Hindu Society Under Siege – As Sita Ram Goel Saw It
Sita Ram Goel (1921 –2003) was an erudite scholar, activist, writer, historian, and publisher. His book How I became a Hindu describes his journey from an early and strong Marxist sympathizer to the rediscovery of his Hindu and Indic roots, as well as understanding the dangers of Marxist extremism and unrepentant materialism.
Most Hindus have no problem accepting Christ as an enlightened person and considering him as another one in the great line of such people across time and space. They would have no issues with Christians, Muslims, or members of any other faith too in line with the fundamental philosophy of Hindu traditions — an indifference to differences as S N Balagangadhara says. Most Hindus would accept the God of Christians or the Allah of Islam as manifestations of the single divinity.
A Hindu, however, has serious concerns when adherents of monotheistic and exclusivist ideologies assume power and indulge in either physical violence (as in the past) or in manipulative and cynical intellectual violence (as at present) against Hindu traditions, practices, and cultural and spiritual values. This ideological turn starts to threaten the Hindu thought and way of life. Though a bit weak before independence, unfortunately, through a right combination of political and academic activism, communists took over to continue their perpetration of intellectual violence against Hindus. All of the above factors combined with a peculiar intellectual framework of the modern Hindu intellectual which Sita Ram Goel calls ‘Macaulayism’. These four forces come together to present a hostile front to Hindus and Hinduism. Each one augments the other and it is sad that even today Hindus remain on the defensive regarding their society and culture perhaps even more so now than before. The “caste-system,” for example, has been the whipping boy across centuries, and caste has gained more traction in the recent past.
In this context, it is important to re-read Sita Ram Goel’s book In this essay we are going to summarize Goel’s book to underscore the centuries’ long effort to undermine Hinduism and to demonize Hindus. The average Indian of any faith needs to understand the subtle and not so subtle inimical forces against Hindu society. Disrupting the Hindu fabric of the country which holds, in fact, the only solution to multi-culturalism and pluralism is a danger to the future of the modern world which is slipping into increasing chaos.
Significance of Hindu Society
Hindu society is the longest surviving civilization in the world. Most other societies in human history suffered a sudden destruction or a traumatic transformation due to invasion by fanatical groups carrying the banner of monotheism, proclaiming their god the only “God,” and conquering and subjugating the “heathen,” the “primitive,” and the “polytheists, animists, others” around the world. The tribal, Abrahamic “religions” founded in the “fertile crescent” of the “Middle East” have wreaked havoc over the world, and now, combined with Marxist/extremist “social justice” cults, have regrouped to weaken if not destroy Hinduism, the lone, long-standing bulwark against extremist religious and political cults and ideologies. It is an amazing facet of Sanatana Dharma or Hindu civilization that it still survives despite onslaughts starting from the times of Alexander. Unfortunately, the attacks continue and there is every need to preserve, protect, and energize the rich artistic, literary, scientific, and spiritual heritage of India.
The entire historical reading of India by the dominant school of Western historians and their Indian disciples is a series of successful foreign invasions to which Hindu India invariably succumbed. The descriptions of the so-called Aryans in the second millennium BCE, by Alexander, by the Muslim invaders from 7th century CE onward, and by European colonialists from the Middle Ages somehow fixed India’s image as a chaotic place for any adventurer to come and plunder. The colonialists and later the Aligarh and Marxist school of historians drew a picture depicting India as the land of constant skirmishes and fights and as a space that sustained an inherently exploitative and oppressive Hindu social system. Marxist historians extended the Aligarh thesis to argue that foreign invaders were not only social and political liberators o but were also providers of incentives to forces of production.
Responsible historians concede that Indian history extended to much earlier times than Alexander’s invasions; the Aryan invasion theory is conjectural and it was the inferiority of Indian warfare techniques rather than any inferior socio-cultural environments which allowed the foreign invaders to conquer the land and loot its treasuries. Hindu-Indian society never constructed a strong, centralized state to tyrannize over its constituent units and invade neighboring countries. Yet their society was strong based on a highly decentralized but cohesive social fabric made of organic units such as the clan (kula), caste (jati), village (grama), town (nigama), metropolis (nagara), country (janapada), and empire (samrajya). This system remained vigorous and vibrant till recent times.
Alexander, Queen Semiramis of Babylonia, and Cyrus the Great of Iran in the 6th Century BCE attacked India with vast armies but the united republics in North-West India repelled them effectively. The Scythians, the Kushanas, and the Hunas after the Mauryan and the Gupta empires did succeed in conquering and ruling over northern and western India. This foreign rule, however, was rather short-lived. They either lost or integrated into Hindu society and culture.
Muslim invaders started in the middle of the 7th century CE equipped with superior ammunition and a forceful ideology which was extremely unusual for Indian traditions to deal with. The armies of the Arab Caliphate which had conquered vast territories stretching from the Hindukush to the Atlantic Ocean could not advance beyond Sindh despite repeated invasions. Later, the Ghaznavids, the Ghoris, the Khaljis, the Tughlaqs and the Mughals who followed fared much better and succeeded in establishing imperial dynasties. Strong and sure resistance from the Rajputs, the Vijayanagar Empire, the Marathas, the Bundelas, the Jats and the Sikhs, one after another, saw the end of Muslim rule by mid-18th century.
The British enslaved India once again after a long history of European colonial presence in India. European and British colonial rule also brought Christianity, an ideology which too was alien and intensely inimical to the basic tenets of the Hindu way of life. Unlike Islam as an officially sanctioned religion during Islamic rule, British colonial rule did not directly support Christian missionary activity but subtle support to Christianity remained intact. Britain’s rising tide of humanism, rationalism, universalism, and liberal democracy did buffer an outright destruction of Hindu heritage.
It is a wonder that Hindu society, despite much damage along the way, including division of the land into three parts, could retain its identity as the only Hindu majority nation in the world. However, after India gained independence from the British, and after being partitioned into a “secular” India and a Muslim Pakistan, still is lodged in battle with Islamism, Christianism, Macaulayism, and Communism. These are residues of foreign invasions which are holding Hindu society under siege.
The Residue of Islamism
Islamism implies a closed cultural attitude making it impossible for its converts to coexist peacefully with other people. Islamism does not refer to Muslims but to that attitude awarding the monopoly of truth and knowledge to one religion only. Islamism, the most significant residue of Muslim invasions, seals itself off from empiricism, rationalism, universalism, humanism, and liberalism, the hallmarks of Hindu as well as modern Western culture. Islamism is displayed front and center when an intellectual like Mohammed Iqbal, admired by many Hindus too, wrote in his poem, “no matter if my idiom is Indian, my spirit is that of Hijaz (Mecca and Medina areas of Arabia)”. Indian Muslim brethren, the flesh and blood of the country, need freedom from Islamism. Many Muslim intellectuals find Islamism repugnant but their voice remains muted and insignificant.
Islamism has the following five fundamentals:
- Indian society before Islam was in utter spiritual, moral, and cultural darkness (Jahiliya) like pre-Islamic Arabia.
- Islam brought true religion, authentic moral values, humane culture, and progressive social order.
- The British, through mostly fraud, aborted this civilizing mission of Islam in India.
- Pakistan exemplifies the power of Islam but the rest of India remains an unfinished task.
- Islam has a right to use all means to convert this Indian Darul-harb (land ruled by non-believers) into a Darul-Islam (ruled by believers with Islamic law).
Islamism evolved into a strategy to use misguided Muslims as soldiers in an army against Indian nationalism. Some features include the sealing off of the Muslim minds from rational values by maulvis; threats of physical violence against Muslims publicly rejecting Islamism; encouraging Muslims to air as many grievances as possible to construct a mock picture of an exploited and down-trodden community; converting the Muslim community into compact vote banks; encouraging Muslims to agitate for India’s support to all relevant and irrelevant international Islamic causes; and staging riots on the pretext of any issue ranging from minor insults to most major international political events.
Another strategy neutralizes or pampers different sections of Hindu society by using “secularism,” “communalism,” or “fascism,” as labels to target specific Hindu concerns, movements, or actors. . These words have been carefully cultivated and used to malign all organisations, institutions, and parties which dare question Islam and its culture. Hindus championing Islamic causes are embraced and others not toeing the line branded as Islamophobes, fascists, and “Hindu nationalists”.
Congress politicians consolidating their vote banks; socialist and communists stoking their anti-Hindu animus and building vote banks; Gandhians misunderstanding non-violence towards all as an endorsement of Islam; and self-alienated Hindu intellectuals exhibiting sheer antipathy towards Hindu society — all played their part in the patronage of Islamism. This patronage also became a definition of large-hearted liberals, progressives, and secularists.
Initially, Islamism made slow progress as Pakistan was of not much help, but since the early seventies, oil and Arab petro-dollars gave it a massive boost. Today, there is a rapid rise of a powerful press and many publishing houses to propagate Islamism. A generous funding of madrasas allows for teaching Islam and training missionaries to make converts, especially from the weaker Hindu sections. Buying land and real estate, storing of arms in mosques and in Muslim localities, and training of Muslim toughs are important strategies in the new scenario. This apart from holding frequent conferences and taking out demonstrations in support of every Islamic cause. Muslim politics get financing and politicians infiltrate every political party. Finally, secularist Hindu intellectuals, journalists, public workers, and politicians get bribes for supporting Islamism, denigrating Hindu culture (especially focussing on the caste-system and Dalits), and character-assassinating those who oppose Islamism.
The Residue of Christianism
British rule in India crystallized into two residues — Christianism and Macaulayism. Christianism in India does not refer to Christians in this country who have not shown any marked hostility towards Hindu society and have greatly integrated into the country’s ethos. Nor have they so far served as vehicles of Christianism except in certain areas of the Northeast. Christianism centers in the numerous Christian missions operating all over the country, particularly in the so-called tribal belts.
The fundamentals of Christianism in India are:
- Hindus have never had a historically verified “saviour” except for the Buddha. Jesus Christ, with unquestionable historicity, superseded all earlier supposed saviours of Hinduism and rendered superfluous all subsequent Hindu saints and sages.
- The Church specifically chose Saint Thomas, an apostle of Jesus himself, to win India for his Master’s message. He could not complete his mission because of an untimely martyrdom at the hands of a Hindu Brahmin.
- The first-century Christians of the South converted by Saint Thomas established Christianity as an ancient Indian religion and not a Western import as alleged by Hindus.
- The sacred task of the Christian Church is to make India a Christian country.
- The only thing good about the Hindu religion is that Hindu saints and sages merely stumbled upon some truths in the workings of Universal Nature and preparing India over a long time for the advent of Jesus Christ.
- A Hindu, even if he follows the Ten Commandments and lives by the Sermon on the Mount, can never hope to escape eternal hell-fire unless he has been baptized in a Christian church and administered the Christian sacraments.
These tenets have their source in the Christian religion claiming for itself a monopoly of truth and the only true God and Saviour. Christianity had an extremely violent record in destroying ancient Greco-Roman traditions. There was gross destruction in Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa, Central America, and South America by way of wars amongst different denominations, Inquisitions, and religious wars with Jews and Muslims.
The first encounter in India with Portuguese missionaries was aggressive and violent. The Church and the Inquisition killed both Hindus and Muslims, forced conversions, demolished Hindu temples, smashed Hindu murtis, and inaugurated an anti-Brahmanism which has by now become the battle-cry of all “progressives” and “secular” politics in India.
Fortunately, something similar did not happen in British India for various reasons. One was the colonial understanding of Muslim history that religion comes in the way of building stable empires. Another was a refusal to patronize Christianity beyond a certain limit due to the parallel Enlightenment values sweeping across Europe. The British rule kept missionaries away as an official policy but the latter did have tacit and subtle support in intellectually attacking Hindu scriptures, thoughts, and practices. The rulers were deeply Christian, mainly Protestant, in their values too which did color their activities.
Christian missionaries during colonial times once spread a canard that many Hindus voluntarily got themselves crushed under the great chariot during the annual rathayatra at Puri to attain salvation. Some good British officers and liberal politicians prevented the official request to demolish the temple but the word ‘Juggernaut’ (a relentless destroying force) came into being — a relic of the imagination of the early missionaries.
Swami Vivekananda, Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Annie Besant, and Mahatma Gandhi were important resisting forces against the relentless missionary attack on Hindu culture and traditions. The West also started imbibing Hindu spiritual values as propagated by the likes of Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, Tagore, and Coomaraswamy.
The core of Christianism in India, however, remains intact with some covert methods used to proselytize, like missionary training of natives; “Hinduizing” the outer accoutrements of Christian priests, liturgy and sacraments; directing their powerful press and publishing houses to develop a scholarly critique of Hindu society showing it as inferior; establishing educational institutions which targets and seduces upper class Hindus; building hospitals and undertaking social work to attract respect for the Christian spirit of social service; starting orphanages and homes for the handicapped where proselytization proceeds safely and unnoticed; concentrating on remote Hindu tribals appealing to their “non-Hindu” status; sponsoring promising candidates and native missionaries on prolonged tours of Western countries; encouraging well-off Christians in the West to adopt boys and girls from poor Indian families; and financing political campaigns for separate states in areas where Christian population has attained a majority.
Money freely flows from churches and communities in Europe and America for all these activities. It comes as a surprise when some missionaries start talking the new language of radicalism and revolution. In associating with the causes of poor tribals, they emulate the example of our Communist leaders of a synthetic radicalism. As the west lost its fascination for the faith, the latter is therefore making a bold bid to establish a safer haven in the East. India provides a soft target as it is difficult to penetrate the Islamic and Communist countries of Asia.
The Residue of Macaulayism
Macaulayism (from Thomas Babington Macaulay) is the successful educational policy of British India producing a class of Indians trapped in colonial ideas about India. These ideas include the following: no worthwhile education before the British; semi-educated teachers imparting some rudimentary arithmetic, reading and writing taught to mostly upper castes and Brahmins; Brahmins denying education to other groups, and so on. People like Gandhi objected to this narrative but it was Dharampal’s scholarly work that shattered this idea of a primitive, caste-based educational system without any achievements.
Dharampal, using old British archives, proved conclusively that the Indian system was better than the English in many areas like: schools and colleges proportionate to the population; the number of attending students; time spent in school; the quality of teachers; financial support for the students; girls education; and the subjects taught. Also, there was a high percentage of “lower” class (Shudra and other castes) students as compared to the “upper” class (Brahmin, Kshatriya, and Vaishya) students.
The English system either trained administrators towards maximization of state revenues or created an admiring Indian social elite in support of British rule. The indigenous system of education was incapable of doing this and was therefore bad-mouthed. Many Hindus, despite this education, like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Swami Vivekananda, and Lokmanya Tilak, rediscovered their roots to survive the deliberate denationalization. For the rest, it succeeded in sweeping an ancient and highly cultured people off its feet. Sadly, we have not seen the last of this.
Macaulayism, not as clear as Islamism and Christianism, is a diffuse doctrine. It is an intellectual attitude settling down as a pervasive cultural climate. Without employing any meticulously cultivated methods to propagate itself and not using a specified section of Indian society as a vehicle, it corrodes the soul and social system of a culture.
The paralyzing consequences of this Macaulayism over Hindu intelligentsia are the following:
- A skeptical attitude towards Hindu spirituality, cultural creations, and social institutions. The approval of anything in Hindu India, past or present, is only after recognition and recommendation by an appropriate western authority.
- A positive attitude towards Western society and culture as representing progress, reason, and science. The rejection of anything West is only after Western evaluation rejects it first.
- An intellectual inclination to compare Hindu ideals and institutions from the past not with their contemporaneous ideas and institutions in the West but with what the West has achieved in its recent history — the 19th and the 20th centuries.
- An attitude to judge the West in terms of the ideals and utopias it proclaims from time to time, while judging Hindus with a reference to the present Hindu society and culture when the Hindus have hardly emerged from a long period of struggle against foreign invasions.
- A psychological propensity to scrutinize, interpret and evaluate Hindu traditions using Western tools of analysis. Macaulayists would term any indigenous tools to weigh western heritage as unscientific and irrelevant to the universe of discourse. The intellectual fashions (English Utilitarianism, German Idealism, Russian Nihilism, French Positivism or Existentialism, American Consumerism, and so on) change as freely and frequently as the dominant intellectual climate in the West.
This approving, rejecting, judging, and justifying evolves into a life-style and thinking where Western models are preferable to indigenous designs for addressing any problem: a secular and socialist state; planned economy; casteless society; scientific culture, and such are examples of transferred western narratives. Parliamentary institutions, public and private enterprises, the infrastructure of power and transport, medicine, public health and housing, education and entertainment, dress, fashion, food, furniture, crockery, table manners, even the way we gesticulate, grin and smile must mirror the West.
Macaulayism will gladly permit a Hindu an occasional privilege to take some pride at Indian heritage, provided Kalidasa and Samudragupta become India’s Shakespeare and Napoleon respectively. The Indian can praise those specimens of Hindu architecture, native literature, sculpture, painting, music, dance, and drama which some Western connoisseurs patronized.
This Macaulayism detaches the Hindu from traditional Hindu society. The rate of growth, the gross national product, and the standard of living are the only criteria of progress. There is tolerance towards religion so long it is a private indulgence. Some of its rituals and festivities can occasionally add some color to life. For the rest, religion is obscurantism, primitive superstition, and a creator of communal riots. Traditional Hindu practices become an object of deep skepticism and scorn for some.
The traditional Hindu, on the other hand, wants to live in peace and amity with all his compatriots. As philosopher Balagangadhara makes it clear, the hallmark of Hindu traditions is an indifference to differences. The traditional Hindu however does want to retain his majority in his only homeland and preserve his society and culture. But Macaulayism stubbornly refuses to concede that right to Hindu society and culture.
- Macaulayism would denounce clear facts proving the need for Hindu self-defence as alarmist, communalist, chauvinist, and fascist.
- The aggressor becomes a poor, deprived, and down-trodden minority whom the Hindus refuse to recognize as equal citizens.
- Later, a Macaulay product assigns to the Hindus an inescapable moral responsibility to rescue their less privileged brethren from the plight into which Hindus have forced them.
- Next, the focus is on the injustice and oppression in their own social system which drives away its less privileged sections towards other faiths for a better life.
- Hindus should put their own house in order proclaims Macaulayism. They should immediately abolish the caste system and abandon all the shameful practices related to food, marriage, and so on. It never occurs that social reform is a slow process and in the meanwhile, a society has a right to self-defence in the interests of its sheer survival.
- The result is a secular-progressive nature which implies abusing the majority but appeasing the minority.
- The stance which suits Macaulayism best is to sit on the fence and call a plague on both houses.
Macaulayism affords to take this neutral, even hostile stance, because there is no more regard to Hindu society as an indispensable benefactor. He or she has already managed to monopolize most of the political, administrative, and media power in this country and the best jobs in business and the professions. The progressive West approves and applauds such critics and extend invitations to these eloquent speakers. They go to international seminars and well-paid lecture tours to enlighten Western audiences about the true state of things in this “unfortunate” country.
The Communist Conspiracy
Capitalist societies retained philosophical eclecticism and political pluralism as expressed in a parliamentary democracy, a free press, and free trade unions. Communist societies, on the other hand, froze Marxist philosophy into a closed system of orthodoxy. This reduced Marxism to another monotheism by being the only doctrine and the only Saviour. Communist regimes could not help becoming totalitarian enemies of human freedom.
Communism was an instrument of Soviet foreign policy, particularly with Stalin, in its drive towards world domination. The split with China also splintered the world communist monolith. But, by and large, the movement has recovered from these shocks. Communism inevitably comes into conflict with positive nationalism guiding the country’s internal and external policies. Positive nationalism draws inspiration from its own cultural heritage and socio-political traditions.
Communism, though not a residue of foreign rule, is yet a foreign imposition of the most malignant character. Ideologically, communism is an extension of Macaulayism. This affinity between communism and Macaulayism derives from a common source in the modern West — materialistic metaphysics, evolutionistic sociology, utilitarian ethics, hedonistic psychology, and so on. In this worldview, man is essentially a homo fabricus, a tool-maker. A centralized economy and an urbanized society are natural consequences of this worldview. Macaulayism always stays defensive and apologetic regarding Communism.
The inspiration of communism was the Soviet Union, and briefly China. This basic dissonance between communism and positive nationalism in India was starkly evident during the Second World War. The Communist Party of India had initially opposed British imperialism and the Muslim League. During the fight for freedom the CPI represented a revolutionary fringe of the nationalist movement. The Congress Socialist Party even allowed its platform for use by the CPI working under a British ban.
Then, in 1941 Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the Congress launched the Quit India Movement in August 1942. The Communists in the Congress opposed the Quit India resolution because now the “imperialist war” became a “people’s war” simply because an enemy of Britain had invaded the Soviet Union. An enemy (British) of an enemy (Germany) invading a friend (Soviet Union) became a friend.
The CPI moved to oppose the freedom movement. British imperialism became British bureaucracy; the Muslim League, a spokesperson of the Muslim mass upsurge; and the demand for Pakistan, a legitimate expression of Muslim nationalism. In a great turnaround, the freedom movement became a collaboration with Fascism, and Subhash Chandra Bose became a “Nazi” and a “Japanese rat”. Communist cadres spied for the British secret police on people organizing an underground movement. Communist intellectuals like Adhikari and Ashraf blueprinted the case for Pakistan with academic arguments and sentimental slogans. During the Second World War, the Government now patronized, financed, and fraternized with the Communist Party of India and helped it attain the stature of an independent political party.
The Communist contribution towards the creation of Pakistan was next only to that of the Muslim League. The Soviet Union wanted a base after British departure but the plan failed even as Pakistan became a base for American interventionism instead. Ever since, the Communists in India have been blaming the Partition on those very forces of positive nationalism which had fought the Muslim League. Communist hostility to positive nationalism is permanent.
Communism targets first Sanatana Dharma as superstition, obscurantism, and priestcraft. Next, communism denounces the Dharmashastras as repositories of primitive prescriptions, Machiavellian morality, caste oppression, untouchability, degradation of women, Brahmin domination, lack of social responsibility, and so on. Thirdly, communism condemns all Indic philosophies as Brahminical conspiracies to suppress Lokayata, or atheism. Buddha was in fact preaching Marxism for all practical purposes except for his unmindful lapse into the unproved doctrine of transmigration.
Fourthly, communist historians, as the most important exercise in Independent India, have ridiculed every hero, period, episode, and precedent in which Hindus can take pride. The Golden Hindu Age of the Imperial Guptas becomes a myth. Maharana Pratap, Shivaji, and Guru Govind Singh are local rebels against Muslims for petty personal ends. They also whitewash bloodthirsty Islamic conquerors and despicable despots, and condone their crimes either by balancing them with “many good deeds” or as a part of “empire-building”. Lastly, the Communist anthropologists and sociologists theorize a class interest into all Hindu social institutions, customs, and manners. There is no allowance for any pride in ancient Indian heritage. Some communist scholars realized painfully the consequences of putting forward thoughts of pride when the Party simply expelled them.
Communism uses three chief methods to denigrate and denounce the votaries of positive nationalism: a difficult to decipher language of doublespeak (Communist movement as patriotic and democratic forces, collaborators as progressive people, Islamic imperialism as secularism, and positive nationalism as Hindu communalism and chauvinism); constantly discovering conspiracies against the working class and the minorities (in form of Hindu communalism and chauvinism, landlordism, forces of obscurantism, revivalism, all associated with American imperialism); and using a strong “swearology”.
During 1948-50, Mahatma Gandhi (bourgeois scoundrel), Rabindranath (mageer dalal or pimp), Patel and Nehru (fascist duo) had some colorful names. Presently, the camp of positive nationalism gets labels of communalists, chauvinists, fascist murderers of minorities, perpetrators of genocide, reactionaries, and revivalists. The tone changes from mild to wild rhetoric depending on the situation.
The main strength of communism in India sprung from colossal Soviet finances. The finances helped in financing a large press bringing periodicals in various languages, establishing publishing houses bringing out communist literature, and managing academic stamps of approval from the ideologically oriented academia at the universities (JNU and Delhi University being notorious ). These publishing houses and presses run in deep losses and the books sell at huge discounts, yet the finances do not seem to trouble them.
The finances also sponsor the cadre-based movement having a far-flung hierarchy of leaders and workers. The movement maintains many front organizations among trade unions, peasantry, students, youth, women, children, writers, and artists for “peace” and “for fighting imperialism”. The costs involved on maintaining and turning these transmission belts, as Lenin called them, are considerable. Finally, these finances funded frequent conferences, congresses, mass meetings, and demonstrations.
The expenses incurred by the Communist movement were abnormal when compared to its size and significance. The one thing which, next to slogans, never gets scarce in the communist movement is money. But it always remains a movement of the poor, maintained by the poor, and for the benefit of the poor.
The United Front of Hostile Forces
A United Front, particularly Islamism and Communism, have forged to malign Hindu society and keep it on the defensive. In the 1940s, the Communist Party of India came out openly in support of the demand for Pakistan. The CPI had once directed many of its Muslim members to join the Muslim League to provide intellectual muscle to the two-nation theory. The “Hindu” Communists inside the Indian National Congress joined them to brand all those opposing partition as Hindu communalists.
After the death of Sardar Patel, communism had its earlier respect restored and it now rehabilitated Islamism under the guise of progressivism. Aligarh Muslim University, a hot-bed of Islamism in pre-Partition days, became the hideout of progressive Muslim professors. Muslim poets and writers, once thundering from the Muslim League platform, now flocked to the Progressive Writers Association and other Communist fronts. These professors, poets, and writers were putting a gloss on Islamism in their newly acquired language of “progressivism”.
The United Front achieved its first great victory when it effectively blocked the emergence of Hindi as the national language. Communism proclaimed India a conglomeration of nationalities, each with its distinct language and identity, like its previous arguments for Pakistan. It also recommended the Soviet model for a correct language policy in India. Islamism immediately revived the lost cause of Urdu as the great language of culture and refinement at the risk of vanishing. No communist came forward to examine this culture and refinement as a legacy of decadent Muslim courts and a frivolous Muslim aristocracy. No communist questioned the heavy Persianization and Arabization of Urdu which made it incomprehensible even to educated people. The recognition of Urdu as a second language has today become the sine qua non of secularism.
Secondly, they joined hands to distort secularism — a solution for Europe at a certain time of its Christian history. India had its own mechanisms to deal with pluralism. Hindus occupying high positions and denying the “poor” Muslims their rightful place; public officials performing Hindu rituals or visiting holy places, and so on, became anti-secular in scope. Meanwhile, Islamism paraded its endless economic, social, political, and cultural grievances backed by “progressive” Hindu intellectuals. The Indian National Congress and other political parties bent over backwards to appease Islamism in the name of secularism.
Most importantly, Islamism and Communism in close cooperation, remarkably re-interpreted Indian history till it became empty of any content to nourish a nation. The aim has been to explode the “theory” that Hindus have always been a nation, and sabotage the sound proposition that Hindus can lead the way for everyone into a broad nationalism.
Christianism has not been an equal and direct partner in this United Front against Hindu society. But, on the Hindi issue and the character of secularism, it did play its part. United Front functions under the protective umbrella of Macaulayism which never fails to incorporate the slogans of the Front in its own respectable language. Christianism finds a ready access to Macaulayism because the missionary schools and colleges provide the main recruiting ground for the latter.
Every society, including Hindu, has its quota of social evils. However, Hindu society still retains and cherishes great spiritual, moral, cultural, and intellectual traditions. The tragedy of a Hindu victim of Macaulayism is that while acutely aware of the evils prevalent in Hindu society, he or she is not aware of the Hindu doctrines which provide no sanction for these evils. The same doctrines can even help in their eradication.
A Macaulay product is doubly dangerous by ignoring the evil prevalent in non-Hindu societies sometimes sanctioned by their own doctrines. Macaulayism does not question when Islamism presents Muslim society as a brotherhood of men, Christianism boasts of Christian society overflowing with love and charity, or Communism claims that an equal society existed in the Soviet Union. Hindu thinkers, reformers, and leaders gave calls to Hindu society to reform itself in its best inherited spiritual and moral traditions. They did not become anti-Hindus in the process. Macaulayists never enter the field of social action and reform. They function as scholars borrowing jargon to “explain” Hindu society.
The nature of this United Front is negative. The participants agree that Hindu society should die and disappear. But there is no agreement among them regarding what sort of a society should replace Hindu society. The three ideologies have chosen to feed upon different limbs of the large-sized Hindu society. Christianism remains busy among Hindu tribals; Islamism aligns itself with the cause of Dalits vigorously; and Communism spreads its base among the upper and middle classes.
Hindu society is a prey to these exclusive, intolerant, and imperialist ideologies. India is secular and democratic because India is Hindu. The Hindu way of life is a solution for the entire humanity and the world but only if they can save their Sanatana Dharma from disappearing under the onslaught of these hostile forces.
Photo Credits: Rashtram
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