A very disturbing emerging nexus

Exactly a year back a Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu journalist living in another country contacted the present writer. He had important information to share. The ruthless destruction of Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sri Lankan army and the silence of Indian state at this immense human tragedy had triggered a completely new set of dynamics he claimed. A section Sri Lankan Tamil youths feeling alienated, defeated, humiliated and above all feeling a terrible sense of betrayal by India were acquiring for the first time an intense sense of hatred towards India. In order to escape Singhalese persecution in the North Eastern province of Sri Lanka there are waves of conversion to Islam, the friend alleged. Prior to 2009 all conversion activities were banned in the Tamil provinces. However after the 2009 tragedy the floodgates of conversion were opened and pan-Islamist organizations were taking full advantage of the situation. Land a precious resource in the North-East provinces of Sri Lanka is being amassed by pan-Islamic organizations and Singhalese. So the Tamil population torn between these forces is rapidly declining.  Ultimately, that friend declared that by facilitating the decimation of Sri Lankan Tamils, the then Indian government had done an irreparable damage to Indian security. It has allowed a strong network of Jihad fire right under its legs which could be manipulated by Pakistan, China, Sri Lanka and other Pan-Islamic forces. 

This was in May 2013. Now the whole transcript of his communication looks like a prophetic warning. On the first of May 2014 the bombs went off in Chennai central railway station killing an innocent techie girl from Tamil Nadu and maiming 10 more for life. On the day of the bomb blast (Thurs day, May 1) Tamil Nadu ‘Q’ branch sleuths had arrested two associates of ISI operative Sakir Hussain from a hideout in Chennai. The police seized fake Indian currency to the tune of Rs 2.5 lakh from them. Police had arrested Hussain, 37, a Sri Lankan, on Tuesday just two days before the bomb blast. The arrested youths were identified as Siva Balan, 39, a Sri Lankan Tamil, and Mohammad Salim, 37, of Royapuram, Chennai. Siva Balan worked as a freelance journalist with a magazine in Chennai, while Salim was running a showroom in T Nagar. Police arrested them based on information given by Hussain.

Already the other South Indian state Kerala had become the hub of Jihad activities. Jihad in Kashmir had been outsourced to Kerala and bomb blasts in various South Indian cities like Bangalore were traced to Jihad brains in Kerala. The clever and cunning channelizing of Tamil anger at the insensitive arrogant attitude of the then Indian government into a hatred for India herself by the masters of Jihad network had spoiled in its first manifestation the lives of Tamils. But what chills one’s spine is the realization that this is just the beginning of the long series of problems and loss of Indian lives India is going to pay as price for the insensitive foreign policy towards Sri Lankan Tamils evolved by Nehru initially and taken to its inhuman logical conclusion by the Nehruvian Indian state. A Balochistan activist once stated in the net, ‘If there is one nation that I love as much as my own Balochistan it is Bharath and if there is one nation that I hate as much as the worst oppressor of my people in Pakistan, it is India.’  A harsh statement but that is the hell spot where decades of Nehruvian Delhi-centric insensitive foreign policies have landed us. 

Instead of being seen as a cultural and spiritual torch bearer of the South Asian and South East Asian regions, India is being seen as a culturally uprooted expansionist mechanical state run by corrupt and inhuman politicians lacking empathy for the fellow Indian cultural brethren scattered across the globe. From Fiji to Ethiopia, from Sri Lanka to Bangladesh the same insensitiveness is repeated again and again.  And now we also know that the geo-strategic void created by the Nehruvian pseudo-secular anti-human foreign policies is being exploited by terrorist forces in South India. A situation worse than the one in Kashmir is being brewed by anti-Indian forces and is being abetted by extra territorial forces, along the long coastal South India. 

In such a situation we need a paradigm shift in the thinking and actions of India’s foreign policy based on cultural and spiritual empathy for Indian cultural descendants everywhere, strong political will to crush not only the functional but also the ideological-theological fountainheads of terrorism, intelligence to identify and destroy the emerging terror networks. One hopes that the new government will chart out this new path and ensure that the South India lives in its traditional real peace and harmony rather than sit in a pseudo-calm posture over the mouth of a volcano.

Aravindan Neelakandan

YB – ET

Yuvabharati : Youth Icon : June 2014

When Mother Kanyakumari spoke in Facebook….

Recently Sahitya Academy award winning novelist Joe D Cruz announced in facebook his support to a Prime Ministerial candidate of a political party. This led to a huge outcry. A publishing firm which markets itself as the publishing house for the downtrodden and marginalized, had taken up the translation of his novel, declared that it had decided to kill the book even before publishing. Condemnations came from the usual leftwing brigade – attacking the writer as fascist. Ironically earlier many of the leading leftwing eminences have signed a declaration forcefully asking people not to vote for the very same candidate Joe D Cruz had endorsed.

The incident had brought out a veritable can of worms. One of the members of the Sahitya Academy award selection committee admitted that after awarding Joe the national literary prize, when she came to know that Joe had leanings towards 'Hindutva' ideology, she in a typical inquisitor manner profiled him for his political beliefs. Other 'eminent intellectuals' were less charitable. They attacked him and abused him saying that he had sold himself to 'fascist forces'.  How a literary person can take a political stand other than the official leftwing stand, they ask. Making themselves laughable caricature of Stalinist commissars, they try to intimidate any lone brave voice that defies their dictates.

Joe D Cruz had answered each of these answers elaborately. It is important that every patriotic Indian understand the importance of his answer to these charges from the leftwing charlatans. First, he says that he is not only a novelist, but also the soul voice of a marginalized community. He had repeatedly pointed out that the coastal communities throughout India form an organic whole and they have strong cultural relations not only among themselves but also with the inland water body communities. Thus these communities have contributed to both Indian culture and spirituality in an immense way which has not been properly recorded by both British and modern Indian historians. The coastal communities have a great stake in a united India.

There are forces which work overnight to weaken, hide and sever these connections not without significant success, which is dangerous to the well being of the entire nation. Hence, a voice that asserts these priceless relations and the contributions of the coastal communities in the formation and evolution of Indian culture is a must. Those who are aiming to create conflicts rather than harmony and those who have vested interest in conflicts rather than unity, try to suppress that voice.  There has been only one platform which has recognized the importance of this voice, the writer from the coastal community contends.    

Secondly Joe D Cruz points out that it is no secret that China, Sri Lanka and Pakistan have been busy creating a naval barricade around India in Indian Ocean. Indian navy which once had supremacy in these waters has been highly controlled in its movements today. This is a dangerous situation. There is a constant violation of the human rights of Indian fishermen at these waters by the navies of these countries. While China has not yet attacked explicitly, it had boosted the aggressiveness of both Sri Lanka and Pakistan. More than 800 Indian fishermen have been killed by Sri Lankan navy in the last few years. Nehruvian policy makers sitting in the air-conditioned rooms of Delhi who share both chicken and a callous indifference to the loss of human lives with the aggressors have pitifully let down our fishermen. When a fisherman dies shot dead by an alien army, India looses a citizen who has a vast and intimate knowledge of the water frontier of India. Joe states emotionally when at last the China-Sri Lanka-Pakistan axis decides to attack India it will be the Indian fisherman from Rameshwaram who would face the first bullet in his chest. Our fishermen are the unpaid yet traditional coast guards of Mother India. So he wants a strong central government that can raise its voice against the brutal sustained inhuman killing of our fishermen. There is only one leader who has spoken explicitly for the plight of Indian fishermen drawing attention to the crimes Sri Lanka and Pakistan are committing against our fishermen, Joe D Cruz points out.

Thirdly, there is a disconnecting void between the growing technological needs as well as the infrastructural needs of the coastal community and the policy making as well as R & D. Starting from the use of satellite technology to identify the fish movements to the storage facility, to the prevention of sea erosion in the coastal villages to good roads connecting the coastal villages and the inland trade centers to effective sustainable practices for maintaining the fishing population – this is a vast area which has been left uncared for decades by policy makers except very occasional actions. Once again there is only one voice in the entire political spectrum that is speaking about these issues. When Swami Vivekananda spoke of new India arising from the humble huts of the hard working Indian population he spoke of the huts of fishermen and iron smiths and also small sideway  food vendors, he meant that the new India that arises should feel for the pain and striving of the marginalized and the downtrodden. Amidst rampant corruption, abject anarchy and degenerate dynasty rule there is only one choice for a person who himself has come up in life from a very humble beginnings – facing all sorts of barriers and humiliations. So such a leader who has evolved from poor beginnings to a world-noticing statesman naturally appeals as the best choice says Joe D Cruz.

Finally the reactions of the elite club of leftwing AC-room based seminar-sustained media-bred warriors of the proletariat have revealed their own real Stalinist fangs beneath their liberal masks. In facebook a fellow fisherman community leader reacted in an emotionally surcharged way to the statement of Joe D Cruz that captures the essence of it all: 'Coastal folks! Rejoice that time has dawned to reclaim our heritage whose roots go back to Bharatha himself … and it has been declared through the voice of Joe D Cruz… Celebrate boys and break a coconut for Mother Kanyakumari!'    

The morning Joe D Cruz decided to write on his facebook wall he feels he was but an instrument of a higher calling. It was the voice of Mother Kumari – the embodiment of Divine Feminine-long suppressed by alien power structures and vested political interests, which manifested in that facebook status. Now it is the duty of every patriotic Indian to heed to that voice and beyond electoral politics, build cultural, socio-economic and spiritual bridges with the long neglected coastal communities all over India. 

Aravindan Neelakandan
YB-ET

Yuva bharati : Youth Icon : May 2014

They die unsung – children of a lesser Goddess!

It was a British magazine 'The Guardian' which revealed that more 500 Indian workers have died in Qatar since 2012.  Qatar is on a fast-track building spree. It is hosting the world football tournament in 2022. So it is harnessing all the human labour it can to build infrastructure. Indian embassy in Doha has meekly confirmed to The Guardian the deaths of 237 Indians 2012 and 241 in 2013 and another 24 Indians in January 2014. It has been found by the reporters that at Doha's main hospital r more than 1,000 people, falling from heights, constructing the needed infrastructure for 2022 World Cup, had been admitted to the trauma unit of the facility in 2012. Ten per cent of these were disabled, and the resulting mortality rate was "significant." Suddenly the warning of International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) that up to 4,000 workers may die before a ball is kicked in 2022 without meaningful reform of the Kafala system, does not seem to be an empty rhetoric but a dire warning of the shape of things to come. 

Kafala system is actually a kind of adaptation. With adaption looked down traditionally in Islamic world, it has come to mean a form of slavery. It ties workers to their employers. Thus Kafala is the Islamic equivalent of indentured labourer system. It places the worker somewhere between a complete slave and a sponsored labourer. Poor Indians and Nepalis seeking livelihood, haunted by unemployment and spiraling prices and escalating bills to be paid for the bare minimum standard of living including education for the children, come to Gulf countries with dreams of a better future. They come ready to toil and sweat. However their willingness to work hard and their extreme financial needs have made them a great human pool of exploitation by the forces that run the Kafala system.  Kafala system is a big pipe which pumps in cheap labor from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Lanka.  Those who are brought through this system are worse than slaves They live entirely at the mercy of the touts and if they survive all these it is a miracle.

During the British colonialism India's poverty was caused by colonial exploitation. The famines created by the British were then used to export Indians to British colonies all over the world to work as indentured labourers. Today with the present political system exploiting India with the same ruthlessness, our people are selling themselves for a dream of a better life – for the enjoyment and entertainment of the Western and Arabian world. The wealth that has been stolen from Indian masses by the political establishment is a huge one. Usually this stolen wealth finds its way into foreign banks. In other words we are in the same situation our forefathers were before independence. The net result is such ugly phenomenon of Indian workers dying for the entertainment of the world. Indian lives have become so cheap thanks to the callous attitude of our government and more deeply thanks to the corrupt Indian polity.

Exploiting this deep malaise certain fake messiahs have arisen in the political field. Anti-national to the core, fascist in their attitude and mob anarchy as their methodology they want to further weaken the democracy of this already wounded nation. Corruption is of course a major disease that is ruining this nation. However such a ruthless corruption of fellow Indians is the result of the lack of patriotism. If a political party hobnobs with anti national forces like the Jehadists and Maoists, if a political party cannot even pay respect to the bodies of the CRPF jawans martyred in the Naxal terror attacks then that party can only capitalize on corruption but cannot root out corruption. Meanwhile Indian fishermen continue to get killed and jailed in the Indian Ocean. Italian marines who killed our fishermen are promised no capital punishment and that they would not be charged under piracy. 

It is anyone's guess that there are substantial number of Indian Muslims in those workers who died in Qatar. The marines who killed the Indian fishermen were Catholics like the fishermen themselves. Yet in both cases their religion did not matter much to their more affluent co-religionists who are from Arabia and Europe. Major Archbishop Mar George Alencherry, an Indian, who was then ordained Cardinal by then Pope even spoke of using Catholic influence in Kerala politics to secure not justice for the slain Catholic fishermen but secure the safety of the killer marines of Italy. In other words, alien religions work as savior of alien people at their service. Indians are ultimately brown skinned heathens left alone as children of a lesser Goddess in the world dominated by Abrahamic religions. Religion is soft-power used by colonial and to-be colonial Arabia and the West.

It is in such a situation that we Indians should forget all our differences to bring in a leadership to the nation that is dynamic, determined, which can provide an all inclusive development model and which is fiercely Indian. We need someone as a Prime Minister who will guard the catholic fishermen from the alien killers and who will bring justice to Indian workers who toil in Qatar under the Kafala system.  We need a leader who stands by the words of Swami Vivekananda – to shun all sectarianism and worship only Mother India and her children as Divine. Today India needs a leader who stands by this true secularism which is defined simply as India first – always and ever. 

Aravindan Neelakandan

YB-ET

Yuvabharati : Youth Icon : April 2014

Wendy Doniger and Freedom of Speech

When Penguin publishers decided to withdraw the book 'The Hindus: An Alternative History' in an out of court settlement with a litigant, many overjoyed Indians over this 'victory', have failed to notice that this may be a well constructed exercise in defaming India and Hindus. 

The book was published in 2009. Professor Wendy Doniger, the author, is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor Chair in History of Religions at the University of Chicago. Her works exhibit a major uniting chord: a reductionism which reduces Hinduism as a symbolic manifestation of Freudian unconscious. Some of her works can definitely be classified as having some kind of brilliance. But as she emerged as a power-center in American academy she increasingly became obsessed with Freudian reductionism of all aspects of Hinduism. She favored such a study of Hinduism among Indologists.  Each of her important doctoral students has produced works that have deconstructed Hindu phenomenon in an amateur Freudian fashion.

For example David Gordon White in his 'Sinister Yogis' has argued that the modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality and in Indian tradition they are mainly  'wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities—which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation—to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification'.  Wendy Doniger herself stated, “The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think,… Throughout the Mahabharata ... Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviours such as war.... The Gita is a dishonest book; it justifies war…. I'm a pacifist. I don't believe in 'good' wars.” (Philadelphia Inquirer of 19 November, 2000)

Another important uniting theme in her writings as well as in the writings of the scholars of her lineage is that they want to denounce the good image that Hinduism has among the Westerners and deconstruct everything in Hinduism that appeals to the western mind.  Once the Freudian deconstruction of Hinduism, however unscientific it was, became the rule in American academic institutions teaching Hinduism or Indology, they received a support from an unexpected quarter, Indian Marxist academicians. For long, Marxists have stated that Freudian psychoanalysis was a bourgeois degeneration. But now when the object of attack is Hindu religion and culture they happily joined hands with the Freudian right. 

Jeffrey Kripal another of Wendy Doniger's disciple wrote a book on Sri Ramakrishna 'Kali's Child' in which he portrayed Sri Ramakrishna's spirituality as emanating from his repressed homosexuality. The book was promoted in the American academic circles so much so that at one point  the book was placed prominently in the "related books" column of the "Ramakrishna" entry in the online edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 2000. Here it should be mentioned that Wendy is a member of the International Editorial Board of Encyclopedia Britannica. The assault continues unabated as for example, in an undergraduate study on Hinduism in an American university another Freudian deconstructionist of Hinduism, Paul Courtright has his work on Ganesa as textbook which informs the students that Ganesa 'remains celibate so as not to compete erotically with his father, a notorious womanizer, either incestuously for his mother or for any other woman for that matter'. The attack on Sri Ramakrishna mission extends far beyond the walls of academic world. For example, in his 1985 book the 'The City of Joy', Dominique Lapierre slandered the monks of Ramakrishna order as 'pimps' selling the victim children of a cyclone devastation into prostitution in Mumbai with assistance from Indian police. The book went on to become a best seller. However the then Marxist government in West Bengal refused permission to shoot the film as a book in Calcutta and even Satyajit Ray is said to have declined to make a film on Teresa as they saw these as colonial attempts to defame the self reliance of the people of the Third World. But then the neo-Marxists we have today have better connect with the globalized transnational capitalism when it comes to attacking Hinduism.   

Such attacks on Hinduism in the western world are almost taken for granted in a way attacks on Jews in the works of 'scientific studies' and fiction were taken for granted in the pre-holocaust west.

However, what is the most salient feature of these attacks on Hinduism has been that Hindus in United States never indulged in violence. Of course a rare angry Hindu shot an email threatening with violence and these authors tried to make of them, a Hindu version of Salman Rushdie and market them the American way. However the mainstream Hindus in United States took an entirely different approach to the problem. They published a detailed Hindu study of each of these Freudian deconstructionists and published an anthology of completely annotated studies of these worthies. It was the professional Hindu deconstruction of the amateur Freudian deconstruction.

Titled 'Invading the Sacred', Rajiv Malhotra's Infinity Foundation launched the book. The book provided the Hindu fraternity of students in the American academic world the needed counter points, point by point, sometimes angry, sometimes polemical but always authentic. It did not incite violence, it did not cry 'insult to religion', it did not ask to cut the slits for blasphemy; it simply put down the facts from Hindu side and misquotes, tortured texts, wrong translations which plagued the armor of the other side. It was an honest, brilliant, democratic call for an open debate and dialogue. Prof. Balagangadhara of the University of Ghent, spoke of this dignified scholarly Hindu response as 'early signs of an awakening' that signal the realization that 'western explanations of their religions and culture trivialize their lived experiences; by distorting such explanations transform these, and this denies Indians access to their own experiences.'  

But the Wendy's side not only shied away from the debate but also wrote tangentially and threateningly that Hindus being a minority in United States should behave.

In India:

The problem reached India during the NDA rule. L.K.Advani was then the home minister. A request was made to ban the book Kali's Child. But Sri.Advani refused to ban the book, disappointing the pseudo-secularist forces which were waiting to beat the Hindus and portray them as fanatical.  On the other hand two monks from Sri Ramakrishna mission, Swami Tyagananda and Pravrajika Vrajaprana, came out with a scholarly work 'Interpreting Ramakrishna Kali's Child Revisited'. The book analyzed in detail the framework in which Kali's Child was written: the historical context, the review of literature and then went into the actual textual data. It proved beyond doubt that the author of Kali's Child, Jeffery Kripal had mistranslated and then misinterpreted the mistranslations and then had sensationalized the misinterpretations of the mistranslations. Again the silence from the other side was deafening. In the case of ''The Hindus: An Alternative History' Vishal Agrawal an Engineer turned Indic scholar, has made an exhaustive study of the errors in the book (Vishal Agarwal, The Hindus: An Alternative History by Prof. Wendy Doniger, A Chapter-wise Review, Voice of India).  There has not been any worthwhile response from the denigrators of Hinduism.  However the particular litigation against the book is on flimsy ground and it is most likely that the case would have been dismissed in favor of the book.

So why did Penguin decide to remove the book?

Hindus do not have the ability to indulge in mass violence as for example it was done by certain religionists in the case of a controversial youtube video or Danish cartoons case. Nor Hindus have the ability to do backdoor lobbying in the corridors of power as certain religionists did when Dan Brown's movie 'Angels and Demons' was to be released in India or when they stopped a premier channel from airing a documentary on the alleged burial site of Jesus and Magdalene. So why did Penguin act this way – four years after the publication of the book, when it has become a no issue. It may be a strategy by Penguin to play 'martyr' and at the same time a marketing strategy to get the book popular and also a political ploy to paint India as 'becoming fascist'.

We have as our example Adi Sankaraacharya who went out of his way to save the Jain texts which Jain scholar Amarasena, was committing to fire in a mood of defeatist depression, after Sankara vanquished him in debate. Hindus do not seek book banning and book burning.  Hindus seek a neutral platform and debate and dialogue with no ulterior motive.  

Aravindan Neelakandan

YB-ET

From delusion to God...

Life in our times appears to be mundane and hectic bundled together. With no great purpose on hand and with all the material indulgences pulling us away, we get desperation and delusion at regular intervals. Will spirituality provide the solution for this muddle? Will it not be fine if an “Avatar” descends at our time to salvage us from our problems?  These thoughts do come in our mind as we are helpless.

But there is one person who can guide us from this delusion.  Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna, who is an embodiment of our spiritual and cultural heritage, shows us the way. Knowing well that the material thirst is one which can never get satiated, he advises  people to meditate and be with the thought of God constantly, as that alone can take us towards the  liberation. He says,” The magnetic needle always points to the North, and hence it is that the sailing vessel does not lose Direction. So long as the heart of Man is directed towards God, he cannot be lost in the ocean of Worldliness.”  This longing for God will ultimately lead a person towards a virtuous life. This is crux of Indian spirituality where 'Dharma' is the bedrock.

We need conviction, commitment in our search for God. Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna Says that in order to realize God one must have perseverance and utmost desire. To emphasise this he gives an analogy. 'when can I realize God? asked a disciple. The guru didn't reply.Instead he caught his disciple by the hand, took him to the river and pushed his head down into the water and kept it like that for a few minutes. The aspirant struggled for breath and the guru wouldn't leave him. Finally in a desperate action the disciple gathered all the strength he had and pushed away Guru's hand. When he came out of the water Guru said, “when you have desperate desire to get your breath back, you gathered all your strength to come up. Likewise you can realize God with the same kind of strength and persistence. It will not come with mere study”. Sri Ramakrishna was in fact called as mad for his love towards God. Swami Vivekananda articulates it nicely for people to understand the persona of Sri Ramakrishna when he says, “ I know one ( Sri Ramakrishna) whom the world used to call mad, and this was my answer: 'My friends, the whole world is a lunatic asylum. Some are mad after worldly love, some after name, some after fame, some after money, some after salvation and going to heaven. In this big lunatic asylum I am also mad, I am mad after God. If you are mad after money, I am mad after God. You are mad; so am I. I think my madness is after all the best.' (cw3:100).

It was Sri Ramakrishna, who arrived at a time when our spirituality and cultural heritage were waning. He revived it and revitalized it by living rather than eulogizing it. His contribution can be understood through the words of French Litterateur, Romain Rolland, who said, “The man whose image I invoke here was the consummation of two thousand years of spiritual life of three hundred million people'. These words will imply the importance and greatness of Sri Ramakrishna and his crucial role in reviving the lost sheen of our Spiritual and Cultural Heritage. Bhagavan Sri Ramakrishna continues to inspire us and guide us. His light will help us through the tunnel.

V.V.Balasubramanian.

YB-ET

Yuva Bharati : Youth Icon : February 2014