How Modi, RSS and other Hindu fanatics are crushing India's spirit
History will remember the present government as one that led the country into a dark age.
from - DN JHA
My personal experience with Hindu and Jain fanatics (RSS, VHP and the extended parivar) goes back to 2001 when my book Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions
was published. They threatened me with dire consequences, demanded my
arrest, attacked me in the university campus, tried to vandalise my
house, and burned copies of my book. They went to court at Hyderabad and
got the book banned. But I challenged the ban and succeeded in getting
it lifted; also I got the book published from London under the title The Myth of the Holy Cow. I defied the ban but I was in police protection for more than two years.
The Hindutva forces have been carrying out their agenda of
"cultural purification" even before the BJP came to power in 2014. Their
ideologue Dinanath Batra got A Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana
dropped from the Delhi University syllabus and forced Penguin Random
House to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s book on the Hindus from the shelves.
Emboldened by the BJP’s majority in Parliament, the saffron brigade is
now using organisations like the VHP, Hanuman Sena, Ram Sene, and
Sanatan Dharma Sanstha for attacking, assaulting and even killing
scholars whose ideas go against their beliefs.
Instances of the illiteracy of BJP governments at the Centre
and states are multiplying every day. Beef has been banned in several
BJP-ruled states, and in Rajasthan, the government has also declared cow
urine as a substitute for phenyl which, we are told, will be used even
in hospital ICUs. Then you have Sushma Swaraj saying that the Bhagavad
Gita is India’s national book and, soon after that, we hear the Haryana
government deciding to include Ramayana and Mahabharata in school
textbooks. Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently claimed, without
any basis, that Ashoka belonged to the Kushwaha caste. Relevant sources
do not refer to Ashoka's caste or to the existence of the caste called
Kushwaha during his time. Then, we were told that Aurangzeb Road in
Delhi must be renamed as it was named after a tyrannical and oppressive
ruler.
One can argue that many Hindu rulers also had negative
aspects. Even Ashoka, considered to be a "good" ruler, is said to have
ascended the throne after killing 99 of his brothers. So why not change
the name of Asoka Road? Why do you have roads named after Bhagwan Das
and Man Singh who fought the Hindutva icon Rana Pratap? The purpose of
renaming roads and cities is plain and simple: to black out the Islamic
past of India.
In a recent move to communalise the history of India, the
Sanskrit department of Delhi University declared its intent to push back
the date of the Rig Veda to 8,000 BC by using dubious astronomical
evidence and ignoring the inscriptional, linguistic, ethnographic and
geographical information which form the basis of the accepted Vedic
chronology. This is a mockery of research, for the department has
already arrived at the conclusion before researching the facts.
The Modi government is trying to destroy the basic character
of academic institutions by appointing mediocre people to head them: Y
Sudarshan Rao, who is better known for his ignorance than for his
knowledge of history, has been appointed chairman of the Indian Council
of Historical Research (ICHR); Baldev Sharma, the former editor of the
RSS mouthpiece Panchjanya has been brought in to replace the well-known
Malayalam writer A Sethumadhavan as chairman of the National Book Trust
(NBT); and Gajendra Chauhan, a BJP functionary, whose claim to fame
rests on his role as Yudhishthir in the TV serial Mahabharata, had been
appointed chairman of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII),
ignoring the stalwarts who had made huge contribution to the film
industry. More recently, a well-known historian Mahesh Rangrajan has
been made to resign as Director, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library
(NMML), to facilitate the induction of someone without any academic
credentials.
The RSS and the Hindutva brigade, including Prime Minister
Modi, attribute fantastic scientific achievements to ancient Indians. We
are told that they had knowledge of stem cell research, plastic surgery
and aircraft much before the West came to know of them. But none of
their claims is supported by evidence. On the other hand, there is much
in ancient Indian science we can be proud of, such as the contributions
of Charaka, Shushruta, Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Bhaskara. But the
Hindutva brigade has seldom mentioned any one of them.
By the time the current regime runs its course, the BJP
would have damaged Indian social polity irreparably and hijacked
academic discourse to a level of abysmal ignorance. History will
remember the present government as one that led the country into a dark
age. With Modi at the helm, India has become a benighted nation.
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