Introspection Time for Narendra Modi &
Hindu Society
"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."
Sun
Tzu , the renowned Chinese strategist.
Ram Kumar Ohri, IPS (Retd) Nov. 9, 2015
- - - - - - - -
Barely 18 months after the historic win in the 2014
elections today the Indian nation
once again stands at the crossroads of history. The resounding victory of the so-called secular group led by Nitish
Kumar and Lalu Yadav in Bihar elections has set alarm bells ringing among
nationalist Hindus. The leaders of the Mahagathbandhan have declared a war on
the popularly elected nationalist leader, Narendra Modi.
Today within India itself, the Hindu
society faces multiple dangers from different quarters some of which are quite
daunting and mindboggling. Anyone who
reads English newspapers, or watches television programmes, can notice the
widespread use of drivel against Hindu ethos,
Surely there is something morbid
and ugly in the spectacle of educated
Hindus deriding their own civilizational values. In this context, for the
benefit of our younger generations, it may be worthwhile to recall the
exhortations of Dr. Annie Besant, who was President of the Indian National
Congress in 1917, calling upon Hindus to defend and guard their faith and
motherland. In a soul-stirring call to the Hindu society she spoke thus :
"
If Hindus don't maintain Hinduism, who shall save it ? If India's own
children don't cling to their faith, who shall
guard it ? Indians alone
can
save India, and India and Hinduism are one."
But in today's decadent
cultural milieu, dominated by self-serving political buccaneers, who bothers
for Annie Besant ? The new crop of sham-secularists won't even know who she was
and how enormous was her contribution to our freedom movement. Somehow the left-oriented
sermonising secularists are unable to
fully comprehend the intensity of Annie
Besant's commitment to India and the
Hindu values.
It is time that Hindus reorganised
themselves and threw out all false
rituals and obscurantism. The orthodox among them have not only to change their
outlook but also get rid of their passive
attitude. Yet the Hindu tradition of "universal humanism" must be zealously protected. At the same
time, the fraternity of Hindus and allied faiths, call them Omkar
Parivar, if you will, must make a new resolve to ensure survival of
their identity at all costs.
This is a time for strategic
introspection by the political and spiritual leaders of Hindus and allied
faiths. One important step towards restructuring
the Hindu society will be to summon a major conclave of representatives of all sections of the Hindu
community from the four corners of India, including all reform-minded religious
leaders and preachers.
The Hindu society must make bold to
abolish all caste distinctions in one go and once for all. A Mahayagna should
be organised on the pattern of the one held several hundred years ago in the
Aravalli hills, perhaps at Mount Abu,
when a similar crisis situation arose for the embattled Hindu civilization
because of rapid decimation of Kshatriya warriors while battling the hordes
of invaders. At that critical juncture by it was considered essential by common
consensus to co-opt scores of non-Kshatriya clans and tribal communities into
the Kshatriya fold by baptising them as "warriors" through the medium
of a formal yagna or "havan". And by that single fiat they came to be
known as "Agnikula" Rajputs. The result was electrifying and the
crisis caused by the shortage of warriors was overcome by adding a new crop of
youthful warriors to fight the onslaught on dharma and freedom.
It may be recalled that Muslim atrocities
reached its peak during the reign of Mughal ruler Aurangzeb who resorted to
senseless killings of innocent masses and razed hundreds of temples. While the
renowned Hindu warrior Shivaji rallied brave Marathas to join the battle
against Aurangzeb's savagery in western India, another saviour of the oppressed masses rose
in north India. Born in Patna in 1666, he was the famous tenth Guru of Sikhs,
the Warrior Saint, Guru Gobind Singh, who challenged the might of Mughal empire
by taking up arms. Before doing so, however, he wrote a letter to the Mughal
emperor, Aurangzeb, in which he warned
the tyrant that when "all other means have proven
ineffective, it is right then to take up the sword."
Those were difficult times for the
disunited Hindu society, divided by
caste-based discrimination and trapped in meaningless rituals. On the auspicious day of Baisakhi, the great
Guru created "Khalsa" by baptising five meek Hindus handpicked from
different castes and regions of India whom he imbued with rare zeal to fight
the growing repression and injustice.
The five disciples handpicked by Guru Gobind Singh came from different castes,
including the highest and the lowest, and belonged to different regions of
Bharat Varsha. Among them were Daya Ram Kohli, a Kshatriya from Lahore in the
north, Dharam Dass, a Jat from Delhi, Mohkam Chand, a low-caste washerman from
Dwarka (Gujarat) in the west , Himmat Rai, a cook from Jagannath Puri (Orissa)
in the east, and Sahib Chand, a barber from Bidar in the south. The
significance of the transformation brought by Guru Gobind Singh was that in one
go he removed all inequalities and abrogated all religious prerogatives of
higher castes. By moulding them into "Khalsa" he made all Hindus sit together, eat together
and take up arms together to fight to save their dharma and motherland. He was
indeed a very worthy son of his heroic father, Guru Tegh Bahadur, who had
sacrificed his life to protect the Hindu faith and honour of Kashmiri Pandits
when the latter were ordered to embrace Islam on pain of death. Guru Gobind Singh was both a warrior and a
learned scholar who led by personal example. In one of the famous stanzas of his celebrated
hymns he prayed thus to Lord Shiva:
"De Shiva bar mohe
aiyhe
Shubh karman te main kabhun na darun
Na darun Ari se jab jaiye larun
Nishche kar apni jeet karun."
Translated into English the above mentioned mantra means: "O Shiva, grant me this boon that may I
never turn away from doing good deeds, that may I always join the battle
against the enemy fearlessly, and by your grace may I always emerge as victor
by sheer resolve to win."
The difficult times presently facing
India demand that all segments of the Hindu society, including the scheduled
castes, the scheduled tribes, backward classes and the higher castes should be brought into the mainstream by abolishing
all distinctions of caste and creed. Today in the echelons of political power
there is hardly any voice of the Hindu
identity because our fractured society was totally fragmented after Mandal
Commission delivered a virtual coup de grace. There are
hardly any Hindus left because
most Hindus now tend to identify
themselves as backwards, scheduled castes, Yadavas, Jats, Brahmins or
Kshatriyas,
Then there is another tendency among Hindus to define themselves in
regional terms like Marathas, Tamilians
or Punjabis. In such a scenario there is no chance of the voice of
Hindu masses being
heard in the corridors of power. Time
has come to carry out a radical reform to reinvent the Hindu faith by
holding
an all encompassing representative conclave of different sections of
Hindu
society. The need of the hour is to confer the status of twice-born,
that is
"dwijya", on all categories of Hindus by throwing out all caste labels
by organiosing a Mahayagna. Only such a bold and dynamic
step, remniscent of the one taken in the hoary past in the Aravalies at
Mount
Abu in Rajasthan, and later on successfully repeated in the seventeenth
century
by Guru Gobind Singh at Anandpur Sahib in Punjab, is the pressing need
of the
hour.
All community leaders and intellectuals
of Hindus and allied faiths should be involved in this national endeavour to
unite, galvanize and restructure the Hindu society. A national level conclave
of Hindus needs to be organised to take
stock of the grave situation arising out of the ganging together of
anti-national forces. Later on, similar conclaves and yagnas should be held in
every State to create mass awareness.
Learn From Our
Past
Decades ago in 1940s the whispers of a
folklore could be heard in the dusty villages located around Kala Aamb in
Haryana (close to the battleground of Panipat) about how the Marathas lost to the army of Ahmed Shah Abdali in the
third battle of Panipat. According to the rural legend, on a dark night a few
days before the day of the battle, when Abdali went around among his camping
soldiers he saw a number of kitchen fires burning in the Maratha camp across
the river. Out of sheer curiosity he asked one of his commanders that why were
there so many kitchen fires burning in
the enemy camp. He was told that the Hindus were divided into a number of
castes due to which they did not cook
and eat together. His instantaneous response was: "Insha Allaha, then I
will surely defeat the infidels".
The rest is history.
After independence at least the above
cited folklore should have awakened the slumbering Hindu leaders. Alas, they did
not wake up, nor tried to learn from their past mistakes !
It will do good to the Hindu society if
for the time being all controversial and peripheral issues are placed on the
backburner. The focus should be on
unifying the Hindu society by winning back into the Hindu fold all those
who deserted it by opening the doors for return to their ancient faith, i.e.,
"ghar wapasi". In these
troubled times we must adopt a rationalist approach, as was advocated by Swami
Vivekananda and Veer Savarkar. Wisdom and sagacity should be the key watchwords
in these times of existential crisis.
Need for Public Discourse
Without such a
"samvad" or open public debate it will be difficult to awaken the
self-styled secularists and their camp followers to the true dimensions of the
multiple threats facing India. Otherwise they will continue to mislead the
gullible Hindu masses by deliberately belting out their trade mark dope-laced lullabies
from multiple bandstands.
The proposed Hindu
conclave must also consider various other options for evolving an effective
national strategy, including the need for evolving a dynamic, energetic and
vibrant leadership in every State.
One important step to revitalise the Hindu
society would be to assign a more dynamic and purposeful role to women whose
participation in nation-building has to be substantially increased. It is not a
difficult task because traditionally India has been the continent of Shakti and
Hindus have worshipped Mother Goddess for thousands of years. Therefore all gender discrimination should be
ruthlessly put down. and weeded out. Let us not forget that for centuries
Lakshmi, Durga and Saraswati have been our role models. Therefore vesting more
power in Hindu women and ridding the Indian society of gender bias is an
important goal which brooks no more delay.
Lastly, time has come to boldly remind
the Hindu masses by relaying the wake up call to every village, every hearth and
every home that those who don't learn from
history will ultimately end up as bad history. That important lesson all
Hindus and Sikhs must learn from our
troubled, eerie past.
Here and now the Hindus must wake up to
the call of history, our history and civilization whose very continuance is in
peril. To listen to it is to live; to remain deaf or diffident, will mean
death. Every son and daughter of our
great ancient land has to make a choice -
and act before it is too late.
Real Model of Secularism
Before concluding let us make a cursory
comparison of our "perverse secularism" with the secular framework of
the United Kingdom, a country often cited as role model for India's
parliamentary democracy. In the U.K. uniform civil and criminal laws have been
enacted for all religious groups and communities and these are equitably
applied to all citizens, without making any exception. In the eyes of the law
all citizens are equal irrespective of their gender, creed, religious beliefs, and modes of worship.
Equal respect for all faiths and equal treatment of people belonging to diverse
religious groups is the quintessential hallmark of secularism. Unfortunately
that high ideal, a vital component of the secular ideology, is totally missing
in the Indian theory and practice of secularism. The constitutional and legal position of
secularism is more or less the same in almost all European democracies and
America. Yet the British commitment to the secular ideal has not been
diminished by the state declaring itself a "Christian" nation. The
monarch ascending the throne, whether the queen or the king, invariably assumes
the title of "Defender of Faith". Interestingly in the U.K. all
important state functions like the coronation and inauguration of the Parliament
session are accompanied by a Christian prayer, often led by the Archbishop of
Canterbury himself. But that does not detract from the state's commitment to
secularism.
In sharp contrast, the system which India has evolved
is a putrid and perverse variety of secularism. Hindus must
understand that in India secularism has become a duplicitous dogma which
supports the Muslims and the Christians, but despises and berates the Hindus.
******************
It is a fact that the
adverse demographic trend has gathered a huge momentum after
independence primarily because a large majority of Hindus and allied religious
groups have readily adopted the small family norm. In the circumstances, the
future of Hindus and allied faiths cannot be taken for granted in the face of
adverse demography and growing threat of jihadi terrorism.
It may be recalled
that when the Muslim population crossed the thresh-hold of 40 percent in the
erstwhile communist and secularitis-infected Yugoslavia, all hell broke loose.
The Serb leadership was in the hands of Communists, all die-hard secularists,
some even more committed than our own home-grown brand of sham secularists.
Slobadan Milosevic was the Chairman of the Socialist Party of Serbia (read
Communist Party). But when Kosovar Muslims aided by Albanian jihadis started
ethnic cleansing of the minority Serb
population of Kosovo, Milosevic and his select team of communists turned aggressive
nationalists. That happened entirely due to a call given by 200 Serb
intellectuals, retired army officers and journalists to save the Serbs identity
and their heritage which led to sudden revival of the instinct for self
preservation and soon self-interest got better of the communist ideology
nurtured for decades among the Serbs. In a jiffy the primordial urge for
survival overtook the communist leadership and obliterated all traces of Serb
secularism, including the much-touted socialist ideal. Ultimately the
uncontrollable violent events took such an ugly turn that Milosevic and his communist team-mates
lost head and resorted to large scale
atrocities on Muslims by using the Serb militia as an oppressive tool. With the
benefit of hindsight soon the Serbs realized that they have paid a heavy price
for their decades long dalliance with secularism and communism. But in the
meantime immense damage had been done to the Serb cause and Kosovo, the
so-called Jerusalem of Serbia (we had better call it Haldighati of Serbs), was
permanently lost to Muslims of Albania. Hopefully the national leadership of India,
including Marxists, will learn some
lessons from the fate of the Balkans and Lebanon, even at this belated stage.
We should remember
that if freedom is lost, or should the
country go through another partition and spell of bloodshed, as happened 68
years ago in the sub-continent and repeated in the Balkans, that will spell end of the road for India's prosperity
as well as its future ambition to emerge as a global power. In any case, the
entire burden of population planning need not be carried by the fraternity of
Hindus and allied faiths. They have already contributed more than proportionate
share. That message must go out boldly to all Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and
Buddhists, in no uncertain terms, especially in rural areas. Family planning
may be practiced only by those Hindus and Sikhs who are pitiably poor and
unable to earn two square meals a day.
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