Marxism vs Buddhism: The next battlefield in Tibet – Claude Arpi

March 27, 2026March 27, 2026VOI

China is batting for a Chinese Dalai Lama, something that the current Dalai Lama has ruled out. – Claude Arpi

Strategic analysts have a hard time for the past few years; most of their views and predictions have gone wrong due to the turmoil which has been occurring all around the world. It is particularly true since the beginning of the Russia-Ukraine war, which was supposed to last only for a few days.

New war tactics and weaponry, for example the use of drones, have appeared in a big way. If it does not want to lose coming battles, India does not have much choice, it needs to take a relook at the battlefields. In these circumstances, information warfare takes an increasingly predominant place.

China has always been far ahead of the rest of the world in the field of propaganda and information warfare, which has sustained the totalitarian regime for decades.

Today, however, one of China’s favourite themes is Buddhism.

Beijing would like the world to believe that Buddhism has for centuries been an important component of Chinese civilisation and that China should take the lead in the propagation of the teachings of the Great Monk, who more than 2,500 years ago wandered in the plains of North India, preaching compassion, mindfulness and interdependent arising.

Paradoxically, Beijing wants to teach Buddhism to Tibet. In September 2025, a meeting was convened in Lhasa by Wang Junzheng, the secretary of the party committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), to address Communist officials dealing with “religion”.

Is it not surprising that a state which follows Karl Marx’s atheist precepts should deal with religion?

Wang insisted on the necessity “to earnestly study and implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important instructions on religious work and … systematically promote the Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism”. The objective was to “lay a solid foundation for long-term peace and stability”. This means that to be stable, Tibet needs to be Buddhist, but with Chinese characteristics.

Wang mentioned Xi Jinping’s visit to Tibet in July 2025, during which the president gave “important instructions … to emphasise Buddhism with the requirements to systematically promote the Sinicization of China’s religion, strengthen the governance of religious affairs and the rule of law and guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to the socialist society”.

In other words, first Marx and then the Buddha.

On November 11, Wang Junzheng, again presiding over a symposium on religious legislation in Tibet, asked the participants to “solidly promote the construction of the Chinese national community, actively guide Tibetan Buddhism to adapt to the socialist society”.

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his enthronement, Gyaltsen Norbu, called the “fake” Panchen Lama by Tibetans, mentioned the succession of the 14th Dalai Lama. Norbu said: “The reincarnation of the living Buddha is an internal affair of our country. Historically, the reincarnation of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism in China has always adhered to the principles and traditions of domestic search, and there has never been a precedent for visiting abroad”.

He added: “China’s living Buddha reincarnation system belongs to Chinese monasteries, and its reincarnation management is an integral part of China’s religious affairs management.”

China is batting for a Chinese Dalai Lama, something that the latter has ruled out.

In December 2025, India took the initiative of organising a four-day international conference on the “Cultural and Historical Significance of His Holiness the Sixth Dalai Lama, Gyalwa Tsangyang Gyatso” in Tawang.

The sixth Dalai Lama was born in the 17th century in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh.

In a post on X about the event on the Sixth Dalai Lama, Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu wrote: “Tawang [has] today become the centre of a global academic dialogue on his cultural, historical and spiritual legacy. He continues to inspire humanity through his timeless teachings, poetry and compassion.”

In another post, he remarked: “The world remembers his poetry, but not the fullness of his teachings and wisdom. It is time that changes.”

Beijing was not amused. It believes that Buddhism belongs to China—and that Tawang too is Chinese!

Pasang Norbu, honorary president of the Tsangyang Gyatso Cultural Research Association in Tibet, issued a statement about what he called the so-called “international conference”; he said that “it represents a blatant provocation to China’s territorial sovereignty and the established norms of international relations … Such actions seriously undermine the efforts of both China and India to resolve territorial disputes and enhance bilateral relations. Ultimately, this is a political farce with ulterior motives.”

Today, China seems to believe that it is the only “owner” of Buddhism.

In this connection, it was a positive move that the second Global Buddhist Summit was convened by the International Buddhist Confederation (IBC), in collaboration with the Union ministry of culture. It took place on January 24 and 25 at the Bharat Mandapam in New Delhi. It was a new occasion to reaffirm that Buddha is a Son of India.

The two-day conference brought together more than 200 delegates and around 800 participants from India and abroad, mostly Buddhist leaders, scholars, practitioners and policymakers, to discuss contemporary global challenges viewed through the message of the Buddha. The theme of the summit was “Collective Wisdom, United Voice, and Mutual Coexistence”.

The main objective was to convey that India stands for world peace in the troubled times that the planet is going through and planetary issues must be faced in the spirit of collaboration, respect for others and mindfulness.

It would be good for China to remember history.

During the 7th century AD, after marrying Princesses Bikruti of Nepal and Wencheng of China, King Songtsen Gampo had converted to Buddhism. A hundred years later, King Trisong Detsen requested Shantarakshita, the abbot of Nalanda University, to teach the Buddha Dharma and ordain the first monks. Shantarakshita immediately faced serious difficulties due to the strong opposition from the indigenous faithful. He convinced the king to invite the tantric guru Padmasambhava, who alone could subdue the forces adverse to Buddhism. The Indian Master succeeded in his endeavour and built the first monastery in Samye, south of Lhasa.

Later, Shantarakshita predicted that a dispute would arise between the Indian and Chinese schools of Buddhism. The dispute was sorted out through the famous Samye Debate. After two years of intense discussions (792-794 CE), the Indian path prevailed and a proclamation was issued stating that the Indian path was thereafter the state religion. Since then, the Nalanda tradition of Indian Buddhism has been the state religion of Tibet.

India must be prepared to tackle the propaganda onslaught from China; it will be tomorrow’s battlefield. – Deccan Chronicle, 18 March 2026

› Claude Arpi is Distinguished Fellow at the Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Delhi), and writes on India, China, Tibet and Indo-French relations.

Statement Affirming the Continuation of the Institution of Dalai Lama – Office of the Dalai Lama – Dharamsala – July 2, 2025

On 24 September 2011, at a meeting of the heads of Tibetan spiritual traditions, I made a statement to fellow Tibetans in and outside Tibet, followers of Tibetan Buddhism, and those who have a connection with Tibet and Tibetans, regarding whether the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue. I stated, “As far back as 1969, I made clear that concerned people should decide whether the Dalai Lama’s reincarnations should continue in the future.”

I also said, “When I am about ninety I will consult the high Lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan public, and other concerned people who follow Tibetan Buddhism, to re-evaluate whether or not the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue.”

Although I have had no public discussions on this issue, over the last 14 years leaders of Tibet’s spiritual traditions, members of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile, participants in a Special General Body Meeting, members of the Central Tibetan Administration, NGOs, Buddhists from the Himalayan region, Mongolia, Buddhist republics of the Russian Federation and Buddhists in Asia including mainland China, have written to me with reasons, earnestly requesting that the institution of the Dalai Lama continue. In particular, I have received messages through various channels from Tibetans in Tibet making the same appeal. In accordance with all these requests, I am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue.

The process by which a future Dalai Lama is to be recognized has been clearly established in the 24 September 2011 statement which states that responsibility for doing so will rest exclusively with members of the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. They should consult the various heads of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and the reliable oath-bound Dharma Protectors who are linked inseparably to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas. They should accordingly carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition.

I hereby reiterate that the Gaden Phodrang Trust has sole authority to recognize the future reincarnation; no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter.

Dalai Lama

Dharamshala
21 May 2025

(Translated from the original Tibetan)

West’s 100-year-old dream of a Christian nation in South Asia – Sumit Ahlawat

March 22, 2026March 24, 2026VOI

The theory that Western countries, primarily the US, are actively abetting armed insurgency to establish a Christian state in India’s northeastern region, similar to East Timor, that could also serve as a Western military base in the Bay of Bengal, has gained credence with the arrest of foreign mercinaries in India – Sumit Ahlawat

The arrest of seven foreigners, including six Ukrainians and one known US mercenary, Matthew VanDyke, in India for illegally trying to cross into Myanmar, supply weapons and provide drone training to armed rebel groups, has once again fanned the theory of a long-term Western conspiracy to carve out a Christian majority state from contiguous parts of northeastern India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.

VanDyke is an internationally renowned, notorious figure who first gained attention during the Libyan Civil War in 2011, when he joined rebel fighters on the ground and was imprisoned.

Subsequently, VanDyke founded an organisation called Sons of Liberty International (SOLI), which provides military training to local armed groups in conflict zones worldwide. Reportedly, he has also participated in the Syrian Civil War and the Russia-Ukraine War.

According to India’s premier counterterrorism agency, the NIA, as many as 14 Ukrainian nationals entered India on tourist visas on different dates. They flew to Guwahati and then travelled to Mizoram without the required documents.

While the theory that Western countries, primarily the US, are actively abetting armed insurgency to establish a Christian state in this region, similar to East Timor, that could also serve as a Western military base in the Bay of Bengal, was often dismissed as speculative and sensational, the arrest of these foreigners is a smoking gun and lends credence to these allegations.

The theory was first suggested by none other than former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024, was alluded to by the chief minister of the Indian state of Mizoram in 2025, and, with the arrest of these foreigners, can no longer be dismissed as a conspiracy theory.

Interestingly, the idea of a Christian-majority, ethno-nationalist state in the region, backed by Western powers, providing a military base to the US in the Bay of Bengal, and actively serving as a frontline state against Chinese interests in the region, is not as bizarre as it seems to be.

The idea is supported by the peculiar religious demography of the region, the long-standing connection of these communities to the Baptist Church in the US, pre-existing ethnic/tribal clevages, real or imagined grievances of injustice, and has a very long pedigree.

In fact, the idea goes back nearly a century and was initially floated by the UK during the dying days of British imperialism.

In the 1940s, when India was about to gain independence, there was an attempt to carve out a separate crown colony from the tribal hill districts of Northeast India and parts of Western Burma, directly under the control of the British crown.

That crown colony would have provided the UK a foothold in South Asia and the Bay of Bengal even after the end of their British Indian Empire, the so-called Jewel in the Crown.

Christian Country Carved Out Of India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar?

In 2024, months before her tragic fall as the prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina had claimed that “conspiracies” were being hatched to topple her government and that she may be assassinated just like her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

She further alleged that a Western power is conspiring to establish a “Christian country” out of Bangladesh and Myanmar, similar to East Timor.

She alleged that a “white man” offered her easy re-election in 2024 if she agreed to allow a foreign country to build an airbase in Bangladesh.

“If I allowed a certain country to build an airbase in Bangladesh, then I would have had no problem,” she said. The offer came from a “white man”, she said. “It may appear it is aimed at only one country, but it is not. I know where else they intend to go.”

“There will be more trouble,” she had warned.

“Like East Timor … they will carve out a Christian country, taking parts of Bangladesh (Chattogram) and Myanmar with a base in the Bay of Bengal.”

A few months after these comments, Hasina’s government was toppled in Bangladesh, and she had to flee the country.

In March 2025, Mizoram chief minister Lalduhoma warned that foreign nationals, including those from the US and UK, were using the state as a transit route to enter Myanmar. These foreigners were suspected of training insurgent groups in Myanmar.

These foreigners were suspected of providing training in drone warfare and supplying sophisticated weapons to these rebels, including drones.

Notably, insurgents in both India’s northeast and in the Chin state of Myanmar have used drones in their armed struggle against security forces.

In September 2024, for the first time, armed rebels in Manipur used drones to drop bombs on security forces. This was the first time ever that drones were used in India by an insurgent group.

Similarly, armed rebels in the Chin state of Myanmar have regularly used armed drones to hit Myanmar security forces.

The Religious Demography of ‘Zo Land’

A Christian-majority country, caved out of Hindu-majority India, Muslim-majority Bangladesh, and Buddhist-majority Myanmar might seem bizarre; however, the peculiar religious demography of this region could support this idea.

The so-called Christian majority, ethno-nationalist country has also been called “Zo land” (or Zogam/Zoram), which refers to the ancestral homeland of the Zo people, a Kuki-Chin-Mizo ethnic group inhabiting parts of India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.

The Kuki tribes of Manipur, the Mizo tribes of Mizoram, the Chin people of Myanmar, and the tribal people in Bandarban district and adjoining areas of Bangladesh’s Chittagong division have recently collectively started calling themselves the Zo people.

All of these tribes are also Christian-majority.

For instance, Manipur has approximately 41.3% Christian population. However, the state’s population is divided along ethnic and religious lines.

Manipur has two large groups: Meiteis and Kukis.

The Meiteis, who mostly live in the Manipur plains, are overwhelmingly Hindu.

The Kukis, living in the hilly areas of Manipur, are overwhelmingly Christian (up to 98%).

Similarly, in the Mizoram state of India, the Christian population is 87 percent.

In the Chin state of Myanmar, the Christian population is over 85 percent.

The Bandarban district of Bangladesh also has a significant Christian minority.

These people, the Kuki-Chin-Mizo or the Zo people, are, therefore, connected by religious and ethnic ties.

They also live in a geographically contiguous region comprising India’s Manipur and Mizoram states, Myanmar’s Chin state, and Bangladesh’s Chittagong division.

However, their ancestral lands have been divided into three different countries.

Ironically, the same colonial state that is responsible for Christianizing them was also responsible for dividing their ancestral lands into three different countries.

Christianity in India’s North East

In the 19th century, most of these people followed various tribal and animistic religions.

Nagaland and Mizoram came under British control in the 19th century following the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–1826) and the Treaty of Yandabo.

The British annexed Assam and, by 1880, brought the Naga Hills under control through military expeditions. Similarly, Mizoram (Lushai Hills) was controlled by 1890-1895 through punitive expeditions.

The British encouraged Christian missionary work in these tribal areas. At the same time, the British imposed an inner-line permit regime for these areas, which helped shape a separate identity for these groups, distinct from the rest of India.

Most of the conversion took place in the 20th century, between 1931 and 1951.

In the 1940s, when it became apparent that India would gain independence, a few colonial administrators floated the idea of a Christian-majority crown colony in India’s northeast, to be administered directly from London.

The plan would have ensured a British base in South Asia even after India’s independence.

The plan was known as The Coupland Plan.

Named after its architect, Sir Reginald Coupland, this plan proposed creating a separate administrative unit comprising the tribal, Christian-majority areas of Assam and the tribal regions of Burma (present-day Myanmar). The core idea was to keep these territories under direct British control even after India gained independence in 1947.

The idea was initially kept secret, but soon it gained popularity and a degree of acceptance, both among the tribals as well as in the British bureaucracy. The way maps were being redrawn around the world meant anything was possible.

Singapore, Bermuda, Aden, and Gibraltar were already British crown colonies, and so was Hong Kong.

However, multiple factors, including fierce opposition from the Indian National Congress, the economic dependence of these regions on the Indian plains, and opposition by many tribal leaders themselves, ensured that the plan was quietly abandoned by 1946.

Still, the British divided these regions into three separate countries. Chhitangong was a Buddhist-majority region, and thus, according to the logic of Indian partition, it should have become part of India. Yet, Britishers made it part of Muslim-majority Pakistan.

In 1971, after Bangladesh’s independence, it became part of Bangladesh.

Burma was officially separated from India in 1937, separating indigenous communities like the Nagas, Kukis, and Mizos.

Following India’s independence in 1947 and Burma’s in 1948, the border became an international frontier.

So, the British colonial state, which encouraged the conversion of these tribal communities to Christianity, thereby helping to emerge pan-ethno-religious identities, and formulated the idea of a separate crown colony, was also responsible for dividing these communities into three countries.

Now, nearly eight decades later, the idea of a separate Christian-majority country in India’s northeast is again fanned by Western countries, primarily the US, hoping to gain a military base in the Bay of Bengal, and a frontier to destabilise South Asia and check China’s expansion.

The plan was earlier alluded to by Sheikh Hasina and the Mizoram chief minister; now, the arrest of these individuals is further proof that this is not just some conspiracy theory, but foreign intelligence agencies and transnational mercenary groups are already working on such a plan. – EurAsian Times, 19 March 2026

› Sumit Ahlawat is a Senior Editor at The EurAsian Times.

The Issue of Conversion: Challenges before Hindu Society – Maria Wirth

March 19, 2026March 24, 2026VOI 1 Comment

Is it possible that the government does not want to know what is happening on the religious front? … When there is no will to know what is happening regarding conversions, there is probably also no will to stop it. The government, rightfully, maintains that it is secular and not concerned about the religion of its subjects. – Maria Wirth

Abstract

This article examines the aggressive proselytization targeting Hindus in India, exposing the socio-political and cultural ramifications of conversions to Abrahamic religions. It highlights the lack of reliable data on conversions, despite documented cases of fraudulent tactics, including financial incentives, “miracle cures,” and exploitation of vulnerable communities. The author contrasts Hinduism—an inclusive, philosophy-based tradition emphasizing dharma (righteousness) and universal spiritual truth—with the exclusive, dogmatic nature of Christianity and Islam, which claim sole religious legitimacy and threaten non-believers with eternal damnation. The article wonders why the secular Indian government is enabling religious inequalities, such as preferential treatment for “minority” religions and the marginalization of Hindu institutions. It is argued that conversions fracture social harmony, empower divisive forces, and erode India’s spiritual heritage. She calls for educating Hindus about their profound philosophical roots (e.g., Advaita Vedanta), challenging irrational dogmas of Christianity and Islam through rational discourse, and stopping unequal religious policies by the state. Ultimately, Wirth frames the preservation of Hinduism as essential not only for India’s cultural integrity but also for humanity as a whole. The Vedic knowledge that God is within as blissful consciousness (sat-chit-ananda) is lacking in the Abrahamic religions.

Text

Conversion is a big challenge for Hindu society in India. Yet it is hardly a topic of public debate. Moreover, it is impossible to get accurate data of conversions. In fact, even the data regarding the composition of the population religion wise, may not be reliable.

In 1947, India’s population was around 36.1 crores, of whom 30.37 crores (84.1%) were Hindus, 3.54 crore (9.8%) were Muslims, 0.83 crore (2.3%) were Christians and 0.27 crores (0.7%) Buddhists (the figures are based on the census of 1951).
In the 2011 census, the Hindu population had shrunk by 4.3 percent and the Muslim population had grown by 4.4 percent. The overall population had tripled to 121.9 crores. Hindus accounted for 96.62 crore (79.8%), Muslims for 17.22 crore (14.23%), Christians for 2.78 crores (2.3%) and Buddhists for 0.84 crore (0.7%).

The census of 2021 was postponed due to the Covid pandemic and will be held only in 2026/27. It can be assumed that since 2011, the Hindu population has shrunk further, yet the population of Muslims is still cited to be 14 percent and that of Christians still 2 percent. Do we bury our heads ostrich-like in the sand?

According to the website censusofindia.net, in 2025, the overall population is estimated at 141 crores, of whom 114 crores are expected to be Hindus. This would be a slight increase of Hindus to 80 percent, which is unlikely considering the massive conversion attempts, apart from the lower Hindu birthrate. Unfortunately, I could not find official numbers for conversions. ChatGPT says: “I could not find any official government estimate that gives a precise number of Hindus who have converted to Christianity since 2011. In fact, the Government of India has explicitly said that no central record/database of religious conversion is maintained.”

The same is valid for Islam: “There is no reliable official data specifying how many Hindus have converted to Islam in India since 2011.” ChatGPT continued, “Most demographic surveys, including those by Pew Research Center, find that religious switching is very rare overall.” According to Pew research survey of 2021, 0.7 percent of the respondents said that they have changed their religion. This would come to around 6 million people. Yet since there is no central database of religious conversion, the true numbers are anybody’s guess.

Aggressive conversions are happening

Most of us know even from personal observation, that missionary activity is extremely high in India by both Christianity and Islam, especially in certain states like Punjab or Tamil Nadu, and basically everywhere, specifically in tribal areas. They don’t hide it. Christian publications exhort their members to convert Hindus. “India must be evangelised in this generation”, declared Blessings, a Christian youth magazine in its 2008 issue, which a priest from Tamil Nadu had left with me. And a German Catholic magazine, which landed in my mother’s mailbox, had an article with the ominous title, “India – a success story”.

The Joshua Project is clearly implemented. New churches shoot up, Christian schools offer discount for fees for Christians, missionaries ‘visit’ patients in hospitals, etc. Occasionally, news about conversions come out in the media due to complaints by Hindus. Some examples from only one week:

On 30. September 2025, several news outlets reported that over 1000 Hindus from poor and backward castes converted to Christianity in Lucknow’s Mohanlalganj. A village once free of Christianity had now 5 churches and100 plus prayer halls. According to India Today, police unearthed a well-oiled nexus to lure Dalits with the help of ‘miracles cures’.

A few days later, another huge conversion ring with wide connections across states was uncovered in Gujarat’s Nandiad, on which OpInda reported.

Soon after, on 6. October, more concerning news surfaced. An American, James Watson, in India on a business visa, was arrested together with two Indian associates for fraudulent conversions in villages in Maharashtra, targeting especially children. He told them that “Hinduism is based on superstition. But if they convert, they will be happy, prosperous and cured from illness.” In this connection, CNN News 18 reported that between 2018 and 2025 over 320 cases had been discovered of visa misuse for religious conversion. This may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Muslims, too, try hard to get Hindus into their fold

The Chhangur Baba case shows how much money flows into fraudulent, elaborate conversion efforts. He and his associates were arrested in July 2025. He received hundreds of crores from abroad for his conversion racket, where he funded Muslim men to entrap Hindu girls. Love Jihad, for long denied, can’t be denied any longer. Even otherwise, Muslims are taught to coax Hindus into converting by presenting Islam as far more attractive than Hinduism. Zakir Naik said in one of his speeches around 2016, it is easy for Muslims to convert Hindus. They only need to show Hindus a picture of Ganesha, with his elephant head and big belly, and ask them whether this is the God whom they worship.

This situation is concerning and the question, why the government has no database, is only natural. Even in states, which have enacted anti-conversion laws, and where it is obligatory to register a change of religion, no overall numbers are available. What is available, are FIRs filed for unlawful conversion, and individual notifications in government Gazettes about name changes. But how many conversions in toto happened, nobody seems knows.

Religion is not a concern for the government

Is it possible that the government does not want to know what is happening on the religious front? If this is true, then even the 2011 census may not give the correct picture. And from an anecdotical episode, this is indeed possible.

A teacher in Mumbai, who was part of the 2011 census team, told me that during the training for the census, they were instructed to accept whatever information they were given. She surveyed a heavily Muslim populated area and knew that she was not getting honest answers. She went back to her supervisor and told him, that the census won’t be accurate if they are not allowed to check the information, for example how many children a family has. Her instructor was blunt, “You heard the instruction. Accept whatever info is given.” She told me, “If the government manages to conduct an accurate census next time, it will be a shock for Hindus.”

When there is no will to know what is happening regarding conversions, there is probably also no will, to stop it. The government, rightfully, maintains that it is secular and not concerned about the religion of its subjects. It has a point. This is clearly a worldwide attitude. The German government also no longer records the religion of its citizens. It did so till in the 1950s, when I was in primary school and dutifully filled out “RK” for Roman Catholic in all official forms. Yet, today, only the Churches keep a record.

Hinduism and the Abrahamic religions are completely different categories

The situation in India is, however, unique. The Hindu faith of the majority is very different from Islam and Christianity. Often it is not even considered as a religion, because it does not have a rigid belief system, but it is rather a way of life. It has a solid foundation in philosophy and demands to follow dharma—to do the right thing in the given situation according to one’s conscience. It does not exclude anyone from being ‘allowed’ into the Presence of God. In fact, it claims, God is already present in everyone, and explains what is meant by ‘God” (not a kind of biased superman on a golden throne high up in the sky, but all-pervading, pure, blissful consciousness). In short, Hinduism makes a lot of sense.

Unlike Islam and Christianity, which were brought to India by invaders, Hinduism does not proselytise. Those two foreign religions demand blind belief in dogmas. A dogma is a claim that cannot be proven to be true, and the most irrational, and very harmful dogmas of both Islam and Christianity are the claims that, 1. Only their religion is true (both didn’t sort out over the centuries, which one exactly is true, because of course they don’t have any proof for their claims) and 2. if you don’t convert to Islam or Christianity, the great God will discard you at Judgement Day and let you burn eternally hell.

Burden of history

Hindus were threatened and brutally coerced to convert first by Muslim and later by Christian invaders over several centuries. Millions of Hindus died for their faith. Many preferred humiliation and financial burden to conversion. When the outsiders left, Hinduism was still strong. However, most of those Hindus, who had converted to Islam and Christianity during foreign occupation, were successfully alienated from their original tradition especially during British rule, who were, and still are, masters in ‘divide and rule’. They made those converts believe that they were better, higher, more worthy than Hindus.

At Independence in 1947, Muslims demanded their own country to be carved out from India, called Pakistan, which in 1971 split into Pakistan and Bangladesh. So, one would expect that Islam is no longer a problem in India, and Hindus have only to deal with those who converted to Christianity but who also, like Muslims, believe that they alone have the true religion, and Hindus will be eternally damned by God if they don’t convert. Yet this is a wrong notion because many Muslims, who agitated for a separate state before Independence on the ground that they can’t live with Hindus, did not go to Pakistan. They stayed back, possibly even with the nefarious agenda to fulfil Allah’s alleged wish to make all Indians follow Islam. The truncated India was generous and allowed it, maybe on the advice of the British who wanted to sow the seeds for division in Independent India.

Many Hindus probably considered the Indian Muslims and Christians as not very different from themselves, and did not realise that their religious doctrine had meanwhile indoctrinated many of them to look down on Hindus, and they had become as unreasonable as their foreign masters used to be. Now the converts, too, believed that the Great God Allah does not like Hindus and will throw them into eternal hellfire, and that Allah/God wants only Muslims/Christians on earth. No reasonable person would believe this, and Indians are generally reasonable, but due to indoctrination from childhood, many of the converts had embraced this irrational belief.

Respectable Gods and religions

Moreover, on the international stage, those religions, which consider the creator of this vast universe as personal, vengeful and biased, are considered respectable even today. People, who are otherwise reasonable, don’t realise that a God, who loves only certain people, must be a tribal God and cannot be the Source of All.

Unfortunately, Hindus did not seem to be aware of those dogmas. Otherwise, why would they allow Christian schools to continue after Independence to teach Hindu children, when ‘good’ Christian teachers naturally look down on their Hindu students because, according to the Church, they follow a dark, demonic cult?

Why would the government allow the catechism to be taught to Christian students, but not allow Vedanta philosophy, which is a rational explanation of what is true, to be taught—not even to Hindu students?

Why would the ‘minority religions’, parts of which are irrational and based entirely on blind belief, get government concessions, and Hindu Dharma, which is based on solid philosophy, would be disadvantaged, for example in the Right to Education Act or regarding their places of worship?

Indian Secularism is upside down

So, even though a secular state is not supposed to be interested in the religion of its subjects, in India, certain reforms would only be fair, as presently the stakes are stacked against Hindus. If a Hindu converts, he gets the advantage of belonging to a politically influential ‘minority’, which is worldwide even a majority. And if he happens to be a criminal, even world media will treat him more leniently than it treats Hindus, and it seems, as if this lenient treatment extends even to the judiciary worldwide.

Agreed, the government has no role to play in religion, but it surely has to level the playing field, especially since the Abrahamic religions and Hindu Dharma are in very different categories: Islam and Christianity are exclusive and divide society between those who are right and saved, and those who are wrong and damned. Even in the interest of developing a ‘rational mindset’, which is the explicit goal of education, the followers of those religions should not be given favours by the government.
In contrast, Hindu Dharma is inclusive and makes sense. It claims that ultimately all will reach back to their divine Source and it exhorts to follow Dharma. It would make sense, in the interest of a stable society, to favour it.

A harmonious society is rather impossible if the divisiveness of the dogmatic religions is not taken out

If you have many crores of Indians who despise Hindus because according to their belief, Hindus are great sinners by worshipping false Gods, a harmonious society is tough to achieve, and enemies of Bharat have a field day to instigate chaos and violence. This is not theory. It’s happening, including with big money from the Deep State, as the investigation into USAID had revealed.

Do Hindus even know what is preached in the innumerable churches and mosques across India? I know that Hindu Gods are called devils or demons by Christian clergy. Yet incredibly, Hindus don’t challenge those harmful dogmas of Christianity and Islam, even though they easily could, as they have the better arguments. Not only this: according to the Human Rights Charter of the United Nations, it is unacceptable to demean a group of people as inferior and damned for eternity. Yet strangely, when a religious doctrine demeans a billion people, moreover people, who are known to be open-minded and dharmic, nobody flags it as wrong.

It shows that the powers-that-be prefer that humans everywhere hold irrational beliefs instead of gaining deep insights into what is true and what can be experienced. It means, Hinduism is an obstacle for those powers. This is an important point and, in all likelihood, responsible for the unfair negative portrayal of Hinduism in world media and the entertainment industry and for funnelling money into conversion attempts. Yet the eradication of Hinduism is definitely not in the interest of humanity as a whole.

Blunders that need to be corrected

It was clearly a blunder that Hindus did not explain their faith to the Indian followers of the Abrahamic religions right after Independence and it needs to be corrected urgently. And an even greater blunder also needs to be corrected: Hindu pundits hardly explained the solid philosophical foundation of their faith even to their own people and especially to the younger generations.

Hindus are strongly focussed on education. Parents make great sacrifices to educate their children well. Yet they did not realise that under the garb of modern education their offspring was not learning anything about their ancient tradition but instead, their children were weaned away from it—due to the immense influence of the Left, which is an arm of the infamous Deep State.

Young Hindus, who went through college education, no longer know the basics of their faith and have not even heard of the Brahman (Advaita Vedanta) that is their own inner essence. Many become atheists, without knowing what being an atheist actually means. In recent years, they become not only atheists, but also ‘woke’ and ‘sexually liberated’, whatever this means. This virus affects mainly the Hindu youth. Of course, not all Hindu youth, but many have no longer an anchor in their faith—a faith for which earlier generations even died. This negative influence makes them vulnerable to go against dharma, not to believe any longer in karma, and it also makes them vulnerable for conversion, if they see material benefits.

It is no virtue not to propagate Hindu Dharma

Hindus sometimes even seem proud that they don’t propagate their faith. It is a false pride and not wise. Christianity and Islam are clever. They explain their good aspects, like strong belief and trust in God or Allah, and strong community support. They also explain why they are closer to the truth. The reason, they say is, that they have one God compared to many Gods in Hinduism. They are right: one source is closer to the truth. The Source must be formless and therefore only One. Unfortunately, most Hindus can’t counter them because, not only do their Muslim and Christian friends not know, but even they themselves don’t know any longer the basic insights of the rishis—the one formless Brahman of the Vedas which is within all of us.

If the Hindu representatives had explained the basics of the Vedas right after Independence in a big way, many of those who had converted to Islam and Christianity might have come back. Anyone who has common sense will come to the conclusion that Hindu Dharma is superior to all three Abrahamic religions, as it is a genuine enquiry and not blind belief in the supremacy of a particular group.

Instead, in the name of ‘harmony’, Hindus downplayed the intellectual superiority of Hindu Dharma and allowed Islam and Christianity to aggressively propagate their religions as “only true” and lure Hindus with a simple formula: there is only one true God and our God is this true God. He is compassionate and loving and has promised that He will look after you, provided you accept him and keep the rules and commandments.

Another positive aspect is stressed: the convert is promised to be part of a strongly bonded brotherhood especially in the case of Islam, but also in the case of Christianity, he will get emotional and financial support from the Church if in distress. Apart from that, since for many Hindus this is not enough reason to forgo their tradition, they lure converts with financial benefits, cheat outright with so-called miracles or frighten simple-minded Hindus with eternal hellfire.

What are the solutions?

Very important is of course that the government does not favour the big and powerful ‘minorities’ of Muslims and Christians. How to achieve this change in a democracy, where everyone is focused mainly on vote banks, needs to be brainstormed.

Apart from the government, Hindu society has a big role to play: First and foremost, the basics of Vedic wisdom need to be made known widely. Schools and universities are a good start and thanks to the New Education Policy, the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) is now indeed taken into educational institutions. There is however a problem: even teachers often don’t know much about the profound philosophy and haven’t done sadhana in their life to discover Atma within. So, they prefer to explain festivals or customs or stories from the Ramayana or Bhagavad Gita.

All this is important, but if the greatest advantage of Hindu Dharma is not clearly explained, students may not be convinced why they should stick to their tradition, especially when they are lured with material benefits and also told that billion humans worldwide see merit in those dogmatic religions. Otherwise, why would there be so many Christians and Muslims in the world?

The most important point and the crucial difference between Hindu Dharma and the Abrahamic religions is that Hindus claim that God is within as Sat-Chit-Ananda (blissful consciousness), and that it can be experienced.

To convey this knowledge effectively, it would need Hindus who have touched their Atma, who know from experience about the oneness of all, because if the truth is conveyed only theoretically, it won’t make an impact. Therefore, sadhana needs to be encouraged and sadhana needs to be the criterion for being able to teach, not academic degrees. Small booklets with sayings of genuine saints like Anandamanyi Ma or Mata Amritanandamayi could be distributed in a big way. They are already available and explain Vedanta philosophy in a simple way. For me personally, meeting Anandamayi Ma had a decisive influence in understanding Vedic wisdom. It was easy to understand because she lived this oneness. Anandamayi Ma once said, “There is no difference between you and me and I don’t see a difference.”

Approach to Indian Christians

The theology of Christianity is a little confusing. On the one hand, it is considered heresy for a Christian to claim that he is one with God, yet on the other hand, the Holy Spirit is supposed to come over him and guide him. And all three—God the Father, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit—are seen as God. Nowadays, many Christians in the West no longer accept the dogmas of the Church, but take the sayings of Jesus and bhakti as guideline. Therefore, many even claim that God is within, as Jesus himself said “the Kingdom of heaven is within”.

Hindus should point out to Christians those aspects, where Jesus, in contrast to the Church, is in line with the Indian rishis. For example, he made the Upanishadic statement, “I and my Father are one” (Aham Brahmasmi). Unfortunately, and shrewdly, the Church declared that this claim is valid only for Jesus, but this of course doesn’t make sense.

Another point: When once asked what is the most important commandment, Jesus said, that the most important commandment is to love God above everything else. This teaching is recorded in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It means, Jesus was foremost advocating bhakti, the most important path also for Hindus, and for anyone who wants to realise the truth. Yet the Church declared as its first commandment: You shall not have other gods before me, and doesn’t mention the bhakti aspect.

Now in all likelihood, the Christians will counter Hindus and claim, “What the Church means, is that we need to worship the true God, and we, the Christians, have the true God and you, Hindus, have false Gods.”

It needs to be understood first by Hindus themselves and then also conveyed to Indian Christians: Hinduism claims that there is absolute truth, and relative truth. Absolute truth is that which is really true, it means it must be always and self-evident. It means, only God (pure, eternal, unchanging consciousness, Brahman) is really true (it can be logically concluded and experienced). And that consciousness is really the only true, invisible, formless God. All else is Maya, a temporary appearance on this truth. This is of course universally valid and independent by what name one calls that one Truth.

An analogy makes it clear: In a movie hall, the flickering, changing pictures of the movie cover the movie screen. Yet the invisible white screen is the only real thing in the movie, all else, including the people, houses, etc. are temporary appearances whose substance is the one screen. The story of the movie is more like virtual reality. This should make sense nowadays. Even Elon Musk believes that this apparent reality is not the real thing. It follows naturally, that discovering the ‘real thing’ (Brahman) is the goal of life.

The Abrahamic religions do not have this absolute Truth level. Even their great (good) God and its opposite, the (evil) Satan, are within Maya, more in tune with the Devas and Asuras of Hinduism.

We should use the sayings of Jesus which are in tune with Vedanta, to make Indian Christians reflect that the dogmas of the Church are unnecessary and even ridiculous, and that their accusation that Hindus worship false Gods does not apply, simply because only one ‘thing’—not a thing of course—is true and everything is contained in that.

Another point: Often, ordinary Christians are critical of their priests and bishops. I know this from Germany, and it may be the case also in India. Especially the higher clergy may be corrupt—morally and financially. If caught, such news should be spread. It helps to wean away common Christians from the Church.

Approach to Indian Muslims

The previous point that often, the clergy is not living an ideal, but rather an immoral life, is valid also for certain Muslim clergy. It should not be hushed up, but spread in news. It helps ordinary Muslims not to be too much under their sway.

It is probably more difficult to have a sensible dialogue with Muslims. Some Britisher made a valid observation: “While the Hindus sharpen their arguments, the Muslims sharpen their swords.” At present, there is the unfortunate situation, that Muslims are confident that Hindus are afraid of their street power. This needs to change and Muslims need to be afraid that they will pay for instigating violence. Law enforcement agencies need to make them pay, or even Hindus who are not afraid to push them back in street violence.

Once I heard a congress spokesperson say on TV, “what does it matter if one worships Krishna or Christ.” True, it doesn’t matter much, Bhakti is a valid path and all true devotion and prayers reach the One. This is valid for Hindus, Christians and Muslims. But it matters what else those religions demand to believe blindly—for example that Hindus are worshipping demons and will go to hell—and which not only creates discord in the society, but also harms those believers individually, as they don’t follow their conscience which tells them to do the right thing in the given circumstances, but instead blindly “believe absurdities which can make them commit atrocities”, as Voltaire had already observed.

So, first, Hindus themselves need to be solidly grounded in their ancient wisdom through knowledge and sadhana, and second, the unreasonable dogmas of Islam and Christianity need to be fearlessly challenged—possibly even by taking the issue to international bodies like the United Nations. – Maria Wirth Blog, 15 March 2026

› Maria Wirth is a German journalist and author resident in Uttarkhand. She is a Neo-Vedantin and the views expressed in this article are personal. This article first appeared in the Journal for Indian Thought and Policy Research, March 2026.

Why Michel Danino’s scholarship must be cherished and celebrated – Swarajya

March 16, 2026March 24, 2026VOI

A survey of Michel Danino’s work provides context to the widespread unease surrounding the Supreme Court’s adverse remarks about him. – Swarajya Staff

The Supreme Court on 11 March ordered a blacklisting of three experts involved in drafting a controversial chapter on ‘corruption in the judiciary’ for a Class 8 NCERT textbook.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul Pancholi described the NCERT director’s response as “disturbing” after it emerged the chapter had been rewritten without disclosing details of the new experts or approval processes.

The court directed the Union government and states not to associate with Professor Michel Danino, Suparna Diwakar and Alok Prasanna Kumar, who were involved in drafting the earlier chapter.

An affidavit by NCERT Director Dinesh Prasad Saklani stated that Michel Danino had supervised the drafting of the chapter, whilst educator Suparna Diwakar and legal researcher Alok Prasanna Kumar were also involved in the process.

The bench directed the Union, all states and all institutions receiving state funds to disassociate them from rendering any service which would mean payment from public funds.

The court observed it had “no reason to doubt that Professor Michel Danino along with Ms Diwakar and Mr Alok Prasanna Kumar either does not have reasonable knowledge about Indian judiciary or they deliberately, knowingly misrepresented the facts in order to project a negative image of the Indian judiciary before students of class 8 who are at an impressionable age. “

However, the three individuals can approach the Supreme Court for modification of this order, the court added.

Who is Michel Danino?

Michel Danino, born in 1956 in Honfleur, France, is a French-born Indian author, scholar, and educationist who has lived in India since 1977 and holds Indian citizenship.

Drawn to Indian civilization from his youth, influenced by Sri Aurobindo and Auroville, he settled in India and became a lifelong student of its ancient heritage. A visiting professor at IIT Gandhinagar, where he supports the Archaeological Sciences Centre, Danino has authored key works including The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati (2010), exploring the Vedic river, and Indian Culture and India’s Future (2011). He has also co-edited textbooks on Indian knowledge traditions and edited Sri Aurobindo and India’s Rebirth (2018).

The Supreme Court’s comments give his critics fresh ammunition to attack him.

Danino has been a target of suspicion in certain academic and media circles for years. The charge is familiar: he writes sympathetically about ancient India’s civilisational achievements, he has defended the physical existence of the Sarasvati river, he has questioned the Aryan invasion theory. This, the accusation runs, makes him a scholar whose conclusions are predetermined by ideology rather than evidence.

Those who make this accusation have, with remarkable consistency, declined to engage with his works.

What the Evidence Actually Looks Like

The Lost River, Danino’s most comprehensive work, is an investigation into the Sarasvati—the river celebrated in the Rig Veda that later texts describe as “disappearing.” The question of whether this river had a physical existence, and if so where, has become entangled in Indian political controversy. Critics therefore treat any scholarly work that argues for its historical reality as ideologically motivated.

What those critics rarely discuss is how Danino builds his case.

The book draws on geological surveys conducted by the Geological Survey of India; on satellite imagery analysed from NASA’s LANDSAT series, France’s SPOT series, and India’s own IRS satellites; on nuclear isotope dating of groundwater samples carried out by scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre; on bore-hole data drilled by American hydrologist Robert Raikes near the Harappan site of Kalibangan; on a 1986–1991 hydrogeological survey of the Cholistan Desert conducted by two German scientists, M.A. Geyh and D. Ploethner; and on remote-sensing research published by three scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation.

This is before one counts the 19th-century British surveyors, the French CNRS mission of the 1980s, the American and Japanese researchers, and the Indian archaeologists whose fieldwork Danino synthesises across more than 400 pages.

The accusation of ideological bias is, in other words, being levelled at a book whose evidentiary base spans four continents, two centuries of scholarship, and at least six scientific disciplines.

Satellite imagery from a NASA programme does not adjust its findings based on Indian political conditions. German isotope hydrology does not take instructions from the RSS. Either the geology is sound or it is not—and critics who wish to challenge Danino’s conclusions are obliged to say which data they dispute and why.

The Quality That Distinguishes a Scholar from an Ideologue

There is a further dimension of Danino’s work that his critics have chosen to overlook: his explicit, consistent acknowledgement of uncertainty and dissent.

In the prologue to The Lost River, he writes that whatever perspective his readers choose to adopt, he will be satisfied if they feel enriched by the inquiry.

In the body of the book, he returns repeatedly to scholars who hold different views, notes where the evidence is genuinely contested, and presents his own synthesis as a reasoned interpretation rather than an unchallengeable verdict. “We will hear diverse viewpoints,” he writes, “learn from every one of them, and I will present my own, while weighing and trying to reconcile inputs from a variety of disciplines.”

This is not a rhetorical formula. It is borne out in practice. Danino does not suppress inconvenient findings. He discusses the minority of scholars who have questioned whether the Vedic Sarasvati was located in India at all, or whether it existed as a physical river.

He engages with their arguments before offering his rebuttal. He flags, more than once, the limits of what the evidence can establish. He distinguishes between what is demonstrated, what is probable, and what remains speculative.

A partisan sophist does not do this. An intellectual demagogue selects evidence, suppresses alternatives, and presents conclusions with a certainty the record does not support. Danino does the opposite—and the contrast with the certainty his critics bring to their dismissals of him is, in itself, telling.

The Argument His Critics Would Rather Not Have

Perhaps the most uncomfortable dimension of Danino’s scholarship—uncomfortable, specifically, for those who accuse him of serving a political agenda—is that his sharpest criticism is directed not at ancient India’s detractors but at the Indian state’s failure to take its own intellectual heritage seriously.

In an article in The Hindu in 2015, Danino notes that no Indian university has a department dedicated to the history of science. He notes that the best online resource for India’s classical mathematicians—a tradition that includes Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, Bhaskaracharya, Mahavira, and Narayana Pandita—is maintained not by an Indian institution but by the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

He notes that significant research contributions to the field in recent decades have come from scholars in the United States, France, Japan, and New Zealand, while their Indian counterparts have worked, in his words, “with little or no institutional support.”

This is not a celebration of ancient India’s greatness. It is a damning audit of post-Independence India’s intellectual priorities. If his agenda were simply to flatter a political constituency, he would not write this. He writes it because it is true, and because a scholar whose subject is being neglected has an obligation to say so regardless of whose discomfort it causes.

The same essay makes an argument that deserves to be read in full by everyone who has dismissed Danino as a partisan. He argues that mainstream Indian historiography’s silence on India’s genuine scientific and mathematical achievements—its failure to give Brahmagupta or Sushruta the space it gives to kings and dynasties—has created the vacuum that fantasists have filled.

The absurd claims about ancient aircraft and Vedic nuclear weapons that embarrass serious scholars arise, at least partly, from a historiography that has told Indian students their civilisation produced nothing worth studying.

Danino’s prescription is not mythologising. It is rigour: document the real achievements, teach them properly, and there will be no room left for the fabrications.

A scholar who builds his case on German groundwater surveys, NASA satellite data, and French archaeological missions is not producing ideology. A scholar who acknowledges competing viewpoints, flags the limits of evidence, and invites his readers to draw their own conclusions is not producing propaganda. A scholar who criticises his own country’s institutions for neglecting the very field he is defending is not writing to please a political master.

In the same way, a scholar who included a section on problems with one of India’s most important institutions in a school textbook is only enabling informed civic understanding among young students. – Swarajya, 16 March 2026

Michel Danino: The quiet giant of our time – Sandeep Balakrishna

March 15, 2026March 17, 2026VOI

Prof. Michel Danino has actually rescued the NCERT by lifting it out of the morass into which the Leftist establishment had sunk it. … The reforms to history textbooks under Danino’s leadership were long overdue and are in the right direction. – Sandeep Balakrishna

Michel Danino, in many ways, is reminiscent of the gurus of the ancient Indian parampara. Unassuming and quiet, yet a powerhouse of scholarship, which is matched only by his dignity and unimpeachable intellectual integrity.

I have had the immense fortune of learning from him for nearly two decades. On the several occasions I have met him, the experience has always been enriching, fruitful and, above all, ennobling.

In fact, if at all I have managed to contribute in any meaningful way in the area of Bharatavarsha’s history and cultural heritage, I owe a huge debt of gratitude—which I cannot repay—to Danino’s stellar body of work.

The areas of his scholarly investigations are daunting even for professional scholars—exposing the bogus Aryan Invasion Theory, tracing the trajectory of the Saraswati River, archaeology, ancient Indian knowledge traditions, nuances of the Puranas and epics, prehistoric studies, Harappan art and town planning, marine archaeology….

From a larger perspective, Danino has created a substantial and qualitative scholarly legacy in his own lifetime and continues quietly on his chosen path away from the public glare, away from any temptations of celebrity.

I speak from personal experience.

The distinguished positions he has held—most notably as Visiting Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Gandhinagar and, lately, as Chairperson of the NCERT—are not only entirely deserving but reflective of his eminence.

The Supreme Court, which took suo motu cognisance of a chapter on judicial corruption in an eighth-standard NCERT textbook, has meted out rather high-handed treatment to Danino.

In many ways, it is a tacit admission of its ignorance of his distinction.

There are legions of students and scholars who literally venerate Danino.

Without exaggeration, Danino—a Frenchman by birth and an Indian citizen for over three decades—is one of the finest cultural patriots of India.

He is deeply anchored in the philosophy and ideals of Sri Aurobindo, one of twentieth-century India’s greatest mystic-saints.

To put this in context, Danino has actually rescued the NCERT by lifting it out of the morass into which the Leftist establishment had sunk it.

Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians, a classic exposé of the NCERT (apart from the Humanities department of the HRD ministry), is perhaps the most devastating critique of this morass to date.

But the late scholar N.S. Rajaram supplies an even more stunning data point that Shourie’s book does not contain.

He mentions how Nurul Hasan—Indira Gandhi’s favourite Education Minister—ran the NCERT like a czar and the consequences thereof.

“NIEPA is a particularly influential body that administers and oversees educational policy in India.

NCERT controls textbooks and other materials that are used in schools and colleges in India…

Through his control of these two powerful bodies, Nurul Hasan became the education czar in India…

A single example should help give an idea of the dangers of this centralised feudal educational policy.

For over 20 years, H.S. Khan—Nurul Hasan’s favourite—headed the history and sociology division of the NCERT.

He is known to hold the view that India became civilised only through the introduction of Islam.

This, incidentally, is also the official Pakistani line…

This is taking the Aryan invasion idea a giant step backwards…

In 1986, on Khan’s initiative, textbook writers in all the states were directed to change the version of history to accord with the anti-Hindu model.”

Yet not one court back then took umbrage at these flagrant distortions of history done at the behest of sitting ministers and high-ranking bureaucrats.

The reforms to history textbooks under Danino’s leadership were long overdue and are in the right direction.

Yet the Supreme Court has taken severe objection to one solitary chapter dealing with judicial corruption and has used its power disproportionately against a widely respected scholar and academic.

Its wording is troubling, to say the least.

“… We have no reason to doubt that Professor Michel Danino, along with Ms Diwakar and Mr Alok Prasanna Kumar, either does not have reasonable knowledge about the Indian judiciary or they deliberately and knowingly misrepresented the facts in order to project a negative image of the Indian judiciary….

There is no reason why such persons should be associated in any manner with the preparation of curriculum or finalisation of textbooks….

We direct the Government of India and all states/UTs/universities etc. to disassociate the three of them forthwith and not assign any responsibility involving public funds.”

Since my own schooldays, there have been any number of chapters in textbooks dealing with political and bureaucratic corruption.

Yet, as far as I can remember, there were no cases or punitive court actions against their authors.

To state the obvious, judicial corruption is a reality.

One is reminded of the recent case of Justice Yashwant Varma, which sent nationwide shockwaves and led to impeachment proceedings against him.

Omitting the mention of uncomfortable truths—judicial corruption in this case—will not make them disappear.

One is tempted to use the cliché that truth is stranger than fiction, but this issue is perhaps one of the clearest signs of the times we live in.

Or rather, an illustration of a timeless truth of history beautifully captured in the Mahabharata:

sulabhāḥ puruṣā rājan satataṃ priyavādinaḥ |
apriyasya tu pathyasya vaktā śrotā ca durlabhaḥ ||

“O King, it is easy to find people who always say pleasant things.

But it is extremely rare to find someone who speaks the unpleasant but beneficial truth, and even rarer to find someone willing to listen to it.” – News18, 13 March 2026

› Sandeep Balakrishna is an author, editor, columnist, public intellectual and an independent researcher. He is the founder and chief editor of The Dharm a Dispatch .

Why nations go to war – Acharya Prashant

March 12, 2026March 12, 2026VOI

You cannot burn your neighbour’s house and rest in peace, not because of some mystical law, but because the act of burning changes the one who burns, and that changed person then returns to the home he imagined was safe and wonders why he cannot sleep. – Acharya Prashant

There is a question that goes unasked every time the world erupts in war, and its absence is more revealing than anything the analysts say. The question is not about which side is right, or which grievance is legitimate, or which alliance has been betrayed. Those questions get asked at great length, with great sophistication, by very worldly, credentialed people. The question that does not get asked is simpler and more dangerous: who is the one fighting? Not which nation, not which ideology, not which scripture, but who, actually, is doing this, what does this person want, and why does the wanting never stop?

That question is dangerous because it turns the lens around. All the other questions look outward, at the adversary, at the system, at the historical injustice. This one looks at the looker. And the looker, it turns out, has a very strong interest in not being looked at.

In the recent weeks, US and Israeli strikes on Iran have killed several top military and political figures, including senior leadership; Iran retaliated with strikes on Israeli positions and on American bases and allied targets in parts of the Gulf region; Pakistan launched strikes into Afghanistan; the Ukraine-Russia front continues its grinding attrition; and all this is happening while the devastating war in Gaza is still quite fresh in the collective memory. Across every editorial room and foreign ministry, the same machinery cranks into motion: geopolitical analysis, balance-of-power calculations, resource competition, historical grievance mapping. These explanations are not wrong, exactly. They describe the furniture of the room quite well. But what they do not explain is who is sitting in it, or why that person keeps setting the room on fire and then expressing surprise at the flames.

Nations Don’t Fight

There is no such thing as a nation as a conscious entity. A nation is a principle, and a principle has no agency of its own; it can only express the consciousness, or the unconsciousness, of the people who generate it. When a people is inwardly chaotic, driven by fear and the need for dominance, it produces a nation that is belligerent, exclusive, and always in search of an enemy to confirm its own identity. When a people is inwardly clear, the nation it generates can be genuinely civilising. But we do not speak this way. We say “the US attacked Iran” as though two abstract entities are in principled competition; the label launders the real actor, the human ego, into a flag, and the flag then takes the responsibility while the ego escapes into the applause.

Consider what a single historical fact does to the entire geopolitical narrative of the current US-Iran crisis. Until 1979, Iran and Israel were functional allies. Iran was an important oil supplier to Israel during the Shah’s era; Israeli and Iranian intelligence services collaborated closely; Iran extended de facto recognition to Israel in 1950 and maintained working relations with it throughout the Shah’s rule, at a time when every Arab neighbour had gone to war to prevent exactly that. Two countries that today describe each other in the language of surgical removal and satanic identity, “the cancerous tumour must be excised,” “the Little Satan must perish,” were, within living memory, strategic partners. No territory changed hands between them in 1979; no oil field was found or lost; no ancient wound was reopened. What changed decisively was the 1979 revolution that placed religious identity at the absolute centre of the Iranian state, and the same country that had been a partner became the enemy. The Islamic Republic made opposition to Israel a central ideological position of the new state, not because Israel had done anything new, but because a state founded entirely on theological identity requires its identity to be defined against something. A Jewish state served that purpose with theological precision.

This is not geopolitics wearing a religious costume. This is religion being worn by the ego as its most respectable armour, and it tells us everything we need to know about the nature of the conflict.

Religion exists to civilise the animal. Every great tradition, at its irreducible core, was attempting to do one thing: take the creature that emerges from the womb driven entirely by the biological logic of survival: consume, expand, eliminate the threat, secure the territory, and elevate it into something capable of clarity, compassion, and self-knowledge. That is the whole project. The animal, however, is remarkably resourceful. It can colonise the very force meant to tame it; it can drape itself in scripture, recite the holy verses with genuine feeling, and emerge looking not like a beast at all, but like a soldier of God. When that happens, religion does not merely fail at its purpose; it becomes the most potent accelerant the ego has ever discovered, because now the hunger for dominance carries the blessing of the divine, the violence is sanctified, and the enemy is not merely an adversary to be defeated but a heretic whose destruction is itself an act of devotion.

Look at the region, and the pattern is visible everywhere at once. The Shia-Sunni schism, a theological dispute over succession thirteen centuries old, continues to shape proxy wars across Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon; the hatred between those who share the same God, the same Prophet, and nearly the same scripture exceeds in ferocity the hatred between people who share nothing. In the United States, some influential evangelical constituencies hold a literal belief in Biblical prophecy that makes their support for Israeli military policy not a political position but an eschatological one; they believe the Second Coming is contingent on certain territorial arrangements in the Middle East, and no diplomatic argument reaches a conviction rooted in the Book of Revelation. Hamas frames every missile launch in the language of holy liberation. The Israeli state, forged in the trauma of the Holocaust and the genuine existential terror of being a country the size of a few Indian districts surrounded by populations that have repeatedly declared their wish to see it gone, responds with a hardness the world has rarely seen directed so openly at a civilian population, and does so while invoking its own theological entitlement to the land. Every party has its scripture and its God. Every party’s God appears to have personally endorsed that party’s military strategy. One must pause and ask with full seriousness: what kind of God is this, who sides so reliably with whoever happens to be invoking him at the moment of the airstrike?

The answer, of course, is that this God does not exist. What exists is the ego, which has been using the name of God since it first discovered that the name confers immunity from examination.

Not Resources, But Identity.

Strip away the theological dressing and the geopolitical framework, and what remains is something both simpler and more intractable: the ego’s bottomless hunger to feel complete. This is the actual engine beneath every war, and no diplomatic architecture has ever been built to address it, because the architects themselves are running the same engine.

The resource explanation for the US-Iran confrontation is the most persistent alibi and the most easily dismantled. The United States is among the world’s largest energy producers; it has no material need for Iranian oil that could justify the risks of direct military confrontation with a nation of ninety million people in one of the world’s most volatile regions. Iran, for its part, possesses no intercontinental missile capable of reaching American cities, and by several credible accounts a negotiated arrangement, with Omani mediation, was genuinely within reach: Iran would continue enriching fissile material but not stockpile it, making weaponisation impossible without abrupt and easily detectable reversal. None of this fits a resource or security conflict in the conventional sense. What it fits is the logic of an ego that requires dominance not as a strategy but as a psychological condition; an ego that cannot tolerate the existence of an entity that refuses to subordinate itself to the hierarchy. You cannot give it enough. Feed it every oil field in the Gulf and it will discover it needs recognition; give it recognition and it will discover it needs submission; give it submission and it will discover it needs the annihilation of any future possibility of challenge. The hunger has no floor because the hollowness it is trying to fill has no floor either.

This is also why every coercive attempt to prevent Iran’s nuclearisation produces the very outcome it claims to be preventing. The lesson that every capital in the world is drawing from watching a sovereign nation’s senior leadership eliminated by a foreign military strike is not “we should negotiate more sincerely.” It is: “We need a nuclear-tipped intercontinental missile, because that is the only thing that makes us genuinely untouchable.” North Korea understood this early and has not been subjected to the same treatment as Iraq, Libya, or now Iran; every government in the world has registered exactly why, and is drawing its own conclusions quietly. Pakistan articulated the logic with unusual candour in the 1990s when it was reported to describe its nuclear programme as the “Islamic bomb”; the theology was decoration, the calculation underneath is now a standard operating assumption in most strategic planning ministries on earth. You can prevent a country from manufacturing a weapon; you cannot prevent it from purchasing one, trading for one, or receiving one through channels that only appear in retrospective intelligence reports five years later. The ego will always find a route around the obstacle, because self-preservation is its oldest and deepest competence, and it will spend every gram of available intelligence in that service. What you cannot route around is the inner condition that makes the weapon feel necessary. Everything else: the sanctions, the strikes, the frameworks, the summits, is rearranging weapons into configurations that feel temporarily safer and calling the rearrangement peace.

The Fire Was Lit In Here

There is a temptation, particularly for citizens of the nations doing the striking, to watch all of this from a position of apparent safety: to feel either pride at a display of power or simple relief that the devastation is happening at a geographical distance comfortable enough to be consumed as news. The objects of the conflict are far away: Iran, Gaza, Afghanistan, Ukraine. The subject, the one who has authorised, funded, and often enough cheered for these operations, remains at home, apparently untouched. This is the ego’s most seductive illusion: that the fire it lights in the world stays in the world, that you can sanction the destruction of other people’s cities and return to your own life carrying none of that destruction inside you.

The fire does not stay outside. It never has.

The inner condition that produces belligerent foreign policy is the same inner condition that produces the epidemic of depression, anxiety, addiction, and inner purposelessness that has become the defining psychological signature of the most militarily powerful societies on earth. It feels counterintuitive to connect these; it feels like a category error to link America’s mental health catastrophe with decades of American military conduct across the world. And yet this is precisely what honest seeing reveals when it is applied without flinching. The violence directed outward, and the suffering experienced inward, are not two events happening in two different places; they are the same ego operating in two directions, and the ego that lights the fire and the ego that cannot sleep afterward are not two separate entities but a single disturbed centre. The ego believes it can cleanly separate the one who acts from the one who suffers. But the one who lights fires has already become a person who lights fires; the one who sanctions collective punishment has already become a person capable of sanctioning collective punishment; and that becoming does not halt at any border. You cannot burn your neighbour’s house and rest in peace, not because of some mystical law, but because the act of burning changes the one who burns, and that changed person then returns to the home he imagined was safe and wonders why he cannot sleep.

The senses are made to face outward, and therefore the ego, using only the senses, sees only what is outside, never what is within. This is the structural predicament of the geopolitically entranced ego: it looks outward at the adversary, at the threat, at the historical injustice, and it never pauses to notice that what it keeps finding out there, the hunger, the fear, the need for enemies, the certainty of its own righteousness, is a precise mirror of what has never been examined within. Nations go to war for the same reason individuals destroy their own relationships: something hurts, something feels insufficient, and the instinct is to locate the source of that pain outside oneself. The nation blames the enemy state; the individual blames the partner; and in both cases the real author of the suffering, the unexamined centre that requires enemies in order to know what it is, goes untouched, free to generate the next crisis with the same efficient reliability.

Ask yourself what genuinely disturbs you when you read the news from that region. If you find that a missile strike produces something that feels uncomfortably close to satisfaction, a sense that the right people are being punished, that your side is winning, that the world is being corrected, sit with that feeling for a moment before moving to the next headline. Ask what it is fed by. Ask what it would mean for your sense of identity if the world stopped arranging itself into enemies you could feel righteous about. These wars are not aberrations in an otherwise rational world order; they are the outward expression of an inward condition that is universal and ancient, that operates identically in the head of state and in the citizen consuming the coverage, differing only in the scale of damage each has access to.

The ego that requires enemies to sustain its own sense of coherence does not disappear when the missiles stop. It waits until it finds the next available occasion. And the wheel turns again.

The wheel will not be stopped from the outside. There is no treaty elegant enough, no balance of power stable enough, no diplomatic architecture sophisticated enough to address what keeps turning it. The wheel is turned from within, by the unexamined centre that has been given every instrument of analysis and statecraft except the one that could actually change something: the willingness to look at itself with the same ruthlessness it has always reserved for its enemies.

That is the only disarmament that lasts. Not a new agreement, not a new government, not a new ideology dressed in the vocabulary of the old one, but just a human being, finally willing to ask: what in me is producing this world, and what would remain of my sense of who I am if I could no longer find an enemy to confirm it?

That question, honestly pursued, is the beginning of the only peace that has ever been real. It will need to be asked again tomorrow. And the day after. Because the ego that found the question will, by the next headline, have found a new enemy. But each asking weakens the wheel by a fraction, and a fraction, repeated across enough human beings, is the only force that has ever slowed it. – The Pioneer, 7 March 2026

› Acharya Prashant is a teacher and author whose work centres on self-inquiry and its application to contemporary life.

Trump Cartoon

Secularism and Tipu Sultan – Sita Ram Goel & Aabhas Maldahiyar

March 9, 2026March 14, 2026VOI

One can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India’s freedom struggle against British imperialism? – Sita Ram Goel

Nehruvian Secularism – Sita Ram Goel

Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modem West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity. Its battle cry was that the State should be freed from the stranglehold of the Church, and the citizen should be left to his own individual choice in matters of belief. And it met with great success in every Western democracy.

Had India borrowed this doctrine from the modem West, it would have meant a rejection of the closed creeds of Islam and Christianity, and a promotion of the Sanatana Dharma family of faiths which have been naturally secularist in the modern Western sense. But what happened actually was that Secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come here in the company of foreign invaders, and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries.

We should not, therefore, confuse India’s Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognised as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.

Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India’s freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahhabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?

One has only to go to the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam and its above-mentioned luminaries. And one can see immediately that their true character has nothing to do with that with which they have been invested in our school and college text-books. No deeper probe is needed for unraveling the mysteries of Nehruvian Secularism.

This is not the occasion to go into the implications of this Secularism vis-a-vis India’s own spiritual vision, India’s own cultural wealth, India’s own national society, and India’s own native nationalism. I have dealt with this theme elsewhere. Suffice it to say that the other face of this Secularism is Hindu-baiting, which profession has been perfected by many scholars, scribes, and politicians, and has so far proved immensely profitable. I need not give the names. The stalwarts in this field are very well known.

What the hazrat and the shaheed Tipu Sultan stood for is described by Mir Hussain Ali Kirmani in his book, Nishan-i-Haidari, which he completed in AD 1802, three years after Tipu’s death. Kirmani writes:

“It happened one day that a fakir (a religious mendicant), a man of saint-like mind, passed that way, and seeing the Sultan gave him a life-bestowing benediction, saying to him, ‘Fortunate child, at a future time thou will be the king of this country, and when thy time comes, remember my words—take this temple and destroy it, and build a masjid in its place, and for ages it will remain a memorial of thee.’ The Sultan smiled, and in reply told him that ‘whenever, by his blessings, he should become a padishah, or king, he would do as he (the fakir) directed’. When, therefore, after a short time, his father became a prince, the possessor of wealth and territory, he remembered his promise, and after his return from Nagar and Gorial Bunder, he purchased the temple from the adorers of the image in it (which after all was nothing but the figure of a bull, made of brick and mortar) with their goodwill, and the Brahmins, therefore, taking away their image, placed it in the Deorhi Peenth, and the temple was pulled down, and the foundations of a new masjid raised on the site….”

That is the Masjid-i-Ala or Jama Masjid standing in Srirangapatanam on the site of a Hanuman temple. One need not comment on Kirmani’s statement that Tipu “purchased the temple from the adorers of the image … with their goodwill”. It is not unoften that terror has produced this sort of goodwill in the minds of its helpless victims. – Excerpted from the Preface to Tipu Sultan: Villain or Hero

Tipu Sultan: When an Islamist tyrant is turned into a freedom fighter and dharma saviour – Aabhas Maldahiyar

Karnataka is witnessing an Opposition backlash against a review committee set up by the state government that recommended doing away with the glorification of the alleged “rocket man” and freedom fighter, Tipu Sultan. The opposition led by the Congress, which was in power in the state between 2013 and 2018, has been parroting following three points to glorify Tipu Sultan:

Tipu was the first freedom fighter of India;
Tipu was the pioneer of war rockets;
Tipu supported the temples and maths while Marathas looted them.

This essay intends to show how slippery and ill-founded these claims supporting Tipu Sultan are. Let’s begin.

“Who are my people? All of them—yes those that ring the temple bells and those that pray in the mosque—they are my people, and this land is theirs and mine.”

Above is a quote appearing from the work of fiction, The Sword of Tipu Sultan, written by novelist Bhagwan S. Gidwani in 1976. Unfortunately, this very work of fiction sets the narrative around how Indians should look at the “Tyrant of Mysore”.

Do you recall the following quote often attributed to Tipu Sultan, the Aurangzeb from south India?

“Every blow that is struck in the cause of American liberty throughout the world, in France, India and elsewhere and so long as a single insolent and savage tyrant remains, the struggle shall continue.”

My maiden encounter with this quote came through a paper titled, Haidar ‘Ali and Tipu Sultan: Mysore’s Eighteenth-Century Rulers in Transition, written by Kavesh Yazdani. Being an explorer of the past, it appeared to be an important duty to investigate the source mentioned by Yazdani for making such a grandiose claim. He had referred to Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan edited by Kabir Kausar with a complete section called “Tipu’s Views on the American Declaration of Independence”.

Interestingly, Kabir’s source is The Sword of Tipu Sultan, a historical fiction by Gidwani. Isn’t it highly cynical that one of the most “seriously considered” academic non-fiction works relies on a historical fiction to build a narrative on how Tipu Sultan “drew inspiration out of the American War of Independence”? More interestingly, the Foreword to Secret Correspondence of Tipu Sultan was written by eminent historian B.R. Grover of Jamia Millia. Read the interesting point he observes as below:

“Compiled by an archivist in his methodical and scientific approach, this work is a welcome addition to the source material of the late 18th century history of India. It affords fresh ground for an assessment of the character and activities of Tipu Sultan and his place in history.”

The then director of the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), Grover goes on to laud this work for its “methodical and scientific approach”, even though it relies on a work of fiction—The Sword of Tipu Sultan—to make a hyperbolic claim about Tipu Sultan. Grover further recommends everyone to read this book!

Now let’s analyse the three points on which Tipu Sultan is glorified.

Tipu Sultan a freedom-fighter?

Wouldn’t it be best to again pick the most popular work used by most to idolise Tipu Sultan as a freedom fighter? Hence, I pick an anthology of essays, titled Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, edited by eminent historian Irfan Habib. As the title itself suggests, the author attempts to project the two as the flag-bearers of modernisation and crusaders against colonialism. Ironically, there are innumerable primary sources that speak aloud of how Tipu Sultan had colonised the southern belt through the sword of Islam. This essay is not intended to deal with colonisation and atrocity under Tipu Sultan, I will just leave the readers with the verse mentioned on his sword which reads as below:

“My victorious sabre is lightning for the destruction of the unbelievers. Haidar, the Lord of the Faith, is victorious for my advantage. And, moreover, he destroyed the wicked race who were unbelievers. Praise be to him, who is the Lord of the Worlds! Thou art our Lord, support us against the people who are unbelievers. He to whom the Lord giveth victory prevails over all (mankind). Oh Lord, make him victorious, who promoteth the faith of Muhammad. Confound him, who refuseth the faith of Muhammad; and withhold us from those who are so inclined. The Lord is predominant over his own works. Victory and conquest are from the Almighty. Bring happy tidings, Oh Muhammad, to the faithful; for God is the kind protector and is the most merciful of the merciful. If God assists thee, thou wilt prosper. May the Lord God assist thee, Oh Muhammad, with mighty victory.

Let us now inspect how well Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan stood against colonialism.

On the issue of Tipu Sultan taking on the British, we need to understand that all he was trying to do was to safeguard his Islamic influence over the land he was ruling. A serious student of history would go back to the contemporary source of that period to get to the truth. I came across The Asiatic Annual Register for the year 1799, and the details on Page No. 194-95 under title “Supplement to the Chronicle” contained the thing of interest pertaining to the subject. It tells us that in February 1797, the captain of a French ship, François Ripaud, dismasted in Mangalore.

He was a conman who exemplified himself as the second-in-command in Mauritius and reflected as authorised personality to discuss Mysore’s succour with a French force that had already amassed to expel the British from India. Tipu fell for this. There began his tourney of French correspondences. It was on the second day of April 1797, when he gave his complete proposal to the French authorities through a letter. It contained among other things the proposal to replace the British with the French, and the equal division of property and territory between the French and him. We also get to know that Tipu was set to hand over Goa and Bombay to new allies, thereby replacing English with French. Irfan Habib should let us know if the proposal to replace one coloniser by another makes Tipu anti-colonial?

One can also look at Tipu’s letter to Zaman Shah, the ruler of Afghanistan on the fifth day of February 1797. In the letter, he proposed jihad against the kafirs with intent to “free the region of Hindustan from the corruption by the enemies of Islam”. The action plan was as below:

Zaman Shah was to banish the Marathas from Delhi.
Next the collaborated Afghan and Tipu’s army would crush the Maratha power in Deccan.

This same strategy was being applied during the Khilafat Movement too. It has been documented clearly and unapologetically by Dr B.R. Ambedkar in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India. Dr Ambedkar writes as below:

“(…) when it is recalled that in 1919 the Indian Musalmans who were carrying on the Khilafat movement actually went to the length of inviting the Amir of Afghanistan to invade India (…)”

The communal Moplah outrage of 1921 in Malabar could be easily traced to the forcible mass conversion and related Islamic atrocities of Tipu Sultan during his cruel military regime from 1783 to 1792.

So, calling Tipu Sultan a freedom fighter is an outright insult to all the freedom fighters.

Tipu Sultan the pioneer of war rockets?

The other claim which is used to project Tipu Sultan as a man of science and technology was his “invention” of war rockets. But like the previous one, even this claim doesn’t hold much water; the primary sources say otherwise. As a first source I go back to the recorded experience of James Forbes (1749–1819). He writes in his book, Oriental Memoirs: A Narrative of Seventeen Years’ Residence in India, Vol. I:

“The war rocket used by the Mahrattas which very often annoyed us, is composed of an iron tube eight or ten inches long and nearly two inches in diameter. This destructive weapon is sometimes fixed to a rod iron, sometimes to a straight two-edged sword, but most commonly to a strong bamboo cane four or five feet long with an iron spike projecting beyond the tube to this rod or staff, the tube filled with combustible materials (…)”

The below images show the replica of Indian war rockets (1790) kept in London Museum of Science. The text clearly mentions Marathas using it against the Europeans.

Hence the attribution to Tipu Sultan to having led the creation of war rockets is a shaky assertion. There are even more primary sources which contradict any such assertion.

Tipu Sultan supported temples and maths, Marathas looted them?

Even this claim reflects how ill-informed people are about what the primary sources say. The usual narrative goes like this: That Marathas destroyed a math that was given grants by Tipu Sultan. Let’s verify it.

The Sringeri Math was sacked by the Pindaris, the freebooter mercenaries who had nothing to do with the Maratha instructions. According to A.K. Shastry, the editor of The Records of the Sringeri Dharmasamsthana:

“However, Peshwa Madhavrao Narayan conducted an enquiry & ordered Parasuram Bhau to give compensation & return the looted articles to the Matha. Parsuram gave a positive reply (Kd. 129, R. 52 in Marathi). The Peshwa’s letter reveals his key interest in giving compensation to the Matha. The positive reply from Parasuram Bhau to the Peshwa would form an impression that the foolish plunder of Sringeri was not due to any deliberate intention on his part, but a result of the predatory habits of the Pindaris in his contingent.”

It becomes very clear from the math’s record that Marathas never intended to do what the Pindaris had done and had even accepted to compensate despite this not being their own instruction. The same record also tells us that Tipu was donating to the math, but some observations give an interesting perspective. Read this excerpt from History of Raja Kesavadas by V.R. Parameswaran Pillai:

“With respect to the much-published land-grants I had explained the reasons about 40 years back. Tipu had immense faith in astrological predictions. It was to become an emperor (padushah) after destroying the might of the British that Tipu resorted to land-grants and other donations to Hindu temples in Mysore including Sringeri Mutt, as per the advice of the local Brahmin astrologers. Most of these were done after his defeat in 1791 and the humiliating Srirangapatanam Treaty in 1792. These grants were not done out of respect or love for Hindus or Hindu religion but for becoming Padushah as predicted by the astrologers.”

Alas! He is the same Tipu who had butchered thousands of Hindus and Christians, done forcible circumcisions, destroyed multiple temples and churches, commissioned literature to incite jihad against non-Muslims, forcibly took non-Muslim women to his harems, etc. How naive it is to believe that the bigoted tyrant was sorrowful for Shankaracharya’s math being looted by some freebooters!

Some interesting nodes to be dealt with later

As I look for the source from where these fake narratives emerge, it takes me to a paper Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan by B.N. Pandey which talks of Tipu giving grants to 156 Hindu Temples. Pandey writes, “Prof. Srikantiah supplied me with the list of 156 temples to which Tipu Sultan used to pay annual gifts.”

Then we are told that Sir Brijendra Nath Seal, the then vice-chancellor of Mysore University, had forwarded Pandey’s letter to Prof. Srikantiah and the latter responded by giving this list.

Interestingly, Sir Seal was the VC of the Mysore University between 1921 and 1929. Any person with common sense would tell that Pandey must have received this list in or before 1929, but it took him 64 years to make this information public; Pandey mentioned it for the first time in his lecture on Tipu on 18 November 1993!

Another source of misinformation is B.A. Saletore’s article, “Tipu Sultan as Defender of the Hindu Dharma”, was first published in 1999 (Medieval India Quarterly, Vol. I, No. 1) It is reprinted in Confronting Colonialism (pages 115-30). This article begins itself with a Kannada sanad issued with Tipu’s seal. It talks about a dispute regarding worshipping at a mandir in Mysore, where Tipu is said to have not only given remedies to the injustice done by his own official, but he also rectifies an omission made by a previous Hindu ruler of Mysore.

In this case too, truth seems miles away. Saletore says, “The second line of the sanad contains merely the Hindu cyclic year and the month and the day (Siddhartha saum. Bhadrapada ba. 5) which corresponds to 15 September 1783.” Here is the error. The cyclic year Siddhartha occurred only once during Tipu’s life which corresponds with Saka year 1721. Bhadrapada Badi 5 of the year named Siddhartha, Saka year 1721 corresponds with 19 September 1799, and Tipu had died on 4 May 1799 (138 days before the sanad is stated).

There is a long list of errors around each document that is used to glorify Tipu. Perhaps, I will pick each one in separate essays anytime soon. – Firstpost, 1 April 2022

› Aabhas Maldahiyar is an author, architect and historian.

Read Online

The Iran Paradox: The strange case of Leftists mourning for a despot – Makarand R. Paranjape

March 5, 2026VOI

To eulogise and lament the demise of a barbarous despot and a brutal regime, which trampled on its own citizens and destroyed its own country economically, socially and politically, is sheer folly. – Makarand R. Paranjape

While Iranians all over the world, and to the extent possible within Iran, are celebrating the fall of a horrible despot and his regime of terror, Left-liberals in both the US and India are in mourning over the Ayatollah’s demise. How can one explain this strange and perplexing paradox?

Iranian women are rejoicing over the downfall of one of the most oppressive and misogynistic regimes in the world, yet US and Indian feminists—who, without the enforced hijab in Iran, would have faced certain imprisonment, even torture—are lamenting the fall of Iran’s patriarchal despots.

Iranian women have endured decades of policed veiling, gender segregation, and brutal crackdowns on protests, such as the 2022 uprising following Mahsa Amini’s death in custody for “improper hijab”. The regime’s misogyny was systemic, with laws permitting child marriage, quasi-prostitution disguised as temporary marriage (sigheh or nikah mut‘ah) and stoning for adultery (zina-e-mohsen).

Yet, when news broke of Khamenei’s death and the subsequent collapse of key regime figures, feminists both in the US and India decried the “militaristic patriarchy” of US and Israeli forces. The same feminists, who champion bodily autonomy, aligned with a theocracy that denied it.

Similarly, organised gay and LGBTQ groups, who could have faced execution in the Islamist Republic of Iran, are wailing the end of Iran’s theocratic dictatorship. Some on social media even pointed out how one of the greatest postmodernists, Michel Foucault, not only praised the regime in Iran but visited the country. I am not sure they knew he was homosexual—or did they simply choose to ignore it in so famous a foreign supporter?

The irony is stark: those who could be hanged from cranes in Tehran are now indirectly defended by activists enjoying protections in liberal democracies, all in the name of intersectional anti-oppression.

Communists were executed by Islamists not only in Iran, but in many other parts of the world. The Iranian regime’s early years saw the mass execution of Leftists, including members of the Tudeh Party, who were purged in the 1980s for ideological deviations from Khomeini’s Shia Islamism. Globally, Islamists have clashed with Communists, viewing Marxism as atheistic heresy. Yet today, Communist sympathisers in the West echo Iran’s anti-American slogans, seeing the regime as a victim of capitalist encirclement.

American Communists are taking the “Death to America” line right in New York City today, thanks to the patronage of their mayor, misusing the latitude of free speech given to them by the laws of the very country they excoriate. Speaking of the mayor, he promptly issued a statement condemning his own country and president.

I do not recall him shedding a tear for any of the prisoners of conscience tortured and killed in Iranian jails or castigating the horrifying attacks of Iran’s proxies in the region. Oh, I stand corrected; he did condemn Hamas much later, after facing repeated criticism. The day after the raid of 7 October 2023, he actually denounced Israel for its apartheid and occupation, not to mention its declaration of war against Hamas. Now this same mayor questions the legality of US and Israeli actions against Iran.

It is strange, to say the least, that the fallen regime has all kinds of supporters, East and West, many of whom are not even remotely connected to, let alone know much about, Iran. The Shia reaction in the subcontinent, by contrast, is understandable, even if, arguably, irrelevant to international geopolitics.

This global phenomenon of Left-liberal outrage over US-Israeli actions, which we may term the “Iran Paradox”, grows even stranger when we realise how many Muslim, especially Arab, states have actually condemned Iran’s retaliatory strikes, not the initial US-Israeli strikes. Even China and Russia, despite whatever verbal or political support they might extend in the totally marginalised and disunited United Nations, did not come to Iran’s aid in its time of dire need. The Ayatollah’s rule of terror, in other words, was left friendless in the end. Such, indeed, is the fate of dictators around the world.

Western liberalism, if we can even call it that, with its fading echoes elsewhere, reveals a profound disconnect with ground realities. Indeed, global political discourse shows that ideological alignments trump human rights or even historical realities.

At its core, the Iran Paradox stems from the frightened prejudice of sore losers, a Left which, some say not without reason, is both intellectually and morally bankrupt. It has nothing to fall back upon except its hatred for the US and Israel.

They are the ultimate villains—imperialist, colonialist and, worst of all, capitalist. Any regime opposing this axis, no matter how repressive, becomes, by default, a symbol of resistance.

Founded in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran, under Ayatollah Khomeini, positioned itself as an anti-imperialist bulwark, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. They took their latter responsibility a bit too seriously, exporting death through proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Now, in closing, to India’s weak and splintered opposition—especially the increasingly irrelevant Congress and its differently enabled band of ideological fellow-travellers. Preaching moral lessons to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who embraced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the eve of the strike on Iran, is one thing.

But to eulogise and lament the demise of a barbarous dictator and a brutal regime, which trampled on its own citizens and destroyed its own country economically, socially and politically, is, as outspoken critics are wont to put it, sheer folly.

Yes, India did business with Iran, but that does not mean we should sing hosannas to its deceased leaders while ignoring their crimes against humanity. Let us not even comment on those virtue-signalling by issuing strong denunciations of the US and Israel. Actions speak louder than words. Besides, who is listening to them? Firstpost, 4 March 2026

› Prof. Makarand R. Paranjape is an author and columnist.

Pakistan: Islamic nation or hater of its own roots? – Balbir Punj

March 4, 2026March 5, 2026VOI

Pakistan Anti-India Rally

Pakistan is contradiction personified. It is a declared Islamic nation that kills more Muslims than most non-Muslim regimes. It allies with powers that bomb or erase Muslims elsewhere and survives by playing the sidekick to global powers. It is an ideological construct consumed by hatred of its own pre-Islamic heritage, history, and civilisational traits, such as plurality. – Balbir Punj

The suicide bombing at the Khadija Tul Kubra Shia Mosque in Islamabad on February 6, 2026, which killed at least 36 worshippers and left over 160 injured during Friday prayers, was not merely another act of terrorism in Pakistan’s troubled history. It was not an isolated tragedy either.

It was, in fact, part of a grim continuum. In November 2024, a Shia procession in Parachinar was attacked, killing 44 civilians, including women and children. In March 2022, the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) bombed the Kucha Risaldar Shia Mosque in Peshawar, killing over 60 worshippers.

In 2015, a Shia mosque in Shikarpur was targeted during Friday prayers, leaving 61 dead. Earlier still, the Hazara Shia community of Quetta endured near-genocidal violence, including the twin bombings of 2013 that killed over 200 people.Pakistan today is home to more than 40 million Shia Muslims—nearly one-fifth of its population. Yet more than 4,000 Shias have been killed in sectarian attacks in the past two decades alone. These are not accidental casualties of instability; they are victims of a sustained ideological assault.

A state that cannot – or will not—protect such a large section of its Muslim population forfeits its claim to Islamic legitimacy. Sectarian targeting has become a structural feature of Pakistan’s internal life. Even more telling was the state’s immediate instinct to deflect responsibility. Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif rushed to blame India and Afghanistan—without evidence or investigation.

But facts are stubborn things. Pakistan’s sectarian violence is neither imported nor imposed. It is indigenous, ideologically nurtured, and politically patronised.

The reasons for mass murders committed in the name of Islam lie not only in theology but also in governance. Pakistan has failed to act as a neutral guarantor of religious plurality. Instead, it has repeatedly aligned itself with extremist Sunni majoritarianism, allowing sectarian hatred to harden into political currency.

Groups such as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) and Ahl-e-Sunnat-Wal-Jamaat (ASWJ), globally recognised for their virulent anti-Shia ideology, have been allowed to operate openly. In September 2020, more than 30,000 extremists marched through Karachi, openly calling Shias “blasphemers” and demanding their beheading. Similar rallies followed in Islamabad. These were not clandestine gatherings; they were public demonstrations of ideological impunity.

Legislative measures such as Punjab’s Tahaffuz-e-Bunyad-e-Islam Bill (2020) further marginalised Shias by privileging a singular Sunni interpretation of Islam. Electoral expediency has repeatedly trumped constitutional responsibility. Extremists are not confronted; they are courted, because they deliver street power and votes.The deeper question remains: how does such an ideology repeatedly find fertile ground in Pakistan?

The answer lies in the circumstances leading to its birth and decades of state policy. A state that once distinguished between “good” and “bad” terrorists should not feign surprise when violence turns inward. Islam, reduced to an instrument of power, inevitably devours its own.

Pakistan’s well-worn narrative, in which India is portrayed as inherently anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic, collapses under empirical scrutiny. At the time of Partition, residual India had roughly 30 million Muslims. Today, that number exceeds 220-240 million, making India home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. Over eight decades, Indian Muslims have grown demographically, participated politically, and lived under a secular constitutional framework that guarantees religious freedom.

India maintains strong relations with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iran, and other Islamic nations. Even under Prime Minister Narendra Modi—frequently caricatured by Pakistani propaganda—India’s engagement with the Islamic world has deepened. Pakistan’s accusation is not grounded in reality; it is an ideological necessity to sustain its founding hostility.

Contrast this with Pakistan, where non-Muslims and non-Sunni Muslims, including Ahmadiyas, have been reduced to statistical insignificance, treated as second-class citizens, and are virtually invisible in the country’s public spaces.

Pakistan’s antagonism towards India is less theological and more civilisational. Pakistan was conceived not as a cultural continuation but as a negation of the subcontinent’s pre-Islamic past. Official Pakistani historiography traces its origins to Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion of Sindh in 712 CE. Islamic invaders who destroyed temples and erased indigenous traditions are glorified as ideological ancestors.

This civilisational rupture was not accidental. As documented by former Indian diplomat Narendra Singh Sarila in The Shadow of the Great Game and economist Prasenjit K. Basu in Asia Reborn, the partition of India was deeply embedded in Britain’s imperial strategy.

Classified British correspondence reveals that on May 5, 1945, Prime Minister Winston Churchill commissioned a secret report recommending that Britain retain a military presence in India’s north-west—present-day Pakistan—to counter the Soviet Union. The report advocated detaching Baluchistan to safeguard British interests in the Gulf and the Middle East, highlighting its value as a military base, transit hub, and reservoir of “manpower of good fighting quality”.

On June 3, 1947, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin candidly admitted that the division of India would help Britain consolidate its position in the Middle East. A 1947 British military report went further, stating that Britain’s strategic requirements in the subcontinent could be met through an agreement with Pakistan alone, even if India refused cooperation.

As Prasenjit K. Basu notes, Pakistan was integral to Britain’s grand strategy of retaining influence over the oil-rich regions of Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf. This logic seamlessly transferred to the United States during the Cold War. Pakistan joined SEATO and CENTO, became a frontline ally against the Soviet Union, and hosted CIA operations, including from the Peshawar airbase.

The United States later used Pakistan as a conduit to China and, during the 1971 war, openly sided with Islamabad against India. America replicated the weaponisation of Islam that Britain had perfected—most dramatically in Afghanistan. To counter the Soviet Union, Washington built a global jihadist ecosystem, with Pakistan as its ideological and logistical incubator.

Post-9/11, Pakistan became indispensable once again, even as it played a double game. Islam was never the objective; it was the instrument.

If Pakistan genuinely loved Islam, it would stand unequivocally with Muslim causes worldwide. Pakistan does not.

While Gaza burns and Iran faces sustained Israeli-American hostility, Pakistan’s establishment maintains strategic silence—or worse, strategic collaboration. Reports of Pakistani facilities being used indirectly by US forces against Iran, and the Pakistani Army Chief’s simultaneous engagements in Washington, expose the hollowness of Ummah rhetoric.

Nowhere is Pakistan’s moral bankruptcy clearer than in its embrace of China. While Beijing systematically erases Uyghur Islamic identity—demolishing mosques, banning Quranic practices, and incarcerating over a million Muslims in “re-education camps”—Pakistan remains conspicuously mute.

A self-proclaimed Islamic state reduced to a surrogate of an empire committing cultural genocide against Muslims is a contradiction too grotesque to ignore: loans, corridors, and strategic relevance purchase Pakistan’s silence.

Perhaps the most devastating indictment came from Shia protesters in Kashmir, who marched with the Indian tricolour, asking a simple but searing question, as media reported: “Shia Muslims are targeted in Pakistan. It is painful to see Muslims being killed inside mosques during prayers. What kind of jihad is this?” Pakistan is contradiction personified. It is a declared Islamic nation that kills more Muslims than most non-Muslim regimes. It allies with powers that bomb or erase Muslims elsewhere and survives by playing the sidekick to global powers. It is an ideological construct consumed by hatred of its own pre-Islamic heritage, history, and civilisational traits, such as plurality. – The Pioneer, 28 February 2026

› Balbir Punj is a columnist, author, and former Chairman of the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC).

Genocide in Kashmir: Forgotten and Buried – Vivek Gumaste

March 1, 2026March 1, 2026VOI

The ethnic cleansing of Pandits from Kashmir is the greatest moral lapse of independent India, unmatched in its magnitude, specificity, or completeness when compared to other such similar social upheavals—over a quarter million Indian citizens wronged. – Vivek Gumaste

The passage of time has the uncanny ability to blur our memory, numb our conscience, and mellow the intensity of our reactions, so much so that even the most horrendous of crimes become gradually cemented into history, fade into the background, and come to be accepted as a part of normalcy; accountability is evaded and life moves on. One such horrific event is the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Valley of Kashmir that began in the late 1980s (more than 35 years ago) and continues to this day. During this genocide, over a quarter million Hindu Indian citizens were driven from their homes to become refugees in their own land, over 1000 were killed, and close to 16000 of their homes were burnt to cinder. More than 500 Hindu temples were desecrated or destroyed. This is unequivocally the greatest moral lapse of independent India, unmatched in its magnitude, specificity, or completeness when compared to other such similar social upheavals—over a quarter million Indian citizens wronged.

The purpose of recalling the horrific, blood-curdling events of those dark days is to reawaken the indifferent conscience of a country that has basically decided to callously brush aside the pain and agony of over a quarter million of its citizens and move on with its life. It is also possible that this indifference stems from ignorance. Today, over 40 per cent of Indians are below 30 years of age, and this pertains to events that happened before they were born. Therefore, it becomes vitally important to make them aware of this gruesome episode of their country’s recent past.

For a democratic, secular nation to be viable, it must demonstrate its ability to uphold the lofty principles it espouses. There is still time to rectify this wrong and salvage the credibility of a nation and prove (not to others) but to ourselves that we truly believe in the ideals of secularism. Hence this reminder.

Definition

The events that transpired in Kashmir were so comprehensive in their cruelty—killings, burning of homes, expulsion, and destruction of sacred sites—that we did not have a single term to describe this phenomenon of evil, then. Only in the mid-nineties, when journalists began to use the word “ethnic cleansing” to describe the forced migration of Bosnian Muslims from Serb territories of the former Yugoslavia, did we realise what had happened in Kashmir and were able to give it a name.

A United Nations Commission, with reference to the happenings in the former Yugoslavia, defined ethnic cleansing as “… rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.”

As per the United Nations, genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits fits the bill of both ethnic cleansing and genocide. This was also endorsed by the NHRC, headed by the former Chief Justice of India, M.N. Venkatachaliah, which concluded in 1995 that the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits was “akin to genocide”.

Ethnic cleansing and genocide, with reference to Kashmir, are not flippant terms concocted by Hindu fanatics but officially vetted descriptions. By appropriately labelling a crime, we not only define its scope for public and international understanding but also induct a sense of urgency to seek its redress.

Kashmir History

What makes this ethnic cleansing even more egregious is that the Kashmiri Pandits are the original inhabitants of Kashmir and the carriers of a culture and tradition that goes back 5000 years, making them and the land an inalienable part of our Vedic civilisation. The oft-repeated phrase—Kashmir is an integral part of India—is not merely a political slogan to counter Pakistan’s claims but a historical reality.

As per the Nilmata Purana, one of our ancient scriptures, the word “Kashmir” is widely believed to be derived from the Vedic sage Kashyap, who is credited with making Kashmir habitable. Kashmir also finds mention in Panini’s Ashtadhyayi, written around the 5th century BC. Other Hindu scriptures like the Puranas (Vishnu, Vayu, Matsya), which modern methodology dates to around 3 to 10th century CE (in their written form—oral versions existed much before), also refer to Kashmir.

Over the centuries, Kashmir established itself as a great centre of Hindu and Buddhist learning. Sharada Peeth, a temple university now in ruins and located 10 kms from the LOC in Pakistan, flourished between 6-12th century CE. Learned and scholarly, Kashmiri Pandits have produced a galaxy of intellectuals like Abhinavagupta, the noted philosopher and poet, and Utpaladeva (10th CE) and others who expounded the theology of Kashmir Saivism. The holy shrines of Vaishno Devi and Amarnath, located in Kashmir, which thousands of Hindus from all over India visit every year despite terrorist threats and the vagaries of the weather, is another example of the importance of Kashmir to our civilisation.

Historically and spiritually, Kashmir is inextricably intertwined with the rest of India and our civilisation; it is the northernmost outpost as exemplified in the 8th century by the extent of Shankaracharya’s religious outreach. Today, Shankaracharya Hill, a majestic mound overlooking the capital Srinagar, marks the site of Shankaracharya’s stay in Kashmir, testifying to this reality.

The purpose of reiterating these historical facts is to demonstrate that Kashmir is ancient Hindu land from which Hindu Kashmiri Pandits are being driven out, today.

Islam is a late entrant to Kashmir. Kashmir remained predominantly Hindu and Buddhist till the 14th Century, ably defended by Hindu rulers. In 1339, Shah Mir established the first Islamic dynasty of Kashmir and started the process of conversion using both fear and inducement. Sikander Shah (1389-1412), labelled “Butshikan” (iconoclast), the sixth ruler of the dynasty, was notorious for his anti-Hindu atrocities, destroying temples by the thousands and forcing people to convert. By the time he died in 1413, a mere 70 years after Shah Mir established his dynasty, nearly 60 per cent of the population had been converted to Islam, mostly by force. Over the next 600 years till present times, different Muslim kings tried to rid the Valley of its Hindu inhabitants or forcibly converted them to Islam. Times changed, people became more educated, but the intention never changed—Project Kafir, whose aim is to rid the Valley of infidels, remained on track.

After 1819, Kashmir became a part of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Sikh empire and eventually passed into the hands of the Dogra dynasty. While these periods provided some respite to the Hindus, the tolerant nature of both Sikh and Hindu rulers failed to reverse the new culture of intolerance that had been forced on the majority of Kashmiris who now accepted it as their destiny.

Since the reign of Sikander Shah, Kashmiri Pandits have been forced to flee the Valley because of religious harassment at least seven times, under different Muslim rulers. The current ethnic cleansing is the latest in this gory saga of ugly religious persecution.

Grievances

The political aura given to the “Kashmir Problem” in recent times is a sham. Machinations of New Delhi, the rigging of the 1987 elections, and the Pakistani Hand have all been invoked as explanations for the targeting of Pandits. But none of these explanations are logically sound or morally tenable. Secular grievances against a third party cannot justify the killings and expulsion of a helpless minority that is an intrinsic part of one’s community. If that were the benchmark, we would see a hundred reverse-Kashmirs in the rest of India. Even at the height of the Gujarat riots, we did not see the scale of migration that Kashmir has witnessed.

There is and remains only one explanation for this depravity: the Hindu identity of the Kashmiri Pandits. The reasons put forth are mere excuses to camouflage the ultimate hidden agenda—the Islamisation of Kashmir.

Even before matters came to a head in the late 80s and early nineties, what we see in Kashmir from the beginning of the 20th century is a sustained anti-Hindu animosity. Nearly every modern political leader of Kashmir has adopted this game plan.

Sheikh Abdullah (1905-1982), the grandfather of Omar Abdullah, was one of the tallest leaders of modern Kashmir, supposedly known for his broad secular outlook. But under the façade of secularism, he practised a rank communalism that discriminated against Hindus and Kashmiri Pandits. In 1931, he was at the forefront of a popular rising against Dogra rule. On July 13 (observed as Martyr’s Day by Muslim Kashmiris on either side of LOC), the Maharaja’s forces fired on an unruly mob, killing 22 Muslims. The Muslims in turn directed their ire on the Kashmir Pandits, killing several of them, looting their shops, desecrating temples, and raping their women. These riots, called the Maharajganj riots, were the beginning of the latest campaign to evict the Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley.

Following independence, when Dogra rule ended and governance fell into the hands of the National Conference, persecution of Kashmiri Pandits became even more blatant. Land reforms were introduced that effectively stole the livelihood of Kashmiri Pandits, many of whom actually belonged to the low-income group. To justify these reforms, Kashmiri Pandits were cast as rich feudal landlords, a myth that the left-liberal lobby and their lapdogs in Western academia latched on to. The reality was quite different—lucrative sericulture, horticulture, and floriculture land meant for farming of fruits, flowers, and silk was under control of the Muslim majority. Even compensation for the land acquired was delayed, and Pandits were discriminated against in jobs, forcing many Kashmiri Pandits to move away from the Valley.

Ghulam Mohammed Shah, who was the CM from 1984 to 1986, openly followed a policy of communalism. In 1986, he authorised the construction of a mosque in Jammu Secretariat where an old Hindu temple stood. And later that year, when Rajiv Gandhi opened the doors of the Ram Mandir-Babri Masjid to Hindus for prayer, he incited Muslims to riot by declaring, “Islam khatre mein hai ” (Islam is in danger). Kashmiri Pandits again bore the brunt of Muslim anger. A mini-pogrom engulfed Kashmir in which Anantnag was the epicentre—hence called the Anantnag riots. An investigation revealed that it was the so-called secular parties that engineered the violence. In Kashmir, there is a thin line between secular and non-secular parties with regard to their core ideology—persecution of Hindus.

In 1986, Ghulam Shah was dismissed and President’s rule was imposed. The 1987 elections that were allegedly rigged, reinstalled Farooq Abdullah as the chief minister. Law and order collapsed during this period, allowing Muslim separatists and Pakistan a free run. Added to this, a weak V.P. Singh government that was both clueless and directionless took power at the centre.

Time was ripe for the final phase of ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits and the Islamisation of the Valley that started 600 years ago, to be executed. – News18, 24 January 2026

› Vivek Gumaste is an academic and political commentator based in the US. This is the first part of a two part article.

VOICE OF INDIA

History Politics Science Religion

Author VOI

Marxism vs Buddhism: The next battlefield in Tibet – Claude Arpi

Statement Affirming the Continuation of the Institution of Dalai Lama – Office of the Dalai Lama – Dharamsala – July 2, 2025

West’s 100-year-old dream of a Christian nation in South Asia – Sumit Ahlawat

The Issue of Conversion: Challenges before Hindu Society – Maria Wirth

Why Michel Danino’s scholarship must be cherished and celebrated – Swarajya

Michel Danino: The quiet giant of our time – Sandeep Balakrishna

Why nations go to war – Acharya Prashant

Secularism and Tipu Sultan – Sita Ram Goel & Aabhas Maldahiyar

The Iran Paradox: The strange case of Leftists mourning for a despot – Makarand R. Paranjape

Pakistan: Islamic nation or hater of its own roots? – Balbir Punj

Genocide in Kashmir: Forgotten and Buried – Vivek Gumaste

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: