Violation of Hindu HR - Need for a Hindu nation - II

V SUNDARAM

I am in full agreement with Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003), a great 'Intellectual Kshatriya,' when he says that Hindu society is the only significant society in the world today which presents a continuity of cultural existence, consciousness and functioning for countless centuries. Most of the other societies known to human history - East and West, North and South - have suffered a sudden extinction or interruption or undergone a traumatic transformation due to the invasion and victory of some latter day monotheistic ideologies like Christianity, Islam and Communism. The pre-Christian, pre-Islamic and pre-Communist cultural creations and artifacts of these societies are now to be seen or met with only in libraries and museums, thanks to the unremitting labours of archaeologists and antiquarian scholars. Hindu culture can meet the same frightful fate if there is going to be no Hindu society to sustain it. This is the point which is not always remembered even by those who take pride in Hindu culture.

There are many Hindus who cherish the great spiritual heritage of Hinduism and also the scriptures like the Bhagawad Gita and the Upanishads in which this glorious tradition lies enshrined. But they do not cherish with an equal conviction, much less enthusiasm, the Hindu society which has honoured and preserved these traditions and scriptures against the onslaughts of external invaders and alien influences down the ages. Again, there are many Hindu who proclaim with great confidence that Sanatana Dharma or Hinduism can never die. In this context the sharp words of Sita Ram Goel are very relevant: 'This is true in a sense. There will always be individuals in 'Non-Hindu Societies' who will recover the mystique of Sanatana Dharma through their efforts at self-discovery. But 'Sanatana Dharma' will surely suffer an eclipse and no more inform mankind at large with its message, if there is no Hindu society to sustain it.'

There are many Hindu who are legitimately proud of Hindu art, architecture, sculpture, music, painting, dance, drama, literature, linguistics, lexicography and so on. But all of them fail to notice the fact that this great wealth of artistic, literary and scientific heritage will die if the Hindu society which created it is no more there to preserve, protect and perpetuate it.

The sudden death of Hindu society is thus no longer a theoretical possibility or eventuality which is either remote or improbable. This great society is now besieged by the same dark and deadly forces which have overwhelmed and obliterated many ancient societies in World History. Suffering from a loss of its 'élan,' Hindu society has become a house divided within itself. Its beneficiaries seem to be impotent in taking necessary steps for ensuring its survival because they themselves have fallen victims to hostile propaganda emanating from the anti-Hindu forces of Islam, Christianity, Nehruvian Secularism, menacing Marxism, and above all Hindu-baiting Macaulayism. Presiding over all these forces with a determined agenda for destroying all things Hindu, we have the Hindu-embracing, Christianity-coveting and Hindu-hating UPA government in New Delhi under the triangular stranglehold of Roman Catholicism, Pan-Islamism and Communism and wedded to the ideology of 'pseudo-secularism' which is just another convenient political word for Anti-Hinduism.

Hindu society which has survived the onslaught of Islamic marauders and Western freebooters for centuries should indeed be regarded as one of the great wonders of world history. In the normal course, Hindus should have come into their own after 1947 and created a new era of social and cultural renaissance in free Hindu. Thanks to the politically motivated policy of Nehruvian Secularism, Hindus have become third class citizens in our own country. They are no longer the honoured citizens of our land. Like leprosy in British India, a permanent stigma seems to have stuck to the terms 'Hindu' and 'Hinduism' in today's India. They have become terms of abuse in the mouth of that very 'elite' which the dumb Hindu millions have raised to the pinnacle of power and prestige with their own blood, toil, sweat and tears.

I cannot help coming to the conclusion that the Hindu and British invasions of India, though defeated and dispersed, have yet managed to 'crystallize' certain 'residues,' psychological and intellectual, which a battered Hindu society is finding it very difficult to digest. It is now well-known that these 'residues' in the monopoly control of the Congress party are now in active collusion with powerful international forces of Christianity, Islam and Marxism and which are being aided and abetted by the government of India on a scale which an impoverished Hindu Society can never hope to match. Although at loggerheads among themselves till 2004, these residues have forged a 'United Front' which is holding Hindu Society under a Pseudo-Secular siege today. This grave mortal danger is as much promoted 'from within' as 'from without.'

It is against this background it has become necessary for all the Hindus of India, whether living in India or abroad, to become firmly resolved in their collective will to declare to the world: 'We Hindus are a nation.' In 1946 when the Muslim League's demand for partition of India and creation of a separate State of Pakistan were being seriously debated, someone asked M A Jinnah: 'You keep talking of Pakistan. Could you explain what is your concept of this Pakistan? What do you really mean by it?' Jinnah replied: 'Of course. In just five words.' Then Jinnah uttered those five famous words: 'We Muslims are a nation' and he went on to elaborate his thesis of unbridgeable cultural difference between Muslims and Hindus, their incompatibility and the impossibility of co-existence of the Muslims with the Hindus, and so on.

An outstanding intellectual and brilliant scholar who paid a heavy price for his unimpeachable integrity in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) to which he belonged, Abhas Chatterjee, wrote a seminal book 'THE CONCEPT OF Hindu NATION' in 1995, a few years before his death.

According to Abhas Chatterjee, our misconception regarding Hindu Nation, Hindutva and Hindu Rashtra has arisen from the fact that we have not tried to comprehend the definition of a Nation. We normally take a nation to stand for a country, a land mass, a specific portion of the globe. But a nation never means a land as such. A nation indicates a group or community of people which has been traditionally living in a particular land, which has its own distinctive culture, and which has an identity separate from other peoples of the world by virtue of the distinctiveness of its culture. The cultural distinctiveness of a nation may be based on its race, or religion, or language, or a combination of some or all of these factors, but all-in-all there has to be a distinct culture which will mark out that nation from peoples belonging to other lands. In the light of this analysis, Abhas Chatterjee, concludes that: 'Once we start looking at things from this point of view, we immediately see not only that we Hindus are a 'Nation unto ourselves, but also we are the oldest surviving NATION on earth.'

We Hindus are not just a religious community like the Hindus and the Christians, but a NATION unto ourselves. The term 'Hindus' is the name of our nationality. We Hindus are a Nation. This is a basic, simple and indisputable truth. Unfortunately, even this simple cardinal truth, most of the Hindus - more particularly the educated Hindus - are unable to appreciate in letter and spirit and this fatal failure lies at the root of all our misconceptions and miseries.

No one can dispute that the traditional homeland of Hindus is the Bharatavarsha. It is a distinct geographical entity. When I say Bharatavarasha in the sense of the Motherland of the Hindus, I do not refer to the boundaries of the truncated India created by Jinnah, and Nehru in 1947, but to those of our traditional homeland which extends continuously from Gandhara to Kamrup and from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. This basically has been the concept of Hindu Nationhood or what we call Hindutva or Hindu Rashtra from times immemorial.

We remained subjugated for more than 1000 years when foreign rulers ruled over our country. By barbaric persecution or economic inducements, they compelled certain segments of our nation to abandon their ancestral culture and adopt the culture of those foreign invaders. These segments of our population forgot that the culture they had adopted was a foreign culture, a culture that belonged to another nation and had been forced on them.

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) wrote in Bande Mataram on 7 October, 1907: 'This great and ancient Nation was once the fountain of human light, the apex of civilisation, the exemplar of courage and humanity, the perfection of good government and settled society, the mother of all religions, the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy. It has suffered much at the hands of inferior civilisations and more savage peoples; it has gone down into the shadow of night and tasted often of the bitterness of death. Its pride has been trampled into the dust and its glory has departed.'

But subjugation cannot by itself destroy the nationhood of a nation. Nor can the nature of the nation, the basic characteristics and disposition of the nation, get altered or changed by the fact of enslavement. Nations do not get destroyed. We Hindus are a nation just as the Germans are a nation, the Armenians are a nation, the Kurds are a nation, the Jews are a nation. Germany was divided into two after the II World War. But this did not abate their nationhood. Within 50 years, they achieved reunification of their motherland and the nation has been restored to its original character and complexion. Alas!! Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and their political slaves have destroyed the identity of India as an Ancient Hindu Nation. They have created the lifeless and spiritless carcass of an Anti-Hindu Pseudo-Secular Nation.

(To be contd...)

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)