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In Martha's maryland - false gods flower
30 May, 2007 l 0919 hrs ISTlTarun Vijay
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In Jammu, a centre in the memory of Barrister Narendrajit Singh of Kashmir houses a small hostel for girls of the Valley who have lost their parents in terrorist violence. Last month I met a little girl, with a twinkle in her eye, who had seen her brothers and parents getting slaughtered before she fell unconscious. The killers came shouting the name of Allah and glory to Islam.
She was reading the life of Buddha under her teacher Pankaja didi and showed no resolve for a violent revenge against those who killed her world when she was just six. But she remembered everything and just before we sat for supper, she asked, “Uncle, why did they kill my papa and mummy and bhaiya ?”
Officially, more than 60,000 Hindus have been killed in the bloody jihad waged more vigorously since 1990 in Jammu and Kashmir. Seventy temples destroyed and five lakh Pundits forced to leave their homes, orchards and schools in the Valley because they were served notices that either they leave behind their women and property or be ready to get killed.
Those who see women as a property to be "owned" and "used" and have unleashed a reign of terror across the globe have suddenly found a friend and a sympathiser from surprisingly unexpected quarters - Harvard. Martha C Nussbaum, who is best described in a line that contains the word Harvard University, has used all her skills and brilliance to attack Hindus of India in her recently-published, though yet-to-be-released book, The Clash Within : Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future.
Right from the first paragraph she has packed lies, utter lies and convenient half-truths to help her predetermined position and to hide the fact that she was unable to find time to study relevant and original source material except those churned out by the extreme hate groups of the Left and jihadi variety.
The Hindus on Sabarmati Express -- 58 women, children and men -- were pilgrims in their own right, and even an illiterate would know that Hindus do not go to Ayodhya for a singular mission to build a temple at the birth place of Rama, but that Ayodhya has been a great holy city since time immemorial even to those who opposed rebuilding a temple where the Babari mosque was erected.
In a paragraph describing Godhra, she has ended up virtually supporting the charring of the living Hindus in the compartment for their unsubstantiated "sin" of getting into "arguments with Muslims passengers and vendors" at a previous station. It's the same arguments one listens to in Pakistan justifying Osama's act of 9/11 citing America's aggressive anti-Muslim arrogance.
She conveniently forgets that silence over Godhra was too deafening and the violent reaction to it resulting in the Gujarat riots was condemned by all, and hundreds of Hindus were also killed in it. Was their death ignorable and merit no mention just because they had the 'H' and not 'M' ? Why on earth must we distinguish between the death of an innocent Hindu and an innocent Muslim?
She quotes a book by Golwalkar to reinforce her hate agenda against a particular group. A book which was never written by him and was discarded by the RSS in the early sixties. The RSS condemned the Gandhi murder, we feel Godse did more harm to the Hindu cause by that heinous act. Gandhi was one of the highest adorable role models for us and millions of Hindus in the RSS chant his name first thing in the morning in a prescribed prayer.
But the facts are sacred to only those who would like to see them.
The biggest perpetrators of violence and hateful campaigns are the jihadis and the left wing extremist groups in India who have, with single-minded zeal, targeted the Hindus for the last five decades. The Indian government is spending billions of dollars to contain Islamic and Left-wing terrorism in six most populous states. The number of Hindus killed by these two groups exceeds the total number of Indian troops killed during the First and Second World Wars and the India-China and Indo-Pakistan wars put together.
Since India was partitioned and Independence declared, it's Hindus who have been losing their space and lives. They lost temples and universities teaching spiritual and religious practices in Pakistan and Bangladesh, they lost their numerical strength which is constantly on a decline in the entire subcontinent. The Hindus have been savaged, brutalized and annihilated in the most horrendous manner since 1947 - see the chronicles of Mujaffarabad, Rawalpindi and Dhaka. Facing jihadis in Kashmir and Maoists and NSCN (fighting a terrorist battle to create an independent Nagaland for Christ) in the heartland and north-east, Hindus may be the only people on this planet who are wounded yet blamed for the hurt themselves making the pain more excruciatingly intolerable.
The real fear for Indian democracy comes from the elite who refuse to see the anguish and hurt of the Hindus who have remained friendly and faithful to their Muslim and Christian fellows in spite of the barbarities in the name of their respective faiths. So Gujarat was not repeated elsewhere in India though Hindus were equally hurt after Godhra. Every Sohrabuddin or Kausar Bi, whatever their history, gets a strong rights group with Hindus leading, to defend them, though we have yet to find a single Muslim group standing up for Kashmiri Hindus or the victims of Godhra.
Shah Rukh, Amir, Azim Premji or Irfan get the same appreciation and respect in a Hindu home that the Ambanis, Mittals, Dravids or Bachchans get and a Shahnawaz is elected by Hindu right-wing voters from Bhagalpur.
Yet, a metro would be diverted to safeguard the Qutub Minar and a Taj Mahal corridor stopped for protecting the environment around the great marble wonder but the greatest memorial to the Hindu god of righteousness and noble virtues, the Ram Setu, which defines the most valuable heritage site mankind can have, is sought to be destroyed. A Hindu holy man of highest stature is arrested while worshipping in the thick of Diwali night but the same state power refuses to execute a non-bailable warrant against a Muslim cleric citing law and order problems.
Hindu schools are compelled to declare themselves a non-Hindu minority to protect their institutions, like the Ramakrishna Mission, the greatest-ever Hindu reformist movement had to do, but Muslims are given special rights, privileges, subsidies and reservations in jobs and educational institution . It pays to be a non-Hindu in this Hindu majority nation, yet Harvard hate centre's Martha loves to describe Hindus as the most violent threat to our democracy.
The best of the Hindu minds form the most respected and revered community globally - no matter what the flag of their adopted nation is. They prove as patriotic and faithful to their nation as any other indigenous group. And they are the most dynamic supporters of the Hindu right Martha fears so much.
They are unlike the hate support groups of the Martha hue, who are stubbornly opposed to a different view point and try to Stalinise their actions against them - through humiliation, isolation, delisting and blacklisting, all in the name of "protecting democracy, free speech and tolerance"! They support an artist's right to paint a nude Jesus showing some liquid from his penis dropping in the W.C. and a Hindu goddess killing a fully-grown man coming out of her womb, but refuse to give the right to say ' no' to people who find it too offending and filthy.
Martha has written what she loved to write and not what can also be described as an objective intellectual discourse. It's too one-sided and outweighs the ground realities. Hindu groups, of various right hues are the only section describing the oneness of the supreme god and have given best of their ambassadors like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Mata Amritanandmayi, Pramukh Swami (Swaminarayan ), Pranav Pandya of Gayatri Pariwar and Swami Ramdev, who have addressed the European parliament, Karachi audiences, British knights, Manhattan and Silicon Valley wizards and Iraqi citizens with a message of love and amity.
And they are the ones who have not minced words in their full support to a temple at Ram's birth place in Ayodhya. We are the same Hindu right flock Martha paints in bad colours for reasons known to her.
Positioning falsely to kill is a bad intellectual habit. So if Hindu leaders like K S Sudarshan hold a large congregation of Muslims in Ajmer and get applause, should it be ignored? If Hindu groups, the "right wing" RSS of course, celebrate the 150th anniversary of 1857 in the Mecca Mosque in Fatehpuri, Delhi has it to be pooh-poohed as a sham exercise? If Hindu and Muslim groups start a dialogue and come closer, should it be welcomed or its spirit condemned? It's for Martha Nussbaum to think about it.
Being a Hindu means having respect for a different faith and not just tolerance. Hindus never believed in conversions and "harvesting seasons" for the heathens and pagans. One had to be born in a Hindu family to be a Hindu. It's only in the early last century when Swami Dayananda saw the threat from Christian proselytizers acting under the protection of the British, that he allowed re-conversions or the shuddhi movement (purification act to bring back the faithful back home).
A pain is a pain no matter what signatures of the God the body bears. The worst kind of communalism is that which segregates the responses on the basis of the victims' faith or colour. And the worse violence is through words based on untruths. Martha has succeeded in excelling in the art of hurting Hindus more than the jihadis could achieve.
We are not like Americans or the Europeans who have made the lives of Muslims a hell post-9/11.One has to see how a Muslim is treated in Martha's land at the airport, offices and in public places. They can't even dream to climb up the ladder in any sphere.
We are different, or accommodating and respectful to a different viewpoint. A Muslim head of the state was supported and made possible by the same Hindu right groups whom Martha describes as the threat to democracy. And while selecting an appropriate candidate in that period, another strong contender that emerged with the Hindu right support was a Christian, who lost the race because a Christian political leader refused to support him for fear of losing the claim to the Prime Ministership.
This happened not because of any act of benevolence, but we earnestly believe that every Indian no matter what his or her faith, is one of us; we share the same ancestors, language, race, culture and future.
Unfortunately the kind of writings that Martha and her friends have produced make Hindus feel more threatened and many of them feel compelled to Islamise their responses. That's the threat we face today from the false gods of Harvard. Left to ourselves we are quite capable of defending democracy and civil values so painstakingly preserved and practiced over the last 5,000 years.
Readers Opinion
In Martha's maryland - false gods flower
1
Comment:Great ... I had read your other article in Panchjanya also. Infact We are really very proud of you that there is one person in Negative English Media who fevour Hindu Theory , Understand it.
Name:kalpana
Location:rajkot
31 May, 2007 1438hrs IST
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