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

January 29, 2026VOI

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

January 25, 2026VOI

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

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.

USA: Seven stages of imperial decline – Samannay Biswas

January 20, 2026January 20, 2026VOI 1 Comment

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.

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

December 11, 2025December 11, 2025VOI

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

November 18, 2025November 19, 2025VOI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

November 14, 2025November 24, 2025VOI

Indians

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

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

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

Caste and the Constitution

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

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

When Caste Masquerades as Dharma

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

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

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

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

The History of Caste: The Distortion of Dharma

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Economics of Discrimination

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

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

The Path Forward: Returning from Smriti to Shruti

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

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

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

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

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

Democratization of Interpretation

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

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

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

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

The Path in Practice

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

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

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

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

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

Christianity’s fraudulent legacy – M. Paulkovich

September 6, 2025January 19, 2026VOI

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

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

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

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

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

The Jesus character is a phantom

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

Was Jesus smarter than a fifth grader?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The one true religion

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

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

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

Frauds and forgeries

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

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

St. Paul overseeing the burning of books at Ephesus.

The good that Jesus brought

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gentle and meek and mythical

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

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

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

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

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

Onward Christian soldiers

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

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

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

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

The Silent Historians

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Paine Quote

Bibliography

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

Further Reading

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

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

Audrey Truschke: A demagogue with a megaphone – Sankrant Sanu

June 18, 2025June 22, 2025VOI

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hitler Analogy: History stripped of context

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

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

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

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

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

A pattern of distortion

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

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

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

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

Silencing students, stifling dialogue

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

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

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

The double standard problem

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

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

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

Drawing the line

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

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

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

Would such treatment be tolerated toward any other faith community?

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

The path forward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

May 25, 2025May 25, 2025VOI

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

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

Early Days

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

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

Well-Wishers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Janaki Ammal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Analysing the ‘phallacy’ of the Shiva lingam – Arvind Sharma

March 28, 2025January 1, 2026VOI

“The Shiva linga is part of a vast natural symbolism of ascending cosmic energy. Such linga forms include mountains, fire, trees, standing stones, pyramids, sun, moon, lightning, and OM. It’s sexual reduction by modern scholars is part of their sexual obsession overall.” – Dr David Frawley quoted by Prof. Sharma

The claim that a Shiva linga may have been discovered at the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi has raised some questions about what it stands for. The issue is important considering the comments made on it on social media. The professor of a college in Delhi, on seeing its picture, wondered whether Lord Shiva had been circumcised. Another voice on social media seemed to wonder whether it spouted semen, perhaps because it was claimed to be a fountain by the opposing party. More recently, a lady from Jaipur seemed to give a foreplay dimension to the changes in its size mentioned at various times. And so on.

What is significant here is the temptation to take it, some would say mistake it, for a phallic symbol, which is its chosen interpretation in Western Indology. This tendency to take it as a body part, therefore, on the part of some may be attributed to the way Western Indology tends to view it. This leads to the next question: To what extent is this description justified?

Sometimes it is argued that the word itself stands for the penis. This is problematic because the term is used to signify gender in Sanskrit, and more generally stands for a mark or sign. Thus the words corresponding to masculine, feminine, and neuter gender in Sanskrit are pullinga, strilinga, and napunsakalinga. It is clear that translating these terms by using the word penis will lead to hilarious results. The use of the word varna and its apparent translation as colour, similarly, created serious problems in Indology from which it is still trying to emerge.

At a religious rather than verbal level, a Hindu, in general, finds the interpretation of the term linga as a phallus jarring, to say the least. Mahatma Gandhi noted that he first learnt from a book by a missionary that it had any “obscene” significance. This radical divergence in understanding the significance of the Shiva linga is a striking example of how the insider’s and the outsider’s perspective might differ on a point. The outsider may associate it with a fertility cult. In Hindu lore, however, the Shiva linga represents the axis mundi, the pillar upholding the universe as it were. In the Puranas it represents the pillar of fire or light, the form in which Shiva appeared when the three gods of the Hindu trinity—Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva—were competing among themselves to determine who was the greatest among them. Shiva proved his pre-eminence because the other gods could not discover the beginning or the end of the pillar, which the linga represents.

It is not that the Shiva linga has not been sometimes interpreted as a body part. According to one scholar, it happens about 10 per cent of the time. Thus this does not happen often, however, even when it happens its understanding continues to be an elevated one. For instance, in the Mahabharata, sage Upamanyu states that the use of the linga and yoni to depict Shiva and Parvati means that they pervade all beings. Ramakrishna states that we worship Shiva in this form to pray for release from the process of rebirth. In a Yogic context, the linga represents the conversion of sexual energy into spiritual energy. Paradoxically, the upright but unshed penis symbolises spiritual ascent brought about by celibacy. Alberuni, the Muslim savant, records that according to one account it denotes Shiva, because when Shiva was ordered by Brahma to create imperfect human beings, Shiva refused to do so, and indicated his displeasure by chopping off the symbol of creation and procreation.

The recovery of the Shiva linga at the Gyanvapi mosque would not be complete until we also recover its proper meaning from the obfuscations under which it has been buried. It is worth reflecting on the following comment by David Frawley at this point: “The Shiva linga is part of a vast natural symbolism of ascending cosmic energy. Such linga forms include mountains, fire, trees, standing stones, pyramid, sun, moon, lightning, and OM. It’s sexual reduction by modern scholars is part of their sexual obsession overall.”

In a review of two books by Wendy Doniger—The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009) and On Hinduism (2014)—in Foreign Affairs (September-October 2014), Ananya Vajpeyi notes how Doniger “argues that the lingam, a symbol of the Hindu deity Shiva that is found in temples should be understood ‘unequivocally as an iconic representation of the male sexual organ in erection, in particular as the erect phallus’.” The shock the Hindu feels in the face of such misrepresentation could only be compared to that of the Christian, upon being told that when the Christian participates in the Mass on Sunday he or she is practising cannibalism, as the Christian then consumes the flesh (wafer) and blood (wine) of Jesus Christ. – Firstpost, 12 June 2022

› Prof. Arvind Sharma, formerly of the IAS, is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he has taught for over thirty years. He has also taught in Australia and the United States and at Nalanda University in India. He has published extensively in the fields of Indian religions and world religions.

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