Do ‘Hindoos’ have ‘Religious Freedom’ in India ?

Akshay Srinivasan June 9, 2020

India is one strange country. The Indian constitution, ostensibly based on ‘Truth, Non-Violence and Secularism’, certainly does seem to say all the ‘right’ things. The accompanying performance of its ‘intellectuals’, having never wasted an opportunity in saying things like ‘Secular fabric is at risk!’, also scores very high on the ‘liberal’ scale.

Yet, this is also a country where the state blatantly usurps Hindu temples & institutions, violently ‘reforms’ native traditions, all with the same impunity – perhaps greater – as the British and the Islamists, before its supposed ‘independence’. India is a country where centuries-old Maṭhas and Devasthānas are rid of their financial powers over mere allegations of ‘mismanagement’; where centuries-old practices are banned over medieval cries of (‘pagan’, implied) ‘superstition!’.

This is our ‘glorious secularism’. This is our ‘cherished liberalism’.

Paradoxically, the ‘learned intellectuals’, who are all for ‘religious freedom’, are all for this too! Unsurprisingly, as are their ‘enlightened’ supranational backers [19][20].

Had this ‘uniquely Indian’ flavour of ‘secularism’ been implemented in the Western nations of its cherished, ostentatious provenance, it would’ve instantly been deemed a grave violation of ‘religious freedom’ and a gross violation of human dignity; indeed, had such a policy so much as even countenanced a Christian or Islamic institution in India, there would’ve been an ‘international furore’ emanating instantly from the very same ‘enlightened’ quarters.

This being the state of things, how is it that the practice of swindling donations & monies of Hindu devotees by the state, and that of destroying benign centuries old traditions turn into ‘the’ characteristic of ‘secularism’ in India ? Why is this policy, of application only to the accursed ‘Hindus’ in their ‘homeland’ ? These questions, the objectives that have driven such legislation, the utter incomprehension behind them, and the judicial instruments that have been used to carry out this constantinian cultural genocide, are the very topics of this article.

We start at the beginning; we start with the ‘glorious’ 25th Article.

Articles 25 and 26

The article which ‘grants’ religious freedom is a very peculiar one. Article 25 of the Indian constitution whilst having started out reasonably by guaranteeing ‘freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion’, subject to ‘public order, morality and health’ (proviso 1), appears to change its mind midway suddenly, by imposing a devastating proviso limiting, nay completely nullifying, any such ‘freedom’ granted, particularly to the Hindu community.

The specific text of Art. 25, reproduced below, may not appear all that egregious at first glance – indeed, widespread support for 2(b), motivated by the political issue of ‘throwing open’ private Maṭha-Devasthānas, remains strong to this day. However, in the British system that occupies the country today; wherein judicial precedence i.e case law defines the often vague, mindless legislation; these very case-law accretions, the result of trying to force fit India into an irreconcilably alien framework over the past few centuries (esp. post-‘independence’), have turned Art. 25 into the core of the charter for ‘Hindu doom’.

(2) Nothing in this article shall affect the operation of any existing law or prevent the State from making any law

(a) regulating or restricting any economic, financial, political or other secular activity which may be associated with religious practice;

(b) providing for social welfare and reform or the throwing open of Hindu religious institutions of a public character to all classes and sections of Hindus.

In addition to Art. 25, Art. 26 of the constitution ‘grants’ citizens the ‘freedom to manage religious affairs’ subject, as before, to ‘public order, morality and health’, along with the ‘right’,

(a) to establish and maintain institutions for religious and charitable purposes;

(b) to manage its own affairs in matters of religion;

(d) to administer such property in accordance with law

Unlike the previous one Art. 26 was formulated, rather surprisingly, without any discriminatory provisos against the Hindus. This is no matter of sarcasm – the lack of discriminatory provisos against Hindus in Art. 26 was certainly vexing to the vestige of the colonial state at the time. Hindu institutions had enjoyed reasonable independence in the century preceding 1920 under a wary British, but had increasingly come to be seen as threats after the WW1 & the Ghadar conspiracy. The accompanying change in policy was, of course, concomitant with and aided amply by the propaganda of British ‘anti-independence’ agents.

The unstated anti-Hindu doctrine that consequently permeated state institutions, appears to have only turned more toxic with the assassination of M.K.Gandhi, and under its statist masters, post-‘independence’ [6], the oversight on the part of the constituent assembly appears to have been addressed quickly by their cousins in the judiciary, starting with the cases of Purī Jagannātha & Śirūr Maṭha.

Purī Jagannātha

Purī Jagannātha had already come under the direct control of East-India Company as far back as 1803 (as had Tirupati) but the multi-national corporation had soon had to ‘relinquish’ control to the lineage of the Rājā of Khurda under the fear of sparking a revolt. The position of the Rājā was, of course, conditional upon ‘proper conduct’ & tutelage under the EIC but the Rājā’s lineage had somehow managed to hold onto their power even after having been reprimanded once or twice over the century.

In ‘independent’ India, the Rājā’s ‘luck’ finally ran out and ‘improper conduct’ came calling one last time amidst the wartime poverty, squalor and the ‘great saviour’ Churchill’s engineered famine. Orissa jumped at the occasion, quickly enacting a legislation in 1951-52, re-enabling the complete take over of the temple. The administration of one of the sacred Chār Dhām s was promptly taken over by a committee of 10 Govt. employees with the Rājā as their titular chairman.

This would seem to be in gross violation of Art. 26 us simpletons.

This was also the crux of the argument of the Rājā’s prosecution against the Union of India. The court however, manned as they are with extraordinary ‘geniuses’, dismissed such ‘naive’ plebeian arguments from the Rājā’s counsel, and the judges, ML Narasimhan [2] of the Orissa High Court, and later Wanchoo [3] of the Supreme Court, expertly reconciled the state takeover with Art. 26, by pronouncing that,

– The state had only replaced the Raja by a committee of state retainers of Hindu faith with the Raja as their chairman. Hence the administration remained in the hands of the Hindus (claims of the ‘Jagannātha. cult’ being non-Hindu were denied).

– Since the state, at the helm of the ‘Hindu committee’, was involved in the strict, unflinching continuation of practices documented in detail in the 1952 ‘Record of Rights’, it can’t be in violation of Art. 26.

– The financial and administrative roles of the Raja as the ‘Adya Sevak’, having been found to be of ‘strictly secular’ nature, was not guaranteed in light of Art 25 (a).

In reality, this judgment, a characteristic output of the ‘inimitable genius’ of the Indian Judocracy (a word coined, unsurprisingly, in India), justifies policies that are not much different from the Chinese Communist Party’s control of Monastries, Mosques & Churches by placing them at hands of ‘believing’ party workers… at least China doesn’t have to flatter itself as the ‘world’s largest liberal-secular democracy’ as if this occidental ‘badge of honour’ were a substitute to the well-being of the nation.

Śirūr Maṭha

Around the same time, the Maṭhādhipati of the Śirūr Maṭha, having incurred large debts due to the paryāya [5] celebrations (again, during wartime), had lost control of the administration of the institution to a state appointed retainer at the behest of a hostile person [4]. The Govt. appointed manager, it was claimed, had kept the accounts from the Maṭhādhipati and had even started openly flouting his authority. In the case that ensued, the Maṭhādhipati was successful in reclaiming his ‘rights’ against the Madras state, but the judgment itself was ultimately to prove a pyrrhic victory for the larger Hindu community [10].

The Madras HC, which initially heard the case, upheld the Maṭhādhipati’s rights and held the Madras HR&CE act, 1951, to be ultra-vires of several articles of the constitution, most crucially, of Article 26. The SC, which heard the subsequent appeal by the Madras state to reconsider the constitutionality of the act, opined – even while dismissing the appeal – that the constitution only protected the ‘essential practices of religion’, and that it was up to them, the Judges, to ascertain what was ‘essential’, by referring to the ‘doctrine’ of the ‘religion’ itself [1].

The SC appeal judgment, while ostensibly having upheld ‘religious freedom’, simultaneously, also reified constitutional interpretations of Art 25, 26 & 27, that would go on to sanction ‘an elaborate regulatory regime for religious institutions’ in the coming years.

Satsanghi Case

In the same decade, the Swaminarayan temple, used by the Satsanghis had become a sort-of battleground for asserting ‘right to entry’ by a ‘Maha Gujarat Dalit Sangh’. The temple had never really restricted Satsanghi-Harijans, and no one other than Satsanghis – Harijans or otherwise – appears to have visited it with any regularity [1]. The problematic application of ‘rights’ left them as confused then as it does today (cf. Sabarimala).

The apprehensive Satsanghis, in response, filed a plea in the courts, not so much for restricting ‘Harijans’, but for restricting non-Satsanghis from unchecked entry. The Satsanghis argued, amongst other things, that, ‘Swaminarayan, the founder of the sect, considered himself as the Supreme God, and as such, the sect that believes in the divinity of Swaminarayan cannot be assimilated to the followers of Hindu religion’, and hence the Satsanghis, by not being ‘Hindu’, were not under ambit of Art. 25 (b).

After hearing the case, CJI Gajendragadkar dismissed the plea by reasoning that, both they and the founder of Swami Narayan, were in fact ‘pucca’ Hindus; that their ‘apprehension is founded on superstition, ignorance and complete misunderstanding of the true teachings of Hindu religion and of the real significance of the tenets and philosophy taught by Swaminarayan himself’. Gajendragadkar, coming from a family of Sanskrit scholars, even reconciled Swaminarayan’s supreme status by relating him to the coming of the Kalki avatar and Kṛṣṇa words in the Gīta.

The court held such great knowledge, wisdom and esteem, that it was more capable of deciding what was ‘essential’ to the religious sects than the sects themselves. Imagine our wise eminences telling Christians that ‘Jesus’ was infact one of Vishnu’s incarnations, and thus the Catholic Church, the largest private landowner in India, was bound to state diktats! Of course, that’ll never happen.

Seshammal vs. TN

In 1970, the Govt. of Tamil Nadu enacted an amendment to the TN-HRCE act, effectively removing the hereditary succession of Temple roles. This was done, as can guessed, with the characteristic ‘Dravidian’ zeal towards ‘social justice’, so that ‘hereditary priesthood in the Hindu Society be abolished and replaced’.

The affected Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava temples collectively challenged this law in the Supreme Court, but the appeal was dismissed on the reasoning that, while the Arcaka s were appointed to perform ‘religious functions’, they had owed their appointment to lay temple trustees, and hence, the ‘act of appointing’ was in fact ‘essentially secular’ in nature, and thus subject to state interference under Art. 25, 2(a).

This was also also the reasoning given when the sēvakas of Purī Jagannātha challenged the state administration’s decision to rid them of their earnings by replacing traditional open receptacles with closed huṇḍi s.

Myth of ‘Justice’

There is no end to cases like these, but, however, in the course of numerous such judgments, a judicial ‘doctrine’ has became concretized in India, along with the accepted notion that, as far as the state is concerned, only the ‘essential practices’ of the Hindus are protected.

The catch ? The Honourables have also monopolized their own position in defining what is essential and what is not. The religion of Christianity was to be defined by Christians, that of Islam by Muslims, but in India, the sole role of defining ‘Hinduism’ was made exclusive to the Honourables!

Conveniently, the management of monetary and land assets of a temple were overnight ‘discovered’ to be completely ‘secular’ affairs, as were the procurement of materials for temple events and the appointment of Arcaka s, Sēvakas, administrators, and trustees.

Hinduism, ultimately, was found to be the most ‘secular’ religion in the world, echoing what many Hindus themselves had vociferously asserted.

The cases presented earlier are considered ‘landmark judgments’ and cited frequently, but in reality, as with everything contemporarily ‘Indian’, there is nothing novel even here. The East India Company and the British colonial state had both formulated very similar policies based on very similar reasoning even without such self-conceited ‘righteous’ notions of ‘granting’ us ‘heathens’, ‘religious freedoms’.

The thinking behind these cases is so deeply ingrained in the society that reading about them doesn’t even evoke a sense of wrongdoing in the Hindu. It’s therefore recommended to the reader to ponder about the consequences of applying the ‘brilliant’ logic behind these cases to ultra-rich organizations like the Catholic Church and other powerful global politico-religious groups, and so also about how such ‘secular’ policies differ from those in ‘oppressive’, ‘undemocratic’ countries like China.

Hindu Doom

It is easy for the ‘liberal Hindu’ to cop out at this point and groan eternally about the lapse in the administration of Purī & Śirūr; about the ‘corruption’ of the Purī Sēvakas; about ‘temple entry’ or indeed about the benefits/defects of ‘hereditary priesthood’ etc. In many such cases, limited case-specific intervention may even be justifiable, but, however, the pronouncements within the British system, due to its ignorance & utter disdain of local traditions, are not only extremely intrusive but from ‘case law’, nationally cumulative. The question raised here is thus not about the ‘ethics’ behind the cases, but really about the protocols for resolving them.

It’s also very easy, under the current colonial-imperial zeitgeist, to be driven into supporting the deep-state against the ‘conspiring Brāhmaṇa’, but it needs to be realized that once the state is through with one community, the very same weapons will be used to ‘harvest’ the rest. The great loss of non-Brāhmaṇa traditions, be it in sculpting, martial arts, music, dance, education or even industry [11], resulting from the calculated destruction of the Temple ecosystem is a testament to this ongoing tragedy. More recently, the push by foreign-funded nexuses to ban practices like ‘bettale sēve’, ‘maḍē snāna’; to destroy the traditions of Śabarimala & Śani Śignāpur; have uniformly gone against the wishes of the practicing non-Brāhmaṇa communities, all in order to pacify the well-paid cultural imperialists [7][8].

India is a country where every jāti has independently maintained, and developed, both traditions and temples. The occidental theories which formulate ‘temples’ to be sole jurisdiction of the ‘corrupt’ Brāhmaṇa s, whose ‘power’ then stems, like the Catholic s of yore, from their ability to limit ‘salvation’ and ‘truth’ to the common men (and women), make very little sense natively. Of course, that doesn’t stop their acceptance and institutional canonization from being profitable, either socially and economically.

It is therefore unsurprising that the courts and their Honourables, aided amply by well-funded academics, are frantically searching Hindu texts to ‘separate the essential wheat from the chaff’, and to present to ‘Hindus’ their one ‘true religion’ just as ‘God’ intended it. Conveniently, most native tradition is non-textual, and ‘constitutional morality’ can thus override any such ‘essentially secular’ practices.

In the pursuit of this ‘noble task’, the concretization of the ‘essential practices’ doctrine has led to the simultaneous development of a standard ‘judicial procedure’, such as it were, to subvert any Hindu practice, institution or place of worship, that catches the eye of any jobless (but well-connected) rando,

– Invoke Art 25, 2(b), to ‘throw open’ the Hindu institution if the matter is concerned with people and authority, or simply use ‘Hindu’ state retainers for administrative-financial control.

– Otherwise, invoke Art 25, 2(a) to interfere in the ‘secular’ affairs of said institution, by declaring said matter to be outside the ‘essential religious practice’.

This simple stratagem, accompanied with verbose, often flattering, ramblings about the Vedas, Upanishads, the Gita, Agamas etc. alongside pleasing comparisons with the right to equality in Art 14/21, and liberal sprinklings (pun intended) of other ‘hip’ phrases like ‘cosmos of freedom’, appears to have kept the Hindu in a state of eternal delusion. The judgment concerning the entry of women into Śabarimala too follows a similar pattern, and appears routine and utterly insipid in hindsight.

The alarming thing, however, is that even after centuries of such colonial pronouncements, the pop-opinion expressed on the Hindu side, both political and intellectual, remains in stark ignorance of their dark predicament. Indeed, Hindus are often more enthused when Art 25-2(a) is used to beat down some Muslim practice than they are in securing their own traditions!

This is not surprising.

Constitutional assembly on ‘Rights’

The blatant and systematic discrimination against the native traditions of India is often traced back by ‘Hindus’ to ‘foreign’ forces. The British and the Islamic colonizers rightly are blamed for these issues, but in the current zeitgeist, their only purpose now is to serve as a white-bogeymen to distract from the insidious, conscious & unconscious Indian vessels of the dead imperialists’ thoughts.

The sub-committee responsible for drafting the articles on ‘rights’ in the constitution is a prototypical instance of this recurring and disastrous phenomenon. The sub-committee was a group comprised mostly of ‘Hindus’, led by the ‘Hindu Hrday Samrat’ in retrospect, Sardar Vallabhai Patel himself. This however, was also the very committee that was unanimous in the view that only the ‘minimum’ amount of ‘religious freedom’ be granted in India to Hindus [1].

The committee was concerned that ‘unchecked’ religious freedom would ‘invalidate legislation against anti-social customs which have the sanction of religion’, and opined that giving ‘solemn sanction in a constitutional document to these practices will be perpetuating an evil which will strike at the very foundation of the State’.

The colonial legislators’ distrust in ‘religious freedom’ (for Hindus) was concomitant with the great belief in the ‘wisdom of the legislatures not to interfere with religious practices’. The committee was therefore deeply prejudiced about including ‘religious practices’ within the ambit of the article as this would prevent ‘social reform’ of Hindus by the state; moreover this would automatically invalidate the legislative ‘progress’ made by the British colonial state in order to ‘civilize the savages’.

In the course of the discussions, the committee had had their hand forced into the inclusion of ‘religious practice’ upon the insistence of the Christians and the Sikhs. This inturn, however, left unsatisfied, the committee’s burning desire that ‘social reforms in the particular community must be permissible with the consent of the legislature of course’. Patel agreed with this sentiment and a new proviso was added into the article stating,

The freedom of religious practice guaranteed in this clause shall not debar the State from enacting laws for the purpose of social welfare and reform.

This proviso transmogrified into the egregious Hindu-specific Art 25, 2(b) after another amendment by the then Congress member & future VHP founding member, K M Munshi (perhaps another statue is in order ?). The other proviso concerning state interference in ‘secular activities’ (Art. 25, 2(a)), was similarly added in without much debate.

This should strike everyone as being very strange.

In the ‘right-wing’ ‘pop-history’, that has, in light of the institutional capture by the colonial-imperialists, become the only avenue for dissent and self-preservation, the sub-committee members like Patel are seen not to be part of the ‘Nehruvian anti-Hindu conspiracy’. The sub-committee members themselves are also fairly vocal about preserving the ‘Hindu faith’ they ostensibly practiced in the discussions.

Yet, it’s very apparent from the sub-committee discussions that these eminences shared very similar concerns as every one of their Fabian-Communist-Liberal-Orientalist-Cononialist-Eugenicist counterparts, both contemporaneous and modern, both Western and Eastern (if there is even such an entity anymore). The ‘intellectuals’ of the entire spectrum appear to be as uniform in their view of India as that between Marx, Hitler and Churchill.

The uniformity of thought amongst occidental ‘intellectuals’, and so also their babbling native clones, leads, unsurprisingly, to policies that are no different even today (so much for ‘sva’tantra). This phenomenon is apparent in every country that has fallen victim to Western aggression over the past few centuries – from Asia to Africa, the result is inevitably the same. The sub-committee discussions make it obvious, contrary to the views of the constitution-is-a-holy-book ‘Indic’ ‘intellectuals’, that the treatment being meted out to the Hindus by the ‘righteous republic’ is precisely what the framers had in mind.

This is ‘constitutional morality’.

The Indian constitution, as it pertains to Hinduism, was and is, a charter for its ‘reform’. It unclear how such a draconian charter is ‘democratic’, ‘righteous’, and even ‘Dharmic’. Have you agreed to this ? Have I ? The Indian constitution, or what little that was appended to the Govt. of India Act, 1935, was drafted entirely by colonial elites, elected by little more than 10% of the population, and by be(k)nighted ICS officers who had pledged their service to the Queen.

Democratic principles aside (since us Hindu ‘savages’ are certainly less than human), it is painfully apparent that the process of formulating the ‘fundamental rights’ appears to have been fundamentally broken. In the wisdom of Western democracies, the entire point of formulating ‘fundamental rights’ is precisely because the legislature and the state can’t be trusted not to trample upon them. The sub-committee on India’s ‘fundamental rights’ was, however, clearly of the opposite opinion – the legislature (and the state) was clearly wiser than the plebeian ‘rabble’, and what more, even needed to be protected from the latter!

Perhaps, ‘Oligarchy’ is the word these ‘eminences’ were looking for ?

The framers, it is apparent, neither understood their own traditions, nor did they understand those of the West. The outcome, as is woefully clear in the Indian case – a greed-laden state run amok, drunk on power and grabbing whatever it can – is precisely what is begotten from such stupidity, mindlessness and disconnect from the land.

The self-conceited preamble, screaming ‘we the people’, while slipping in the ‘slave charter’ of 1935 Govt. of India Act; its motto of ‘satyam ēva jayatē’, while concealing, to this day, the ‘transfer of power’ agreement with the British; its claims to ‘secularism’, while discriminating against ‘Hindus’ explicitly in name; all seem like cruel Orwellian jokes.

Little wonder it’s so ‘celebrated’.

It is quite telling that, August 15, the day of surrender of both the INA and their Japanese hosts, was chosen by Mountbatten, a British royal, to be the ‘Indian Independence day’.

Republic of ‘Atrocity’

The role of atrocity literature, both for justifying British rule over India, and for enacting such blatantly discriminatory legislation needs far more research – though of course, no such thing can be expected in the vestigial colony. It is clear that even if the intent of persons formulating such legislation, were not quite so genocidal, the ‘knowledge’ and understanding that led them there, perhaps may not have quite so benign a provenance.

Indeed, the ‘Ātma’ is hardly limited to the vicinities of the body.

Colonial and imperial histories are rife with such ‘false flags’ & ‘atrocity literature’, very consciously cooked up, often without a trace of the conspiracies that used them historically. The little that we can see – the ‘righteous’ justifications of the Gulf Wars (WMD, Nayirah testimony), the Vietnam War (Gulf of Tonkin), and others, and those during the endless destruction of Asia in the century prior (Opium wars), must serve as poignant reminders of what can go wrong with the ‘righteous’ warriors run amok.

Unfortunately for Bhāratavarṣa, the sub-committee, their successors in the legislature, the academia and the judiciary, have all proven themselves to be little more than crude Brown Anglo-Saxon clones, brainlessly mimicking their masters in speech and accent even, but conveniently, also entirely free from the heavy burdens of internal logic, or indeed, consistency. Indeed, one wonders if such eminences, free from logical burdens, are, but in fact, ‘artificially’ intelligent bots, running around from one statistical mode to the next, happily collecting the rewards that inevitably come their way.

The ‘eminences’ remain unified in their belief that the ‘Hindus need to be taught a lesson’, because their ‘beastly’ ‘religion’ ‘sanctions’ all sorts of ‘evils’. They had ‘Sati’, ‘Dowry’, ‘Caste-System’, ‘Untouchability’, and every kind of ‘Satanic superstition’ possible. This unshakeable belief, ironically more a ‘religion’ than ‘Hinduism’ itself, is sadly so widespread that it remains true regardless of political affiliation – this being true even of the larger Sangha Parivar.

The colonizer truly is in the mind to paraphrase the ‘great liberator’ Winston Churchill, and hence, it is considered a great ‘sin’ by the ‘Hindoos’ to even ask the simple question – ‘are these true ?’. Are we really the modern day Canaanites needing to be ‘genocided’, if not in life, then in culture, for the betterment of all ‘humanity’ ?

Radical new research on these topics has already shed great new light on the Goebbelsian [20] propaganda that has come define every single aspect of Indian life today. The works from the likes of Dharampal [11], S N Balagangadhara [12,13], Meenakshi Jain [14], Veena Talwar, have even decisively collapsed many of these ‘Brown Sahib’ colonial justifications.

Sadly, these eye-opening works are, at best, consciously ignored, and at worst, have had their authors demonized. Perhaps, recognizing them reveals the shallow ‘racial’ nature of the Congress-led independence movement – replacing White Sahibs with Brown ones is hardly ‘independence’ now is it ?

Way Forward

In the short term, new fronts of attack being opened by the the ‘Honourables’, needs greater awareness.

The former CJI, now renowned for gagging his employee, opined in 2016 that, since Hinduism incorporated ‘all forms of beliefs’, Hindus temples and administrations should not discriminate between ‘Hindus’ and non-Hindus.

Statements such as this, if legally reified and taken to the logical conclusion, will serve as the legal basis for the ongoing the ‘capture’ of Hindu temples by Christian Missionaries and other supernational entities. This will legalize the covert processes rumored to already be instituted in temples like Tirupati [17], and so also secure legislative amendments like those passed by Kerala for appointing non-Hindus into the Devaswom-HRCE departments.

On the more ‘intellectual’ front, the ‘bullshitting’ that is typically required to justify what is ‘essentially religious’ also appears to be taking a toll on the larger agenda [16]. The future CJI of the ‘righteous republic’, has expressed the great need for unbridled ramrodding of ‘constitutional morality’, regardless of the ‘essential religious practices’ test (flawed as it is). This development will decisively be the end of whatever little ‘religious freedom’ that has been spared to Hindus, in the coming few decades.

The silver lining of all this could be that this would lead to greater awareness, but recent history does not give much hope of this. The surreptitious censorship by global academic and information monopolies, along with state-capture of both temples and education institutions also does not lend much hope in the long run. The prioritization of the slave-economy over industrialization will also strengthen the status quo in the short term – India continues to earn far more from remittance than from exports.

On the longer term, as noted in my previous article, it should be realized that there really is no ‘Hindu side’, politically. This reflects reality in that there really are no popular alternatives to the theories that are leading us towards the precipitous cliff. It is unsurprising therefore, that, neither the arguments on the ‘Hindu’ side, nor that of the Union of India, nor even that of the ‘learned’ judges, make any sense natively.

Even the so-called ‘true secularism’ is no cure. From the work of Jakob de Roover [9] we know that it is impossible for any state, secular or not, to remain religiously ‘neutral’. Human rights too, like secularism, were birthed in the tumultuous period of Christian reformation, and are attuned to Christianity. It’s unclear what makes these theories, by this mere historical fact, to be universal, and so obviously superior, but it must be acknowledged that there really are no developed ‘indic’ alternatives at the moment.

In the current asphyxiated state of the Hindu mind, it might thus make sense to argue, like the lawyers of the ‘Hindu’ side, on alien terms. Indeed, there might even be sufficient leg room in the system for restoring the ‘rights’ of ‘Hindus’. However, the language game is so artificial and detached from reality that one has to read the actual judgments to see their true ugly face. This being the case, nyāya (~= logic, reasoning) can’t really be expected; thus it’s unclear how much longer such reactionary positions will go in preventing a total civilizational collapse – especially when considering other occult movements within the country that appear to have vast supranational support.

India’s own chosen goal of being an Anglo-Saxon vassal, culturally, linguistically and perhaps even ‘religiously’, as noted in my previous article, is at the heart of this ongoing tragedy, and it’d be hard to stem the momentum being rapidly picked up by this movement by such passive-submissive ‘conservative’ means. The rapid state-sponsored anglicization of public discourse and education will destroy the ability to transmit the little knowledge of Indian culture that survives in our dying languages, ultimately destroying the tiny sliver of civilization that’s on life support.

India’s civilizational continuation requires a ‘reform’ of the Indian state, with the word ‘reform’ attaining the same understanding as that with which sponsored ‘intellectuals’ use it with respect to India’s native traditions. This is unlikely to occur until India continues to be entrapped in the ‘good cop, bad cop’ political routine, while the state apparatus chips away happily at the remnant civilization with impunity.

The shoddiness of the cultural attack itself speaks to our collective stupidity more than anything else, and perhaps – as I’ve increasingly come to suspect – even indicate widespread consension. If the latter is the case, I’m truly sorry.

(This article is based heavily on the Master’s thesis of Anil Rao [1].)

References

[1]. Anil Rao, Freedom of Religion and the Supreme Court of India, Masterproef van de opleiding, Universiteit Gent

[2]. Ram Chandra Deb V State of Orissa, AIR 1959 Ori 5, 6

[3]. Raja Bira Kishore Deb V State of Orissa, AIR 1964 SC 1501

[4]. Madras v. Sri Lakshimindra Thirtha Swamiar of Sri Shirur Mutt, AIR 1954 SC 282

[5]. The administration of the Upupi Srī Krṣna Maṭha are shared by 8 Maṭha s in the region; the transfer of responsibility occurs during Paryāya.

[6]. Sanjeev Nayyar, Indian govt won’t be any different from British if Hindus can’t manage their own temples, The Print, 8 April 2019, https://web.archive.org/web/20190408135737/https://theprint.in/opinion/indian-govt-wont-be-any-different-from-british-if-hindus-cant-manage-their-own-temples/218210/

[7]. P Radhika, The Subject of Bettale Seve (Nude Worship) at Chandragutti, South India, Hokkaido University, 2012

[8]. Wilma Serrao, Made Snana: Devotees call it catharsis while intellectuals call it atrocity, Udayavani, January 12 2015, https://web.archive.org/web/20150923031817/www.udayavani.com/english/news/exclusives/19419/%E2%80%8Bmade-snana-devotees-call-it-catharsis-while-intellectuals-call-it

[9]. Jakob De Roover, Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism, Oxford University Press, 2015

[10]. T. R Ramesh, HR & CE: Rogue Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu, Vijay Vaani, https://web.archive.org/web/20130823153235/http://vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=1887

[11]. Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century,

https://archive.org/details/DharampalCollectedWritingsIn5Volumes/page/n4

[12]. M. Fárek, D. Jalki, S. Pathan, P. Shah, (Eds.), Western Foundations of the Caste System, Palgrave MacMillan, 2017

[13]. S N. Balagangadhara, The Heathen in his Blindness…, Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion, Leiden, New York, 1994

[14]. Meenakshi Jain, Sati: Evangelicals, Baptist Missionaries, and the Changing Colonial Discourse, Aryan Books International, 2016

[15]. Veena Talwar Oldenburg, Dowry Murder, Reinvestigating a Cultural Whodunnit, Penguin, 2010

[16]. Murali Krishnan, Question of Law: Essential Religious Practices Test a “problem in our jurisprudence”, DY Chandrachud J, https://www.barandbench.com/columns/question-of-law-essential-religious-practices-test-a-problem-in-our-jurisprudence-dy-chandrachud-j

[17]. Srinivasa Rao Apparasu, 44 non-Hindus working in Tirupati temple to be shifted to other departments, Hindustan Times, January 06 2018, https://web.archive.org/web/20180217145144/https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/44-non-hindu-employees-working-in-tirumala-temple-to-be-shifted-to-other-departments/story-FyU77dUOnTfhyQaDiBFF4L.html

[18]. Indiafacts Staff, Forceful Evangelism abetted by a Christian Principal

, February 22, 2015, http://indiafacts.org/evangelism-rocks-tirumala-tirupathi-devasthanams-ttd/

[19]. Akshay Srinivasan, Faulty Numbers behind the USCIRF, July 16 2019, http://indiafacts.org/faulty-numbers-behind-the-uscirf/
[20]. Annual Report of the USCIRF, US Commission on International Religious Freedom, April 2020

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