Moving from negative type to an inspiring stereotype

"Just because of a few fellows, don't brand us all" they had explained.

But that same explanation had to be kept very handy as incidents of civil disobedience from the community never stopped. 

Let's be clear, stupidity is secular. 

It was, is & will always be the case, that a few will be deviant in every group, tribe, community or nation. 

The job of the many then, is to condemn those few at the earliest instance. That as much an instant reflex due to the deep sense of both anguish & embarrassment and also a mature thoughtful response.

A clue can be taken on how the Sikhs did not allow the Khalistani brand to stick on the community & erased it from the Indian public's memory space. And one can also learn from them, on how they fought the mistaken-for-Taliban identity in foreign lands. 

Barring the fringe, most were always aligned to the mainstream, but through the clarion call of their religious leaders, they became consciously aggressive in positive posturing everywhere in the world. 

Not done, those few deviants would have got encouragement to march on & set the tone for the many, especially amongst the gen-next and would have given a bad name to the entire Sikh community. 

The turbaned Sardar today is a proud & solid global brand. One that is correctly stereotyped as - those folks who are at the forefront of national security & those who don't ever beg, but on the contrary serve.

In this, in some instances the Muslim leadership has severely failed, not just in India but across the world.

They've oscillated from either defense, to offense - but not been indulgent introspectors or demonstrating efforts to severely reverse the flow. 

They've either shown active sympathy towards the ruckus makers of their own by remaining silent or passive (if not instigating to disobey the law) or their first port of call has been : So what(?) ... others too have such fringe amongst them. 

It is assumed that such a tendency arises from some misplaced belief in their own super exclusiveness. 

This does everything to alienate themselves, while knowingly & unknowingly playing cheerleaders to the deviant few and thereby adding to the eddies of a downward whirlpool in which their youth are sinking.

This is pure human psychology, nothing to do with religion. 

Having said that, I find the leadership of say Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Oman and now Saudi Arabia under MBS to be far more enlightened. 

Thus, their subjects are seen to be so well behaved in such trying times as compared to the some in the current crop of Muslims here. 

The Muslims themselves, must first accept that there is an issue within their community. 

The terror attraction is a manifestation of their inability to reform with time & that can happen to persons of any faith, irrespective - if they remain frozen in the past.

For most Muslims, religion even today is not about a personal spiritual experience in solitude, but the faithful are expected to visibly practice the rituals in a manner that makes their religiosity a central life theme. 

That gets further rekindled at the almost mandatory weekly Friday ( working day at office ) mosque's mass congregations. As a result, Muslims encounter many modern day requirements that cannot be compatible with their daily mandated religious routines. 

Being accommodative, would attract scorn from the community peers or make them feel incomplete Muslims. 

Thus most cannot convince the world at large that they are beyond & larger than their self imposing religion bearing identity. 

In a fast globalizing world where cultural assimilation is an expectation, interdependence a maturity and gloss & glam a norm, their inflexibility to adapt to the order of the day renders them somewhat unemployable & their school of thought as obsolete.

Not willing to bow out as misfits in the fast paced modern society, some staunch Muslim community leaders have lately been instigating a retaliation, rather than reform. 

These so called leaders don't seem to resonate with the likes of say Abdul Kalam the former president of India or the Khan trio Bollywood superstars or A R Rehman the master music composer or Bismillah Khan the instrumental music Ustad or Sania Mirza the tennis ace or Azharuddin the cricket captain or IH Latif the ex-air force chief or Ahmedi the ex-justice at Supreme Court - to just name a few of the Muslims, that have negotiated with their personal space to reach great heights & become entire India's favorite. It is not even in their reckoning that this makes India perhaps the most unique country in the world where a minority community has achieved so much & in so many spheres. 

For some, the heroes to emulate are perhaps foreigners like Osama Bin Laden or even Burhan Wani, a Pakistan declared "martyr".

Some parents too get influenced and so fail to teach their children, that there is solace in societal achievements and not in being a claimant of perpetual victim-hood by it.

The Muslim issue must be resolved by Muslim themselves. Building a positive brand is a great starting point, giving explanations is definitely not.

It is time for the Muslim leadership of India, irrespective of the sect, to express assertiveness in the opposite direction - that they are collectively more than 10% of the population, more than 100 million in absolute numbers and have been sons of soil for more than 500 years !

And so they are fully assimilated into the mainstream & don't need any minority rights whatsoever.

Further, that they're capable of taking care of selves and on the contrary providing postive guidance, including alms to the deprived - not just to their own but even to the other smaller, poorer and underprivileged groups too. 

That alone can be a true Muslim pride.

India's message, mission, and destiny!

In today's India, the constitution may perhaps be the least read, amongst the most quoted book !

Nani Palkiwala an eminent jurist had challenged the powers of the said constitution, when it was abused and he won decisively against none other than the Prime Minister of India. 

The constitution, he had argued - gives powers to alter or amend the constitution itself but not in a manner that it's basic core structure is irreparably damaged or destroyed. 

There are those who believe that only because the British made lines on paper and because a written constitution was framed in 1950, that India was born. 

That may be true from the modern physical landmass, lines on maps,  and wordings in a book that defines a Republic and the mass of people ruled by a government, but in itself, it is a severely an incomplete definition. 

The words and lines is a compromised understanding at worst & a quick fix convenience at best. 

A nation is also a common identity of people, united by common descent, history, culture, social practices or languages, etc inhabiting a particular territory.

And so India, simply because it was "born" on paper as a Republic on that fateful day, does not mean that it didn't exist before that. 

Indian civilizational culture & values, which give a nation it's collective mindset & conscience, lie beyond the ambit of any legislation. It too governs lifestyle at the conscious & unconcious level, all of which existed for several millennia before the written constitution & continues to do so. 

And so, without hesitation, over 550 princely states came together to immediately form the Union of India, at the time of exit of the British rule in India. 

In that, it's ultra uniqueness was that since time immemorial the practice of polytheism way of life, and irrespective to the many kingdoms here, the people shared a bond. And so they had timeless visa to attend the many festivals and melas across the subcontinental Bharat and had a common reverence for the many deities, temples, rivers, sages, seers & hymns - which centuries ago, the outsiders, namely those of Arabic & European origin referred to as "Hindus." 

The region got to be known as "Hindustan" - a place of the people that lived in the approx area between the Him-paravat (now Himalayan mountains) & the Indu-mahasagar (now Indian ocean). 

The actual name can be Sanatana Dharma - a timeless law, a principled duty with no end date. 

Those people in the West of Bharat then recognized that in this form of faith existing in India - all & any belief or practice, including none at all, is accepted i.e. if one is seeking peace or redemption or salvation. 

The only fundamental here - is that there's none. 

Thus, the narrow singular steadfast concepts of The God, The Holy Place, The Holy Book, The Holy Day, The Founder, etc do not exist. There are no claimants, each is a seeker - based on his or her method or understanding. 

In theory, if one could eliminate every Hindu God’s existence, yet nothing would happen to the faith.

At its most basic level, which is also its ultimate offering, the Hindu faith is an urge to introspection, to self-investigate: Who am I? Who sent me here? What is my purpose? Where will I go from here? Can I escape it all?

All of this has to be answered, not as a recluse, but in the midst of and through the daily duties of every worldly role that comes our way.

Here, there is no son of God, no prophet, not even teachers - only Gurus who can show the path.

However, the path must be walked alone, by each one for himself or herself.

The toil and the reap - if there is any, are theirs alone to experience.

Theology (What is): Divinity is within all.

Philosophy (How to realize it): You can search & realize that divinity by any method you choose.

Ideology (How to maintain integrity): No method has an exclusive claim over it.

Obviously then in the conscience of such people, concepts such as blasphemy, heresy, apostasy and punishment thereof are alien. There is no other-ing either. 

Thus, there's been no conflict ever between the State & the Church nor have there been "holy wars" here, as it has happened in the West. 

How can there be a conflict, when it is not even a religion? If it is anything, it is a way of life, to each their own!

It would mean that those following any, including the Abrahamic religions are not the "others" or "separate" & they too would be acceptable in the land. 

In other words, the polytheistic way of living is fully compatible with the monotheistic religions. One can be a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew, a Parsi & a Hindustani simultaneously. 

It is this which gives rise to Bhartiata or "Cultural Secularism", one which allowed for the Hindus to accept the Jews, fleeing from religious persecution & to provide them shelter; it allowed for making of one of the earliest mosque in the world i.e. Cheraman Masjid by a Hindu king for the convenience of his Muslim visitors; it allowed for the Ezharappallikal Churches in the first century within the Brahmin community at Malabar Coast, it allowed for a Hindu king to resettle the Parsis who were displaced from Persia including building a fire temple for them & one in which the builder king himself or his subjects agreed to not enter as requested by the Parsi immigrants.

All this much before a written constitution or it's pet word 'secularism' found its roots here. 

One could consider this ancient, open and wise "Cultural Secularism" as an integral part of an operational unwritten constitution of sorts that predates the written one and derived by copying the West, and frankly somewhat incompatible with the innate and indigenous thought and experiences. 

For the record, the word 'secularism' was inserted in the written constitution's preamble without any debate in the midst of a national emergency of 21 months starting June 25, 1975, when technically the constitution was abrogated. 

We must not forget that post independence,  the Constituent Assembly had debated and then rejected the need to have secularism included in our constitution's preamble!

It may surprise the uninitiated to learn that in the original constitution of India, on the page of Fundamental Rights chapter, there's a depiction of Lord Ram!

So if the constitution is supposed to mean a firm and final authority, with written codes - it would be important to highlight at this juncture, that there is no such thing as a documented UK constitution. 

It would shock some to know that the system in UK merely works on some cultural principles coming down over the centuries as hand-me-downs, traditions, conventions, ideologies, social consensus, and court judgements. And that includes unelected bishops in the upper house.

One can assertively claim that Indianness and its innate Hinduism existed in philosophy, practice & principle - much before the written code was made & the latter cannot be a replacement for the former. 

However, going by what Nani Palkiwala fought for and won - we cannot allow any faith to be cannibalizing or disproportionately proselytizing & propagating or make claims of theirs’ being the only way to achieve peace, redemption or salvation. 

A few of the clergymen of the monotheistic religions have been heard making claims that the practitioners of polytheism, no matter what, are doomed to die as sinners. 

The propagation of that thought would destroy all that's very much at the basic core of being an Indian first & it's conscience. 

Those who believed that they wished to be both non-inclusive & non-compromising, have already willingly alienated themselves by forming independent and exclusive theocratic nations by breaking away from India's landmass. 

Those within the country, must now not further test on what is already proven. For peace & harmony amongst people, one mustn't rely only on the man made written constitution & it's conceptual secularism. Instead one must willingly surrender to the much more time tested, ancient & wiser - the functional "Cultural Secularism", one in which there's no exclusivity or exclusions. 

Let's be clear, at a level, the Hindutva movement is actually an antithesis of Hinduism. 

However, it has come about as an ideological, legal and political response to the over reliance by some on the written constitution and its words, but not the spirit. The Hindutva movement is a measure to form a protective moat around the time preserved Hindu heritage. 

That has happened after the Hindus, in many instances, have got a raw & a discriminatory deal, due to the law. 

In the final reckoning, for a peaceful society, one needs to get the following:

1) That faith is a fact beyond the realm of proof or reasoning, and every stakeholder of the nation must accept & respect the same. 

2) That the civility of the majority is in its ability to accommodate any minority, and providing it equal opportunities. 

3) That the real security of any minority is not found in the law, but goodwill of the majority and using the opportunities to produce outcomes having universal appeal.

4) The nation will survive and thrive, if its authentic cultural values and civilizational ethos do. 

5) That media's freedom is a right, but it's responsibility towards national integrity is paramount and therefore essence of its reportage. 

At times, some zealous media men however have been found to not recognize the above reality & so, in their reportage, are missing the spirit behind the words mentioned in the written constitution. This lacuna blemishes the beauty of Indianness.

Nobody wants a Hindu Rashtriya as defined by the educated but not learned political scientists. It's way of life however needs to be preserved.

And shouldn't all want that unique Hindustan, as distinctly recognized by those that lived outside of India centuries ago?

The History Of Transformational Change

People don't like politicians. 

Yet Modi broke all records and came to power, even stronger than before. 

A worthy ponder - what's his secret sauce?

The Moditva doctrine appeals much to the Bharat-bhakt creed, those seeking an indigenous cultural renaissance, that has otherwise been long subdued. 

The said renaissance is about decolonization of the Indian population's mind i.e. intellectual property too, not just eviction of the British from the physical real estate called India. 

The indigenous thought was buried by the British courtesy "Baron" Thomas Babington Macaulay.

His strategy was to remove from history books, all that's worthy of admiration within the Indian civilizational context, that might bring pride & reason of 'Being' to future generations. Only one's Being manifes into Doing. 

Putting it differently, the strategy was to teach the future adults of India, that it's a defeated race and there's merit in doing it the English culture way.

For Macaulay the logic was straight & simple - brighter the student today, easier the subjugation tomorrow, so long as the student was taught a history of his or her defeated ancestors.

The ancient Indian literature & relics which stood as a testimony of a very advanced thought, engineering, culture & civilization - was deliberately ignored or even belittled.

That was continued by status quoists non-strategist government of "independent" India. That's cause :

1) The British suddenly left India post the 2nd world war, to focus on their efforts in the reparations of their economy & were finding it difficult to contain the many rising mutinies. They handed power hurriedly to a bunch of fellows, who somewhat felt obliged to their erstwhile masters.

2) To add decay to the dilapidation, sadly the early leadership of India in subsequent election took support from the Leftist to form the government. As a result, the Marxist historians that came on board in the academia, didn't challenge much of Macaulay's tamperings. The only modifications allowed, were to tactfully present the Indian freedom struggle movement as a peaceful, one in which the British glady negotiated into & left. It was to showcase the ruling party's soft power & prowess, to cement their political agenda.

3) To make matters worse, Abul Kalam Ghulam Muhiyuddin Ahmed bin Khairuddin Al-Hussaini Azad, the first education minister of independant India for the initial decade, was a Saudi born, never had any formal education except briefly going to a madrassa, and had interest in the Khilafat movement. 

This then led a good student of history to conclude that India's problem was in her medieval Hindu thought, the Indian National Congress was a savior, aligning to everything Western was good, and to be secular means to accept & appreciate all that is Islamic without any questions.

That came at the cost of everything to do with what is innate to India. That not only included Sanskrit, the rich language of the scholars, but also one's very own mother tongue !

Englishness then was projected as a ticket to a brighter future.

Heritage then obviously felt like a product of the past with a firm expiry date & indigenous culture as a burden. 

They would teach us at length of the entire lineage of the Mughal dynasty but not of their ruthlessness while destroying the Hindu temples,  or converting large swaths of population by force. Nor would they show much of the local heroes like Rana Pratap, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Sri Guru Gobind Singh, etc. 

World War was taught sans the mention of the sacrifice made by Indian soldiers and of course the loot from the Indian soil to finance the British empire or it's wars was put under the carpet. 

They hid from us that the temple was the epicenter of major activity in ancient India, including a place for exchange of thought, art & exhibition. That nodal point was thoroughly ransacked or disturbed. While the Mughals destroyed temples by brute force, the sophisticated British carefully removed the idols from them to adorn their homes, gardens or museums. 

So while they wouldn't tell of the mass destruction of monuments here by invaders, they would also keep us bereft of knowledge of the grand wonder-of-the-world type monuments of Indian origin found not only in India but also in Afghanistan, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Cambodia to Indonesia which were under the influence of ancient Indian civilization. 

In "cultural" history, we would be taught, for example the architectural beauty of the Taj Mahal or Humayun's tomb but not a word is mentioned on the grandness of Kailasa Temple or as why did the sarvajanik Ganesha became a mass cultural movement. 

The independence struggle mostly highlighted Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, who were close to Mountbatten, a British administer who was also close to the royalty there, and waz the last viceroy of India. 

Real history became history, really. 

It's believed, if you want to control the future, you must control the past. To control the past, you must control the present. Those who control the present, own the history of the past that provides nourishment to the future. 

If you teach of the glory of past to the children, you are more likely to produce real inspired men in the future i.e. proud motivated defenders of the legacy & heritage of motherland.

However, with a truncated, pygmied, and morphed history by both the British & the continuation of same by the early Indian leadership, further backed by the communists, people slowly became psychologically embarrassed Indians or Hindus. 

That, even when the Hindu-centric civilization is the only living civilization that has survived thousands of years, including in the face of the onslaught by both the Mughals and the British. 

And survived it did because in the ancient Hindu wisdom, at it's natural core is Cultural Secularism - one that is open, pluralistic, inclusive & with no prescription whatsoever. 

The faithful are all seekers of a Universal Truth by whatever method, practice or belief in God one chooses, including with the freedom to not choosing anything at all i.e. if they believe it will lead to salvation. 

For lack of word, it was called a religion but all it is, is a way of life. 

What they are expected to follow is their dharma, translated loosely as principled duty, one that they deemed as fit for the larger good of both - self & the society.

In this kind of way of life, the only fundamental, is that there are none.

Thus, the narrow singular steadfast concepts of The God, The Holy Place, The Holy Book, The Prayer, etc do not exist. Obviously then blasphemy, heresy, apostasy & punishment thereof are alien to the land here. 

And so there's never ever been a case of conflict between the State and Temple here nor have there ever been crusades or religious zealotry, all of which were witnessed in the West. Secularism as a cure was therefore required for the Western society but has little utility here. 

This too was never taught in India.  

It is this philosophy which gives rise to Bhartia or "Cultural Secularism", one which allowed for the Hindus to accept the Jews, fleeing from religious persecution & to provide them shelter; it allowed for making of one of the earliest mosque in the world i.e. Cheraman Masjid by a Hindu king for the convenience of his Muslim visitors; it allowed for the Ezharappallikal Churches in the first century within the Brahmin community at Malabar Coast, it allowed for a Hindu king to resettle the Parsis who were displaced from Persia including building a fire temple for them & one in which the builder king himself or his subjects agreed to not enter as requested by the Parsi immigrants.

All this much before a written constitution or it's pet word 'secularism' found its roots here. 

Thus in the context of Indianness - the State should have no embarrassment in embracing the faith, as a guiding principle for serving, rather than keeping an arms length from it.

But because it was not taught here, the said Cultural Secularism that existed in practice, got replaced by introduction of a Constitutional one, with an attempt to model it on a Western idea, that too in a surreptitious manner in the midst of a national emergency. 

Again, that was never taught to the political science students.

Further, that Constitutional secularism was used as a vote banking tool by politicians, to pander to those following the Abrahamic faiths, that inherently are proselytizing & predatory by nature, with claims of their's being the only way to achieve salvation. 

The mere mention of some of these truths or any suggestion for correction of the anomalies, is inconveniencing some.

What they forget, is that only when you find authentic pride in your own deep roots of the past, can you rise tall in future. 

History teaches lessons and we must seek them out - "Do forgive but don't forget" is a valuable one. 

However beware. For those who do not learn from history, are often condemned to be taught the same lesson again & again. 

The current government is now asserting a transformational change as it believes that truth must be told for the sake of truth, not with a view to seek revenge. 

And they will resurrect the real history and counter intuitive to what some believe, it will in fact bring long term peace & harmony in the country.

For his huge number of followers, Modi is just a name - a metaphor for change that they too seek. And change always faces resistance.

That has been the history of change !

Order Order !

The peculiarity of the world is that they claim to desire Law & Order...well, that's getting it all backwards. 

In reality they pursue Order & Law. The world talks Law, but walks Order.

China is a ripe example of same & so attracted so much investment from all over the world in the last three decades, that its now reached a place, where it is challenging the investors. 

If there a lesson? 

Notwithstanding the demand for Law (functional democracy, policed IPR regime, contract enforcement agencies, mature courts, etc ), money follows Order - not Law. 

And so in the past, even tiny single party democracy like Singapore or Middle-Eastern kingdoms got more investment over a democratic India. 

Wherever there's political or otherwise stability i.e. Order - industry & money would move there. Sure, Law does provide that little bit of extra comfort, but only as a good accessory to Order.

America is desirous to "use" India as a counter balance to the widening Chinese footprint esp. as they themselves are abrogating their global responsibility.

They would through China centric trade war (read "Hot Peace" which haz replaced Soviet era "Cold War") want to contain China & nudge the American owned factories in China to move elsewhere. 

But where?

India has both - a potential market base & sourcing capability. 

It also has Modi to set the Order right !

Unfortunately, even as Modi's India tries to untangle itself from itself i.e the web of too much Law & bring about an Order, China has taken advantage & has manufactured a disorder here through it's proxies, including the terror organizations working out of Pakistan. 

That's because besides considering us as next emerging competition, on international forums, India has been vocally anti-BRI and not just the CPEC part of it. Unlike the Americans, we didn't even send in low ranking officials to Xi Jinping's launch of OBOR. 

China's economic growth rate is also at a 30-year low and costs are high. The OBOR seems to be sputtering & the America imposed trade war is now a bad irritant.

Industries are moving away from China to countries like Thailand and Vietnam, India could be next. That would be an irreparable ouch. 

It wants to keep India employed internally, so that we leave it alone internationally. And in that, it has smelled blood in the midst of the anti-CAA protests. 

So China knows well that unlike Tiananmen Square where it send tanks (afterwhich there's been no mass protests since 3 decades), India can't even send a team of policemen for investigation to curb the JNU student agitation, without the Law getting in the way. 

Law has the mesmerizing feeling that all is fair & equal. Well, to treat unequals equally is itself unfair !

Law is an ass, Order is a stallion.