First part of Three Part Series, By Subramanian Swamy

What does the despicable terror and mayhem in
Mumbai on November 26th signify for India? Shorn of the human tragedy,
wanton destruction, and obnoxious audacity of the terrorists, it signifies a
challenge to the identity of India
from radical Islam. Cinema actor Shahrukh Khan may wax eloquent about the “true
Islam” on TV, but it is clear that he and other such Muslims have not
read any authoritative translations of the Koran, Sira and Hadith which three
together constitute Islam as a theology, and which is a complete menu of
intolerance of peoples of other faiths derisively labeled as kafirs. Hence
instead of talking about the “correct interpretation” of Islam they
ought instead be urging for a new Islamic theology consistent with
democratic principles.

 

           
         In 2003, two years after the
9/11 murderous and perfidious Islamic assault on USA, resulting in killing of
more than 3000 persons within two hours, and which was perpetrated by
leveraging the democratic freedoms in USA, the Saudi Arabian Embassy in the
website of its Islamic Affairs Department [www.iad.org] laid down what a “good” Muslim is
expected to do. Dr. Steven Stalinsky of the Middle East Media Research
Institute [MEMRI] based in WashingtonDC accessed it and published it
in issue No.23, of the Institute newsletter, dated November 26[what irony!]
2003. I have to thank a NRI in US, Dr. Muthuswamy for this reference. In that
site it is stated:

 

” The
Muslims are required to raise the banner of Jihad in order to make the Word of
Allah supreme in this world, to remove all forms of injustice and oppression,
and to defend the Muslims. If Muslims do not take up the sword, the evil
tyrants of this earth will be able to continue oppressing the weak and
helpless”

 

                       
Now who is more authoritative- Sharukh Khan or Saudi Arabia ?

 

Obviously the latter. The
above quote is what in substance is being taught in every madrassa in India, and can
be traced back to the sayings of Prophet Mohammed. I can quote a plethora of
verses from a Saudi Arabian translated Koran[e.g., verses 8:12, 8:60, and
33:26] which verses justify brutal violence against non-believers. If I delved
into Sira and Hadith for more quotes, then I could risk generating much hatred,
so it will suffice to say that Islam is not only a theology, but it spans a
brutal political ideology which we have to combat sooner or later in realm of
ideas.

 

                       
Some may quote back at me verses from Manusmriti about brutality to women and
scheduled castes. But as a Hindu I have the liberty to disown these verses [since
it is a Smriti] and even to seek to re-write a new smriti as many, for example,
Yajnavalkya have done to date. Reform and renaissance is thus inbuilt into
Hinduism. But in Islam, the word of the Prophet is final. Sharukh Khan and
other gloss artists cannot disown these verses, or say that they would re-write
the offensive verses of the Koran. If they do, then they would have to run for
their lives as Rushdie and Taslima have had to do. Leave alone re-writing, if
anyone draws a cartoon of Prophet Mohammed, there will follow world-wide
violent rioting. But if Hussein draws Durga in the most pornographic posture, the
Hindus will only groan but not violently rampage.

 

          
We Hindus have a long recognized tradition of being religious liberals by
nature. We have already proved it enough by welcoming to our country and
nurturing Parsis, Jews, Syrian Christians, and Moplah Muslim Arabs who were
persecuted elsewhere, when we were 100% Hindu country.

 

                       
Moreover, despite a 1000 years of most savage brutalization of Hindus by
Islamic invaders and self-demeaning brain washing by the Christians, even then,
Hindus as a majority have adopted secularism as a creed. We have not asked for
an apology and compensation for these atrocities. But the position of Hindus in
this land of Bharatmata,
where Muslims and Christians locally are in majority, in pockets—such as in Kashmir and Nagaland, or in small enclaves such as town
panchayats of Tamil Nadu, is terrible and despicable. Even in Kerala where
Hindus are 52% of the population, they have only 25% of all the prime jobs in
the state, and are silently suffering their plight at the hands of 48% who vote
as a vote bank. .

 

                       
The 26/11Mumbai slaughter therefore should teach us Hindus that the time has
come to wake up and stand up

 

”it is now or never”.

 

If we do not stand up now
to Islamic terrorism, then India will end up like Beirut, a permanent
battlefield of international terrorists, buccaneers, pirates and missionaries.

 

                       
What does it mean in the 21st century for Hindus to stand up ? I mean by that a
mental clarity of the Hindus to defend themselves by effective deterrent
retaliation, and also an intelligent co-option of other religious groups into
the Hindu cultural continuum.

 

                       
Mental clarity can only come if we are clear about the identity of the nation.

 

 What is India ?

 

An ancient but continuing
civilization or is it a geographical entity incorporated in 1947 by the Indian
Independence Act of the British Parliament ?

 

What then does it means
to say “I am an Indian” ?

 

 A mere passport holder of the Republic of India or a descendent of the great seers
and visionaries of more than 10,000 years ?

 

Obviously our identity
should be of a nation of an ancient and continuing Hindu civilization, legatees
of great rishis and munis, and a highly sophisticated sanatana philosophy.

 

        
If Hindu culture is our defining identity then how can we co-opt non-Hindus,
especially Muslims and Christians ? By persuading them by saam, dhaan, bheda and
dand that they acknowledge with pride the truth that their ancestors are
Hindus. If they do, it means that they accept Hindu culture and enlightened
mores. That is, change of religion does not mean change of culture.Then
we should treat such Muslims and Christians as part of our Brihad Hindu family.

 

Noted author and editor
M.J. Akbar calls this identity as of “Blood Brothers”. It is an
undeniable fact that Muslims and Christians in India are descendents of Hindus. In
a recent article in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, an analysis
of genetic samples[DNA] show that Muslims in north India are overwhelmingly of
the same DNA as Hindus proving that Muslims here are descendents of Hindus who
had been converted to Islam, rather than repositories of foreign DNA deposited
by waves of invaders.

 

Akbar thus asks
rhetorically:

 

 “When have the Muslims of India gone
wrong ?”

 

and answers:

 

” When they have
forgotten their Indian roots”.

 

How apt !

 

Enlightened Muslims like
Akbar therefore must rise to the occasion and challenge the reactionary
religious fundamentalists. That is India is not Darul harab to be
trifled with. In a conciliatory atmosphere the minorities would willingly
accept this. It is also in their interest to accept this reality. Hindus must
persuade by the time- honoured methods Muslims and Christians to accept this
and its logical consequences.

 

This identity was not
understood by us earlier because of the distorted outlook of Jawarharlal Nehru
who occupied the Prime Minister’s chair for seventeen formative years after
1947 and for narrow political ends, had fanned a separatist outlook in Muslims
and Christians.

 

The failure to date, to
resolve this Nehru-created crisis, has not only confused the majority but
confounded the minorities as well in India.  This confusion has
deepened with winter migratory birds such as Amartya Sen descending on the
campus of the India International Centre to preach inane taxonomies such as
“multiple identities”.

 

 

There has to be an
overriding identity called national identity, and hence


we should not be derailed by pedestrian
concepts of multiple or sub-identities.

 

““““`Without a
resolution of the identity crisis today, which requires an explicit clear answer
to this question of who we are, the majority will never understand how to
relate to the legacy of the nation and in turn to the minorities. Minorities
would not understand how to adjust with the majority if this identity crisis is
not resolved. In other words, the present dysfunctional perceptional mismatch
in understanding who we are as a people, is behind most of the communal tension
and inter-community distrust in the country.

 

           
““`In India,
the majority is the conglomerate or Brihad Hindu community which represents
about 81% of the total Indian population, while minorities are constituted by
Muslims [13%] and Christians [3%].  Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, and some other
microscopic religious groups, represent the remaining three percent. Though
also considered minorities, but really are so close to the majority community
in culture that they are considered as a part of Hindu society. Unlike Islam
and Christianity, these minority religions were founded as dissenting
theologies of Hinduism. Even Zoroaster can be traced to leader of Vahikas in
Mahabharata who migrated to Persia.
Kaikeyi in Ramayana was from Persia
when that country was hundred percent Hindu. Thus these religions share the
core concepts with Hindus such as re-incarnation, equality of all religions,
and ability to meet God in this life. That they feel increasingly alienated
from Hindu society nowadays is also the consequence of India’s
identity crisis caused by British historians and their Indian tutees in JNU.

 

The India of today
would not have been in existence had the attempts to divide Hindus succeeded. In
the 20th century, a sinister attempt to divide the Hindu community on caste
basis was made in 1932 when the British imperialists offered the scheduled
castes a separate electorate. But shrewdly understanding the conspiracy to
divide India, Mahatma Gandhi
by his fast unto death and Dr. Ambedkar by his visionary rejection of separate
electorate, foiled the attempt by signing the Poona Pact.

 

    
But the possibility exists that such attempts at dividing India socially
may be made again in the future, a possibility that cannot be ruled out

. Indian patriots will have to watch against such
attempts very carefully. Segmentation, fragmentation, and finally balkanization
have been part of the historical process in many countries to destroy national
identity and thereby cause the political division of the nation itself. Yugoslavia is a
recent example of this, which has now been divided into four countries, largely
due to Islamic separatism and Serbian over-reaction.

 

    Virat
Hindutva can be achieved in the first stage by Hindu consolidation that is
achieved by Hindus

holding that they are Hindus first and last, by disowning
primacy to their caste and regional loyalties.

This would require a renaissance in thinking and
outlook, that can be fostered only by patient advocacy and intellectual
ferment.

 

For this we need a new
History text, and a proper understanding of the distinction between the four
varnas [not birth based but by codes of behavior for devolution of power in
society] and jati [which is birth based and mostly for marriages]. Just as
Valmiki and Vyasa are regarded as Maharshis despite being of different jati
from Parasuram, hence Dr. Ambedkar should be called a Maharishi for his sheer
depth of knowledge of Indian history. That he had become bitter because of
Nehru systematically sidelining him is no reason not to do so.

 

India

thus needs a Hindu renaissance today that
incorporates modern principles, e.g., of the irrelevance of birth antecedents,
fostering gender equality, ensuring equality before law, and accountability for
all. It is also essential to integrate the entire Indian society on those
principles, irrespective of religion. Uniform civil code for example, is something
that the vast majority of Muslim women want, but because this demand has been
usurped by those who deny the equality of nationality to the Muslims, hence
comes the resistance to a eminently reasonable value. The Muslims think that
this is the first step in several to subjugate them or wipe out their identity.
But Muslims have quietly accepted Uniform Criminal Code [the IPC] despite that
it contradicts the Sharia.

 

In other words, Hindutva
has two components—one that Hindus can accept [such as caste abolition,
eradication of dowry etc.] without any other religion’s interests to consider.
The other is the embracing by minorities of the core secular Indian values
which have Hindu roots. This would require, particularly Muslims and
Christians, to acknowledge that their ancestry is Hindu, and thus own the
entire Hindu past as their own legacy, and to thus tailor their outlook on that
basis. This would integrate Indian society and make the concept of an inclusive
[Brihad] Hindutva and rooted in India’s
continuing civilization.

 

 Thus, if India
has to decide to have or not have good relations with Israel, Pakistan, Iran or
US, it cannot be on the basis how it will impact on India’s Muslims and
Christians, but on what India’s national interests require.
If India has to dispatch
troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka
or Nepal to combat
terrorism, that policy too has to be decided on what is good for India, and not
what any religious or linguistic group identifies as it’s interest.

 

Thus such an Hindutva is
positive in outlook, while raw Hindu xenophobia is negative and based on Hindu
hegemony which will frighten all. Such an Hindutva will resolve our current
energy-sapping identity crisis, which otherwise will completely emasculate India in the long
run. The choice for the patriotic Indian is thus clear: We need a clear and
positive view of our national identity based on our Hindu past and a Hindu
renaissance to unite the Hindus with constructive mind-set as well as persuade
the minorities to be co-opted culturally with Hindu society.

 

Once being Indian means
virat brihad Hindutva, we can tackle terrorism by an effective strategy of
defence. What are the components of that strategy is the subject matter of my
next column here.

 

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