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

It is time to stand up straight. It is time to be heard. It is time to fulfill the Dharma BJP was elected for. The BJP needs to realize that apathy is the self-defense of the powerless, and they are now powerless enough to be nonchalant. Orphans of Bengal: Disillusioned. Resigned. Defeated. Broken It is time to stand up straight. It is time to be heard. It is time to fulfill the Dharma BJP was elected for. The BJP needs to realize that apathy is the self-defense of the powerless, and they are now powerless enough to be nonchalant. Nupur J Sharma 4 May 2021 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] On the 2nd of May, the media reported on democracy, finally triumphing over ‘tyranny’ and ‘fascism’. Mamata Banerjee had summarily and decisively defeated BJP. A hard-fought battle, indeed. Through it all, I kept thinking back to the time I was interrogated in the police headquarters at Lal Bazaar, by an officer of the ‘Rowdy Department’. While TMC and BJP celebrated their victories, TMC for sweeping the state in a landslide and BJP for bettering their score, I battled with my own thoughts. As the actual wins continued to trickle in, we had just about wrapped up our election coverage at 10:00 PM, after reporting the victory of Suvendu Adhikari over Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram and the trends, that had stabilized somewhere about 77 seats for BJP and 210 for TMC. I was exhausted and I hardly spoke to my family. Fought with a dear friend even. As I could hear sounds of celebration out on the roads, a part of me knew that these celebratory sounds would soon turn into war bugles by the winning party and cries of despair by the losers. And so it did. Soon after TMC swept the state, news of startling violence began to trickle in. Avijit Sarkar was brutally lynched to death by alleged TMC cadres and just before his death, he had uploaded two videos on Facebook where he had narrated his harrowing ordeal. He had spoken about how TMC goons had even tortured and killed his adopted puppy. BJP karyakartas were being murdered, lynched and their homes being burnt to ashes and looted. In another incident, alleged TMC goons were seen thrashing female BJP workers in broad daylight in Kendamari village in Nandigram. BJP National General Secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya tweeted about the incident, along with a disturbing video. It could be seen that the two BJP workers were thrashed to the ground by two men. They pulled the victims by the hair while the onlookers stood as mute spectators. The man behind the camera could be heard encouraging the accused men to continue with their assault. The women fought back and tried to defend themselves after being assaulted in full public glare. One of the men intervened and the two victims could later be seen walking away. With the honour and lives of women being trampled upon and men being killed, another disturbing news came to the fore. Swapan Dasgupta, the BJP candidate from Tarakeshwar tweeted about 1,000 Hindus families in Birbhum, ready to flee the area because of the carnage by TMC marauders. Through it all, through the several pictures of carnage and bloodshed, through the several videos where you could hear the desperate pleas for help, I kept my head down and worked, intermittently talking to my friends and family about just how distressing and dire the situation really was. Disillusioned. Resigned. Defeated. Broken. The thing about violence is that it always happens to “other people” until it starts knocking on your door. The distance that journalists can build between them and the macabre incidents they report is rather staggering. Unphased by the carnage, we end up reporting thousands of cases where men are murdered, women are raped and killed and humanity dies in darkness. But for me, this felt different. Perhaps because I am a hypocrite. Perhaps because I felt the pain of others far more when I could almost smell the blood from my office. Perhaps because all the other cases I reported felt to have happened to ‘others’, far away from my own circle of security. This felt too close. And as it did, I felt unbridled rage taking over. The history of politics in Bengal has always been violence. Every regime that governed Bengal came to power stepping on the dead bodies of Hindus laying on the ground soaked with their blood. Mamata Banerjee came to power after the Nandigram carnage, where thousands were killed by the Communist regime. The communists ruled with an iron fist, killing thousands in their regime’s wake. In 1972, when the Congress won, it had unleashed massive violence on polling day. There were several allegations of rigging. There was gunfire, unbridled violence to either stop people from voting or force them to vote the Congress way. In a Telegraph article, it is noted: “There was gunfire and bombing. The Congress had taken complete control of the election set-up and was freely rigging the polls,” said Gopal Banerjee, 56, a CPM leader from Baranagar who had accompanied Basu on a round of the constituency as an 18-year-old that day. “Jyotibabu visited a few polling stations and decided to withdraw his candidature. ‘This cannot be tolerated,’ he told us,” Banerjee said. And right before the 1972 election, where Congress won, there was the Sainbari massacre . Where a family of Congress supporters were brutalised in the most ghastly manner. A mother was fed rice, soaked in her murdered son’s blood. Nirupam Sen, a known figure of the CPI(M) party, subsequently inducted as a member of the party’s central committee, was alleged to have led this massacre. Soon after the incident, the then Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi visited the Sain house to console the family. To share their grief. To tell them that they were not alone and the party leadership that the family gave their life for, was going to stand by them, toe to toe. Did it matter that she was the Prime Minister of India? Not really. She was also the leader of a party that was in power and as a leader, it was her duty to make sure that her soldiers knew she would not abandon them. The conspicuous absence of BJP leaders Today, when BJP leaders are being killed, the party response has been abysmal, to say the least. For hours after the killings started, the party leadership was conspicuous in its absence. While the official handles of BJP Bengal etc were tweeting, there was not one leader who was visible. On the ground or even on the far more protected space of social media. One could argue that regional strife should be handled by regional leaders. Perhaps someone like Babul Supriyo. A young, dynamic leader who rose from the ashes (not so much) and led his party to victory (well, not so much either) and has braved the violence to stand by those who look up to him (don’t think anyone does, and no he did not). He instead, tweeted a helpless tweet, yelping for help himself. Babul tweeted helplessly, inspiring little faith in his leadership or the leadership of the local unit of BJP. His message was rather clear.. I will tweet. But “I won’t stand by my own people because I am out of the cojones I showed while asking for votes and asking karyakartas to put their lives on the line to get me and my party elected”. In fact, there are audio clips doing the round where BJP karyakartas on the ground are basically admitting that the leadership is absent. There is no party. No sangathan. No leadership. They have been left alone to fend for themselves and protect themselves from the marauders after the leadership promised them that they will not be abandoned. Amidst all of this, BJP has declared that it would do a “nation wide dharna” and that JP Nadda would visit the families of the karyakartas under siege from TMC. Let us take a moment here to evaluate the response by BJP. While even leaders like Suvendu Adhikari, who is arguable the most powerful leader today in Bengal after Mamata Banerjee, is being attacked, BJP has chosen to take the path of Gandhi, which essentially means sitting quietly and doing absolutely nothing. What else is a Dharna, really? Just sit and hope that the public shaming helps shame the murderers? The marauders? The absolute shameless? Optics matter more than the lives of party workers? The grand issue with BJP is that while it sits in government with a brute majority, it has not the faintest clue how to wield that power for its own people. The opposition, however, is far less idealistic. They don’t care about what people who oppose them would think. They care about what their allies, their voters would think. BJP, on the other hand, appears to care far more about what the international media would write about them, what the Lutyens journalists would tweet, and how Congress would use it to leverage their own political fortunes. Their supporters can scream hoarse but statesman-itis that seems to afflict the BJP leadership is far more concerned about the optics for the ones that rather see them dead and gone than the ones who put their lives on the line for them, thinking that the party itself would keep working for their ideological, political and civilisational existence. With Bengal, the party knew exactly how the election would end. If they won, TMC would unleash their wrath on their cadre out of frustration. If they lose, which they now have, TMC would unleash their wrath on their cadres for pure retribution. Having known that, the local leadership made up of butterflies like Babul Supriyo have gone “underground” and expressed their inability to help their cadre. The BJP leadership told the local cadre to go forth and fight. To make this last stand for them. Because they would be protected. They would be looked after. But the white-collar-bhadroloks of BJP-Delhi does not seem to have the slightest clue about the street politics of Bengal. Perhaps if they are too concerned about the optics and are unable to protect their own workers, they should just tell their workers to protect themselves, in so many words. Self-defence, after all, is a divine right. Self-defense is as much a state of mind as it is about the weapons used and techniques employed. Let the BJP workers think that they are worth defending. And the process starts with the Delhi-white-collar politicians making way for local leaders who know how street politics works in Bengal. What it takes to defend their workers. It is time to make way for someone like Suvendu Adhikari and give him the power to do as he deems fit. It is time to stand up straight. It is time to be heard. It is time to fulfil the Dharma BJP was elected for. The BJP needs to realise that apathy is the self-defence of the powerless, and they are now powerless enough to be nonchalant. The BJP faces an identity crisis similar to that of Congress in 2011. It is time to be counted for those who stood by them and trusted them, without worrying about those who will burn this nation to see them gone.

'Reality Bytes' is a podcast series where the truth is not taboo. Hosted by Nupur J Sharma, the editor-in-chief of OpIndia. Podcast 'Reality Bytes' Interviews with Nupur J ... Play Video Play Video 02:26:38 BJP, Modi, supporters and dissent: A discussion on caste, politics, Hindutva, tradition and more In this conversation, OpIndia and UpWord collaborate to bring a scintillating conversation about the varied opinions on the Dharmic spectrum. The conversation touches upon difficult and sensitive subjects like caste, jati, worshipping politicians and political parties, BJP supporters self-censoring, tradition vs science, and more. Watch this discussion as Rahul Roushan, Ashish Dhar, Anand Ranganathan, and Nupur J Sharma agree, disagree, and vow to continue the discussion. 00:00:00 - Intro 00:00:47 - Why this conversation? 00:07:22 - Bigotry accusations on Anand 00:18:25 - Is Anand a Congress stooge? 00:25:32 - What does it mean to be a Modi supporter today? 00:31:44 - Political views evolve 00:38:42 - Censorship & cancel culture 00:51:56 - Hindu unity 00:53:06 - Caste politics 01:00:16 - Birth-based caste and Hindu society 01:12:55 - Science, Philosophy, and Hindu culture 01:30:13 - Inter-caste marriage 01:46:38 - Hindu tradition, justice and equality 01:53:02 - The narrative of caste atrocities 02:15:07 - Non-negotiables for Hindus Play Video Play Video 02:44:11 Fake ‘Hindu terror’ bogey: TRUTH about Dabholkar murder, conspiracy against Hindus & Sanatan Sanstha Narendra Dabholkar, the leader of the Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti and a supposed 'rationalist', was fatally shot in Pune on August 20, 2013. Almost immediately, Sanatan Sanstha, a Hindu organisation, was blamed for the murder. What followed a terribly botched-up investigation and a deep conspiracy to implicate Hindus and further the mythical Hindu terror bogey. In this podcast, Nupur J Sharma talks to Advocate Virendra Ichalkaranjikar, the lawyer representing the accused Hindus in the murder and Ramesh Shinde, the national spokesperson of Hindu Janjagruti Samiti. Note: This podcast was recorded on the 4th of May, a week before the Dabholkar verdict was out. The Sanatan Sanstha members, NT surgeon Tawde, Sanjeev Punalekar, and Vikram Bhave were acquitted in the verdict. Two accused were given life sentences - Sachin Andure and Sharad Kalaskar. While they were convicted, the sessions court removed UAPA charges against them. Advocate Virendra believes they will be acquitted in the High Court. Play Video Play Video 51:22 Reality Bytes Ep 12: 'Modi's Northeast Story' by Tuhin Sinha and Aditya Pittie The book ‘Modi’s North East Story’ by Tuhin Sinha and Aditya Pittie is a collection of essays featuring contributions from people like Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Union Minister Kiren Rijuju, Nagaland MP Phangnon Konyak and many others. In this, Nupur J Sharma speaks to the authors Tuhin Sinha and Aditya Pittie Play Video Play Video 01:34:29 Reality Bytes Ep 11: The Long Struggle for Gyanvapi Temple and 'Waiting For Shiva' I Vikram Sampath Hindus have been waiting for Shiva, much like Nandi. The book by historian Vikram Sampath, Waiting for Shiva: Unearthing the Truth of Kashi’s Gyan Vapi, traces the historical, religious, archaeological, and legal arguments to bring forth the truth about the Temple - and to explain the undying significance of the campaign to reclaim Hindu places of worship. Recently, the ASI survey of the Gyanvapi premises (disputed Masjid) revealed evidence that Hindus knew existed. But why was the survey opposed? What is the significance of the Gyanvapi Masjid case? What is the historical significance of Kashi? In this podcast with Nupur J Sharma, Vikram Sampath answers questions about the history of the Temple, the struggle by the Hindus for its reclamation spanning centuries and the lessons we can draw from that struggle today. Blog This is your section paragraph. As the first text your readers encounter, this copy should clearly convey what your site is all about. Explore

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Intersectionality is thus a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of one's social and political identities (e.g., gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) might combine to create unique modes of discrimination. Why the Muslim perpetrators’ name must be mentioned explicitly when the victim is a Hindu Intersectionality is thus a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of one's social and political identities (e.g., gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) might combine to create unique modes of discrimination. Nupur J Sharma 2 December 2019 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] The brutal rape and murder in Telangana has shaken the very conscience of the nation. With widespread outrage not limited to social media, the case has occupied the media’s primary focus and rightly so. While primarily and exclusively, rape is about men exerting their depraved power over women, it is the Left which often peels layers and concerns itself with semantics. They did so in the Telangana case as well, and this article is to present the other side of the story. It is to understand why the identity of the rapist is also of consequence by extrapolating the Left’s theories. The main accused in the case is one Mohammad Pasha. Pasha was the mastermind of the heinous crime and the one who was responsible for killing her. It was Pasha who smothered her while raping her and it is he who strangled her by putting his hands on her nose and mouth. By all accounts, whether it is the remand report or even Left websites like The Quint who are trying to interview his mother to paint him as a victim of poverty, the foremost accused is Pasha. The other three accused, equally brutal, are Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen and Chennakeshavulu. With Mohammad Pasha alias Mohammad Ali alias Arif being the mastermind of this heinous crime, it was obvious for his name to be splashed everywhere. His identity as a Muslim, fuelled his name being highlighted further. The Left immediately sprung up to action and condemned the crime being given a “communal colour”. In fact, The Quint, that is now trying to whitewash the Mohammad by interviewing his poor mother, did a fact-check that essentially slammed “BJP supporters” for communalising the incident. India Today even tweeted that ‘Rapists have no religion’ while using a Hijabi woman as their model. When a heinous crime such as this happened, should the perpetrator be the prime focus or the victim? This is the first, foremost and the eternal question that plagues reportage and conversation around such issues. However, even if the victim is the focus, the invariable glare comes on to the monsters who would so brutally snuff the life out of an innocent. The contention here, however, was not the fact that the perpetrators were being spoken about. The content of the Left was that the ‘right’ was communalising the crime by focussing on Mohammad instead of all 4 perpetrators (the others were not Muslims). At this juncture, one must ask the broader question independent of the Telangana case but not excluding it – is there a rationale of mentioning the identity of the perpetrator when he is a Muslim and the victim is a Hindu? To answer that question we must understand why media and the Left highlight the identity of Dalit victims even in crimes which are not motivated by caste considerations and then understand whether that rationale holds true for crimes where the perpetrator or the main conspirator of a crime is a Muslim and the victim is a Hindu. Why the identity of a Dalit victim is mentioned after a crime and the concept of ‘Intersectionality’ It is often noticed that the caste identity of a Dalit victim is mentioned by the media and the Left while reporting crimes. The non-Left has theorised that this is perhaps to drive a wedge in the society and further the narrative that in Hindu majority India, Dalits and lower-castes are brutalised on a regular basis and therefore, further the ‘Muslim-Dalit unity’ trope that would then help ‘secular fronts’ electorally. Essentially, the non-Left has religated this practice of mentioning the caste identity of Dalit victims to the ‘break-India project’ and the project to demonise Hindus. While that may be the agenda for several media houses and Left intelligentsia, the rationale behind highlighting the caste identity of Dalit victims has a separate origin altogether. The theory essentially believes that the victim would have been at a lower risk had her identity not been that of a Dalit and hence, mentioning the caste identity is essential as even if the crime is not motivated by caste animosity, the victim was at a higher risk by virtue of her caste. To reach this conclusion, the sociological theory of ‘Intersectionality’ must be understood threadbare. ‘Intersection’ is essentially the point where two entities meet. This concept is then extrapolated to society in general. When talking about the sociological concept of Intersectionality, one must understand what society and people are defined as. The society is defined by the people, the social constructs, way of living and belief system. When it comes to the people who make up that society, one needs to understand what a person’s identity is. Identity itself is essential ‘who a person is and what he identifies himself as’. An individual is made up of his beliefs and qualities and those which are unique to him, identify him as a person which, in turn, shapes his perceptions and value systems. A person, through his own perceptions and value systems, identifies himself and what his relationship is with the society on the whole. The perception and value system of the individual is shaped by the messages he receives from the society, his school, parents, neighbourhood, religious institutions, so on and so forth. Intersectionality is thus a theoretical framework for understanding how aspects of one’s social and political identities (e.g., gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, etc.) might combine to create unique modes of discrimination. So for example, a Jewish woman might be discriminated against not exclusively for her Jewish identity or gender identity but because both these identities intersect and create a unique form of discrimination in a place where Christian women are not discriminated against. Or, where a black woman is more discriminated against than a black man. For instance, a White woman is less privileged than a White Man but more privileged than a Black Man. Applying this theory, the caste and gender identities of a Dalit woman are mentioned in the media when a crime is committed, since the victim was at a higher risk of being discriminated against not just because of the historical suppression of Dalits on the whole but also because of her gender identity even if the crime is not motivated specifically by caste animosity. While the media does overdo it and their motivations might be suspect, there is merit to the argument that a Dalit woman living in a disadvantaged area is more at risk than an upper-caste woman in the same area or in a more affluent area and thus, it is not incorrect to mention the caste and gender identity of the victim who might have been at a higher risk due to the intersectionality of her identities. Intersectionality should apply not only to the victim but also the perpetrator Intersectionality as a concept is mostly applied to the victim where intersecting identities of the victim puts her at a greater risk of discrimination. However, the concept of Intersectionality must also apply to the perpetrator on how his intersecting identities make him more prone to committing a crime against the victim, whose intersecting identities puts her at greater risk with respect to the perpetrator in question. While the identity of the victim is important and nothing can diminish that, the identity of the perpetrator how the identities of the victim and the perpetrator intersect at a societal level is equally important to understand the risk the victim faces historically. It is pertinent to understand here that in a country as diverse as India, it is not only the identity of the victim that determines the factor of risk but also the identity of the perpetrator. It is important to understand how the two communities view each other through social constructs that determine the factor of risk the victim faces from the perpetrators of a particular identity. For example, the media in India and the Left mentions the Dalit identity to drive home the point that Dalits are oppressed by upper-caste Hindus. Here, it is not only the identity of the Dalit victim that is in play but also the identity of the perpetrator. That the Left mentions the identity even of the perpetrator does not take away the gender identity or the caste identity of the victim. However, the victim was not at higher risk only because of her identity as a Dalit woman but also because of the intersectional identity of the perpetrator – Upper-caste Hindu male. Why the same theory must be applied when the perpetrator is a Muslim and the victim is a Hindu While the Left highlights the intersecting identities of a Dalit woman when a crime is committed, when the identity of a Muslim criminal is mentioned especially in sexual crimes against Hindu women, the allegation that is often hurled is that the non-Left is trying to ‘communalise’ a crime. However, if the same theory is applied to such crimes, would it not justify highlighting the religious identity of the criminal when the perpetrator is a Muslim and the victim is a Hindu? The sociological concept of Intersectionality itself admits that tenets of the concept are fluid and change depending upon time and place. For example, we do not talk about race or gender contracts the way we used to 100 years ago. When we talk about religious identities, one must also acknowledge in no uncertain terms that Hindus and Muslims have been co-existing in India but the historicity of that relationship is strained and blood-soaked at the very least. Hindus have seen over 800 years of Islamic rule where they were beaten, raped, killed and converted. Where their temples were trampled upon and their identity as Hindus was under siege. Post the Islamic rule, in Independent India, the atrocities committed by Islamists have not stopped, whether the Left likes to believe it or not. If we take Kashmir, for example, India’s only Muslim dominated state, the picture becomes evident. The Hindu minority of the state were beaten, raped, murdered and cleansed from the state. The slogans that emanated from the mosques of Kashmir in the 90s said that Hindu men should leave the valley but leave their women behind for the Islamists. The chants also asked the Hindus to either convert to Islam or leave the valley. With these examples alone it is acceptable to conclude that Hindus have been historically at a disadvantaged position with respect to Muslims in India and have often been victimised, brutally, by Muslims. Other than collective crimes by the Muslim community like that of the Islamic invasion and the plight of Hindus in Kashmir, several crimes at the individual level too have proved that Muslims are more likely to victimise Hindus and this barring the acts of rioting that the Muslim community has initiated. A large section of Muslims believe that Hindus are Kafirs and idol-worshippers who deserve sub-human treatment, even death. The mentality is evident in several cases like that of Kamlesh Tiwari, where he was brutally murdered for allegedly insulting the Prophet of Islam. Without getting into a long-winded section explaining an established truth, a list of 50 crimes that were committed by Muslims against Hindus in a short span of time can be read to get the drift. With the established truth that Muslims are more likely to target Hindus, in crimes where Muslims are the perpetrators, mentioning the religious identity of the Muslim is pertinent considering it is the intersectionality of the Hindu and Muslim identities of the victim and perpetrator that puts the Hindus at higher risk of being victimised. Why mentioning Muslim identity is even more pertinent when the victim is a Hindu woman Intersectionality is a sociological concept says that intersecting identifies give rise to unique models of oppression. We have already established the Hindu identity itself puts a victim at a higher risk when the perpetrator is a Muslim. With intersecting identities of gender and religion, the Hindu woman is placed at a higher risk than Hindu men, for example, or Muslim women when the perpetrator is a Muslim. Historically, Hindu women have been oppressed brutally by Muslims. One recalls the rampant rapes during the Islamic rule, and even in Kashmir where women were brutally raped by Islamists. It is a technique that many Islamists adapt to convert Kafir women to Islam. In recent times too, we have seen several cases where the Muslim perpetrator victimised the Hindu woman. There have been rampant cases of Love-Jihad where Muslim men trap Hindu women with the excuse of a relationship and then, convert, rape and/or murder. It is thus established that the intersecting identities of gender (women) and religion (Hindu) do put women at a higher risk. In individual cases, one can never judge the risk factor. Even when Dalit women are victimised and their identities mentioned as such, it is entirely possible that in a particular case, the intersecting identities of gender and caste played no role in her victimisation. However, the identity is mentioned due to Intersectionality, as a matter of principle keeping in mind the history of abuse and oppression faced by Dalit women. In the case of Hindu women too, nobody says that in every case, the Hindu woman’s religion and gender identity is necessarily a contributing factor for the Muslim perpetrator, but as a principle, considering the historicity of atrocities by Muslims on Hindu women, the identity of the perpetrator must be mentioned. In the Telangana case, for example, the head of the gang that committed the heinous crime was Mohammad Pasha, a Muslim. The victim was a Hindu woman. Now, we do not know the religiosity of Pasha himself, however, as a principle, one is to ask if the women would have been at less risk if she was a Hijabi woman instead and was the victim at a higher risk because of her intersectional identity of being a Hindu woman in front of a Muslim perpetrator. While there is no correct answer considering we do not know the level of indoctrination or religiosity of Pasha, the identity of the Muslim perpetrator is to be mentioned, just as the caste and gender identity of the Dalit woman victim is mentioned regardless of motivating factors of the crime. What happens when the victim is a Dalit woman and a perpetrator is a Muslim man? We have already established that the Muslim identity of the perpetrator is an essential component and should be mentioned when the victim if a Hindu woman. However, what happens when the victim is a Dalit woman and the perpetrator is a Muslim man? The media is often extremely dishonest when it comes to such crimes. As explained in detail, intersectionality is when the intersecting identities of an individual put her at a higher risk. As also discussed above, when the perpetrator is of Muslim identity, the intersecting identities of both the perp and the victim play a role in determining the risk factor that the victim faces. When a Muslim man victimises a Dalit woman, one must ask the very important question of which intersecting identity of that woman put her in harm’s way. Was it her identity as a Dalit woman or as a Hindu woman? When the perpetrator is a Muslim, one has to assume that for him, the differentiation between a Brahmin woman and a Dalit woman does not exist. For him, the two intersecting identities that put the victim at a higher risk is that of gender (woman) and that of her religion (Hindu) and not of her caste (Dalit). For a Muslim, per his religion, all Hindu women are Kafirs and thus, the Muslim will not differentiate between different castes. In such a scenario, one has to ask why the media and the Left continue to highlight the Dalit woman identity of the victim instead of the intersecting identities of a Muslim man victimising a Hindu woman? While the concept in itself holds merit, it is this chicanery of the media that raises several doubts on their intent. Conclusion This theory of Intersectionality, while a sociological concept is rooted in Marxism. While the roots and their explanation is a subject for another day, it suffices to say that the concept itself is rooted in communism and its allied offshoots such as feminism. One has to wonder why then does the Left often raise hell when the Muslim identity of the perpetrator is mentioned? Is it because if their denial to accept empirical evidence that Muslims are often the oppressing force or their blatant agenda that Hindu lives aren’t as precious as Muslim lives? Their misplaced notions that Dalits are not Hindus and are in fact closer to Muslims in their political fantasy? Either way, while we reject Communism, their theory of Intersectionality, to have merit, must be applied to all categories of crimes, which also means that the Muslim identity of the perpetrator must be explicitly mentioned when the victim is a Hindu woman. Identity is the principal focus of the theory of intersectionality. It mandates that every individual be viewed through the prism of his collective identity, This theory is extremely mainstream in the Left and acquired the status of a hallowed doctrine in academia. Concepts such as ‘Savarna privilege’ and ‘White Male Privilege’ have their origins in this theory. Therefore, leftists cannot discard this theory simply because the current situation does not suit their agenda. It must be applied in all situations uniformly. Leftists cannot argue that every individual and situation must be viewed through the prism of the identities of the individuals involved and then claim that the Muslim identity of the rapist does not matter when the victim is a Hindu woman.

We would see a time where we would wish we had learnt our lessons from the first partition of India - and that day, we would look at our children and find it onerous to explain why we did nothing when we could stop what appears to be an eventuality today. Rangeela Rasool, 295A, partition: History threatens to repeat as demands for a special law to punish ‘gustakh-e-rasool’ grows We would see a time where we would wish we had learnt our lessons from the first partition of India - and that day, we would look at our children and find it onerous to explain why we did nothing when we could stop what appears to be an eventuality today. Nupur J Sharma 13 June 2022 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Nupur Sharma, the former BJP spokesperson, has been caught in a dangerous storm after she made certain innocuous comments during a TimesNow debate. After Indian Muslims like AltNews’ co-founder Mohammad Zubair dog-whistled against her, she was declared a ‘blasphemer’ and several Islamist outfits, including Taliban and Al Qaeda, are now demanding her head on pike. Amid the death threats, Indian Islamic outfits have come out to demand a law that punishes those who speak ‘against’ Islam. Darul Uloom Deoband, an Uttar Pradesh-based Islamist outfit, has demanded that Nupur Sharma be punished for her statements against Islam. They said that those who make objectionable statements against the symbols of Islam “to spread hatred in the country” need to be punished severely. But these are the statements one expects from Islamist outfits. However, the statement by Maulana Mufti Abul Qasim, the VC of Darul Deoband, is a telling sign of the things to come. Qasim issued a statement on Wednesday demanding a special law that strictly punishes those who insult Islam. Reportedly, Maulana said, “I strongly condemn the insulting remarks against our beloved Prophet. Religious sentiments of the followers of any faith cannot be provoked in the name of freedom of expression. Insulting the Prophet will not be tolerated by Muslims in India or abroad”. According to reports, he further said that the Indian government should enact a special law “to deal with cases where religious symbols of Muslims are targeted”. The Maulana further spoke about communal harmony while talking about how the Muslim community deserves a special law. He said, “India is a secular country and people here have been living together for centuries. These communal and extremist elements are not only harming the country’s social harmony but also disturbing the nation’s secular fabric and ethos”. At the very outset, let us marvel at how the Islamist’s hate is also dressed up as harm to the “social fabric” caused by their victim. Essentially, they fracture the harmony and social fabric with arson, rioting, protests, and slogans like “Gustakh-e-Rasool Ki Saza, Sar Tan Se Juda”, and then blame their victim, who they want to behead for hurting their fragile emotions just enough to send them down the path of violence. This sleight of hand is almost amusing as it keeps repeating itself over and over again. They take offence to just about anything, run riots, commit violence and then, blame the person exercising their freedom of speech for fracturing social fabric and harmony. It almost appears as a blackmailing tactic. Do as we please or we will burn your country and blame you for it. Besides this oft-repeated pattern, what was carefully tucked away in his statement, was the demand for a “special law” meant only to protect the frangible feelings of the Muslim community. While blaming the victim for the violence unleashed by the Islamists, Maulana Mufti Abdul Qasim demanded that the state enact a special law that outlaws hurting the sentiments of Muslims and insulting their religious symbols. The demand has come from several other Islamic quarters as well. In fact, Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah also said that in Islamic nations, the crime of Blasphemy would be punishable by death, however, in India, no action has been taken. While he did not directly ask for a special law or for the death penalty, his insinuations were rather clear – the ‘moderate Muslim’ would be more than happy if a special law was enacted that specifically punished, in the harshest terms, those who hurt feelings of the Muslim community. The demand for a special law may seem innocuous and an impossibility that we must summarily ignore, however, one has to acknowledge that what is happening now is a dangerous repeat of the events that led to the breaking up of India. In this regard, it would bode well to remember the case of Mahashay Rajpal, who published Rangeela Rasool and was ultimate assassinated for it. We mostly here 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). We must bear in mind that this was an era before the existence of Section 295A, therefore, thankfully, the conversation around the law cannot be used to skirt the issue of radical Islam and how its street power not only affects change in policy and law, but also has scant regard for the law of the land when they decide to eliminate those who do “gustakhi” against “Rasool”. 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. With the Muslim mobs going on a rampage, 295A was passed to assuage the feelings of the mobs and in the same year, there were two unsuccessful attempts at Mahashay Rajpal’s life. On April 6th, 1929 a 19-year-old carpenter named Ilm ud din stabbed Mahashay Rajpal on 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. He paid the price for publishing that book despite the court acquitting him and the Muslims getting a special law to protect their fragile feelings. Not too long after India was torn apart by those who were convinced that the Muslim community could be placated. Before the Rangeela Rasool controversy, Hindus saw the Khilafat movement, the support it got from Congress and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and after that, Hindus saw the rise of a Muslim leader like Mohammad Ali Jinnah, leading India’s partition. While Rangeela Rasool did not cause the partition, there was a common thread – a clear, stark, unmissable thread. Mahashay Rajpal’s murderer was represented in the court of law by Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Iqbal, who is eulogised today by the Left Liberals, wrote a song in his honour. Pakistan gave him the honour of Ghazi. The partition of India happened on religious lines. It was not because Hindus did not concede to the demands for concessions made by Muslims or because Muslims felt persecuted in syncretic India – it was because the Muslim community came together and proclaimed that they were a nation unto themselves and that they could not coexist with Kafirs, ie Hindus. The idea of Islamic religious nationalism significantly impacted the psyche of the Muslim community where their allegiance to the Ummah, the global Muslim brotherhood, far outweighed their allegiance toward India. The Muslim community asserted that the Muslims of India were a “nation” with their distinct religious, cultural, and political ideology and could not possibly survive with Hindus, who they considered a separate nation, per se. Did the Two-Nation Theory result from the feeling of persecution and alienation by the Muslim community as so many Left historians would have us believe? Was it first propagated by Veer Savarkar as they claim? Certainly not. Syed Ahmad Khan, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University said in 1876, “I am convinced now that Hindus and Muslims could never become one nation as their religion and way of life was quite distinct from each other.” Seven years later, he voiced similar sentiments. He said, “Friends, in India, there live two prominent nations which are distinguished by the names of Hindus and Mussalmans…To be a Hindu or a Muslim is a matter of internal faith which has nothing to do with mutual relationships and external conditions…Hence, leave God’s share to God and concern yourself with the share that is yours…India is the home of both of us…By living so long in India, the blood of both have [sic] changed.” Twelve years later, he stated, “Now, suppose that the English community and the army were to leave India, taking with them all their cannons and their splendid weapons and all else, who then would be the rulers of India?… Is it possible that under these circumstances two nations—the Mohammedans and the Hindus—could sit on the same throne and remain equal in power? Most certainly not. It is necessary that one of them should conquer the other. To hope that both could remain equal is to desire the impossible and the inconceivable. But until one nation has conquered the other and made it obedient, peace cannot reign in the land.” Jinnah had later famously said, “It is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality,” he said. “Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literary traditions. They neither intermarry nor eat together, and indeed they belong to two different civilisations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions.” This was said by Jinnah in 1940 in an address to the Muslim League at the time, only a few years after he represented the killer of Mahashay Rajpal. The murder of Mahashay Rajpal was the Two-Nation Theory being written with the blood of a man in painful detail. The Muslim community truly believed that Hindus and Muslims were too distinct in their faith and way of life to ever live together peacefully. In the case of Rangeela Rasool, those who had written provocative books about Hindu Devi and Devatas were never harmed. Their initial provocation was glossed over completely by MK Gandhi and the intelligentsia at the time, so much so, that most people don’t even know today that Rangeela Rasool was a response to the Hindu faith being satirised and not a product of blind hate. In that situation, the Muslim community itself thought that the insult to Hindus was acceptable, naturally, since insulting the faith of the Kafirs is par for the course in the Islamic faith, however, Gustakh-e-Rasool invited a death penalty, whether the law of the land endorsed that punishment or not. The Muslim community wanted to live by Sharia and whether the state granted their wish or not, they were more than willing to snatch it, enforce it, and do what it takes – which meant taking a knife and murdering Mahashay Rajpal. The fact that Jinnah defended the killer of Rajpal also makes evident that the murder itself was an act of bravery for the Islamic world. He was defended by the very leader who would, a few years later, create a “land of the pure” for the Musalmans because according to their divine law, the death penalty was justified for the Kafir. Koenraad Elst mentions this in his book ‘Decolonising the Hindu Mind’. Today, when there are demands for a special law to protect the easily-hurt sentiments of the Muslim community as a result of the comments by Nupur Sharma on TimesNow, one must look back and take lessons from history. Nupur Sharma, who seems to have shaken the foundation of several Islamic nations, not just the Islamists back home, made the comments she did after Muslim panellists on TimesNow and other channels repeatedly mocked the Shivling found in the disputed Gyanvapi structure. There were Maulanas who mocked why Hindus worship a penis, others who pointed to random structures in the middle of the road to tell Hindus to go worship that structure as well, and overall, the painting of the Hindu community as a barbarian cult simply because they wanted their places of worship back, once demolished by Muslim invaders. Much like the Rangeela Rasool controversy, the initial provocation against the Hindu community was forgotten, however, Nupur’s response to the comments was turned into an international rallying point for the Islamic world, with ‘Gustakh-e-Rasool ki saza sar tan se juda’ slogans, enactments of her beheading, her effigies being hung in the middle of the road and more. The Islamist mobs that took the street have scant regard for the law of the land, much like the mobs that rioted after Rangeela Rasool’s first edition sold out quickly, and they truly believe that their Islamic laws are above the laws of the land – the laws made by Kafirs living in a Kafir state. If the Rangeela Rasool controversy and the murder of Mahashay Rajpal was the Two-Nation Theory in action, then, the Nupur Sharma incident is its action replay. Karl Marx, the Father of Communism, stated in 1854, “The Koran and the Mussulman legislation emanating from it reduce the geography and ethnography of the various people to the simple and convenient distinction of two nations and of two countries; those of the Faithful and of the Infidels. The Infidel is “harby,” i.e. the enemy. Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever.” Back then, we had the likes of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who condemned Mahashay Rajpal and not the frenzied Muslim mob. Back then, we had Gandhi embrace the Moplah Muslims and blame the Hindus for their own genocide after he gave his support to the Khilafat movement. Back then, we saw a new law promulgated simply to spare the delicate feelings of the Islamists. Today, we hear the Liberals condemn Nupur Sharma instead of the frenzied Muslim mob. Today, we have political leaders ousting Nupur Sharma and asserting that she affected our relationship with the Islamic world, resulting in the Muslim mobs taking to the streets and rioting after Jumma Namaz. Today, we have those who deny the very existence of radical Islam and the challenges that India faces and those, who called the Delhi anti-Hindu riots an ‘anti-Muslim pogrom’. Today, we see the demands for a special law to spare the feelings of the Islamists. Bharat stands at a delicate precipice. We refused to recognise the Two-Nation Theory in action back then and if we choose to close our eyes today, if we choose to repeat the mistake of fixating on the idea of brotherhood, pluralism, syncretic culture and all the other punch words that politicians like to mouth, Maa Bharati will see a time soon, where her very existence would be under threat yet again. We would see a time where we would wish we had learnt our lessons from the first partition of India – and that day, we would look at our children and find it onerous to explain why we did nothing when we could stop what appears to be an eventuality today.

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

Ahimsa, essentially, is doing everything to stop Himsa. Ahimsa is not the absence of Himsa, but the use of Sam, Dam, Danda, Bhed to achieve peace. We could see Rahul Gandhi's speech today in the parliament as just another Hinduphobic rant. Or we could see it for what it was - an attempt to keep the Hindu community ashamed and guilty. India has suffered the consequences of the apotheosis of one Gandhi - we certainly cannot afford another blunder. As Rahul Gandhi equates Hinduism with Ahimsa, time to remember why Hindus must not fall for 'another Gandhi' Ahimsa, essentially, is doing everything to stop Himsa. Ahimsa is not the absence of Himsa, but the use of Sam, Dam, Danda, Bhed to achieve peace. We could see Rahul Gandhi's speech today in the parliament as just another Hinduphobic rant. Or we could see it for what it was - an attempt to keep the Hindu community ashamed and guilty. India has suffered the consequences of the apotheosis of one Gandhi - we certainly cannot afford another blunder. Nupur J Sharma 1 July 2024 Previous Item Next Item [object Object] Calling it as one sees it is a burden that some bear. While it is often branded a virtue, for me, it has been a physiological reflex, often, much to my detriment. It is almost as if I am simply incapable of shutting up, even when shutting up would certainly have its rewards. One subject that I have, yet again, refused to shut up about and invited the anger of many fellow Hindus, is the merciless defanging of the Hindu community by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I genuinely and truly believe that the bane of the Hindu community was internalising the lessons of misplaced Ahimsa, predominantly spoon-fed by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – a man who was ‘christened’, quite literally, as a messiah. The internalised guilt inflicted on the community even when it wanted to defend itself crippled us for generations and to date, we pay the price for trading our right to survival for brotherhood – a sentiment that is delicately nursed by carefully inculcated delusions. I have, of course, been conferred with several not-so-flattering titles for the views I hold on the issue. In fact, I have often had arguments with my colleague Rahul Roushan on the subject as well. While I believe MK Gandhi was the Hindu community’s undoing, Rahul seems to be far more forgiving. He has repeatedly asserted that he forgives MK Gandhi for his shenanigans because he was a practicing Hindu and was not Hinduphobic – like Nehru, for example. While I insist that MK Gandhi and the ideals he professed must be torn down and dethroned, Rahul believes that Hindus gain nothing by demonising Gandhi and is willing to let him have the throne along with others who perhaps deserve the pedestal. I had just about moved on from MK Gandhi and started to shift my focus to Dr BR Ambedkar when I heard another ‘Gandhi’ trying the same tricks that MK Gandhi employed, only in a far more sinister manner. Rahul Gandhi in the parliament said , “Modi ji said once that India has never attacked any other country. There is a reason for that. Because this country is a country of Ahimsa (non-violence), this country is not a country of fear. So all our great personalities spoke about Ahimsa, spoke about removing fear… daro mat, darao mat… and on the other hand, Shiv ji says daro mat, darao mat, shows the Abhay Mudra, talks about Ahimsa and buries his Trishul on the ground. And the people who call themselves Hindus talk about violence, hate and lies 24 hours. You are not a Hindu. In Hinduism, it is clearly mentioned that one should stand with the truth…”. After this, Rahul Gandhi randomly held out his hand to show the Abhay Mudra (essentially, claiming that it was the Congress hand symbol). Now, we know this rant by Rahul Gandhi is insidious. We know it is sinister. But my reaction to Rahul Gandhi’s rant this time was far more circumspect. I found myself not dismissing him as a blithering fool, but instead, trying to put his speech in context – historical and contemporary. For those who support PM Modi politically, their immediate reaction would be to say that Rahul Gandhi insulted the entire Hindu community by claiming that Hindus only talk about violence and hate. Of course, this is the simplest interpretation of what he said. I, however, believe there is more to it. There are two specific components to what Rahul Gandhi said in the parliament. First, Hinduism’s core tenet is that of non-violence. The other is that Modi does not represent all Hindus – this he said after PM Modi made a rare intervention saying that Rahul Gandhi’s characterisation of all Hindus as a people who espouse violence is a serious matter. Both these components were meant to specifically cater to disgruntled Modi supporters and the young voter – who is fed the “Sabarmati ke sant” delusion as a matter of state policy. As for the second component, I believe it is meant to specifically cater to the ‘disgruntled Hindu voter’ – a segment that has started to look beyond PM Modi for a resolution to Hindu issues. This disgruntled voter believes that the political support base has started hyphenating PM Modi and Hindu issues, often sacrificing the latter for the interest of the former. For both these segments, it is essential to see through the sinister, British-esque designs of Rahul Gandhi. Ahimsa – a central tenet of Hinduism? One of the first instances when Hindus were defanged by the British was with the passage of The Indian Arms Act 1878. Right after the revolt of 1857, the British, petrified of another armed resistance to their occupations, passed a law that barred Indians from carrying firearms without a license. The British understood that their best chance to continue their occupation of Bharat was through the de-arming and de-fanging of Hindus. The de-arming and neutering of Hindus to ensure minimum resistance to their own subjugation became a template – followed not only by the British and MK Gandhi but continued to this day by the party created by the British – the Congress party. Rahul Gandhi, quite confidently, spoke about Ahimsa being the central tenet of Sanatan Dharma – as if those who pick up weapons to defend themselves and/or the community are committing a cardinal sin. One can’t possibly blame him for his narrow view of Sanatan Dharma, given his Christian mother must have imparted the hollow punchlines that come with religious moral science lectures in Catholic schools as the gospel truth – at least theoretically, which is never followed by the faithful but prove as a great tool for religious brainwashing by inculcating a false sense of moral superiority. Sanatan Dharma has an illustrious history and the Kshatra tradition which revolves around the destruction of evil and is far from the neutered, comatose version of Hinduism that Congress wants to peddle for their own political gains. One of the primary root words of Kshatra is ‘himsayam’ which relates to the Kshatra’s duty to destroy evil. The etymological explanation of the word Kshatra is, in itself, “one who protects from harm and injury”, the fundamental quality of the Kshatra being to protect Dharma and therefore, the Kshatra-guna itself is related to protection – by force – if necessary. The pacifists, who follow the path shown by MK Gandhi, often feel squeamish because they believe the Kshatra-guna relates to the promotion of violence, however, that is, again, only a result of the historical brainwashing – a political project to knock Hindus down and keep them there so the pliable community can accept their own subjugation without putting up a fight. It is, therefore, said that “without the element of protection, Matsya-Nyaya (big fish eat little fish) would prevail”. It is the eternal Sanatan wisdom that says that if there has to be order, there has to be punishment and only if there is punishment, will order emerge. Kamandakiya – Nitisara , in fact, opens with the praise of the King who holds the sceptre to mete out punishment to maintain order. In the book Ksattra, the authors write, “Among the Vedas, the Rig-veda has been associated with Brahmanas, Yajur-veda with Kṣattriyas, and Sama-veda with Vaisyas. The Yajur-veda has been hailed as an action-oriented, ritual-intensive Veda; while Rig-veda is more aligned to prayer, Sama-veda is aligned to worship, and Atharva-veda forms a bridge between the physical and the spiritual. Yajur-veda is a symbol of kṣättra, of the protection of the good, and of destruction of enemies. The upa-veda associated with Yajur-veda is Artha-Veda (or Dhanur-veda). While explaining a mantra, the commentator Mahīdāsa says, “Dhanur-veda (archery) is the science of war.” Through the Dhanur-veda we see the entire system of war. Yajñas like Rajasuya, Sautramani, Vajapeya, and Aśva- medha that are described in the Yajur-veda are famous as kṣāttra-yajñas. The Vajapeya-Yaga is for preparing various units of the army in order to reclaim lost land. The Sautrāmani-Yaga is for bringing allies together. The Rajasuya-yaga is conducted when an emperor is born or created. The Aśva-medha is for expanding the kingdom and establishing sovereign status over a large portion of land. We see unbridled kṣättra in all these yajñas. There are elements of kṣättra even in the traditional practices related to worship and invoking the Supreme. The unfortunate situation today is that a worship of cowardice has entered military science. We have infused our military with a narrow, ritualistic mindset, thus sapping bravery and energy. However, our Vedic rşis brought an element of kṣättra even in worship and ritual”. It is, therefore, evident that Sanatan has a strong, illustrious tradition of Kshatra – where force and punishment are used to restore Dharma, protect the weak, and defend the ideals we hold dear. Nowhere in the Yajur-Veda, or any Veda, is Ahimsa in its bastardized, Gandhi version mentioned – it is only an illusion, a grand lie, sold to Hindus to ensure they remain guilty, neutered, and defenceless. What betrays the Janeudhari version of himself which Rahul Gandhi projects, is his absolute infantile interpretation of Shiva. To allude that Mahadev buried his Trishul because he believed in Gandhi’s Ahimsa is not just infantile but asinine. Mahadev, is quite literally, the God of Destruction and anyone who is a practicing Hindu would certainly not propagate that he destroys with Ahimsa. The Shivlinga itself is a manifestation of Raudra. His Avatars, like Kaal Bhairav, represent the annihilation of time and preservation of the universe – a symbol of fearlessness, the guardian of Temples, the destroyer of enemies and evil spirits. Of course, there is spiritual symbolism of the Trishul which represents the Nadis, levels of consciousness, and more, however, Rahul Gandhi’s reductionist interpretation of Shiva and his Trishul to talk about some binary of Gandhi-esque pacifism is so outlandish that one has to wonder how someone so oblivious of Sanatan Dharma can even have the confidence to talk about the tenets of the faith. In his supreme confidence, which is, unfortunately, the hallmark of the unlettered, Rahul Gandhi wanted to present Sanatan Dharma as some sort of a hippy cult where its participants are high on some form of hallucinogens, lying around in their comatose stupor, talking about universal peace. In reality, Sanatan has a long tradition of Akharas where community defence was one of the fulcrums of collective survival. Yes, Sanatan Dharma guides every shade and stage of existence. From prosperity to happiness, satisfaction, love, peace – inner and community, punya, karma, moksha, and more – however – it does not look down upon self and community defence, it does not glamourise pacifism and cowardice – in fact – it draws lessons from wars fought for the preservation of Dharma and honour. Non-violence: An age-old political project to keep Hindus neutered and subjugated I believe the very existence of the Hindu community hinges on one simple question – Do we wish to emulate MK Gandhi or Gopal Patha – in the face of aggression and violence? In 1946, the massacre of Hindus in Bengal was rather intricately planned. Jinnah is recalled having said that he would 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 lionizing 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. 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 organization 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 the 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”. 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 visited Naokhali, he was rebuked by the Muslim League and after that, he 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. MK Gandhi famously asked Gopal Patha to lay his weapons down and surrender. Gopal Patha refused. He refused to give into Gandhi’s pacifism to appease the murderous Jihadis. He refused to give into the delusion that surrendering, being cowardly, and dying with a smile on his face was a virtue. Gopal Patha upheld the tenets of Sanatan Dharma – he preserved Dharma. He protected Dharma. He protected Hindus. He did not give up. In fact, while MK Gandhi wanted Gopal Patha to lay down his weapons, in the same year in a prayer meeting, he advised the women in East Bengal to commit suicide by poison or some other means to avoid dishonour. He told the women to suffocate themselves or to bite their tongues to end their lives. In 1921, while the Malabar Muslims were slaughtering Hindus, raping women and forcefully converting Hindus, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi insisted that they had committed a sin against the “Khilafat movement” and not the Hindus. In fact, he went ahead and insisted that Hindus must remain “non-violent” in the face of “extreme provocation”. While Hindus and Sikhs were being massacred and raped in Pakistan right after the partition, MK Gandhi said , “Hindus and Sikhs should become brave and show that even if all the Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan were to be killed there would be no retaliation in India. I do not want to live to see our people copy Pakistan. If I am to live I shall ask every Hindu and every Sikh not to touch a single Muslim. It is cowardice to kill Muslims and we must become brave and not cowards”. On April 6, 1947, Mr. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi said– “If Muslims want to kill us (Hindus), we must face death bravely. Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our (Hindu) lives”. There was, indeed, a running theme in what Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi told Hindus. He repeatedly told Hindus that their faith taught them to surrender to evil, murderous mobs who were raping, beheading, murdering, and dishonouring them. He repeatedly told Hindus that his pacifism was a manifestation of the very essence of Sanatan Dharma and if Hindus so much as dared to defend themselves, they would be going against the tenets of their faith. MK Gandhi told Hindus that cowardice was in fact bravery and bravery was betrayal. He truly and genuinely wanted Hindus to believe that by being cowardly and surrendering to evil unquestioningly, Hindus would be doing the greatest service to this land with Hindu consciousness because that is what Hinduism stood for. This glorification of cowardice as a virtue, only for Hindus, was diligently furthered as a political project. It was, and still is, accepted wisdom that as long as Hindus are kept under the spell of Ahimsa, the community would give up their bargaining power with the state. For the ultimate retention of political power, it is no secret that the most violent, the most demanding, and the most petulant community has to be kept in good humour. When they get offended, and go on a murderous rampage after Hindus respond with Rangeela Rasool to books insulting Hindus, they need to be kept in good humour by the passage of a special law. When they want to establish a Caliphate in Turkey, they need to be pacified with unquestioning surrender by the Hindu community, willing to be beheaded with a smile on their face. Rahul Gandhi today did exactly what the political class has done for centuries – twist Sanatan Dharma to convince Hindus that their cowardice is considered a virtue and if they are TRUE Hindus, they would surrender, give in – and die with a smile on their face. It is this political project that leads to the demonisation of Hindutva, the vilification of Raudra Hanuman, the angst at Bhagwan Ram with a bow and arrow, the screaming, screeching uproar at the Ayodhya movement, the aversion to the Ram Temple, the anger at the demystification of history and the unadulterated hate against Hindu organizations – all of it remind Hindus that they are a warrior race, not a herd of sheep who should be led to their slaughter. Ahimsa, essentially, is doing everything to stop Himsa. Ahimsa is not the absence of Himsa, but the use of Sam, Dam, Danda, and Bhed to achieve peace. We could see Rahul Gandhi’s speech today in the parliament as just another Hinduphobic rant. Or we could see it for what it was – an attempt to keep the Hindu community ashamed and guilty. India has suffered the consequences of the apotheosis of one Gandhi – we certainly cannot afford another blunder.

Official website of Nupur J Sharma, Editor-in-Chief of OpIndia. From accidental journalist to advocating for Hindu civilisational causes. Explore her work, publications, podcasts and media appearances. Mother, Accidental Journalist, Editor In Chief, OpIndia “I picked up my pen because they sold theirs” Why I Am 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. About An Indian journalist who believes in presenting stories that seldom find mention in the corporate media. The voice of those persecuted. Hindus are one of the most persecuted religious groups and I have chosen to dedicate my life to documenting religiously motivated crimes and advocating for equal human and civilizational rights. During the course of my career, I have investigated several important stories related to religious extremism and terrorism - Delhi anti-Hindu riots being one of the most important. Work From starting my career writing about corporate media, their spins and their utter distortions in 2017 to progressing to the realisation that while media distortions were important, there was a civilizational battle unfolding right before our eyes and the corporate media was only a tool being used to challenge the very existence of Hindus, my journey continues to be a thrilling one. 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. OpIndia ↗︎ The Delhi anti-Hindu riots were perhaps a pivotal moment in modern history. The anti-Hindu riots was not a spate of violence which can be viewed and analysed in isolation. 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. 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. Publications ↗︎ There is no better teacher than History in determining the future. While Hindus dream of peace and brotherhood, their History is being whitewashed, genocides watered down and rights being snatched away by brute street veto and the complicity not only of the media and the intelligentsia, but also of a deracinated state. Bharat is being catapulted towards Khilafat 2.0 and Hindus are somewhere in the 100 year timeframe preceding the Genocide of Hindus which was a direct result of the Khilafat movement and Muslim separatism. The Hindus’ collective right to retain the cultural, religious and ethical integrity of the only land they have has to be held sacrosanct – legislatively, judicially and socially. This is, perhaps, the one lesson that history is screaming out, waiting for Hindus to hear. Civilisational Advocacy ↗︎ Podcast Bringing you reports and stories from a perspective often ignored or suppressed by the mainstream media of India. Listen Media Speech is power, speech is to persuade. This section featured select TV appearances, speeches, talks, Q&As and videos. Explore

Orphans of Bengal: Disillusioned. Resigned. Defeated. Broken It is time to stand up straight. It is time to be heard. It is time to fulfill the Dharma BJP was elected for. The BJP needs to realize that apathy is the self-defense of the powerless, and they are now powerless enough to be nonchalant. Nupur J Sharma Next Item Previous Item

‘Dismantling Global Hindutva’ event: Nazi-esque propaganda to justify the genocide of Hindus India is the only land that has a Hindu majority. Hinduism, Sanatan, is engraved in its consciousness since before the political boundaries were drawn. Our stories, our heroes our legacy is attached to this land and no other. It is time for Hindus to preserve it - in action and words. Nupur J Sharma Next Item Previous Item

A Hindu perennially ashamed and guilty: How narrative after Ayodhya verdict is trying to achieve it It is important to realise that the Jihad apologists don't despise Hindus per se. They simply want that the Hindu community never gets over its insurmountable capacity to absorb hate, humiliation, defeat, murder, rape, conversion and the desecration of their faith. For the capacity to absorb humiliation to continue, the Hindu must be made to carry the burden of undeserved guilt perennially. Nupur J Sharma Next Item Previous Item