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While Maktoob acknowledges that it was a "rumour", it failed to include in their report that the rumour was also spread by Islamists themselves and then, this rumour was used to justify the violence. Nuh violence: How the media crafts a narrative to whitewash violence unleashed by Islamists and blame Hindus instead While Maktoob acknowledges that it was a "rumour", it failed to include in their report that the rumour was also spread by Islamists themselves and then, this rumour was used to justify the violence. Nupur J Sharma 1 August 2023 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Mewat violence, image via NDTV On 31st July, almost 4000 Hindus participated in a Jalabhishek Yatra by Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The religious procession came under attack by an Islamist mob in Nuh, Haryana. While Hindus were trapped in a hostage-like situation, news emerged that two home guards have been killed in the violence unleashed by Islamists during the Jalabhishek Yatra on a Shravan Somvar, the auspicious Monday of the Sravan month. The police told OpIndia that one of the home guards was killed in the stone pelting by Islamists while the other was shot dead when the violence by Islamists was unleashed. Speaking to OpIndia, VHP also informed that several temples had come under attack in the Nuh area of Mewat after the Islamists unleashed premeditated violence against Hindus. One video which went viral on social media was a Hindu talking about how a Temple had come under attack and how the Islamists had burnt alive 3 Hindus. It was a live video that was uploaded on Instagram. There were several other videos and pictures that emerged which showed the extent of the violence unleashed by Islamists. VHP has claimed that almost 30 temples came under attack in Nuh, however, the police have not confirmed the exact number of temples that were attacked. VHP also said that the violence was planned and that the stones and bricks had been collected by the Islamists at least 2 days in advance. OpIndia was told that they were using Bajrang Dal activist ‘Monu Manesar’ as an excuse to spread fake news and incite violence. Interestingly, almost on cue, several Islamists on Twitter started sharing an old video of Monu Manesar alias Mohit Yadav, claiming that he was present at the Shobha Yatra and therefore, the violence erupted. This, however, turned out to be false. OpIndia did a detailed fact-check confirming that the video was from last year and that Monu Manesar was not present at the religious procession. Essentially, the Islamists seem to have meticulously planned to unleash violence against a Hindu religious procession that takes place every year. The police have confirmed that the procession had the required permission from the police. After unleashing planned violence against thousands of Hindus, they started spreading fake news on Twitter claiming that the violence was unleashed because of the presence of Monu Manesar. This turned out to be fake since Manesar was not present at the procession at all. The media extended all the help to the Islamists to blame the victims after the violence The media, on its part, ensured that they extend help to the Islamists to blame the victims after unleashing violence against devotees. Maktoob media, the Islamist portal which had tried to shield Islamists during the JNU violence after anti-CAA protests and the Delhi anti-Hindu riots, peddling fake news regularly, published two reports on the issue that deserve a harder look. Their first report on the issue was headlined, “Haryana: 1 killed, 5 injured as clashes breakout during VHP rally in Nuh”. The headline itself hinted that the rally turned violent, essentially insinuating that it was the Hindus who were a part of the religious procession turned violent. Note how in the headline they fail to even acknowledge that it was a religious procession. The first part of their report also fails to identify the “rally” as a religious procession. It further repeats the trope that the rally itself turned violent, not that it was attacked from the outside, insinuating that it was the Hindus who unleashed violence and not the Islamists – this, when 2500-4000 Hindus were stuck in a hostage-like situation for hours in a temple, rescued only on Tuesday morning. In the report, they also inserted the Monu Manesar angle, further claiming that the Muslims were opposing Manesar being a part of the procession because it would “disturb harmony”. They write, “The violence broke out around Monday noon when around half-a-dozen vehicles carrying devotees reached Nuh Chowk leading to rumors that Monu Manesar was inside one of the vehicles”. While Maktoob acknowledges that it was a “rumour”, it failed to include in their report that the rumour was also spread by Islamists themselves and then, this rumour was used to justify the violence. Manesar was not a part of the procession. But even if we assume for a moment that he was, it is interesting that Islamists used that as an excuse to unleash mass-level, planned violence against Hindus, attack on Temples and holding almost 4000 devotees hostage. They used this to even justify the murder of 2 home guards and several Hindus who were injured. Here are some images of Hindus who were seriously injured during the violence which was unleashed by Islamists. Injured person in Nuh violence Injured person in Nuh violence Here is a video of an injured Hindu after the mob violence by Islamists. This is the condition of Hindus due to a mere rumour that one individual would be present at a religious procession that was attended by thousands. And the rumour is being used to paint the Muslims as the victims and whitewash the unbridled violence which was unleashed against Hindus on a religious procession and the attack on temples. Yogendra Yadav, who was also involved in the planning stages of the Delhi anti-Hindu riots “reacted” to the violence and blamed the Hindus instead. This quote was used by Maktoob media to further shield the Muslim mob. In the first paragraph of the report, Maktoob writes, “As the violence broke out during a procession organized by the right-wing group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Haryana’s Nuh district on Monday, it quickly escalated to other parts of the state, including Gurugram, where a Hindutva mob set a mosque on fire and fired gunshots”. First and foremost, they brand the mob Hindutva while they failed to identify who started the violence in Nuh. Then, even in their first paragraph, they fail to mention that the violence was started by the Muslims and give the impression that the attack on the mosque is also a part of the same violence that was done by the Hindus in Nuh, while it was the Muslims who started the violence. It is pertinent to note that the under-construction building, which is a disputed structure and the case is in court, was set ablaze in Gurgaon after the violence spread to Sohna Chown on the 31st of July. Investigation is underway and the police have not ascertained details. There are some Hindus and Muslims who have been detained by the police. While the first report failed to mention Temples being under attack, the second report mentioned a mosque. While the first report failed to identify Islamists and even justified the violence by a Muslim mob, the second report targeted Hindus without giving context to the violence being initiated by the Muslim mob in Nuh. It is evident that the aim of Islamist and Leftist media is to create confusion and shield the Islamists who attacked thousands of Hindus in Nuh. Maktoob media is just one of the foot soldiers shielding the mob and normalizing violence against Hindus.

The government in power, on its own, is not responsible for shifting the Overton Window. Basically, they are responsible for recognising where the window is and then making policies that are commensurate with where the window is. It is people outside the acceptability spectrum that move the window by convincing the masses that what is radical today should be policy tomorrow. The greatest achievement of Hindus in the past 7 years: Shifting the Overton Window The government in power, on its own, is not responsible for shifting the Overton Window. Basically, they are responsible for recognising where the window is and then making policies that are commensurate with where the window is. It is people outside the acceptability spectrum that move the window by convincing the masses that what is radical today should be policy tomorrow. Nupur J Sharma 9 November 2021 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] In 2016, a year before I had joined OpIndia as their editor, I read an interesting article on the ‘MyVoice’ section of the website. It is essentially a corner of the internet where users can express themselves but OpIndia does not wholly endorse the opinions expressed thereof. The article was headlined, “Why I will celebrate the destruction of the Babri structure on 6th December”. I was agape at the audacity – pleasantly surprised. One has to realise how Hindus simply did not have the audacity to express their joy at the events of 6th December 1992. Babri was the outward anathema of our collective conscience. We were forced to be ashamed even if we secretly rejoiced Hindus finally reclaiming a piece of their heritage. I grew up in a house where my grandfather and father expressed insurmountable joy at the illegal structure being demolished. They fervently believed that Hindus were forced to take matters into their own hands because the secular state subjugated Hindus and chose to ignore their 500-year-old battle to reclaim the very spot where their Bhagwan Ram was born. It was a great source of pain that the State had forced Ram Lalla to live in a rickety tent. It was a great source of rage that in our own land, we could not truly express what we wanted , as a people. It was April 2019 when I truly realise how far we had come. I had been working with OpIndia for over 2 years when politicians made a controversy out of a sentiment that several Hindus like me secretly felt. Chanting “ Ram rashtra hain, rashtra Ram hain “, Sadhvi Pragya declared that she was proud of taking part in the demolition of the illegal structure called Babri Masjid that once stood on Ram Janmabhoomi. A litany of abuse followed, not just from Muslims but from politicians who had made a career out of holding Hindus by their hair and rubbing their nose on the ground, breaking their pride, hacking their self-respect. My colleagues and I were upset, enraged even. We decided, then to throw caution to the wind. The article I had read in 2016, sitting in my cosy office space had to be mainstreamed. As disparate people who had come together simply because we were sick of the media’s political correctness and literary subjugation of Hindus, we had to speak up. We published the article on main OpIndia website on 21st of April 2019. Babri Masjid Demolition – why people can be proud of it. It was out there. “Babri structure was a symbol of that tyranny and barbarism”, the article said. “I celebrate the destruction of that symbol. I celebrate the annihilation of brutality. I celebrate the restoration of equality. I celebrate 6th December. I celebrate self-respect. I celebrate freedom”, the author declared. I don’t think a lot of people realise the gravity of the decision to publish this article on OpIndia. Over the years, we as a people had been conditioned to edit our opinions to be commensurate with the imposed norms of political correctness. There had been renegades like Sita Ram Goel, Arun Shourie (before we lost him to the dark side), Ram Swarup and many others, but for the average unwashed masses, opinions inconvenient to the establishment were taboo. In our mind, we risked being ostracised by our social circles and probably booked by the secular state for daring to endorse the destruction of a symbol of Muslim oppression and tyranny. But that did not happen. While we feared friendly recoil, we were hailed for publishing an article that verbalised the sentiment of the people. Being the voice of those who could not voice these opinions themselves. The Overton Window had shifted. Forever. The Overton Window is a set of ideas and policies which are acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. The spectrum of acceptability ranges from what the society deems “unacceptable” to what set of ideas eventually becomes a government policy acceptable to the mainstream population. Joshua Treviño has postulated that the six degrees of acceptance of public ideas are roughly: Unthinkable Radical Acceptable Sensible Popular Policy The Overton Window, simply put, shifts when an acceptable idea becomes popular and then translates to policy. Or better yet, when a radical idea journeys its way through being considered ‘sensible’ to ‘popular’ and then translates into policy. The idea that the head of the state would proudly participate in the Bhoomi Pujan of Ram Mandir was “unthinkable” given that most of us in our 30s today had observed politics since the time the government in power went to the Supreme Court denying Bhagwan Ram’s existence. Interestingly, after the Supreme Court, on this very day in 2019, had ordered in favour of Hindus, Congress had come supporting the construction of Ram Mandir, though in muted tones. What was unthinkable then, became political policy now. The ripple effect of a some-what, tangentially Hindu centric party being in power has been subtle and driven by the masses far more than the government itself directly. What was taboo then, is mainstream now. We went from “Godse was a Hindu terrorist” to “Godse was a murderer, but there is no harm in saying he was a nationalist”. The challenge is to turn the shift in Overton Window into policy, which in this case, would be getting the government to declassify his last testimony in court. We went from saying that the demolition of Babri Masjid was a dark path on the syncretic culture of India to taking pride in Hindus reclaiming Bhagwan Ram’s Janmabhoomi. We went from wanting a hospital at Ram Janmabhoomi to wanting a Bhavya Ram Mandir and a pining to reclaim Kashi and Mathura. With the Overton Window shifting, the challenge now is to translate this to government policy, which would mean the removal of the Places of Worship Act. Subtly, taboos have been broken and what was once considered “unthinkable” or even “radical” has become “sensible” if not “popular”. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the Overton Window shifting is that it has been done purely by the masses – how it should be. Much like the 2020 and 2021 Diwali celebrations. While the Secular state banned firecrackers assuming that it is only a celebratory tradition, Hindus took to the streets, defying the ban, even getting arrested, lighting the sky so our ancestors could find their way back to their abode after the Mahalaya Paksha was over. While the Secular state made a policy thinking that the idea of the ban was mainstream, the people rose up in dissent, asserting that the Overton Window had long shifted and what they thought was mainstream was now obsolete. But perhaps, the most “unthinkable” idea was that of India being a land of Hindu consciousness. The acceptability of the propositions furthered by the Citizenship Amendment Bill was split in the middle. As is India’s wont, the ideological divide was as stark as a bright sunny summer morning. The Left opposed the provisions tooth and nail. The ‘idea of India’ that has long been touted as the existential foundation of India had been shaken, as per them, with one swift motion. The Left has long espoused the principle that India is an all-giving, all-embracing entity, especially when it comes to Muslims. Whether this special corner of the heart that bleeds only for Muslims is a result of political compulsions, the Gandhian dystopia or the engrained false persecution complex is unclear. Perhaps it is a culmination of all of the above. Either way, while the Left detested the idea of law finally being honest enough to give citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring Islamic nations, the non-Left rejoiced the decision as one that rights a historic wrong. The idea of the act was simply – India is the only land that has a Hindu majority. Hinduism, Sanatan, is engraved in its consciousness since before the political boundaries were drawn. Our stories, our heroes our legacy is attached to this land and no other. Hindus deserve a land they can come back to when the world seems too harsh, when their rights are denied and when they are persecuted because of their very identity. The only criticism of the Citizenship Amendment Act was perhaps the fact that it did go as far as to give Hindus a ‘right to return’, much like Israel gives to Jews. That would have been the truest establishment of a “Hindu Rashtra”. But CAA, even in its current form, was a policy borne out of the Hindus recognising the civilisational entity that is Bharat. Mainstreaming the idea that India is indeed a Hindu land. That idea then translated to policy. What was radical then, was policy now, albeit, one that fell short, but policy nonetheless. The government in power, on its own, is not responsible for shifting the Overton Window. Basically, they are responsible for recognising where the window is and then making policies that are commensurate with where the window is. It is people outside the acceptability spectrum that move the window by convincing the masses that what is radical today should be policy tomorrow. The Modi government being in power is sufficient for the Overton Window to shift. It is a government that is at the very least, if not proactively Hindu centric, tangentially so by being responsive to Hindu demands. How we create that demand is something Hindus need to decide. One must not have heard of Joseph Overton, but one has certainly heard of the chants of Jai Shree Ram in 2014. The chants of ‘Hind, Hindu, Hindutva’, ‘Mandir Wahi Banayenge’ and “Kashi Mathura Baaki hai”. One might not have heard of the Overton Window but one certainly remembers how we broke down, tears bedewed our cheeks when on 9th November 2019, the Supreme Court vindicated a battle Hindus had fought for 500 years. Hindus have not only shifted the Overton Window but shattered the glass, never to be implanted again.

Hindus today might believe that Nupur Sharma's comment was "unnecessary", but if there was a word of caution, it would be this - tomorrow, they will say your very existence, the existence of the dirty Kafir that they are theologically and viscerally meant to hate is an affront to their faith. Many Hindus still think what Nupur Sharma said was ‘unnecessary’: Here is a necessary read for them Hindus today might believe that Nupur Sharma's comment was "unnecessary", but if there was a word of caution, it would be this - tomorrow, they will say your very existence, the existence of the dirty Kafir that they are theologically and viscerally meant to hate is an affront to their faith. Nupur J Sharma 7 June 2022 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] On the 5th of June, BJP suspended the now-former spokesperson of the party, Nupur Sharma, after certain Muslim countries started getting irate about certain comments she had made during a debate (basically, quoting the Hadit). The BJP claimed that Nupur had taken a stand contrary to theirs on several occasions and therefore, an inquiry would be initiated against her pending which she would stand suspended from the party – a party she had been associated with for over 15 years. The move led to widespread condemnation predominantly from those who support and vote for the BJP since the move was seen as the party taking away institutional support from her amidst death and rape threats by Islamists. Those who prefer to support the party with utmost loyalty have theorised that she is being given protection against the threats she has been receiving, however, her suspension is in the national interest because India cannot afford to dent its hard-won relationship with the Muslim world. I would not be getting into that argument since it is beyond the scope of this article. However, there were certain other arguments made to essentially justify the suspension of Nupur Sharma. One of the most predominant ones relied on the classic argument – ‘But it was unnecessary for Nupur to get into that argument’, ‘It was unnecessary for her to insult their faith’, ‘It was unnecessary for her to lose her patience on national television? Does she not know they get violence about perceived blasphemy?”. The obvious problem with this argument is that it essentially blames the victim. By saying this, even if it is said with reference to her suspension, one tacitly ends up justifying the threats that she has been at the receiving end of. The Islamists use exactly this argument to justify their calls for “Sar Tan Se Juda’. They say, “Nupur Sharma should have known that if she comments on Prophet Muhammad, we will get offended and demand her head”. The logical slide of this argument is staggering. If the “She should have known better” argument is to be accepted, every victim of every crime can be shamed using it. One basically places far more value on someone’s whim than facts when one uses this argument – Because Nupur Sharma chose to legitimately exercise her freedom of expression, the calls to behead her are justified because she should have known that her speech can lead to hurt feelings which can, in turn, lead to her execution. But beyond the logical slide of that argument, there is a civilisational aspect that is far more concerning. First and foremost, we perhaps need to understand the civilisational illiteracy from which this argument stems. For the longest time, Indians, even in schools, have been fed with tropes about all religions being equal. It is a trope that has made Indians, especially Hindus, rather blind to reality and insufferably sanctimonious. One of the reasons why certain Hindus believe that Nupur Sharma’s comments were “unnecessary” is because they truly believe that all religions are fundamentally equal and it is not completely abnormal to be offended when remarks about one’s faith are made. That argument is not off the mark – it is natural to be a little hurt – but it is certainly not the characteristic of every faith to give calls to behead. What is also untrue is that all religions are equal. The ‘all religions are equal’ claim stems from notions of religious pluralism. Religious Pluralism essentially says that firstly, all religions must acknowledge that certain truths exist in other religions as well, thereby declaring that it is not only their own religion that is the ‘only truth’. Further, it says that all religions must acknowledge that every religion teaches basic universal truths that have been taught since before the advent of religion itself. When one delves into the principles of religious pluralism as a construct that can enable religions to co-exist without sectarian violence, it becomes important to ensure that all religions are brought down to the same surface level and hence, the claim that all religions are the same takes a beastly proportion where cultural context is often lost. At the very outset, it suffices to say that Islam lays out a doctrine for the humiliation of Kafirs. When verses of the Quran ordain its followers to slay Kafirs and Polytheists, one has to wonder how can a religion that is at odds with Polytheism be equal and aspire for the same goals as that of a Polytheistic religion? When Islam is at odds with Polytheism and the religious texts explicitly mention the subjugation of any Polytheist faith, how accurate is it to say that all religions are exactly the same? Therefore, why it is “necessary” for Hindus to talk about, dissect and analyse Islam openly and honestly is because it is a faith that demands the sacrifice of Hindus. There is nothing remotely similar in Hindu texts that goad the Hindu community to annihilate those who follow another religion. Therefore, for Nupur to clap back at a Muslim panellist denigrating Hinduism by merely quoting the Hadits is necessary. It is necessary because the Islamic community needs to acknowledge, at the very least, that their insult to Hinduism comes from religious hate while the Hindus’ comment on Islam comes from a place of either self-defence or frustration at being subjugated for centuries. For aeons, we have been told that the onus of maintaining peace, harmony and brotherhood rests on the shoulders of Hindus. And those Hindus, who think merely the fact that Hindus don’t indulge in violence fulfils this responsibility of maintaining brotherhood, are wrong. Hindus are expected to maintain brotherhood by ceding everything they hold sacred and by giving up large parts of their personal liberty. Hindus are not supposed to be offended when their faith is mocked, not supposed to utter a word against Islam, understand that Islam is peaceful and all the violence in the name of Islam does not represent Islam, die with a smile on our faces if we are murdered by Islamists, shut our eyes to facts, give up claims on our places of worship, accept that we are devil worshippers and believe, deep in our heart, that Islamists think of us as brothers and sisters while they hold a sword to our neck. This cast of mind is so set in the Hindu psyche that any comment on Islam, even innocuous ones, seems “unnecessary” because it would lead to friction, violence and “disruption of harmony” – a harmony that only existed because the victims of Islamist violence and hate, the Hindus, had Stockholm Syndrome and were beaten to believe that accepting that subjugation with a smile on their face was their eternal responsibility. It is, therefore, not surprising that one of the main criticisms of Nupur Sharma is that her comments were completely “unnecessary”. She, in order to maintain this mythical harmony, must give up her rights, her hurt, her thoughts and essentially, the damn truth because one just never knows what might irk the intolerant minority off. While Hindus do as Hindus were taught, this trope pushes us down a slope where the slide will ensure that it pulls the entirety of our civilisation down. Sita Ram Goel had said, “To start with, we want to take up what we consider to be its most important contribution, namely, the unravelling of two behaviour patterns – Muslim and National – which collaborated closely for years and precipitated Partition in the final round. The Muslim behaviour pattern was characterized by acrimony, accusations, complaints, demands, denunciations, and street riots. The National behaviour pattern, on the other hand, was characterized by acquiescence, assent, cajolery, concessions, cowardice, self-reproach, and surrender”. It has been decades since Goel wrote these words and to this day, they hold true. You see, the Muslim community has an insatiable appetite for concessions. You make one, they will demand another. You concede, they will demand 10 more. Soon, you will realise that the Hindu community has given up everything to placate the petulant minority and yet, has been met with nothing but acrimony. If today, we believe that Nupur Sharma’s statement was “unnecessary” because it ended up provoking the Islamic community, that is a needless concession that the Hindu community is extending to the Islamists. They have the right to be hurt, but not the right to be riotous. The concession accorded makes them believe that their hurt is justified to the extent of giving calls to behead. Now once that concession is extended, their insatiable appetite will raise its ugly head. Once you accept their murderous sentiments, they will claim that your places of worship, your mandirs, are an affront to the Islamic faith. Once you concede that, they will say that you cannot even pray in your home because according to the Islamic community, there is no god but Allah and therefore, the fact that you believe in another god and pray to him is hurting their religious sentiments. The slide would end with them demanding your head on a pike because the very existence of Kafirs offends them. We must remember that the very basis of the partition was their demand for a ‘land of the pure” untarnished by the existence of Kafirs. When Gandhi allowed the Islamic community to run riots and murder Hindus, it validated their two-nation theory, enough for them to demand the dismemberment of India. When concessions were made to them about the Khilafat movement, terming it a nationalist movement instead of an Islamic one (that held allegiance to the Turkish Caliphate), MK Gandhi emboldened them to set their barbarity in motion and massacre Hindus in accordance with the Ummah they were fighting for. Hindus today might believe that Nupur Sharma’s comment was “unnecessary”, but if there was a word of caution, it would be this – tomorrow, they will say your very existence, the existence of the dirty Kafir that they are theologically and viscerally meant to hate is an affront to their faith. They won’t only claim this openly, but they will make you guilt-ridden enough to truly believe that your existence is “unnecessary”, impeding their faith, and therefore, you must die with a smile on your face when they come for you.

India is the only land that has a Hindu majority. Hinduism, Sanatan, is engraved in its consciousness since before the political boundaries were drawn. Our stories, our heroes our legacy is attached to this land and no other. It is time for Hindus to preserve it - in action and words. ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ event: Nazi-esque propaganda to justify the genocide of Hindus India is the only land that has a Hindu majority. Hinduism, Sanatan, is engraved in its consciousness since before the political boundaries were drawn. Our stories, our heroes our legacy is attached to this land and no other. It is time for Hindus to preserve it - in action and words. Nupur J Sharma 19 August 2021 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] A 3-day conference cosponsored by 60+ Departments or Centers from 45+ Universities most from the USA is set to take place on the 10th, 11th and 12th of September. The event titled “Dismantling Global Hindutva” is set to see the participation of several Hindumisic elements like Audrey Truschke , Naxal sympathiser Anand Patwardhan and Nandini Sunder, Quint journalist Neha Dixit and many others. While the Hindumisic elements globally have tried to equate Hindus to Nazis, the Nazi-esque propaganda to justify the impending genocide of Hindus, is hard to miss. It is evident that this declaration of war against the Hindus has gone from a few rants of deranged minds on Twitter, to an organised campaign with journalists, academics and career Hindumisic activists joining hands. Nazi-esque propaganda and the dehumanisation of Hindus The poster of the ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ event depicts an inverted hammer ‘uprooting’ brutally on what appears to be an RSS Swayamsevak, clad in saffron. The brutal, horrifying imagery has a subtle message to it, not unlike the ‘moderation’ that was peddled by the Nazis right after Röhm Putsch (The night of the long knives) where over 150 political opponents were murdered by the Nazi regime. The pseudo-moderation technique that was adopted by the Nazis essentially modelled the murderous purge as a ‘preventive measure’ to control violent people. One can see how the parallels play out in the poster of the event. In the poster, it is apparent that an RSS Swayamsevak, almost a representative image of all Hindus who are no longer ashamed of their culture, is uprooted by a hammer. However, to hide the blatant Hindumisia and the endorsement of genocide against Hindus, the poster craftily fashions the tip of the murderous hammer as a pencil. The global propaganda against the Hindus have, especially in the past few years, focussed primarily on the dehumanisation of Hindus. One recalls the posters during the anti-CAA protests and the slogans that were raised for the murder of Hindus – the most prominent ones being the slogan of ‘Hinduon se Azadi’ – essentially meaning that Muslims wanted freedom from the Hindus – supplemented with the image of sacred OM being morphed as the Nazi symbol, a Hindu woman being made to wear the Hijab and songs that called for the religious symbols of Hindus being destroyed so only the name of Allah can remain – “When All Idols Will Be Removed… Only Allah’s Name Will Remain”. The imagery in the poster also draws from the same concept of dehumanisation that has been followed against a persecuted lot since the Nazi regime. A man clad in saffron, with his roots in Bharat, being crushed by the revolution to save the country from ‘violent barbarians’. It is hard to miss the parallel to Der Stürmer (The Attacker), that printed cartoons that used antisemitic caricatures to depict Jews as not only ‘dangerous’ but also enemies of the nation – not unlike what the narrative of this poster or the Hindumisic elements have been throughout the past few years. Propaganda 101: Select a few points and repeat them over and over again “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”, said Joseph Goebbels one, the chief propagandist and faithful soldier of Adolf Hitler, right before he proceeded to murder millions of jews in one of the worst organised genocides that the world has seen. The ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ event employs, effortlessly, the Goebbels technique of the demonisation of a people by proxy, to justify their eventual genocide. When one reads the ‘eventbrite’ description of the event, the following points are reiterated to justify their campaign of hate: Militant Hindu groups exist and are growing exponentially Rampant violence against minorities Citizenship Amendment Act Crackdown on dissent Imprisonment of “activists” fighting for Tribals Equating Hindutva and racism – drawing a false parallel to white supremacy The demonisation of the diaspora Demonetisation and farm laws Overall erosion of democratic practices and freedoms in India These are tropes that have been used by the propagandists at home far too often and the counter to each of these tropes have been discussed several times, at length. There really are no “Hindu militant groups” that exist in India. The ones being called the “nails” to be uprooted from India wade in knee-deep water to rescue those who need help, brave Islamist terror to save Hindus when they are being slaughtered as Muslims unleash their terror on the streets, rescue women being raped and forcefully converted to Islam, work relentlessly to offer humanitarian assistance at the times of pandemic and live lives stripped of the wine and dine luxuries that the ‘liberals’ decrying them enjoy. In fact, they trudge along their path of humanism even while their murders are whitewashed, given a political context and even celebrated. So why have these organisations been termed as ‘militant’ by these Hindumisic forces? These organisations epitomise three things, as their very foundation – self-defence, the reclamation of Hindu heritage in all its glory and the organisation and unity of Hindus – all of which poses a threat to the global hegemony of Islamists and leftists. In reality, “uprooting the RSS” is mere symbology. Hindutva, that these elements define as a “political, authoritarian ideology” that has “nothing to do with Hinduism” is nothing but a dogwhistle used to target Hindus and everything Hinduism stands for, without really explicitly talking about their genocidal dreams of “Hinduon se Azadi”. In an attempt to do so, every institution that has rallied Hindus to unite must be demonised and dehumanised. Apart from the RSS, it is also the Modi government that has been relentlessly targeted for being the political faction behind which Hindus have united in the 2014 and 2019 general elections in India. Interestingly, the tropes they use gives us a peek into their nefarious designs. While the “Dismantling Global Hindutva” event aims to talk about the mythical “violence against minorities” trope (Let’s be clear here – my minorities, they mean only Muslims. Jains being attacked by Muslims only recently, for example, is a case of religious hatred that will not even be discussed), they have conveniently used Citizenship Amendment Act as a hammer with which to beat the Modi government. This dichotomy itself explains their delirium – while they believe that Muslims in India need protection from the Hindu majority, their concern for ‘minorities’ starts and ends with Muslims – The Hindu minorities suffering in Islamic nations like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are those ‘heathens’ who perhaps deserve to be sacrificed to the Islamic demon, simply for daring to be pagans in an age where Islam and its barbarity are aided and abetted by self-proclaimed ‘liberals’. Further, the fact that the event has even demonised the diaspora who refuse to submit to the ‘Liberal’ agenda and continue to be proud of their roots, is a classic case of trying to equate merely being proud of ones own religious and cultural heritage to the Muslim ‘Ummah’ and the global evangelist designs whose idea of a nation-state is based on the ‘brotherhood’ between their co-religionists and the eradication of ‘Kafirs’ or ‘non-believers’. A trend has emerged over recent years to find an equivalent of monotheistic fundamentalism in the faith of polytheistic Hinduism. The saffron terror narrative of the Congress party might have collapsed but people of a particular political ideology haven’t deterred from their efforts to find in pagan Hinduism the most nefarious aspects of monotheistic faiths. It is not just the ‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ event that equates Hindus with the KKK, not so long ago, in an issue of Outlook magazine, an attempt was made to equate Hindutva with the vicious ideology of the Ku Klux Klan by having the cover of the issue portray a member of the white supremacist American outfit sporting a Tilak. Needless to say, there is no equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan in India just as there exists no saffron terror. Those who genuinely believe that Hindutva could be equated with an ideology that asserts the supremacy of a particular race fails spectacularly at grasping the core tenets of the Hindu faith. Racial supremacy has never been a core tenet of polytheistic faiths in its entire history. Yes, the Greeks and the Romans did practice slavery, however, it was never the defining aspect of their culture or faith. In contrast to that, monotheistic faiths have continually harboured and encouraged sentiments of racial supremacy through their concept of the ‘chosen people. In this day and age, it can be most blatantly observed in Islam where the Arabs believe in the superiority of their race as a consequence of the ancestry of the Prophet of Islam. It has surely not escaped the notice of people that when a particular community converts to Islam en masse, they give up on their own heritage and adopt the traditions and customs of the Arabs so much that they could even be dubbed pirated Arabs. And if we look back at history, we can observe that white supremacy stems in part from Christian theology as well. Thus, racial supremacy is so alien to the Hindu faith that only a fool or the ideologically blinded would equate the Ku Klux Klan with Hindutva. History stands testament to the fact that Hindus, by and large, have existed together without enmity to any serious degree for hundreds and thousands of years. Despite the atrocity literature spread by vested interests, Hindu society has never witnessed a race war or a caste war ever in its ancient history. Of course, liberals are working hard to change that fact by continuously fueling regionalist and casteist sentiments to divide Hindu society but despite various political leaders’ attempt at inciting violence along caste lines, they have failed spectacularly thus far and the riots and violence that did occur was more due to political motivations rather than any indication of a deep fissure within Hindu society. And in their continued effort to create deep fissures in The Hindu society and dehumanise those who refuse to submit to this agenda, the event that is set to take place in September, even extends support to the Urban Naxals who have been arrested for waging a war against the country and those protesting Khalistanis who orchestrated an attempted insurrection on the 26th of January, using the newly passed farm laws, that actually benefits the farmers, as an excuse. When all else fails, decry democracy The cries of “democracy being in danger” in India is a fallacious, empty, abstract fall-back argument that the “liberals” often mention, to decry the Hindus who dared to elect a government they thought would look after their interests. One recalls how India was classified as an “electoral autocracy” by the very “liberals” who are repeating these tropes with this event. Autocracy essentially means a country where power is concentrated in the hands of a few people. A democracy, on the other hand, is antithetical to an autocracy – meaning the people elect the government they want in the coutry. The ‘liberals’ craftily decry India as an ‘electoral autocracy’ to give the impression that the democracy in India is dysfunctional to an extent that while it may appear to have democracy, the power actually rests in the hand of a few authoritative individuals. In reality, the only trope that they mean to cover in academic humbug is the fact that Hindus, perhaps for the first time in a long time, united to elect a government that they believed would look after their interest. Funnily enough, the Modi government itself has done paltry little to uphold the interests of Hindus exclusively. All of the policies of the Modi government has been aimed towards better governance of the nation as a whole. Even CAA, for example, that has become a thorn for these liberals, included the Sikh and Christian minorities under persecution in Islamic nations, much to the chagrin of Hindus. Despite this, the mere fact that Hindus voted overwhelmingly for a government that would not actively work against the Hindus, like Congress peddling the ‘saffron terror’ narrative or attempting to introduce the ‘communal violence bill’, has spurned the narrative that power in India rests in the hands of a few. What they mean by this, in reality, is that Hindus united and decided the government they want in power by voting in one voice and the Muslims failed to thwart the democratic will of the people. The aim of the ‘dismantling global Hindutva’ event and the solution For decades now, Hindus have been massacred and their genocide has been whitewashed in the name of ‘secularism’, ‘brotherhood’ and ‘peacekeeping’. Not just that, over time, as we see now, Hindus have been painted as the perpetrator of violence against Muslims instead of the victims of Muslim violence. From the Moplah genocide where Hindus were raped and slaughtered, to the Direct Action Day, the Noakhali massacre, the en masse genocide of Chitpavan Brahmins to the current anti-Hindu Delhi Riots, the brutal attacks against RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal members while they collected money for Ram Mandir construction to the thousands of Hindu girls being trapped in the unending loop of Grooming Jihad, Hindus have been the victims of years of onslaught. Instead of talking about the real barbarians, “liberals” whitewash Islamist crimes and paint Hindus as the perpetrators of violence. And once painted as the perpetrators of violence, they proceed to dehumanise the very existence of Hindus so when the barbaric hoards come to slaughter, the world simply looks away – because who cares about the pagan demons being slaughtered anyway? While the ‘liberals’ have spent years creating atrocity literature to prove that Hindus are monsters who deserve to be eradicated, Hindus have just about begun to document the atrocities they have been subjected to. The solution to such events is to ensure that every crime against every Hindus is documented painstakingly and spoken about widely – without filters. To tell the world out story, repeatedly, loudly. The more practical aspect is, of course, the involvement of the Indian government. US universities, many of which are funded directly by the United States government, are joining hands with Indian propagandists to demonise Hindus. These very universities have their offices in India and earn millions from Indian students. As Sandeep Balakrishna writes : “Most of the universities sponsoring this xenophobic event have their branch offices on Indian soil and they regularly recruit Indian students and therefore, a good chunk of their income comes directly from Indian taxpayers. Not to mention the fact that they use Indian resources for their operations. The question thus arises: are they recruiting Indian students to indoctrinate them in how to wage war against the native culture of their own country by using their own money in fees? This “conference” seems to prove exactly that. Two, India’s economic ties with the US and vice versa should not come at the expense of slaughtering the heart of Indian culture, which is Hindu Dharma. Three, and this message has to ring loudly in the US academia: it has to be sent from both the Indian Government and Indian businessmen and wealthy individuals–withdrawal of funding for expensive chairs and endowments. The right amount of pressure applied at all levels should hopefully do the trick”. Much remains to be said about the event itself, the organisers, the money trail and the tentacles that are out to devour the nation whole – because India does not remain what it is without the Hindus who give her basic characteristics of pluralism, culture, tradition and grandiose. However, it is time for the Indian Government to exert the right amount of pressure and for Hindus to stand up and be counted – not to cower and ask for sympathy from the devil, but to talk about the historic atrocities against Hindus, the cultural pushback that is our right and the propaganda against a people that will no longer be allowed to fester. India is the only land that has a Hindu majority. Hinduism, Sanatan, is engraved in its consciousness since before the political boundaries were drawn. Our stories, our heroes our legacy is attached to this land and no other. It is time for Hindus to preserve it – in action and words.

It is not the Hindus who created a Swami Yati Narsinghanand - it is the Islamists, their rampages, their genocidal dreams and those who soft-pedal when Hindus are victimised on daily basis. Dharma Sankat over Dharma Sansad: Calls for violence and a dilemma for Hindus It is not the Hindus who created a Swami Yati Narsinghanand - it is the Islamists, their rampages, their genocidal dreams and those who soft-pedal when Hindus are victimised on daily basis. Nupur J Sharma 24 December 2021 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] For the past two days, Twitter is rife with videos of a three-day event called Dharma Sansad, organised in Haridwar, Uttarakhand. During the event, several Hindu leaders like Yati Narsinghanand allegedly called for violence. The videos doing the rounds on social media have content that, on the face of it, appear divisive and inflaming. If the videos doing the rounds are authentic, no individual in their right mind could condone the speech being made where they are essentially saying that they are ready to murder Muslims the first chance they get. Snippets of the Dharma Sansad were splashed on Twitter. There were claims that Hinduism and Hindutva are the same, given that these statements were made by saffron-clad “sadhus” and others said that these videos indicated that Hindu terrorism was real. In a video shared by the Left, Yati Narsinghanand was heard saying that Hindus need to collect better weapons than the Muslims, given that in a battle, those with better weapons win. Thread on a 3 day "Dharm Sansad" organised in Haridwar by Hindutva groups where explicit calls were given for Hindus to pick up arms against Muslims. #HaridwarGenocidalMeet Day 1, 17 Dec: Yati Narsinghanand said, "swords won't be enough to kill Muslims. We need beater weapons." pic.twitter.com/MTL8u1H7F3 — Kaushik Raj (@kaushikrj6) December 22, 2021 He said that more kids (to fight the demographic battle) and better weapons are the only things that would save Hindus in a civilisational battle. He said that every Hindu had the responsibility of protecting their own kids and the women of their house. The next was a short speech snippet of Swami Sagar Sindhu Maharaj from Roorkee. The tweet said that he appealed to Hindus to “at least keep swords” and asks them to purchase weapons of at least Rs. 1 lakh. In the video, Swami Sagar Sindhu Maharaj could be heard saying that one could use mobiles that cost only Rs 5,000, but Hindus should have good weapons of at least Rs 1 Lac so that, if anyone ever enters their house, they would not escape alive. The important point to note here is that he said that those weapons would be used as a means of self-defence if anyone enters the house, not for unprovoked genocide. On Day 2, Swami Dharam Das Maharaj made a speech that was indefensible. He said that he would have killed former PM Manmohan Singh if he could gather weapons. Another problematic video was where one Swami Prabhonanand called for a “safai abhiyaan” of Muslims. There were other videos where it was allegedly said that Hindus need someone like Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and Prabhakaran to save Dharma. OpIndia personally cannot vouch for the authenticity of these videos, however, given the statements being made, it leaves little to the imagination as to what the full content of the Sansad was. In a civilised society, elements that call for violence and provoke citizens to pick up arms against other civilians would be rounded up and put behind bars. But in an increasingly polarised society, divided into religious lines, we see far too many fissures and desensitisation to calls for violence. When these speeches became viral on social media, the first reaction of most Hindus who follow the news regularly was to either look away or to post a video of AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi making an equally hateful speech. In that video, Owaisi was seen warning police personnel and saying that once Yogi returns to his temple as the Mahant and PM Modi returns to the mountains, there would be nobody to save them from their eventual fate. The video that several Hindus shared on social media went unnoticed by those outraging against Dharma Sansad. In fact, it was Asaduddin Owaisi who took to Twitter to share how his party had filed a complaint against the speeches made during Dharma Sansad and that he was willing to launch a nationwide agitation if the Hindus sadhus were not arrested. When Vir Das went to the US and spoke about the two India’s that exist, perhaps this is one aspect that he should have spoken about. Two Indias – one where Hindus are booked when they make speeches like the ones made during Dharma Sansad, and another, where those like Owaisi go scot-free after calling for the genocide of Hindus on multiple occasions and real hate crimes like that in Punjab don’t even invite an FIR against the murderers. As I said, in any civilised society, both these elements would be thrown in jail and the locks thrown away in the Ganges – but that is not what happens. When statements are made criticising Islam and Prophet Muhammad, Muslim mobs take to the streets to shout “Gustakh-e-rasool ki saza sar tan se juda”. When that happens, as we saw in the case of Kamlesh Tiwari who was eventually murdered by Muslims, the law enforcement agencies arrest the one criticising Islam, not the one shouting for the beheading of the one who exercised his freedom of speech. We have seen examples aplenty where Muslim mobs have not only screeched genocidal slogans but acted on their slogans and gone on a rampage against Hindus. From the Delhi anti-Hindu riots to the mob violence in Bangalore, from the several cases where Muslim mobs lynched Hindus to more organised instances of violence like the one we saw in Bangladesh against Hindus, or even the violence in Maharashtra after lies of “blasphemy” were spread in Tripura. It is a function of this street veto that no law seems to control the menace of Islamism. The worldview of significant sections of the Muslim community make it quite difficult, and in certain cases impossible, to implement law and order in ghettos where they are the overwhelming majority. There is significant resistance towards the implementation of law and order in these areas and a lot of these places are ‘no-go zones’ even for the Police. In such a scenario, the police also focus on arresting the ‘blaspheme’ rather than those threatening to behead a man for saying something mildly uncomfortable. It is a cowardly cop-out, but one that States take to deal with an unnamable Asura that no law, no civilisation has been able to contain. While the hoards exercise their street veto and make the State bend to their violent whims, Hindus have often taken to social media to talk about liberal hypocrisy, the impotence of the state, that is meant to have the monopoly on violence, and the overall neutering of the Hindu samaj, that sits back and merely watches their women getting raped, their men getting beheaded and the streets being permeated with Hindu blood. Amidst all of this, one cannot really discount the helplessness that the average Hindu feels. When Hindus were being massacred in Bengal and OpIndia covered the story of a Hindu girl who was gang-raped in from of her father by Muslim TMC goons looking for “Hindu women”, and the Bengal govt enabled the violence while the central government looked away, it was only human to, in between the sighs and wails, look for our Gopal Patha – Gopal Patha who could pick up weapons and save Hindus from the inevitable and horrifying end that was awaiting them. Did that make Hindus barbarians? Did the prayers for a saviour and the hope for retribution make them genocidal animals? Do victims become aggressors just because they want to be saved? It is from this stems the reality why we have been numbed to a large extent to speeches where the stray Hindu asks others to ensure they have weapons with which they can defend themselves. Firstly, even the Hindus who have been desensitised to these speeches know on a deeper level that these are merely empty words. When was the last time that rousing speeches gave rise to Hindu mobs that took to the streets with weapons, looking for Muslims to cut up? In the liberal fantasy universe, it is an everyday occurrence, but in real terms, it never really happens. The fact is that these leaders can call upon Hindus to maintain arms and fight for Dharma, but in the end, the actual “fighting” has to be done by average Hindus who hold work-a-day jobs and don’t attend genocidal sessions at their local madrassas, given that temples are certainly not used to congregate mobs, despite the wet dreams liberals seem to write about in Washington Post. This is exactly why Liberals and assorted Islamists are pressed to focus on “hate speech” while trying to villainize Hindus because there is no on-ground impact of these speeches that they can really focus on. Hindus don’t have a Mahmood Paracha who makes speeches in mosques asking to raise an armed militia. There is no Hindu equivalent of ISIS that will lionise terrorists, hail genocide, splash images of beheadings. There is no Hindu equivalent of the word “kafir”, there is no Hindu equivalent of ISIS and there is no Hindu equivalent of the Quran or Jihad. While focussing on hate speech, liberals and Islamists conveniently brush aside actual hate crimes against Hindus. It is how the Delhi anti-Hindu riots got morphed into an anti-Muslim pogrom even before the funeral pyres of Ankit Sharma and Dilbar Negi had gone cold. It is this sophistry that makes Hindus become desensitised to such speeches. While they know this will hardly translate to any bloodshed on the ground, they are pressed to keep their sane, peaceful core aside to look the other way because they know that those demanding for the arrest of these saffron elements would happily whitewash a Hindu’s murder to embolden radical Islamists, Khalistanis and swords for hire. They have lived through those experiences where jokes on their genocide were passed off as free speech, where their murder was whitewashed to peddle the “Muslim pogrom” narrative, where their daughters being abducted and forcefully converted were branded as “voluntary love affairs”. The Dharma Sansad poses a Dharam Sankat for most Hindus – give in to their basic survival instinct and look away from such speeches or preserve what is inherently good in them and condemn any call for violence thereof. I am not really ashamed to say that there is no right answer. If the Hindu genocides did not exist, if the Muslim mobs did not go on a rampage, if I had not covered the Delhi anti-Hindu riots and the flawed narrative of “Muslim pogrom”, if I was but a work-a-day citizen far divorced from the reality of the onslaught against Hindus, it would be so much easier to denounce such speech. It would be so much easier to take the moral high ground and say that everyone, whether it is a Yati Narsinghanand or an Asaduddin Owaisi, making speeches provoking violence should be arrested and left to rot behind bars. And somewhere in my heart, I believe this to be the case even now. I want all of these elements to be jailed and removed from society. It is only human to harbour dreams of peace and brotherhood. But when reality hits and one has to cover the brutal murder of yet another Hindu and one is hit with the realisation that even before you can document another step towards our civilisational end, the “liberals” have already started giving the murder a “context” to save their Islamist brethren, one gets jaded, jaded enough to suffer a dilemma when such videos emerge. It is not the Hindus who created a Swami Yati Narsinghanand – it is the Islamists, their rampages, their genocidal dreams and those who soft-pedal when Hindus are victimised on daily basis. The speeches made during the Dharma Sansad barely helps the cause of Hindus or Hindutva. Open calls to violence or wanting Hindus to become another Bhindranwale is not the answer. The solution to civilisational causes is the will of the people and that will translating to policy by the government of the day, not thuggish behaviour and calls to violence by political aspirants. It is the classic Godse conundrum – one knows why he did what he did, but with the murder of Gandhi, the Hindutva cause was forever damaged.

An in-depth report on the Delhi anti-Hindu riots of February 2020, authored by Nupur J Sharma, reveals the premeditated violence against Hindus since December 2019. Learn about the brutal murders, media misrepresentation, and the conspiracy detailed in her work, also available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.in/dp/B08DNNWNXR?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_2ECQ0YQQQEG59X1HJHRG. Image Info 3 This is your About paragraph. Write a short introduction about yourself, your product or a specific feature. Image Info 4 This is your About paragraph. Write a short introduction about yourself, your product or a specific feature. Image Info 2 This is your About paragraph. Write a short introduction about yourself, your product or a specific feature. Image Info 1 This is your About paragraph. Write a short introduction about yourself, your product or a specific feature. Publications The Delhi anti-Hindu riots were perhaps a pivotal moment in modern history. The anti-Hindu violence which broke out on the 26th of February 2020 in the national capital was a testament to how a deracinated state and the corporate media capitulate to the Islamic mob. The anti-Hindu riots was not a spate of violence which can be viewed and analysed in isolation. As per the chargesheets in the case, the planning for the violence started right from the 5th of December 2019 and after almost 3 years, the conspiracy led to several Hindus being brutally murdered – Ankit Sharma stabbed multiple times, Dilbar Negi burnt alive after his hands and legs were chopped off and many others, who were hacked to death merely for being Hindu. The corporate media, on its part, shamelessly branded the anti-Hindu violence an ‘anti-Muslim pogrom’, ignoring the conspiracy and 3 months of violence which led to the February violence, initiated by the Islamist mobs. In July 2020, I co-authored a fact-finding report for OpIndia which documented the progression of the violence which led to the Delhi anti-Hindu riots in February 2020. Ever since December 2019, almost on a regular basis, there was low level violence against Hindus, misinformation against CAA/NRC and genocidal calls being made. This publication traces the three months preceding the riots and how, the February violence was merely a culmination of Left activists, Islamists and Global propagandist coming together to unleash Khilafat 2.0 against Hindus. Purchase E-Book Delhi Anti-Hindu Riots 2020, The Macabre Dance of Violence Since December 2019: An OpIndia Report Civilisational Advocacy While Hindus dream of peace and brotherhood, their History is being whitewashed, genocides watered down and rights being snatched away by brute street veto and the complicity not only of the media and the intelligentsia, but also of a deracinated state. Explore Publications

The state, historically, has incentivised street veto and it is also our history that the Muslim community has wielded that power effectively The post-poll violence in Bengal: Where is our Gopal Patha The state, historically, has incentivised street veto and it is also our history that the Muslim community has wielded that power effectively Nupur J Sharma 29 July 2021 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Just as I finished interviewing Ritu (name changed), who was gang-raped in front of her father by TMC barbarians looking for ‘Hindu girls’, I felt numb and nauseous. I messaged a friend telling him as much. That perhaps I can’t keep doing this for long. How long does one keep interviewing victims, being murdered, raped and butchered because the echelons of power don’t see merit in breaking off the cycle of violence unleashed in Bengal? This was the impact of the interview, of course. The realisation that democracy has been reduced to a mere double entendre – one, signifying the right of every citizen to exercise their agency, the other, a cruel joke where you get butchered for it. Since the 2nd of May, ever since it became clear that Mamata Banerjee was all set to retain power in the state of West Bengal, heinous, animalistic violence was unleashed upon the people of Bengal, specifically, those who dared to either work for BJP or those who dared to vote for them in the state elections. Ritu was gang-raped on the 2nd of May. She says it must have been about 6 or 7 PM. It was at about 5 PM when Mamata Banerjee announced her victory and told her workers that she would address the media post 6 PM. Ritu told us during the interview that according to her knowledge, there are several other women who were gang-raped in the vicinity of her residence in Burdwan. But as is expected, none of them really want to talk about it.. none of them wants to go to the police because they believe going to the police is as good as walking into the TMC office where the goons who gang-raped them are sitting. None of them trusts the local BJP leaders, who have all but sold out to the TMC, according to her. Hands in gloves with the very people who are brutalising and disrobing women who dared to exercise their agency in the state elections. While the media looked away, the judiciary brushed aside the urgency of a state-sanctioned carnage of political opponents and the echelons of power twiddled their thumbs, the Hindus of Bengal, the Bhadralok, sat at their chai-tapris, glad that the election micchils (processions) were done with. They could finally enjoy their heated political debates while having chai-biskoot, without the constant blaring of the loudspeaker or the police shooing people away because a political rally was about the start. And as they did, the women of Bengal who were being brutalised wept. As the women wept and the men’s blood soaked parts of Bengal, to celebrate the menacingly famed slogan that Mamata believes clinched the victory for her in the state, ‘Khela Hobe’, she chose a fitting day . 16th August, the day when the call to massacre Hindus of Bengal was given by Muslim League founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Bengal, the only province in India under Muslim League rule at that time, was apparently chosen by the Muslim League leadership as the suitable place to unleash terror on Hindus in the name of “Direct Action”. In 1946, the massacre of Hindus in Bengal was rather intricately planned. Jinnah is recalled having said that he will either have India divided or India burnt and that he had given up on Constitutional methods to demand the creation of Pakistan. Jinnah had chosen the 16th of August as Direction Action Day because it was the 18th day of Ramzan, the day when the Battle of Badr was fought and won – a war fought by Prophet Muhammad himself, against the Kaffirs, and is considered to be won by Allah’s divine intervention by Muslims. The battle led to the violent occupation of Mecca. On the 16th of August, Calcutta was littered with posters lionising Jinnah and reminding Muslims that they had to follow the footsteps of the Prophet. It is reported that Syed Muhammad Usman, mayor of Calcutta, had issued a widely circulated leaflet that said: Kafer! Toder dhongsher aar deri nei! Sarbik hotyakando ghotbei! (Infidels! Your end is not far away! You will be massacred!). The aim was to make Bengal ‘land of the pure’ and rid it of the Kaffirs (Hindus). The aim was to wage another Battle of Badr, in which the Muslims would conquer the heathens. What followed on the 16th right after the Jumma Namaz is Muslims going on a rampage, beheading Hindus, chopping their limbs off and raping Hindu women. Several women were taken as sex slaves by those who were fighting with the religious fervour of the Battle of Badr. In the Kesoram Cotton Mills at Lichubagan in the Muslim-dominated Metiabruz area, Muslim mobs entered and beheaded over 600 labourers. The Hindus, neutered and asked by Gandhi to die with a smile on their face hardly fought back. There was a mass exodus from Bengal that marked millions fleeing, because the massacre seemed too brutal to fight against. The parallels, as frightful as they may be, are hard to miss. There is a reason why Mamata Banerjee has selected the 16th of August as the day to celebrate the “Khala Hobe Diwas”. Just like in the run-up to the Direct Action Day, Mamata too had announced, rather openly, that violence would be the norm if she came back to power and also, that she was not above using violence as a tool to teach those people a lesson who would dare to go against her. Mamata Banerjee had warned the people of Bengal that the BJP would lose and when they do, they would only have her to turn to – her menacing tone not missed by anyone. She had given a call to gherao the forces deployed in the state, a call that paved the way for unbridled violence against them. Her leaders had warned of killing those who dared to vote for BJP. In fact, TMC leader Firhad Hakim had openly asked for BJP workers to be thrashed, calling them the progeny of pigs. What followed, just like during the Direct Action Day, is the carnage of Hindus. In Ritu’s case, her rapists were looking for “Hindu women” to rape. She says there are several like her who will never speak up. Just like during the Direct Action Day, men were found hanging from trees, women were disrobed and gang-raped, villages were burnt to ashes and carnage was unleashed against the political Kaffirs. Just like during the Direct Action Day, thousands fled Bengal to take refuge in neighbouring Assam, wailing because they had no place to go. Wailing because the political system and the double entendre of democracy had failed them. During the Direct Action Day, on the 17th of August after 2 days of Hindus being massacred, Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay rose like a phoenix. Gopal Patha (Patha means ‘lamb’. He was called so because he ran a mutton shop) had already founded the Bharat Jatiya Bahini, an organisation of young men to help fellow citizens during a natural calamity. On the 17th, Gopal Patha turned from a philanthropist to a warrior, ready to defend his people. Throughout the night, Gopal Patha, along with his young men from the Bharat Jayati Bahini worked on a plan on how they could defend Hindus from the Muslim barbarians. The marwaris offered finances, others spent the night making weapons for them. Muslim League chief minister of Bengal, Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy and the Muslim League goons had decided on the 17th that they were going to take two more days to complete the annihilation of Hindus. But they had not taken into consideration their greatest roadblock. Gopal Patha. From the 18th to 20th, Gopal Patha and his men put up a brave fight, paying the Muslim League goons back in equal measure, if not more. Historian Sandip Bandopadhyay wrote, “They faced resistance everywhere. Hindu youths counter-attacked with such ferocity that the Muslim League men had to flee. Many were killed. Emboldened by their success in taking on and defeating their Islamist attackers, Hindu youths took the fight to Muslim-majority areas and started killing Islamist men. They did not, however, touch Muslim women and children or the aged and the infirm”. By the 19th of August, suddenly, the Muslims started feeling unsafe. Only two days of retribution, of self-defence, and the Muslim League started running with tail between their legs. It was only on the 21st of August when the Muslims had started feeling unsafe because the Hindus dared to defend themselves, did Viceroy’s rule come into action in Bengal. Where is our Gopal Patha What happened during Direct Action Day has significant lessons for Hindus of Bengal. Today, when their self-confidence lies six feet under the ground and their own are being disrobed, the rest of the country has often wondered why the central government has not bothered to do much. While that question in itself has merit and the ire is justified, we must not forget history or we would certainly be doomed to repeat it. When countless Hindus were being raped and massacred in Bengal, it took the Muslims to feel “threatened” for the Viceroy’s rule to be imposed. It was the Muslims feeling “threatened” that got the deracinated Indian leadership of Gandhi and Nehru to take note of the massacre foisted on the people because of their neutered secular politics. During the Noakhali riots, countless Hindus were raped and murdered. The converted Hindus were made to write declarations that they had accepted Islam out of their free will and Hindus in the 2000 square mile area were made to pay the Jaziya. When MK Gandhi had visited Naokhali, he was rebuked by the Muslim League and after that, he had travelled to Bihar to stop the retaliatory violence by the Hindus. There, he is famed to have said that Hindus must leave Noakhali or die – this, because the Muslim League had asked him to quell the violence, the same Muslim League that was raping Hindu women, beheading Hindu women and waging a war against Kaffirs. It is indeed our history that the state, historically, has incentivised street veto and it is also our history that the Muslim community has wielded that power effectively. When Hindus were massacred in Bengal in 2021, we made the mistake that the Gopal Patha knew not to. We are waiting for a deracinated state, running a democracy that is inherently rigged against Hindus, to save us. It is not really the fault of any single party – every government historically has responded to those who scream the loudest. In fact, it is not only a problem endemic to India. NN Taleb, in his book Skin in The Game (Chapter: The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority’), talks about how a small community of Jews/Muslims in the USA is able to influence the availability (Kosher/Halal meat) in entire America. He talks of a ‘one-way street of religions’ and explains how the Muslim majority was achieved in a largely Christian West Asia and Egypt. He writes: “Yes, an intolerant minority can control and destroy democracy. Actually, it will destroy our world. So, we need to be more intolerant with some intolerant minorities. Simply they violate the silver rule (Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you). It is not permissible to use ‘American values’ or ‘Western values’ in treating intolerant Salafism (which denies other people’s right to have their own religion). The west is currently in the process of committing suicide.” The most important lesson in his book, however, is the following: “Beware of the person who gives advice, telling you that a certain action on your part is “good for you” while it is also good for him, while the harm to you doesn’t directly affect him.” And that really is the principle that ensures that every democracy is rigged against the real victims. The real victims hardly scream or kick or run riots. The real victims are mostly like the Hindus of Bengal, who silently go into the night because they have been told over the ages that the very foundation of their religion requires them to be non-violent. Political parties and the state, as such, step in when the loudest minority starts fearing the retaliation of the silent majority because that means the minority, that is feeling threatened, will also scream the loudest after they fail to meet their violent goals. It is the political mess that the state responds to, not pleas for help. Governments are not always evil, the wisdom of the masses is not always sound. It becomes quite evident in the case of how India treats its Muslim minority. There can be little doubt that the Indian state is scared of its Muslim population. Due to the power structures that form the basis of Muslim society, our country is held hostage by radical elements from the community whose ideology is almost exactly the same as the Taliban’s or the Al Qaeda’s. The lesson that the governments of the world, the Indian government included, wants Hindus to learn is remarkably simple: We will listen to you when you respect yourself enough to defend yourself. The State is, plainly, telling Hindus, and rightly so, that civilisational battles can’t be fought by moaning to a state that has its hands tied behind its back historically, because breaking those shackles takes decades. The State responded and stepped in to restore peace only after Gopal Patha saved Hindus. The State and the leadership (Gandhi and Nehru) stepped in only when Hindus started paying the barbarians back in their own coin – a Bihar for a Naokhali. The state is telling Hindus, in no uncertain terms, that fighting the civilisational fight, the battle to survive, rests on the shoulders of those who wish to survive. It is upon us if we choose to document our end or defend what we have. The state is telling Hindus to find their Gopal Patha.

With over 2 million impressions and thousands of mentions (good and bad), I feel it is important I talk about my position to my readers because this position, I believe, is important for the longer civilisational battle that Hindus seem to have been sucked into, willingly or unwillingly - I stand by every single word in those tweets. ‘Muslims must stay away from Garba’: A viral tweet and a conversation I must have with my readers With over 2 million impressions and thousands of mentions (good and bad), I feel it is important I talk about my position to my readers because this position, I believe, is important for the longer civilisational battle that Hindus seem to have been sucked into, willingly or unwillingly - I stand by every single word in those tweets. Nupur J Sharma 3 October 2022 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Maa Durga (Image credit: Newstrack) On the 29th of September, an innocuous tweet about Garba made me the subject of an ocean of support, but also of sub-human vitriol, abuse and slander. As they say, if one can’t handle the heat, one should get out of the kitchen. Frankly, social media vitriol by Islamists and their ideological backbones only act as fuel. I thrive on it. I know I should be crying copious amounts of tears, much like the Left, because the non-Left always tells me that we need to play that game “smartly”. But I can’t. I don’t feel victimised. I feel vindicated. I believe for the larger Hindu cause, it is only desirable that the poison rises to the surface – the poison against Hindus, against Hindutva, against this great civilisational land for which our ancestors bled and died. The tweet that went viral, was a rather mainstream opinion – mainstream if one actually gets out of the South Delhi, South Mumbai circuit and bothers to interact with the rest of the country – Muslims should stay away from Hindu festivals, Garba in this case, because it is a deeply religious celebration of the Navdurga – those who believe idolatry is a sin and that polytheists should be slayed wherever they are found, have no business attending Hindu festivals. With over 2 million impressions and thousands of mentions (good and bad), I feel it is important I talk about my position to my readers because this position, I believe, is important for the longer civilisational battle that Hindus seem to have been sucked into, willingly or unwillingly – I stand by every single word in those tweets. This article is not meant to be an explanation for the Islamists and Leftists who seem to have lost their sleep over this rather average opinion. It is meant to be a conversation between my readers and me through the only medium I can truly express myself – because Twitter, I believe, is a tawdry medium made for punchlines, not elaborate discussions. I have been running OpIndia for over 5 years now, and year after year, on every single major Hindu festival, we document how devotees come under attack by Islamists, Leftists and sometimes, the state. In 2020, right before the anti-CAA violence broke out, there was a spate of attacks against Hindus. It started with the Hauz Qazi temple vandalisation in the heart of Delhi and was followed by several attacks against Durga Puja processions. In 2021, we saw the Delhi anti-Hindu riots, large-scale attacks against Hindus in Bangladesh and the Bengal post-poll violence specifically directed against Hindus and this is just a timeline off the top of my head. In between all of this, we also witnessed a global cabal trying to vilify Hindus by using euphemisms like Hindutva – from “Dismantling Global Hindutva” to Leicester – Hindus are being vilified, targeted, beaten, attacked and shunned. The propaganda crescendo, dare I say, is almost Nazi-esque in nature – stereotype and vilify an innocent, indigenous population to an extent that even their genocide seems justifiable. The attacks against Hindus by Islamists, the world over, are not something that should surprise us. We don’t even need to go into Islamic theology to understand that their hate for Polytheists comes from their deep faith in their scripture. Frankly, I never understood why we need to start quoting scriptures to make our point. We don’t need to talk about Surah 2 (Al-Baqarah) Verse 191, Surah 3 (Ali ‘Imran) Verse 151, Surah 4 (An-Nisa) Verse 56, 89, 101, Surah 5 (Al-Ma’idah) Verse 14, 51, 57, Surah 8 (Al-Anfal) Verse 65, 69, Surah 9 (At-Tawbah) Verse 5, 14, 23, 28, 29, 37, 58, 111, 123, Surah 21 (Al-Anbya) Verse 98 so on and so forth. We just need to look at documented evidence about their collective conduct towards Hindus. Even as this Garba controversy was brewing, OpIndia documented how Muslim men in Indore and Ahmedabad pretended to be Hindus to access Garba events just so they could film Hindu girls and how a minor was gang raped by Muslim men who said they will get Jannat because they raped a Hindu woman and that everything was “fair” in Islam. Even as the controversy brewed, Muslim youth forcibly entered a Garba event in Jaipur. Even as this controversy brewed, we reported NIA revelations about PFI planning to bomb several Hindu religious places during Dussera and Diwali. I am not even talking about centuries of persecution. I am not talking about Aurangzeb, Babar and their likes (or even the support they find among Indian Muslims today). I am not going back decades to talk about Hindus being burnt alive in Godhra or the Malabar Genocide of Hindus, the Khilafat movement and the partition. I am merely talking about the news that emerged in a span of 48 hours – 30th September and 1st October. With thousands of temples desecrated to build mosques, the ongoing persecution of the Hindu faith does not need a theological debate to find legitimacy. One only needs to open their eyes and look around. With news emerging on a daily basis, what is it then, that forces people to convince themselves that sectarian hate against Polytheists is a figment of the Hindu imagination? I believe the aim is guilt-tripping Hindus. To place the responsibility of syncretic culture only on the shoulders of Hindus so the community is forced to accept every aggression against themselves without any semblance of retaliation or self-defence. With all of this evidence, Hindus are expected to uphold the mythical syncretic culture where Muslims of all hues must be embraced and invited to participate in Hindu festivals, festivals that celebrate the divine feminine – deities that Islam considers demonic. The evidence that the insistence on attending Garba is not rooted in religious respect or reverence but to ensure that the Hindu community’s spirit of self-defence is broken down completely, is aplenty. Arfa Khanum Sherwani, The Wire journalist who claims to fight for Muslim rights took to Twitter to talk about how the Hindu insistence that Muslims should stay away from Garba is breaking down the last shred of the composite culture that remains in India. She termed Hindus “Hindutva Fascists” for asking Muslims to stay away, given that certain sections of the Muslim community mock, desecrate and abuse Hindu deities. Today, when Arfa is talking about the composite culture of India and calling Hindus ‘fascists’ for asking those who don’t believe in the feminine Hindu deity to stay away from Garba, it is important to remember that Arfa had earlier said that “Bharat Mata ki Jai” is communal because Muslims are being forced to submit to the concept of feminine deity when they follow the “One God” concept. 2018 tweet by Arfa Khanum Sherwani The proud Muslima is calling Hindus “fascists” because they essentially took her assertions at face value, as one of the representatives of the Muslim community, and said that since Muslims believe that submission to the feminine deity is “communal” and “fascistic”, maybe Muslims have no business attending Garba festival. And, to rub the communal Hindu’s nose in the mud, she attended a Garba festival and posted the video online as well. I will not be posting the video of her at Garba in this article because it appears that she was there with a minor, presumably her daughter according to several tweets, and no child should pay for the sins of her mother. Now, does it make Hindus fascists if we simply take these assertions made by Muslim representatives at their face value and why should we not believe that Arfa attended the Garba festival simply because she wants to taunt the Hindu community? Hindus, on the other hand, to counter this burden, try to push the burden onto the Muslims – they say if Hindus are supposed to accept Muslim participation in Hindu religious festivals like Navratri, non-Muslims should also be allowed to enter Mecca, offer prayers to their deities in a Mosque, so on and so forth. That is a facetious argument, used merely to point toward hypocrisy, not necessarily for implementation. Frankly, I have no problem if non-Muslims are not allowed in Mecca and Mosques don’t allow Hindus to worship their deities on their premises (the legitimate ones, not ones built over ruins of Hindu temples, of course). Religious activities are for those who believe in the Deity/God being worshipped – not for those who have no veneration for the religion or the divine power being prayed to. I don’t want to enter Mecca. As a Hindu, I have no faith in Islam and therefore, my presence there has no logical basis for it. But the fact that the very Muslims, who think violence is justified if Hindus so much as pass through “Muslim areas”, think that it is their constitutional right to enter Hindu religious festivals even though they have no faith in the Deity being celebrated, is an argument that gives rise to such facetious demands – a sign of desperation and anger. Besides the burden of maintaining India’s mythical syncretic culture, one shabby and effective ploy used by the defenders of this shenanigan is to de-hyphenate religion from our festivals. Diwali becomes a “festival of lights”, Holi becomes a “festival of colours” and Garba becomes merely a folk dance. The deep religiosity attached to these festivals is discarded, even delegitimised, so our religious festivals can be “secularised” and used to display the disrobed mockery of Hindus by Islamists. In their ‘dismantling global Hindutva’ propaganda, where Hindutva is just a euphemism for Hinduism, this strategy fits perfectly – chip away everything Hinduism stands for to ensure that nothing is left to fight for in the end. Hindus must, in my opinion, vociferously assert the religiosity of their festivals because if they don’t, they might not have much to celebrate in the future. Not all Muslims I am deeply aware that my position on Hindu festivals could be unpalatable to some Hindus, who are fundamentally inclusive. Despite intimate knowledge of everything I have said and covered in this article, a nagging thought that would gnaw at them is that not all Muslims are the same. Their friend, their neighbour, their building contractor, their fruit seller and the average Muslim on the street trying to earn an honest living has nothing to do with hate for Hinduism, they would like to believe. This is partly true, of course. All Muslims are certainly not the same. In fact, in one of my articles about how Islamophobia is a Muslim brother ploy, I had said exactly this – it would make sense for the Muslim community to fight “Muslimophobia”, however, “Islamophobia” is a ploy to skirt criticism of the problematic religious tenets that dehumanise others. Having said that, what I can’t seem to find an answer to is who are those thousands who take to the streets to chant Sar Tan Se Juda, as we saw during the Nupur Sharma fiasco? Who were those two Islamists who murdered Kanhaiya Lal? All Muslims are not the same, yes, but with thousands and lakhs of Muslims baying for Hindu blood, how do you differentiate? Are they not Muslims and do their wishes not adhere to true Islam? Why do so many factions of the Muslim community resort to unbridled violence against non-Muslims the world over? I am no Maulana and these are questions that the Muslim community has to answer. What makes these misgivings worse, is the fact that we hardly saw condemnation for Islamist violence against Hindus. When the Delhi anti-Hindu riots took place, despite ample evidence that it was a planned attack against the Hindu community, the entire global cabal of Leftists and Islamists employed all the resources at their disposal to prove that it was an anti-Muslim “pogrom”. When Nupur Sharma came under global threat and chants of Sar Tan Se Juda echoed on the streets, the Muslim community shunned away from condemning the bloodthirsty monsters. In fact, there were tweets even justifying the “anger” of the Muslim community by saying that Nupur Sharma crossed a line. Judges of the Supreme Court no less blamed Nupur Sharma for the beheading of Kanhaiya Lal by Islamists and the Liberals simply cheered them on. When the larger Muslim community remains mute against Islamist aggression, whitewashes cases of genocide, calls cases of rape and murder of Hindu girls fake and made up and justifies violence against Hindus for speech, Hindu misgivings are reasonable, at the very least. If the Muslim community believes that this mistrust is misplaced and that they truly wish to participate in Hindu festivals not to insult, desecrate, mock and dismantle Hinduism, they need to give Hindus a reason to trust them and explain the parts of their faith that propagate violence. If they think the violence and mockery of the Hindu faith is a part of Islam, they need to evolve and summarily denounce the last stone pelter and hardliner on the streets. Failing this, and failing the blanket and genuine condemnation from the larger Muslim community of every act of violence perpetrated against the Hindu community, Hindus have a right to defend their faith against aggression, verbal or physical, just as any community under siege would. Essentially, this entire guilt-tripping of Hindus during their festivals is an effective way to make the Hindu community accustomed to their own persecution. To quote Sita Ram Goel, “The point that all of you are trying to make is that Hindus should not stand up and speak in defence of their own religion and culture, that Hindus should not try to analyse and understand the factors and forces in the field around them, in short, that Hindus should remain at the receiving end for all time to come. We are sorry we have to reject your advice”.

Explore Nupur J Sharma’s insights on Bharatiya history, Civilisational issues the preservation of Hindu cultural identity. Civilisational Advocacy There is no better teacher than History in determining the future. History shows that progressively, a violent minority has strengthened the legislative, judicial and societal cover it gets to assert its religious supremacy aspirations. These aspirations are often negotiated after a violent, vehement and shameless assertion of street veto. While Hindus, bit by bit, cede to assuage the urge to cement the aspiration of religious supremacy, the Abrahamics harbor unbridled and unfettered hatred for their very existence, confirming to the prescriptions of the doctrines that they follow. While Hindus dream of peace and brotherhood, their History is being whitewashed, genocides watered down and rights being snatched away by brute street veto and the complicity not only of the media and the intelligentsia, but also of a deracinated state. Bharat is being catapulted towards Khilafat 2.0 and Hindus are somewhere in the 100 year timeframe preceding the Genocide of Hindus which was a direct result of the Khilafat movement and Muslim separatism. It took 100 years of low-level violence for thousands of Hindus to be systematically murdered. A strong, confident, sovereign Hindu India is perhaps the only thing that has the potential to stop the balkanisation of Bharat, A Hindu nation, built on Hindu ethos. The Hindus’ collective right to retain the cultural, religious and ethical integrity of the only land they have has to be held sacrosanct – legislatively, judicially and socially. This is, perhaps, the one lesson that history is screaming out, waiting for Hindus to hear. Civilisational Advocacy Play Video Play Video 01:19:22 OpIndia Reality Bytes Robert Spencer talks about the global menace of Jihad Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of nineteen books and an authority on radical Islamism and the threat posed by Jihad Play Video Play Video 01:11:49 Navonmesh नवोन्मेष वैचारिक मंथन कार्यक्रम - श्रीमती नुपूर जे. शर्मा जी नवोन्मेष फाउंडेशन द्वारा आयोजित "वैचारिक मंथन" कार्यक्रम में उपस्थित हुए सैंकड़ों लोगों को श्रीमती नुपूर जे. शर्मा जी ने हिंदू धर्म में महिलाओं के अधिकार को लेकर किया संबोधित। #navonmesh #navonmeshjaipur #navonmeshjaipur2023 #नवोन्मेष #वैचारिक_मंथन #वैचारिक_मंथन_कार्यक्रम #hindutva #hinduecosystem Play Video Play Video 01:16:44 Sangam Talks Khilafat 2.0: The Untold History of 200 Years of Hindu Persecution & What Lies Ahead | #SangamTalks Political analyst reveals shocking patterns of violence spanning 200 years of Indian history. Discover how the Khilafat movement connects to modern conflicts and learn why understanding this history is crucial for India's future. The speaker exposes systematic persecution while revealing uncomfortable truths about partition, communal violence, and constitutional bias. Essential viewing for anyone seeking to understand the real dynamics behind India's communal tensions. *Key Points* - Tracing violence patterns from 1840s Moplah riots to modern Delhi riots - Khilafat movement's lasting impact on Indian Muslim politics - Constitutional and policy solutions for Hindu protection - Media narratives vs historical ground realities *Concepts explored* - Malabar genocide, two-nation theory, religious pluralism, Ummah concept, population exchange, street veto politics, Islamic fundamentalism, Hindu civilizational state, partition history, communal violence patterns *About The Speaker* Nupur J Sharma is a management graduate from Symbiosis. After running her business for years, she decided to leave that behind. She has been the editor in chief of OpIndia for the past 5 years and her prime focus is documenting persecution of Hindus. She has published a fact-finding report on the Delhi anti-Hindu riots of 2020 which is available on Kindle. She has also done seminal work in documenting the persecution of Hindus across the globe. Articles: https://www.opindia.com/author/unsubtledesi/ Delhi Anti-Hindu Riots 2020, The Macabre Dance of Violence Since December 2019: An OpIndia Report : https://www.amazon.in/-/hi/Nupur-J-Sharma-ebook/dp/B08DNNWNXR/ *Topics covered* 00:00:00: Introduction: Khilafat 2.0 and Contemporary Parallels 00:03:45: Historical Roots: 1840s Moplah Violence and Ottoman Influence on Indian Muslims 00:15:30: Khilafat Movement 1919-1922: Gandhi's Support and Malabar Hindu Genocide 00:28:45: Partition Analysis: Why Muslims Stayed in India and IUML's True Purpose 00:42:15: Modern Patterns: 2019-2022 Violence from Hauz Qazi to Kanhaiya Lal Murder 00:56:20: Constitutional Critique: Secularism vs Hindu Civilizational State 01:08:30: Solutions Framework: Specific Laws Against Islamic Fundamentalism 01:14:25: Concluding Analysis: Recognizing Khilafat 2.0 and Future Preparedness Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3nhAUpe7aBm1rFCBgoWWcA/join Join our YouTube channel to get updated on new video releases: SangamTalks : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalks SangamTalks Hindi : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksHindi SangamTalks Business : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamBusiness SangamTalks Punjabi : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksPunjabi SangamTalks Tamil : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksTamizh SangamTalks Malayalam : https://www.youtube.com/@sangamtalksmalayalam SangamTalks Bangla : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksBangla SangamTalks Marathi : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksMarathi SangamTalks Kannada : https://www.youtube.com/@sangamTalkskannada SangamTalks Bhojpuri : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksBhojpuri SangamTalks Clips : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksMedia SangamTalks Shorts : https://www.youtube.com/@SangamTalksShorts For updates you may follow us on: Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/sangamtalks Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/sangamtalks/ Telegram : https://t.me/sangamtalks Twitter : https://twitter.com/sangamtalks Whatsapp : https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va95hH77z4kb3h4JaD1s Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/company/sangamtalks Website : https://www.sangamtalks.org Donate : https://www.sangamtalks.org/donate #KhilafatMovement #HinduGenocide #MalabarRiots #TwoNationTheory #IslamicFundamentalism #HinduCivilizationalState #PartitionHistory #CommunalViolence #ConstitutionalBias #ReligiousPluralism #UmmahnConcept #PoliticalIslam #IndianHistory #HindutvaAcademics #BreakingIndiaForces #HistoricalNarratives Play Video Play Video 01:06:44 OpIndia Reality Bytes The Places of Worship Act and how the reclaim Kashi, Mathura J Sai Deepak talks about the Places of Worship Act and how to reclaim Kashi and Mathura Play Video Play Video 16:23 Stop! HinduDvesha Ms. Nupur Sharma, Editor - Op India, speaks on Hindudvesha Ms. Nupur Sharma, Editor of OpIndia, speaking at the International Conference on UNDERSTANDING HINDUDVESHA IN THE GLOBALIZING WORLD, at the Constitution Club, Delhi, April 1, 2023 Play Video Play Video 01:01:48 Pondy Lit Fest Our Inexorable Laws Justice Jaichandren, Navdeep Singh, Sandhya Jain, Swati Goel Sharma, Nupur Sharma, J Sai Deepak (Chair) Play Video Play Video 03:13 SangamTalks Media History of Moplah riots against Hindus | Nupur J Sharma | #sangamshorts Main talk link: https://youtu.be/UFusz7PoOiE Talk title: Khilafat 2.0 Speaker: Nupur J Sharma Join our newsletter for getting updates on upcoming lectures: https://www.sangamtalks.com/subscribe Join our YouTube video channel for learning about new video releases: Hindi : https://www.youtube.com/sangamhindi English : https://www.youtube.com/c/SangamTalks Tamil : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH3afXBAYabOqTIi4uKFbZg Punjabi : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiJdh1RmnQIYnGERJ2jAFCA Bhojpuri : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVQERR3gS0PmEDHKUgCW9LA Marathi : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPmqDkiFNgGs95D3g6mBcmg Malayalam : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMVssln7NCnwv88-UVMtNpw Shorts : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1a89nobV2ozUlFpDhp7QIw Bangla : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ehxDugiAxBxPLsZNTM_rQ For updates you may follow us on: Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/sangamtalks Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/sangamtalks/ Telegram : https://t.me/sangamtalks Twitter : https://twitter.com/sangamtalks Koo : https://www.kooapp.com/profile/sangamtalks Website : https://www.sangamtalks.org Donate : https://www.sangamtalks.org/donate Play Video Play Video 22:34 OpIndia Reality Bytes Editor in Chief, Nupur J Sharma, talks on the anniversary of anti-Hindu Delhi Riots Nupur J Sharma talks on the anniversary of the Delhi anti-Hindu riots at an event organised by GIA (Group of Intellectuals and Academicians). Media Speech is power, speech is to persuade. This section featured select TV appearances, speeches, talks, Q&As and videos. Explore

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. It would be a great injustice to Bharat if the very doctrine that stabbed her and made her bleed would be beyond analysis and reproach - especially in a Bill that otherwise makes much-needed changes, protecting real victims. One can only hope that the parliamentary debates on the IPC draft address these concerns and necessary caveats and exceptions are added. Why Section 195 of Draft Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita needs relook: A ‘religiously neutral provision’ that may end up criminalising criticism of Muslim separatism Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. It would be a great injustice to Bharat if the very doctrine that stabbed her and made her bleed would be beyond analysis and reproach - especially in a Bill that otherwise makes much-needed changes, protecting real victims. One can only hope that the parliamentary debates on the IPC draft address these concerns and necessary caveats and exceptions are added. Nupur J Sharma 12 August 2023 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Muslims protesting against CAA in India (Image credit: Bloomberg) On the 11th of August, Home Minister Amit Shah introduced 3 new bills to revamp the criminal justice system of India. These bills Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Bill will replace the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and the Indian Evidence Act respectively. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita draft bill is meant to replace the current Indian Penal Code. Speaking on the three bills in the Lower House, Amit Shah said, “Under this law, we are repealing laws like Sedition.” “From 1860 to 2023, the country’s criminal justice system functioned as per the laws made by the British. With these three laws there will be a major change in the criminal justice system in the country,” he said. Essentially, the bill was presented as a progressive bill that strikes down colonial-era laws and gives far for freedom to a citizen, at least as far as his freedom of expression does, than the IPC does, however, as one says, the devil is always in the details. The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita draft bill with 356 sections and several sub-sections and clauses is a vast bill that required a thorough reading to fully understand whether it is as progressive as was initially supposed. Like in any bill, there are sections that welcome additions. For example, the bill takes a leap towards dealing with the menace of Love Jihad by explicitly adding that establishing sexual relations under false pretences would be considered a crime. This means that the Islamists who pretend to be Hindus to trap Hindu girls, later forcing them to convert, would be a crime under the IPC – a historic step for Hindus. Further, there are laws about unlawful assembly that would make the involvement of elements like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam in the anti-CAA riots a criminal activity upfront. Another example of the positive changes brought about by this draft is sub-clause 2 of the very law I intend to criticise in this article. Section 195 (2) says, “ Whoever commits an offence specified in sub-section (1) in any place of worship or in any assembly engaged in the performance of religious worship or religious ceremonies, shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to five years and shall also be liable to fine “. This would mean that the Allahu Akbar chants and religious provocations during Hindu processions, even if passing through so-called Muslim areas, would be considered criminal activity. In fact, this provision would also explicitly consider it criminal when Maulanas spew seditious statements in Mosques during Friday prayers, inciting several attacks against Hindus by Islamist mobs. There are, indeed, several provisions that aim to fix the areas that colonial-era laws had not considered or the previous governments had no will to address. It is because of these positive provisions that I believe the intent of this draft is to ensure equality and security for all citizens, including the Hindus of this country. It is only because I believe the intent of the dispensation to take this bill in the right direction, do I now write this scathing indictment of the provision I believe is draconian and misplaced. Chapter XI of the draft bill deals with offences against public tranquillity. Clause 195 under this chapter essentially criminalises academic criticism and analysis of Muslim separatism explicitly, even though it does not mention Islam as a specific religion. For the purpose of this article, we will analyse each sub-section and clause of section 195. Section 195, sub-section 1, clause (a) 195. (1) (a) says: Whoever by words, either spoken or written or by signs or by visible representations or through electronic communication or otherwise,— (a) makes or publishes any imputation that any class of persons cannot, by reason of their being members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community, bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as by law established or uphold the sovereignty and integrity of India; shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both. This law is rather simple. If anyone says, writes or illustrates that certain persons or a group of people hold no allegiance to the Indian Constitution or that they have a propensity to not uphold the sovereignty of India, they are liable to be thrown in jail for 3 years. The obvious defence of this section is that it does not mention any community or religious group specifically and therefore, it is a fair clause that every denomination can use to their safeguard the dignity of their community. However, laws are to be understood in societal contexts and realities. The power imbalance Let us take the example of gender-neutral laws. There have often been demands that rape laws must be made gender-neutral and one can, if one tries, see the merit in these arguments to the extent that men need to be safeguarded as well. However, it is imperative that we understand the power dynamics in society that make it important for laws that are focused specifically to protect women. While men do suffer the consequences of heinous crime, women are disproportionately affected by sexual crimes and that is a fact that can’t possibly be denied. When a section of the population is disproportionately affected by a specific nature of crime, laws must be made to specifically provide safeguards to that section. This is essentially the argument made in favour of laws that are specifically made to protect women against sexual exploitation. Now, while we hold that line of argument, let us consider two statements: Brahmins can’t be true to Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s constitution because it aims to annihilate caste. Brahminism is antithetical to equality, which is the cornerstone of the constitution Dr Ambedkar wrote. Muslims can’t submit to a secular constitution because Islam aims to create Dar-al-Islam. The concept of Ummah is antithetical to modern notions of nation-state, loyalty to whom our constitutions demand. It is the societal reality of today that the first statement sounds academic in nature, even ideal activism while the second sounds like ‘hate speech’ not just to average folks, but even the highest judiciary of the land – this is where my fear lies. If one analyses decades of judicial activism, one would find several statements that talk about a casteless society, brahmanism, caste atrocities etc. However, it is the same court that reads out the Quran even to pass a judgement where the basic rights of Muslim women are upheld – like in the Triple Talaq case. In fact, we had a sitting judge smile at the thought of a Brahmin Genocide while listening to a case about hate speech against Muslims. Such is the power imbalance against Hindus at the highest echelons of the Indian State. There is a reason why Hindus for a while got no law protecting their life and limb specifically against Jihadi violence despite several genocides leading up to the partition – the power imbalance is almost insurmountable. Let us take another example. While the framers of the constitution explicitly focussed on caste annihilation in the constitution and enshrined specific safeguards against the marginalised sections of the society with the specific aim of reforming the Hindu society, it was the Muslims who managed to preserve their personal laws on the basis of religion. From Mohammad Ismail to Mahboob Ali Beg, the argument made when UCC was being discussed in 1946 was that personal laws are a part of the religious beliefs of Muslims and therefore must not be touched. Ultimately, even though Dr Ambedkar was in favour of reform, the Muslim personal laws prevailed untouched. Historically, it was after Rangeela Rasool was printed and Muslims went on a rampage, was Article 295A passed by the British. It was not passed when the Muslims had published two books insulting Hindus, in whose response Rangeela Rasool was printed. Even after 295A was passed by the British to assuage the ever-hurt sentiments of Muslims, despite the fact that the insult first came from the Muslims against Hindus, the Muslims still went ahead and murdered Mahashay Rajpal. The power structure is certainly not equal and therefore, even if a law treats Hindus and Muslims as the “same”, the two religious denominations are not the same by any measure. The argument is that Hindus can use this law too in order to legally punish those who hurt the sentiments of Hindus, but is the system ripe for the usage of the law equally? Has it ever been? Was it not evident from the comments against Nupur Sharma by the Supreme Court itself? The two religious denominations are not the same. They certainly don’t behave the same in a societal context and therefore, a law that aims to protect religious sentiments equally of both communities will only benefit the most intolerant because hatred against the tolerant community has already been normalised to such an extent that it is not even considered hate speech anymore. Since no religion is mentioned, it would apply to all religions equally – the fallacies of that argument The assumption that because a specific religion is not mentioned, it would apply to all religions equally, stems from the misplaced notion that all religions are the same and all religious groups behave in the same manner – more dangerously, it assumes that all criticism is equally applicable to all religions. The ‘all religions are equal’ claim stems from notions of religious pluralism. Religious Pluralism essentially says that firstly, all religions must acknowledge that certain truths exist in other religions as well, thereby declaring that it is not only their own religion that is the ‘only truth’. Further, it says that all religions must acknowledge that every religion teaches basic universal truths that have been taught since before the advent of religion itself. When one delves into the principles of religious pluralism as a construct that can enable religions to co-exist without sectarian violence, it becomes important to ensure that all religions are brought down to the same surface level and hence, the claim that all religions are the same takes a beastly proportion where cultural context is often lost. At the very outset, it suffices to say that Islam lays out a doctrine for the humiliation of Kafirs. Stemming from that reality is the fact that all religious sections do not behave in the same manner in a society, especially one like Bharat, with an ancient Hindu consciousness. When one talks about Islam, it is important to acknowledge certain realities: Islamic doctrine itself ordains the humiliation of Kafirs and the conversion of Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-Ul-Islam. This is not an imputation on every Muslim, however, reality of the doctrine cannot be glossed over to chase mythical dreams of harmony and brotherhood, especially in a nation that has been torn apart once based on the tenets of this very doctrine. Islamists have little to no regard for the law of the land. There is a law that, of course, criminalises murder, however, that does not stop the Islamist from picking up his knife and beheading Kanhaiya Lal. There exists a law which deems Kamlesh Tiwari as an offender who deserves to be in jail, however, the Islamist has little to no use of the law because, for him, his religious doctrine requires him to slay Tiwari and Kanhaiya Lal – and slay he did. No other community is as perpetually offended as the Muslim community – that inherent offence stems from the fact that their religious doctrine considers itself the last, final and only true word of God – in that scenario – any other assertion that goes against their religious tenet is one that offends them. There are limitless words, phrases, averments, assertions, suggestions and opinions that can offend them. Essentially, no law can limit their offence and therefore, their propensity to indulge in street violence when they do get offended – because the moment you X offends them and therefore, must be criminalised, they will start getting offended by Y – all the while – dispensing justice per their religious doctrine as they did in the case of Kanhaiya Lal. A nation that is not Islamic in nature must be turned into an Islamic land. Lastly, their religious doctrine avers them to place their faith in the Ummah and not nation states – any nation state which does not conform to the Ummah is one that is an enemy state. These are merely facts. These facts have long been established and repeated by several scholars over decades. Now, when we say that Section 195 (1)(a) is applicable to all religious denominations equally because it does not specifically mention a religious group, what we are essentially doing is being blind – wilfully – to these realities that stem from the Islamic doctrine. The law in this case criminalises two specific imputations: That a person or a group of people don’t bear allegiance to the Constitution of India because they belong to a certain religious group That a person or a group of people cannot uphold sovereignty or integrity of India because they belong to a certain religious group. Now, realistically, given Bharat’s history and its current realities, which community is most likely to not bear allegiance to the Constitution of India and/or not have the propensity to uphold the sovereignty and integrity of Bharat as a nation-state? For Hindus as a religious denomination, Bharat is a civilisational state that has the blood of their ancestors and the consciousness of their Gods and God Kings. It is the land they fought for and bled for. It is the land that they could preserve for themselves after the Islamic community tore their civilisation apart based on their religious tenets – based on the two-nation theory where they claimed that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together in the same nation because the Muslims are a nation unto themselves. While even the most “extreme” Hindu’s crime is saying that this is a Hindu land – taking ownership of this civilisation and vowing to preserve it – the most extreme Muslim has a completely opposite view. He believes that India is Dar-ul-Harb which must be converted to Dar-Ul-Islam. When such notions are harboured, there is obviously no allegiance to the Constitution and it is precisely the sovereignty and integrity of the nation that they wish to hurt – as it was during the brutal partition of the nation. 195 (1) (a) would essentially outlaw and criminalise a discussion on these very basic tenets based on which India has not only been torn apart but has been made to bleed for centuries. Academic criticism and evaluation of Islam and its tenets directly impact the course a civilisation would take – especially one with a substantial Islamic population. Criminalising the analysis of certain established facts that we have seen play out practically in front of our eyes not even 100 years ago is harakiri of the worst kind. If this draft does become a law, essentially, for a Muslim to say that he believes in the supremacy of the Quran over the Constitution would be his religious right, because that is precisely what his religious doctrine preaches. He can defend that belief based on the religious freedom guaranteed to him by the Constitution of India (ironically). However, if someone was to point out that he believes in the Quran over the Constitution of India because he follows Islam, that person would be liable to be thrown in jail for 3 years (along with a fine). And this is certainly not a figment of my imagination. Samajwadi Party leader ST Hasan had only recently said that the government can make laws but Muslims will only follow Sharia. TMC Minister Siddiquilla had said that the Quran will always prevail over the Constitution and this sentiment was also expressed by a Bollywood actor. Even the state of Kerala was all set to declare the supremacy of Sharia over the Constitution in the court of law and vouch for its legal and constitutional validity. The sentiment expressed by these leaders, who swear by the Constitution when they are elected no less, are not surprising – thousands of Muslims harbour the same sentiment. Again, this is not my assertion. Here is what Dr BR Ambedkar had said in his book Pakistan or Partition of India: “Hinduism is said to divide people and in contrast, Islam is said to bind people together. This is only a half-truth. For Islam divides as inexorably as it binds. Islam is a close corporation and the distinction that it makes between Muslims and non-Muslims is a very real, very positive and very alienating distinction. The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is a brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity, but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity,” BR Ambedkar wrote in ‘ Pakistan or Partition of India ’ . “ The second defect of Islam is that it is a system of social self-government and is incompatible with local self-government because the allegiance of a Muslim does not rest on his domicile in the country which is his but on the faith to which he belongs. To the Muslim ibi bene ibi patria [Where it is well with me, there is my country] is unthinkable. Wherever there is the rule of Islam, there is his own country. In other words, Islam can never allow a true Muslim to adopt India as his motherland and regard a Hindu as his kith and kin.” On the question of Muslim loyalty to his country vis-a-vis his loyalty to Islam, Ambedkar wrote: “Among the tenets, one that calls for notice is the tenet of Islam which says that in a country which is not under Muslim rule, wherever there is a conflict between Muslim law and the law of the land, the former must prevail over the latter, and a Muslim will be justified in obeying the Muslim law and defying the law of the land … The only allegiance a Musalman, whether civilian or soldier, whether living under a Muslim or under a non-Muslim administration, is commanded by the Koran to acknowledge is his allegiance to God, to His Prophet and to those in authority from among the Musalmans…” Ambedkar opined that the teaching of the Holy Quran rendered the existence of a stable government almost impossible. However, he was more alarmed by the Muslim tenets that prescribed when a country is a motherland to the Muslims and when it is not. “ According to Muslim Canon Law, the world is divided into two camps, Dar-ul-lslam (abode of Islam), and Dar-ul-Harb (abode of war). A country is Dar-ul-Islam when it is ruled by Muslims. A country is Dar-ul-Harb when Muslims only reside in it but are not rulers of it. That being the Canon Law of the Muslims, India cannot be the common motherland of the Hindus and the Musalmans. It can be the land of the Musalmans—but it cannot be the land of the ‘Hindus and the Musalmans living as equals.’ Further, it can be the land of the Musalmans only when it is governed by the Muslims. The moment the land becomes subject to the authority of a non-Muslim power, it ceases to be the land of the Muslims. Instead of being Dar-ul-lslam, it becomes Dar-ul-Harb ,” he said. “To the Muslims, a Hindu is a Kaffir. A Kaffir is not worthy of respect. He is low-born and without status. That is why a country that is ruled by a Kaffir is Dar-ul-Harb to a Musalman. Given this, no further evidence seems to be necessary to prove that the Muslims will not obey a Hindu government. The basic feelings of deference and sympathy, which predispose persons to obey the authority of government, do not simply exist. But if a proof is wanted, there is no dearth of it. It is so abundant that the problem is what to tender and what to omit…In the midst of the Khilafat agitation, when the Hindus were doing so much to help the Musalmans, the Muslims did not forget that as compared with them the Hindus were a low and an inferior race, ” BR Ambedkar had said . If the current draft were to be passed as a law, it is a given that Dr BR Ambedkar, had he written this book today, would have been jailed for 3 years (with fine). Not just Ambedkar, here is what Sita Ram Goel wrote in his book ‘Muslim Separatism’: “If the Hindus sang Vande Mãtaram in a public meeting, it was a ‘conspiracy’ to convert Muslims into kãfirs. If the Hindus blew a conch, or broke a coconut, or garlanded the portrait of a revered patriot, it was an attempt to ‘force’ Muslims into ‘idolatry’. If the Hindus spoke in any of their native languages, it was an ‘affront’ to the culture of Islam. If the Hindus took pride in their pre-Islamic heroes, it was a ‘devaluation’ of Islamic history. And so on, there were many more objections, major and minor, to every national self-expression. In short, it was a demand that Hindus should cease to be Hindus and become instead a faceless conglomeration of rootless individuals.” He continued, “On the other hand, the ‘minority community’ was not prepared to make the slightest concession in what they regarded as their religious and cultural rights. If the Hindus requested that cow-killing should stop, it was a demand for renouncing an ‘established Islamic practice’. If the Hindus objected to an open sale of beef in the bazars, it was an ‘encroachment’ on the ‘civil rights’ of the Muslims. If the Hindus demanded that cows meant for ritual slaughter should not be decorated and marched through Hindu localities, it was ‘trampling upon time-honoured Islamic traditions’. If the Hindus appealed that Hindu religious processions passing through a public thoroughfare should not be obstructed, it was an attempt to ‘disturb the peace of Muslim prayers’. If the Hindus wanted their native languages to attain an equal status with Urdu in the courts and the administration, it was an ‘assault on Muslim culture’. If the Hindus taught to their children the true history of Muslim tyrants, it was a ‘hate campaign against Islamic heroes’. And the ‘minority community’ was always ready to ‘defend’ its ‘religion and culture’ by taking recourse to street riots “. If Sita Ram Goel lived today and wrote this book after this draft had become a law, he would too, be jailed for 3 years (with fine). Not just them – you would potentially be in jail too simply for reproducing what they wrote and saying that you believe they were right. In essence, 195 (1) (a) criminalises the academic criticism and analysis of Muslim separatism and the religious tenets that convince them to hold allegiance to the Islamic Ummah over the concept of the nation-state. One has to wonder how we can possibly celebrate Partition Horror Remembrance Day when the conversation around the very root of that partition is criminalised. Section 195, sub-section 1, clause (b) Section 195, sub-section 1, clause (b) says, ….. “asserts, counsels, advises, propagates or publishes that any class of persons shall, by reason of their being members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community, be denied, or deprived of their rights as citizens of India shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both “. Section 195, sub-section 1, clause (b) seems to be a rather dangerous provision if one truly understands what it might be suggesting. Essentially, it says that one cannot ask for the suspension of rights of any group of people for being members of a religious, racial, language or regional group. What does this mean, essentially and how can it potentially impact an average citizen’s freedom of speech and expression? Let us take the example of 1990s Kashmir. Islamic brutes were committing genocide against Kashmiri Hindus. If this provision was a law at that time, and if a citizen said that “there must be a curfew imposed in Kashmir because Muslims are committing a genocide against Hindus”, or that “There is a genocide against Hindus because of Islamic supremacy and they must be thrown in jail for it”, one would be imprisoned for three years – this, because you are calling for the suspension of legal or constitutional rights of a group of people while identifying them on the basis of not only their religion but also their region. In the current context, Khalistanis demanding a separate state comes under waging a war against the nation and would be criminal. However, if a citizen points out that Khalistanis are separatists demanding a separate nation on the basis of their religion, and therefore, they should be thrown out of the country”, it could be potentially argued that the individual has demanded the suspension of the legal and constitutional rights of a group of people based on their religion, as therefore, must be thrown in jail for 3 years. As far as the Nuh violence is concerned, if one says that internet services must be suspended and a curfew must be imposed in Nuh after the recent violence, even without naming the religion of the aggressors, it could be argued that one is demanding the suspension of legal rights of a regional group and therefore, the individual must be thrown in jail. While these scenarios may seem like exaggerations, vague, unthoughtful laws do have an exaggerated effect and unfortunately, the provisions of Section 195 (1) (a) (b) (c) (d) would only end up favouring those who wish to hurt the sovereignty of India, giving them undue concessions, and penalise those law-abiding individuals who want the integrity of Bharat held sacrosanctly. Section 195, sub-section 1, clause (c) (d) Section 195, sub-section 1, clause (c) (d) says: “(c) makes or publishes any assertion, counsel, plea or appeal concerning the obligation of any class of persons, by reason of their being members of any religious, racial, language or regional group or caste or community, and such assertion, counsel, plea or appeal causes or is likely to cause disharmony or feelings of enmity or hatred or ill-will between such members and other persons; or (d) makes or publishes false or misleading information jeopardising the sovereignty unity and integrity or security of India, shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both “. These two clauses are not very different from what was already included in the IPC. Clause (c), of course, one can argue that it gives some protection to Hindus, for example, when bile is spewed against them by Dravidian supremacists, however, again, it is the power imbalance that would make it a potent tool in their hands. One would imagine that if the law has to be liberalised from the legacy of the British, this would be tweaked, however, there is nothing contained in these two clauses that changes the status quo. Conclusion The Indian State has historically given concessions to the Muslim community simply to ensure that their forever-hurt sentiments remain assuaged. They have the right to be hurt – anyone does – but not the right to be riotous – and they are going to be riotous if you continue to legitimise their perennial hurt. The concession accorded makes them believe that their hurt is justified to the extent of giving calls to behead. Now once that concession is extended, their insatiable appetite will raise its ugly head. Once you accept their murderous sentiments, they will claim that your places of worship, your mandirs, are an affront to the Islamic faith. Once you concede that, they will say that you cannot even pray in your home because according to the Islamic community, there is no god but Allah and therefore, the fact that you believe in another god and pray to him is hurting their religious sentiments. The slide would end with them demanding your head on a pike because the very existence of Kafirs offends them. We must remember that the very basis of the partition was their demand for a ‘land of the pure” untarnished by the existence of Kafirs. When Gandhi allowed the Islamic community to run riots and murder Hindus, it validated their two-nation theory, enough for them to demand the dismemberment of India. When concessions were made to them about the Khilafat movement, terming it a nationalist movement instead of an Islamic one (that held allegiance to the Turkish Caliphate), MK Gandhi emboldened them to set their barbarity in motion and massacre Hindus in accordance with the Ummah they were fighting for. Bharat should not be giving yet another concession to the riotous Islamists by potentially criminalising even conversation around what led to the partition and the tenets that inspire thousands of Islamists to take to the streets – tenets that form the foundational existence of terror groups like PFI – tenets that aim to turn Dar-ul-Harb into Dar-ul-Islam. Yes. These provisions can be used by both Hindus and Muslims but the societal realities are different from what we want them to be. Laws can also not be looked at from a partisan lens. Democracy is a revolving door and while you may believe that vague laws will be used to safeguard you when an ideologically aligned government is in power, vague laws are equally prone and more likely to be used against you by a state, regardless of govt in power, that is historically adept at taking a knee to violent, intolerant minorities who exert street power with impunity – it is for that reason that exceptions and safeguards for specific communities based on historical realities is necessary. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. It would be a great injustice to Bharat if the very doctrine that stabbed her and made her bleed would be beyond analysis and reproach. One can only hope that the parliamentary debates on the IPC draft address these concerns and necessary caveats and exceptions are added.

Neo-atheists have merely substituted religion with the political ideology of their choice. Instead of proselytising on behalf of a religion, they proselytise to convert their people into their favoured political ideology. Neo-Atheists, Atheists, militant Atheism and everything in between: Caged by Abrahamic Monotheism Neo-atheists have merely substituted religion with the political ideology of their choice. Instead of proselytising on behalf of a religion, they proselytise to convert their people into their favoured political ideology. Nupur J Sharma 7 September 2020 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Before we proceed further, there are two things that ought to be stated outright. Firstly, the purpose of this article is not to encourage desecration of the Quran or any other Islamic scriptures or doctrine. The sole purpose is to provide an understanding of the core matter at hand, in light of the online battle between ex-Muslims and Hindus. And secondly, most obviously, the author does not believe that all Muslims are Jihadis or terrorists. Now that we are done with formalities, let us jump straight to the matter. Steven Weinberg, the great American physicist and a Nobel laureate, once remarked, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil – that takes religion” and since then, this quote has almost been weaponised by Atheists around the world to condemn religion as an outdated concept that is using violence to maintain its relevance in a world that has outgrown the need or the desire for its tenets. The New Atheism movement started in the mid-2000s with the ‘four horsemen for Atheism’ – Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris – gaining immense popularity. The core tenet of New Atheism is that religion was created in an attempt to explain how the world works at a time when science had hardly made the leaps that it has today. Thus, at a time when science has progressed, religion’s validity has expired, so to speak. There are several other claims that New Atheists make which we will examine in the course of this article, however, the central theme remains constant – Religion, any religion, has outlived its validity. The New Atheism movement, however, ushered in another remarkable trend. It essentially espoused that being an Atheist was not sufficient. Atheists must ‘scientifically’ counter the theists and expose their dogmatic ways wherever they are found. What started off as an attempt to infuse scientific discourse and composed debate on the question of Religion, soon became a free-for-all with the influx of several ex-Muslims, like Armin Navabi, Harris Sultan and others, who simply assumed that the function of Atheism was ‘desecration’ without the consideration that criticism for every religion would have to differ based on the genesis, nature and context of that specific religion itself. Armin Navabi, Iranian Ex-Muslim who is now an Atheist first tore up and spat on the Quran. Following the support he got from Hindus, he proceeded to willfully desecrate the Hindu faith. The underlying reason for doing this, per Armin, was that all faiths should be desecrated equally, however, that is not where this saga began. It has already been established that the saga of desecrating the Hindu faith started with another ex-Muslim, Abdullah Sameer, shielding the Muslim community after the Sweden and Norway riots, getting called out by Robert Spencer and then, proceeding to draw a false equivalence between Hindus (who were calling him out online) and Muslims (who were burning the world). Soon, after the spat between Robert Spencer and Abdullah Sameer, Sameer started posting offensive images of Hindu Goddess Kali. Along with him, several other ex-Muslims like Harris Sultan and Armin Navabi started talking about how Hindus are just as bad as Muslims because they were calling them out on Twitter. On the 3rd of September, Armin took things a step further and shared the same image of Maa Kali. Only a couple of hours before posting this distorted picture which showed Goddess Kali in a sexual epithet, Armin was retweeting and talking about the #DesecrateTheQuran hashtag. Given how this spat started, one can easily assume that this entire episode was orchestrated to falsely equate Hindus and Muslims post the Sweden and Norway riots by the Muslims. However, for the purpose of this article, I will not be delving into that aspect. What needs to be analysed, however, is the surmise that gives rise to the notion that desecration of all faiths, in equal measure, is a desirable outcome of Atheism. It is in this spirit, that Harris Sultan, while speaking to ‘Hindu Atheist’ Kushal Mehra question OpIndia for covering Armin’s desecration of the Quran but being silent or even outraged, by his desecration of the Hindu faith. At the heart of it, is the supposition that all religions are equal and thus, all religions should be desecrated equally and it is this ill-informed position that needs to be challenged. Dissecting the ‘All religions are equal’ claim The notion does not really stem from Atheism itself but the notions of religious pluralism that assumes that not only do all religions claim that their truth is the ‘only truth’ that exists, but that all religions are based on the principles of Universal Truths and thus, these are the two tenets that need to be dealt with if religions are to co-exist peacefully. Religious Pluralism essentially says that firstly, all religions must acknowledge that certain truths exist in other religions as well, thereby declaring that it is not only their own religion that is the ‘only truth’. Further, it says that all religions must acknowledge that every religion teaches basic universal truths that have been taught since before the advent of religion itself. When one delves into the principles of religious pluralism as a construct that can enable religions co-existing without sectarian violence, it becomes important to ensure that all religions are brought down to the same surface level and hence, the claim that all religions are the same takes a beastly proportion where cultural context is often lost. For the purpose of this article, we will focus on Islam, Christianity and Hinduism since the question we eventually want to answer is- why is it permissible to desecrate Islam and not desecrate Hinduism? At the very outset, it suffices to say that no other religion in the world, at this point of time in history, lays out a doctrine for the torture, subjugation, conversion and humiliation of all the people who refuse to believe in their faith, other than Islam. This question of whether all religions are equal and whether Islam is inherently a religion of peace was discussed at length in an interview with Jihad Watch Director Robert Spencer. He said in the interview that Islam as a religion indoctrinates its adherents to slay the Kafirs where they see them. They lay out the doctrine for religious warfare and strict rules as to what is to be done with the ‘spoils of war’. No other religion in the world has left behind a trail of mangled bodies, blood and gore in its wake as much as Islam and what is worse is that this carnage was sanctified in their religion, in fact, it is one of the necessities of their religion. Moral relativists and apologists of Islam often say that Islam is a religion of peace and it is its adherents who have distorted the peaceful version of Islam. They also say that the Quran is a peaceful text that essentially takes people closer to universal truths, just as other religions do, but it is the Hadith that twists the meaning of the Quran and ebbs people to commit violence in its name. None of these claims hold scrutiny, according to Spencer, since there exists no version of Islam that does not lay out a doctrine for the subjugation of Kafirs. In the interview, Spencer quoted verses of the Quran that themselves asked Muslims to slay the Kafirs and strike their neck. As Mr Spencer talks about the verses of the Quran that ordain its followers to slay Kafirs and Polytheists, one has to wonder how can a religion that is at odds with Polytheism be equal and aspires for the same goals as that of a Polytheistic religion? When Islam is at odds with Polytheism and the religious texts explicitly mention the subjugation of any Polytheist faith, how accurate is it to say that all religions are exactly the same since neither Christianity (which is also an Abrahamic religion) or Hinduism (which is a polytheistic religion) say anything that remotely resembles Islam. We can further classify this argument between Abrahamic faiths and Polytheistic faiths. In the conversation with Robert Spencer, it was clear why Islam took over 500 years to find footing in India and countries like Europe fell to the onslaught of Islam far quicker than India. The Quran presents itself as completion and correction of Christianity, said Spencer, which also gives us a window into just how vast the difference between the Hindu faith and Islam/Christianity really is. Hence, to essentially say that all religions are equal and aspire towards the same universal truths is a fallacious statement that is made by the people who either harbour malice, or ignorance. What the desecration of the image of Maa Kali meant for Hindus A familiar grouse that was expressed by the Neo-Atheists is why Hindus were celebrating the desecration of the Quran while they felt outraged when Armin Navabi desecrated the Hindu faith by sexualising Maa Kali. The underlying issue with this question that seems to baffle the Ex-Muslim Atheists is that they, almost militantly, follow the tenet that all religions are the same, a question, that we have debunked earlier in this article. When we have concluded, with adequate proof, that all religions are indeed not the same, one has to then understand the cultural context to truly understand why Hindus were celebratory, or even supportive, when ex-Muslim Atheists desecrated Islam and went after the same Atheists when they sexualised Kali. From what I understand, the backlash against Armin Navabi first started with him sharing the sexualised images of Maa Kali and was exacerbated with his follow-up tweet that essentially told Hindus to put Maa Kali in a Burkha if her sexualisation was offending them. What Armin did was to reduce the divine, with no provocation whatsoever, to a basal, human upheaval of hormones. To ask Hindus whether they would want to masturbate to a deity they consider their mother or even say that he “simps for Kali” which essentially means that he would put the deity on a pedestal to get sexual favours in return. This tirade did not come from a place of understanding but from a place of militancy of thought that had no cultural context whatsoever. When they ask “how is the desecration of the Quran different from the desecration of Maa Kali”, the simple fact remains that the ex-Muslims grew up in a household that deeply believed in the tenets of Islam, as per their own confessions. Their draw towards Atheism or even anti-theism comes from being told that if they do not follow exactly what the Quran says, they will go to hell. Or that apostates deserve death and if they do not follow the tenets of the Quran, they too, like apostates would deserve death. From being told that women don’t deserve respect or can even be beaten up because the religion accords a sub-human position to women. It is a faith that is largely considered the root of violence and militancy across the world, a faith that has claimed countless lives in order to stay relevant in the modern age. Hence, since their anti-theism or atheism comes from their experience of religion growing up in a household that followed Islam, they understand what they are desecrating, to begin with. They know, that when they tear the Islamic scripture, what is the extent of the ideology and what those pages say, in very specific terms. However, for most monotheists, barring a few who can be debated on their ideas of universal truths and not just anti-theism, the idea of Hinduism is too abstract to even understand what the religion’s basic tenets are. This was, in fact, admitted by Navabi himself in a podcast he did a year ago. How then is it acceptable to critique a religion one doesn’t understand simply because it is a religion and the anti-theist believes in the desecration of all religions, even though they are by no way equal. Further, what the western anti-theists and atheists, a significant chunk of them being ex-Muslims, don’t understand is that there is a cultural context to the outrage of Hindus. For thousands of years, Hindus have been subjugated by the Islamist invaders who have raped Hindu women, beheaded our kings, murdered our children all for the ultimate goal of the establishment of the Caliphate. There are countless tales of how the Islamic invaders murdered Hindus and kept their wives, mothers and daughters as slaves – the spoils of war. The barbarity was so perverse, that Hindu women often chose to jump into the fire and give up their lives after Hindus were defeated in war, lest they were taken slaves by Islamic invaders. You might wonder why they didn’t simply slit their wrists instead of stepping into the burning fire – well – they did not want their corpse to be desecrated by the followers of Islam who had laid siege on their land. The brutality is not just limited to Islamic invaders. In the modern political landscape of India, Hindus were humiliated during the partition as well. One recalls how the Khilafat movement claimed the lives of countless Hindus during the Moplah massacres by Islamists and even the Direct Action Day, spearheaded by Jinnah. After the countless deaths of Hindus, our own, MK Gandhi, asked Hindus to simply lay down their lives if the Islamists chose to claim it. During partition, Hindus were mutilated and their women raped. At the altar of ‘secularism’, which the Atheists love to espouse, India decided to not conduct a full exchange of population, a suggestion that was made by various luminaries at the time including Dr B.R. Ambedkar, and thus, began another cycle of subjugation in modern India. This year itself, we saw riots by sections of the Muslim community and aided by the Left against the Hindus. The saga of brutality continues to this day not just in India, but also, against the minority Hindus of Pakistan and when India decided that the minority Hindus could take refuge in India, their natural home post-partition, the Islamists ran riots yet again. They stabbed a Hindu over 50 times simply because he was Hindu and chopped off the arms and legs of another before burning him alive. Since the Atheists and anti-theists love to ally with the Left, the obvious question that will be thrown after reading this article is – what about the Muslims who died? Let me preempt that question and say that in every war, both sides suffer losses, but war is defined by those who start the war, and Hindus, have never started one. With centuries of subjugation behind them, when Armin says that Hindus must put their Goddess in a Hijab if they are offended by the cheap sexualisation, he triggers an all-too-familiar sentiment – convert or die, worse, be raped. For centuries, whether they were Islamic invaders, or the Muslims post-partition of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the domestic Muslims who still employ this tactic or even the Muslims of Pakistan who till date subjugate Hindus, this trope has been used to humiliate Hindu women and their faith. For centuries, these were the options given to Hindu women by Islamist barbarians – wear a Burkha, convert to Islam or be raped or killed. This is exactly the sentiment that was invoked by Armin – He essentially said that he will reduce our Goddess to an object of cheap titillation, a disrobed woman, humiliated because he can. And if Hindus did not want him to cheapen their mother, they should make her wear a Hijab. While it is unclear that this was the intent or not, however, it is clear that internalised misogyny, Hinduphobia, hate for Idolatory and the unbridled urge for the subjugation of Kafirs is so strong, that even after leaving the faith, the barbarism towards polytheists remains. Hindus saw what Armin did as not just the humiliation of their deity, but also Iconoclasm that the community is far too familiar with. For the Hindu, there is absolutely no difference between their Idols being desecrated by the Islamic hoards and being buried in the steps of a mosque, their Ram Temple being demolished by invaders to build a Mosque and then deny them their rights and what Armin did. Essentially, it was an outsider, an Islamist, perhaps, who desecrated their faith and presented the remains as an offering at the foot of Abrahamism. One simple account of the hatred Muslims had for idolators comes from a poetic account of what Ahmad Shah did at Sidhpur, available in Mirat-i-Sikandari, the history of Gujarat, written by Sikandar ibn-i-Muhammad alias Manjhu ibn-i-Akbar in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. He marched on Saiyidpur,— writes the historian, on Jamad-ul-Awwal in AH 818 (July/August, AD 1415) in order to destroy the temples which housed idols of gold and silver. As quoted by Sita Ram Goel in his book, ‘Hindu Temples’, the poetic account is as below: He marched under divine inspiration, For the destruction of temples at Saiyidpur, Which was a home of the infidels,And the native place of accursed fire-worshippers.— There they dwelt, day and night, The thread-wearing idolaters.— It had always remained a place for idols and idol-worshippers,It had received no injury whatsoever from any quarter. It was a populous place, well-known in the world,This native place of the accursed infidels. Its foundations were laid firmly in stone, It was decorated with designs as if drawn from high heaven. It had doors made of sandal and ud.— It was studded with rings of gold, Its floors were laid with marble, Which shone like mirrors. Ud was burnt in it like fuel, Candles of camphor in large numbers were lighted in it. It had arches in every comer, And every arch had golden chandeliers hanging in it. There were idols of silver set up inside, Which put to shame the idols of China and Khotan. Such was this famous ancient temple, It was famous all over the world. By the effort of Ahmad, it was freed from the idols, The hearts of idol-worshippers were shattered with grief.He got mosques constructed, and mimbars placed in them, From where the Law of Muhammad came into force. In place of idols, idol-makers and idol-worshippers, Imams and callers to prayers and khatibs were appointed. Ahmads good grace rendered such help, That an idol-house became an abode of Allah. When the Sultan was free from Saiyidpur, he marched on Dhar in AH 819 (AD 1416-17) . One has to understand that for a Hindu, what Islamic invaders did to their temples and their idols is no different from what Armin Navani or any of the other ex-Muslim Atheists did to the image of Maa Kali. In both cases, the iconoclasm was exactly the same. In both cases, the followers of Abrahamic religion (yes, Atheist is also an Abrahamic, Monotheistic religion, which I will explain later in the article), desecrated the idol that they sacred. An idol and a faith that did absolutely nothing to deserve the kind of humiliation that it received except the fact that it chose to exist and fought, fiercely, the attempts to convert. The urge to desecrate Hindu idols comes from the basic contradiction between Hinduism and other monotheistic religions. The icons of Hinduism are expressionist while the monotheistic religions are mostly suppressionist. While Islam and Christianity are political ideologies, Hinduism is that which depends on its adherent’s experience and spirituality. While all you need to understand and even criticise Islam and Christianity is a study of their text, what you need to criticise Hinduism is experiencing and ultimately, working up to understanding its scriptures. While Christianity and Islam focus on a binary value system, Hinduism has multitudes of value systems that can even be at odds with each other. That Islam and Christianity both function on the basic premise that any human emotion is to be suppressed, Hinduism believes that it is to be celebrated and expressed, and it is this expressionism and the lack of binary value systems that Abrahamics find so difficult to rationalise. The binary model simply does not work with Hinduism and thus, the frustrations of a suppressive culture is often expressed by desecrating symbols of an expressionist, spiritual religion. Essentially, when Hindus say that Abrahamics do not understand Hinduism enough to criticise it, they mean that until they have gone through the experience of being Hindu, there is no text that they can read and claim proficiency in the religion, unlike Islam and Christianity. To top it all, other than the painful ignorance of Hinduism itself, the Atheists and anti-theists who have denounced Islam do not understand the cultural context of the Hindu communities struggle with Iconoclasm and thus, have not the faintest idea of the scars that have been inflicted time and again. For a Hindu, an Atheist is only deepening the scars left by the religion they claim to have denounced. For a Hindu, what the Atheist does is no different from what the adherents of Islam did to his idols and temples. And this cultural context cannot be ignored simply by repeating the “all religions are equal” trope, because they are certainly not. Why Hindus endorse desecration of Islam but not of Hinduism 20-year-old Yazidi girl Israa, who had been rescued from ISIS, burnt her hijab as she was surrounded by the Kurdish forces in 2019. The image, that powerful image, became one of the symbols of resistance against the Islamic forces. In her interview , she had said that she felt suffocated the first time she was asked to wear it and she wished she could burn the ISIS terrorists just like she burnt her hijab. Why did Israa feel suffocated with the Hijab and why was burning that Hijab such a powerful sentiment for her? For that matter, why is burning the image of Adolf Hitler such a powerful image for Jews? Why does a Yazidi celebrate when symbols of her oppression are destroyed? Because the hijab symbolises and is a manifestation of her oppression. Her scars. It symbolises the very people who took away her dignity, her faith, her family, her community, her temple, her everything. It is a symbol of those who pushed her and her family to darkness. It is a symbol of those who she wishes to destroy, not because she hates Muslims, but because the staunchest followers of Islam destroyed her life and desecrated on everything she and her ancestors held dear. Given the history of Hindus and their subjugation by Islamists, the sentiment mirrors that of Yazidis. When symbols of oppression are destroyed, Hindus are bound to support that as an act of defiance. It becomes even more pronounced when that destruction of oppressive symbols comes from those who claim to have left the faith of Islam. It is essentially seen as a validation of vindication of their pain. The reason why Armin got support and coverage when he desecrated the Quran is for the very reason that a Yazidi woman would burn her Hijab or be jubilant when someone else does. It was a destruction of the symbol of centuries of oppression. It was an act of defiance, the same defiance felt by Hindus. It validated the angst felt by Hindus. Now, imagine claiming that the destruction of the Hijab by a Yazidi is the same as the destruction of the symbols of Yazidism. While Islamists consider Yazidis as devil worshippers, would it be fair to assume if a Yazidi is happy about the destruction of the Quran or even that of the Hijab, she has to mandatorily be accepting of the destruction of her faith when has done nothing to receive that ire? This analogy is exactly what is needed to understand why Hindus supported the desecration of the Quran by Armin and not the desecration of Maa Kali. Hindus saw their vindication in an ex-Muslim recognising that Islam is a religion that has the potential to subjugate non-believers because that premise has been responsible for their own humiliation for centuries. On top of that, it helped them reinforce that what the Left has been telling them to almost gaslight them, about Islam being a religion of peace is not true – and this came not just from Hindus, who were the victims, but also people who used to be Muslims and have since left the faith. Then came the inexplicable desecration of Maa Kali and it jolted Hindus from their stupor. They wondered why an Atheist ex-Muslim would desecrate their faith when they had done nothing to deserve that ire. Armin tore the Quran because his experiences taught him that he did not want to endorse the ideology in the Book. What was his experience with Hinduism that drove him to desecrate Hinduism? Nothing except the notion that all religions are equal. Hindus would endorse the desecration of the faith that subjugated them and reject the desecration of their own faith that has been subjugated by the oppressor. Interestingly, Atheists seem to not have the bandwidth to grasp the fact that by desecrating Hinduism, they have only cut the branch that they were sitting on. Their aim in desecrating Islam was that its tenets are inconsistent with the modern age values that the world espouses. However, one of the tenets is to slay polytheistic religions and as a result of that, idols are desecrated. Essentially, the Atheists ex-Muslims seem to have done exactly what their erstwhile religion ordained them to do, it was only cloaked with Atheism and not Islamism. The ire of Hindus was expected, and necessary because for far too long, their faith has been desecrated for no fault of theirs, simply because the Abrahamics cannot accept polytheistic faiths. Saying ‘enough is enough’ is important. The shaming of Hindus when they voiced their disgust We have already established why Hindus were disgusted and outraged at the conduct of Atheists against Hinduism and the depiction of Maa Kali, however, what was more unpalatable is the response of the Atheists, ex-Muslims and Hindus to that outage. Outright, Hindus were labelled “just as bad as Jihadis” for protesting against the blatant disrespect for their faith, for no good reason. What is essentially wrong with this assertion is that first, the ex-Muslim atheists and Liberal Hindus were trying, rather hard, to draw a false equivalence between Hindus and Muslims. That is almost the same as drawing an equivalence between Jews and Nazis when a Jew criticises the desecration of its faith by ex-Nazis. Or saying that a Yazidi is “as bad” as an ISIS terrorist because they differentiate between the burning of the Hijab and the ruination of her faith by the very people who enslaved her. What the Atheists and Liberal Hindus essentially wanted was to submit to the whims of those who clearly have no idea of the cultural context of Hindus or worse, know and don’t care. Personally, I believe it is the second because I have seen several videos where these ex-Muslims discuss Hinduism and I find it hard to believe that they would have no idea of the cultural context. Essentially, the Atheists ex-Muslims and Liberal Hindus wanted Hindus to submit to the desecration of their faith, quietly, demurely, or they threatened to label them just as bad the very people who raped, subjugated, murdered and forcefully converted them to Islam. The manipulation in this tactic is staggering. Essentially, this is akin to telling a victim that she must not voice her opposition to what the perpetrator did against her or she will become just as bad as the perpetrator himself and because the victim harbours such visceral hate for everything that her perpetrator stands for, she would somehow be brainwashed and gaslighted into silence. The debauchery of this argument was further exposed when some of the Hindus started telling their fellow Hindus that Hinduism is a tolerant religion and hence, any and all desecration must not be responded to aggressively. What they wanted to tell Hindus is that they should accept the desecration of their faith to display how tolerant they and that if they don’t, even their words of protest would be right compared to those who were murdering and burning down entire cities because they were offended. Perhaps the overtly erudite Ex-Muslims and Hindu Atheists and liberal Hindus need to pay attention and read Karl Popper. He says: “ Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant “. Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance is an apt description of what Abrahamics and Liberal Hindus want pious Hindus to follow. Essentially, these elements want Hindus to be tolerant to a level where the intolerant reign over the tolerant and the tolerant espoused by Hindus dies along with them. Certainly, one can see how that is a principle that has never been one that can be followed without the complete annihilation of the community that wishes to be tolerant to the level of their own destruction. It is essential to understand here that Islam took over 500 years to find footing in India because of the deep faith that Hindus held. Despite the barbarity heaped upon them, they refused to submit to the rule of Islam and held on to their faith despite all odds. When the Liberal Hindu and ex-Muslim Atheists want Hindus to inexplicably let go of that faith in the name of tolerance, what they do is create a situation where they leave the faith open to the onslaught of Abrahamics – the intolerant. Does the last standing major pagan religion in the world deserve to be annihilated on the basis of hollow principles like tolerance? This is a question that Hindus need to ask themselves without consideration for what Abrahamics believe they should do. But under no circumstances should Hindus be played by moral pleas of tolerance and in no manner, should they be manipulated to believe that their words can be deemed just as violent as rampaging mobs burning the world down. Freedom of Speech – The hypocrisy of it all Neo-Atheism and especially, those by Ex-Muslims and Ex-Christians are essentially based on two concepts that they consider the axiomatic truths – Universal value system and binary value system, as discussed before, that draws heavily from the Enlightenment philosophy. Essentially, this means that Atheists believe that there are certain universal value systems that are to be accepted without any question. Individual rights, the dominance of man over nature, freedom of expression, overt reliance on logic and essentially, rejecting everything that is not “real”. The binary logic sees everything in black and white and is a concept of absolutism. Essentially, Atheism gives no room for any deviation from what it believes to be the ultimate truth and/or the ultimate value that is to be espoused. When ex-Muslims criticise Islam for its dogmatic practises, they must essentially declare that all religions are to be treated the exact same way since their binary logic does not allow them to understand a construct where a religion like Hinduism can have multitudes of value systems. When they talk about freedom of expression, they must be absolutists because any limitation means that they are being thoroughly non-binary. For Atheists, they must desecrate Hinduism if they desecrate Islam because since one religion is problematic, all religions must be equally problematic. If one religion has Jihadis who burn the world down, the other must also have the same kind of adherents even though there is no empirical evidence to prove the hypothesis. The beliefs of Liberalism and Atheism come from the enlightenment age which had no scope for the understanding of Hinduism since it was aimed at overthrowing the dogmatic Church. Thus, Hinduism and its criticism thereof simply remains a product of the Abrahamic lens that is donned by Liberals and Atheists without really the consideration that none of these principles applies in totality to Sanatan Dharma. In that sense of absolutism, freedom of speech and expression is also meant to be absolute according to most liberals and atheists, however, just as any absolute ideology, this too suffers from its inherent hypocrisies. Every culture has its natural limits to freedom of expression that draws from the cultural context of that particular society. For example, one would not go to Israel and name their child Adolf Hitler because there is a contextual limit to FoE that comes into play. Similarly, one would not use the “N-word” in the USA because attached to it are tales of suppression and one has to give due importance to the cultural and societal context before being an absolutist as far as FoE is concerned. This was proved remarkably well when in a podcast by Kushal Mehra, who calls himself a Hindu Atheist, three ex-Muslims refused to use the “N-word” even when the subject came up. The ex-Muslims on that podcast included Harris Sultan who is now equating Hindus to Jihadis because they would not roll over and accept the desecration of their harmless faith. If Harris Sultan was indeed an absolutist when it came to freedom of speech, he should have ideally had no problem with using the N-word rather openly. He did not because Sultan seems to be more clued in and respectful of the cultural context of the country he lives in and more importantly, the culture he has adopted as his own. Extending the same rationale, one has to question the Atheists that if they would not demand absolute FoE to use the “N-word” because of the history of subjugation attached to that word or would not expect a Jew to ‘tolerate’ anyone ‘hailing Hitler’, why would they then expect unbridled and unrestricted freedom of expression when talking about Hinduism? If these ex-Muslims would not call Jews ‘just as bad as the Nazis’ for voicing their exception to their faith being desecrated in the same manner as Hitler did, why would they say that Hindus are as bad as the Jihadis when Hindus were voicing their exception to their faith being desecrated in the exact same manner as the Jihadis did? To take this a step further, their wails of ‘freedom of expression’ became a loud shriek and words such as ‘Mujahindus’, drawing an equivalence with Mujahideen, were thrown about. Atheists posture as the arbiters of morality but here they are, conflating people trolling a person on social media with cast distance between them with actual terrorists. Speech is now violence we are to believe. And such people pretend to be FoE absolutists. The amusing aspect of this is the fact that Abhijit Iyer-Mitra himself does not hesitate to abuse the parents of individuals he disagrees with. Coming from him, it is especially difficult to accept such an argument. The other argument, presented by Kushal Mehra is that people in India do not understand how neo-atheists in the West operate. I humbly disagree with that assertion. We understand perfectly how neo-atheists operate in the West. Neo-atheists in western countries are overwhelmingly oriented towards the Left and suffer from delusions of their own. In the current context, just because they get a kick out of abusing our Gods, it does not mean that a deliberate provocation ought to go unchallenged. There also seems to be an insinuation that Hindus ought to be fearful of the mockery neo-atheists are capable of. With due regards, there is absolutely no reason for us to be fearful of them. Instead, they are the ones who ought to be careful with regards to the manner in which they use their speech. One does not know when cancel culture strikes them down. Also, Abhijit Iyer-Mitra and Kushal Mehra are good friends of mine but I am extremely disappointed with their ideological stance on the current debate revolving around atheism and freedom of expression. The hypocrisy of Harris Sultan is particularly astounding. He was recently threatened by a Muslim for his criticism of Islam. The offended Muslim had actually threatened to hurt Sultan’s family and had made it clear that he was aware of the atheist’s address. Hindus have done no such thing. Harris Sultan has personal knowledge of the fact that Hindus and radical Muslims are not the same. Even so, even he peddles the delusion of equivalence between the two. Why it is perfectly okay for Hindus to endorse desecration of Quran and oppose abuse of Hindu Gods At the very outset, it ought to be mentioned that the foremost loyalties of Hindus ought to lie with their Gods and Goddesses and not to concepts such as freedom of expression and other such things. It is perfectly permissible, even rational, for Hindus to not tolerate the abuse of the Devis and Devtas. There is no decree that FoE ought to be the foremost priority of Hindus. Atheists might value FoE above all else, and we have already established that they are not the FoE absolutists they pretend to be, but Hindus are under no compulsion to prioritise FoE over their Gods and Goddesses. It is also perfectly rational for people to have one set of rules for the out-group and completely different for the in-group, there is nothing wrong with that. Atheists do not have the authority to decide what is permissible and what is not. For them, insulting someone’s mother is crossing the line. We share the same sentiment. The only problem here is that we consider our Goddesses to be our mothers as well. Therefore, their insult towards our Goddesses invokes the same emotions in us that an insult to their mother evokes in them. They have no business dictating the relationship we share with our Gods and Goddesses. It also ought to be mentioned that neo-atheism is intrinsically Abrahamic in its approach. It arises out of the enlightenment worldview that was ingrained in Abrahamic philosophy. It is no surprise then that modern atheism has a distinctly protestant approach to it. Furthermore, it also ought to be mentioned that the fervour with which modern atheists approach politics is the same as a devotee approaches religion. Neo-atheists have merely substituted religion with the political ideology of their choice. Instead of proselytising on behalf of a religion, they proselytise to convert their people into their favoured political ideology. Instead of Gods and Goddesses, they want people to believe in absolute FoE, the rules of which they wish to dictate as the evidence clearly by the current saga, and the precepts of liberalism. Hindus are under no compulsion to live our lives by their rules. ‘Hindu’ atheists might fancy calling themselves Charvakas but they are no different from neo-atheists at all. They have utterly failed to distinguish themselves from the ideology that neo-atheists espouse. Calling nonsense by a different name does not change the fact that it is still nonsense. Before attempting to corner Hindus, it is incumbent upon atheists to provide evidence for their claim that the world will automatically be a better place without religion. It ought to be mentioned that the absence of religion does not automatically lead to a paradise for human rights and freedom of expression. In the 20th century, the biggest death toll was under Communism. In the 21st century, hundreds and thousands of Muslims have been locked up in ‘reeducation camps’ by Communist China. The crimes may not have been committed in the name of atheism but they do disprove the atheist claim that a lack of religion automatically leads to a better world. If the current episode has proved anything, it is that there is no essential difference between Charvakas and neo-atheists. The other thing that it has proved is ex-Muslims are remarkably obtuse about cultural sensitivities. The only good thing that has come out of it is the fact that Hindus have demonstrated that they shall no longer take kindly to the abuse of their Gods.

The Hindus' path to the divine is one that is illegitimate in Monotheistic faiths and no matter how syncretic Hindus want Hinduism to be, to accept wildly untrue equivalences would only lead to Hinduism being chipped away, with the Islamist delegitimising anything that does not conform to their worldview. 5 dangerous tropes and falsities that Shivraj Patil is encouraging by comparing Jihad with the Mahabharat war or Dharma Yuddh The Hindus' path to the divine is one that is illegitimate in Monotheistic faiths and no matter how syncretic Hindus want Hinduism to be, to accept wildly untrue equivalences would only lead to Hinduism being chipped away, with the Islamist delegitimising anything that does not conform to their worldview. Nupur J Sharma 21 October 2022 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] On Thursday (October 20), Congress leader Shivraj Patil stirred the hornet’s nest after he claimed that the concept of ‘Jihad’ is a part of the Bhagavad Gita and that it was taught to Arjuna by Lord Krishna. Patil, who served as the Union Home Minister between 2004-2008 in the Sonia, sorry, Manmohan-led UPA government, made the contentious claims in Delhi during the launch of the biography of Congress leader Mohsina Kidwai. “There is a lot of discussion about Islam. And our work in the Indian Parliament is not about Jihad but ideals. Jihad is only evoked when all efforts, undertaken with a clear mind, fail,” he asserted. “The concept of Jihad is not limited to the Quran but also the Bhagavad Gita, which is a part of Mahabharat,” he continued. The UPA-era Minister then went a step ahead and alleged that Lord Krishna taught about Jihad to Arjuna during the Dharamyudh between the Pandavas and Kauravas in Kurukshetra. “Lord Krishna had taught Arjuna about Jihad (In Bhagwat Gita). And Jihad does not exist only in Hindu and Islamic scriptures. It is also present in the Holy text of Christians,” he insinuated. Shivraj Patil then justified the concept of Jihad and said, “Despite trying your best, if someone approaches you with weapons, you cannot simply run away…You cannot call it wrong.” There are, of course, multiple things which are deeply problematic with Shivraj Patil’s statement. The most glaring is his comparison of the Islamic concept of Jihad to Dharma Yuddha, which was being fought during Mahabharat. His assertion that the concept of Jihad exists not only in Islam but in every religious text, including that of Hinduism and Christianity is one that finds no basis in reality and we will delve into the difference in detail. Another interesting aspect of the statement made by Shivraj Patil is that he unwittingly seems to have revealed the motivation behind making such a statement. In his statement, Patil says “Despite trying your best, if someone approaches you with weapons, you cannot simply run away…You cannot call it wrong”, essentially saying that those who commit Jihad are only responding to aggression against them, thereby whitewashing the theological evidence of what Jihad truly means and also, brushing under the carpet the Jihadi foundation of Islamic terrorism. This statement comes as no surprise since one has to remember how Patil was sacked after the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack. In fact, after accusations of him delaying the response to the attack surfaced, Patil had lied to claim that no aircraft was available in Delhi and therefore, there was a delay in sending in NSG commandos. “No aircraft was available here (in Delhi), and then we called one from Chandigarh and dispatched 250-300 NSG commandos within two-three hours to Mumbai and I also travelled with them. That was a freight aircraft and we travelled to Mumbai standing”, he had said. This lie was summarily debunked at the time. Why Patil chose to lie is something we can leave up to the readers to speculate. Be that as it may, the purpose of this article is to discuss how Shivraj Patil is inexact, to put it mildly, when he conflates the concept of Dharma Yuddh with Jihad and essentially says that the Mahabharat was “Jihad” that Bhagwan Krishna had told Arjun to wage. What is Jihad Jihad is one of the most sacred duties that pious Muslims are meant to perform. The word “Jihad”, is an Arabic word which means “struggle”. It is an established fact that Jihad is the struggle for the cause of spreading Islam, using all means available to Muslims, including violence. This kind of Jihad is often referred to as “Holy War”. Now, when Jihad is a means to spread Islam, logic extends that Jihad would be waged against non-Muslims or those who are considered non-believers in the word of Prophet Mohammad and denounce the concept of “There is no God but Allah”. Essentially, Jihad is a concept of the ultimate subjugation of the non-believer, where, either by convincing them or by using violence, the non-believers are supposed to be brought to the “one true path” of Islam. This is not an opinion formed out of thin air. Islam religious scriptures are evidence of the fact that Jihad is waged against non-believers, using violence, if necessary. Here are some of the verses Wasim Rizvi, who later converted to Hinduism, had cited in his petition where he had asked for 26 verses that promote violence against non-Muslims to be deleted. Surah 2 (Al-Baqarah) Verse 191: And kill them [in battle] wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, and fitnah1 is worse than killing. And do not fight them at al-Masjid al-Ḥarām until they fight you there. But if they fight you, then kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers. Surah 3 (Ali ‘Imran) Verse 151: We will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve for what they have associated with Allah of which He had not sent down [any] authority.1 And their refuge will be the Fire, and wretched is the residence of the wrongdoers. Surah 8 (Al-Anfal) Verse 65: O Prophet, urge the believers to battle. If there are among you twenty [who are] steadfast, they will overcome two hundred. And if there are among you one hundred [who are steadfast], they will overcome a thousand of those who have disbelieved because they are a people who do not understand. Verse 69: So consume what you have taken of war booty [as being] lawful and good, and fear Allah. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. Surah 9 (At-Tawbah) Verse 5: And when the inviolable months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they should repent, establish prayer, and give zakāh, let them [go] on their way. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful. Verse 14: Fight them; Allah will punish them by your hands and will disgrace them and give you victory over them and satisfy the breasts [i.e., desires] of a believing people. Verse 23: O you who have believed, do not take your fathers or your brothers as allies if they have preferred disbelief over belief. And whoever does so among you – then it is those who are the wrongdoers. Verse 28: O you who have believed, indeed the polytheists are unclean, so let them not approach al-Masjid al-Ḥarām after this, their [final] year. And if you fear privation, Allah will enrich you from His bounty if He wills. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Wise. Verse 29 Fight against those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth [i.e., Islām] from those who were given the Scripture – [fight] until they give the jizyah1 willingly while they are humbled. Verse 37: Indeed, the postponing [of restriction within sacred months] is an increase in disbelief by which those who have disbelieved are led [further] astray. They make it1 lawful one year and unlawful another year to correspond to the number made unlawful by Allah2 and [thus] make lawful what Allah has made unlawful. Made pleasing to them is the evil of their deeds; and Allah does not guide the disbelieving people Verse 58 And among them are some who criticize you concerning the [distribution of] charities. If they are given from them, they approve; but if they are not given from them, at once they become angry. Verse 111 Indeed, Allah has purchased from the believers their lives and their properties [in exchange] for that they will have Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, so they kill and are killed. [It is] a true promise [binding] upon Him in the Torah and the Gospel and the Qur’ān. And who is truer to his covenant than Allah? So rejoice in your transaction which you have contracted. And it is that which is the great attainment. Verse 123: O you who have believed, fight against those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness. And know that Allah is with the righteous. These are, of course, just some of the verses. The full list of the verses cited by Wasim Rizvi can be read here . What is Dharma and Dharma Yuddh Dharma, in itself, is rather difficult to articulate in English since no parallel word or phrase exists to capture its essence. It is a concept inimitable to Sanatan Dharma and the English vocabulary simply falls short. I would therefore depend on greater minds and their wisdom in an attempt to article what it stands for. “Like the English word ‘law’, the word ‘dharma’ has taken on different connotations. Its original wider meaning is ‘law’. The dharma of any object upholds its existence and regulates its behaviour. It is in this sense that we refer to the dharma of nature, the dharma of water, the dharma of fire and so on…This wider meaning led to the use of the term while describing the laws governing other-worldly objects, irrespective of whether these laws were verifiable or not! The term ‘dharma’ gradually encompassed the mutual relation between Heaven, hell, reincarnation, god, individual (soul), creation and the like. In fact, the word ‘dharma’ soon came to be almost exclusively used in its other-worldly connotation.… The actions of human beings in this world were thought to affect his existence in the hereafter. So ‘dharma’ came to also mean that which upheld his life in the hereafter. In the past, the rules that governed worldly relations between individuals and nations were also termed ‘dharma’ . This is clear from terms such as dharma of war (yuddhadharma), dharma of governance (rajdharma), dharma of conduct (vyavahaardharma) and the like”, wrote Veer Savarkar (1934, Vidnyannishtha nibandha or pro-science essays, Samagra Savarkar vangmaya, Vol. 3, p.309-310). From what Veer Savarkar wrote, it is evident that Dharma is a “duty” that is to be performed, to uphold the purpose of existence. It is the law which governs the conduct of that entity in the fulfilment of his existential duty and the path one must follow to attain Moksha. Dharma, therefore, is not religion, however, it is a part of wider religious tenets. About Dharma Yuddha, Koenraad Elst once wrote , “The proverbial war in the Hindu worldview is the great war of the Bharata clan, on which the mega-epic Mahabharat elaborates. This epic philosophizes profusely on the principles of dharma yuddha even as it describes the successive episodes of a real-life war. Yuddha means “struggle, war”. Dharma, “sustenance, that which sustains”, effectively means “maintaining the correct relation between the part and the whole”, “playing your specific role in the whole that you are part of”. Dharma Yuddh is therefore one’s struggle to fulfil their existential duty. Dharma yuddha means “struggle in accordance with ethics/Dharma” or a “chivalrous war” to uphold morality, ethics, honour, so on and so forth. How Shivraj Patil was wrong in equating Dharma Yuddh and Jihad The basic flaw in what Patil has said is the fact that the comparison between Dharma Yuddh and Jihad is like a comparison between apples and oranges. While Dharma Yuddh is the struggle to perform one’s duties towards oneself, one’s Gods and the society at large, Jihad in itself is a concept of slavery where others are subjugated in the name of the “One True God”, by violence if necessary. Having said that, let us, one by one, talk about how Patil was far divorced from reality when he equated Mahabharat with Jihad. 1. The first and foremost, most glaring falsity in that statement is that while Mahabharat was fought between two branches of the same family, who followed the same religion, Jihad is patently against those who are non-believers in the tenets of Islam. Mahabharat was about two sets of cousins who were pitted against each other for the throne and war became necessary when a peaceful resolution failed. The Mahabharat Dharma Yuddh did not happen over whose God was superior or was the “one true God”. It did not take place as a religious campaign to either spread Hinduism or to ensure that other religions submit to tenets of Sanatan Dharma, even by violence if necessary. During the course of the war of Mahabharat, no religious places were defiled and no mosque was changed into a temple after the place of worship was desecrated. In history, however, whenever Jihad has been waged, it was specifically against non-Muslims to spread Islam by the sword and one of the main characteristics of Jihad was the desecration of religious places. For example, the unrelenting attacks on Kashi Vishwanath began shortly after Islamic invaders entered India. It was first attacked in the 12th century by Qutb al-Din Aibak. The temple’s peak was damaged in the attack, still, Puja ceremonies continued there even after that. History has it that the destruction of the sacred Hindu temple was carried out under Mohammad of Ghori’s orders. The Kashi Vishwanath Mandir was once again demolished during the rule of Sikandar Lodi (1489–1517). Evidence implies that Sikandar Lodi was responsible for the invasion of Kashi Vishwanath. In 1669 CE, the ultimate assault on the Kashi Vishwanath Temple was carried out by the Mughal tyrant Aurangzeb. He demolished the temple and replaced it with the Gyanvapi masjid. The remains of the erstwhile mandir can still be seen in the foundation, the columns, and the rear part of the mosque. The Kashi Vishwanath Temple complex, which stands today, is adjacent to the disputed mosque complex and where devotees can do puja and prayers, was built by the great Ahilya Bai Holkar of Indore in 1780. In fact, the Islamic record of Maasir-i-Alamgiri states that on April 9, 1669, Aurangzeb had issued a ‘farman’ decree, “to governors of all the provinces to demolish the schools and temples of the infidels and strongly put down their teachings and religious practices.” Further, according to Muraqat-i-Abul Hasan, Aurangzeb ordered his soldiers and assistants from Cuttack, Orissa, and on to Medinipur in Bengal to destroy every house with a Hindu deity that was built in the last 12 years. Aurangzeb further ordered that if any temples were reconstructed, they should be demolished again completely so that Hindus could not revive worship at the sites. According to two Akhbarat dated 28th March and 14th May 1680, even temples in the loyal and friendly Amber state, such as the famed Temple of Jagdish at Goner in Amber, were not spared due to his religious fervour. History is littered with examples where the places of worship of Kaffirs were brutally and mercilessly desecrated and destroyed because the Islamic barbarians, who waged Jihad in Bharata, considered it “holy war” – changing Dar-ul-Harb to Dar-ul-Islam, which meant ruining every religious symbol of Hindus to establish Islamic symbols instead. In Mahabharat, there is no commandment given by Bhagwan Krishna to Arjun that requires him to attack the faith of any non-Hindu religious group. It was a battle where even the rules of a righteous and just war were established. How the “just rules of engagement” degraded gradually, based on the unjust methods of the Kauravas, is a matter of a separate debate altogether. In fact, the reason why Mahabharat is called a righteous war is because it was triggered by a woman, Draupadi, being dishonoured. There is no such concept in Islam, in fact, Jihad essentially condones taking sex slaves and war prisoners, which is antithetical to the concept of Dharma itself. 2. In Hindu history, hardly any religious or theological questions have been solved by war. Wars, as we see in the case of Mahabharat, have been the means to settle questions of authority and justice. Questions of a religious and theological nature have always been settled by vaad-vivaad – discussion and debate. Jihad, however, is a different beast altogether. The fact that even theological supremacy against non-believers has been a subject of war, is evidenced by the numerous wars that have been fought since time immemorial – from the battle of Badr, the battle of Uhud, and so on and so forth. From medieval times to now, when Islamic terrorism is rampant against non-Muslims all of the hues, in an attempt to turn nations into Dar-ul-Islam. In fact, it is pertinent to point out that Mahabharat itself was not a war to settle religious authority as was the case, for example, during the battle of Karbala. Therefore, at an extremely conceptual level, war has never been the means of settling questions of religious authority, religious supremacy etc in Hinduism whereas, the “Holy War” or Jihad has always been a means to settle such issues in the Islamic world. It is therefore outlandish to claim that the very concept of Dharma Yuddh and that of Jihad are similar. 3. Another important aspect to ponder upon is that Dharma and religion itself are not the same. Religion is a set of commandments, rituals, traditions etc to be followed whereas Dharma depends on the time and place. For example, Arjun’s dharma on the battlefield was to wage war against his own relatives, whereas, in a different setting, his Dharma could be that of performing Charity. Islam, however, is a religious duty of every Muslim and is a part of the wider religious commandments of Islam. The two concepts are, therefore, foundationally not the same. 4. One true formless God is an Abrahamic exclusivist concept, and anything similar in the Sanatan theology is entirely of a different philosophical nature. For example, one of the favourite tropes of those who wish to Abrahamise Hinduism is asserting that the concept of Brahman is similar to the concept of “One True God” in Islam. That, however, is not true. Brahman, however, is not a literal “one true God”, but a philosophical concept of a Cosmic Principle and consciousness. Therefore, to say that Hinduism too follows the concept of “One True God” is patently false. 5. The trope that Hindus too worship “One True God” and that Mahabharat was similar to Jihad in Islam is peddled by several Jihadists and Islamists in an attempt to delegitimise Hinduism and assert their exclusivist view that there is ‘No God but Allah’. Even those like Zakir Naik have peddled this trope. Zakir Naik’s problematic views have been picked up by several Islamic websites and Indian media houses that further the same trope. Here is an example from mainstream The Print, run by Shekhar Gupta. Article by The Print It is important to understand the problematic trope saying “Ishwar, Allah Tero Naam” has been long peddled as a syncretic version of how every individual finds their own path to the one true form of divinity, however, in the name of syncretism, Jihad, which aims to subjugate those who don’t submit to their one true God is often pushed under the rug. Shivraj Patil’s statement was essentially the path that Hindus need to tread if they wish to get closer to their own annihilation. While the Hindu might accept Islam as a legitimate path to the divine for those who follow the religion, the Muslim, at least the pious Muslim, would believe that idol worship is satanic and those who don’t follow THEIR true god deserves to be converted by the sword. The Hindus’ path to the divine is one that is illegitimate in Monotheistic faiths and no matter how syncretic Hindus want Hinduism to be, to accept wildly untrue equivalences would only lead to Hinduism being chipped away, with the Islamist delegitimising anything that does not conform to their worldview.