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Hinduism vs Hindutva: A battle of British colonial construct – Adit Kothari

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Hindus in Hindustan

Hindutva is not ritualistic “Hinduism”, but when etymologically translated from Sanskrit, it simply is the essence of being Hindu—a civilisational consciousness rooted in land, memory, culture, and continuity. – Adit Kothari

The word “Hinduism” itself is not ancient. Neither is it native nor organic. The very suffix “ism” within the word “Hinduism” reeks of Western taxonomy, aiming to confine the civilisation within rigid, dogmatic lines, much like the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam. Such a framework is violently alien to Sanatan Dharma, which never sought reduction into a closed creed.

The Hindu civilisational experience is fluid, plural, evolving, contradictory, and unapologetically non-dogmatic. As Atal Bihari Vajpayee observed in his 1998 interview with Javed Akhtar, India’s secularism flows naturally from Hindu civilisation itself. Hindu thought binds no one to a single prophet, a single book, or a compulsory theology. One may be astika or nastika, devotional or sceptical, ritualistic or philosophical, and still remain within the civilisational fold. There is no concept of blasphemy, apostasy, or enforced belief.

“Hinduism” was not born in Kashi or Kanchipuram. It was midwifed in colonial census offices and missionary tracts. European orientalists and British administrators required a neat category to govern, classify, and evangelise. In doing so, they lumped together diverse Indic traditions—vedic, tantric, bhakti, folk—under a single label, often distorting them to fit monotheistic templates. The term gained currency only in the early 19th century. By freezing Sanatan Dharma into “Hinduism”, colonialism hollowed out its essence, morphing it to fit within their monotheistic template.

Hindutva, contrary to hysterical propaganda, does not destroy this civilisational ethos, but it vociferously exposes the artificiality of the colonial box it was forced into. Hindutva is not ritualistic “Hinduism”, but when etymologically translated from Sanskrit, it simply is the essence of being Hindu—a civilisational consciousness rooted in land, memory, culture, and continuity. It encompasses all Indic traditions, including Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, bound by culture, history, and geography, not narrow dogma. One does not need to pray to Ram to be Hindu. One does not even need to believe in God. One only needs to belong, to a civilisational inheritance that predates and outlives religious dogma.

This is precisely why Hindutva terrifies the pseudo-liberal establishment. Pseudo-liberals peddle the lie that Hindutva endangers “Hinduism”. This is inverted propaganda from a deracinated elite, conditioned by Macaulay’s education system. In truth, Hindutva is the purest secularism India has ever known. Unlike Western secularism’s hostile separation of state and faith, or India’s pseudo-secularism that panders to Muslims while demonising the Hindu, Hindutva treats all born of this soil as heirs to a common civilisation. It demands loyalty to Bharat first, allowing diverse dharmas to flourish without privileging imported exclusivism. This is true pluralism: equal cultural dignity, not appeasement.

Colonialism weaponised “Hinduism” to divide. It was deliberately marketed as superstitious Paganism ripe for “civilising”. Reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, while alleviating genuine social evils, inadvertently reinforced colonial frameworks by engaging Hindu civilisation in Abrahamic terms. Ironically, this was made possible precisely because the Hindu was never a codified faith and therefore remained open to reform in a way dogmatic religions like Islam are not. Post-independence, Nehruvian secularism entrenched minorityism, alienating the majority, while left-leaning narratives painted any Hindu assertion as “communal”.

Hindutva is accused of being “majoritarian” by the very people who reduced Hindus to a religious minority within their own civilisation. They denied them cultural rights while enthusiastically funding, protecting, and politically mobilising every other faith identity.

India’s Anglophone elite, left-leaning intelligentsia conditioned by colonial education and Nehruvian secularism, loathe the term “Hindutva” not for any supposed majoritarianism—their go-to smear—but because it ruthlessly exposes their lingering colonial hangover. Hindutva asserts an unapologetic, indigenous civilisational identity tied to India as a civilisational land, history, and ethos, shattering the superiority complex these elites inherited from Macaulay’s system. Conditioned to see India’s value system as backward or in need of Western “civilising”, they embraced abstract secularism, Muslim appeasement, and cultural alienation as badges of progress. Hindutva strips that facade, reclaiming agency for the rooted majority, highlighting their detachment from the masses, unease with confident Hindu assertion, and the hollowness of power built on post-colonial mimicry rather than authentic heritage. It forces uncomfortable self-reflection on their enduring mental colonisation, and that’s precisely why they hate it.

In Bengal, this conditioning runs deep. The Bengali intelligentsia, shaped by the Bengal Renaissance and later Marxist dominance under decades of Left Front rule, has long leaned leftward. They are often virulently anti-Hindutva, viewing it through a lens of colonial-era secularism and Soviet-inspired atheism. Calcutta’s elite, influenced by British education and communist hegemony post-1947, internalised narratives dismissing Hindu civilisational pride as retrograde.

This brings us to the [recent] spectacle. On January 11, 2026, at the prestigious Calcutta Club, the Calcutta Debating Circle in association with The Telegraph, hosts a debate on the motion “Hinduism Needs Protection From Hindutva.”

For the motion are relics like Mani Shankar Aiyar and Ashutosh, feral loudmouths like Mahua Moitra, and distorians like Ruchika Sharma peddling tired pseudo-secular tropes. Against the motion stand stalwarts like Swapan Dasgupta, J. Sai Deepak, Agnimitra Paul, and Sudhanshu Trivedi, who, unlike the flustered opposition, conduct themselves armed with logic and history.

The Left-leaning intelligentsia, long cocooned in culturally alienated narratives, are in for a total feast. For decades, they’ve parroted that Hindutva is “fascist” or “majoritarian,” ignoring how it liberates Dharma from colonial chains. This event will hopefully pierce that bubble, forcing confrontation with truths, that “Hinduism” is the real threat to authentic Dharma and Hindutva its saviour. Hopefully, by the end, even the most conditioned will glimpse the propaganda they’ve swallowed, emerging informed and even perhaps awakened.

The death knell of that construct has sounded. Hindutva is not a threat but a reclamation. Not destruction, but resurrection. And it is precisely this mirror, held up to enduring mental colonisation, that its critics find impossible to face. – News18, 10 January 2026

› Adit Kothari is a Calcuttan residing in London as a Pravasi Bharatiya, working to dismantle the plethora of false narratives and misinformation against India and Hindutva.

India rthat is Bharat

Without self-enquiry, rationalism is just another superstition – Acharya Prashant

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Self-enquiry in practice.

Without self-enquiry, rationalism turns outward-only. It scrutinizes religion, superstition, tradition, politics, and the beliefs of others, but it never pauses to examine the psychological centre doing the scrutinizing. The ego remains untouched, and rationality becomes its armour. – Acharya Prashant

Rationalism was meant to be a method, not an identity. It was to be the discipline of honest seeing, not another tribe of the like-minded. You question, you examine, you see clearly. You hold no belief sacred, no authority exempt, including your own. Every conclusion must justify itself, and if it cannot, you let it go: that is the original promise. From the Greek sceptics to the Enlightenment philosophers to the modern scientific temper, this is what rationalism has always claimed as its essence: the courage to ask, the willingness to discard, the refusal to bow before any idea simply because it is old or revered or comfortable.

This inheritance has served humanity well: superstition loosened its grip, the tyranny of priests and kings could be challenged, and questions forbidden for centuries could finally be asked. Science, medicine, law, and political freedom all owe something to this spirit of inquiry. The courage to question rather than blindly obey, to examine rather than merely accept: this is what allows the mind to mature and society to remain free.

None of this is an argument against rationalism as method. The method works. Peer review catches errors, replication weeds out fraud, falsification disciplines speculation. The institution of science corrects what the individual scientist cannot. But the method’s virtue does not automatically transfer to the practitioner. A system can be self-correcting while the people within it remain thoroughly self-deceived. It is this gap, between what rationalism promises and what the rationalist practices, that concerns us here. Yes, there are rationalists who already practice what this essay calls for: who hold conclusions lightly, who examine their own motivations, who do not need the identity of “rational person” to feel secure. This essay is not addressed to them. It is addressed to those who have made reason into a fortress rather than a discipline.

Somewhere along the way, the rationalist method itself became an identity. Rationalism stopped being something you do and became something you are. To call oneself rational became a badge, a tribe, a source of pride and belonging. And the moment rationalism became identity, it could no longer examine itself, for the ego does not question its own hiding places.

When the questioner himself is never questioned, rationalism quietly shifts its role. It stops being an instrument of truth and becomes an instrument of the ego. What was meant to liberate becomes a fortress; what was meant to clarify becomes a tribal flag. The very capacity that could have set you free becomes a new bondage, subtler and therefore more dangerous than the old.

The Outward Gaze

Without self-enquiry, rationalism turns outward-only. It scrutinizes religion, superstition, tradition, politics, and the beliefs of others, but it never pauses to examine the psychological centre doing the scrutinizing. The ego remains untouched, and rationality becomes its armour.

Watch the rationalist in action. He will tell you precisely why the pilgrim is wasting his time at the temple, but he cannot tell you why he himself spent three hours last night arguing with strangers on the internet. He will explain the cognitive biases that make people believe in astrology, yet he has never once examined the compulsion that makes him need to correct them. He writes essays on why people cling to tradition. Still, he cannot see that his own identity as “the one who sees through tradition” is just as clung to, just as defended, just as psychologically necessary to him as any ritual is to the devotee.

Pause and ask: What were you really protecting in that argument? Truth, or self-image? What did you get from being right? What did you fear would happen if you were seen as wrong? If nobody applauded your correctness, would the compulsion still be there?

This is the fatal flaw. Reason directed only outward is not complete reason; it is half-reason, and half-reason is often more dangerous than no reason at all, because it comes with the illusion of completeness.

The religious believer at least knows he believes. The rationalist who has made reason into identity does not know he believes; he thinks he merely sees. And so his beliefs operate unchecked, unexamined, all the more powerful for being invisible to himself.

Here, rationalism becomes belief in reason, not the use of reason. The distinction is crucial. The use of reason is alive, flexible, self-correcting; it holds conclusions lightly, knowing that new evidence or deeper insight may require revision. It is comfortable with uncertainty, because it does not need conclusions to provide identity. It can say, “I do not know,” without feeling diminished.

Belief in reason is something else entirely. It is reason frozen into dogma, producing certainty rather than clarity, positions rather than understanding, debates rather than insight. The believer in reason has made rationality into a flag, and he will defend that flag as fiercely as any religious zealot defends his scripture. His positions are not held because they are true but because they are his; his arguments are not aimed at understanding but at victory. His rationalism has become, in everything but name, a faith.

This is why so many rationalist spaces feel like battlegrounds, not laboratories. The atmosphere is not shared inquiry but competing certainties. People do not come to learn; they come to win. They do not listen to understand; they listen to rebut. The form is rational, but the substance is tribal.

The Psychology Beneath the Logic

Such rationalism is often loud, combative, and moralistic; it seeks victory, not truth. The vocabulary has changed: we now speak of “evidence-based” and “peer-reviewed” instead of “revealed” and “ordained.” But the psychological posture is identical.

It replaces gods with data, scriptures with graphs, priests with experts. The structure remains the same; only the vocabulary has been updated.

Rationalism without self-enquiry cannot see its own motivations. Fear, insecurity, superiority, the need to be right: these operate freely beneath the language of logic. The rationalist believes he is defending truth, but he does not see that he is defending himself. He believes he is exposing others’ irrationality, but he does not see the irrationality of his own emotional investment in being the one who exposes.

Reason is then used to justify psychological compulsions rather than dissolve them. The ego learns to speak in syllogisms; it marshals data the way a lawyer marshals precedents, not to find truth but to win the case. And the case is always the same: I am right, I am rational, I am superior to those who are not.

This is why the most aggressive rationalists so often resemble the fundamentalists they oppose. The content differs: God versus no God, scripture versus science, tradition versus progress. But the structure is the same. Both need certainty, both need enemies, both cannot tolerate ambiguity, and both derive identity from their conclusions. In this condition, rationalism becomes collective prejudice in modern dress.It calls itself progressive, but it is deeply conformist; any community that prides itself on rational thinking quickly develops orthodoxies as rigid as any religious sect.

In certain Western rationalist circles, approved conclusions function as membership tests. Deviate, even carefully and with evidence, and you are not refuted but reclassified: you become a denialist, a bigot, someone who has “revealed their true colors.” The argument is not answered; the arguer is diagnosed. Among several Indian rationalists, the pattern mirrors. One must hold the correct contempt for all religion and the “correct” suspicion of all tradition. Suggest that an ancient text contains genuine philosophical insight, and you risk being treated as a communal apologist; question whether one particular civilizational model is the only path to human flourishing, and you become intellectually untouchable.In both cases, the permitted conclusions are known in advance, and argument no longer exists to discover truth but to police boundaries. This is not reason at work; it is the ego defending its shelter, now speaking the language of rationality.

It calls itself free, but it is bound to identity, group approval, and intellectual fashion. The rationalist who prides himself on thinking independently often thinks exactly what his intellectual community thinks. He reads the same sources, reaches the same conclusions, expresses the same outrage, and dismisses the same enemies. He has not escaped the herd; he has joined a different herd, one that flatters itself as a gathering of independent minds.

This is not the failure of rationalism; it is the predictable outcome of rationalism that refuses to examine the rationalist. When the ego is never questioned, it will use any tool, including reason, to do what the ego always does: seek security, belong to a group, feel superior, and avoid the terror of standing alone.

The Inward Turn

True rationality is inseparable from self-enquiry.

This is what separates genuine reason from its counterfeit. The moment reason turns inward and asks, “Why do I need this conclusion? What does this belief give me psychologically?”, rationalism regains its original power.The question is not merely “Is this true?” but “Why do I want it to be true? What fear would arise if it were false? What image of myself depends on this position? What would remain of me if I surrendered this certainty?”

Try it now. Pick a position you hold dear, one you have defended publicly, one that feels obviously correct. Ask: what do I get from holding this? Not what is true about it, but what does it give me? Watch what arises. If the mind rushes to justify the position, that rush is the answer. If irritation arises at the question itself, that irritation is the answer. Self-enquiry does not require you to abandon your conclusions; it only asks you to see who is clinging to them, and why.

This is the questioning the ego cannot survive. It can survive any external argument; it can change positions, update beliefs, switch tribes, and remain fundamentally intact. What it cannot survive is being seen. The moment awareness turns on the one who argues, the game is exposed: the certainties are revealed as defences, the positions as props for identity. The rationalism that seemed so solid turns out to be a house built on the shifting sand of psychological need.

This is why self-enquiry is so rare, and why it is so essential. The rationalist who has never asked, “What am I really doing when I argue?”, who has never noticed the pleasure in being right, the fear of being wrong, the satisfaction of superiority, has never used reason fully. He has used reason the way a child uses a stick: to hit things, defend territory, feel powerful. He has not yet used reason the way a surgeon uses a scalpel: to cut through illusion, beginning with his own.

When self-enquiry accompanies rationalism, everything changes. Positions become lighter and can be revised without trauma. Disagreement becomes information rather than attack. Uncertainty becomes tolerable, even interesting, because identity no longer depends on knowing. The rationalist stops performing and starts inquiring, stops defending and starts seeing, stops winning and starts learning.

This is reason restored to its original purpose: not a weapon for victory but a light for seeing. And that light must fall on the one who holds it, not only on the objects he chooses to examine.

Without that inward turn, rationalism is not liberation; it is merely a sophisticated cage.

The bars are elegant, the locks are logical, and the prisoner is convinced he is free because he can critique the cages of others. But he remains inside, for he has never questioned the one who built the cage, who maintains the cage, who is terrified of life outside the cage. His cage has a sign on it that says “No Cage,” and he believes the sign.

This is the final irony: the one who prides himself on questioning becomes the one who cannot be questioned. The identity of “questioner” becomes the most protected possession of all.

Liberation is not a change of content; it is freedom from the need to cling to any content. The liberated mind can hold positions without being held by them, can use reason without being used by the ego’s need for reason, can think without needing thought to tell it who it is.

This liberation is not achieved by abandoning rationalism; it is achieved by completing it, by turning the light that has illuminated so much of the external world, finally, uncompromisingly, on the one who holds the light.

The question is not whether you can question religion, tradition, politics, or superstition; you have already demonstrated that capacity. The question is whether you can question the questioner. Can you ask, with genuine not-knowing: What am I defending? What am I afraid of? Who would I be if I could no longer call myself rational?

You have spent years examining everything except the examiner. That exemption is the source of your bondage. The rationalist who cannot examine his own rationalism is no different from the believer who cannot examine his own belief; both are prisoners, and one is simply more articulate about the prison walls.

Begin there. That is the only beginning worth the name. Refuse, and you remain what you have always been: an ego armed with arguments, a prisoner who has memorised every book on liberation but never bothered to look at his own chains. – The Pioneer, 24 january 2026

› Acharya Prashant is a teacher, author, and founder of the PrashantAdvait Foundation. 
Self Enquiry Cartoon

The Donald at Davos – Christopher Bucktin

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Donald Trump with CEO of the World Economic Forum Borge Brende.

What the world witnessed at Davos was a president confusing bombast with leadership, swagger with strategy, and contradiction with strength. It was geopolitics performed as self-parody. – Christopher Bucktin

Donald Trump’s Davos appearance was billed as the moment the President of the United States would reassure a nervous world.

Instead, it became a spectacle of vanity, contradiction and geopolitical illiteracy that underlined just how dangerous his worldview has become. Standing before global leaders at the World Economic Forum, Trump did not so much deliver a foreign policy address as indulge in a performance aimed at his MAGA base and an imaginary audience that endlessly admires, fears, and obeys him.

The substance of the speech barely mattered. The damage did. What the world witnessed was a president confusing bombast with leadership, swagger with strategy, and contradiction with strength. It was geopolitics performed as self-parody. Nowhere was that clearer than in Trump’s fixation with Greenland. He presents it as if it were an underperforming golf resort he might snap up at auction, a frozen land waiting for the Trump logo.

At Davos, he again insisted America must have “right title and ownership” of the island to defend it, as if sovereignty were a receipt you file away after purchase. The idea might sound comic, a billionaire landlord eyeing the world’s largest island like a distressed property, but the implications are not.

Greenland matters. It sits at a strategic junction between North America and Europe. As Arctic ice retreats, shipping routes open and the region’s military and economic value increases. The US already operates the strategically vital Pituffik Space Base, providing missile warning and surveillance across the North Atlantic.

Greenland also contains rare-earth minerals crucial to modern economies and defence systems. China understands this. Europe understands it. Britain understands it. America has understood it for decades. None of this has ever required ownership. Yet Trump cannot tell the difference between influence and possession. Cooperation bores him. Partnership is too subtle. Only control scratches the itch. His worldview is not that of a statesman balancing interests, but of a property developer pacing a showroom, demanding to know why the keys aren’t already in his hand.

For Europe, this is not an abstract concern. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO ally. Trump’s casual talk of acquiring it, his maligning of Denmark’s defence spending and his flirtation with economic punishment crossed a basic line. If borders are treated as negotiable and sovereignty as optional, the post-war order starts to unravel. That is why European leaders reacted with barely concealed contempt. This was not anti-Americanism. It was alarm. Trump’s performance only deepened it.

He muddled Greenland with Iceland. He solemnly promised he would not use force before boasting that America would be “unstoppable” if it did. He reduced territorial acquisition to a cheeky request for “a piece of ice”. The contradictions piled up, delivered with the smug assurance of a man who believes confidence absolves him from coherence.

To be clear, American involvement in Greenland is not inherently sinister. The US presence has long helped secure the North Atlantic, and investment could support Greenland’s development while countering Chinese influence. But there is a chasm between partnership and coercion. Trump offers the latter and sells it as leadership, like a protection racket dressed up as diplomacy.

What made the episode truly farcical, however, was how quickly the strongman act collapsed. After weeks of sabre-rattling and Davos posturing, Trump quietly changed his tune. Suddenly, last night, there were talks. Suddenly, there was a “framework”. Suddenly, the threats to slap tariffs on European allies melted away.

On social media, Trump claimed discussions with NATO had been “very productive” and that a deal covering Greenland and the Arctic was emerging. Diplomatic reality was less obliging. There is no agreement for US ownership. No transfer of sovereignty. No Arctic land grab. The “framework” looks suspiciously like a retreat, hurriedly repackaged as victory.

While Trump was busy applauding himself, the most serious intervention at Davos came from Mark Carney, who articulated what many leaders now accept privately. The Canadian Prime Minister, who, despite being fairly new in office, has quickly grown to become the adult in the room.

He said the US-led global order is fractured, and that trust in American leadership has eroded. Allies can no longer assume that Washington, while under Trump, will act predictably or in good faith. Trump’s Greenland antics are not a blip; they are a symptom. When the leader of the world’s most powerful democracy treats alliances as transactional, sovereignty as inconvenient and diplomacy as a bullying exercise, the consequences ripple outward. Bad actors feel emboldened. Rules weaken. Uncertainty grows.

Into that vacuum steps more conflict, not less. Carney’s conclusion—that the future demands more multilateralism and less blind reliance on an America that has chosen to be unreliable—was hard to dispute. For us, this matters profoundly. Britain is a NATO power, a close US ally and a European neighbour. It depends on stability, rules and trust.

Trump’s approach to Greenland undermines all three. If borders become bargaining chips, middle powers lose leverage. If alliances resemble protection rackets, collective defence frays. If American commitments hinge on flattery, Britain must adjust.

That is why Keir Starmer was right to say the UK would not yield to Trump’s demands. Standing firm is not hostility towards the United States; it is respect for international law and for our own interests. Indulging Trump’s fantasies would only encourage fresh ones.

Trump will leave Davos claiming he had impressed the world. In reality, he confirmed its worst fears. He contradicted himself within sentences. He confused countries. He lied about NATO, ignoring that Article 5 has been invoked only once, in defence of the US after 9/11. He even recycled the lie that the 2020 election was “rigged”, informing a global audience that American democracy itself is fraudulent. It is not strength. It is instability, broadcast live. The ridicule is earned.

A president who boasts that world leaders call him “Daddy” is not projecting authority; he is advertising insecurity. A leader who thinks admiration can be demanded rather than earned is not commanding respect; he is pleading for it.

Beyond the mockery, however, lies a serious truth. Trump’s obsession with Greenland exposes a worldview that rejects equals, despises restraint and elevates ego above order.

It treats alliances as optional, law as an inconvenience and power as entitlement. That is why Europe pushed back. That is why Britain did too. Greenland is not just about ice, minerals or bases. It is about whether the rules governing international relations still matter. At Davos, Trump made clear that, for him, they do not. – Mirror, 22 January 2026

› Christopher Bucktin is the United States editor for the Mirror.

Orange Shark Cartoon

USA: Seven stages of imperial decline – Samannay Biswas

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Empires

The United States, as the world’s leading superpower since the mid-20th century, exhibits many hallmarks of late-stage economic and imperial decline, patterns already seen in Spain, Britain, and the Soviet Union. – Samannay Biswas

All throughout history, major empires and superpowers have followed recurring patterns of economic decline, often resulting in collapse. This framework, popularised in analyses of Spain, Britain, and the Soviet Union, identifies seven stages driven by overextension, financial mismanagement, and societal shifts.

The “seven stages of empire” was a theory conceived by Lieutenant General Sir John Bagot Glubb, also known as “Glubb Pasha.” Glubb was a soldier in World War I and a long-time commander of the Arab Legion in Jordan until his retirement in 1956. During his retirement, he became a historian and an author.

In 1976, he wrote the essay The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival based on research of over a dozen empires over a period of 3,000 years, including the Assyrians and the British Empire. His observations were that the life span of most empires is typically around 250 years, with all empires following a cyclic pattern consisting of seven parts: the pioneers, the conquest, the commerce, affluence, intellect, decadence, and decline.

In his view, whether in a culture and technology-dominated world or a materialistic and fragmented one, the moral and social trajectory of an empire draws upon a same pattern of duty, discipline, and then materialism, fragmentation, and loss of unity. Though not a deterministic theory, Glubb’s idea was a caution, and it influences current arguments regarding an imperialism ascent and fall, including an America one.

With evidence drawn from historical data and current trends related to the US economy, as of January 2026, this article explores these phases, how they appeared within previous empires, and why it appears to be moving through these phases faster than projected. With evidence drawn from historical data and current trends related to the US economy, as of January 2026, this article explores

Stage 1: Military Overextension

It’s also a fact that the fall of many empires started with the thinning out of resources around the world.

There are many examples throughout history. Spain during the 16th century had military forces deployed on four different continents, with military expenditures accounting for half of its spending. The British Empire, which extended to six continents by 1900, had costs it couldn’t sustain during World War I, with expenditures reaching $40 billion, or $1 trillion in today’s currency. The Soviet Union supported wars ranging from Afghanistan to Africa with 15-20% of its spending.

Meanwhile, military expenditures for the U.S. recorded $900.6 billion during fiscal year 2026, surpassing the total military spending of the next 10 countries combined. Furthermore, despite maintaining more than 750 bases in 80 countries and deployed troops in 150 countries, the US is facing difficulties in maintaining its presence through aged military hardware and manpower deficiencies. Others see this repeating the same mistakes of the past.

Stage 2: Currency Debasement

To finance themselves, empires have no choice but to debase their currency.

Spain also brought a lot of copper into the silver currency; thus, the purity level of the silver currency fell from 100% to nearly 0% by the end of 1600. This increased inflation. Britain left the gold standard by 1931. This reduced the value of the pound by 25%. The ruble in the Soviet Union was not convertible, meaning that it relied on the exports of gold and oil.

The US lost the gold standard in 1971, and the fiat currency has been used since. But the US dollar has lost 98% of its value since then. The value of the money supply in the US has increased by 400% since the year 2000, and nearly $6 trillion has been printed since 2020. The decline of the US dollar currency in the modern era may cause potential inflation risks given the structure of the economy.

Stage 3: Debt Spiral

If left uncheckded, borrowing translates to defaults or unaffordable interest payments.

There were four bankruptcies between 1557 and 1596. Britain had $30 billion in debt by 1945, which was above GDP. Reserve depletion was a result of economic stagnation in the 1980s.

As of the data cut off of January 18, 2026, the US national debt was recorded at $38.62 trillion, with its debt-to-GDP ratio recorded at 123.6%. The interest payments are inching closer to $1 trillion, which even surpasses spending on the military. Also, the deficit for 2025 was recorded at $1.74 trillion, which is 5.9% of GDP, and it is forecasted to increase to 6.1% in 2035.

Stage 4: Loss of Productive Capacity

Wealth influxes result in deindustrialization.

The import of gold from Spain undermined the manufacturing industries in Spain. Britain’s relocation of industries after World War II undermined industries in Britain. The USSR’s central planning system led to inefficiencies in grain production, causing the USSR to import grains.

There has been a decrease of 49,000 factory jobs in the US between February and September 2025, marking the 70,000th job cut since April 2025, leading the overall employment level to 12.69 million, the lowest level since March 2022. The trade gap of the country has also escalated by 14% or 95.2 billion dollars in the first nine months of 2025, registering an acceleration of 131.3 billion dollars for goods imports. Importation of medications and electronics is still a notable component.

Stage 5: Social Decay

Economic strain manifests in societal breakdowns.

Spain experienced rising crime and emigration. Britain’s post-empire period was marked by inequality. The USSR faced disillusionment and brain drain.

In America, homelessness increased by 18% to 771,480 in 2024, with an increase of 23% in initial incidents since 2019. Drug overdose deaths decreased by 21% to approximately 73,000 in the year to August 2025, yet they continue to be high. Birth rates will also be lower, with slower growth in population due to an increase in overdose and suicide deaths. Trust in institutions has reached an all-time low with a rise in crime levels.

Stage 6: Loss of Reserve Currency Status

Countries that are allied start diversifying away from the dominant currency.

The loss of global acceptance was even worse for Spain. “The British pound depreciated from $4.03 in 1940 to $1.27 today. The ruble never became a reserve currency.”

“Dedollarization is gathering pace.” Countries within the BRICS are lining up alternatives, with central banks buying more gold than ever before for five straight years as of 2022. The value of China’s yuan-denominated trade is increasing, and Saudi Arabia has started accepting funds for oil exports in something other than US dollars. The dollar’s role in international reserves is at a two-decade low. This may heighten US vulnerabilities.

Stage 7: Total Collapse

Sudden crises frequently precede final collapse.

Spain became a secondary power by the year 1700. An empire was lost by Britain within two decades after the year 1945. The USSR fell apart in 1991, after about 900 days of acute crisis.

The US is arguably already in Stage 5, with warnings of Stage 6. The forces pushing for acceleration are rapid growth of debt, evidence of dedollarization, and increased societal stresses. Debt is projected to close in on 118% of GDP by 2035. But there are arguments opposing it, pointing to collapses that never occurred and with growth running at 1.8 to 1.9% CAGR.

The Decline of the Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire reached its peak in the 16th century under rulers like Charles V and Philip II, controlling territories across Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. At its peak around 1580, it dominated global gold and silver production, with the Spanish real serving as a reserve currency.

The Spanish Empire had decayed into a financially drained, non-preeminent state by the end of the 17th century. The decline was the result of economic neglect, military overextension, domestic rebellions, and inefficiency.

Spain waged warfare relentlessly, such as the Eighty Years’ War waged against rebels from the Netherlands or wars fought against the Ottoman Empire and the English or the French. By 1580, troops were spread across four continents, absorbing over fifty-percent of government expenditures.

The inflow of silver caused inflation, followed by bankruptcy and the collapse of domestic industry due to imports. The forced expulsion of Jews and Moriscos reduced the skilled workforce. Poor leadership and corruption exacerbated the decline of Spain, resulting in an empire that was large in terms of appearance but shallow in reality.

The Decline of the British Empire

At its height, the British Empire controlled 25% of the planet’s land surface and populations, and the pound sterling was the world’s reserve currency.

The decline accelerated following World War I and became irrevocable following World War II. Overextension of the military, war debts, decline of industry, and the rise of colonial nationalism contributed to the inability of the imperial power to maintain control. Britain went bankrupt following World War II with its debt level exceeding its GDP.

Currency devaluation, loss of colonies such as India, and geopolitical setbacks like the Suez Crisis confirmed Britain’s diminished status. By the late 20th century, the empire had dissolved into the Commonwealth, marking the end of Britain’s imperial era.

The Decline and Collapse of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union found itself a superpower after World War II but disintegrated in 1991. Expenditures due to military build-up, economic stagnation, inefficiency in central planning, and a drop in oil prices were factors in its disintegration.

Reforms of Gorbachev revealed faults in the system that brought relaxation in control in politics and prompted movements for independence in Eastern Europe as well as the USSR. Factors such as ethnicity conflicts, corruption, decay in institutions, and poor governance led to dissolution without a major war.

Where The US Stands?

Even so, there are some traits indicative of a further six stages of decline which the United States shares with Spain, Britain, and the USSR. These include a powerful global position, but still some key advantages, such as innovation, flexibility, well-developed capital markets, or military might, that the United States has vis-à-vis its putative competitors. It is possible to trace signs of growing weaknesses in each stage.

What these trends foretell is that a possible decline might emerge sooner than the historical precedents had indicated in the past since the magnitude of global interdependence, debts, and new geopolitics are all involved.

Stage 1: Military Overextension

Military overextension has persisted, with the US maintaining the world’s largest defense budget. The Department of Defense’s fiscal year 2026 budget request is approximately $892.6 billion—near-flat from prior years but still above the combined spending of the next several major powers.

Commitments range from more than 750 bases in over 80 countries, NATO obligations in Europe, relationships in Asia such as Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, to deterrence in China, Russia, and Iran. Recruitment difficulties, aging inventory, and possible multiple front situations such as Taiwan, Ukraine crises, and the Middle East war zones keep stretching their capacity.

These pressures mirror the unsustainable military burdens that exhausted prior empires.

Stage 2: Currency Debasement

Currency debasement has continued through fiat mechanisms. The dollar has lost about 98% of its purchasing power since the gold standard ended in 1971.

The massive monetary expansion-especially since 2020-has been a given source of sustained inflationary pressures, even if partly moderated in recent times. This is a similar dynamic to Spain’s coin debasement and Britain’s post-war struggles with currency stability, though it comes on a far larger scale given the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency.

Stage 3: Debt Spiral

The debt spiral has never been higher. As of January 7, 2026, the gross national debt is at $38.43 trillion, an increase of $2.25 trillion from last year, averaging a daily increase of a staggering $8.03 billion.

This translates to 120% of GDP and interest payments that are approaching and surpassing $1 trillion a year. The deficit impact for fiscal year 2026 has shown borrowing of $602 billion for the first three months.

In contrast to sovereign bankruptcies in Spain or the debt crises in post-WWII Britain, the US has the “benefit of being able to borrow in its own currency because its dollar is widely held as a foreign exchange reserve currency.” Still, the rising cost of borrowing and fiscal risk of “debt monetization”—monetary policy being used to pay debt—“may push the system to its tipping point sooner than before.”

Stage 4: Loss of Productive Capacity

Decreased productivity can also be seen in the deindustrialization of the economy. Factory employment plummeted in 2025, posting its eighth consecutive monthly decline in December, reaching around 12.692 million, which is the lowest in several years.

The industry lost tens of thousands of employment positions due to tariffs, supply chain shifts, and global forces, despite government policy initiatives targeting reshoring. Though the trade gap for the goods and services trade declined slightly late in 2025, deficits remain.

Heavy reliance on imports for electronics, pharmaceuticals, and critical components parallels Spain’s historical import dependence and Britain’s erosion of its industrial edge.

Stage 5: Social Decay

The various indicators are where social decay manifests. Homelessness reached record highs, with over 771,000 people affected in 2024, as housing costs and a widening inequality led to this movement.

New drug overdose deaths, despite recent declines, are elevated, and the fertility rate is continuing to trend downward. Population growth increasingly relies on immigration, and under current projections, natural decline is possible by 2030.

With political polarization, crime issues in urban centers, and emigration of skilled talent in certain sectors, confidence in institutions is at historic lows. These dynamics echo social fragmentation in previous empires under economic stress.

Stage 6: Loss of Reserve Currency Status

A loss of reserve currency status is already exhibiting visible, but increasing, trends. Central banks are stockpiling gold, alternative currencies, such as the yuan, are finding increasing use in the settlement of trades, and the BRICS countries are making progress in new systems.

The dollar’s holding in global reserves has been gradually reduced over two decades, but it remains around 57-60%. However, it remains dominant in global foreign exchange transactions. The move by Saudi Arabia away from dollar-denominated oil contracts, as well as attempts by China, Russia, and India to avoid dollar-based payment systems, show that there is momentum.

Stage 7: Total Collapse

While complete collapse is still a prospect rather than an imminent danger, the coincidence of the above factors, as well as possible external shocks in the form of large-scale geopolitical turmoil, sudden interest rate spikes, or speeded-up dedollarization, may start a abrupt collapse.

Historical cases of collapse have differed greatly in the speed of collapse: its taking several decades in Spain, its taking perhaps two decades in Britain following World War II, in contrast to the few years in the Soviet Union. The highly interconnected nature of the US’s role in the world means that whatever crisis emerges—whether debt ceiling crisis, a serious default scare, or a run on reserves—the US’s finance sectors are likely to be more susceptible to a faster cascade in a crisis.

While resilience factors such as innovation and policy flexibility remain, the arithmetic of compounding debt, eroding productive capacity, and shifting alliances suggests the window for course correction is narrowing, potentially leading to significant economic reconfiguration sooner than many anticipate. – Times Now, 18 January 2026

›  Samannay Biswas writes financial stories for Times Now Digital. 

Uncle Sam

Cost of Moral Evasion: How antisemitism and indophobic terror share the same justifications – Raja Muneeb

VOI

Navy lieutenant Vinay Narwal, killed in the terror attack at Pahalgam, and his wife Himanshi were on their honeymoon.

The ideological architecture that excuses, contextualises, or sanitizes violence against Jews is strikingly similar to the one that has, for decades, normalised Islamist terrorism against India. In Western discourse, Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks … are too often framed through the language of grievance, insurgency, or regional complexity rather than named plainly for what they are: pure acts of ideologically driven terrorism targeting Indians. – Raja Muneeb

The attack on the Jewish community celebrating the Hannukah festival at Bondi Beach, Sydney, that was carried out by a father and son duo, leaving thirteen people dead and around two dozen injured, did not erupt from a vacuum. It was not an inexplicable act of sudden madness, nor can it be responsibly explained away as an isolated incident disconnected from broader ideological currents. Rather, it represents the most violent endpoint of a long, cumulative process, one in which antisemitism has been normalised, laundered through the language of activism, legitimised within Western societies through their educational and media ecosystems, and amplified by social media into a moral permission structure for violence against Jews anywhere in the world.

This is not a result of a botched-up immigration policy, ethnic assimilation, or any particular faith as such. It is an argument about ideas, wherein certain forms of hatred that once were universally recognised as toxic and unacceptable have now been repackaged as political virtue, and how radical Islamist actors exploit this permissive environment to move from grievance to justification and from justification to terror.

For years now, Western societies have struggled to draw a clear line between legitimate criticism of Israeli state policy and the resurrection of classic antisemitic tropes. That line has not merely blurred but, in many spaces, has been deliberately erased. On university campuses, slogans like “River to the Sea,” once associated with violent movements, now fashionably coexist with calls for “intifada”, chants that erase Israel’s right to exist, and rhetoric that frames Jews globally as legitimate targets. This behaviour has been defended as expressions of resistance rather than being recognised as incitement to violence. What was once a fringe discourse has now been absorbed into student politics, activist coalitions, media debates, and academic forums, often without serious scrutiny of its historical and ideological baggage.

This all matters because language shapes the moral boundaries of a society. When violence is framed as resistance, when terror is contextualised rather than condemned, and when antisemitism is recast as anti-imperial critique, the social taboo against targeting Jews weakens. The effect is cumulative. Each protest slogan, each academic paper that romanticises revolutionary violence, each media commentary that explains rather than confronts antisemitic aggression, contributes to an environment in which hatred becomes ordinary and outrage selective.

Western journalism has not been immune to this shift. Sections of the media ecosystem, particularly opinion columns, activist journalism, and certain digital platforms, have increasingly adopted the framing vocabulary of ideological movements rather than maintaining analytical distance from them. Violence against Jews is too often narrated through a prism of provocation, grievance, or geopolitical abstraction, while violence against others is treated as morally self-evident atrocity. This asymmetry does not merely distort public understanding; it signals to radical actors that some victims matter less than others.

Academia, too, has largely played an adverse role. In parts of the humanities and social sciences, post-colonial frameworks have hardened into ideological orthodoxy. Complex conflicts are flattened into binaries of oppressor and oppressed, and entire populations are assigned collective moral identities. Within this schema, Jews are frequently stripped of historical vulnerability and recast as extensions of Western power, regardless of geography or individual circumstance. Once a group is dehumanised at the level of theory, it becomes easier for others to dehumanise it in practice.

Social media then completes the circuit. Algorithms reward outrage, grievance, and absolutism. Videos of protests, selectively edited conflict footage, and emotionally charged narratives circulate without context, accelerating radicalisation far faster than traditional ideological pipelines ever could. For individuals already predisposed to grievance, particularly those exposed to Islamist narratives that frame global politics as a civilisational war, this digital ecosystem offers constant validation. Violence is no longer unthinkable; it is rehearsed rhetorically long before it is physically enacted.

This is where radical Islamist ideology truly enters the picture. Groups and networks that traffic in political Islam have long understood the value of narrative convergence. They do not need to create antisemitism from scratch; they merely need to tap into existing discursive currents and redirect them toward action. When Western spaces legitimise the language of “intifada” without acknowledging its violent history, Islamist radicals misconstrue it as an endorsement. When journalists contextualise antisemitic attacks as expressions of anger, extremists hear absolution. When campuses treat calls for the erasure of Israel as protected speech divorced from consequence, radicals see an opportunity.

The Bondi Beach attack, viewed through this lens, is not simply an act of personal extremism. It is the terminal point of a broader ideological supply chain, one that begins with intellectual indulgence, passes through activist normalisation, is accelerated by social media, and is ultimately weaponised by those who believe violence is not only justified but righteous.

It is time now for Western societies to confront an uncomfortable truth: tolerance for intolerance does not remain neutral. When antisemitism is selectively excused, it does not stay rhetorical. It metastasizes into violence and terrorism. The failure to enforce moral clarity, especially within the institutions that shape young minds and public discourse, creates a permissive environment in which radical actors operate with confidence rather than fear of reprisal.

This does not require suppressing debate or criticism of governments. It requires intellectual honesty. It requires recognising that calls for violent uprising are not metaphors, that historical hatreds do not become benign when wrapped in progressive language, and that terrorism does not emerge spontaneously; it is meticulously cultivated.

Violence against Jews anywhere in the world is not a foreign problem imported from distant conflicts. It is a mirror reflecting back the ideas we tolerate, the language we excuse, and the silences we mistake for neutrality.

This same ecosystem of legitimized violence does not stop at Europe or Australia, nor is it confined to antisemitism alone. The ideological architecture that excuses, contextualises, or sanitizes violence against Jews is strikingly similar to the one that has, for decades, normalised Islamist terrorism against India. In Western discourse, Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks, from Mumbai in 2008 to Pahalgam in 2025, are too often framed through the language of grievance, insurgency, or regional complexity rather than named plainly for what they are: pure acts of ideologically driven terrorism targeting Indians.

The moral evasions are familiar. Just as antisemitic violence is frequently absorbed into debates about “resistance”, jihadist attacks against Indians are softened through narratives of political dispute, human rights asymmetry, or historical and religious resentment. The result is the same: reluctance to draw clear moral lines leads to an intellectual environment in which terror becomes explicable before it is condemned.

This parallel runs deeper than rhetoric. Islamist networks operating from Pakistan have long relied on the same narrative permissiveness cultivated in Western academic, journalistic, and activist spaces. Kashmir, like Israel, is often presented not as a complex political issue but as a moral abstraction, a symbol onto which revolutionary fantasies are projected. Indians, like Jews, are frequently stripped of civilian status in these narratives, recast instead as extensions of a state or ideology deemed illegitimate, and then subjected to brutal killings, as was the case in the Pahalgam terror attack.

This moral equivalence, where democracies defending territorial integrity are equated with terror groups that target civilians, ultimately functions as an enabler. It reassures extremists that their violence will be debated rather than universally rejected, contextualised rather than criminalised. In that sense, the ideological ecosystem that lowers the threshold for attacking Jews in Bondi is the same one that has, for years, provided intellectual oxygen to those who bomb trains in Mumbai, massacre pilgrims in Kashmir, or radicalize young men across borders.

Until Western societies confront this shared architecture of excuse-making, this habit of mistaking explanation for absolution, the cycle of so-called legitimised terror will continue to find new targets in different geographies with familiar justifications.

If the West wishes to prevent future terror attacks, it must look beyond the individual attacker and interrogate the ecosystem that made such violence imaginable, defensible, and ultimately executable. The cost of failing to do so is not abstract. It is measured time and again in blood, in severely broken public trust, and in the quiet erosion of the moral red lines that once defined the West as a civilised society. – Firstpost, 18 Decemeber 2025

› Raja Muneeb is an independent journalist and columnist. 

Campus Hate Cartoon

 

Dhaka to Sydney: A missing link in the terror narrative – Makarand R. Paranjape

VOI

 

Bondi beach shooters Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram.

Why has the largely-liberal Western media hesitated to label the Bondi Beach massacre as Islamist terrorism? Part of the answer may lie in ideological sensitivities, particularly in progressive circles wary of stigmatising communities. … Critics argue that such an approach softens and whitewashes the threat. If doctors themselves are afraid to name a disease, how can they ever hope to cure it? – Prof. Makarand R. Paranjape

The horrific mass shooting at Bondi Beach on December 14 during a Hanukkah celebration claimed at least 15 lives and wounded dozens more. Sadly, the perpetrators have an India link. We used to believe that Indo-Australian relations were defined by cricket and the Quad, not to mention Anglo-cosmopolitanism. But now, a new and disturbing element has been added to the mostly pleasant relations between the colonial cousins.

The Sydney terrorist massacre was perpetrated by a father-son duo, Sajid Akram, a 50-year-old Indian national from Hyderabad, and his 24-year-old Australian-born son Naveed. Sajid was shot dead by the police. Naveed now faces multiple charges. To my mind, however, the news coverage and analysis that followed were far from satisfactory.

How is it that this father-son pair of killers carried out such a massacre without the state agencies intervening? Worse, how is that even after being disarmed so bravely and spectacularly by Ahmed al-Ahmed, Sajid was allowed to return to the bridge, join his son, rearm, and even kill a Jewish senior who threw a brick at him?

Where were the police? Was there a laxity, if not intelligence failure? After all, the Akrams were already under state scrutiny if not surveillance. Surely, the attack is only the tip of an iceberg. There is likely a bigger group, with an international network and support system, behind the attack. The Philippine authorities have denied that Davao City, where the Akrams visited for nearly a month this November, had a role to play.

But we know that Mindanao, at the Muslim-majority southern tip of the island nation, has been a hotbed of Islamist radicalism for decades. Secessionist movements led by groups like the Moro National Liberation Front and Moro Islamic Liberation Front have waged a war of insurgency, with splinter factions like the Abu Sayyaf Group, and later, Al Qaeda and Islamic State modules, trying to take control. The death toll over the last 50 years is estimated to exceed 1.5 lakh.

Does the Indian angle, with father Sajid being an Indian national from Hyderabad, suggest that not just Pakistan, but India too is a breeding ground for international Islamist extremism? Closer, in India’s own neighbourhood, the recrudescence of Islamist violence in Pakistan and Bangladesh are a daily reality. The Indian high commission in Dhaka has been under siege recently, with the authorities there allegedly preferring to look the other way.

Targeting a Jewish community event, that too during a major festival, invites the obvious and easy labeling of ‘antisemitism’. However, such framing risks obscuring the deeper ideological driver: global jihadism. Australian authorities, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have acknowledged the suspects were “driven by Islamic State ideology”.

Why, then, has the largely-liberal Western media hesitated to label the massacre as Islamist terrorism? Part of the answer may lie in ideological sensitivities, particularly in progressive circles wary of stigmatising communities. Albanese’s Labor government, while condemning the act as a “radical perversion of Islam”, has emphasised community cohesion over blunt confrontation of jihadist ideology. Critics argue that such an approach softens and whitewashes the threat. If doctors themselves are afraid to name a disease, how can they ever hope to cure it?

More troubling are operational questions about the attack itself. How did this duo, despite Naveed being on the radar of security agencies, acquire licensed firearms? Eyewitness accounts and footage show a brave couple, Boris and Sofia Gurman, confronting Sajid early in the rampage. They were shot and died in each other’s arms. An unnamed New Zealander also helped tackle one of the gunmen on the bridge. Yet, the attackers pressed on, suggesting gaps in immediate containment by the police.

Sajid Akram, who migrated to Australia decades ago, left behind family in Hyderabad who claim ignorance of his radicalisation. But if an individual from India’s Muslim community can embrace violent jihadism abroad, what does it say of undetected extremist undercurrents within India itself?

Traditionally, Islamist militancy in South Asia has been more associated with Pakistan-based groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. But one cannot rule out their tentacles reaching deep within our country. Should India’s domestic counter-terrorism efforts be stepped up? Or is the Akram case a product of diaspora radicalisation rather than a direct export from India?

Closer home, the recurrence of Islamist violence in our neighbourhood demands scrutiny. In Pakistan, militant groups continue to operate with varying degrees of impunity. In Bangladesh, the post-2024 political upheaval following Sheikh Hasina’s ouster has unleashed a wave of Islamist assertiveness and radicalism.

The interim government under Muhammad Yunus has faced accusations of leniency toward radicals, with far-right groups like Khilafat Majlis organising protests and marches toward the Indian mission in Dhaka. Escalating violence against Hindu minorities, with 250 incidents reported in early 2025 alone, not to mention open threats from outfits like Hizb ut-Tahrir, signal a dangerous shift toward Islamisation, even demanding the establishment of a new caliphate. Anti-India sentiment, fuelled by jihadist propaganda, has boiled over in demonstrations, effectively placing Indian diplomatic missions under siege.

What connects Bangladesh to Bondi? Though no direct evidence is palpable immediately, it is the resurfacing of global jihadism that is the real red flag. While online claims attempting to tie the attackers to Pakistan have been debunked, the missing link is the global resurgence of Islamic State ideology, behind which, arguably, is the Muslim Brotherhood, some of whose chapters have been recently designated as terrorist organisations by the US.

Despite territorial defeats, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for thousands of deaths worldwide in 2024-25, leveraging online propaganda to radicalise individuals far from its core bases. But the truth is that ideology alone doesn’t inspire people to kill others or themselves. Networks of funding, logistics, and rogue state support are essential. Why isn’t international media focusing on this?

The reluctance to confront Islamist terrorism head-on, coupled with regional tolerance for extremists and intelligence failures, connects the Dhaka violence to the Sydney massacre. The true missing link is not conspiracy, but complacency in facing the persistent threat of global jihadism. – The New Indian Express, 20 Decemeber 2025

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

Hindus terrorised in Bangladsh.

Rushdie’s Duplicity: A victim of Islamist violence makes Hindu nationalism an easy target – Utpal Kumar

VOI

Salman Rushdie

To watch Rushdie reprimand “Hindu nationalism” after surviving a near-fatal Islamist attack is therefore to witness a tragic spectacle: a man shaped by fear into criticising the safest opponent available. – Utpal Kumar

Soon after Salman Rushdie was stabbed by an Islamist madman in New York in August 2022, Gopalkrishna Gandhi wrote an article in the Hindustan Times, ‘The scorching truth of Rushdie’s ordeal’. While examining the Rushdie stabbing, Gandhi seemed oblivious to the attacker’s identity—the writer didn’t mention even once why the novelist was attacked, who the attacker was, or why Rushdie was forced to stay under cover for years despite issuing several apologies. Instead, he invoked Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu in 1948. His verdict became intriguingly problematic when he wrote, “The attack on Rushdie comes from the same source?”

Really!

Salman Rushdie’s latest warning about the “rise of Hindu nationalism” in Bharat seems to follow the same Left-‘liberal’ pattern—of, first, denying or at least minimising the scale of Islamist violence; and, second, if the scale of violence is too vast to ignore, creating an equivalence in Hinduism. It reads less like a principled stand and more like a man barking up the only tree that never bit him while fastidiously avoiding the forest of blades that left him with one eye less and a badly damaged liver.

The documented record of violence against Rushdie is neither vague nor debatable. It is exhaustively chronicled by many scholars, including Daniel Pipes, who, in his book The Rushdie Affair (1990), coined the term “Rushdie Rules” to describe how “editors, newspapers, publishers, and academic teachers abide by a new set of rules—new to modern Westerners at least—which limit the freedom to discuss Islam with the same methods, terminology and frank inquisitiveness that are considered normal in discussing Christianity or Hinduism”. Rushdie had himself written extensively about this in his 2012 memoir, Joseph Anton.

It was Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa that sent Rushdie into hiding. Then, there was the selective killing of no less than 45 people worldwide associated in one way or the other with The Satanic Verses—this included the murder of its Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, in 1991. Many were stabbed, including an Italian translator of the book in Milan; a Norwegian publisher was shot in Oslo. And, finally, it was an Islamist radical, Hadi Matar, who in 2022 stormed a stage in New York and plunged a knife repeatedly into Rushdie’s neck and abdomen, leaving him almost dead. All this is a living testament to the fact that Khomeini’s decree, as Daniel Pipes emphasises, “was never simply a religious opinion, but a death sentence with no expiry date”.

In contrast, Rushdie’s affair with Hindu nationalism is not only bloodless, it is anti-climactic in many ways. When he mocked Bal Thackeray and caricatured Hindu figures in The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995), the much-anticipated Hindutva havoc never materialised. Thackeray, far from issuing anything resembling a fatwa, responded with a shrug and the suggestion that his secretary could read the book for him.

This civilisational lopsidedness was noted by Koenraad Elst in his preface to The Rushdie Affair, where he contrasted the Ayatollahs’ unforgiving wrath despite Rushdie’s repeated apology with the quick closure of the Shivaji Maharaj controversy when Khushwant Singh apologised for calling the Maratha hero “a bastard”. In the Hindu case, an apology ended the matter. In the Islamist case, apology merely confirmed guilt. The difference is civilisational, not rhetorical.

Given this stark historical-civilisational difference, Rushdie’s latest denunciation of “Hindu nationalism” appears less like conviction and more like reflex—the reflex of a man who has learnt, through his own bloody experience, which ideologies kill and which merely complain. It is psychologically understandable, even if morally disappointing and intellectually dishonest.

A traumatised man avoids the bully but lectures the weak and gentle. Writers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali have described this phenomenon as the “fear-shaped silence” that hangs over critiques of Islamism. Rushdie may not be totally silent, but he is certainly cautious, careful to look for the safer target while framing his criticisms of Islamism within layers of diplomatic phrasing. He is well aware, better than anyone else, of the one ideology that puts a global contract on life that never gets revoked.

To watch Rushdie reprimand “Hindu nationalism” after surviving a near-fatal Islamist attack is therefore to witness a tragic spectacle: a man shaped by fear into criticising the safest opponent available. It is not courage; it is self-preservation masquerading as principle. And it underscores a deeper truth about our intellectual climate—the willingness of cultural elites to condemn, even cut, the tree that never struck them while tiptoeing around the jungle that nearly swallowed one of their own.

Rushdie’s warning about Hindu nationalism may win him applause in Left-‘liberal’ salons, but it is a misdirection that obscures the true, documented, bloodstained threat that has shadowed him for the past 36 years. If he is barking, he is barking up the wrong tree—and perhaps the only one that never bared its teeth.

Hindu nationalism, after all, did not force Rushdie into hiding. Hindu nationalism did not murder his colleagues. Hindu nationalism did not stab him on an American stage. Hindu nationalism did not declare that repentance is insufficient and that the sentence is eternal. Islamism did all of this, openly and repeatedly—an ideology that celebrates the likes of Hadi Matar.

Perhaps Rushdie the rebel, which he was once in the 1980s, is no more, as he himself had suggested in Joseph Anton. Recalling the moment in 1989 when a fatwa was issued against him by the Ayatollah of Iran, he remembered receiving a call from a woman BBC reporter who asked, “How does it feel to know that you have just been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini?” It was a sunny Tuesday in London, but Rushdie had never felt the world so dark. “It doesn’t feel good,” he replied, though inwardly he thought, “I’m a dead man.”

Rushdie, the rebel writer, is long dead. Long live Rushdie! – Firstpost, 9 December 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”.

Islam is a religion of violence – Ayaan Hirsi Ali

VOI

Madrasa with Student

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.

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.

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.

S.R. Goel Quote

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

VOI

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.

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.

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.

The secularisation of Diwali – Utpal Kumar

VOI

 

Rama arrives in Ayodhya on Diwali 2025.

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.

George Orwell Quote