Hinduism & Buddhism: More similar than dissimilar – Ravi S. Kapoor

September 15, 2025September 15, 2025VOI

In many parts of Asia—including India, Nepal, and Tibet—there is considerable similarity between Buddhist and Hindu practices, with communities often participating in each other’s festivals and visiting shared sacred sites. – Ravi Shanker Kapoor

With the Supreme Court agreeing to examine a plea for repealing the Bodh Gaya Temple Act, 1949, tensions between Buddhists and Hindus may rise shortly. As it is, there is a long-standing belief that Buddhism and Hinduism are fundamentally different from and antithetical to each other. This perception has led to the construction of oppositional binaries: egalitarian Buddhism versus iniquitous Hinduism, noble Buddhists versus wicked and scheming Brahmins, atheistic versus theistic, spiritual versus ritualistic. However, a closer examination of the philosophies, histories, and lived practices of the two traditions reveals that such binaries are misleading.

At the heart of both Hinduism and Buddhism lie the concepts of dharma and karma. These are not just abstract metaphysical principles but fundamental frameworks through which both traditions interpret human action and its consequences. In Hindu thought, dharma represents righteous duty, aligned with cosmic order. Karma refers to the principle of causation, where one’s actions directly influence future circumstances—either in this life or the next. Buddhism, especially in its early and classical forms, embraces these principles in similar ways.

While it is true that the Buddha rejected the authority of the Vedas and certain ritual practices associated with orthodox Brahmanical practices, he did not reject the ethical foundations of religious life. His teachings were a reformist response to what he saw as unnecessary ritualism and social stratification, not a wholesale rejection of spirituality. The roots of his thought remain embedded in the soil of the Indian subcontinent, and many of his core ideas are echoed in various strands of Hindu philosophy, especially in the Upanishads, Samkhya, and Vedanta schools.

From a theological perspective, there is a remarkable similarity between the philosophies of several Buddhist teachers and the great Hindu exponent of Vedanta, Adi Shankar. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “His works reveal that he not only was versed in the orthodox Brahmanical traditions but also was well acquainted with Mahayana Buddhism. He is often criticized as a ‘Buddhist in disguise’ by his opponents because of the similarity between his doctrine and Buddhism. Despite this criticism, it should be noted that he made full use of his knowledge of Buddhism to attack Buddhist doctrines severely or to transmute them into his own Vedantic non-dualism.”

Another misconception often propagated is that Buddhism was inherently against Brahminical authority, that it was a movement against Brahmins. Historical evidence contradicts this simplistic narrative. A large number of early and influential Buddhist monks, scholars, and teachers were themselves Brahmins. Asanga and Vasubandhu, the fourth-century Gandhara-based Brahmin brothers, went on to found the Buddhist school of Yogacara (Practice of Yogā). It became a prominent school in China.

Kumarjiva (344-13), a brilliant translator of the Mahayana Buddhist texts like Lotus Sutra, was the son of a Brahmin. The great Buddhist philosopher of the Madhyamaka school, Nagarjuna, and the poet who embraced Buddhism after being its critic, Asvaghosha, also had Brahmin backgrounds.

Idols play a major role in Hinduism and Buddhism, though the followers of both faiths have different attitudes towards idols. In many parts of Asia—including India, Nepal, and Tibet—there is considerable similarity between Buddhist and Hindu practices, with communities often participating in each other’s festivals and visiting shared sacred sites.

The similarity in iconography is also quite evident. Also, images of the Buddha are often found in Hindu homes.

Another dimension where Hinduism and Buddhism have a common history is in the suffering and destruction inflicted by Muslim invasions, particularly during the medieval period. Between the 12th and 16th centuries, numerous Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples were destroyed, their libraries burned, and monks and priests killed. The great Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramashila, and Odantapuri, which were global centers of learning, were brutally attacked by Turkic and Afghan invaders. Hindu religious centers, too, faced similar devastation.

This shared trauma is a chapter in Indian history that remains insufficiently acknowledged in public discourse. Both traditions were marginalized, not only in terms of physical infrastructure but also in terms of cultural continuity. While Hinduism, with its vast rural roots and decentralised structure, managed to survive and revive over time, Buddhism, with its monastic dependency, suffered a more prolonged decline in India—though it flourished in other parts of Asia.

This is not to suggest that there was never any conflict between the two great traditions, but mostly it was peaceful coexistence. In India, as elsewhere. In The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World, William Dalrymple writes, “This free mixing of Hinduism and Buddhism is a striking feature of South-east Asian religion for this time onwards [sixth century]. … The Buddha and the Hindu gods accommodated each other and often appear folded in with local religious practices including ancestor worship, fertility ceremonies, and Naga and Yakshi worship as well as other spirit cults.”

To pit Hinduism and Buddhism against each other is to do a disservice to both. – News18, 1 September 2025

› Ravi Shanker Kapoor is an author and freelance journalist.

Christianity’s fraudulent legacy – M. Paulkovich

September 6, 2025January 19, 2026VOI

The cult of Christianity has an incalculable amount of blood on its hands. And the Jesus tale seems to have been nothing more than oral legend, with plenty of hoax and fraud perpetrated along the ages. – Michael Paulkovich

Most historians hold the position I had once harbored as true, being a Bible skeptic but not a Christ mythicist. I had maintained that the Jesus person probably existed, having fantastic and impossible stories later foisted upon his earthly life, passed by oral tradition then recorded many decades after Jesus lived.

After exhaustive research for my first book, I began to perceive both the brilliance and darkness from history. I discovered that many early Christian fathers believed with all pious sincerity their savior never came to earth—or when he did, it was Star-Trekian style, beamed down pre-haloed and fully-grown, sans transvaginal egress. Moreover I expose many other startling bombshells in my book No Meek Messiah: Christianity’s Lies, Laws, and Legacy.

I embarked upon one exercise to revive research into Jesus-era writers who should have recorded Christ tales, but did not. John Remsburg enumerated forty-one “silent” historians in his book The Christ (1909). I dedicated months of research to augment Remsburg’s list, finally tripling his count. In No Meek Messiah I provide a list of 126 writers who should have recorded something of Jesus, with exhaustive references.

Perhaps the most bewildering “silent one” is the mythical super-savior himself, Jesus the Son of God ostensibly sent on a suicide mission to save us from the childish notion of “Adam’s Transgression” as we learn from Romans 5:14. The Jesus character is a phantom of a wisp of a personage who never wrote anything. So, add one more: 127.

The Jesus character is a phantom

Jesus is lauded as a wise teacher, savior, and a perfect being. Yet Jesus believed in Noah’s Ark (Mt. 24:37, and Lk. 17:27), Adam and Eve and their son Abel (Lk. 3:38 and Lk. 11:51), Jonah living in a fish or whale (Mt. 12:40), and Lot’s wife turning into salt (Lk. 17:31-32). Jesus believed “devils” caused illness, and even bought into the OT notion (Jn. 3:14) that a magical pole proffered by the OT (Num. 21:9) could cure snake bites merely by gazing upon it.

Was Jesus smarter than a fifth grader?

But perhaps no man is more fascinating than Apollonius Tyaneus, saintly first century adventurer and noble paladin. Apollonius was a magic-man of divine birth who cured the sick and blind, cleansed entire cities of plague, foretold the future and fed the masses. He was worshipped as a god, and son of god. Despite such nonsense claims, Apollonius was a real man recorded by reliable sources.

As Jesus ostensibly performed miracles of global expanse (e.g. Mt. 27), his words going “unto the ends of the whole world” (Rom. 10), one would expect virtually every literate person on earth to record those events during his time. A Jesus contemporary such as Apollonius should have done so, as well as those who wrote of Apollonius. Such is not the case. In Philostratus’ third century chronicle, Vita Apollonii, there is no hint of Jesus. Nor in the works of other Apollonius epistolarians and scriveners: Emperor Titus, Cassius Dio, Maximus, Moeragenes, Lucian, Soterichus Oasites, Euphrates, Marcus Aurelius, or Damis of Hierapolis. It seems none of these writers from first to third century ever heard of Jesus, global miracles and alleged worldwide fame be damned.

Another bewildering author is Philo of Alexandria. He spent his first century life in the Levant, even traversing Jesus-land. Philo chronicled Jesus contemporaries—Bassus, Pilate, Tiberius, Sejanus, Caligula—yet knew nothing of the storied prophet and rabble-rouser enveloped in glory and astral marvels. Historian Josephus published Jewish War ca. 95. He had lived in Japhia, one mile from Nazareth—yet Josephus seems to have been unaware of both Nazareth and Jesus. (I devoted a chapter to his interpolated works, pp. 191-198.) You may encounter Christian apologists claiming that Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, Phlegon, Thallus, Mara bar-Serapion, or Lucian wrote of Jesus contemporary to the time. In No Meek Messiah I thoroughly debunk such notions.

The Bible venerates the artist formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, an “apostle” essentially oblivious to his heavenly saviour. Paul is unaware of the virgin mother, and ignorant of Jesus’ nativity, parentage, life events, ministry, miracles, apostles, betrayal, trial and harrowing passion. Paul knows neither where nor when Jesus lived, and considers the crucifixion metaphorical (Gal. 2:19-20). Unlike the absurd Gospels, Paul never indicates Jesus had been to earth. And the “five hundred witnesses” claim (1 Cor. 15) is a well-known forgery.

Qumran, the stony and chalky hiding place for the Dead Sea Scrolls lies twelve miles from Bethlehem. The scroll writers, coeval and abutting the holiest of hamlets one jaunty jog eastward never heard of Jesus. Dr. Jodi Magness wrote, “Contrary to claims made by a few scholars, no copies of the New Testament (or precursors to it) are represented among the Dead Sea Scrolls.“

Christianity was still wet behind its primitive and mythical ears in the second century, and Christian father Marcion of Pontus in 144 CE denied any virgin birth or childhood for Christ—Jesus’ infant circumcision (Lk. 2:21) was thus a lie, as well as the crucifixion! Marcion claimed Luke was corrupted, and his saviour self-spawned in omnipresence, a spirit without a body (see Dungan, 43). Reading the works of second century Christian father Athenagoras, one never encounters the word Jesus (or Ἰησοῦς or Ἰησοῦν, as he would have written)—Athenagoras was thus unacquainted with the name of his saviour it would seem. Athenagoras was another pious early Christian, unaware of Jesus (see also Barnard, 56).

The original booklet given the name “Mark” ended at 16:8, later forgers adding the fanciful resurrection tale (see Ehrman, 48). The booklet “John” in chapter 21 also describes post-death Jesus tales, another well-known and well-documented forgery (see Encyclopedia Biblica, vol. 2, 2543). Millions should have heard of the Jesus “crucifixion” with its astral enchantments: zombie armies and meteorological marvels (Mt. 27) recorded not by any historian, but only in the dubitable scriptures scribbled decades later by superstitious yokels. The Jesus saga is further deflated by the reality of Nazareth, having no settlement until after the 70 CE war—suspiciously around the time the Gospels were concocted, as René Salm demonstrates in his book. I also include in my book similarities of Jesus to earlier God-sons, too striking to disregard. The Oxford Classical Dictionary and Catholic Encyclopedia, as well as many others, corroborate. Quite a few son-of-gods myths existed before the Jesus tales, with startling similarities, usually of virgin mothers, magical births and resurrection: Sandan, Mithra, Horus, Attis, Buddha, Dionysus, Krishna, Hercules, Isiris, Orpheus, Adonis, Prometheus, etc.

The one true religion

If you encounter a Christian defending her faith purely based on its popularity, you would do well to inform her that Christianity was a very minor cult in the fourth century, while “pagan” religions, especially Mithraism, were much more popular in the Empire—and the Jesus cult would have faded into oblivion if not for an imperial decree.

From No Meek Messiah: It is 391 CE now as Roman Emperor Theodosius elevates Jesus (posthumously) to divinity, declaring Christianity the only “legitimate” religion of the world, under penalty of death. The ancient myth is rendered law. This decision by Theodosius is possibly the worst ever made in human history: what followed were century after century of torture and murder in the name of this false, faked, folkloric “prophesied saviour” of fictional virgin mother. Within a year after the decree by Theodosius, crazed Christian monks of Nitria destroy the majestic Alexandrian Library largely because philosophy and science are taught there—not the Bible. In Alexandria these are times of the highest of intellectual pursuits, all quashed by superstitious and ignorant Christians of the most godly and murderous variety: they had the “Holy Bible” on their side.

Emperor Theodosius I could have had no idea how much harm this blunder would cause humanity over the centuries that followed. Christianity was made the only legal cult of the empire, and for the next 1500 years, good Christians would murder all non-Christians they could find by the tens of millions.

Frauds and forgeries

Along the centuries the Church has sought to gain power and wealth, and No Meek Messiah exposes their many scams and deceits and obfuscations in detail including:

Abgar Forgeries (4th century)
Apostolic Canons (400 CE)
Hypatia the Witch (415 CE)
Symmachian Forgeries (6th century)
St. Peter Forgery (ca. 751)
False “Donation of Constantine” (8th century)
False Decretals (8th century)
Extermination of the Cathar “witches” (13th century)
Murder of the Stedinger “devils” (1233)
The Manifest Destiny decree (1845) and eradication of Native Americans
Invention of the “Immaculate Conception” (1854)
The Lateran Treaty (1929)

St. Paul overseeing the burning of books at Ephesus.

The good that Jesus brought

Early Christians believed all necessary knowledge was in the Bible and thus closed down schools, burned books, forbade teaching philosophy and destroyed libraries. The Jesus person portrayed in the Bible taught that “devils” and “sin” cause illness, and thus for some 1700 years good Christians ignored science and medicine to perform exorcisms on the ill.

The Bible decrees “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Ex. 22:18, with support from Dt. 18:10-12, Lev. 20:27, 2 Chr. 33:6, Micah. 5:12, and 1 Sam. 28:3). In the New Testament, Paul in Galatians 5:19-21 joins the anti-witchcraft credo. But let’s face it: Paul claims to be a devoted Hebrew, full of credulity and misogyny. Paul will “suffer not a woman to teach” and thus along the centuries women have been second-class citizens, especially within the Church. These juvenile and immoral Bible edicts are not left in the past.

From No Meek Messiah: Remember the witch hunts? Long ago and far away, past atrocities forgotten? So perhaps we should forgive and forget. Around the world, the Christian Bible is still used to accuse people, usually children, of “witchcraft” and to punish them. Refer to The Guardian, Sunday, 9 December 2007, “Child ‘witches’ in Africa”; Huffington Post, October 18, 2009, “African Children Denounced As ‘Witches’ By Christian Pastors”; and The Guardian, Friday 31 December 2010, “Why are ‘witches’ still being burned alive in Ghana?” The scripture normally cited regarding witches is Exodus 22:18, and there are many more. In Ghana, a study found that “accused witches were physically brutalised, tortured, neglected, and in two cases, murdered.” In Kinshasa, Congo, “80% of the 20,000 street children … are said to have been accused of being witches.” Even to this day the Bible’s proclamations against witches are still considered valid by many Christians. In places like Indonesia, Tanzania, the Congo and Ghana superstitious fundamental Christians actively pursue and execute witches, including murdering child “sorcerers.” In Malawi, accused witches are routinely jailed.

Christians are typically kept ignorant of certain evil and immoral words placed into the mouth of this mythical mystery-man:

“If any man come to me, and HATE NOT his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26.

Jesus is actually portrayed as a pitiful man in desperate need of praise:

“He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” – Matt. 10:37.

Not only does Jesus never advise against slavery, but he recommends savage whipping of disobedient slaves:

“And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.” – Luke 12:47.

Jesus has nothing against stealing, as he instructs his apostles to pinch a horse and a donkey from their rightful owner:

“And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and were come to Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives, then sent Jesus two disciples, Saying unto them, Go into the village over against you, and straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me. And if any man say ought unto you, ye shall say, The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them.” – Matt. 21:1-3.

Gentle and meek and mythical

I personally know several Christians who accept evolution as scientific fact. Okay, they kind of ignore the Old Testament, but I asked one born again Christian about the genealogy of Jesus and she was only aware of another one in Luke.

From No Meek Messiah: Christianity absolutely depends on mythical “Adam.” Without Adam, Eve, and a talking snake, Jesus’ mission is moot and pointless and void. Christians are generally oblivious of this because they have been shown a genealogy in Matthew (which only goes back to “Abraham”), and are rarely if ever exposed to Luke’s disparate and childlike version—which if true would negate all of evolution and in fact most known history and science. According to the anonymous author of Luke, a mere seventy-five generations separate “Adam”—and the beginning of the universe—from the birth of Jesus some 2,000 years ago.

This “meek” messiah boasted he was “greater than Solomon” (Mt. 12:42), saying he “came not to send peace, but a sword” (Mt. 10:34), and (Lk. 12:49). Jesus desperately needs your praise (Mt. 10:37), and advises you to beat your slaves.

This Jesus character speaks highly of father Yahweh‘s genocidal tantrums in Matthew 11:20-24. Jesus is referring to the book of Joshua where his father declares he will wipe out all people of Sidon: “All the inhabitants of the hill country from Lebanon unto Misrephoth-maim, and all the Sidonians, them will I drive out from before the children of Israel”.

You may have heard Christians claim that the only “god hates fags” verbiage comes from the Old Testament (Lev. 18:22), but both Paul (in Rom. 1:26-27) and Jesus speak out against it, as the J-man praises the ruin of Gaytown, Canaan: “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.” – Luke 17:29.

Onward Christian soldiers

Christianity has a violent “holy book” as its authority, granting followers supremacy over the entire earth (e.g. Gen. 1:28) which they used to justify land grabs, genocide and holy conflicts. The following wars were perpetrated by Christians in the name of their saviour:

War against the Donatists, 317 CE
Roman-Persian War of 441 CE
Roman-Persian War of 572-591 CE
Charlemagne’s War against the Saxons, 8th century
Spanish Christian-Muslim War of 912-928
Spanish Christian-Muslim War of 977-997
Spanish Christian-Muslim War of 1001-1031
First Crusade, 1096
Jerusalem Massacre, 1099
Second Crusade, 1145-1149
Spanish Christian-Muslim War, 1172-1212
Third Crusade, 1189 CE
War against the Livonians, 1198-1212
Wars against the Curonians and Semigallians, 1201-90
Fourth Crusade, 1202-04
Wars against Saaremaa, 1206-61
War against the Estonians, 1208-1224
War against the Latgallians and Selonians, 1208-1224
Children’s Crusade, 1212
Fifth Crusade, 1213
Sixth Crusade, 1228 War against the Livonians, 1198-1212
Spanish Christian-Muslim War, 1230-1248
Seventh Crusade, 1248
Eighth Crusade, 1270
Ninth Crusade, 1271-1272
The Inquisitions
War against the Cathars, 1209-1229 and onward
War against the Stedingers of Friesland, 1233
Spanish Christian-Muslim War, 1481-1492
Four Years War of 1521-26
Count’s War of 1534-36
Schmalkaldic War, 1546
Anglo-Scottish War of 1559-1560
First War of Religion,1562
Second War of Religion, 1567-68
Third War of Religion, 1568-70
Fourth War of Religion, 1572-73
Fifth War of Religion, 1574-76
Sixth War of Religion, 1576-77
Seventh War of Religion, 1579-80
Eighth War of Religion, 1585-98
War of the Three Henrys, 1588
Ninth War of Religion, 1589—1598
Ottoman-Habsburg wars, 15th to 16th century
War against the German Farmers (“peasants”), 16th Century
The French Wars of Religion, 16th Century
Shimabara Revolt, 1637
Covenanters’ Rebellion of 1666
Covenanters’ Rebellion of 1679
Covenanters’ Rebellion of 1685
The Thirty Years War, 17th Century
The Irish rebellion of 1641
Spanish Christian extermination of South American natives
Manifest Destiny
War of the Sonderbund, 1847
Crimean War, 1853-1856
Tukulor-French War, 1854-1864
Taiping Rebellion, 1851 and 1864
Serbo-Turkish War, 1876-78
Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878
Russian Revolution, killing of Jews, late 19th century
First Sudanese Civil War, 1955-1972
Nigerian Civil War, 1967
Lebanese Civil War, 1975
Sabra and Shatila massacre, 1982
Second Sudanese Civil War, 1983
Yelwa Massacre, 2004
Bosnian War, 1992-1995

A relatively unknown contrivance occurred in the thirteenth century when Pope Innocent III ordered a genocidal attack against the entire region of Languedoc France. The pope depicted the Cathars as witches; of being cannibals; desecrating the cross; and having “sexual orgies.”

Yet malefic sounds of sibilance emanated only from the Vatican, and not from its contrived enemies living peaceably in France with their pure and righteous ways. The Church murdered over a million innocent Cathars over the period of 35 years—men, women, children. Christian forces wiped them from the face of the planet. At the height of the siege, Christian forces were burning hundreds at the stake at a time. The Christian colossus exterminated them, then annexed much of Languedoc—some for the Church, some from northern French nobles. The extravagant Palais de la Berbie (construction began in 1228) and the Catholic fortress-cathedral Sainte Cécile (began 1282) are just two examples that remain to this day.

The Silent Historians

Conclusion

When I consider those 126 writers, all of whom should have heard of Jesus but did not, and Paul and Marcion and Athenagoras and Matthew with a tetralogy of opposing Christs, the silence from Qumran and Nazareth and Bethlehem, conflicting Bible stories, and so many other mysteries and omissions, I must conclude this “Jesus Christ” is a mythical character. “Jesus of Nazareth” was nothing more than urban (or desert) legend, likely an agglomeration of several evangelic and deluded rabbis who might have existed.

The “Jesus mythicist” position is regarded by Christians as a fringe group. But after my research I tend to side with Remsburg—and Frank Zindler, John M. Allegro, Thomas Paine, Godfrey Higgins, Robert M. Price, Charles Bradlaugh, Gerald Massey, Joseph McCabe, Abner Kneeland, Alvin Boyd Kuhn, Harold Leidner, Peter Jensen, Salomon Reinach, Samuel Lublinski, Charles-François Dupuis, Rudolf Steck, Arthur Drews, Prosper Alfaric, Georges Ory, Tom Harpur, Michael Martin, John Mackinnon Robertson, Alvar Ellegård, David Fitzgerald, Richard Carrier, René Salm, Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy, Barbara Walker, Thomas Brodie, Earl Doherty, Bruno Bauer and others—heretics and iconoclasts and freethinking dunces all, according to “mainstream” Bible scholars.

If all this evidence and non-evidence including 126 silent writers cannot convince, I’ll wager we will uncover much more. Yet this is but a tiny tip of the mythical Jesus iceberg: nothing adds up for the fable of the Christ. In the Conclusion of No Meek Messiah I summarise the madcap cult of Jesus worship that has plagued the world for centuries. It should be clear to even the most devout and inculcated reader that it is all up for Christianity, and in fact has been so for centuries. Its roots and foundation and rituals are borrowed from ancient cults: there is nothing magical or “God-inspired” about them. The “virgin birth prophecy” as well as the immaculate conception claims are fakeries, the former due to an erroneous translation of the Tanakh, the latter a nineteenth century Catholic apologetic contrivance, a desperate retrofitting.

Jesus was no perfect man, no meek or wise messiah: in fact his philosophies were and are largely immoral, often violent, as well as shallow and irrational. There have been many proposed sons of god, and this Jesus person is no more valid or profound than his priestly precursors. In fact, his contemporary Apollonius was unquestionably the superior logician and philosopher.

Christianity was a very minor and inconsequential cult founded late in the first century and then—while still quite minor—forced upon all the people of the Empire, and all rival kingdoms in the fourth century and beyond, as enforceable law with papal sanction. Christianity has caused more terror and torture and murder than any similar phenomenon. With its tyrannical preachments and directives for sightless and mindless obedience, the Bible is a violent and utterly useless volume, full of lies and immoral edicts and invented histories, no matter which of the many “versions” you may choose to read—including Thomas Jefferson’s radical if gallant abridgement.

The time to stop teaching the tall tales and nonsense to children, frightening them with eternal torture administered by God’s minions, has long ago passed. Parents who do so are likely deluded, and most surely are guilty of child abuse of the worst sort….

The cult of Christianity has an incalculable amount of blood on its hands. And the “Jesus” tale seems to have been nothing more than oral legend, with plenty of hoax and fraud perpetrated along the ages. It is my hope that mankind will someday grow up and relegate the Jesus tales to the same stewing pile that contains Zeus and his son Hercules, roiling away in their justifiable status as mere myth. – JNE, 19 July 2014

Thomas Paine Quote

Bibliography

Catholic Encyclopedia, first edition. The Encyclopedia Press, 1907-1913.
Dungan, David L., Constantine’s Bible, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.
Ehrman, Bart, Jesus, Interrupted, New York: HarperCollins, 2009.
Encyclopedia Biblica: A Critical Dictionary of the Literary, Political and Religious History: The Archeology, Geography and Natural History of the Bible, Edited by Thomas Kelly Cheyne and J. Sutherland Black. 1899.
Magness, Jodi, The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
Oxford Classical Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Salm, René, The Myth of Nazareth, Parsippany: American Atheist Press, 2008.

Further Reading

Alfaric, Prosper, Jésus a-t-il existé? 1932.
Allegro, John M., The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth, Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1992.
Barnard, Leslie William, Athenagoras: A Study in Second Century Christian Apologetic, Paris: Éditions Beauchesne, 1972.
Bradlaugh, Charles, Who Was Jesus Christ? London: Watts and Co., 1913.
Brodie, Thomas, Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus: Memoir of a Discovery, Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2012.
Carrier, Richard, Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus, Amherst: Prometheus, 2012.
Doherty, Earl, Neither God nor Man, Ottawa: Age of Reason, 2009.
Drews, Arthur, Hat Jesus gelebt? Mainz: 1924.
Dupuis, Charles-François, L’origine de tous les cultes, ou la religion universelle, Paris: 1795.
Ellegård, Alvar, Jesus One Hundred Years Before Christ, New York: Overlook Press, 2002.
Fitzgerald, David, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All, Lulu.com, 2010.
Freke, Timothy, and Gandy, Peter, The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “Original Jesus” a Pagan God? New York: Three Rivers Press, 1999.
Harpur, Tom, The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light, Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2005.
Higgins, Godfrey, Anacalypsis, A&B Books, 1992.
Jensen, Peter, Moses, Jesus, Paul: Three Variations on the Babylonian Godman Gilgamesh, 1909.
Kneeland, Abner, A Review of the Evidences of Christianity, Boston: Free Enquirer, 1829.
Kuhn, A. B., Who Is This King of Glory? Kessinger Publishing, LLC; Facsimile Ed edition, 1992.
Leidner, Harold, The Fabrication of the Christ Myth, Survey Press, 2000.
Lublinski, Samuel, Die Entstehung des Christentums; Das werdende Dogma vom Leben Jesu, Köln: Eugen Diederichs, 1910.
Martin, Michael, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.
Massey, Gerald, Ancient Egypt, the Light of the World, Sioux Falls: NuVision, 2009.
McCabe, Joseph, The Myth of the Resurrection and Other Essays, Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1993.
Ory, Georges, Le Christ et Jésus, Paris: Éditions du Pavillon, 1968.
Paine, Thomas, The Age of Reason, Paris: Barrots, 1794.
Price, Robert M., Deconstructing Jesus, Amherst: Prometheus, 2000.
Price, Robert M., The Case Against the Case for Christ, Cranford: American Atheist Press, 2010.
Reinach, Salomon, Orpheus, a History of Religions, New York: Liveright, 1933.
Remsburg, John, The Christ, New York: Truth Seeker, 1909. Reprinted by Prometheus Books, 1994.
Robertson, John M., A Short History of Christianity, London: Watts & Co., 1902.
Steck, Rudolf, Der Galaterbrief nach seiner Echtheit untersucht nebst kritischen Bemerkungen zu den Paulinischen Hauptbriefen, Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1888.
Walker, Barbara, The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, New York: HarperOne, 1983.
Zindler, Frank, The Jesus the Jews Never Knew, Cranford: American Atheist Press, 2003.

» Michael Paulkovich is an aerospace engineer, historical researcher, freelance writer, and a frequent contributor to Free Inquiry and Humanist Perspectives magazines. His book No Meek Messiah was published in 2013 by Spillix.

The RSS Century – Makarand R. Paranjape

August 19, 2025November 23, 2025VOI

The RSS set its sights on nation-building through cultural and political mobilisation. Its ideology emphasises a unified Hindu identity as the bedrock of Indian nationhood, a stance that has both inspired millions and provoked fierce opposition. – Prof. Makarand R. Paranjape

In the brouhaha over the ‘impossible’ retirement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the somewhat more probable demission of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) head Mohan Bhagwat, might we be forgetting an even more important milestone?

True that both Modi and Bhagwat will turn 75 in a few weeks, September 17 and September 11, respectively. Seventy-five, we needn’t remind ourselves, is the age at which leaders of the Sangh Parivar are expected to retreat gracefully both from public office and active duty, giving way to younger, even if not more capable, talent.

The prospects of Modi hanging up his boots, so to speak, seem not just unlikely, but remote. Despite his much-vaunted ‘almost sannyasi’ image as India’s most powerful renouncer. From all reports, not only does the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) need him, but he, too, has sent several signals to the effect that his work is far from done.

What about Bhagwat? Less implausible than Modi, but who can tell? RSS sarsanghchalaks lead by example. They are not politicians, though, almost as an occupational hazard, so embroiled in politics. Instead, a sarsanghchalak is supposed to embody the highest values, not only of the Sangh but of Sanatana Dharma itself.

My own contact with Mohan Bhagwat has convinced me that both his company and his conversation are spiritually elevating. At a crucial moment in my career, he suggested, quite simply and softly, that sticking to one’s own highest intention and integrity were far more valuable, in the long run, than ”playing the game”. A true intellectual, he remarked in passing, should never seek position or preferment: “Vat rahat nahi,” he said in Marathi. Which means, you lose respect.

Yes, we, in India, tend to revere individuals more than organisations. The personality cult comes naturally to us. But built into the Sangh’s DNA is the idea that the organisation is more important than the individual, society more important than the organisation, and the nation the most important of all.

As one pracharak or full-time worker, shifted out of what most would consider a very high-profile post to one of relative anonymity told me, “We are good to go wherever we are sent at very short notice.” He smiled when he said this and did not look at all unhappy or disappointed: “Apna jhola tham liya aur bus chal diye.” Get hold of one’s rucksack and just move on.

Such an attitude of egoless idealism and absence of attachment may not be universal among the cadres, but in the core group of those who actually make the Sangh what it is, it is less rare than common.

No wonder, rather than focusing on any individual, however great, the more significant jubilee that I am alluding to, of course, is the 100th anniversary of RSS.

Let us not forget that RSS has produced not only prime ministers like Narendra Modi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee but dozens of cabinet ministers, chief ministers, and governors. At least two vice presidents, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and M. Venkaiah Naidu, and one president of India, Ram Nath Kovind, have come from its ranks. Not to mention luminaries in every branch of society.

With an estimated membership running into millions and over 75,000 active branches (shakhas) that are supposed to congregate daily, RSS is the world’s largest and most important voluntary socio-cultural organisation.

One would have to be blind or utterly prejudiced to disregard its unique and prodigious achievements. The RSS journey over the last 100 years has been nothing short of phenomenal. Its contributions to nation-building have, in my estimation, no parallel anywhere in the world.

On Vijayadashami 2025, the tenth victory day marking the culmination of India’s autumn Navaratri festival, RSS completes 100 years of its existence. Celebrated all over the subcontinent and elsewhere as the triumph of good over evil, it coincides this year, quite ironically for critics, with the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi on October 2.

Unlike our political leaders, RSS shuns self-praise, avoids blowing its own trumpet. Of its six sarsanghchalaks, only its founder, Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar or Doctorji and, his anointed successor, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar or Guruji, have a specially consecrated joint memorial in Nagpur. No one else. There is no active personality cult around these two either.

I would not be surprised if, at least from the RSS side, its centenary celebrations might end up being relatively quiet. Closer to the date, however, the world, especially the Indian media, is bound to take notice.

Let us just say that I am starting a bit early.

Does the RSS centennial signify a spectacular and momentous accomplishment?

The answer is an unambiguous yes. Because, in the minds of many, RSS has done more in the service of Hindu society and the Indian nation than any other organisation or association.

Founded in Nagpur in 1925 by Hedgewar, RSS emerged at a time when India was grappling with colonial subjugation and internal divisions. Hedgewar, an ardent nationalist and physician trained at the Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, envisioned an organisation that would unify Hindus and foster a sense of cultural and national pride. RSS was not merely a response to British colonialism but also to the fragmentation of Hindu society, weakened by centuries of invasions, social stagnation, and religious disunity.

In addition to the threat of Muslim separatism, which was casting its long and sinister shadow over the motherland.

Hedgewar adopted a grassroots approach, establishing shakhas, daily gatherings where volunteers engaged in physical exercises, ideological discussions, and community service. This disciplined, decentralised model allowed RSS to penetrate deep into Indian society, from urban centres to remote villages. From its modest beginnings, RSS, as I have already shown, has become a mighty and, I dare to invoke a Gandhian phrase, a “beautiful tree”.

The RSS journey is marked by its unapologetic, at times aggressive, commitment to Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, a term popularised by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Unlike other reform movements like the Arya Samaj or the Ramakrishna Mission, which focused primarily on religious or social reform, RSS set its sights on nation-building through cultural and political mobilisation. Its ideology emphasises a unified Hindu identity as the bedrock of Indian nationhood, a stance that has both inspired millions and provoked fierce opposition.

Why is RSS is so feared, to the extent of being deliberately slandered and demonised? Because it alone, of all of India’s great Hindu reform movements, has dared to dedicate itself to nation formation. Also because its enemies want Hindus to remain divided and India to remain weak?

When Hindu society was at a parlous and precarious juncture, as during the bloody Partition of India in 1947, RSS played a critical role in saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children. RSS, since Independence, has also selflessly served the nation, whether during flood, famine, or, worse—the dreaded Emergency of 1975-77, often at great cost to itself and immense sacrifice of its members.

What is more, all this service has been rendered silently, with hardly any publicity or fanfare. Even if its fully dedicated cadre of workers, numbering not over an estimated 3,500, are called pracharaks or publicists—a better English rendering, were it not for the negative connotations, would actually be “super spreaders”.

This goal has embroiled it in the rough and tumble of politics. RSS not only inspired, seeded, and nurtured the Bharatiya Jana Sangh in 1951, but its successor, the Bharatiya Janata Party in 1980. The latter has been India’s ruling party at the Centre for over 11 years and is in power in 14 out of India’s 28 states.

Besides BJP and the Jana Sangh, RSS has also spawned over 100 important organisations from student to trade unions, schools, colleges, and ashrams, to cultural, social, and religious organisations.

It was RSS that founded the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in 1949 and the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) in 1964. As also the Bajrang Dal in 1984.

The Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, the Bharatiya Kisan Dal, and Seva Bharati have been inspired and founded by RSS too. Its work is not confined, unlike a popular misconception, solely to men. Major women’s organisations such as the Rashtra Sevika Samiti, Durga Vahini, and Matru Shakti have also been birthed by the Sangh. As dozens devoted to tribal and minority welfare have also been. These and a variety of other institutions have endeavoured to strengthen Hindu society and the Indian nation.

RSS is feared, reviled, and hated precisely because it has not shied away from seeking and wielding power, through its progenies and affiliates, in the interests of Hindus and India. This is the one simple reason why several groups, forces, and bodies from the extreme left to the farther right, not to mention India’s former ruling party Congress, all sought to ban, suppress, malign, denigrate, and delegitimise RSS.

But while its antagonists have failed and weakened over the decades, RSS has succeeded dramatically, even incredibly. That is why the last 100 years can justly be termed the RSS century.

And millions more may join its summons to national service in consonance with its beautifully moving and inspiring anthem. Inspired by Doctorji and composed by Narhari Narayan Bhide, let me invoke its opening line: Namaste Sada Vatsale Matrubhume (To Thee, ever-affectionate Motherland, my obeisance). – Open Magazine, 1 August 2025

› Prof. Makarand R. Paranjape is an author, columnist, former teacher at JNU and former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study.

Is the Ganga really self-cleaning? – Pranay Lal

August 13, 2025VOI

The Ganga is no longer the self-cleansing river it once was. Its silicate-rich water, and less so, its myriad bot-like bacteriophages, are fading as the human stain deepens. – Dr. Pranay Lal

In 1896, a British bacteriologist named Ernest Hankin stood on the banks of the Ganga, watching as locals filled clay pots with water. He hoped that the dreaded cholera outbreak would not occur under his watch. In his attempt to avert it, Hankin discovered something extraordinary: water drawn from the river seemed to kill the pathogen within hours. In wells where the Ganga’s water was not introduced, however, the bacteria flourished.

Intrigued, Hankin conducted experiments, filtering and heating the water to determine what made it so inhospitable to cholera. He hypothesised that an unseen biological agent was at work. The notion that the Ganga could retain its self-purifying properties defied conventional wisdom. Even as evidence mounted, the idea was dismissed as anecdotal—a quirk of the river’s mythology rather than a function of science.

Hankin’s discovery would take another three decades to be recognised as the action of bacteriophages: viruses that prey exclusively on bacteria. It wasn’t until the 21st century that modern research tools finally confirmed what Hankin had suspected.

Several recent studies have mapped the prevalence of bacteriophages in the Ganga, in water samples collected from Hardwar to Varanasi. These studies have found unusually high concentrations of phages targeting common pathogens of waterborne diseases. Some scientists have even isolated bacteriophages that neutralise deadly, antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

When phage therapy was first discovered, researchers were elated that the Ganga was an untapped reservoir.

But bacteriophages exist only because its prey, the bacteria, is found in abundance. They would not exist without them. Simply put, the presence of bacteria-killing viruses is a symptom of bacterial pollution. It is not the sign of some potent power of the river.

Further, the presence of bacteriophages is only a small part of the Ganga story. The secret of the river’s anti-bacterial water lies in its unique geochemical properties.

All about silicates

On the slopes of the Himalayas and in the waters of the Ganga and its tributaries, an invisible process unfolds. It was first articulated by Nobel laureate Harold Urey, who proposed a deceptively simple equation: CO2 reacts with calcium-bearing silicate rocks, forming limestone and releasing silicates. This reaction, playing out over geological time, acts as a planetary thermostat, drawing carbon dioxide from the air and locking it away in ocean sediments. This entrapment, called deep carbon burial, prevents the carbon from returning to the atmosphere, helping regulate atmospheric CO2 and global warming.

Nowhere is this process more pronounced than in the Himalayas, where young, rapidly eroding rock faces provide an ideal surface for chemical weathering. Rain, made slightly acidic by atmospheric CO2, scrubs the mountain’s flanks, washing sediments down the Ganga and ultimately to the deep basins of the Bay of Bengal. There, carbon mineralises and settles into long-term storage, part of a vast, slow-moving cycle that has regulated global temperatures for millions of years.

In theory, this should be a stabilising force. The amount of organic carbon buried in the Bengal basin alone accounts for up to 20 per cent of terrestrial organic carbon reaching oceanic sediments. But this process is not immune to disruption. Some climate scientists have turned their attention to what happens when pollution, deforestation, unchecked urbanisation, and large and small dams interfere with the carbon reaction explained by Urey.

The Ganga’s seemingly staid landscape is actually quite complex. The rocks and sediments that get carried down from the high Himalayas define its chemistry. In the highlands, calcium, magnesium, and bicarbonate dominate, pointing to carbonate weathering. But as the river descends, sodium, potassium, and excess bicarbonate take over—evidence of silicate weathering and inputs from alkaline soils and groundwater.

The clays and sediments of each river are unique, and they entomb a variety of silicate-rich minerals. These minerals deter bacterial growth, killing them or reducing their reproduction. The river, along its course, deposits different silicate concentrations: the higher the concentration, the lower the bacterial counts.

No longer a purifying force

A 2024 paper has found that the Ganga’s dissolved silicon (DSi) and silicon isotopes build up in the river but their potency reduces downstream, in the plains.

At higher elevations, only some silicates bind with iron oxides and carbonates. When the river meets the Yamuna and the Gomti, more silicon gets added, from other rocks and river sands. At the place where the Gomti meets the Ganga, the silicate concentration reaches its maximum limit.

As sewage gets dumped into the river, farm and industrial pollution builds up and much of the silicates get bound. By the time that the silicates reach the mid-Ganga, they’re completely sequestered. Most get bound to organic molecules like bacteria or sewage. This would not have been the case in the pre-industrial era. As cities and industries have grown, Ganga’s silicate potential has diminished. Instead of trapping CO2, it now combines with human waste.

The Ganga is no longer the self-cleansing force it once was. Its silicate-rich water, and less so, its myriad bot-like bacteriophages, are fading as the human stain deepens. Restoring the river isn’t just a matter of environmental conservation or a public health imperative. It is critical that this ceaseless engine of carbon capture isn’t lost to modern neglect. – The Print, 25 October 2025

› Dr. Pranay Lal is a biochemist and natural history writer. He is the author of ‘Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent’ and ‘Invisible Empire: The Natural History of Viruses’.

Time for India to stop wearing the ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ labels – Abhijit Majumder

July 3, 2025July 3, 2025VOI

It is time for Bharat to do away with “secular” and “socialist” labels—one a colonial, Western construct weaponised against India’s civilisation; the other, an infatuation with the rise of the Soviet Union and its oppressive communist economy, which ultimately failed. – Abhijit Majumder

The words of RSS sarkaryavah or general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale have often been the bellwether to profound and unexpected change. His statement [qualifying] decriminalisation of homosexuality under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, for instance, paved the way for the Indian Right bringing down its wall of resistance towards the reform.

So, when “Datta-ji” calls for a debate on the words “secular” and “socialist”, which were inserted into the Preamble of the Constitution not by Parliament but through the backdoor during Emergency, his words carry both weight and edge.

“Later, these words were not removed. Should they remain or not, a debate must happen. These two words were not in Dr. Ambedkar’s Constitution. During the Emergency, the country had no functioning Parliament, no rights, no judiciary and yet these two words were added,” Hosabale said.

Has the Narendra Modi dispensation made up its mind to remove “secular” and “socialist” from India’s Constitution?

It seems so.

Late last year, Tamil Nadu governor R.N. Ravi too had brought it up.

Secularism was a European concept that evolved after a conflict between the Church and the King, he said. He argued Bharat is a dharma-centric nation, and therefore, “secularism” was not part of the Constitution but added during the Emergency by “one insecure prime minister”.

The founding parents of the Indian Constitution had extensively debated the subject before deciding not to include the two terms.

On November 15, 1948, K.T. Shah proposed an amendment to the draft of the Indian Constitution to include “Secular, Federal, Socialist Union of States”. However, B.R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the Drafting Committee, junked the proposal.

He said, “What should be the policy of the state, how society should be organised in its social and economic side, are matters which must be decided by the people themselves according to time and circumstances.”

Ambedkar was staunchly against codifying an ideology like socialism in the Constitution and restricting future generations from choosing their own path.

“It cannot be laid down in the Constitution itself because that is destroying democracy altogether,” he said.

Ambedkar argued that the Constitution blueprint already had socialist principles laid down through the Directive Principles of State Policy. He pointed to Article 31 of the draft, which already prescribed a strong dose of socialism by preventing the concentration of wealth and providing equal pay for equal work.

And both Jawaharlal Nehru and Ambedkar argued that the term “secular” did not need to be explicitly mentioned in the Preamble. Ambedkar said the Constitution had already made it clear that India would not recognise any religion.

Articles 16 and 19, for instance, prohibit discrimination against any person based on religion.

Nehru said the notion of Western secularism did not fit Bharat’s ideas of religious tolerance and respect for all cultures, ironically echoed by Ravi and the RSS-BJP ecosystem so many decades later.

But Congress member of the Constituent Assembly Lokanath Misra was perhaps one of the most outspoken and unabashed voices against “secularism”. He called “secular State” a “slippery phrase, a device to bypass the ancient culture of the land”. He argued that religion could not be divorced from life.

“If religion is beyond the ken of our State, let us clearly say so and delete all reference to rights relating to religion. If we find it necessary, let us be brave enough and say what it should be,” he said.

Here is a particularly impassioned—many may say politically incorrect—excerpt of his speech at the Constituent Assembly debates.

“We have no quarrel with Christ or Mohammad or what they saw and said. We have all respect for them. To my mind, Vedic culture excludes nothing. Every philosophy and culture has its place but now, the cry of religion is a dangerous cry. It denominates, it divides and encamps people in warring ways.

In the present context what can this word ‘propagation’ in Article 19 mean? It can only mean paving the way for the complete annihilation of Hindu culture, the Hindu way of life and manners. Islam has declared its hostility to Hindu thought. Christianity has worked out the policy of peaceful penetration by the backdoor on the outskirts of our social life.

This is because Hinduism did not accept barricades for its protection. Hinduism is just an integrated vision and a philosophy of life and cosmos, expressed in organised society to live that philosophy in peace and amity.

But Hindu generosity has been misused and politics has overrun Hindu culture. Today religion in India serves no higher purpose than collecting ignorance, poverty and ambition under a banner that flies for fanaticism. The aim is political, for in the modern world all is power-politics and the inner man is lost in the dust.

Let everybody live as he thinks best but let him not try to swell his number to demand the spoils of political warfare. Let us not raise the question of communal minorities anymore. It is a device to swallow the majority in the long run. This is intolerable and unjust.”

The new India must carefully choose what it wears, what it wants to be. – News18, 27 June 2025

› Abhijit Majumder is an author, editor, journalist and media entrepreneur in New Delhi.

Audrey Truschke: A demagogue with a megaphone – Sankrant Sanu

June 18, 2025June 22, 2025VOI

Hinduism, as a non-Abrahamic tradition, remains open season in many Western academic spaces. This double standard isn’t just unjust—it’s intellectually dishonest. – Sankrant Sanu

On the streets of New York, Audrey Truschke—then assistant professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University—stood with a megaphone and declared to a crowd: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his political party, the BJP, openly adhere to Hindutva.”

She then launched into her historical comparison: “Hindutva came about roughly 100 years ago. … It was inspired in its early days by Nazism. Did I say Nazis? Yeah, I said Nazis.” She emphasised: “I want to be clear that I am talking about real, actual, historical Nazis.”

Then came the most inflammatory claim: “Early Hindutva espousers openly admired Hitler. … They praised Hitler’s treatment of the Jewish people in Germany as a good model for dealing with India’s Muslim minority.”

With this inflammatory rhetoric, she branded India’s ruling BJP and its adherence to Hindutva as Nazi-like—by extension tarring the hundreds of millions of Indians who democratically elected this government, as fascists. It wasn’t scholarship; it was street theatre designed to demonise an entire community. For Hindus across America, this wasn’t just academic discourse—it was public vilification. To rub salt into the wound, the department of history at Rutgers gleefully posted Truschke’s diatribe on their Facebook feed with the endorsement: “That’s what we call public history.”

Now, with her latest book India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent hitting shelves this month, Truschke’s troubling methodology is reaching an even wider audience. The timing couldn’t be more urgent for examining what happens when academic platforms become weapons of ideological warfare.

The Hitler Analogy: History stripped of context

Truschke’s accusation draws from a controversial passage in We or Our Nationhood Defined, published in March 1939 and attributed to M.S. Golwalkar of the RSS. The reality is more complex than her megaphone moment suggests.

The book wasn’t authored by Golwalkar but paraphrased and translated by him. The historical context matters crucially: in 1939, the full extent of Nazi atrocities against Jews was not yet known. The Holocaust — the systematic extermination of six million Jews—wouldn’t begin until 1941. For many colonised peoples worldwide, including some Indians, Hitler was viewed primarily as an enemy of Britain—their colonial oppressor.

The passage reflects the ideological uncertainty of that era, when colonised peoples worldwide were grappling with competing definitions of nationalism and looking to various models of national reorganisation. More importantly, the RSS has explicitly disavowed this misattributed quote, and decades of subsequent Hindutva writings have evolved far beyond these early formulations. But such nuance doesn’t fit Truschke’s narrative.

Most perversely, her Hitler comparison erases a remarkable historical truth: Hindus have never persecuted Jews. For over two millennia, India has been a haven for Jewish communities—in Kerala, Maharashtra, and Bengal. While Jews faced pogroms in Europe, ghettos in the Middle East, and extermination in Nazi camps, they found safety and dignity in Hindu-majority India.

To draw parallels between Hindutva and Hitler isn’t just inflammatory—it’s a moral inversion of history that anachronistically applies knowledge of the Holocaust to judge a misattributed quote from an earlier period—and then use that nearly 100-year-old aside to define a contemporary political movement. This is not academic history; it is political pamphleteering.

A pattern of distortion

This isn’t an isolated incident. Truschke’s 2017 book Aurangzeb: The Life and Legacy of India’s Most Controversial King whitewashes a well-documented record of temple destruction, discriminatory taxation, and forced conversions. Despite abundant evidence from Aurangzeb’s own firmans (imperial decrees) documenting systematic iconoclasm and forced conversion of Hindus, she claims he “simply left temples alone” and was a protector of Hindus, dismissing documented destructions as merely following “an Indian stance dating back, at least, to the Chalukyas and Pallavas”.

This false equivalency ignores a crucial theological distinction. When Aurangzeb’s contemporary sources praise him for hitting against the “infidels” and spreading Islam through “holy war,” these aren’t political calculations—they’re expressions of religious doctrine. In Islamic theology, idol worship is the gravest sin, making temple destruction an act of piety. Hinduism contains no such mandate. Political motivations aren’t identical to doctrinal imperatives.

Truschke dismisses scholars like Jadunath Sarkar as unreliable while downplaying Persian sources that contradict her narrative. Her approach isn’t history—it’s revisionism designed to obscure inconvenient truths.

Her recently published India: 5,000 Years of History on the Subcontinent promises more of the same: selective citations, interpretive sleights, and wholesale demagoguery. We can expect the 600-page tome to follows the familiar pattern—Hinduism cast as irredeemably oppressive, Islam framed as emancipatory. There’s little interest in balance, complexity, or competing narratives. It is only in the politicised ghetto of “South Asian Studies”, where practicing Hindus have little voice, that an academic would get away with this level of propaganda.

Silencing students, stifling dialogue

At a recent Georgia Tech event, a Hindu student described confronting Truschke at Princeton about her portrayals. Instead of engaging his respectful questions, she dismissed his concerns as “Hindutva propaganda” and shut him down. The room fell silent—a moment of intimidation, not academic exchange.

Hindu students at Rutgers report similar experiences: hesitating to speak in her classes, fearing they’ll be branded bigots for defending their faith. Many now avoid her courses entirely. In 2021, students petitioned against her teaching Hinduism, citing her claim that the Bhagavad Gita “rationalises mass slaughter” and her suggestion linking Hindus to the January 6 Capitol riot.

Rutgers defended her academic freedom and promised dialogue with the Hindu community. That dialogue never materialised.

The double standard problem

American universities rightfully crack down on antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Black racism. Yet when Hindu students raise similar concerns, institutions often look away, or worse, actively endorse such writing.

Truschke positions herself as the victim of “Hindu nationalist trolls” while sidestepping legitimate concerns from students who feel unsafe in her academic spaces. When she tweeted that Lord Rama was a “misogynistic pig”—later claiming scholarly translation—even Robert Goldman, the scholar she cited, publicly rejected her framing. One wonders how the academy would react if a professor used the same language about a different revered figure, say Prophet Mohammad.

The damage spreads beyond academia. Hindu students report being mocked as “cow piss drinkers”, stereotyped as “Brahmin oppressors”, or casually equated with fascists. When they respond, they’re accused of extremism—silenced not by force, but by fear.

Drawing the line

This isn’t about suppressing legitimate criticism of Hindutva politics. It’s about distinguishing between scholarly critique and rhetorical abuse.

Truschke’s defenders, including Romila Thapar and Sheldon Pollock, argue that attacking Hindutva isn’t Hinduphobia. In practice, targeting Hindutva often disguises targeting Hindus.

When Truschke abuses Rama, she is attacking an iconic figure in the Hindu tradition, revered across the length and breadth of India. There can be no better evidence of what her target is.

Would such treatment be tolerated toward any other faith community?

The answer is obvious. Hinduism, as a non-Abrahamic tradition, remains open season in many Western academic spaces. This double standard isn’t just unjust—it’s intellectually dishonest.

The path forward

Universities must confront this hypocrisy. If “safe spaces” truly exist for all, Hindu students deserve the same dignity afforded every other community. That means distinguishing between legitimate academic inquiry and inflammatory demagoguery—whether delivered through peer-reviewed journals, street megaphones, or 600-page histories now being peddled as the history of India.

Academic freedom must be balanced with academic responsibility. Scholars have the right to challenge religious and political traditions, but they also have an obligation to maintain scholarly standards, engage in good faith, and create inclusive learning environments.

With Truschke’s latest work now in circulation, the stakes have never been higher. Her interpretive framework isn’t confined to specialised academic journals—it’s shaping how a new generation learns about Indian civilisation.

Until universities address this imbalance, the promise of inclusive academia remains hollow. Hindu Americans will continue raising their voices—not to suppress debate, but to demand what every community deserves: fairness, intellectual honesty, and basic respect.

The megaphone may be loud, but truth has a voice of its own. – News18, 16 June 2025

› Sankrant Sanu is an author, entrepenour, and researcher based in Seattle nad Gurgoan.

Which is the oldest Dravidian language? – Anirudh Kanisetti

June 12, 2025VOI

The speakers of Proto-Dravidian, according to archaeological and linguistic streams of evidence, lived in the Krishna-Godavari valley in present-day north Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. – Anirudh Kanisetti

Veteran actor Kamal Haasan courted controversy by declaring that “Kannada was born out of Tamil.” The question of which Indian language is oldest—and, by extension, most native to the soil—has been a political hot topic since the mid-20th century. Some say Sanskrit, others say Tamil. But beneath the nationalist furore, paleobotanists, historical linguists, and archaeologists have made stunning discoveries about the linguistic heritage of all Indians.

From the lost Gangetic ‘Language X’, to the possible origins of Southeast Asian languages, to the homeland of Proto-Dravidian speakers, it turns out prehistoric Indian languages were as diverse as today’s.

Where do Dravidian languages come from?

The term “Dravidian” today is often associated with India’s southern states, linked to ideas of ethnicity, culture and politics. Here I use it only in the linguistic sense. In The Dravidian Languages (2003), linguist Bhadriraju Krishnamurti writes that Dravidian languages are spoken from the tip of the peninsula deep into Central India; one isolated Dravidian language, Brahui, is spoken as far west as Balochistan in present-day Pakistan.

Anthropologist and historian Thomas Trautmann, in Dravidian Kinship (1981), also found a Dravidian substrate in many place-names in Maharashtra, and pointed out that Dravidian cultural practices—such as first-cousin and maternal uncle-niece marriages—are practiced by a few castes in Sindh and even Gujarat. Speakers of Dravidian languages, and their descendants, are extremely widespread.

Given this vast geographic range, it’s natural to ask: who were the ‘original’ Dravidian speakers? How did they spread and why? By looking at the earliest shared features of all Dravidian languages, we can assemble a hypothetical Proto-Dravidian language from which all modern Dravidian languages descend. We can figure out what plants and animals they saw, what their climate was like, and what their politics and settlements were like. Then we can look at the ecology of the subcontinent, archaeological digs, and we can see what matches.

Distinguished linguist Franklin C. Southworth, in his paper “Proto-Dravidian Agriculture” (2005), made the most rigorous attempt yet to reconstruct this lost world. Proto-Dravidian speakers had a word for “king”. They used a similar word for “hut” and “village”, suggesting small populations of related families. They knew of various agricultural and hunting tools, and a wide variety of wild animals.

Around the 3rd millennium BCE—when the Harappan civilisation was thriving on the Indus Valley—the speakers of Proto-Dravidian were also aware of many crops, such as sorghum and various types of millet and gram. They also had terms for cattle pens and domesticated sheep and goats. Finally, as archaeobotanist Dorian Q. Fuller writes in “Non-Human Genetics, Agricultural Origins and Historical Linguistics in South Asia” (2007), Proto-Dravidian speakers seem to have lived in a dry, deciduous forest environment.

One region seems a good match for all these criteria. It is a region where the ranges of the modern Dravidian language families—Northern, Central, South-Central and South—overlap, and possibly where they radiated from. This is supported by extensive archaeological findings of a “Southern Neolithic” period, with evidence of small mud homes, remains of domesticated and wild animals, and crops.

There is a 73 per cent match between Southworth’s Proto-Dravidian vocabulary of plants and those found in Southern Neolithic sites. Surprisingly, these sites are rather distant from the hotbeds of South Indian linguistic nationalism today. They are neither in south Karnataka nor in Tamil Nadu. Rather, the speakers of Proto-Dravidian, according to archaeological and linguistic streams of evidence, lived in the Krishna-Godavari valley in present-day north Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The archaeology of languages

To be clear, this is not to say that all Dravidian speakers originated from the Krishna-Godavari valley. (If we are being cheeky, no human being truly ‘originated’ anywhere except Eastern Africa.) The fact is, even the Proto-Dravidian language has some words borrowed from other language families, namely Austro-Asiatic—spoken mostly in Southeast Asia today, with the Munda families of Odisha and Chhattisgarh being the Indian representatives. This may suggest that the speakers of even earlier stages of Dravidian migrated to the Krishna-Godavari valley from elsewhere, picking up influences from other languages on the way. Some genetic and linguistic theories link early Dravidian speakers to the Iranian Plateau and the Harappan civilisation, but that’s a matter for another day.

Interestingly, the Proto-Dravidian language is not a perfect match for Southern Neolithic excavations: the peoples of the Southern Neolithic practised urn burials, but there’s no vocabulary for it in Proto-Dravidian. It also doesn’t match other archaeological candidates, such as the Harappan civilisation. If their cities are anything to go by, Harappans must have had a vocabulary for engineering and geometry, but it’s practically nonexistent in Proto-Dravidian. Proto-Dravidian also doesn’t have a word for ‘rhinoceros’, which are often depicted on Harappan seals. This doesn’t mean that no Dravidian speakers lived in Harappan cities—such a vast civilisation must have been multilingual. It just means there may have been another, now-extinct early branch of Dravidian languages, which could have evolved separately from Proto-Dravidian.

Proto-Dravidian has words for some crops—especially wheat—which may be of Harappan origin, suggesting, at the very least, agricultural exchanges. The true “homeland” of the Dravidians, then, is still unclear. All we can say for certain is that around 3000 BCE, Proto-Dravidian speakers deep in the South Indian peninsula harnessed agriculture and, as their population exploded around 1100 BCE, they spread out in waves across the Indian Subcontinent.

“Broadly, the default Proto-Dravidian agricultural practice was dry farming of millets, pulses and tubers. Irrigated rice farming (alongside cash crops like cotton and sugarcane) became more important in the late 1st millennium BCE,” Dr Sureshkumar Muthukumaran, a historian, curator and lecturer at the National University of Singapore, told me. Over the centuries, Dravidian speakers traded words, animals and crops not only with North India but also with Southeast Asia. A particularly influential branch headed south, giving rise to the South Dravidian languages. Some groups, relatively isolated on the Nilgiri hills, developed languages such as Irula and Toda. Others, settling into the expansive coasts and plains, spoke the ancestors of Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam.

The language that became Tamil, according to Krishnamurti (Dravidian Languages), branched off around 600 BCE, roughly when the first cities were growing on the Gangetic Plains far to the North. Three centuries later, it had developed into Old Tamil, the first Dravidian language to have a written culture, composed in thriving new trading towns with rice-farms. Old Tamil itself was composed of many dialects, which evolved into Middle Tamil and eventually modern Tamil centuries later. Between 800–1200 CE, some Middle Tamil dialects branched off into Malayalam.

We can say with confidence that the ancestor of Kannada is not Tamil: it is a lost South Dravidian language related both to the languages of the Nilgiris and to Old Tamil. Unfortunately, the earliest written examples of Kannada date to c. 450 CE, so we don’t have a clear picture of how the language evolved in the centuries prior. Thereafter, though, many dialects of Kannada evolved, through Old Kannada into Middle and thence modern Kannada. In North Karnataka, Kannada dialects had a fertile exchange with Indo-Aryan languages such as Marathi, which in turn had a Dravidian substrate.

The mosaic of Indian languages

It is becoming increasingly clear that this complex mosaic of linguistic borrowings, evolutions, migrations, and shifts is the story of all Indians, indeed of all humanity. Rig Vedic Sanskrit provides another early example. Prof Michael Witzel, a linguist and scholar of the Vedas, writes in “Substrate Languages in Old Indo-Aryan” (1999) that already by 1500 BCE, the earliest Indo-Aryan languages had absorbed a chunk of vocabulary from now-lost Austro-Asiatic languages in Punjab—a hypothetical Harappan language called “Meluhhan” in Sindh, and a language called “Language X”, probably spoken by the earliest Neolithic farmers in the Gangetic plains. A few centuries later, c. 800 BCE, Dravidian words suddenly appear in the Vedas, possibly hinting at now-lost North Dravidian languages.

As noted above, Tamil literature and writing appeared around 300 BCE. The earliest Tamil literature is called the Sangam poetry, after assemblies of poets who compiled it. Linguists, however, generally agree that the word “Sangam” itself is borrowed from Indo-Aryan languages, while Old Tamil poets were clearly aware of Vedic mythology. Meanwhile, around the same time in North India, Prakrit literatures blossomed, overpowering the dominance of Sanskrit in religion and ritual. Krishnamurti (The Dravidian Languages) argues that Prakrits probably developed from the integration of the speakers of now-lost regional Dravidian languages into the North Indian mainstream. And, in the medieval period, starting around 600 CE, all the major Southern Dravidian languages, including both Kannada and Tamil, borrowed extensive political, grammatical, and religious terms from a revitalised Classical Sanskrit.

So, what is indigenous and what is foreign? Which language is “oldest” when all have branched off from already-diverse origins, and borrowed from or lent to each other across centuries? India’s modern linguistic diversity didn’t appear out of nowhere: all the evidence is telling us that we are the inheritors of a complex, multidimensional mixing of genes, words, technologies, and ideas across timescales of truly mind-boggling proportions. Banal statements that language A is older than language B might set social media aflame and rally nationalists to a cause. But, as is increasingly clear, patriotic oversimplifications always trample on the histories and dignities they claim to protect. – The Print, 5 June 2025

› Anirudh Kanisetti is an author and public historian.

Srinivasa Ramanujan: A genius who transformed mathematics – B. Sathish

May 25, 2025May 25, 2025VOI

In just five years at Cambridge, Ramanujan earned the reputation of being the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century. He solved numerous complex mathematicam problems that had remained unsolved for centuries. – B. Sathish

Among the world’s legendary mathematicians, such as Leonhard Euler, Carl Gauss, and Carl Jacobi, a common trait is that they were trained by professionals. In stark contrast, Srinivasa Ramanujan (22nd Dec 1887–26th Apr 1920) was a self-taught mathematician. He once said, “An equation for me has no meaning unless it expresses a thought of God.” Ramanujan believed his mathematical insights were divine revelations bestowed by Goddess Namagiri Thayar of the ancient sixth-century temple in Namakkal. Deeply devout, he maintained that his discoveries were not merely the result of study, but were revealed to him in dreams by the Goddess.

Early Days

Ramanujan’s father, Kuppuswamy Srinivasa Iyengar, worked as a clerk in a sari shop, while his mother, Komalathammal, played a significant role in nurturing his early education. They lived in a small, traditional home in Kumbakonam. At the age of 21, Srinivasa Ramanujan married a ten-year-old girl, Janakiammal, on 14 July 1909. Although they had no children, Janakiammal’s life was remarkable in its own right. Ramanujan’s wife and mother lived with him until he left for England on 17 March 1914.

By the age of 15, Ramanujan had mastered trigonometry, algebra, geometry, cubic equations, and more. However, due to his intense obsession with mathematics, he lost his scholarship at Kumbakonam Government College in 1904 and subsequently failed to obtain a degree from Presidency College, Madras, in 1907. Interestingly, at just 18 years old, Ramanujan left home following a misunderstanding—an incident that was reported in The Hindu newspaper under the headline “A Missing Boy”.

Well-Wishers

Thanks to Ramaswamy Aiyer, the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society (IMS), who recognised the potential of this gifted mathematician. Ramanujan first published “Some Properties of Bernoulli’s Numbers” in 1910, and from then on, he published a total of 12 research papers in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.

In 1912, after securing a clerical job at the Madras Port Trust, Ramanujan joined the University of Madras as its first research scholar in May 1913.

Ramaswamy Aiyer introduced him to Sheshu Aiyar, who, in turn, gave Ramanujan a note of recommendation to meet Dewan Bahadur R. Ramachandra Rao, the then District Collector of Nellore and a noted mathematics enthusiast. On the suggestion of Sheshu Aiyar, Ramanujan began writing to well-known mathematicians in Britain, starting with unsuccessful attempts to reach M.J.M. Hill, E.W. Hobson, and H.F. Baker.

It was in January 1913 that Ramanujan wrote one of the most famous letters in the history of mathematics. The recipient was G.H. Hardy, a lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, and one of Britain’s foremost pure mathematicians. Without Hardy’s intervention, Ramanujan might never have been recognised as the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century. It was Hardy who truly discovered Ramanujan’s genius. (Explore the Hardy–Ramanujan number 1729!)

Hardy wrote of Ramanujan: “Here was a man who could work out modular equations and theorems … to orders unheard of, whose mastery of continued fractions was … beyond that of any mathematician in the world.”

Ramanujan travelled to England on 17 March 1914, after seeking the permission of Goddess Namagiri Thayar of Namakkal, and stayed for about five years until 1919. In just five years, he earned the reputation of being the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century, even as the world was engulfed in the First World War. He solved numerous complex problems that had remained unsolved for centuries.

How could a non-mathematician even imagine such achievements? For his work, Ramanujan’s name was accepted for the Fellowship of the Royal Society, and he was also elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 2012, Ken Ono of Emory University, United States, finally solved a problem that had remained an open challenge to mathematicians for 90 years—a problem originating from Srinivasa Ramanujan’s last mysterious letter. Professor Ono referred to the problem mentioned in Ramanujan’s final letter to Professor G.H. Hardy. In his speech, Professor Ono said, “No one was talking about black holes back in the 1920s when Ramanujan first came up with the mock modular forms, and yet, his work may unlock secrets about them.”

Ramanujan’s most celebrated works include number theory, infinite series, elliptic functions, modular forms, and mock theta functions, among others.

School education departments should make it mandatory for students to visit the little-known Ramanujan Museum (established in 1993 in Parry’s, Chennai), which houses a collection of some of his works—thanks to the efforts of mathematics educator P.K. Srinivasan.

Janaki Ammal

It would be an injustice not to mention Janaki Ammal and how her life unfolded after the sudden demise of Ramanujan at the young age of 32. After Ramanujan’s passing, Janaki Ammal lived in Mumbai for eight years, where she learnt tailoring and English. She returned to Madras in 1932, choosing to live as an independent woman. Hanumantharayan Koil Street in Triplicane became her home for the next 50 years. Tailoring helped her to survive financially.

She later adopted W. Narayanan after her close friend Soundravalli passed away. As a foster mother, Janaki Ammal ensured that Narayanan received a proper education and got him married in 1972. Narayanan and his wife, Vaidehi, took great care of Janaki Ammal until her death on 13 April 1994, at the age of 94.

In her later years, Janaki Ammal fondly recalled: “I considered it my good fortune to give him rice, lemon juice, buttermilk, etc., at regular intervals and to give fomentation to his legs and chest when he reported pain. The two vessels used then for preparing hot water are still with me; these remind me often of those days.”

Thanks are due to the governments of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and West Bengal, Madras University, and various mathematical institutions for their constant financial support to Janaki Ammal. The Hinduja Foundation also donated Rs 20,000 towards her welfare.

Janaki Ammal was a philanthropist as well, providing financial support to many students.

In interviews conducted soon after the discovery of Ramanujan’s “lost” notebook by George Andrews in 1976, Janaki Ammal lamented that a statue of Ramanujan had never been made, despite earlier promises. After the efforts of hundreds of mathematicians, a bronze bust was finally created from the only authentic passport-sized photograph of Ramanujan by American sculptor Paul Granlund. A copy of the bust was presented to Mrs Ramanujan at a formal function at the University of Madras in 1985—after a gap of 60 years.

I leave it to readers: are we truly celebrating him? If not, we must learn about Srinivasa Ramanujan and educate our children about his legacy. It is not only the government’s responsibility; it is ours as well.

One can only hope that, as centuries pass, Srinivasa Ramanujan will be remembered alongside other luminaries such as Aryabhata, Brahmagupta, and Bhaskara. – New18, 26 April 2025

› B. Sathish is an engineer in the automotive industry.

How the West has sustained an anti-India bias on Kashmir till today – Claude Arpi

May 12, 2025May 27, 2025VOI

Despite Raja Hari Singh having signed the Instrument of Accession and joined India, Maj. William Brown of the Gilgit Scouts refused to acknowledge the orders of the Maharaja, and on November 1, 1947, he handed over the entire area of Gilgit-Baltistan to Pakistan. – Claude Arpi

On May 4, during an interactive session at the Arctic Circle India Forum 2025, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar spoke of broader geopolitical upheavals affecting the world, in particular Europe, which “must display some sensitivity and mutuality of interest for deeper ties with India”.

Answering a question on India’s expectations from Europe, Jaishankar said, “When we look out at the world, we look for partners; we do not look for preachers, particularly preachers who do not practice at home and preach abroad.”

This sharp answer came after the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, urged both India and Pakistan to exercise restraint.

Kaja Kallas, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, formerly a Prime Minister of Estonia, was obviously ill-informed about the situation in Kashmir (and along the India-Pakistan border).

The attitude of certain Western countries (as well as the UN General Secretary) represents a great danger for India today; it has been so in the past.

The Kashmir Issue

A few years ago, while researching in the Nehru papers, I came across a “Top Secret” note written in the early 1950s by Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai, then secretary-general of the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Affairs; it was entitled “Background to the Kashmir Issue: Facts of the Case”; it made fascinating reading.

It started with a historical dateline: “Invasion of the state by tribesmen and Pakistan nationals through or from Pakistan territory on October 20, 1947; the ruler’s offer of accession of the state to India supported by the National Conference, a predominantly Muslim though non-communal political organisation, on October 26, 1947; acceptance of the accession by the British Governor-General of India on October 27, 1947; under this accession, the state became an integral part of India.”

Unfortunately, in a separate note, Lord Mountbatten, the Governor General of India, mentioned a plebiscite which would “take place at a future date when law and order had been restored and the soil of the state cleared of the invader”, then “the people of the state were given the right to decide whether they should remain in India or not.”

It was an unnecessary addition, but Mountbatten wanted to show British (so-called) legendary fairness.

Anyway, the conditions were clear and in two parts: first, the Pakistani troops or irregulars should withdraw from the Indian territory that they occupied, and later a plebiscite could be envisaged.

Bajpai’s note also observed: “Pakistan, not content with assisting the invader, has itself become an invader, and its army is still occupying a large part of the soil of Kashmir, thus committing a continuing breach of international law.”

The Gift of Gilgit

Worse was to come; Maj. William Brown, a British officer, illegally offered Gilgit to Pakistan. The British paramountcy had lapsed on August 1, 1947, and Gilgit had reverted to the Maharaja’s control. Lt. Col. Roger Bacon, the British political agent, handed his charge to Brig. Ghansara Singh, the new governor appointed by Maharaja Hari Singh, while Maj. Brown remained in charge of the Gilgit Scouts.

Despite Hari Singh having signed the Instrument of Accession and joined India, Maj. Brown refused to acknowledge the orders of the Maharaja under the pretext that some leaders of the Frontier Districts Province (Gilgit-Baltistan) wanted to join Pakistan.

On November 1, 1947, he handed over the entire area to Pakistan, in all probability ordered by the British generals.

An interesting announcement appeared in the 1948 London Gazette mentioning that the King “has been graciously pleased … to give orders for … appointments to the Most Exalted Order of the British Empire.…” The list included “Brown, Major (acting) William Alexander, Special List (ex-Indian Army)”. Brown was knighted for having served the Empire.

At the time, the entire hierarchy of the Indian and Pakistan Army were still British. In Pakistan, Sir Frank Messervy was commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army in 1947-48, and Sir Douglas Gracey served in 1948-51; while in India, the commander-in-chief was Sir Robert Lockhart (1947-48) and later Sir Roy Bucher (1948), and let us not forget that Sir Claude Auchinleck (later elevated to Field Marshal) served as the supreme commander (India and Pakistan) from August to November 1947.

Who can believe that all these senior generals were kept in the dark by a junior officer like Maj. Brown?

The Western influence or manipulation continued in the following years and decades; the Americans soon entered the scene too.

India and the Western Powers

After China invaded northern India in 1962, Delhi decided to ask for the help of the Western nations, particularly the United States. The latter was only too happy to offer it and thus gain leverage over India, which until that time had been “neutral and non-aligned”.

Seeing northern India invaded by Chinese troops, it seemed logical that the United States would come to India’s aid, but it turned out differently.

Soon after the ceasefire declared by the Chinese on November 22, 1962, and instead of helping India, Great Britain and the United States decided that the time had come to resolve the Kashmir dispute between their Pakistani ally and India, now begging for help.

Two days after the ceasefire, Averell Harriman, the US Under Secretary of State, and Duncan Sandys, the British Commonwealth Secretary, visited the two capitals of the subcontinent to persuade the “warring brothers” that it was time to bury the hatchet and find a solution to the fifteen-year-old Kashmir question. Harriman and Sandys signed a joint communiqué and asked the two countries to resume negotiations.

India’s invasion by China was forgotten.

Delhi, in a position of extreme weakness, had doubts about the possibility of obtaining positive results from negotiations conducted under such circumstances, but Nehru did not refuse the “offer”.

On December 22, 1962, he wrote to the provincial chief ministers: “I have to speak to you briefly on the Indo-Pakistan question, and particularly on Kashmir. In four days, Sardar Swaran Singh [the Minister of External Affairs] will lead a delegation to Pakistan to discuss these problems. We realise that this is not the right time to have a conference like this, as the Pakistani press has vitiated the atmosphere with insults and attacks directed against India. Nevertheless, we have agreed to go and will do our best to arrive at a reasonable solution.”

The two delegations ultimately held a series of six meetings; nothing came of them. The first negotiations took place in Rawalpindi; Swaran Singh and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s foreign minister, limited themselves to a historical presentation of the problem and the reiteration of their respective points of view. During the talks, India reaffirmed that it wanted to explore all possibilities to resolve the issue, as it wanted to live in peace with Pakistan, which insisted that the UN resolutions of August 1948 and January 1949 must be implemented as soon as possible (without them vacating the occupied part of Hari Singh’s kingdom).

The negotiations got off on a bad start: just before they began, the Pakistani government announced that it had reached an agreement in principle with China on its border issue. Just a month after the end of the Sino-Indian War, Pakistan was prepared to give China a piece of territory that India considered its own. What a slap in the face for India! Were the Western powers aware of the secret negotiations between Pakistan and China? Probably.

It is indeed surprising that Pakistan, an ally of the United States and the Western world, chose this moment to make this announcement. It was proof that Pakistan expected nothing from the talks with Delhi.

Negotiations on Kashmir continued between January 16 and 19, 1963, in Delhi and February 8 and 11 in Karachi, of course without any tangible results. Pakistan wanted a plebiscite, but India insisted on the prior demilitarisation of the regions occupied by Pakistan.

Talks took place in Calcutta between March 12 and 14. India proposed some readjustments of the Line of Control, but these were rejected by Pakistan.

During the fifth round of talks held in Karachi between April 22 and 25, India protested that Pakistan had ceded part of Kashmiri territory to China; there was no longer any chance of finding a negotiated solution to the Kashmir issue.

During the sixth and final round of talks, India clarified that it had no intention of replacing a democratically elected government with an international organisation that it believed had no knowledge of local issues. India therefore rejected the proposals.

Retrospectively, 63 years later, it is not surprising that in an interview with Sky News, when the interviewer Yalda Hakim questioned him about Pakistan’s long history of backing, supporting and training terrorist organisations, Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif admitted, “Well, we have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades, you know, and the West, including Britain.”

India should indeed beware of some Western powers. – Firstpost, 10 May 2025

› Claude Arpi is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi. He is the director of the Pavilion of Tibetan Culture at Auroville.

India’s Pakistan conundrum – Claude Arpi

April 29, 2025May 27, 2025VOI 1 Comment

India’s ‘dharmic genes’ have made it more generous towards a deceitful Pakistan without any receprocity. History can’t be rewritten, but one should perhaps learn from it. – Claude Arpi

It has been argued that “Bharat has become a victim of its own innate dharmic nature—and, of course, democratic laws.”

This is a historical fact.

The Simla Agreement of 1972, repudiated by Pakistan after Delhi denounced the Indus Water Treaty of 1960, provided for the return of Pakistani prisoners of war. Unfortunately, India’s ‘dharmic’ genes accepted to release more than 90,000 Pakistani prisoners of war, against very little compensation. The Indian leadership probably thought that it was unethical (or adharmic) to keep so many Pakistani nationals in custody.

There are many more examples of the “dharmic” nature of the Indian leadership. We shall mention three here; if India had listened to saner elements, the situation would have been different on the borders today. It can, of course, be argued that it was plain stupidity, not ‘dharma’, which guided the Delhi establishment at that time.

Take Lahore

Lt. Gen Nathu Singh Rathore was one of the most remarkable officers of the Indian Army post-independence. When offered the post of first Indian Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, he refused and told the defence minister that Gen. K.M. Cariappa would do a better job than him.

But Gen. Nathu always spoke frankly, sometimes too frankly for the politicians in Delhi. At the end of 1947, he thought of taking Lahore to force the raiders and their Pakistani supporters to leave Kashmir and return to their bases. The general decided to speak to Nehru; his biographer wrote: “When he reached the prime minister’s house, he found him sitting on the lawn, talking to some ministers and civilian officials. Presently, Nehru got up and went inside. The others present there asked Nathu Singh for his views on the best way to deal with the crisis in Kashmir. Nathu Singh replied that if he had his way, he would use the minimum troops to hold the passes and, with maximum force, attack and capture Lahore. This would force Pakistan to withdraw and vacate all occupied territory in Jammu and Kashmir.”

The biographer continues: “The civilians were impressed by the logic of this argument, and when Nehru returned, they told him that the general had a good plan to throw out the invaders. When Nehru asked him to repeat what he had said, Nathu Singh demurred, saying that he would rather not, since he knew it would not find favour. But Nehru insisted, and Nathu repeated what he had told the others.”

But Nehru was horrified and became angry: “How can a responsible senior officer think of such a foolhardy scheme? It could cause an international crisis.”

Incidentally, in 1965, a similar plan was approved by Lal Bahadur Shastri, then prime minister, and the threat to Lahore probably saved Kashmir.

After the Pahalgam massacre, it is worth remembering this. Had the Indian Army advanced on Lahore in 1947, there would be no Kashmir issue today. But would the British have allowed it? This is another question.

Occupy Chumbi Valley

In October 1950, after the Chinese had captured Chamdo, the capital of Eastern Tibet, and were ready to advance towards Lhasa, Harishwar Dayal, an extremely bright ICS officer posted as Political Officer (PO) in Sikkim (looking after Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan), wrote to the Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi about the Chinese advances on the Tibetan plateau.

Dayal quoted from a letter from Hugh Richardson, the Indian Head of the Mission in Lhasa dated June 15, 1949, who had then suggested that India might consider occupying Chumbi Valley up to Phari “in an extreme emergency” (meaning if China threatened to invade Tibet).

More than a year later, Dayal brought back the idea: “This suggestion was NOT favoured by the Government of India at the time. It was, however, proposed as a purely defensive measure and with NO aggressive intention. An attack on Sikkim or Bhutan would call for defensive military operations by the Government of India.”

China’s PLA planners today call this “active defence”.

Dayal explained his reasoning: “In such a situation, occupation of the Chumbi Valley might be a vital factor in defence. In former times it formed part of the territories of the rulers of Sikkim, from whom it was wrested by the Tibetans by force. It is now a thin wedge between Sikkim and Bhutan, and through it lie important routes to both these territories. Control of this region means control of both the Jelep La and Nathu La routes between Sikkim and Tibet as well as of the easiest routes into Western Bhutan, both from our side and from the Tibetan side.”

Dayal expressed his strategic views further: “It is a trough with high mountains to both east and west and thus offers good defensive possibilities. I would therefore suggest that the possibility of occupying the Chumbi Valley be included in any defensive military plans, though this step would NOT, of course, be taken unless we became involved in military operations in defence of our borders.”

Dayal had probably not realised that China was “friend” (or “brother”) of the leadership in Delhi; a few days earlier, the prime minister had already severely reprimanded the PO and Sumul Sinha, who had replaced Richardson in Lhasa, for not understanding that China was India’s friend.

What prompted Dayal to write this letter was probably his meeting with some of the members of the Himmat Singhji Committee, who would have asked him to put his views in writing in order to bring some pressure on the pacifists in South Block, who could only see the “wider perspectives”.

One can only wishfully dream of the implications an Indian advance in Chumbi would have had (no Siliguri Corridor, etc).

1971: Why not take Baltistan?

Another case: in August 1971, as the clouds were gathering over the Indo-Pakistan border, a young Ladakhi officer, Chewang Rinchen, joined again his old regiment, the Ladakh Scouts; he was asked to report with Colonel Udai Singh, his commanding officer, to his beloved Nubra Valley. Rinchen had already been awarded a Maha Vir Chakra in 1947 at the age of 17.

Rinchen confidently told his GOC that the Ladakhi Scouts and the Nubra Guards (known as the Nunnus they were later integrated into the Scouts) would do the “job” and repel the Pakistani forces.

The army base for the sector was located at Partapur in the Valley, and since 1960 an airfield had been opened at Thoise (till today the base camp for the operations on the Siachen Glacier).

The Nunnu was a good tactician; he always sought the cooperation of the local people, whether they were Buddhist, Muslim or Christian. He knew that most of the time, the troops had to depend upon local vegetables, meat and other supplies to survive.

While most of the commanders favoured a riverbed approach, Rinchen decided to cross over the mountains with his Dhal Force and follow the ridge. He argued that the enemy must be waiting with mines and machine gun nests near the river; he chose to capture Pt. 18,402, the highest Pakistan-occupied post, and then roll down to Chulunkha, the Pakistani base.

Soon after, on December 8, from the top of Pt. 18,402, Rinchen could see the entire valley from Turtok and Chulunkha in the east to the Indian Army headquarters at Partapur and the airfield at Thoise in the west. Rinchen’s tactics had paid off. He told his men, “Enjoy the Pakistani blankets and food”.

On December 9, advancing along the ridges, Rinchen and his men descended towards the Chulunkha defence complex, trying not to be seen by the enemy. Soon, Rinchen got a wireless message from Maj. Thapa informing him that Thapa’s team had managed to enter the enemy bunkers and a few Pakistani soldiers had been killed and a JCO captured.

On December 14 morning, soon after shelling started to destroy the roadblocks near the Turtok axis, the Dhal Force began its advance again.

At 10 pm, shelling was stopped, and the troops entered the Turtok village. Surprisingly, the village was absolutely silent.

The next phase of the operations was Tyakshi village, 6 km. from Turtok. It was concluded on December 14 in the evening. A few Pakistani soldiers were captured with arms and ammunition.

On December 17, Rinchen ordered his troops to get ready to launch an attack against Prahnu and Piun in Baltistan (Khapalu, the first large town in Baltistan, is located 28 miles away); it was never to happen.

In the afternoon, the Pakistani government agreed to a ceasefire. The Dhal Force was ordered to cease fire, greatly disappointing Chewang Rinchen’s men; they knew that in a few days they could liberate the entire Baltistan. Rinchen could not disobey orders from Delhi.

Had this been done, Pakistan would have lost its base for the Siachen Glacier operations, which were to start 13 years later.

Many such stories could be recounted, but history can’t be rewritten; but one should perhaps learn from history. – Firstpost, 27 April 2025

› Claude Arpi is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi. He is the director of the Pavilion of Tibetan Culture at Auroville.

VOICE OF INDIA

History Politics Science Religion

Author VOI

Hinduism & Buddhism: More similar than dissimilar – Ravi S. Kapoor

Christianity’s fraudulent legacy – M. Paulkovich

Is the Ganga really self-cleaning? – Pranay Lal

Time for India to stop wearing the ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ labels – Abhijit Majumder

Audrey Truschke: A demagogue with a megaphone – Sankrant Sanu

Which is the oldest Dravidian language? – Anirudh Kanisetti

Srinivasa Ramanujan: A genius who transformed mathematics – B. Sathish

How the West has sustained an anti-India bias on Kashmir till today – Claude Arpi

India’s Pakistan conundrum – Claude Arpi

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