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Islamophobia as a blanket term cannot stop people from fighting for their own survival by being scared of people who have persecuted those who don't follow their diktat for centuries. ‘Islamophobia’ does not exist: It’s time to push for this ‘politically incorrect’ reality Islamophobia as a blanket term cannot stop people from fighting for their own survival by being scared of people who have persecuted those who don't follow their diktat for centuries. Nupur J Sharma 14 June 2022 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Protests against Nupur Sharma in India (Image credit: Al Jazeera) At the very core of humanity, is a war to survive. It is a paradigm that no animal or man can escape. The civilisational war we see today may be dressed up differently depending on the issue we choose to debate – reclamation of cultural heritage and places of worship, judicial reforms, police reforms, demographic challenge, citizenship to persecuted minorities from neighbouring Islamic nations, the law against forceful religious conversion and the list is endless – however, at the very heart of it, every issue revolves around the survival of an ancient civilisation that has now morphed into a “secular” quip or a people, who have fought, for centuries, for the preservation of that ancient civilisation. When Rangeela Rasool was published by Mahashay Rajpal, the court had clearly exonerated him saying that commentary on historical figures, including Prophet, does not promote enmity between groups. That, however, did not stop the Islamists from murdering him brutally. It was also craftily brushed under the rug that Mahashay Rajpal had published Rangeela Rasool (written by Pandit Chamupati Lal) after serious provocation by the Muslim community where they chose to publish two books mocking Hindus and their faith. In this case, Mahashay Rajpal and Pandit Chamupati Lal chose to answer words with words. Book with a book. However, for the Islamists who constantly want special treatment and concessions from the Hindu community, that was “blasphemy”, a crime punishable by death under Sharia. The trajectory of the Nupur Sharma case was not too different. After the discovery of the Shivling, Islamists on television debates and social media started mocking Hindus and their faith. They called Hindus penis worshippers and far worse. During the TimesNow debate, when panellists started mocking the Hindu faith yet again by calling the Shivling a fountain, Nupur had had enough. She lashed out asking the Islamist panellist how he would feel if she was to mock their faith. She did not mock him per se – she asked how he would feel. And boy did the Islamists answer. They took to the streets, shouted ‘sar tan se juda’ slogans, pissed on her picture, hung her effigies and did everything that one expects from uneducated barbarians. So far, Nupur Sharma is safe. Alive. However, one has to reconcile with the fact that she is a woman marked for life. Wouldn’t take much for us to reconcile with it, sadly. That is just how the human race is. An atrocity that shocked us yesterday would become the norm tomorrow. The Hindu memory is painfully short and soon, the community would move on to the next outrage cycle leaving Nupur Sharma alone to deal with the consequences of bruising the extremely fragile sentiments of the Islamists. One would expect the Nupur Sharma issue to be one that united the Left and the Right (for the lack of a better phrase) in India. After all, it is the Left and the Liberals who claim that India is stifling freedom of speech and expression. They also rally vociferously for the right to offend and the right to criticise religion – we saw that in several cases – Munnawar Farooqi being a case in point. The Right, let us assume, would speak up because Nupur Sharma commented on Islam specifically, a religion they allegedly despise, but the Left would speak up for Nupur’s right to speech, therefore, uniting the two factions. That did not happen. Instead, there were cries about Hindus becoming increasingly hateful under the Modi regime, atrocities against Muslims being on the rise and general wails of Islamophobia that we have heard all too often. Pakistan approached the United Nations demanding action against India due to Nupur Sharma’s “Islamophobic comments”. Bhutto demanded that the UN take note of “rising Islamophobia” in India. Attempting to arm-twist the UN further, Bilawal Bhutto reportedly said, “Silence could be taken as complicity and could lead to further incitement to violence, communal discord and hate incidents”. Essentially, Pakistan told the UN that if it does not get involved and chastise a nation of 1.3 billion people because one woman politician went on a TV debate and made a 10-second innocuous comment that repeated what the Islamic hadiths say, Hindus would get emboldened to exercise their free speech further and incite the Muslims to riot and indulge in violence. If you find something fundamentally flawed in that argument, where 1.3 billion people need to be condemned for a factually correct statement by one person so that the tolerant, peace-loving, sar tan se juda chanting, stone-pelting and rioting Islamists do not indulge in violence, you are an Islamophobe. We live in an age where any criticism of Islam or even a comment on the collective behaviour of the Ummah based on facts is seen as Islamophobia. If you report a crime committed by Islamic fundamentalists with a clear religious motive, like conversion, it is Islamophobia. If you condemn the violence that the intolerant minority indulges in, it is Islamophobia. In this case, Nupur’s response to Hinduphobes was Islamophobia and the Hindu community’s condemnation of rape, death and beheading threats to Nupur Sharma was also Islamophobia – they are just upset about the comment, after all. A little anarchy is justified. A little violence is a part of the democratic process, it was said – the state must allow it. If you disagree with this asinine view, you, my friend, are an Islamophobe. So what is Islamophobia? The United States House of Representatives in December passed a bill called ‘Combating International Islamophobia Act’. It was introduced by famed Jihad supporter, Ilhan Omar. The bill aims to combat global Islamophobia. The bill allows the Department of State to establish an office to monitor and combat Islamophobia and address related issues and of course, it requires the submission of annual reports to Congress about global Islamophobia and what countries have done to act against it. The vague, subjective law allows all speech directed at Islam, forget criticising it, to be termed as Islamophobic – a term that in itself is problematic on several levels. A phobia, by its very definition, is an irrational fear. Islamophobia, essentially means, that anybody who comments negatively against Islam has an irrational fear of Muslims and Islam similar to that of xenophobia or racism. Firstly, it is rather hilarious that a bunch of converts believe that they are a separate race. But beyond that, to accept absolutely anything as “Islamophobia”, we need to evaluate if the fear of Islam or that of the Ummah is one that is irrational, to begin with. According to the UN definition, Islamophobia refers to irrational hostility and fear toward Islam, and therefore aversion and fear toward Muslims or the majority of them. It also refers to the practical consequences of such hostility in the form of discrimination, unequal treatment toward Muslims (individuals and communities) and their exclusion from the main political and social agenda. Let us break this down. The first defining characteristic of Islamophobia is that the fear and/or hostility has to be ‘irrational’. The predominant fear against Islam is that it treats non-Muslims as sub-humans and believes in waging Jihad against those who don’t follow Islam. That Jihad is violent and humiliating. They believe in converting non-Muslims by force and have indulged in several genocides of non-Muslims in the name of Islam. These are all factual statements. We have seen the rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, Jaish e Mohammad, Lashkar e Toiba, Hamas, Al Shabab, Hizballah, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Lashkar e Jhangvi, Boko Haraam etc and the common aim of all of these Islamic organisations that have been designated as terror organisations, is to establish an Islamic Caliphate. India, specifically, has seen Islamic terrorism perhaps far more than any other nation in the world. Even if we move past the Mughal invasions, the Khilafat movement and the Malabar genocide of Hindus itself is an examples of how Muslims executed Hindus in a concerted manner because they had sworn their allegiance to the Turkish Caliphate. We have seen grooming gangs in the UK, grooming jihad in India, Taharrush in Egypt, Germany, the UK and other places like Pakistan, genocides across the world and sporadic incidents of violence directed at non-Muslims from Sweden, to Africa, the US, UK, Germany, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and everywhere else where a substantial Muslim population exists. The go-to reason to brand such basic facts as “Islamophobic” is to claim that none of this is the true representation of Islam. An erstwhile Muslim, Waseem Rizvi, had once gone to court with a list of Quranic verses that directed violence towards Kafirs. Here are some of them: 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 4 (An-Nisa) Verse 56: Indeed, those who disbelieve in Our verses – We will drive them into a fire. Every time their skins are roasted through, We will replace them with other skins so they may taste the punishment. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted in Might and Wise. Verse 89: They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away [i.e., refuse], then seize them and kill them [for their betrayal] wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper, Verse 101: And when you travel throughout the land, there is no blame upon you for shortening the prayer,1 [especially] if you fear that those who disbelieve may disrupt [or attack] you.2 Indeed, the disbelievers are ever to you a clear enemy. This is a short indicative list. The full list of 26 verses listed by Waseem Rizvi can be read here . Therefore, the argument that it does not represent Islam is certainly not an accurate one. Let us, for a moment, assume that none of this represents Islam and it is indeed a peaceful religion that wishes nothing more than peaceful coexistence. Given that assumption, one has to then ask the question of why so many factions of the Muslim community take to terrorism and overall violence against non-Muslims. Who are those thousands and lakhs of Muslims who have, in India, taken to the streets to demand the beheading of Nupur Sharma? Are they not Muslims and do their wishes not adhere to true Islam? I am no Maulana and these are questions that the Muslim community has to answer. Given this, and the fact that their conduct has been similar throughout the world, can we really blame someone for being scared of Islam and can we, logically, call that fear irrational? For most living organisms, anything that threatens their right to exist would be deemed an enemy. Nobody in their right mind can say that all Muslims are the enemy, however, their fear that Islam threatens their existence is not misplaced, given the mountain of evidence and the trail of blood that stand as a witness. In fact, the term Islamophobia itself reveals the true intent of the Muslim Brotherhood in coining and furthering this term. Islam as a religion has to be open to criticism and it is completely rational to be scared of certain aspects of Islam, as detailed above. One may want to fight “Muslimphobia” and if that is the aim, the phrase used has to be that and not Islamophobia. When one shuts down all criticism of Islam and even deems quoting the Hadiths as blasphemy, one can safely argue that it is not the non-Muslim who is Islamophobic but those taken offence who are truly Islamophobic since they have a fundamental problem with their own texts being quoted. Frankly, one suspects, that the Muslim community themselves don’t believe that these facts are “Islamophobic”. This term, which was popularised by the widely fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, was only a tool to ensure that all comments and criticism of Islam is stifled. It was a tool to scare people into submission and exploit the innate goodness in the world that makes people not want to hurt the sentiments of others, overall. It is a mythical beast that has been peddled with influence and money to ensure that the atrocities of the Islamists get shielded by piggy-backing on the victims of real atrocities – those who have been discriminated against because of their colour, race or worse, religion (Hindus and Jews come to mind). If the Muslim community believes that the terrorists, stone pelters, those demanding Nupur Sharma’s beheading etc do not follow “real Islam”, they need to give the world a reason to trust them and explain the parts of their faith that propagate violence. If they think it is a part of Islam, they need to evolve and summarily denounce the last stone pelter and hardliner on the streets. Failing this, Islamophobia as a blanket term cannot stop people from fighting for their own survival by being scared of people who have persecuted those who don’t follow their diktat for centuries.

One must remember that Moplah Muslims committed sporadic atrocities against Hindus for 100 years before the Malabar Genocide of Hindus took place. We, dare I say, are today somewhere in those 100 years - where what trajectory we might take depends on how the Hindus decide to steady their heart and if the state wakes up to uncomfortable realities that history has been trying to teach us for decades. Ram Navami violence is not sporadic: If one read RC Majumdar, one would know that history, leading up to 1947, is being repeated right in front of our eyes One must remember that Moplah Muslims committed sporadic atrocities against Hindus for 100 years before the Malabar Genocide of Hindus took place. We, dare I say, are today somewhere in those 100 years - where what trajectory we might take depends on how the Hindus decide to steady their heart and if the state wakes up to uncomfortable realities that history has been trying to teach us for decades. Nupur J Sharma 11 April 2023 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Aftermath of attack on Hindus in Himmatnagar (Photo Credits: PTI) Every year, Hindus come under attack when they take their religious processions out and this year was no different. During the Ram Navami Shobha Yatras, Hindus came under attack as Muslim mobs pelted stones, created arson, attacked unsuspecting Hindus and then, blamed Hindus for their own persecution. In Bengal, when Hindus came under attack, Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister, said it was the Hindus who pelted stones at their own procession because the Muslims can’t possibly commit violence during the month of Ramzan – they would be busy doing Namaz, after all. “Minority community was not at all involved as they were busy with Ramzan and Namaz”, she said. Not only that, she essentially insinuated that Muslims should annihilate the Hindus. “Can’t you step up now and stop these rioters and goons? If women are with me, then, I will show my power to the rioters…”, she was heard saying in another speech in April. “ Ki sonkha loghu bhai bona ra, Allah Tallah er kache doye kore danaga baaj der khotom korte parbe na (Can’t my brothers and sisters from the minority community pray to Allah to finish off these rioters),” she said . From Gujarat to Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and beyond, Hindus were hounded, attacked and humiliated while celebrating one of the most sacred festivals – Ram Navami and even as the intolerant minority went on a rampage, from Islamists to Leftists and even politicians blamed Hindus for coming under attack because they had the temerity to take out their religious processions through an area which was ghettoised by the Muslims. For most Hindus, India is a civilisational state of their ancestors, where their faith, culture, tradition and stories lie. A soil that has been soaked with the blood of their ancestors who fought for the integrity and honour of this land. It can safely be argued that if some start believing that Hindus have no right to exist in areas which are ‘no longer Hindu’ (remember ‘Muslim areas’ is now a legitimate term by the ‘secular’ commentariat), then Islamists who tore Bharat apart in the name of Islam, must not be allowed their religious rights in a nation with a distinct Hindu nation, despite the cries of secularism. It could perhaps be argued that the Nehru-Liaquat pact which skirted the full population exchange post-partition is the true culprit of the malaise we face today. Had India been left only with Hindus and Pakistan, created in the name of Islam, only with Muslims, perhaps Hindus would not be humiliated for taking out their religious processions in their own land. These arguments are often shot down as “hate speech” because it supposedly “creates” a divide, a divide that clearly already exists and has existed for 100s of years. For those who believe that Ram Navami processions and other Hindu religious processions have come under attack only recently after the rise of the BJP and perhaps, after the awakening of the collective Hindu consciousness in contemporary times, even a cursory reading of history would rupture that notion. RC Majumdar is one of the most noted historians of modern India. His most noted work was his 11-volume series on the history of India which starts tracing Bharat’s history right from ancient history to the freedom struggle. The final volume of the series, ‘Struggle for Freedom’, is considered one of the most authoritative accounts of the freedom struggle and the events that shaped Bharat, especially leading up to the partition of India. In Chapter 15 of his book “Struggle for Freedom”, RC Majumdar gives a bird’s eye view of the nature of Hindu-Muslim relations in the country, particularly in the 1920s and 1930s – a few years before the partition of India and around the same time of the Khilafat movement and the Malabar genocide of Hindus. The Muslim League, RC Majumdar days, regained its old strength after the Khilafat movement dwindled in India and started playing its old tricks of communalism. Gandhi had managed to reach a hollow “truce” through the non-cooperation movement which was supported by Hindus and Muslims for very different reasons – Muslims, specifically, for their Khilafat dreams. As the non-cooperation movement died down in Bharat, the hollow “peace” was exposed for what it is – naked hatred for Hindus. “At the back of it lay the old Muslim policy of deriving personal or communal advantages by cooperating with the Government against Hindus”, RC Majumdar writes. “The revival of the old communal spirit resulted in discords over petty issues, such as music before mosques, cutting down the branches of the pipal tree, held sacred by the Hindus, which obstructed the very long pole carried in the Muslim Tajjiya procession, the killing of cows in public places during Id ceremony, and things of this sort”, he writes. What is interesting is that RC Majumdar, the veteran historian, deemed it necessary to mention “music in front of mosques” as one of the distinct features which caused violence by the Muslim community. The slaughter of cows openly to humiliate Hindus was a feature that historically, was known, however, the fact that “music in front of mosques” got the Islamists to unleash violence against the Hindus then, a feature that is prevalent even today, is an interesting revelation. 1923 onwards, communal riots were an order of the day especially after the Hindus had started a shuddhi movement which was condemned by the Muslims, who were regularly converting Hindus by force at the time. In 1918, given the discord between Hindus and Muslims, a committee had been appointed at the Delhi session of Congress to draw up an “Indian National Pact”. A draft of the pact was placed before the committee in 1923. In the meantime, the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee, under the direction of CR Das, approved a strange “Hindu Muslim Pact”, specific to Bengal, that essentially curbed the rights of Hindus. Even in this pact, the “music in front of Mosques” played a prominent role. Two features of the pact, which was later rejected by the Congress committee, as was the National Pact, need to be analysed specifically. No music should be allowed before a mosque There should be no interference with cow killing for religious sacrifices, but the cow should be killed in such a manner as to not wound the religious feelings of Hindus. While no music in front of a mosque is something that the Muslim side specifically demanded, they also demanded their right to slaughter cows. The fact that the pact said that the manner of killing should not offend Hindus, it is pertinent to realise that any slaughter of cows would hurt the religious feelings of Hindus, regardless of the method adopted. While this Pact was rejected later, it goes to show this history of attacks against Hindus because of the establishment of so-called “Muslim areas” where even music being played by Hindus invited violence from the Islamists. RC Majumdar in his book then talks about incidents of violence that marred the period, with many of them revolving around music being played in front of mosques and Hindu religious processions being taken out from “Muslim areas”. Mr Majumdar writes, “One of the worst communal riots broke out in Calcutta in May 1923. It arose out of an Arya-Samajist procession playing music while passing before a mosque. The Arya Samajists contended that they were merely following a regular practice which was never objected to before, while the Muslims asserted that the music disturbed their religious prayer. So fighting commenced and continued for several days, in the course of which there were many casualties on both sides”. There are certain elements of what Majumdar wrote that deserve greater scrutiny. Firstly, Majumdar writes that the Arya-Samajists said that they were following regular practice and that the processions were never objected to. Several times, when Hindu religious processions come under attack by Muslim mobs, the Hindus are left flummoxed, claiming that they were simply doing what they have done every year, and could never understand why they came under attack that specific time. Even during the Delhi anti-Hindu riots, there were testimonies reported by media portals where Hindus expressed shock over the violence, saying that they have coexisted in the area for many years. This phenomenon does not seem to be new. One possible reason could be that the Muslim population increased over the years and what was acceptable then, became “haram” later, however, that aspect would need deeper study. Secondly, that the Muslims asserted it disturbed their prayers, is also an argument that is often used today to blame Hindus for the violence committed by Muslims. After the Ram Navami violence in Bengal in 2023, a Muslim cleric justified the violence by citing exactly the same reason. When the cleric was asked his views on the violence unleashed in Shibpur, Howrah on March 30, the cleric said that this is the month of Ramzan and when the Hindus were taking out the procession, it was time for Muslims to break their fast with Iftar. It was the state administration’s duty to make sure that the ‘Sobha Yatra’ passed the area either half an hour before or after the Muslims broke their Roza. He stated that the incident occurred in the evening during Maghrib Azaan. He claimed that if the procession had been held in the afternoon, this would not have happened. The violence occurred since Hindus chose an evening schedule for the ‘Sobha Yatra,’ which clashed with the Azaan time. Therefore, it is safe to say that the reasons employed by Muslims in the 1920s to attack Hindus are being used in 2023 to attack Hindus as well. To assume that there is any authentic grievance that leads to violence against Hindus would be naive. Essentially, everything points to the fact that the violence by the Islamists is a mere tool for religious supremacy because the very existence of Kafirs in spaces they assume to be their own offends their religious sensibilities. The fact that violence is indeed a tool for religious supremacy is proved by another incident narrated by RC Majumdar in his book. He writes, “The cause of the riot on Bakr-id day, 15th July, was an official notice closing an additional route through the Hindus quarters for cows destined for slaughter. The attempt of the Muslim butchers to take by force a cow through the prohibited road caused serious rioting in which about 12 Hindus were reported to have been killed and about a hundred seriously injured. Order was not restored till the military was called in and opened fire. Panic prevailed in Hindu quarters and houses and shops were closed for many days. A Hindu temple was desecrated and sporadic attacks on Hindu passers-by continued for several days. According to official estimates, hospital casualties were, Hindus – dead 8, injured 44; Muslims – dead 1, injured 25 and an unknown number being privately treated. Similar but less serious disturbances occurred in many other places on the Bakr-Id day. Some of the bigger street-fightings took place in Nagpur, Jubbulpore, and other places in CP where the Muslims, being much fewer in number, suffered more heavily than the Hindus”. Further, RC Majumdar writes, “On the day of Muharram, some Mohammedans accompanying the punja processions molested Hindu men and women whom they met on the road and afterwards entered the Sharan Vishveswar Temple, remained in possession of it for some hours and did some damage. The next day, a story went around that Hindus had caused mischief to a mosque, thereupon, Muhammadan mobs attacked all Hindu temples in the city, numbering about 15, and broke the idols. They also raided the Sharan Vishweshwar Temple and attempted to set fire to the temple car. The police were eventually obliged to fire”. The chronology of this event seems woefully familiar. While the Muslims committed violence when Hindus passed through “Muslim areas” so to speak, they also created violence on their festivals, forcing their way into Hindu areas and displaying how they were slaughtering a cow. Further, they created violence and took over a temple, and on the basis of a rumour, proceeded to attack all temples, desecrate idols and went on a rampage. Essentially, then and now, it would appear as though it does not particularly matter if the Hindu procession was passing a “Muslim area” or it was the festival of Muslims – the eventual brunt had to be borne by the Hindus either way – it is therefore not far fetched to say that even the outrages today aren’t about Hindus “disturbing” Azaan or “provoking Muslims”. It is merely about Hindus’ presence and the fact that Kafirs exist. Giving further credence to this, RC Majumdar writes, “The Hindu-Muslim relations continued to deteriorate in 1925 and 1926, the Bakr-Id ceremony causing serious riots in Delhi, Allahabad and Calcutta. No less than 16 communal riots took place in 1925, the worst of which were those in Delhi, Aligarh, Arvi and Sholapur. The most serious riot in 1926 took place in Calcutta in April over the question of music before the mosque. The riot which continued in full fury on 3, 4, and 5 April, caused 44 deaths and 584 injuries, besides looting, burning and desecration of both temples and mosques. There was another riot on 22 April, and the casualties were 66 killed and 391 injured. There was a third riot in Calcutta which continued from 11 to 25 July resulting in 28th Deaths and 226 serious injuries. There were also riots in the interior of Bengal as well as in Rawalpindi (14 killed and 50 wounded) and Allahabad (2 killed and 27 injured). There were no less than 5 riots in Delhi. The government made an unsuccessful effort to control, by regulation, the hours of music before the mosque but Hindus reacted very strongly against them”. Interestingly, even in this case, all of these riots happened because Hindus were playing music somewhere in the vicinity of a mosque. The state, then as it does now, tried to control the Hindus and impose legislation on them instead of controlling the Muslim mobs. In contemporary times, one can recall that this year itself, in 2023, almost 100 years after these riots, the Ram Navami procession was banned in Jahangirpuri because the year before, Muslims had created violence during Hindu religious processions. Now, like it was then, Hindus asserted their rights and continued with their religious procession as planned. Even in 1926, after the government tried to impose legislation stopping Hindus from taking religious processions out and playing music, the Hindus asserted their rights and ensured that their religious rights were not curtailed. In fact, over 400 Hindus were arrested after they decided to not pay heed to govt impositions to protect the Muslim sentiment. “Several communal riots broke out in 1927. At Kulkathi (Barisal, Bengal) a Muslim mob refused to allow passage to a Hindu procession which was permitted by the local authorities to proceed. The police opened fire, killing 17 and wounding 12 Muslims. Twenty-seven were killed in a communal riot in Lahore and eleven at Bettiah (Bihar)”, RC Majumdar wrote. In this case as well, the situation was then as it is now. Despite permission and the law being followed by the Hindus, the Muslims would have no part of it and attacked the Hindus regardless. This phenomenon of Muslims attacking processions by Hindus and insisting upon cow slaughter simply to humiliate Hindus was also written about by Dr BR Ambedkar in his book “Pakistan or the Partition of India”. He writes, “Another illustration of this spirit of exploitation is furnished by the Muslim insistence upon cow slaughter and the stoppage of muslim before mosques. Islamic law does not insist upon the slaughter of the cow for sacrificial purposes and no Musalman when he goes to Haj, sacrifices the cow in Mecca or Medina. But in India, they will not be content with the sacrifice of any other animal. Music may be played before. a mosque in all Muslim countries without any objection. Even in Afghanistan, which is not a secularised country, no objection is taken to music before a mosque. But in India, the Musalmans must insist upon its stoppage for no other reason except that the Hindus claim right to it”. The fact that Hindu processions were being taken out from in front of mosques and/or music was being played in the vicinity of mosques was a point of massive riots and communal unrest that claimed the lives of several Hindus and Muslims with the Muslims often starting the violence citing hurt to their religious sentiments. During the Ram Navami violence in 2023, it was emphatically asserted that Hindus were responsible for being attacked because they had the temerity to pass through “Muslim areas”. That they deliberately provoked the Muslims by their presence in that area and that, had the Hindus not provoked them, the Muslims would not have gone on a murderous rampage against them. Their argument today is exactly the argument they were making 100 years ago – that Hindu presence in these “Muslim areas” provokes Muslims. The Hindus are saying today exactly what they were saying then – ‘this is our right’ and sometimes, ‘we have always lived in peace, how did we get attacked this time’. Either way, it would be a grave error for Hindus or the Indian political dispensation to assume that these attacks against Hindu religious processions are sporadic and lack pattern. What happened then led to the 1947 partition based on the principle that Muslims are a distinct nation unto themselves and cannot coexist with Hindus. The “Muslim area” demarcation is merely the same theory in play on a smaller scale. To ignore this violence or to assume that such low-level outrages are not leading to much bigger outrages would be foolish. One must remember that Moplah Muslims committed sporadic atrocities against Hindus for 100 years before the Malabar Genocide of Hindus took place. We, dare I say, are today somewhere in those 100 years – where what trajectory we might take depends on how the Hindus decide to steady their heart and if the state wakes up to uncomfortable realities that history has been trying to teach us for decades.

Hindus, as I say, will perish if we refuse to recognise the patterns of oppression that we have been taught to accept like well-trained mules. From Rangeela Rasool to Kohat riots and Nupur Sharma: An unmissable pattern of insult, aggression, victim playing and vilification of Hindus Hindus, as I say, will perish if we refuse to recognise the patterns of oppression that we have been taught to accept like well-trained mules. Nupur J Sharma 21 October 2022 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Protest against Nupur Sharma in Pakistan (Image credit: ChinaDailyHK) The buzzword for 2022 is ‘Islamophobia’. Any criticism of Islam, the conduct of the Muslim community as a whole in an incident where unbridled violence was unleashed on non-Muslims or even stating facts from their religious scriptures, which appear inconvenient to the facade of tolerance that has been created by the Ummah, is considered an aggression against the supposedly oppressed Muslim community worldwide. There are examples aplenty of how the global media helps the Ummah turn themselves into perennial victims after every incident of unilateral aggression. One of the foremost examples in India recently was the Delhi Riots. There is ample recorded evidence that the Delhi Riots of 2020 were a planned conspiracy to target the Hindu community. Some of the players who hatched the conspiracy are lodged in prisons with cases of UAPA slapped against them. If one reads the over 17,000 page conspiracy chargesheet that has been filed by the police, one sees the meticulously documented evidence that includes pictures, dates, WhatsApp chats, CDR details, a money trail, witness statements and far more. The Ummah, however, with the help of a terribly spineless media, turned a planned killing spree against Hindus into an “anti-Muslim pogrom”. They picked up one speech by a BJP leader hours before the violence broke out and general “Islamophobia” that they conjured out of thin air to assert, globally, that the Delhi Riots were a planned “pogrom” against Muslims. While taking into consideration the speech of Kapil Mishra, they ignored the hundreds of Hindumisic speeches delivered by the Muslims in the run-up to the violence, the trail of violence that started in December 2019 against Hindus, the fact that Muslim leaders like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam had gone on the record to state that violence needs to erupt when Donald Trump would be visiting Delhi and the fact that genesis of the violence does not depend on body count. One of the foremost tropes used by the Left to paint the Delhi anti-Hindu riots as an anti-Muslim pogrom is that there were more Muslims who died in the final February 2020 violence than Hindus. It is true that more Muslims died in the February violence, however, it is also true that the violence was unleashed by the Muslim side. As elucidated before, the first murder was that of a Hindu, constable Ratan Lal, and the first incident of violence was initiated by the Muslim community. After days of provocative speeches and a killing spree against Kafirs (Tahir Hussain admitted that the violence was unleashed to teach Kaffirs a lesson), Hindus had decided to defend themselves. In a riot, it is an established fact that unfortunately, lives would be lost on both sides – that is the very nature of communal strife. However, the nature of a riot is not determined by how much damage the numerically superior side defending themselves inflicts, but on the basis of the conspiracy leading up to the violence and honest analysis of who started the violence. It is, however, the nature of the Ummah to cry victim when the Kaffirs decide to so much as defend themselves or, in the rare scenario, decide to retaliate in equal measure. During the Delhi Riots, the conspiracy was hatched by the Islamists, the violence was initiated by them to teach “Kaffirs a lesson” and the nature of the riot was purely anti-Hindu, however, the moment Hindus decided to defend themselves, the Ummah started claiming victim and the global media, with the help of their brown sepoys in India, painted the riots as an “anti-Muslim pogrom”. This is not the first time this has happened and it certainly won’t be the last. The Hindu community has often been subjected to unimaginable violence and branded as the aggressor community if they have dared to defend themselves and/or retaliate against the original aggression by the Muslim community. We mostly hear that Mahashay Rajpal was assassinated for publishing satirical work on Prophet Muhammad called Rangeela Rasool, but we seldom hear why he chose to publish the book. In 1923, Muslims published two particularly offensive books to Hindus. “Krishna teri geeta jalani padegi” used derogatory and vulgar language against Shri Krishna and other Hindu deities and “Uniseevi sadi ka maharshi” which contained derogatory remarks on Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati (incidentally written by an Ahmadi). In response to this provocation by Islamists, Pandit Chamupati Lal, a close friend of Mahashay Rajpal, wrote a short biography of the Islamic Prophet, Mohammed. “Rangeela Rasool” was a short pamphlet which satirised the life of the Prophet of Islam. Pandit Chamupati made Mahashay Rajpal promise that he would never reveal the name of the author – he knew the consequences of it. Anonymously published under the name “doodh ka doodh aur panee ka panee”, the book enraged Muslims. Staying true to the values of one-way brotherhood, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote in his pamphlet “Young India”, condemning Rangeela Rasool. While Gandhi ignored the provocation by Muslims, by the end of June 1924, the colonial government banned the book. The Muslim community, partly emboldened by MK Gandhi’s endorsement of their hurt sentiments and whitewashing of the provocation against Hindus, filed multiple cases against the book under 153A. In May 1927, Mahashay Rajpal, who published the book, was acquitted of all charges with the court observing that commentary based on facts on historical figures, including the prophet of Islam, cannot be said to promote enmity between groups. As soon as the verdict was delivered, Muslim mobs went into a frenzy. They rioted and demanded the head of Mahashay Rajpal. They were chants about how the murder of Rajpal was acceptable because, under Sharia, the punishment for blasphemy is death. On April 6th, 1929 a 19-year-old carpenter named Ilm ud din stabbed Mahashay Rajpal in his chest eight times while he was seated in the outer verandah of his shop. Though he was offered to give up the name of the author, Pandit Chamupati Lal, during the court proceedings, he refused and did not yield. He paid the price for it. The initial provocation in this case came from the Muslim community. Mahashay Rajpal and Pandit Chamupati merely responded in the same coin. The response by the Hindus led to the Muslims demanding the head of Mahashay Rajpal, going on a rampage and unleashing riots, getting a special law enacted that we today know as 295A and the brutal murder of Mahashay Rajpal. Not only this, but it also led to the vilification of the Hindu community spearheaded by none other than MK Gandhi himself. He had written in Young India, “A friend has sent me a pamphlet called R. Rasul written in Urdu, The author’s name is not given. […] The very title is highly offensive. The contents [are] in keeping with the title. I cannot without giving offence to the reader’s sense of fine give the translation of some of the extracts. I have asked myself what the motive possible could be in writing or printing such a book except to inflame passion. Abuse and caricature of the Prophet cannot wean a Musalman from his faith and it can do no good to a Hindu who may have doubts about his own belief. As a contribution, therefore, to the religious propaganda work, it has no value whatsoever.” In fact, MK Gandhi had gone as far as to say that provocation and abuse by Muslims do not justify this response by Hindus, thereby, painting the Hindu community as the aggressors and whitewashing the original provocation by the Muslim community. While Mahashay Rajpal was murdered in 1929 for a book that was published in 1923, in 1924 the Muslim community followed the same pattern during the Kohat violence , where Hindus were massacred for a response to the provocation by the Muslim community. On the fateful days of September 9th and 10th of 1924, radical Islamist mobs unleashed m ayhem in Hindu mohallas (neighbourhoods) in Kohat town of North-West Frontier Province (now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) in present-day Pakistan. The carnage was pre-meditated and resulted in the exodus of the entire Hindu population from the area. Since the British depended on the majority Muslim community to maintain their stronghold in the area, it implied that the government of the day turned a blind eye to the treatment meted out to the Hindus. In May 1924, a notorious Muslim publication published a poem that was highly offensive towards Hindus. The poem in “Lahaul” read, “ We shall have to burn the Gita of Kirars. We shall break the flute of Krishna. O Muslims! You will have to take up the sword and destroy the existence of Kirars and burn their goddesses “. The genocidal poem by a Muslim newspaper hurt the sentiments of the Hindu community and especially the Sanatan Dharma Sabha. The local secretary of the organisation, Jiwan Das, then published a pamphlet by the name of ‘Krishan Sandesh’. The pamphlet contained poems meant to reinstate the religious identity among the Hindus. Miffed by the anti-Hindu poem published in Lahaul, Das printed a poem by one author from Jammu wherein he mocked the followers of Allah. It read, “ We have kept quiet so long, we shall have to speak out, O mulla! You must gather up your prayer carpet and taken it to Arabia. We shall build a temple to Vishnu in place of the Ka’ba, And destroy the existence of the Nimaziz. “ After the retaliation by Hindus, which was publishing a poem that offended the Muslims as Muslims offended the Hindus, the Maulvis started their hate speeches baying for Hindu blood. On September 3, 1924, Maulvi Ahmed Gul and Qazi Miraj Din led a Muslim crowd to the Assistant Commissioner of Police, S. Ahmad Khan, and demanded action against Jiwan Das. Khan assured them that Jiwan Das would be prosecuted under IPC 505, 153A. He had also directed the burning of pamphlets. “Alas! Oh impotent Mussulmans! You have spoiled your cause by accepting bribes from the Hindus. You should die! You should have some sense of shame,” the extremist preachings began at the mosque. Maulvi Ahmed Gul then set the stage for the impending riots. He warned the police to take action against Das or that the community would take action as per Shariat . He gave an ultimatum until 8 am on September 9. He received support from other clerics such as Shahin Shah and Mian Fazul Shah. In one such meeting at Haji Bahadur mosque, fanatic Muslims took the ‘oath of talaq’ i.e. they will divorce their wives if they fail to defend their religion. By night, Muslims were seen parading with arms. On September 9, 1924, a crowd of 1000-1500 Muslims first went to meet Deputy Commissioner Reilly, forcing him to give in to their demands. At around mid-day, half of the mob disappeared and surfaced outside the Hindu mohalla. The Hindus were anticipating trouble after learning about the ‘oath of talaq’, and hate speeches delivered at mosques. They sent telegrams to the Deputy Commissioner, SP but in vain. Muslim mobs, particularly young boys, stormed into Hindu colonies and began wielding sticks and pelting stones. Fearing an impending pogrom, the Hindus fired shots at them. Amidst the chaos, one of the stone pelters died while several others were injured. This gave the fanatic Muslim mob a free pass to kill the Hindus. Shops, temples and houses were set on fire and destroyed. Properties belonging to the Hindus were vandalised and looted. The riots continued until 7 pm at night when the law enforcement authorities dispersed the mob and brought the situation under control. At about 11 am on September 10, 4000 Muslims from Kohat and nearby tribal areas gathered outside the Hindu mohalla. The large-scale arson forced about 3000 Hindus to flee Kohat town and take shelter in a nearby temple. It was at this point that the Muslims began torching Hindu homes after looting them and slaughtering those who chose to stay behind. Several Hindus were killed, others went missing and tens were wounded according to official figures. In the case of Kohat violence, the Hindus paid a price for first responding to Muslims with a poem after they published one that offended Hindus and thereafter, for defending themselves after mobs stormed their colonies. It is hard to miss the parallels that these cases, and so many more like them have. In the Nupur Sharma case, for example, it is an established fact that she only responded to the provocation by a Muslim panellist, who had ties to PFI and other terror organisations. However, it was the Muslim panellists who escaped scot-free and Nupur Sharma who became the subject of threats from across the world, Muslims hankering to rape her, kill her and behead her. The pattern seems to have been established rather firmly: Insult Hindus and their faith with vile words. Provoke a reaction from Hindus. Play victim about the reaction of Hindus. Demand special laws, special treatment and the prosecution of the Hindu for his response, while escaping themselves because they played the victim and partly because the state is incapable of dealing with radical Islam. Despite police action against the Hindus who merely retaliated, the Muslim community will often claim that the action was not sufficient. Soon after that, the Maulanas will start spewing venom against Hindus as a community. There would be intellectuals who would condemn the retaliation by the Hindus and help in painting the Muslims as the victims of hate from Hindus, completely ignoring how the Muslim community either initiated the provocation or the violence, as the case may be. Emboldened by this support, the Muslim community will step up their vitriol and start initiating violence. They will then unleash violence against the Hindus, in some cases, hatch a conspiracy to teach “Kaffirs a lesson”. When the Hindus defend themselves, they will turn the table and claim that the violence was perpetuated by the Hindus against the Muslim community. Most cases of such violence have common elements from the 10 points cited – from the Rangeela Rasool fiasco, to Kohat riots and even Nupur Sharma were a result of the permutation of some of the 10 points cited above. Essentially, the Muslim community has been sending a rather powerful message to the Hindu community – we will insult you but you have no right to retaliate in the same measure – if you do, we will hunt you down. We will also unleash violence against you, but if you defend yourself, we will tell the world that you organised a pogrom against us. This pattern has repeated over and over again, to a point where Hindus have, to a great extent, stopped responding to any sort of insult to their faith and assault against their families. A glimpse of that syndrome was seen during the Nupur Sharma case when Hindus wondered “what was the need” for Sharma to respond to the bile being spread by the Muslim panellist since she “knows the consequences”. Here is what I had written back then: 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”. Hindus, as I say, will perish if we refuse to recognise the patterns of oppression that we have been taught to accept like well-trained mules.

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

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Watch Nupur J Sharma's youtube videos. Videos Speech is power, speech is to persuade. This section featured select TV appearances, speeches, talks, Q&As and videos. Channel: Channel: Show: Show: Roles Producer Producer Producer Producer Collapsible text is perfect for longer content like paragraphs and descriptions. It's a great way to give people more information while keeping your layout clean. Link your text to anything, including an external website or a different page. You can set your text box to expand and collapse when people click, so they can read more or less info. Channel: Channel: Show: Show: Roles Producer Producer Producer Producer Collapsible text is perfect for longer content like paragraphs and descriptions. It's a great way to give people more information while keeping your layout clean. Link your text to anything, including an external website or a different page. You can set your text box to expand and collapse when people click, so they can read more or less info. Channel: Channel: Show: Show: Roles Producer Producer Producer Producer Collapsible text is perfect for longer content like paragraphs and descriptions. It's a great way to give people more information while keeping your layout clean. Link your text to anything, including an external website or a different page. You can set your text box to expand and collapse when people click, so they can read more or less info. Podcast Bringing you reports and stories from a perspective often ignored or suppressed by the mainstream media of India. Explore

Nupur J Sharma's journey outlining her commitment towards Hindu rights, media challenges in terms of shifting the “Overton Window” and civilisational advocacy through her editorial efforts. Why I am About I was once an anonymous nobody – sitting in my cocoon and running a small business in a quiet area of Kolkata. Nobody knew me. Nobody cared who I was and what I thought. Perhaps my father did, because he was the other one who cared to listen to my endless rants. One day in 2017, I got a call by a man I deeply admired for his wit. My would-be CEO, Rahul Roushan, asked me if I wanted to lead OpIndia.com – a small website which had the temerity to exist – against the media tides. It wasn’t much then. But it was a website where I wrote infrequently because I have always believed that words matter. I knew nothing about digital publishing or journalism. But I so desperately wanted to write. I took up this job believing that it would give me a much needed respite from the mundane, work-a-day career I had. I did not particularly understand money and did not much care for it either. I said yes. Overnight, I quit the business. I quit because I felt drawn, not to this profession, but to the prospect of writing for a living. OpIndia as a publication grew exponentially. The day I did my first investigative story, I remember sitting in my father’s chamber and watching Republic TV as Kapil Sibal raved and ranted about the story – threatening to sue me. This was the dopamine hit I had been looking for. I felt exhilarated. I felt liberated. It was a strange feeling because as an average middle-class new mother, threats of a lawsuit should have scared me. It didn’t. The only thought in my head was – “I did it”. The lawsuit never came because the story was solid. From the urge to just write to the proliferating growth of OpIndia, somewhere along the line, I changed. For most of my life and at the beginning of my career with OpIndia, I thought reconciliation was possible. It was hope that drove me then. It is unbridled, unadulterated rage that drives me now. Every dead body, every incident of brutality unleashed against Hindus that I documented drove me further away from “I am sure they will condemn at least this” to “I will only stand for my own”. Over the years, I have closely followed the sheer brutality with which the Left and Islamist nexus hunted those they don’t agree with - their hate gift wrapped in punch words like “secularism”, “harmony”, “morality”, “truth”, “brotherhood”, “idea of India”, and so much more. I have documented them giving a political context to the brutal hacking of Hindu activists. I have watched them ensure that Hindus lose their jobs merely for speaking about the Islamic invasions. I have watched them celebrate the death of Hindus and dance on their dead skull. I have watched them dismiss how Islamists abduct, rape, convert young Hindu girls. Pretend to be Hindus and then convert them to Islam after they’re in too deep. I watched them stay quiet after Hindu girls were brutally dishonored and hacked. They turned a well-planned killing spree against Hindus into an “anti-Muslim pogrom”. Those of us who documented the truth were hounded, abused, smeared, character assassinated, black listed by publishers. They cropped images of images where weapons could be seen atop mosques. They weaponized the innocence of Hindus. A Hindu chants Jai Shree Ram because of centuries of unshakable faith. A Hindu puts the sticker of Hanuman on his car because he believes He is the protector. They took that innocent faith and turned it into a marker of “terrorism”. Hindutva was meant to arm Hinduism to adapt to a world order based on nation states. A concept which for Muslims meant Ummah and for Hindus meant this civilizational state. Hindus gave up their Monarchs to get “secularism” and they needed Hindutva to find their political identity. Hindutva is meant as a shield against those who weaponize the innocence of Hindus and because they needed to weaponize the innocence of Hindus, Hindutva had to be tarnished by the Ummah and the Global Left Conglomerate. I watched it happen. I documented it. They regularly unleash a Nazi-esque propaganda, globally, where the persecution or beheading of any of us would not draw condemnation, but cheers and celebration. When we are murdered, when we are lynched, when we are beheaded, we will be blamed for it - even by our own Judges. They have lied for years. Fake Jai Shree Ram crimes. Fake threats. Fake Musalman Khatre Main hai. Fake church crimes. Fake “Hindus raped a nun” (turned out to be Bangladeshis). Fake history. Fake alternate realities. They have lied, cheated, misled, to demonize us. All of us. They guilt tripped us enough so millions of Hindus shut up, sit down, and don’t celebrate the Ram Janmabhoomi verdict - a battle Hindus won after 500 years of sacrifice. “You will provoke them”, they said. And we. shut. up. Weaponized the innocent of Hindus, as I said. When journalists who were not blatantly sympathetic to the cause of the Left and/or Islamists were hounded, dragged and arrested, they laughed. When death threats were issued to Hindu women, they justified. When I was hounded out of West Bengal for speaking the truth, they cheered. I am now driven by rage. Rage that comes with knowing what they are doing. What they have done. What they want to do. The rage that comes from watching and documenting Hindus being beheaded. The rage that comes with them justifying our civilizational demise. I would, ideally, like to be dewy eyed too. To stand for lofty ideals uniformly. Nobody is born with rage. Mine comes from their conduct. Between fairness and survival, I will choose the survival of MY PEOPLE, a people they want wiped out. When you hold us by the hair and try to drown us repeatedly, you cannot expect us, any of us, me, to stand with a rope to rescue you when you drown in the same pond. You just can’t. That’s not human nature. Retribution the purest emotion. I have been asked several times why I chose to fight for Hindus and only Hindus when I could have simply feigned neutrality and achieved the success, I can’t possibly achieve being honest about my work. I have been asked to speak for the rights of the very Islamists and Leftists who want me dead. Who want us dead. Who want this civilization wiped out. I won’t. I never have and I never will. I never will because this higher burden of morality on Hindus will be the death of us. “We are better than them”, I am told repeatedly. I say - We are. But we will certainly be deader than them if we hold on to this moral high ground and sacrifice survival of Hindus because we have this undying need to be morally superior. We are morally superior because we didn’t start the fire. We didn’t start this cycle of hate and viciousness. We didn’t behead. We didn’t kill. We sacrificed our own so peace could be maintained. Enough. Thus far and no further. I believe that I exist not because it was my divine destiny to be a journalist, but perhaps, be a conduit in shifting the Overton Window – so what is considered “radical” today by the deracinated, comatose Hindus, is considered a policy tomorrow by those who rule the world. 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. There are broadly 6 degrees of acceptable of public ideas: Unthinkable Radical Acceptable Sensible Popular Policy What was unthinkable yesterday, could possibly be a policy tomorrow. The idea that Bharat was a land of Hindu consciousness was an unthinkable proposition a few years ago because of the deracination of the pollical class. Today, it is an acceptable dinner table conversation and perhaps, the CAA even signaled that Bharat was discreetly whispering that the then “unthinkable” idea could possibly be a policy tomorrow. While there have been signs of hope, there has been a sea of despair. While my soul prays for a revival, every morning, I wake up to documenting our end. OpIndia As OpIndia emerges as one of the few voices speaking against the global persecution of Hindus, in my capacity as the editor-in-chief, I have aimed to shine the light on cries unheard, issues pushed under the rug, taboos that are meant to be broken and history that had been whitewashed. Explore

While accepting the truth might be hard with the politically correct narrative of 'secularism' having diseased our discourse, the truth is that Islam as a religion was introduced in India through violent conquests and barbaric Islamic rulers who were alien to the nation India: A land with Hindu consciousness, which will forever be a natural home for Hindus While accepting the truth might be hard with the politically correct narrative of 'secularism' having diseased our discourse, the truth is that Islam as a religion was introduced in India through violent conquests and barbaric Islamic rulers who were alien to the nation Nupur J Sharma 10 September 2019 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Ever since the 2014 elections, India has experienced a sea change not just attitudinally, but also in terms of the policy. One of the policy decisions that aims to right a historic wrong is the Citizenship Amendment Bill. In 2016, the Modi government tabled the Citizenship Amendment Bill that aimed to cleanse the country of illegal immigration. The Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 15, 2016, seeks to amend the Citizenship Act, 1955 to provide citizenship to illegal migrants, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who are of Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi or Christian extraction. 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 foundation for the citizenship amendment bill is rather simple – India is a natural home for persecuted Hindus, Buddhists and Jains from neighbouring Islamic countries. Essentially, all people belonging to non-Islamic religions should see India as their natural home. The objection that the Left raised was rather a simple (and expected) one as well – why are Muslims being left out when all others are being given the chance to become Indian citizens. An example of the outrage that is expressed by the Left is journalist Rajdeep Sardesai voicing his concerns during an interview with website Lallantop. An incensed Rajdeep spoke at length about how we are moving towards Jinnah’s India and how the Citizenship Amendment Bill should have a human element in it. He also spoke about how the Hindu refugees in India are political refugees and not those persecuted on religious lines. Before we go into the details of Rajdeep’s assertion that Hindu refugees are merely economic refugees and not ones borne out of religious persecution, it becomes essential to examine why the Citizenship Amendment Bill is bang on target and why India has to be considered the naturalised home for persecuted Hindus. Dominant religions of the world According to theregistere.co.uk, nearly 75% of the world’s population practices one of the five most influential religions of the world: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. To quote from the report, “Christianity and Islam are the two religions most widely spread across the world. These two religions together cover the religious affiliation of more than half of the world’s population”. if one sees the world map at a glance, the dominant religions, country-wise, draws a rather obvious picture. Country-wise majority religions. Source: pbslearningmedia.org (OpIndia doesn’t endorse the map of India depicted here, it has been used only to show the religious demographics of the world) The interactive map by PBS visually displays the countries of the world and the dominant religions in those countries. While the extent of the spread of Christianity is evident by the ocean of purple, Hinduism and Islam deserve a closer look. The interactive map can be used to see the spread of Hinduism and Islam. From the map, one can see that there are only 2 countries in the world that have a Hindu majority population today. India and Nepal. There is not one country where the Hindu population is between 40% to 70% and most other countries where there is a remote presence of Hinduism ranges between 1% and 10% of the population. In India’s neighbouring countries, Pakistan, according to this map, has a Hindu population of 1.9%, which some may believe is an exaggerated number in itself, Bangladesh has a Hindu population of 9.1%, Myanmar of 1.7% and Bhutan of 22.6%. Map showing Muslim population % (OpIndia doesn’t endorse the map of India depicted here, it has been used only to show the religious demographics of the world) Above is the map that visually displays the number of Islamic countries or countries with a Muslim majority in the world. According to the Pew Research Center in 2015, there were 50 Muslim-majority countries. Worldatlas.com (April 2017) identified 45 ‘Islamic countries’. Among the Islamic states are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Oman, and Yemen. Other states where Islam is the politically defined state religion are Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Malaysia, Maldives, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Somalia and Brunei. Other Muslim-majority countries include: Niger, Indonesia, Sudan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sierra Leone, Djibouti, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Mali, Northern Cyprus, Nigeria, Senegal, Syria, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Turkey and Uzbekistan. According to a 2010 study and released in January 2011, Jones (2005) defines a “large minority” as being between 30% and 50%, which described nine countries in 2000, namely Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Islam has 1.5 billion adherents, making up c. 22% of the world population. The argument about India being a naturalised home for Hindus stems first and foremost from the demography of the world. As is evident, India and Nepal are the only two countries in the world where Hindus are the majority population. With Nepal being a rather small country, the onus to be the naturalised home for Hindus falls on India, and rightly so. With 50 Muslims Majority countries and the entire world painted purple as is evident from the world demography map shared, there is no other country in the world that can be called their own other than India. India a ‘secular’ state? The obvious counter to this argument by the Left is that India is a ‘secular’ nation with no state religion. The concept of ‘secular’ was inserted in the Constitution only at a much later date by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It was after the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution of India in 1976 that the Preamble to the Constitution asserted that India is a secular country. It is thus fair to assume that the makers of the Constitution did not envisage India as a secular state, to begin with. Moreover, even if accept that India is a ‘secular’ state by virtue of the 42nd amendment to the Indian Constitution, that would only mean that India does not have a State religion. As Pakistan is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, India, is not a Hindu state where the state religion is Hinduism. For the purpose of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, that still does not take away from the fact that by virtue of demography, India will remain a naturalised home for persecuted Hindus. It is often the wont of the Left that they tend to recognise the existence of India from the moment of its political freedom. They recognise the Indian State as having come into existence only after the political boundaries were drawn in 1947. However, Bharat exists for as long as civilisation has existed. The consciousness of Bharat does not exist from the moment political boundaries were drawn. The sacred land as described by our scriptures is India. This land is the mother of our entire existence. All our heroes, our greatest stories, our greatest accomplishments, our entire history basically, happened in this piece of land. India’s consciousness will, forever, remain Hindu. While accepting the truth might be hard with the politically correct narrative of ‘secularism’ having diseased our discourse, the truth is that Islam as a religion was introduced in India through violent conquests and barbaric Islamic rulers who were alien to the nation. Does this mean Indian Muslims are not just as Indian as the Hindus? Certainly not. However, the very cultural and existential foundation of India has been and shall forever remain Hindu even if the Indian State has no State religion constitutionally speaking. The Nehruvian Blunder After the partition, which was squarely based on religious lines owing to the demands of Jinnah, widespread riots had broken out in India and the newly formed Pakistan. The non-Muslim citizenry who were in Pakistan started making their way to India and the Muslim citizens in India started making their way to Pakistan. The migration is well documented and proven. In 1950, an accord was signed between Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan where each side pledged to secure its minorities and give equality of citizenship regardless of religion. Both sides promised to help recover looted property, assist in the recovery of abducted women and not recognise conversions made during communal disturbances. Essentially, Jawaharlal Nehru scuttled the de facto population exchange with the 1950 Accord. After the Accord was signed, Muslims, who had left West Bengal, returned and Nehru ensured that their property was restored to them. However, the travesties heaped on the Hindus continue to this day, unabated in Islamic Nations like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Quoting a report from DailyPioneer: Syama Prasad Mukherjee resigned from the Cabinet on April 1, 1950, in protest against Nehru’s failure to take Pakistan to task for the continued suffering of his people. At a Cabinet meeting the same day, Mukherjee said, “What do you care for us Bengali Hindus? What do you care for the criminal assaults on our women?” (Soundings in Modern South Asian History, ed. DA Low) Enraged at the renewed exodus of Hindus, which he viewed as deliberate, he suggested an exchange of populations, which Nehru rejected vehemently. Nehru, in his communication to the then West Bengal Chief Minister, had further said (as quoted in the DailyPioneer report): “I have been quite certain right from the beginning that everything should be done to prevent Hindus in east Bengal from migrating to West Bengal…I think the Hindu leaders of East Bengal, who have come away, have done no service to their people. If as you suggest things have gone too far already, then naturally, we shall all do what we can but I shudder at the prospect and the magnitude of the human misery that will come in its train. To the last, I shall try to check migration even if there is war”. Jawaharlal Nehru was thus, quite vehemently against population exchange and was, in fact, willing to fight a war to ensure that persecuted Hindus are not allowed to migrate back to India. While since the time of Nehru, Hindus were disallowed from migrating to their natural homeland, India, despite persecution, the influx of Muslim illegals continued un-checked. If today, the Citizenship Amendment Bill seeks to right that historic wrong that, in the name of ‘secularism’, sacrificed Hindus at the altar of Islamic Jihad, the Left must introspect why it is vehemently against the move in the very name of secularism. One has to ask at this point, where else are Hindus supposed to go if not India. The double standards of the Left While the Left has vehemently opposed the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the name of secularism, in the very name of secularism have rallied behind Rohingya illegals and demanded that the Indian State accept the influx from Myanmar. The Left has demanded that on humanitarian ground, India should accept Rohingya Muslims as refugees in India. India has, in its part, repeatedly asserted that firstly, India has no legal obligation to accept international refugees and secondly, Rohingya Muslims pose a security threat to India. It is thus intriguing that while the Left does not recognise India as the natural home for Hindus, the only country in the world apart from tiny Nepal that has a Hindu majority, it is insistent that India strain itself by accepting Muslim refugees who pose a security threat. Interestingly, even Saudi Arabia, the country which is considered to be the birthing place of Islam, has also deported hundreds of Rohingya Muslims from the country. Al Jazeera had reported that hundreds, who had outlived their visa had been put in detention camps and deported. The ones who resisted were handcuffed and deported. In fact, some who had lived there for their entire lives were also deported from the country when the police found that they did not have adequate documents. This begs two important questions: 1. If the Left is so concerned about the dignity of Human Life as it claims to be, then how is it that they have a problem with India accepting Hindus, Sikhs and even Christians persecuted in neighbouring Islamic countries? 2. How is it that the Left heart beats only for Muslim refugees whom even the Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia are not accepting? The ‘secular country’ bunkum that is furthered by the Left is used to browbeat India into accepting Muslim refugees when over 50 Islamic countries are not coming forth to help them. The narrative is also used to ensure that India forgets its Hindu consciousness thereby following Nehru’s path to abandon the Hindus who are regularly persecuted in Islamic Nations. As discussed earlier, the argument of ‘secular country’ can only be limited to the political Indian State not having a State religion, however, the argument can in no way be used to erase the Hindu foundation and consciousness of the country. The fact of the matter is that Islamic Nations are violent towards ‘Kaafir religions’. It a fact that can no longer be glossed over with mere rhetoric. With India, being a large ‘Kaafir nation’ surrounded by Islamic nations that seek to annihilate it, one has to ask oneself honestly how well the ethos of ‘secularism’ will serve the interest of the nation. For the purpose of this argument, I will club Jawaharlal Nehru with the Left as well. While he was vehemently against the Hindu population of East Bengal coming into West Bengal, he firstly did nothing to arrest the influx of Muslim illegals. Secondly, with the 1950 Accord, he scuttled the full exchange of population that could have taken care of the woes of India that it is diseased with today. This is not to say that Muslim citizens of India should ‘go to Pakistan’, an argument often used by the Left to show the non-Left as anti-Muslims. However, the fact does remain that a full transfer of population between India and Pakistan was the only logical step when a nation was carved out of India on the basis of Islam. The Muslims who stayed back often like to cite that as an excuse to whitewash the crimes of the Muslim community in India. However, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) is a testament to the fact that while several Muslims stayed back, the full population exchange was scuttled by Nehru and several of them are certainly loyal to India, the Ummah does reign supreme with a large section of Muslims. Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), which claims to be born after Indian Independence in 1948, is actually an off-shoot of Pakistan founder and Islamist Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s All India Muslim League (AIML). The All India Muslim League was succeeded by the Muslim League in Pakistan and the Indian Union Muslim League in India. In its website, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) claims that its motto is secularism and communal harmony but has often openly indulged in carrying out objectives which are contrary to its own motto. The Muslim League had strongly advocated for the establishment of a separate Muslim-majority nation-state, Pakistan, which successfully led to the partition of British India in 1947 by the British Empire. The birth of Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) in December 1947 was part of that intention to keep the spirit of the All India Muslim League alive. Muhammad Ismail, the first President of the Indian Union Muslim League after it split up from the Jinnah’s Muslim League, had actively participated in the partition movement of the country and was an ardent supporter of the creation of Pakistan. Interestingly, Muhammad Ismail, who claimed IUML was a secular outfit had, in fact, supported the retaining of Sharia law for Indian Muslims in the Constituent Assembly after India’s independence. Thus, while a large section of the Muslim population in India still does advocate for Sharia and vehemently supports Pakistan owing to its Islamic foundation, Hindus have no home to truly call their own because of tenets of ‘secularism’. While a portion of the Muslim population still bats for Pakistan, Hindus have one land that they can call their own, that have them as the majority. The fact remains that India’s foundation is Hindu and when that is acknowledged, it would in no way mean that Minorities don’t get their rights since a Hindu Nation would not function as an Islamic nation that has the concept of Kaafirs. In such a scenario, one has to concede that while the change from ‘secularism’ to ‘Hindu nation’ would take years if not decades, at least for the purpose of the Citizenship Amendment Bill, India is and always will be the natural home for all Hindus. Just like Israel is considered the natural home for Jews or any one of the 50 Islamic Nations should be considered the natural home for Muslims. Conclusion The arguments against India being the natural home for Hindus are mostly based on facetious arguments. That India is a ‘secular’ country, that it goes against the ethos of humanity and often, scriptures quoted out of context to assert that Hinduism itself talks about embracing everyone. Other arguments against the Citizenship Amendment Bill talk about why Ahmadiyyas, who are also persecuted in Islamic countries are not a part of the section of people who deserve asylum. The last argument has an explanation, albeit, a rather harsh one. Muslim Nations often persecute certain sections of the Muslim community because they claim that certain sects are not following the ‘true’ version of Islam. Hindus, cannot be held responsible for the internal troubles of the Muslim world. That is something that the Muslim world needs to reform to tackle all on its own. 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 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.

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 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.