Islam and Hindutva by Ghulam Muhammed

Monday, October 24, 2016

Islam and Hindutva

Since the arrival of Narendra Modi, a lifetime parcharak of RSS, as Prime Minister of India, with huge convincing majority in Lok Sabha, a string of measures have been unleashed at several levels in politics, society, and economy to ‘crush’ Indian Muslims.

A cursory study of the reasons for this negative avalanche of enmity towards Muslims, equal citizens of this pluralist, multicultural republic, would reveal several factors that are in public domain.

However, there is a much deeper motivation that drives the political votaries of Hindutva to counter Muslims and Islam, and that could be pure jealousy.

Brahmins at the head of the caste hierarchy have been fully aware of the common origin of their monotheistic ideas and ideals. They however, having imposed on themselves a non-military life-style had been no match for Muslim invaders who had both an ideology and the means to nourish it in a favorable social environment.

Brahmins helplessly observed how the monotheist Muslim, with identical ideology of religion, could marshal forces, create States and use its resources to achieve both a worldly prosperous existence as well as a life-style conducive to harmonious social environment conforming to Islamic fundamentals.

Brahmins, a fairly educated tribe had nurtured deep jealousy against Islam. Even though they admired or appreciated so many facets of Islamic Sharia, they had gone on some distance with their caste-ridden hegemony to be able to bring about any change to adopt Islamic norms in their conduct, or join Muslims in converting Hinduism to a class-less, idol-less, generous version of even their own Vedic based religious beliefs.

Now that through exploitation of secularism and democracy as tools of convenient power-grab, Hindutva had acquired State power, they have ambitions to spread out like Islam, to all over the world albeit with their pagan images of soft power. In this age of modern communication, compared to 14 century old Islam, they do have some beginner’s luck to bedazzle the unsuspecting world with their demonstrative razzle dazzle of song and dance rituals. However, the deeper content of Vedic truth cannot be long covered up and it has to acknowledge and trod the same monotheistic path like Islam, if it has to get any foothold in the hearts and minds of  uninitiated looking for alternatives to their failed religions, be that Christianity or Marxism.

Hindutva’s singular misfortune is to fall for the help, assistance, agency, surrogacy and guidance of Jewish Zionism that has a historical world record of burying their clients while making a big hoopla of their king-making prowess. Not universally realized is the fact that even behind the British colonization and its final disintegration, the British Jewry were always there reading out their mantras at each step of the way. India was done in, more by the Jewish British than the British themselves. One can easily pick out Jewish names in Britain’s 200 years of Indian colonization and exploitation. 

Specimen of Jewish intervention in world history of rise and fall of global movements are too many to escape Hindutva opportunists.

No doubt, in India over the millennium, Hinduism as distinct from Vedic religion had impacted several Islamic practices that were and are contrary to Islamic basics. 

However, with the new age of open societies in the ever shrinking global village, even Indian Islam is opening up to essential basics, gradually shunning practices mimicking Hindu rituals. More so to confront Modi’s direct interference in Muslim affairs! The old Empire is preparing to strike back. Viva the Mullahs!

As a humble servant of Islam and Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) I am duty bound to call all Brahmins who have intellectual capacity to absorb both Vedic and Islamic traditions, to hear the call of your inner being and have the courage to read Shahada (There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is Allah’s servant and messenger) and join the ranks of the righteous and the rightly guided. 

I pray to Almighty to open the hearts of all Brahmins wherever they are, to the truth of their special duty to the creator.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>

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Politics of conversion - By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr - DNA

The RSS, with its me-too Christian evangelical spirit, has no understanding of the Hindus. The Hindus are easygoing, modern, hedonistic, with an indolent sense of sensuous spirituality. They take pride in liberal Indian, but not Hindu, nationalism. The RSS’s antagonistic acts of conversion will cause revulsion among a majority of Hindus and the BJP will lose its Hindu constituency. 

http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-politics-of-conversion-2044864

Politics of conversion

Thursday, 18 December 2014 - 5:00am IST Updated: Wednesday, 17 December 2014 - 8:25pm IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: dna

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  Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

Right-wing Hindu organisations unsuccessfully imitate Christian missionaries

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One of the curious things about the debate on the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) affiliates going aggressive on converting Muslims and Christians to Hinduism is the outrage of the liberals. “How can (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi remain silent when the RSS is going on the rampage on conversions?” is their pointed question. They say that Modi did not utter a word of Hindutva during the election campaign and, therefore, neither he nor the RSS can consider the electoral victory as an endorsement of Hindutva. Therefore, the RSS’ predatory acts of conversion are untenable. They feel that Modi should control the RSS-wallahs.

There are loopholes in the argument of the liberals, though their rage has a charmingly righteous ring to it. The first loophole: The RSS and the BJP cannot be expected to play by liberal rules. The RSS’ hostility towards the religious minorities is barely concealed. The BJP maintains an ambivalent attitude towards them. They are right-wing and they will do right-wing politics — that is majoritarian politics. The second loophole: the liberals rationalise conversions of the Hindu lower castes to either Christianity or Islam saying that the Hindu caste order is unjust, and the Hindu lower castes and classes have every right to throw off the yoke of caste and escape into other religions. Despite the good intent, the argument turns out to be inconsistent because if choosing a faith is an individual decision, then the individual can turn to any religion. For example, if a Hindu can convert to Christianity or Islam, so can a Muslim or a Christian to Hinduism. The liberals are wary on this point.

The problem is that conversion is never an individual choice in India as it is in contemporary Europe and America, where individuals freely convert to other religions, especially to Islam and sometimes to Buddhism. In India, conversion is a political act. Ambedkar and his Mahars converting to Buddhism was a political gesture. But there is a bit of complicated history to conversion in modern India, especially from 19th century on. The Christian missionary activity in north India, in contrast to what had happened in Kerala in the first century of the Common Era (CE), had intensified during the British rule though the government of the day kept a meticulous distance from the evangelical activities of the various churches.

The Hindu response to Christian missionary activity was curious. Sections of the modern Hindu middle classes saw Christianity as part of modern Western civilisation which was a misperception. Modern West had gone through various revolts, the Protestant revolt against the Roman Catholic Church, and the revolt of Age of Reason against both. They did not notice this. Many of the modern Hindus wanted to reform the superstitious Hinduism of their day on Protestant Christian lines. Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Swami Dayananda Saraswati followed the Christian model in different ways. Roy’s Brahmo Samaj was a Protestant congregation without idols. Saraswati too rejected idol worship and he wanted to go back to the Vedas, cleansed of their unscientific liturgical portions. He had also introduced what he called the Shuddhi Movement, which is conversion of Muslims, Sikhs and Christians to Hinduism.

Brahmo Samaj turned out to be tepidly rationalist and withered away in due course. Arya Samaj was dismissed by the orthodox Hindu establishment of the day, and it remains on the fringes of Hindu society till this day. Saraswati had better success in Punjab, where he antagonised the Sikhs. Khushwant Singh in the second volume of his A History of the Sikhs argued that the Singh Sabhas were a response to the Arya Samaj. The RSS has inherited the Arya Samaj legacy in Punjab and the friction with the Sikhs, especially the Akali elements of the community, persists. 

Swami Vivekananda’s Ramakrishna Mission is again an imitation of the Christian missionary model. Vivekananda realised that what made the Christian missionaries acceptable was their social work, setting up of hospitals and schools and their solicitude towards the poor and the marginalised. Vivekananda’s ‘Christian socialist’ vision never took root in the work of the Ramakrishna Mission.
The RSS has taken to the Christian missionary mode in the 1970s and 1980s. The evangelical activity that the RSS had undertaken in scheduled tribes areas of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Gujarat is again an attempt to follow in the footsteps of the missionaries. But it does not seem to have succeeded in its act of imitation because it lacks the Christians' religiosity and compassion. The Christian missionaries were once part of the Western colonial and imperialist quest, but now only the religious quest — of spreading the message and converting people — remains. The global Christian missionaries are seasoned evangelists and the RSS cannot counter their sophisticated approach. The RSS cannot hope to go out of India and convert people of other countries and faiths to Hinduism the way the Christian evangelists did.

The RSS, therefore, turns conversions into a political act, having failed to inspire on the social and religious fronts. The RSS through the conversion campaign wants to ensure national unity through Hinduism. It follows the old Protestant assumption, especially in England of the 17th century, where Roman Catholics were suspected to have extra-territorial allegiance. Religion as a means of national unity is the credo of right-wing political parties in Europe, and the RSS believes in it as well.

Meanwhile, Muslims in India after the First World War falsely believed that the Ottoman Empire was a symbol of global Muslim unity. They had failed to contend with the nationalist aspirations of the various Arab countries. Modern Muslims entertained the romantic notion of pan-Islam, which remained a figment of the imagination of poets like Iqbal. Modern Arabs too dreamed of pan-Arabism and they found out the hard way that it was unrealistic.

The RSS’s dreams of national unity based on Hinduism will meet the same fate as that of the pan-Islamists and the pan-Arabists. The RSS believes, and the BJP subscribes to the illusion, that the Turkish invasions of 11th and 12th centuries were due to disunity among the Hindus, and they want to unite Hindus now to preserve India. The RSS, with its me-too Christian evangelical spirit, has no understanding of the Hindus. The Hindus are easygoing, modern, hedonistic, with an indolent sense of sensuous spirituality. They take pride in liberal Indian, but not Hindu, nationalism. The RSS’s antagonistic acts of conversion will cause revulsion among a majority of Hindus and the BJP will lose its Hindu constituency. 

The author is editorial consultant with dna

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Stop Hindutva now - Written by Tavleen Singh - The Indian Express

Tavleen Singh has a change of heart, on the double. Calls on PM Modi to ‘Stop Hindutva now’. Who is gullible, Modi or Tavleen?

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The Indian Express

http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-stop-hindutva-now/99/

Fifth column: Stop Hindutva now

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Why is the Prime Minister not publicly rebuking them for dragging Hindutva into his mandate in the ugliest way?

Written by Tavleen Singh | Posted: December 14, 2014 1:33 am | Updated: December 14, 2014

 

Why is the Prime Minister allowing the RSS to steal his mandate? I ask this question wherever I go these days and frankly I have no answer.

When Leftist political pundits harangue me with charges that it was the RSS that helped Narendra Modi become prime minister, I tell them that they do not know what they are talking about. Leftists are usually allergic to dust, heat, poverty and the real India and so rarely travel during election campaigns. This made them miss the fact that last summer’s general election was not about Hindutva. Anywhere. It was about change and development. Without Modi, the BJP could not have won half the seats they did. Besides, if the RSS could help it win elections, what went wrong the last two times?

Yet there exists today the bizarre situation in which our strongest prime minister in decades is allowing Hindu fanatics in the Lok Sabha and Hindu fanatical organisations outside to blacken his image. The MPs who have been most offensive wear saffron robes signifying asceticism and renunciation. So what they are doing in Parliament instead of in some Himalayan cave is a valid question. But since they have found their way into the Lok Sabha, why is the Prime Minister not publicly rebuking them for dragging Hindutva into his mandate in the ugliest way? We barely recovered from that Sadhvi calling all Muslims ‘bastards’ when her brother in saffron pronounced that Nathuram Godse was a patriot. Both these MPs expressed regret when their remarks caused a public furore, but it is not possible to ever apologise for such things.

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If we need proof that these fanatics have RSS approval, it is evident in the zeal with which the BJP’s ‘alma mater’ is trying to convert Muslims and Christians ‘back’ to Hinduism. The Sanatana Dharma does not permit proselytisation. But try telling that to those loonies rampaging about the derelict, desperately poor shanties of Uttar Pradesh trying to bring Muslims and Christians ‘home’.

Of course these fanatics harmed the people they are trying to reconvert, but much more than this is the harm they have done Modi and his government. Just as he was beginning to bask in the luminous glow of international approval and domestic election victories, he is now in danger of losing all his support. His votes did not come for Hindutva reasons. I say this with certainty. During the election campaign, wherever I went, I asked if Hindutva and the Ram temple were issues any more. And not even in the dusty halls of Banaras Hindu University did I meet anyone who believed these were issues in the 2014 election.
Everywhere I went, people said that they were drawn to Modi because of his talk of ‘vikas’ and ‘parivartan’. At his first rally in Uttar Pradesh I walked some distance with ordinary residents of Kanpur and when they saw BJP workers ride by angrily shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ from speeding motorcycles, they expressed strong disapproval. So why has the Prime Minister remained silent when the worst kind of Hinduism has been unleashed by the RSS and when the ‘love jihad’ proved that it would lose him votes in future?

For his government, the worst consequence is that the RSS has succeeded in changing the subject. So six months on, when we should have been talking about reforms in governance and the economy, we are talking about cow urine remedies and religious tensions. By now his ministers should have put before us a list of proposed reforms for sectors ranging from energy and the railways to policing and healthcare. That these are desperately needed is obvious from the horrible healthcare tragedies in Chhattisgarh and Punjab and from the recent rape in an Uber taxi.

Where economic reforms are concerned, there has so far been only talk. Not only has Modi’s government continued policies that brought the economy to its knees, it has not even rid us of laws (land acquisition, companies law) that have made doing business in India even more difficult than it already was. And if our roads, railways and ports continue to be as bad as they were in the 19th century, we can be certain that India will remain very poor for another 50 years.

It was the hope that Modi meant what he said when he promised ‘parivartan’ that won him a full mandate. For his own sake, he needs to remember this quickly or he will find that the RSS will take it away from him to revive its own fortunes. Incidentally, if it is so keen to play a bigger role in India’s future, why does it not take charge of doing some ‘Swachh Bharat’ activity in temples and holy cities like Varanasi and Hardwar? Why does it not take charge of cleaning our sacred rivers?

Follow Tavleen Singh on Twitter @ tavleen_singh