Vande Mataram: Nationhood in conflict – Prafull Goradia

November 23, 2025November 23, 2025VOI

“Vande Mataram” should not divide Indians; it should remind them of their shared soil and destiny. History may be scarred by conquest and division, but the future must rest on reason and reconciliation. – Prafull Goradia

Questions such as whether our Constitution is secular or whether “Vande Bharat” is a patriotic or political slogan are not merely contemporary concerns; they are rooted in centuries of Indian history. To understand current controversies, one must go back to AD 1194, when Mohammad Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in the Second Battle of Tarain. Some trace the origins even further. Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah once claimed that Pakistan was born the day the first Hindu converted to Islam in the subcontinent.

Muslims came to India as conquerors, guests, or converts who could claim native descent. Among the rulers, some were benevolent, others harsh, and a few destructive. The brightest phase came under Emperor Akbar, whose long and liberal reign brought a rare harmony to India. In contrast, Aurangzeb’s intolerance marked the darkest chapter of Mughal rule.

A puzzling feature of Indian history is the absence of a united Hindu resistance to the Sultans and Badshahs of Delhi. Shivaji stands out for his courage and statecraft, yet his influence remained confined to the Deccan. Maharana Pratap, too, fought heroically against Akbar, but his struggle was limited to Mewar. A pan-Indian uprising never materialised. By the mid-18th century, the declining Mughal order gave way to new powers. The reckless Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah, alienated his own officers and merchants, pushing them into alliance with the East India Company. Their support ensured Robert Clive’s victory at Plassey in 1757, which opened the gates of Bengal to British domination. Subsequent British victories-over Tipu Sultan in 1799 and the annexation of Awadh under Dalhousie-completed the dismantling of Muslim authority.

The Revolt of 1857 briefly shook British confidence. For a year, large parts of North India were aflame, but the uprising ended in defeat. In 1858, Queen Victoria assumed direct control, and two decades later, in 1877, she was proclaimed Empress of India. The British concluded that Muslims had been the principal instigators and punished them more severely than Hindus.

This perception deepened Muslim resentment and nostalgia for lost power. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, founder of the Aligarh Movement, even argued that when the British eventually left, they should return India to the Muslims from whom they had taken it. Whether this was foresight or delusion remains debatable. Ironically, the Indian National Congress—often branded a “Hindu party”—was not formed by Hindus at all. It was founded in 1885 by a retired English civil servant, Allan Octavian Hume. Yet, by 1906, Muslims had established their own political platform, the All-India Muslim League, reinforcing the belief that while Hindus were traders and cultivators, Muslims were natural rulers. This sentiment persisted even after Mahatma Gandhi entered the scene in 1915.

Gandhi’s early political strategy was curious. To bridge Hindu-Muslim divides, he supported the Khilafat Movement, launched by the Ali brothers—Mohammad and Shaukat—to restore the Ottoman Caliphate after World War I. Astonishingly, Gandhi even became president of the Khilafat Committee, formed to defend a Turkish sultan thousands of miles away. Many observers saw this as proof that political power in India still revolved around Muslim leadership. Gandhi’s satyagraha, though morally compelling, appeared to many as nothing more than a moral appeal, not really a political challenge to imperial rule.

In 1940, at Lahore, Jinnah declared that Hindus and Muslims were “two distinct nations.” No strong Indian voice publicly disputed this claim. When the premiers of Punjab and Bengal initially opposed Partition, Congress leaders quietly welcomed their stance, believing Jinnah’s plan would fail. Yet, by May 1947, Mountbatten announced the Partition, confirming that Jinnah’s vision had prevailed. Once again, Muslim political will had triumphed. Partition’s aftermath was tragic and uneven. In Pakistan’s western wing, Hindus and Sikhs were virtually wiped out by 1948. The eastern wing—now Bangladesh—saw its Hindu population fall from 33 per cent to barely 8 per cent. Migration was overwhelmingly one-sided: millions of Hindus fled Pakistan, but few Muslims left India. The imbalance revealed the persistent perception that power and initiative in the subcontinent lay largely with Muslims, not Hindus.

This historical backdrop helps explain why, even today, debates such as the one surrounding “Vande Mataram” evoke old anxieties. Some Muslim leaders continue to act as if their community still sets the terms of national discourse. Such illusions are not merely harmless, they perpetuate misunderstanding and hinder social harmony.

India’s past is too complex to be reduced to communal binaries. Both Hindus and Muslims have shaped its destiny, for better and for worse. Yet, national progress demands a sober recognition of facts, not romanticised memories of lost empires or imagined privileges. True secularism lies not in appeasement but in equal accountability. The maturity of a nation is measured not by the volume of its grievances but by its capacity to face history without distortion.

In the final analysis, “Vande Mataram” should not divide Indians; it should remind them of their shared soil and destiny. History may be scarred by conquest and division, but the future must rest on reason and reconciliation. Every citizen—Hindu, Muslim, or otherwise—must realise that the power to shape India’s tomorrow lies not in nostalgia for the past, but in unity of purpose and respect for truth. Only then can the spirit of Vedanta, of oneness and universality, truly prevail. – The Pioneer, 12 November 2025

› Prafull Goradia is a former member of the Raja sabha and is currently the general secretary of the Akhil Bharatiya Jan Sangh.

Islam is a religion of violence – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

November 18, 2025November 19, 2025VOI

The view that the ideology of radical Islam is rooted in Islamic scripture understands fully the cause of terrorism; it takes religious arguments seriously, and does not view them as a mere smokescreen for underlying “real” motivations, such as socio-economic grievances. This school of thought understands that the problem of radicalization begins long before a suicide bomber straps on his vest or a militant picks up his machine gun; it begins in mosques and schools where imams preach hate, intolerance, and adherence to Medina Islam. – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

In the 14 years since the attacks of 9/11 brought Islamic terrorism to the forefront of American and Western awareness and then-President George W. Bush launched the “Global War on Terror,” the violent strain of Islam appears to have metastasized. With tracts of Syria and Iraq in the hands of the self-styled Islamic State, Libya and Somalia engulfed in anarchy, Yemen being torn apart by civil war, the Taliban resurging in Afghanistan, and Boko Haram terrorizing Nigeria, policymakers are farther away from eliminating the threat of violent Islamism than they were when they began the effort. In fact, Western countries are increasingly witnessing domestic attacks such as the murder of British military drummer Lee Rigby and the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, the shootings at Parliament Hill in Canada in 2014, the attacks at satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and at a Jewish supermarket in Paris this past January, and most recently the terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on a military recruiting center and Naval compound.

But does this violent extremism stem from Islam’s sacred texts? Or is it the product of circumstance, which has twisted and contorted Islam’s foundations?

To answer this, it’s worth first drawing the important distinction between Islam as a set of ideas and Muslims as adherents. The socio-economic, political, and cultural circumstances of Muslims are varied across the globe, but I believe that we can distinguish three different groups of Muslims in the world today based on how they envision and practice their faith.

The first group is the most problematic—the fundamentalists who envision a regime based on Sharia, Islamic religious law. They argue for an Islam largely or completely unchanged from its original seventh-century version and take it as a requirement of their faith that they impose it on everyone else. I call them “Medina Muslims,” in that they see the forcible imposition of Sharia as their religious duty, following the example of the Prophet Mohammed when he was based in Medina. They exploit their fellow Muslims’ respect for Sharia law as a divine code that takes precedence over civil laws. It is only after they have laid this foundation that they are able to persuade their recruits to engage in jihad.

The second group—and the clear majority throughout the Muslim world—consists of Muslims who are loyal to the core creed and worship devoutly but are not inclined to practice violence or even intolerance towards non-Muslims. I call this group “Mecca Muslims.” The fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts.

More recently, and corresponding with the rise of Islamic terrorism, a third group is emerging within Islam—Muslim reformers or, as I call them, “Modifying Muslims”—who promote the separation of religion from politics and other reforms. Although some are apostates, the majority of dissidents are believers, among them clerics who have come to realize that their religion must change if its followers are not to be condemned to an interminable cycle of political violence.

The future of Islam and the world’s relationship with Muslims will be decided by which of the two minority groups—the Medina Muslims and the reformers—wins the support of the Meccan majority. That is why focusing on “violent extremism” is to focus on a symptom of a much more profound ideological epidemic that has its root causes in Islamic doctrine.

To understand whether violence is inherent in the doctrine of Islam, it is important to look at the example of the founding father of Islam, Mohammed, and the passages in the Quran and Islamic jurisprudence used to justify the violence we currently see in so many parts of the Muslim world. In Mecca, Mohammed preached to his fellow tribesmen to abandon their gods and accept his. He preached about charity and the conditions of widows and orphans. (This method of proselytizing or persuasion, called dawa in Arabic, remains an important component of Islam to this day.) However, during his time in Mecca, Mohammed and his small band of believers had little success in converting others to this new religion. So, a decade after Mohammed first began preaching, he fled to Medina. Over time he cobbled together a militia and began to wage wars.

Anyone seeking support for armed jihad in the name of Allah will find ample support in the passages in the Quran and Hadith that relate to Mohammed’s Medina period. For example, Q4:95 states, “Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit (at home).” Q8:60 advises Muslims “to strike terror into (the hearts of) the enemies, of Allah and your enemies, and others besides, whom ye may not know, but whom Allah doth know.” Finally, Q9:29 instructs Muslims: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

Mainstream Islamic jurisprudence continues to maintain that the so-called “sword verses” (9:5 and 9:29) have “abrogated, canceled, and replaced” those verses in the Quran that call for “tolerance, compassion, and peace.”

As for the example of Mohammed, Sahih Muslim, one of the six major authoritative Hadith collections, claims the Prophet Mohammed undertook no fewer than 19 military expeditions, personally fighting in eight of them. In the aftermath of the 627CE Battle of the Trench, “Mohammed felt free to deal harshly with the Banu Qurayza, executing their men and selling their women and children into slavery,” according to Yale Professor of Religious Studies Gerhard Bowering in his book Islamic Political Thought. As the Princeton scholar Michael Cook observed in his book Ancient Religions, Modern Politics, “the historical salience of warfare against unbelievers … was thus written into the foundational texts” of Islam.

There lies the duality within Islam. It’s possible to claim, following Mohammed’s example in Mecca, that Islam is a religion of peace. But it’s also possible to claim, as the Islamic State does, that a revelation was sent to Mohammed commanding Muslims to wage jihad until every human being on the planet accepts Islam or a state of subservience, on the basis of his legacy in Medina.

The key question is not whether Islam is a religion of peace, but rather, whether Muslims follow the Mohammed of Medina, regardless of whether they are Sunni or Shiite.

Today, the West is still struggling to understand the religious justification for the Medina ideology, which is growing, and the links between nonviolence and violence within it. Two main viewpoints have emerged in the debate on the causes of violent extremism in Islam. The difference between them is reflected in the different terminology used by proponents of the rival views.

Popular academics such as John Esposito at Georgetown and author Karen Armstrong believe that religion—Islam, in this case—is the “circumstantial” bit and that the real causes of Islamist violence are poverty, political marginalization, cultural isolation, and other forms of alienation, including real or perceived discrimination against Muslims. These apologists for Islam use words such as “radicalism,” “violent extremism,” and “terrorism” to describe the various attacks around the world committed in the name of Islam. If Islam is mentioned at all, it is to say that Islam is being perverted, or hijacked. They are quick to assert that Islam is no different from any other religion, that there are terrible aspects to other religions, and that Islam is in no way unique. That view is more or less the “official” view of policymakers, not only of the U.S. government, but also of most Western countries (though policy changes are beginning to appear on this front in some countries such as the U.K., Canada, and Australia).

But the apologists’ position has been a complete policy failure because it denies the religious justifications the Quran and the Hadith provide for violence, gender inequality, and discrimination against other religions.

Proponents of the alternative view, such as the late academic Patricia Crone and author Paul Berman, rely on different terms such as “political Islam,” Islamism, Salafism, Wahhabism, and Jihadism. All of these terms are designed to convey the religious basis of the phenomenon. The argument is that an ideological movement to impose Sharia law, by force if necessary, is gaining ground across the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and even in Europe. In a speech this past July, British Prime Minister David Cameron said: “Simply denying any connection between the religion of Islam and the extremists doesn’t work, because these extremists are self-identifying as Muslims. The fact is from Woolwich to Tunisia, from Ottawa to Bali, these murderers all spout the same twisted narrative, one that claims to be based on a particular faith. Now, it is an exercise in futility to deny that.” I agree.

Western governments have tried to engage with “Moderate Muslims”: imams and community leaders who denounce terrorist attacks and claim to represent the true, peaceful Islam. But this has not amounted to meaningful ideological engagement. These so-called moderate representatives of Islam insist that violence has nothing to do with Islam and as a result the intolerant and violent aspects of the Quran and the Hadith are never acknowledged or rejected. There is never any discussion about change within Islam to bring the morally outdated parts of the religion in line with modernity or genuine tolerance for those who believe differently.

Despotic governments, civil war, anarchy, economic despair—all of these factors doubtless contribute to the spread of the Islamist movement. But it is only after the West and, more importantly, Muslims themselves recognize and defeat the religious ideology on which this movement rests that its spread will be arrested. And if we are to defeat the ideology we cannot focus only on violent extremism. We need to confront the non-violent preaching of Sharia and martyrdom that precedes all acts of jihad.

We will not win against the Medina ideology by stopping the suicide bomber just before he detonates himself, wherever he may be; another will soon take his (or her) place. We will not win by stamping out the Islamic State or al Qaeda or Boko Haram or al-Shabab; a new radical group will just pop up somewhere else. We will win only if we engage with the ideology of Islamist extremism, and counter the message of death, intolerance, and the pursuit of the afterlife with our own far preferable message of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. – USIP, 9 November 2015

› Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch and American writer, activist, conservative thinker and former politician. She is a critic of Islam, and an advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women.

From Dharma to Dogma: The genesis of caste – Acharya Prashant

November 14, 2025November 24, 2025VOI

Indians

India’s tragedy is that somewhere in history, caste and dharma were kneaded together like salt in dough. What began as a division of labour merged with notions of virtue and sin. Acting within one’s caste became dharma; going outside it became sin. – Acharya Prashant

Every few years, incidents remind us that caste persists in different avatars. Our Constitution guarantees equality, yet divisions control how we live, marry, vote, and worship. Knowingly or unknowingly, we judge people by birth. Caste survives despite legal systems, educational programs, and metropolitan anonymity.

We wrongly believe social reform alone can fix what is mostly psychological. Caste is not a census number; it is a paradigm of evaluation. People constitute systems; as long as people don’t inwardly change, systemic change won’t help much.

Caste and the Constitution

The Constitution guarantees liberty, equality, and fraternity. Yet caste persists because exclusivity, superiority, and material benefits are irresistible. Caste has become ingrained in habit, rooted in livelihood, kinship, and identity. Our constitutional principles are like rangoli patterns on the ground; they cannot change the soil underneath.

That soil pervades everyday life. Many trades favour one community over another. Marriage remains mostly endogamous, with nine of ten unions within caste. Lineage maps out towns and villages. And when voting time comes, we rarely cast our vote; we vote our caste.

When Caste Masquerades as Dharma

The persistence of caste cannot be explained by sociology alone. Laws may impact behaviour and reforms may change customs, but neither explains nor eradicates how caste has been sanctified in dharma’s name.

For humans, consciousness is paramount. An insult to self-worth hurts far more than bodily injury. More than our flesh, we protect our ‘feeling’ of being right: our dharma. Dharma is the inner compass for right seeing and living, man’s most sacred possession, guiding all people.

If caste were only a social structure, reformers would have erased it. If merely legal, the Constitution would suffice. But caste is sustained in religious belief. It persists because it hides behind Dharma’s name.

As long as this false dharma based on birth endures, caste will endure. What is worshipped will not be questioned, and what is not questioned will not change.

The History of Caste: The Distortion of Dharma

To understand why caste became inseparable from Indian life, let’s start from the beginning. The Purusha Sukta in the Rigveda speaks of an all-encompassing Being from whom everything comes. The hymn is metaphorical: the Brahmin came from His mouth, the Kshatriya from His arms, the Vaishya from His thighs, the Shudra from His feet. The symbolism points at how every form of work emerges from the same living whole, without any mention of hierarchy.

The Rigveda differentiates between Arya and Dasa, indicating early social stratification. There is still a dispute about whether varna was originally fluid or hierarchical. The goal is not to prove a perfect history, but to understand that any tradition has both liberating and limiting parts. It is our ethics that decide the thread we will follow next.

The Upanishads are the best argument against caste because they don’t just reject birth-based differences; they also reject body identification. The Vajrasuchika Upanishad, for example, directly emphasises that caste is unreal. The Bhagavad Gita said that varna comes from guna (individual physical tendencies) and karma (individual choices), not birth.

Such scriptures were being composed and had sublime philosophy emphasizing egalitarianism. However, there was a critical lapse: the scriptures were limited to a few meditative thinkers who mostly remained aloof and out of touch with mainstream society. The authors of the scriptures presented their insights in books, but did not get into grounded social activism to turn the spiritual insights into social reality. So, concurrently with the heights of meditative revelations, the social order continued to have strong currents of discrimination. By about 400 BC, the Dharmasutras emerged to become practical social guides. ‘Dharma’ began to mean social order. Spiritual symbolism became social distortion, and these new ‘scriptures’ started to show inequality based on caste. Over time, these grew into Dharmashastras, remembered as law codes such as the Manusmriti. Here lay the tipping point. The Purusha Sukta was reread with harmful additions: claims of Brahmin superiority, prohibitions on hearing the Vedas, and punishments for non-compliance. The spiritual metaphor became a manual of social control.

Later, the Puranas reinforced these distortions. With the Puranas’ dualistic approach came theism, and the social order was declared divinely ordained. Now, rebelling against caste meant rebelling against God, who made the caste system. Story after story contained subtle caste validation. Divine avatars were consistently born into upper castes, while those who challenged varna faced curses or calamity. The logic was circular but effective: if the gods themselves observed caste, it must be cosmic law. In dualistic theology, God becomes the author of worldly hierarchy. What Advaitic philosophy had rejected, mythology now sanctified.

Advaita Vedanta maintained a steadfast intellectual stance: since all distinctions are illusory, how can caste be authentic? But as caste became the dominant social system, even Advaita found itself compromised between transcendental truth (paramarthik) and practical social order (vyavaharik). The peak of truth was accepted as the highest, but was made distant from the ground of lived reality.

Caste’s story, however, is not one of unbroken supremacy. The Buddha did not accept the authority of the Brahmins. Bhakti poets Saints Kabir, Ravidas, and Chokhamela ridiculed caste. Basava’s Veerashaivism and Guru Nanak’s teachings went against the idea of a hierarchy. However, even as Bhakti emphasized that all individuals are equal in the eyes of God, it did not quite revolt against the unequal social hierarchy. A strange co-existence of unequal social order with equality before God was not just accepted, but institutionalized in Bhakti mythology, social order and rituals.

The reform movements show that resistance to caste often does arise within the religious system. But the idea of equality is often reabsorbed by the strong current of social inertia. What started as a misinterpretation of scripture became a social law, then a habit, and finally institutionalized heredity. The lesson is serious: to fight caste, you need both spiritual clarity and institutional change.

The Economics of Discrimination

Endogamy, or marrying within one’s own group, is at the heart of caste. It keeps bloodlines and a sense of belonging, while creating psychological walls. When marriage becomes restricted, so does social intimacy—families stop sharing meals, homes, and lives with those outside their group. Communities that marry within closed circles risk losing genetic diversity and cultural exchange. The biological costs are real, but the cultural impoverishment runs deeper: when people cannot marry across lines, they struggle to see each other as equals.

Yet caste continues not just as a belief but also as a source of profit. The priest’s ritual authority gave him power over knowledge, while the landlord’s caste position made his hold on land and labour even stronger. Endogamy preserved not just bloodlines but property. By ensuring daughters married within the caste, families kept wealth and land concentrated, turning social boundaries into economic moats that protected privilege across generations.

The Path Forward: Returning from Smriti to Shruti

The solution cannot principally come from courts; it must arise from understanding dharma itself. Sanatan Dharma was never meant to be a set of strict rules and inherited beliefs. It was the dharma of Shruti, the direct revelation of Truth. The emphasis was on clarity of consciousness, not on divine commandments. Social order was to be a spontaneous and fluid outcome of individual realization. Over time, however, we began living by Smriti, frozen law, and social convention.

As long as Smriti remained faithful to Shruti, it guided society; when it diverged, it enslaved society. Much of what we call “Hindu practice” belongs to this later distortion, drawn more from the Manusmriti and Puranas than the Upanishads. We talk about Vedic heritage, yet we live by hierarchies that came after the Vedic period.

This appeal to return to Shruti has a crucial objection: what if the texts themselves are complicit? What if hierarchy is inherent rather than incidental?

We need to consider this criticism. If the Upanishads were enough, why did Vedantic philosophy persist alongside millennia of discrimination? Sublime texts alone do not ensure accurate interpretation. The conclusion is stark: for each truthful scripture, we also need an equally truthful interpreter. The interpretation, practically, is as important as the scripture itself. And this interpretation must be made socially widespread, though that task will face resistance from those whose power depends on distortion. So, we need culture and powerful institutions to ensure and defend scriptural wisdom’s rigorous interpretation and dissemination.

And a note of caution to the sage-philosopher: your job doesn’t stop at meditation, revelation and publication. You need to get into the society and ensure that the light seen by you becomes the living light of the common man. The philosopher, the meditator, the thinker can’t afford to hide in his cave, he will have to be, firstly a rebellious social activist, and secondly, a meticulous institution-builder. This will mean getting into the din of public life and sacrificing the serenity he so lovingly cherishes, but that’s the sacrifice life and history demand of him. If he refuses, the consequences of his self-absorption will be socially devastating.

Democratization of Interpretation

We must ask who has the authority to interpret Shruti. In the past, only Brahmins, especially priests, had that right. But we cannot have the same gatekeepers who let the truth get distorted in charge of bringing it back.

It is important to make interpretation more democratic. Shruti should be accessible not as a privilege but as a birthright of consciousness. This means having translations of the Upanishads in the vernacular language, open discourse, and the recognition that spiritual realisation, not lineage, is what qualifies someone to understand the Upanishads.

When religion diverges from philosophy, it transforms into a blind and violent force, serving as a tool of fear rather than liberation. The Upanishadic view starts where hierarchy stops. It sees the sacred not in birth but in realisation.

In Vedanta’s light, every division dissolves. The way forward is cleansing religion, valuing truth over tradition, realisation over recollection. No interpretation of any scripture is valid if it violates the principles inherent in the Mahavakyas “Aham Brahmasmi” and “Tat Tvam Asi”.

The Path in Practice

It begins with modern, scientific education of the ego-self in school and college curricula. Students must be exposed to the process of biological and social conditioning, the matter of false identities, and the question “Who am I?”.

Cultural change valuing the Upanishads over the Manusmriti must be promoted, as well as rigorous interpretation of Smriti texts true to the spirit of Vedanta. Religious institutions must open doors regardless of birth, and spiritual leaders should publicly reject caste-based privilege.

Legal and economic measures too remain vital: affirmative action, anti-discrimination enforcement, and equalisation of opportunity. The soil is renewed not by one hand alone but by many: the teacher, the reformer, the legislator, and the rebel. – The Pioneer, 8 November 2025

› Acharya Prashant is a spiritual teacher, philosoper, poet and author of wisdom literature.

There are Brahmin, Kshatriya, Patel, Jain, Bania, Parsi, Saiyad, Pathan and Christian sanitation workers in Gujarat.

Vande Mataram marginalised in the name of secularism – Utpal Kumar

November 12, 2025December 8, 2025VOI

The Congress, in its post-Independence avatar, began to craft a “secular” nationalism that saw overt Hindu imagery as regressive, even dangerous. In doing so, it vacated a cultural space that epitomised the soul of Bharat. – Utpal Kumar

In his seminal work The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Karl Popper explains what he calls the “paradox of tolerance”. He writes, “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” Popper, however, adds a rider, saying that as long as one can counter intolerant views “by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise”.

Seven decades later, Nassim Nicholas Taleb reaches a similar conclusion in his 2018 book Skin in the Game, where he explains how it is the most intolerant, however minuscule they might be, who succeed in imposing their views on the majority. Among others, he gives the example of halal food to show how a small, stubborn group’s preferences dictate changes for everyone.

Today, as we celebrate 150 years of ‘Vande Mataram’, composed by sage and seer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in 1875 and later included in his novel Anandamath (1881), Popper’s “paradox of tolerance” and Taleb’s “minority rule theory” seem vindicated as never before.

Few symbols capture the trajectory of Bharat’s nationalist evolution—and its post-Independence identity crisis—as poignantly as Vande Mataram. Once the heartbeat of the freedom struggle, this ode to Bharat Mata (the motherland) became, over time, an inconvenient liability—an “extra”, to use Swapan Dasgupta’s term in his book Awakening Bharat Mata—awkwardly preserved but carefully marginalised too.

Vande Mataram’s journey from revolutionary anthem and rallying cry of the nationalist movement to contested, “communal” symbol reflects not only Bharat’s pseudo-secular identity politics but also the deliberate reshaping of national consciousness to accommodate the intolerant, who brand their intransigence as the anxieties of a besieged minority.

The retreat of Vande Mataram was threefold. While it became an “extra” post-Independence, this wasn’t the only time this song was viciously assaulted. The verses of Vande Mataram inspired one of the most enduring icons of Indian nationalism—the image of Bharat Mata. As per Bankim’s notion, she is an embodiment of both divine power (Shakti) and cultural identity:

Terrible with the clamorous shouts of seventy million throats,
and the sharpness of swords raised in twice seventy million hands,
Who sayeth to thee, Mother, that thou art weak?
Holder of multitudinous strength,
I bow to her who saves,
to her who drives from her the armies of her foemen,
the Mother!

Yet, by the early 20th century, alternative depictions began to emerge. Abanindranath Tagore’s 1905 painting of Bharat Mata showed a saffron-robed, serene woman—gentle, ascetic and unarmed. This transformation from Shakti to Sadhvi was further solidified when Mahatma Gandhi entered the freedom movement arena in the country.

Gandhi, though deeply religious, was wary of any symbol that could alienate Muslims. He revered Vande Mataram but readily surrendered to the opposition: “It never occurred to me that it was a Hindu song. … But in such times it is wisdom not to market pure gold.” His retreat symbolised the nationalist leadership’s helplessness—which was more like surrender—to the intolerant. The Congress, anxious to sustain Hindu-Muslim unity, began to treat Vande Mataram with utmost restraint.

The Muslim League, led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, rejected Vande Mataram outright, calling it “idolatrous” and “anti-Muslim”. Its depiction of the nation as a goddess was deemed an affront to Islamic monotheism. To pacify Muslim sentiment, the Congress decided that only the first two stanzas—devoid of explicit religious imagery—would be sung, and even then, never by compulsion.

This compromise of the majority didn’t stop the rise of Muslim separatism; it gave it further impetus. The country got its independence but at the cost of partition—in the name of religion. And as happens with concessions, one leads to another—the smaller takes us to the bigger ones.

On January 24, 1950, the Constituent Assembly adopted Rabindranath Tagore’s Jana Gana Mana as the country’s national anthem. Interestingly, the decision was reached without debate or vote. Vande Mataram was given “equal honour”, yet it was relegated to ceremonial margins—sung only in part, on rare occasions.

The author’s intent isn’t to question Jana Gana Mana, and it is ludicrously silly to link it with the British monarchy. The point being raised here is the discomfort which first the Gandhian worldview and then the post-Independence Nehruvian ecosystem had with Hindu imagery and underpinnings. The Congress, in its post-Independence avatar, began to craft a “secular” nationalism that saw overt Hindu imagery as regressive, even dangerous. In doing so, it vacated a cultural space that epitomised the soul of Bharat.

The assertive spiritual nationalism of the early freedom struggle was recast as an embarrassment—something to be remembered but not revered. Vande Mataram thus became the “extra” of Indian nationalism—honoured in rhetoric bereft of its Sanatana sacredness and explicit Hindu imagery, thus denying its rightful place at the centre of national identity.

The story of Vande Mataram is the story of Bharat struggling to reconcile its ancient Sanatana soul with its modern “secular” anxieties. It is also a reminder that concessions to a bully, even if he is a minority, do not pay. They backfire. – Firstpost, 9 November 2025

› Utpal Kumar is Opinion Editor at Firstpost and News18 and is the author of the book Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History.

Let’s honour the India that is Bharat and the Hinduism that is Sanatana Dharma – David Frawley

November 7, 2025VOI

India that is Bharat, which occurs in the beginning of India’s Constitution, highlights the need for a civilisational revival that was an integral part of India’s independence movement, not just creating another modern nation-state. – Dr. David Frawley

India cannot be understood without an equation with its traditional name of Bharat. India is a much older civilisation than Europe and has maintained its continuity uniquely over the millennia. The term Bharat brings that ancient history to mind and its cultural identity as Bharatiya Samskriti, a vast dharmic civilisation with its own unique voice and global influence.

Similarly, Hinduism cannot be understood without its equation with Sanatana Dharma, meaning the universal, eternal and perpetual Dharma. Sanatana Dharma shows the need to understand the dharmic traditions of Bharat in their own right and according to their own terminology: a profound spiritual, religious, philosophical, scientific, artistic and cultural tradition, with numerous great rishis, yogis and gurus, deity forms and temples, all reflecting a pursuit of higher consciousness and Self-realisation. We should equate Hinduism, Hindu Dharma and Sanatana Dharma, not simply by name but by meaning and implications.

It is great to see India’s politicians today using the term Bharat, or India/Bharat for their identification at diplomatic programs. It is an essential part of decolonization and calls for a reexamination of the global identity of India and what it represents as a civilisation. Similarly, it is important to identify Hinduism as Sanatana Dharma.

Sanatana Dharma refers to the term dharma in a generic way, embracing dharma in all its names, actions, vision and wisdom. Hindu Dharma is known for its many sects and sampradayas, whether Shaivite, Vaishnava, Shakta, Ganapata and Saura such as Adi Shankara recognised long ago, and as Vedic, Itihasa/Purana and Tantra with many modern movements as well. These diverse Hindu teachings are all expressions of a unitary Sanatana Dharma.

Vedic sciences like Yoga, Ayurveda, Vedanta, Jyotish and Vastu that are spreading worldwide reflect the Sanatana Dharma vision of universal consciousness at the foundation of Hinduism. Hindu art and culture with its music, dance, festivals and customs express the vibrant Sanatana way of life, embodied in its magnificent temples, their mystical designs and ornate sculptures.

Bharat and Sanatana Dharma

We must also note that Bharat cannot be understood without its inherent connection with Sanatana Dharma, as Bharat always viewed itself as a dharmic civilisation. Yet this does not mean that by using the terms Bharat and Sanatana Dharma, one will be creating a limited religious state. It will be acknowledging India’s dharmic civilisation and its experiential search for universal truth and consciousness, as in Yoga and Vedanta.

Let us, therefore, remember Bharat as the inner reality behind what is called India, and Sanatana Dharma as the essence of what people refer to as Hinduism. Sanatana Dharma highlights Hindu Dharma as embracing all humanity and all living beings, rooted in the Earth and nature, not any dogma. It has the vision of the world as one family, and the universe, both animate and inanimate as part of one’s own Self, with the Divine not apart from us.

I am not saying we should give up the terms Hinduism or Hindu Dharma but recognise Sanatana Dharma as its foundation. Even the word India we cannot give up, given its global usage, but can equate it with its Bharatiya essence for greater clarity and understanding.

Sanatana Dharma and national elections

Sadly, we still see an equation of Hinduism/Sanatana Dharma in a negative light at a political level with new assertions of the same old prejudices. This is most glaring in anti-Hindu anti-Sanatana Dharma state governments like the Communists in Kerala and DMK in Tamil Nadu who are trying to discredit and eradicate it for their own personal advantage. Meanwhile, India’s Congress party today, their ally, remains silent in the face of these virulent attacks, though it still claims to be Hindu when convenient, but lacks any conviction to express or defend Sanatana Dharma from such denigration.

We must remember that Sanatana Dharma is the ancient basis of Kerala and Tamil cultures, honouring Vedic knowledge and sustaining numerous monumental Hindu temples. Sanatana Dharma was the original basis of India’s Independence movement inspired by the Bhagavad Gita, and there can be no real Congress party apart from it.

Such political parties that oppose this dharmic heritage should be rejected in [any] national election. If they have no place for Bharat or Sanatana Dharma in what they respect or represent, what country, culture or civilisation can they claim to uphold or be part of?

Let us honour the India that is Bharat and the Hinduism that is Sanatana Dharma and we will understand the greatness of both. – News18, 9 Decemeber 2023

› Dr. David Frawley is the director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies and the author of more than 30 books on Yoga and Vedic traditions.

Hollywood’s distortion of Hindu symbols – Gautam Chintamani

November 4, 2025VOI

By blurring the sacred with the profane, Hollywood erodes the capacity for distinction itself. If the Hindu swastika and the Nazi cross are interchangeable, if Krishna’s revelation and the mushroom cloud are comparable, if Bushido is nothing more than gangster loyalty, then moral categories collapse. The West’s darkest deeds can be cloaked in Eastern wisdom, while the East’s oldest traditions are dragged into the West’s nightmare. – Gautam Chintamani

Hollywood has always had a way of flattening differences. In the grand illusion of cinema, two things as far apart as night and day can, with the right framing, appear indistinguishable. The business of film thrives on archetypes, but sometimes the archetypes are chosen with so little care—or perhaps so much calculation—that they collapse distinct histories and philosophies into one misleading picture. As the world approaches the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, it is worth revisiting how Hollywood has systematically placed Eastern symbols into Western nightmares, encouraging audiences to see the sacred through the lens of the profane.

Two films, separated by more than sixty years, offer a striking study of this phenomenon: Stanley Kramer’s Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023). Both films confront cataclysmic episodes in modern history—the Nazi crimes against humanity and the making of the atomic bomb—yet each imports Hindu symbols at decisive moments, almost as if to suggest that the moral ambiguities of the West and the spiritual legacies of the East occupy the same continuum. To the uninitiated viewer—and let us assume this is the overwhelming majority—these moments collapse cultural distances, turning difference into sameness.

Consider Judgment at Nuremberg, whose opening credits depict the shattering of a swastika. At first glance, the symbolism is unambiguous: the icon of Nazi horror reduced to rubble. Yet the image that lingers on screen is not the crooked, tilted hakenkreuz of Hitler’s Reich but the upright, balanced form of the Hindu swastika, a sacred sign of prosperity and cosmic order that predates Nazism by millennia. The misrepresentation is not trivial. Symbols are repositories of collective memory. The Hindu swastika embodies cycles of life, cosmic balance, and good fortune; it appears on thresholds, marriage rituals, and the opening pages of business ledgers. By confusing it with a twentieth-century emblem of genocide, the film extends the Nazi theft of the symbol into the cultural memory of the West. The original meaning is obscured, the millennia-old inheritance distorted.

This conflation continues to reverberate. In 2021, a bill introduced in the New York Senate proposed that schools teach the swastika as a hate symbol, without distinction. Hindu and Buddhist organisations protested, pleading for nuance, but the damage was already in place. Once a sign has been recast on screen, it tends to stay recast.

If Kramer’s film blurs visual iconography, Nolan’s Oppenheimer entwines philosophy with spectacle. In one of the film’s most startling sequences, Robert Oppenheimer quotes from the Bhagavad Gita not in the laboratory or the lecture hall, but in the intimacy of a sexual encounter. As Jean Tatlock presses him to read aloud from a Sanskrit verse, he recites Krishna’s cosmic proclamation: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The scene conflates erotic vulnerability with spiritual revelation, suggesting that the scientist’s deepest confession emerges not through moral reckoning but through carnal intimacy.

The quotation itself has long been debated. Oppenheimer knew Sanskrit and genuinely engaged with the Gita. Yet in the film, the context trivialises the source. Krishna’s words on the battlefield of Kurukshetra are a divine disclosure of cosmic duty and the eternity of the soul; they are not an endorsement of technological annihilation. By placing this moment in a boudoir rather than a battleground, the film distorts not just the scripture but its moral gravity. More troubling is the film’s broader posture.

Nolan’s portrait of Oppenheimer is sympathetic, even indulgent. The architect of the atomic bomb emerges as a tragic genius, crushed by politics and scapegoated by lesser men. The deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki recede into abstraction, almost footnotes to the protagonist’s inner torment. The climactic scene with President Truman, who dismisses Oppenheimer as a “crybaby,” allows the audience to pity the scientist while diverting attention from the annihilated civilians. The film invites us to grieve for the maker, not the victims. Hardly surprising then that the studios were clear in not releasing the film in Japan in its initial run—a market that for long has been second home for Hollywood.

In this reframing, Eastern philosophy functions as an alibi. The Gita becomes the text that gives Oppenheimer a language for his burden, as if the destruction of worlds could be sanctified by scripture. The appropriation universalises the bomb: no longer the invention of one nation’s scientists, but the cosmic destiny of humankind.

The misappropriation of Hindu symbols is not an isolated case. Hollywood has long repurposed Asian traditions, plucking them from their contexts and suturing them into Western narratives where their meanings are inverted or hollowed out.

As the world marks eighty years since the end of the Second World War, it is crucial to remember not only the horrors perpetrated but the symbols misused in their narration. The hakenkreuz was not the swastika; the Gita was not a manual for atomic warfare. Each had meanings far older, richer, and more humane than the distortions allowed.

These are not small distortions. Why do they persist? One answer lies in Hollywood’s appetite for the exotic. For decades, India, Japan, and China have been backdrops of mysticism, storehouses of symbols repurposed to lend profundity or menace.

Another answer is more unsettling. By blurring the sacred with the profane, Hollywood erodes the capacity for distinction itself. If the Hindu swastika and the Nazi cross are interchangeable, if Krishna’s revelation and the mushroom cloud are comparable, if Bushido is nothing more than gangster loyalty, then moral categories collapse. The West’s darkest deeds can be cloaked in Eastern wisdom, while the East’s oldest traditions are dragged into the West’s nightmare.

This was never a mere accident. Hollywood has long been an unofficial arm of the American state. FBI files and Cold War records show cultural appropriation was part of the soft-power playbook: projecting American myths while bending other civilisations’ icons inward. When the swastika is recast as eternal evil, or the Gita becomes the language of apocalypse, the damage is geopolitical.

A generation in India grows up unsure of what belongs to them, quick to doubt their inheritance. And the irony is unbearable: heirs to millennia of civilisation outsourcing their doubts to California while their certainties wither at home. Unless we wake up to these distortions, the oldest philosophies in the world will survive only as Hollywood subtitles — mistranslated, misused, and mistaken for someone else’s truth. – News18, 30 september 2025

› Gautam Chintamani is a film historian, a voracious cinephile attuned to writing on the world cinema, Bollywood and everything in between.

Max Müller to Doniger to Orsini: The West sends Trojan horses to India – Abhijit Majumder

October 28, 2025October 29, 2025VOI

The West repeatedly sends academic Trojan horses who would erase and distort Indian history, attack self-esteem, construct divisive narratives, and collude with India’s own sell-out intelligentsia to project credibility. – Abhijit Majumder

India is the imperialist’s unfinished project. Few lands that have been touched by Christian or Islamic imperialists have managed to remain largely unconverted and geopolitically intact. In a little over 100 years since 1900, the centuries-old fluid indigenous faiths in the entire African continent, for instance, dwindled from 76 per cent of the population to just 8 per cent, having been replaced by the two hardcoded religions.

Bharat, or what remains of it after Pakistan and Bangladesh were created, still has not given in. Sanatan Dharma is still the way of life for more than 75 per cent of Indians, and in spite of the best efforts of invaders and colonialists, its nationalism and civilisational self is rising again, its economy rapidly growing, its military gaining muscle.

The mere presence of Bharat—with its staggering size, diversity, and potential—has unnerved the West enough across ages to repeatedly send academic Trojan horses who would erase and distort history, attack self-esteem, construct divisive narratives, and collude with India’s own sell-out intelligentsia to project credibility.

The controversy around Francesca Orsini, Hindi scholar from London-based SOAS, is a continuation of that. A white woman specialising in an Indian language may fascinate us, but a look into her political activism in academic guise begins to reveal a different story.

She accuses the very language she teaches, Hindi, of political usurpation of other languages. She has a problem with Indian nationalism. In 2020, she introduced a resolution in the Seattle City Council against India’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

While India is not obligated to host those arriving to spread intellectual poison, Orsini was deported recently after landing in Delhi for gross violation of visa conditions during her previous visits. Orsini is a rather mediocre entrant in the galaxy of Western radicals who have got into the study of Indology, history, Sanskrit and other languages only to undermine Bharat.

German philologist Friedrich Max Müller, hired by the British colonialists in 1847, came with a mission to bury the Vedas, which he described in a letter to his wife as “the root of their religion, and to show them what that root is, I feel sure, the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3,000 years”. He also wrote: “The ancient religion of India is doomed, and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”

Then there was James Mill, a Scottish historian and economist whose work, The History of British India (1817), divided Indian history into Hindu, Muslim, and British periods. In his book, Mill extensively describes Hindus as “uncivilised”, “barbaric”, “savage”, and “rude”. This gentleman wrote with astonishing confidence on India without once stepping on this land and no knowledge whatsoever of Indian languages.

The more recent gift horses from the West to India like Wendy Doniger, Sheldon Pollock, and Audrey Truschke employ a more sophisticated packaging but are no less venomous. Doniger uses psychoanalytic quackery to introduce a homosexual angle to the relationship between Ramkrishna Paramhansa and his disciple Swami Vivekananda; Pollock blames the Sanskrit language for the Holocaust; and Truschke swoons over the genocidal Mughal Aurangzeb.

India’s intellectual tradition is among the most welcoming mindscapes in the world. Bharat has continuously assimilated knowledge and made “outsiders” its own. Even in the modern era, it has been enriched by foreigners from Sister Nivedita to David Frawley, Michael Danino to Koenraad Elst, Francois Gautier to Maria Wirth. These scholars have taken a dharmic approach. They did not approach Indic knowledge with the mission to debase it.

But ultimately, Indians will have to take a major part of the blame for not taking up their own knowledge universe seriously, neglecting languages like Sanskrit, writing their own history, and leaving a vast vacuum for the likes of Orsini to fill.

Unless Bharat begins to take its own story seriously, vultures will come to feast. – News18, 25 October 2025

› Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist and editor-in-chief at Earshot Media, New Delhi. He is the author of the book, ‘India’s New Right’.

Scholastic Apartheid: Western intellectual colonialism in India – Hindol Sengupta

October 27, 2025October 27, 2025VOI

In 1998, Jaswant Singh wrote one of the fiercest defences of India’s choice of acquiring nuclear weapons with an essay called ‘Against Nuclear Apartheid’. The time has come to focus on a different—but no less problematic—apartheid.

India has endured a long history of scholastic apartheid, especially in the humanities. The term “scholastic apartheid” here refers to the entrenched and systematic cultural and institutional barriers that have long prevented Indian or non-Western scholars from critically engaging, on equal terms, with the West and its intellectual traditions. Western, especially White, scholars, on the other hand, are not only permitted but encouraged to dissect, critique, and even deride Indian society, civilisation, religion, and history.

It is impossible to ignore that Western scholars—overwhelmingly White—have exercised an unrestrained entitlement to interpret, categorise, and often diminish Indian culture, religion, and society with little pushback from Indian institutions themselves. These analyses, interpretations, and often prejudiced criticisms not only gain currency within the academy and mainstream media in the West but are frequently internalised by Indian intellectuals and the broader Indian public, who often lap up Western validation with scant scepticism.

At the same time, no Indian scholar—no matter how credentialed, nuanced, or deeply trained in the Western humanities—has ever been afforded a comparable footing to turn the gaze on Western civilisation. While the Indian academy is populated by numerous ‘experts’ on the West who largely parrot or celebrate Western thought, rarely do critical studies produced in India or by Indians elsewhere, particularly those that challenge fundamental Western narratives, get any meaningful hearing or space in Western institutions, media, or discourse networks.

This asymmetry is not simply a matter of academic preference. It is rooted in deeper epistemic and institutional racism and the continued coloniality of Western academia.

For instance, any German historian working on Indian topics is treated with a presumed authority and seriousness by institutions in both Germany and India, but if an Indian historian proposes to research, say, the Protestant Reformation or the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment from a critical Indic perspective, they are met with cold indifference, suspicion, or even ridicule.

Such work is seldom, if ever, funded, published, or incorporated into major Western scholarly discourse. One of the most powerful critiques by Indian scholars of German Indology and its profound biases, Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee’s The Nay Science: A History of German Indology (2014) received little attention, and mostly derision, from the Western academic world. Sadly, it is so complicit in the Indian system in such neglect that it never got much attention even from Indian institutions.

Imagine, for a moment, an Indian academic proposing a deep, critical study of the enduring racial caste system in the United States, not as a sympathetic outsider, but as a critical analyst pointing out the systemic failures and foundational hypocrisies of its democracy. Imagine a researcher from Delhi securing a major grant to study the role of French laïcité as an instrument of state-sponsored anti-religious hegemony, particularly against its minority populations. Imagine a team from Mumbai or Kolkata publishing a definitive, critical ethnography of the British class system, exposing its role in perpetuating social immobility and political dysfunction.

Where would such a scholar publish? Which major Western university press would champion this work? Which mainstream media outlet, from The New York Times to The Guardian, would grant it a serious, respectful review, let alone a celebratory feature? The answer is self-evident.

Such work would be marginalised from the beginning. It would be dismissed as “biased”, “polemical”, “un-rigorous”, or “lacking in theoretical grounding”—a coded phrase meaning it does not originate from or pay sufficient fealty to the established Western theoretical canon. The non-White scholar is permitted to speak, but only as a “native informant”, providing raw data about their own exotic society. They are never, ever accepted as a peer, a theorist, or a critic with the standing to analyse the analyst.

One cannot, therefore, treat questions like, “Which Western scholar has been denied access to India?” as if this is an equivalent dilemma. It is in fact a deflection—a refusal to confront the deeply embedded structure of global knowledge production, which is predicated on the assumption that Western civilisation is the universal norm, and everything else is an object of study, not a subject with agency.

The phenomenon has a long history. From the early colonial period, British administrators and Orientalists set themselves up as intellectual “trustees” of Indian civilisation, pronouncing on the nature of Indian society, translating and systematically reinterpreting Indian texts, and mapping them onto a Western meta-narrative. Indian voices—literate, nuanced, and deeply engaged with their own historical experience—were either co-opted or sidelined entirely. Today, the small bunch of academically well-known Indian names in the Western academy almost always focus their critical gaze on India and rarely, if ever, on their adopted societies and cultures.

It is therefore disingenuous to only focus on which (of the very few) Westerners are denied access to India when the deeper and more damaging problem is the persistence of scholastic apartheid.

While writing this essay, I asked Perplexity and Gemini which Indians have written major critical histories of Western societies that have won wide recognition in the West? Two names came up, which illustrate the problem: Jawaharlal Nehru and the British-Mauritian Sudhir Hazareesingh.

The struggle is thus not simply for representation, but for reversing the flow of intellectual power. It is a struggle for a world in which Indians and other non-Western peoples are fully entitled and institutionally supported to analyse, critique, and theorise Western societies—as they wish, on their own terms, for their own publics, and as equals in the global commons. – Firstpost, 24 October 2025

› Dr. Hindol Sengupta is professor of international relations, and director of the India Institute, at OP Jindal Global University.

The secularisation of Diwali – Utpal Kumar

October 23, 2025October 23, 2025VOI

You begin to liquidate a people by taking away its memory. You destroy its books, its culture, its history. And then others write other books for it, give another culture to it, invent another history for it. Then the people slowly begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world at large forgets it still faster. – Milan Kundera, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

We are living in an era of great Hindu awakening. After centuries of civilisational amnesia imposed through colonisation, political manipulation, and intellectual distortion, Hindus are rediscovering who they are. There is a growing self-awareness and self-esteem—a recognition that Sanatana Dharma is not a relic of the past but a living, breathing continuum that is as ancient as it is modern, as sacred as it is rational, and as religious as it is scientific.

Yet, as this consciousness rises, so too does a more sophisticated form of opposition. Gone are the crude, overt attacks on Hinduism. The new offensive is subtler: it praises the tradition outwardly while hollowing it out from within. The sacred is stripped away, leaving behind only a cultural shell—sanitised, commercialised, and secularised.

Diwali is a classic example.

Once a deeply spiritual celebration grounded in profound human and moral values, Diwali is now often reduced to a vague “festival of lights” symbolising the victory of “good over evil” and “light over darkness”—but stripped of its rich Hindu context. While these phrases aren’t inherently wrong, divorced from their sacred roots they detach Diwali from the core religio-cultural traditions that give it true meaning: the joyous return of Sri Rama to Ayodhya, Krishna’s slaying of Narakasura, and Goddess Kali’s triumph over demonic forces.

Imagine if Christmas were explained merely as a “festival of love conquering hate”, with all references to Jesus erased. That’s what has happened to Diwali. No gods, no demons, no religion, no story—just a feel-good celebration. At this rate, even “light” might soon be declared polluting. Recall how a Samajwadi Party leader recently questioned the rationale of spending on diyas, drawing parallels with Christmas celebrations abroad, and suggested Bharat should emulate them. One day, someone may well ask why Diwali is even needed when Christmas is just a month away. Why not club the two together—to save money for a “poor” country like Bharat?

And this secularisation—or should one say desacralisation?—is not accidental. Each Hindu festival now faces its own “civilising campaign”. Before Diwali, one is compulsively reminded to save the environment; before Holi, the campaign gains ground to conserve water; before Raksha Bandhan, gender rights come to the fore; and before Shivratri, one witnesses an online movement to stop “wasting milk”. Under the guise of modern-day morality and sensibility, the sacred fabric of these festivals is systematically targeted and assaulted.

Environmental consciousness and social justice are causes worth emulating, but their selective invocation only against Hindu festivals betrays their dubious, anti-Hindu intent.

The problem with the “Festival of Lights” narrative is that it seeks to secularise Diwali by divorcing it from its sacred roots. It distorts the Indic notion of festivity—one that embraces diversity while being bound by a shared civilisational core.

Diwali in the North celebrates Rama’s homecoming; in the South, Krishna’s victory over Narakasura; and in Bengal, Kali’s triumph over demons. In Tamil homes, Diwali morning begins with an oil bath, invoking the presence of Goddess Lakshmi and the sacred waters of the Ganga. “Ganga snanam aacha?” (Have you had your holy dip in the River Ganga?): This is a customary greeting exchanged on Diwali, referring to the ceremonial oil bath. Invoking Ganga manifests a strong sense of civilisational unity in the Sanatana Dharma.

Such assaults aren’t just limited to the popular/cultural arena; they run deeper into academia as well. Sheldon Pollock, a prominent American Indologist, for instance, has interpreted Sanskrit texts and traditions as a tool of oppression and elitism. In his book The Battle for Sanskrit, Rajiv Malhotra exposes how Pollock has worked tirelessly to strip Sanskrit of its sacred identity.

The American Indologist, for instance, has accused Sanskrit of “Brahmin elitism”, besides influencing British colonialism and German Nazism. Pollock describes Sanskrit as “at once a record of civilisation and a record of barbarism—of extraordinary inequality and other social poisons”.

His discomfort with Sanskrit’s Sanatana roots is such that he interprets the Ramayana as a political code through which “proto-communalist relations could be activated and theocratic legitimations rendered”. He alleges that the Ramayana’s portrayal of Ravan and the Rakshasas as “others” forms the ideological foundation for later-day hatred for Muslims. In his view, the sacred Hindu epic itself has been instrumental in legitimising violence against Muslims.

Pollock’s dangerous assertions aren’t mere academic theories. They are ideological weapons designed to delegitimise Hindu civilisation by attacking its moral and spiritual core.

When sacred stories are desacralised, the culture they sustain begins to erode. Once memory fades, replacement histories can be written. That is how a civilisation is colonised—this time, not by armies, but by narratives.

The battle, therefore, is not about fireworks or rituals—it’s about their sacred, innate meaning. It’s about whether Hindus will continue to define their festivals, their texts, and their traditions, or whether others will define them for them.

As Kundera warned, when people lose their memory, they lose themselves.

The “modern” sanitisation of Hindu festivals, the intellectual deconstruction of its sacred texts, and the cultural detachment from its civilisational roots are all parts of the same process—a slow liquidation of Bharat’s civilisational identity.

Diwali is merely the battleground; the real target is Sanatana Dharma. – Firstpost, 21 octoberv 2025

Utpal Kumar is Opinion Editor at Firstpost and News18 and is the author of the book Eminent Distorians: Twists and Truths in Bharat’s History.

Why Hindu Americans can’t do what Jewish and Muslim Americans can – Surajit Dasgupt

October 21, 2025VOI

The grievance that Hindu Americans do not lobby for India as Jews do for Israel is both premature and misplaced. Diaspora power is earned over generations, not asserted overnight. As Indian Americans mature politically, their challenge will be to balance pride in their roots with the pluralism that defines their adopted homeland. – Surajit Dasgupt

When Shashi Tharoor raised a seemingly provocative question about the global Hindu community’s inability to lobby for India the way Jews in the US advocate for Israel or Muslims campaign for Palestine, he tapped into a long-standing unease within sections of India’s diaspora. His remarks, made at a public event, drew swift responses from several non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of Indian origin (PIOs) in America. They countered that India’s decision-makers seldom consult them before taking major policy decisions—such as buying oil from Russia or voting at the United Nations—and that they are often treated merely as emotional extensions of the homeland rather than as stakeholders in policy outcomes.

At one level, the NRI lament is outlandish. No sovereign country consults its overseas citizens before making foreign or economic policy choices. Yet, Tharoor’s pin prick touched a raw nerve because it revealed a deeper question about influence: Why have Hindu Americans, despite their wealth and education, not attained the political leverage that Jewish-Americans enjoy, or the ideological coherence that binds American Muslims on issues like Palestine?

This comparison is not new, but it is newly urgent. Indian-Americans have risen rapidly in visibility over the past two decades, producing senior officials, business leaders and even members of Congress. Still, their collective political voice remains fragmented. To understand why, it helps to explore how other diasporas—particularly Jewish-Americans—built power over generations. That contrast begins with history.

Jewish experience, American integration

Jewish migration to America began in waves through the 19th century, driven by persecution in Europe and the promise of religious freedom. It was not easy, as American Christians were no less swayed by the notion that Jews were the ‘killers’ of Jesus Christ. One thing that the older Americans perhaps did not throw at the Jews is envy. European Christians—as much as Asian Muslims—were jealous of Jews, seeing the Israelites become the first among the followers of the three Abrahamic faiths to become rich, thanks to the business of interest on money considered evil in Christianity and Islam but not in Judaism. There were enough rich men in the capitalist US to resent Jewish riches.

Yet, the early Jewish settlers faced hostility, discrimination and exclusion. If Europe saw Jews portrayed as villains, American cinema portrayed Jews (and Blacks) as villains too.

Examples from classic English literature

The Canterbury Tales (c 1400): In “The Prioress’s Tale,” Jewish characters are depicted in a classic antisemitic blood libel, accused of murdering a devout Christian child.
The Jew of Malta (1590s): Christopher Marlowe’s play features Barabas, a greedy, treacherous, and murderous character, who helped define the “villain Jew” stereotype on the English stage.
The Merchant of Venice (c 1600): William Shakespeare’s Shylock is the most famous example of this archetype. Though given a humanising monologue, he is characterised as a vengeful moneylender who demands a “pound of flesh” and is ultimately forced to convert to Christianity—a “happy ending” for the Christian characters.
Oliver Twist (1838): Charles Dickens’s Fagin is a villainous “crafty old Jew” who runs a school for child pickpockets. Dickens initially referred to Fagin as “the Jew” over 250 times, reinforcing the association of criminality with his Jewish identity. After a Jewish reader criticised the portrayal, Dickens removed many of the references in later editions and created a positive Jewish character, Riah, in a later novel.
Trilby (1894): George du Maurier’s novel features Svengali, a manipulative Jewish rogue and hypnotist who dominates a young woman. The character was so influential that his name entered the English language as a term for a sinister manipulator.

When film emerged in the 20th century, many of these same stereotypes were transferred to the screen.

Antisemitic caricatures: The early 20th century saw the phenomenon of “Jewface,” vaudeville acts that featured exaggerated Jewish stereotypes with props like putty noses and fake beards. Early cinema adapted many of these tropes.
Nazi propaganda: In the 1930s and 1940s, Nazi Germany weaponised these historical caricatures in its propaganda films to portray Jewish people as satanic, greedy, and inferior.
A 1943 production of The Merchant of Venice in Vienna, for example, depicted Shylock as a demonic figure to support Nazi ideology.
Controversial adaptations: The 1948 film adaptation of Oliver Twist was denounced by Jewish groups in America for its antisemitic depiction of Fagin, leading to the film’s postponement in the US.
The “Jewish American Princess” stereotype: Post-war Jewish male writers, and later cinema, popularised the “JAP” stereotype, portraying young, materialistic, and spoiled Jewish women.

That was until several rights movements in the 1960s forced the American racists to climb down their high horses.

Over time, the Jews in America organised themselves into tight-knit communities centred on synagogues, charities and cultural institutions. From the outset, Jewish immigrants recognised the necessity of solidarity to survive in a majority-Christian society. That solidarity evolved into political coordination.

By the early 20th century, Jewish newspapers, cultural organisations and philanthropic networks had formed a vast informal infrastructure for communal representation. After the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish activism entered a new phase: moral urgency fused with political strategy. Groups such as the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and later the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) refined lobbying into an art. They cultivated bipartisan connections, funded research centres and established think-tanks that shaped American opinion about Israel and anti-Semitism.

It took decades of sustained effort. Jewish leaders worked patiently to normalise pro-Israel positions within Washington’s mainstream. When critics today call US Middle East policy “tilted” towards Israel, they overlook how that tilt emerged from generations of community-building, strategic philanthropy and civic participation. The result is not merely influence over foreign policy but a broad societal sympathy for Jewish concerns—a by-product of cultural immersion through education, arts and civil rights movements.

Muslim identity, shared faith

The Muslim-American story is very different but equally instructive. Muslims in the US are far more ethnically diverse—comprising Arabs, South Asians, Africans and converts—yet they have gradually coalesced around faith-based advocacy. Their political influence is still evolving, but organisations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) have given them a public voice.

The Palestinian issue provides a coherent moral and political framework to all Muslims in the US, transcending their respective nationalities, with their advocacy prioritising a global Muslim identity. This communal psychology contributes to their emotional unity. Not the case with the Hindu-American community! Predominantly Indian in origin, Hindus in the US represent a single country but lack an equivalent unifying ideology. Moreover, if individually, Indians constitute no more than 1% of the American population—too small for lobbying—and Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, or Arabs are fewer than Indians, the Islamic collective makes up for the absence of a large number of migrants from one given country.

As a saving grace, Indian-Americans are hardly casteist and their separate denominations—like Vaishnava, Shaiva, Shakta, Smartha, etc—do not manifest in the US to the point where Hindu unity would become a tough ask. However, India’s internal political polarisation often spills into the diaspora, dividing Indian-Americans between secular liberals and those aligned with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Indian-American paradox

Indian-Americans are among the most prosperous ethnic groups in the United States, with high median incomes and remarkable educational attainment. Silicon Valley, academia and medicine are full of Indian success stories. Yet political power does not automatically follow economic success. Unlike Jewish or Muslim groups, Indian-Americans have not built long-term institutions for coordinated lobbying. The existing organisations—such as the US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) or the Hindu American Foundation (HAF)—operate in silos and often struggle for mainstream acceptance.

There is also a generational factor. The first wave of Indian immigrants in the 1960s and 70s arrived under professional visas, focused on assimilation and career advancement. Political activism was rare. Their children, more culturally confident and socially integrated, are beginning to enter politics—figures such as Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, and Vivek Ramaswamy illustrate this new visibility—but ideological divisions persist. Jayapal’s left-leaning stance on India’s human rights record often clashes with the nationalist sentiment of conservative Hindus. Consider how desperate Ramaswamy was during the Trump campaign to prove Hinduism isn’t too un-Christian, after all!

Most awkwardly, Hindus under the overseas wings of the Sangh Parivar need to work in coordination with Pakistani and Indian Muslims—including with CAIR and ISNA activists—in the US so that the South Asian identity looks significant and prominent enough to pressure the American policy makers.

Even symbolic recognition has come slowly. When one American state declared October 2022 as the “Hindu Heritage Month”, it was celebrated as a milestone. But as the activists who pushed for it admitted, Hispanics took nearly three decades to achieve comparable recognition. Diaspora influence takes time—and unity.

Politics of access, perception of influence

The optics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s warm rapport with Donald Trump during the latter’s first presidency created an illusion of extraordinary Indian-American influence. The “Howdy Modi” rally in Houston in 2019, where the two leaders walked hand in hand before a cheering crowd, suggested that the community had arrived as a political force. Yet that perception was misleading. It reflected personal chemistry, not institutional power.

When Trump returned to office for a second term, expectations of deeper India-US alignment quickly met geopolitical reality. Washington’s interests in China, trade and global security do not shift with diaspora enthusiasm. The limits of Indian-American leverage became clear, underscoring how different it is from the entrenched Jewish lobby or even the organised Muslim advocacy on Palestine and civil rights.

Long road to influence

Diaspora influence, as history shows, matures over generations. The Jewish experience offers the clearest example. From the early 20th century to the post-Holocaust era, Jewish-Americans worked through education, philanthropy and coalition-building. They forged alliances with African-Americans during the civil rights movement, ensuring moral reciprocity when they later defended Israel’s legitimacy. Their activism was institutional, not episodic.

For Indian-Americans, such institutional continuity is still forming. The community’s philanthropic energies are vast but scattered. Major donors fund temples, educational foundations and disaster relief, yet few invest strategically in think-tanks or policy advocacy. Nor is there consensus on which issues to champion. Should lobbying focus on India’s image, on global Hindu identity, or on broader multicultural representation? Each objective attracts different constituencies, often at cross purposes.

Cultural perception, historical memory

Then, influence does not depend on money or access alone; your narrative is an edifice built upon the foundation of the memories of your community as a collective. For Jewish-Americans, the memory of persecution provided a moral foundation for activism. Anti-Semitism in Western literature and film gradually gave way to empathy and representation, transforming public attitudes. Today, Jewish characters in American media are complex, human and often central to moral storytelling. This cultural normalisation underpins political legitimacy.

Indian-Americans, by contrast, are still defining their narrative. The Western imagination often reduces India to stereotypes of spirituality or poverty. Despite recent Bollywood popularity and the global reach of Indian cuisine, the Hindu identity remains poorly understood. Worse, political controversies—over caste, majoritarianism or Kashmir—have made the term “Hindutva” contentious abroad, complicating outreach efforts.

Future of diaspora advocacy

If Indian-Americans are to build real influence, they must learn from the patience and organisation of their Jewish counterparts. Effective lobbying requires consensus, credible institutions and a shared sense of purpose beyond partisan divides. It also demands bridging the gap between India’s domestic politics and the pluralist expectations of American democracy.

For now, the community’s most powerful asset remains its credibility: hardworking professionals with high civic participation and low crime rates. Translating that respectability into political leverage will take time—and strategic discipline.

The grievance that Hindus do not lobby for India as Jews do for Israel is, therefore, both premature and misplaced. Diaspora power is earned over generations, not asserted overnight. As Indian-Americans mature politically, their challenge will be to balance pride in their roots with the pluralism that defines their adopted homeland.

Tharoor’s question, then, was less an accusation than an invitation—to imagine what an organised, confident and inclusive Indian-American voice could achieve if it learned from history. – News18, 15 October 2025

› Surajit Dasgupta is a senior journalist and writer.

VOICE OF INDIA

History Politics Science Religion

Category india

Vande Mataram: Nationhood in conflict – Prafull Goradia

Islam is a religion of violence – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

From Dharma to Dogma: The genesis of caste – Acharya Prashant

Vande Mataram marginalised in the name of secularism – Utpal Kumar

Let’s honour the India that is Bharat and the Hinduism that is Sanatana Dharma – David Frawley

Hollywood’s distortion of Hindu symbols – Gautam Chintamani

Max Müller to Doniger to Orsini: The West sends Trojan horses to India – Abhijit Majumder

Scholastic Apartheid: Western intellectual colonialism in India – Hindol Sengupta

The secularisation of Diwali – Utpal Kumar

Why Hindu Americans can’t do what Jewish and Muslim Americans can – Surajit Dasgupt

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