Author: Tarun Vijay
Publication: The Times of India
Date: September 12, 2007
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Tarun_Vijay/The_Right_View/Strengthening_sinews_/articleshow/msid-2361146,curpg-1.cms
Just before we were about to celebrate Dussehra,
the government of India swore that Ram never existed. A Diwali-Dussehra gift
to the Hindus. Last time, Diwali saw Shankaracharya Jayendra Saraswati being
arrested while performing puja by Jayalalithaa's khaki-clad law enforcers.
This time when the nation is ruled under a non-Hindu dispensation, an officer
bearing the name of Ram was assigned the job of destructing a bridge known
as Ram Setu and another officer, who represents the Ministry of Culture, filed
an affidavit in the Supreme Court on behalf of the government that Ram never
existed.
Should we begin saying now, 'He, who Ram?'
Do we need birth certificates to prove Ram,
Krishna, Nanak, Jesus and Muhammad? Can the government ask a Muslim or a Christian
to file an affidavit in court about having no proofs regarding Hazrat Bal's
genuineness or Virgin Mary's immaculate conception? No, they won't even think
about it. Fear of death and receiving ostracism. Fear of losing votes and
getting thrown out of power. Simple reasons.
Hindus don't do that. Hence get humiliated
at the hands of Hindus only. Like Indians were made to testify against Bhagat
Singh and other revolutionaries so that they could be hanged.
This is how colonial powers do. Using 'natives'
against their own blood brothers.
At a time when India shows a new vibrancy
and a military exercise in the Bay of Bengal exhibits our raised levels of
confidence, we hear noises denouncing it and an affidavit filed by the government
certifying that no Ram ever existed, hence the destruction of what people
call as Ram Setu doesn't mean destroying an ancient site, and so is a doable
act. Bravo. That's the climax of a polity and the state in self-denial. A
pitiable mindset, indeed. Honouring people's faith and a collective memory
of the nation is also one of the duties of the new borne governance, which
remains always subservient and lower in status to the elements of civilisational
constitution and cultural continuity several millenniums old. The Left is
concerned about ties with America and not the sentiments of the people of
India and the UPA is concerned how to appease the Left to safeguard the government.
Where's India in their eyes?
A state and its constituents that defy all
that and humiliates the majority sentiments through any instrument of a recently-gained
superficial power, fails itself and lowers the flag of national pride.
Rakhi and Krishna Janmashtami behind, we are
geared up to celebrate a number of colourful festivals like Ganapati, Navratras,
Durga Puja, Dussehra and Diwali. Every festival announces a celebrative mood
of the people who are accustomed to welcome new births with gaiety and deaths
as a window to the new another world. While ultimate happiness is defined
in a reunion with the cosmic powers of creation, our gods and goddesses inspire
a complete and decisive annihilation of the wicked and establishing the supremacy
of the righteousness i.e. dharma . Rama versus Ravana, Krishna versus Kans
and Kauravas, Durga versus Mahishasur, and using the instrument of Ganapati
festival for arousing the spirit of freedom against the imperialist forces-
every story and its finale tells us about a war between the good and the evil
and victory of the noble values. It also underlines that those who fear war,
get war, hence the compassionate, friendly and all-inclusive spirit should
not mean cowardice translating into a meek acceptance of the aggressors' unjust
behaviour. Warn him, give time for a correction and if nothing positive comes
out annihilate him as ruthlessly as has been the nature of the assault. Krishna
annihilated the unrepentant with his celestial weapon, yet gave the greatest
sermon of the Bhagwad Gita in the midst of the epic war. But we are disinheriting
whatever was bequeathed to us for a mirage of harvesting votes. The inconvenience
to millions at the airport, in temples, on railway stations and inside buses
due to the security necessitated by the Ravanas and Kansas of jihadi variety
is abysmal, but the decision-maker politician doesn't care. He sits safe in
his citadel. This festival time may well be a good point to remind him of
his dharma as exemplified in the lives of Indian icons.
A tradition to provide safety and succour
to the patriots sacrificing our own best and the dearest has well been portrayed
in the life and times of Guru Govind Singh. When Kashmiri Pandits approached
Guru Teg Bahadur Sahib to protect them from the barbarities of Aurangzeb,
the great father asked his son Govind Rai who would be the best saviour to
the hapless Brahmins? Govind replied,' who else father, than your own noble
soul?' Tegh Bahadur Sahib protected the Kashmiri Pandits, was martyred for
a noble cause and became immortal as 'Hind ki Chadar' -the protector of Hindustan
and his brave son established the Khalsa, pure path of the devoted shishyas
, the Sikhs. Truly Vivekananda said that the only ideal that we can have is
of Guru Govind Singh whose steel will would fight the hundred thousand foes
with a solitary sword. He lost his father, mother and four sons fighting a
battle for dharma against Aurangzeb, but never ever showed weakness of his
resolve and kept the fight on till last. And look what the so-called followers
of Ram and Guru Govind Singh are doing to the nation!!
The ideals of our women symbolised an indomitable
personae, marked with courage, valour and unflinching adherence to the truth.
The characters of Sita, Anusuya, Ahilya, Gargyi, Maitreyi, Chennamma, Mata
Gujri and Sharada are the glittering examples of empowered womanhood that
sustained social and cultural values on an equal footing. Only the semi-literate
colonised mind would depict them otherwise. Our ideal of sewa or service has
been based on a one-way devotion -without accepting the hot money or waiting
people to die with a last moment baptismal and a cross hung on the neck they
know nothing about.
When Europe was declaring women 'soulless'
and burning them as witches, we were having the great exponents of the celestial
poetry and citizen-queens in Ahilya Bai and Durgawati.
The galaxy of heroes and the most modern values
of all times, changing the contours of the surface in each era yet preserving
the essential everlasting, sanatan values deeply ingrained in our collective
psyche has been symbolised in our ancestry, traditions and lineage. If we
don't remember what we were and get stuck in a sixty-year-old shrub of recent
activism as a substitute for a five-thousand-year-old flow of the tested tradition,
we will be bartering gold with a soiled newspaper. Those who do not remember
their past can have no future Winston Churchill had said and it should be
remembered by those who understand their ancestral wisdom through foreign
translations only.
So much self-denial has crept into us that
we feel gratifying to honour a painter who revels in offending Hindus with
the nudity of his ideas and oppose teaching Gita in schools on the premise
that it's a Hindu scripture. Has it ever occurred to you why schools don't
teach Vedas or Upanishads or the stories of Luv and Kush and Rama, but are
quite comfortable teaching Narcissus, Romulus and Remus, Humpty Dumpty, and
Jack and Jill? Because Jack and Jill are secular and Luv-Kush or Gita belong
to Hindus, hence, are communal? Then whatever belongs to India gets banished
automatically, being Hindu? Why should our own brothers, inheritors of the
common legacy and cultural heritage dispossess everything that is theirs,
just because a change in the way of worship? It reminds me of a true incident,
whence an overenthusiastic education minister of Madhya Pradesh, in his late
fifties, changed the nursery class primers of Hindi alphabet showing Ga for
Ganapati, saying its communal and replaced it with Ga for Gadha,(donkey) as
a secular representation!
I would consider blasphemous and an un-Hindu
trait if, for example, American Hindus refuse to read and honour great icons
of the American nationhood like Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Martin Luther King
because they all were Christians. No, they are universal and America can't
be interpreted without understanding them. Life and sacrifices of Jesus remain
a great inspiration, though what the organised church does in his name is
a different story all together, which made Vivekananda to say,' you are not
Christians, go back to Christ'.
India's Ram, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, Alvars,
Krishna Dev Rai ,Shivaji and the great Gurus belong to all Indians irrespective
of their way of worship. Their message is universal and not sectarian. To
divide them in small religious segments and follow the alleys of segregation
and hate created by the colonial rulers is an unbecoming act. This is a tyranny
of the intellectual dishonesty which has robbed India of her real grandeur
and a rightful place. Kolkata, always known for the colours of Puja, Ramkrishna
Mission, Subhash Chandra Bose and Ganga, became known as a city of poor, hungry,
dying, and destitute that needed a Belgian nun to get 'salvation' at the last
moment. Previous invasions took away our wealth, later they came to disrobe
us of our archaic memories and a sense of pride in being what we were. Nowhere
is it taught that we were more literate and had better scientific temper before
the British crushed our centres of scholarship and implanted such alien routes
to excellence our masses could never get connected to. This harmed our ethical
and social patterns, making us less confident. Though deprivation is considered
the biggest maximiser of conflicts, we saw intolerance as the main source
of socio-economic and military interventions.
All this was faced by us like no other community
faced in the entire history. Now, a mood of rebellion seems to be taking shape
in a positive sense. Revenge of history is an unstoppable phenomenon and we
may accelerate it by growing too tall in comparison to our foes and push a
rebellion against the shackles of rituals and idioms mismatched with the new
times of India. The past has taught us the art to wait and not to show an
undue anxiety. Shivaji waited too long and didn't lose his cool despite Afzal
Khan desecrating the highest revered temple of Tulaja Bhawani, the royal deity.
He just remained alert and when the opportune time arrived, Afzal was eliminated.
Hence all the denials to self-rejuvenation should be resisted without losing
calm as they also help in precipitating the angst against colonial hangover.
The atmosphere of self-goals and negationism
will change in its own way. The signs are quite visible now. It may not be
the way many of us might have conceived or envisioned. It could be an entirely
new brave world of an assertive, proud Indian, nation being the only God relevant
to his world view. Signatures of such an unprecedented rejuvenation have started
showing up in an all-pervading air of new hopes. That's what our destiny is,
and that's what we are going to achieve, defying all doomsayers. This will
happen through dharma alone, that's the life line and solitary power centre
of energies for us. See the huge crowds, lined up with folded hands and a
prasadam in Connaught Place's Hanuman temple in the Capital, wearing Guccis,
Prada, Zac Posen and Zandra Rhodes with our with Rohit Bals, Rina Dhakas and
Tarun Tahilianis. No one squirms. The new religious channels are mushrooming
without losses and ashrams , yoga centres (not withstanding the foolish clergy
of a small church in UK ), Gita classes, top management courses based on Hindu
scriptures from Manhattan to Madras are crowded more than ever with youngish
twenty to thirty somethings outnumbering the retired genre. Dior Femme is
a simpleton on a Gurgaon street and highrises don't surprise.
But it's a minority scene. A chaos on political
front has to be noted and eliminated like Shivaji did, patiently but decisively.
Farmers' plight remains unaddressed and the disadvantaged are simply brushed
aside with traitors and insurgents getting a fashionable shelter by fossilised
seculars. Their days are numbered and an Indian surge, the saffron hued, is
the sunrise sign. Listen to the small talks on street corners and the coffee
houses of the IIC variety. The convergence on national interest is astonishing.
Dharma guides it all. Small things matter
most, like 'Rohtak Express', Komal of the Chak De fame!
In Gujarat a girl lit the pyre of her father,
since he had no son, in spite of a long-cherished tradition of having this
last duty performed by only a male heir. In Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Maharashtra,
female priests are flourishing without even a murmur of inconvenience to the
traditionalists. The attires of the grandpa and grandma have changed and through
soaps, however nauseating and devaluing they might have been declared, the
Ekta Kapoors have transformed evening chats in small towns and villages. Our
dreams are wider and more ambitious. Pandits work on computers, deliver on
the Internet, Vedic knowledge is digitalised and secular universities have
quietly introduced Vedic mathematics too.
Change the path, break old dilapidated conventions,
discard the rituals and consider nothing sacred except our people and the
nation. To crib about the attire, language, protocol, all those choti choti
baatein , you know, is passé, the sole copyrighted repository of the
old-fashioned and to rebel against all odds and the beaten track announces
youth and future. Invite the wrath of the well-established, the seasoned woods
are often moth-eaten. India's new avatar is seen in many facets. You may like,
dislike or simply despise them, but they are occurring. The biggest sign is
the language that has changed. Both the spoken as well as the written one.
Foes, we know them well, why to disclose strategies
in the Press Club? It's the redoubled confidence that we talk to China and
Pakistan and didn't care for the sanctions. We can take the low tides and
the high tides in foreign relations in our stride but Mother India was never
known to have nincompoop children. From Vajpayee to Manmohan, let every one
have his share of glory and without prejudices. Doesn't this enliven and re-energise
our grit and resolve to emerge victors finally? The more you hate and distrust,
the more shakti you lose. Wrong doer's hisab kitab will be done, by history.
None will be spared. Why try writing that in times of creating new rainbows?
Aches are a part of life, only the headless
will have no headaches. So face the pains boldly and charter a path for your
own actions.
So, the next time, you must ask one question
standing before a mirror: What have you, the eternal complainant done for
the nation? The answers to it, by a billion Indians, shall strengthen our
sinews like never before.
The author is the editor of Panchjanya, a
Hindi weekly brought out by the RSS. The views expressed are his personal.
