Is Hinduism really threatened ?

                                  Is Hinduism really threatened?

As one visits the social media sites one increasingly encounters a sense of anxiety among some sections of the Hindus. There are clearly two trends to such anxiety one caused by the violent methods of the advocates of the Caliphate and the other occasioned by the needs of polarization on the eve of elections. The relevant question in the given situation is whether the Hindus that are anxious do really know what Hinduism is about or is their response to the presumed threat over stretched.

Hinduism as one understands through the Gita and the Upanishads is a way to self actualization, the state of eternal bliss and the end purpose of the Vedas. A realized Hindu in a state of realization would be in a state of bliss rather than in a state of eternal anxiety. All the paths namely Bhakti, Japa, Dhyan and Gyana converge on one truth “the true inner self “ ,the consciousness , that propels the inert attributes, the senses, the mind the Buddhi which are dynamic only so long as they are in sync with the true “inner self “, “ the atman “. The Bhagwad Gita , which is a treatment of the Upanishads and the light that they throw on the singular truth that is the “ Atman “ finds all other things untrue more properly described as  “Maya “. The central theme of both the Bhagwad Gita and the Upanishads is the explanation of “tat twam asi “, “that you are “. The Bhagwad Gita in its eighteen chapters devotes six chapters each to elucidate the three words that encapsitulate the divine truth, “the Atman “, “the Brahm “.  Serious adherents of Hinduism have two paths available to them for such realization, the path of Advait which finds “Brahm “formless and Dwait which sees the same in forms. Irrespective of the differences in the recourse to enlightenment the journey eventually brings one to the same truth. While an adherent of Advait would seek the realization in terms of ‘’ Yoga “ bringing the senses, the mind and the buddhi in sync, the Dwaiti would seek it through Bhakti which is devotion . While the Advaiti would seek self realization by first understanding the relevance of the senses, the mind and the Buddhi and how these elements can organize a personality or disorganize it, the Dwaiti is given more to customs and rites. Even in such situation the focused emphasis is on the development of organized human personalities which can become such only through the disciplining of the senses, the mind by bringing the two under the command of buddhi, “the Reason”.  The true self can only be realized through such disciplining. A realized Hindu has no cause for anxiety which is more often bred by here say or some unreasonable spirit of finding one’s own faith as superior to others. The essence of all religions is promotion of right conduct that defines the human. Hinduism talks about right conduct as profoundly described in Gita by Krishna to Arjuna on the eve of the epic battle Mahabharata. Buddhism talks about right conduct as it gives the eight truths; Jainism also lays emphasis on it and so do Christianity and Islam. The right conduct in the given scenario is to leave all that is unlawful and provocative to the Arms of the state and secure the essence of religions and stand up to any misinterpretation of the scriptures by vested interests.

Reverting to Hinduism one has to bear in mind that it believes in the unity of souls and that being the underlying truth no human irrespective of the faith he or she pursues, can be viewed differently or less religious. If Brahm, the consciousness is the sole propeller of all, otherwise inert, what scope remains for an enlightened Hindu to allow anxiety occasioned by different hues and colors, to prey on him?

The movement of the Indian state has been a movement of convictions and its faith in its secular spirit. The line between the state and religion is clearly drawn. The state would not interfere in the affairs of religions and would encourage their promotion but would also not tolerate any design of any religion that undermines it. A strong and reasonable state that India is, given its one and only religious book “the Constitution “, as stated often by the Prime minister and quite recently in the US Congress by him, is fully enabled to deal with sections, which through their deliberate misinterpretation of faiths tend to increasingly become irreligious towards the state and its peace loving and law abiding citizens circulating material that offends and threatens its integrity. Hinduism is a concept worth imbibing rather than being quixotically anxious about.

The Battle ground ............... A shy Modi and Shah .

                                               

Two years gone and the NDA government well in its third year of rule may come in for surprise in the next elections. Post last general elections the coalition does not appear to be on a sound turf given the drubbing it has continued to receive in the state elections one after another except Assam and while propaganda agents appear to make the ornamentation of Modi louder in a bid to project him strong as ever there clearly appears to be a rot setting underneath the meticulous icing that conceals the beneath.

B J P, post last general elections, organizationally appears, as leader centric , as does Congress. While the hope of BJP hinges on Modi –Shah combine, which going by the results of the state elections and the realities on the ground with dissatisfaction of the common man simmering , is no assurance for Modi ‘s Govt. While the strategy of the BJP think tank, it appears is focused on a concerted image thrashing of the Nehru Gandhi family with a view to effecting a coup in the Congress which appears preposterous because irrespective of the attack on this family and also perhaps a sense of dismay in the organization with the silence that marks the response of the leadership to such, the tree will continue to keep the following sheltered and perched.

 Whatever such might appear the fact remains that organization without the tree will lose its identity and solidarity and it is this that the BJP understands well. Congress may be accused of having a dynasty to guide it but that is where the handicap of BJP, lies. Congress despite having broken earlier has always followed the Nehru Gandhi family and developed and consolidated itself around its member. The congress has survived two splits and on both the occasions the organization followed its leader Late Indira Gandhi and she even went beyond the national memory of the Emergency to return victorious in the elections that followed. There were multifaceted allegations against her, definitely though, not of the quality that they become now , but the national mandate corrected these, each time, as it did to Modi’s Gujarat image internationally , post riots.

 Modi’s cabinet has five outstanding ministers in Defence, Surface transport, Foreign affairs, Railways and Home affairs but none of these seem to be in any state of grooming should the organization ever require a change of leadership in an eventuality. A bubbling Foreign minister Shushma Swaraj who has performed her role as this minister, looks increasingly subdued even as she does not allow the same to have the better of her dedication to work. The Defense Minister Parriker is another person who appears to go about his work seriously and meaningfully but is perhaps called upon to indulge in matters such as pursuing the Augusta Westland and other Defense deals with a sense of political aggression against the Gandhi family than to resort to incisiveness in investigation thus causing damage to his established repute as the Chief minister of Goa which he was, prior to assuming the present responsibility. Though Shushma justifies her role in the position she holds, the same is increasingly sought to be diminished, by presenting her as a  Minister robotically responding to the commands of her Prime minister which given her track record in the parliament and also as an independently popular Minister of Atal’s government, is an impression, that does not stick. Gadkari another cabinet minister and erstwhile President of the BJP is a person who has shown grace in winning the support of the staunchest of opponents of this government by going about his work with a sense of purpose. A man who showed magnanimity to the Delhi CM who approached him for a reproach following a defamation case he was forced to file against him. Prabhu, the Railway minister has brought noticeable cleanliness to the stations across the country. A complaint by a passenger on an Indian train is attended within minutes and the journey has become safer and comfortable. The home minister Raj nath whose tenure along with his minister of state has been a period of comparative calm with no major terrorist strike and some respite from the indigenous extremists is now being sent to Uttar Pradesh to lead the party in the state not by measure of some assurance of his leadership but to do damage to his image and shield Amit Shah where the parties fortunes are a foregone conclusion. Shusma Swaraj and Rajnath Singh are the two shadows in the PMs Cabinet that have the potential to out shadow him in the long run and which the PM ,it appears , wants to keep caged. With the old guard in Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Jaswant Singh outmaneuvered the outwardly buoyant BJP may be a party whose internal intrigue is concealed by media manipulation menacingly evident otherwise , even in the informal get-together s of senior BJP party leaders.

 Modi has all this far been presented as the face of the Party and Amit Shah the resource organizer, the faces that now appear to be going shy as they shirk responsibility in Uttar Pradesh. If by any shred of imagination the party makes any impression in Uttar Pradesh under Rajnath Singh , the credit goes to Modi and Shah, should it fail, Rajnath becomes the goat. Here perhaps lies the common in the Congress and the BJP. The shoulders of the vitriolic spokespersons keep sinking and the countenance of the ministers, bureaucrats and party men reflects a sense of despondency desperately shrouding fear with sycophancy, another common between the BJP and Congress.

Congress sees virtue in silence and in perhaps what one of the leaders of the BJP and now a cabinet Minister had told the agencies investigating him that it would not be long when he would be in power and would then take good care. And indeed the parrots changed the cages with the change in Government. All that was right in the UPA tenure became wrong and all that was earlier wrong in the conduct of the BJP and its associates , became right. The silence of the Congress speaks so much as perhaps it waits, for the BJP led NDA government to crumble under its own weight. The nation should rest assured; nobody gets punished for anything in politics which draws its sustenance from slander. The boxing is for the gallery.

   

China occupied Pakistan C O P .............. NSG and the expectation of equal treatment.

                            China occupied Pakistan ………… C O P

                                N S G and the expectation of equal treatment

The gradual occupation of Pakistan by China may be a long term strategy of the latter to contain the threats the former with its nuclear armaments may pose to it in the long run in the fast changing global scenario which is marked by the impermanence of international relations. The Pak foreign minister now finds US an opportunistic nation guided, as he suggests always by its self interest. The minister’s latest outburst comes close on the heels of international opinion converging on India’s inclusion into the nuclear suppliers group.

Pakistan , it seems seeks treatment on an equal footing with India on the matter failing to realize why India’s case is considered in place by majority of the decision makers who on the other find Pakistan  undeserving of such status. The difference, Pakistan has to realize lies in the responsibility in conduct of civilized responsible international behavior. While Pakistan stole its existence as an independent nation by virtue of the majority of Muslim population that lived in the areas that came to constitute the so called pious land and having attained that status went ahead with its policy of minority cleansing, the Indian state despite the feeling of animus between the majority Hindus and minority Muslims on account of the partition insisted on donning the secular fabric and no resident on its soil was ever to be treated as an unequal being.

 The minorities in India hold responsibilities in the governance as does the majority and there has never been a dividing line in the governmental psyche. The unity of India is secured by its respect for diversity which irresponsibly remained amiss in the Pakistani scheme of things. One is assured when one visits the China town in Kolkatta to find how the Chinese live in this city along with the natives or to the pain that each Indian felt when a synagogue in Bombay came under attack by Pak terrorists who killed the Rabi and his wife orphaning the child who was secured by an Indian female attendant. The attack on the synagogue was not in isolation it was part of a well orchestrated design on the part of Pakistan. Despite the arrest of the Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab, Pakistan shirked its responsibility attributing the act to the so called non state actors, resident on its soil. This by no account could have been the conduct of a responsible nation. All terrorist strikes in India have invariably a Pak signature which this nation refuses to recognize and admit, when confronted.

An Indian plane hijacked from Kathmandu by Pak terrorists was flown into Pakistan before it headed for Kabul. The terrorist in the plane were generously armed by the Pak agents in Pakistan. Talibaan in Afghanistan were then its own people who helped the terrorists secure release of a terrorist imprisoned in India along with others. An Indian passenger Katyal was brutally killed. Pakistan basked in some sadistic glory making the released terrorist a strategic asset who later from the sanctuary in Pakistan, masterminded the attack on the Indian Parliament and Pathankot. The Pakistanis saw some strange victory in these irresponsible and inhuman acts. Even before this, the perpetrators of the Bombay serial bomb attack resulting in the death of hundreds of Indians found refuge in Pakistan and the kingpin stays comfortably at Clifton street in Karachi under ISI security umbrella. And a little later when the Indian Prime Minister setting aside all reservations against interacting with this irresponsible rouge nation went on a goodwill visit across the borders to Lahore, the nation’s services chiefs refused to show him respect refusing to salute him. And while the Prime ministers talked, Mussharaf had secretly sent his forces into the Indian territories of Kargil and moved them back when the US President Clinton cut the Pak PM to size asking him to withdraw his forces from Indian Territory immediately. US, it appeared had come to understand this irresponsible nation.

Years later when President Bush followed his visit to India with a visit to Pakistan, he reacted to the suggestion of the Pak President on the latter’s demand for equal treatment of Pakistan with India in the matter of the civil nuclear deal, with the contempt it deserved even as he added how India had always been responsible while Pakistan had not.

Pakistan now accuses the US of being opportunistic forgetting how the American gratis has sustained it since its illegitimate birth. Clinton saw it; Bush had realized it, and the erstwhile secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned this failed country about the risks involved in breeding snakes in one’s backyard. Obama found Osama on this pious land and this rogue pretended it was unaware of his presence on its soils. China may have taken hint from Hillary Clinton’s observation as it continues its friendly occupation of Pakistan even as it disciplines Muslims at home proscribing Hizab and practice of Islam.

The list of Pakistan’s irresponsible behavior is long. Abdul Quadir Khan has been a proclaimed proliferator who went about trading nuclear technology with other states before such was discovered by the International agencies .Pakistan did nothing to bring this man to justice as it should have done as any responsible nation would have done. This man is free and is a threat to mankind given his record of trading nuclear secrets.

Pakistan will have to realize that it is not India that makes its existence uncomfortable instead it is the policy of self destruction that it has pursued. If the US now becomes not so friendly with Pakistan, it is clearly on account of the acts of treachery it has continued to indulge in, with the untiring sustainer of its existence right from the time it came into being. It is Pakistan which is to blame to have pushed the US and the other nations to the threshold to stop trusting it. The continuing displeasure of the US with this parasite also has a message for China which has to evaluate its relationship with this deviant nation sans any regard for responsible neighborly and international conduct, a vice, that makes it un comparable with  India, which even in times of grave provocations and continued singularity of its predicament which though now becomes realized and accepted globally has not shown disregard for responsible conduct and it is the sole reason why nations of the world find it deserving of larger international responsibilities. While India may not be as worried with the COP ie China occupied Pakistan, it does find Chinese use of POK, a disputed territory, some result of bad company China should show refrain about, as a responsible Asian giant.

Silent Manmohan versus An eloquent Modi

                    Silent Manmohan versus An eloquent Modi

The nation had lost Rajiv Gandhi to the LTTE design, the suicide bomber who had been on his trail brought this young ex prime minister’s electoral campaign to an abrupt and painful end. Elections took place and the Congress was returned to power. The choice of premiership fell on Narasimha Rao who took Manmohan Singh as his Prime minister. Rajiv was a man who was given to modernization and reforms and the nation had witnessed a glimpse of such inclination when he twice became the Prime minister. Once when the nation lost his mother and the nation its great Prime Minister to the bullets of her own security staff whom she continued to retain despite advice against such insistence on her part. The nation had witnessed the “Operation Blue star “in Punjab and in the days following that she was advised against keeping any Sikh staff in her security. She would not accept such an advice; she maintained that no price was big enough to secure secularism in the country. The price as it turned out was big which she and this nation painfully, but graciously paid, as she fell to the bullets of the staff she had retained.

The nation knew little about scams during her lifetime. The economy by and large remained closed during her tenure that followed two Prime ministers namely Nehru and Shashtri. While Nehru was often questioned by his secretary for squandering his salary as he doled out sums generously to the needy who approached him. The secretary had to ask Nehru’s staff to stop lending him money which he, of and on borrowed from them to help the needy in his personal capacity. The secretary later made some arrangement in the Prime minister’s relief fund to take care of this Prime minister’s penchant for generosity. Once his sister had incurred an expense of about Rs two thousand and five hundred in Punjab and when this was brought to his notice by the state CM he requested that the same be converted into a loan which he continued to pay in installments. Shastri another revered prime minister continued to follow the policies of his predecessor and the nation by and large  continued in its focus on capital formation with a view to making the nation and its economy self reliant. The insistence of the two prime ministers on discouragement of consumption to augment savings and investment needs to be read in the background of the insolvency that the nation and its economy had inherited from the British masters. Indira Gandhi as the succeeding Prime minister also saw soundness of this logic in the background of no external support for nation building. A backward economy despite external challenges and the influence of the cold war threats from neighboring Pakistan and China continued its march trudging towards self reliance. Rajiv in his second tenure as prime minister showed first signs of readiness to go for reforms and modernization and also exhibited courage to order a gradual opening of the economy but his term got marred by a controversy relating to the Bofors gun deal, a charge that was brought to stand against him but which eventually fell and his name getting cleared albeit posthumously. Credit is due to him for having realized very early that future wars would be fought or avoided on the strength of missiles and to which cause he encouraged the missile man and the scientists of this nation. The responsible possession of the missiles silently assembled over decades and accounting for the nation’s inclusion in the missile control regime has traversed a long journey equally and perhaps even more vigorously pursued by the BJP government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee and is and cannot be termed as a biannual achievement. Silence in development and non demonstration of nation’s defense assets is perhaps a very sound strategy of the past governments with a very sound logic to take the adversary by surprise. Between Rajiv’s second stint and Narasimha Rao’s ascendency, the nation saw first exercises in the politics of coalition. The experiments did the nation no better. When Rao came to power the nation’s coffers were empty, its bullion lay mortgaged, and the state of the economy was terrible. The PM’s choice fell on Manmohan Singh who had excelled as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, whom he took in his cabinet, as his finance minister.

The finance minister for what he is accused got about his work silently without fanfare or indulgence in the recounting of the financial non wisdom of his predecessors and was taken to task when he took a very considered view to devalue the currency. The risk was great but calculated judiciously, in the midst of the growing demand for bringing down the controversial structure at Ayodhya which was tearing apart the social and secular fabric of India, demand for Indian products rose in the international market, the export graph rose and the balance of payments position improved. The coffer was now gracefully filled and the foreign exchange reserves lost on account of the mismanagement of the economy by the newly experimented coalition politics grew to a level of assurance.

History has not been just to the man who single handedly under the guidance of an enabling prime minister lived up to the confidence the latter reposed in him. It is this phase in India’s history which has not been properly acknowledged because it was from here that the nation’s strengths started getting revealed to the world but then there was a price this government had to pay for having failed to protect the controversial structure at Ayodhya. The majority electorate somehow came to believe that those who had engineered the destruction of the structure would replace it with a temple to Ram and the minority had reasons to be offended as they believed that Rao had a tacit role in it. Whether or not it was true is questionable but reports suggest that the PM ventured out of his closed room only after the structure had fallen.  Once in power the advocates for the temple forgot about redeeming the pledge they had made to the people. The temple never came to its place despite numerous lives lost in the frenzy that marked such demand and the coming and going of so many BJP governments.

Coming to Manmohan’s second stint one has to take into account the affects of globalization, the terrorist strike on the twin towers, the all time high oil prices and the global meltdown. While economies of the world began to succumb to the pressures that resulted, the Indian economy did not submit and though it might have appeared slow in comparison to China its policy of consolidation of its strengths worked and credit has to be given to this Prime minister for the greatness of his silent stewardship undoubtedly bereft of any eloquence. Manmohan headed a coalition which one has to concede could never have been selfless. That he stood strong to the need of this nation and its economy refusing to submit to the pressures that internally and externally came to burden him can hardly be termed paralytic. Where there was corruption, and it appeared so prima facie, he did not hesitate to bring his cabinet ministers to justice. As prime minister he cannot be held responsible for not having acted on here say which unfortunately has been the sad mechanization of his detractors who themselves seem wanting in practicing what increasingly accounts in their rhetoric.

Manmohan, when he had relinquished charge had left to the nation a growth rate of four percent. Within months the magic of the conjurers raised it to over six percent, their claim now stands at over seven percent. The nation indeed gallops but the hinterlands emit a dark picture, sad as ever, marred by successive droughts, possibly awaiting the vagaries of flood. Yes the orchestra is fine tuned, and the baton ready but to what purpose and with what pain should the symphony commence to gather the hearts of the forgotten and forlorn sobbing in the segregated part of their motherland as the miserable body of the manipulated face so projected.