Saamiye Sharanam Aiyappa!
The holiest of holy sites, the beating heart of the world’s largest annual religious pilgrimage, is today a war zone. Agents of state-violence, stand within the walls of the temple, criminalizing devotees, and sullying its sanctity. Not a whimper from the legislature, the executive or the judiciary. Of the 4th pillar of democracy, the less said the better. Every major media house stands against the centuries-old traditions of the temple and we watch the shameful irony of “women’s rights” being thrust down the throats of women who don’t want those rights. For us South Indian Hindus, it is perhaps only now that we understand the ugly significance of Operation Blue-Star in the Sikh imagination.
If we, the liberal intelligentsia, do not hold the powers of the state to the value of religious neutrality, we cannot continue to demand of the Hindus that they do not politicize their religion. The territory of people who are forever on the defense is destined to constantly shrink. The Hindus have no option but to go on the offensive even if only to maintain the status quo. Hindutva, today, is not an option, it is a reality and a necessary counterweight to the forces of political Islam, political Christianity, Communism and an enemy state. Hindus too want Azaadi!
If we do not want the future of India to descend into a battle for supremacy between these warring factions, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is for the state to return to a position of neutrality. It is only a neutral state that can earn the trust of the Hindus and hold back the politicization of their religion. If the legislative arm of the state continues to support Islam and Christianity through its laws, to shamefully kneel before an activist judiciary that is stomping all over its territory, and to be apathetic to the Hindu-bashing English media’s excesses and fake news, then it becomes imperative for the Hindus to attempt to take over the arms of the state and establish a Hindu-Rashtra.
The Hindus accepted the secular state because they are a reasonable people. They have given the secular state 70 years to prove its neutral credentials. At every stage the secular state has failed. The state has, from its Nehruvian beginnings, supported the Communists whose primary aim has been the demonization of popular Hinduism. The state has, from the beginning, supported the appeasement of Muslims and Christians to the detriment of the Hindus. The state has, from the beginning, tried to establish an elite westernized bureaucratic and media culture that has time and again worked hand-in-hand with foreign agencies to denigrate all things Hindu.
No longer should this state of affairs be acceptable to us. If we, the self-proclaimed liberals, are against elitism, if we are against the selective application of our constitutional guarantees, if we are against hate-speech and the supremacy of one culture over another, then we must recognize that these are the very values we support when we are vocal about all things anti-Hindu but silent about- Christianity’s institutionalized pedophilia and rape of nuns, Christian take-over of “spiritual territory” by the cultural degradation of tribal people; Islamic terror, misogyny and Ghazwa-e-Hind; Communist violence and hate-speech; Pakistani culpability in violent acts in our country; The ethnocide of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh; the constant and selective Hindu-bashing in the English media; the Abrahamic bias in our judiciary’s understanding of Hinduism and the laws of appeasement that are at the root of these cancers.
Neutrality is needed now. It is incumbent on the state’s arms to earn back the trust of the Hindus now…and for us intellectuals to start living up, in the true sense, to that word we define ourselves by – l i b e r a l.
– Left Liberal Homecoming
