Hindus in Hindu Rashtra

Title: Hindus in Hindu Rashtra – Eighth Class Citizens and Victims of State-sanctioned Apartheid

Author: Anand Ranganathan

Publisher: BluOne Ink, 2023 (First)

ISBN: 9789392209475

Pages: 135

 

The Left-Islamist cabal in India is nowadays adamant on creating a narrative of the nation turning into a Hindu Rashtra where the religious minorities face extinction and democracy in danger. They ignore the inconsistency and illogicality between trumpeting in mass-media that democracy is in danger and the government doing nothing to stifle such content. No authoritarian state would permit such wild allegations to be made in public, but our propagandists hope that the public won’t notice the discrepancy. Putting that aside for a moment, if we examine whether India had really transformed into a Hindu Rashtra only because a Hindu-nationalist party was in power for a decade, what do we find? Have the Hindus mobbed all avenues of power and marginalized the minorities? Are the minorities trembling in fear of being forcibly converted to Hinduism? But wait a moment. Aren’t these the same people who opposed a bill in the previous Karnataka legislature that sought to ban religious conversions by surreptitious means? Why the minorities oppose a legislation that bans conversions if they really feel threatened? If you get confused at these contradictions and suspect that there is more to it than meets the eye, this book is right for you. On the other hand, if you are comfortable with the fiction that secularism was diligently practiced without discrimination in post-independent India till 2014, you better avoid this book. This book analyzes the position of Hindus in today’s India and how the cards are decked against them under the guise of secularism. Anand Ranganathan is a scientist and author. He is very active on social media and this is his first non-fiction book. Ranganthan discusses eight specific topics which are claimed to form a state-sanctioned apartheid against the majority community which in effect transformed them towards the lowest levels of reckoning – eighth class, as the author pityingly attests.

 

Ranganathan identifies that the stage had been set for discrimination against Hindus much before independence and pinpoints it to Gandhi’s taking control over the nation’s pulse in the 1910s. Minority appeasement then began on an unprecedented scale. Many of his appeals lacked any sense of reality and approached the level of being plain silly. He advocated the Hindus not to harbour anger against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them and should ‘face death bravely’. On the Jewish question in Germany, he suggested the same idea to the victims of Nazi holocaust. But unfortunately, every single time the minorities were appeased, it had only emboldened their leaders and political fronts for further extortion and blackmail. Thus, the trait of discrimination was in the nation’s DNA when free India took birth in 1947. It is the discrimination or apartheid in our constitution, policies, legal framework, society and psyche that makes Hindus not only second class, but eighth class citizens. The author presents his evidence in the chapters following this assertion.

 

Ranganathan cites government control of Hindu temples as the first and foremost mark of discrimination. This seems to be absolutely true. Why should a country which takes pride in being secular keep on controlling the religious institutions of only one religion? Natural justice demands that either it should control all or none at all. The state control of temples invariably leads to political intervention. In Kerala, communist leaders who proudly proclaim themselves as atheists have no qualms in sitting in the administrative councils of temples just because they were born to Hindu parents. The resulting inefficiency leads to dismal realization of revenue from temple property. Hence the money which should have been spent on opening Veda pathsalas, schools, colleges, scholarships, orphanages and cultural centres go wasted whereas the other religions are free to use their own money in the way they choose. The author criticizes the government headed by Narendra Modi too in doing little to correct this injustice. He suggests that instead of spending Rs. 339 crores on grand corridor projects like Kashi, it should take steps to free temples. Ranganathan then suggests public listing of the temples as a company as an alternative to state control. This would be a company whose product has not changed in a millennium and never will. People should be able to buy shares in it and public trading is also advocated. He has no objection to the government taxing its wealth. But readers would find this proposal not a bright one. Apart from the moral dilemma of designating a spiritual abode as a commercial entity, the problem of how less profitable temples can survive is not addressed. Also, if the temple’s shares are traded in public, how can you prevent them going into the hands of hostile interests?

 

Some of the harsh remarks in the book are reserved for the Hindu genocide and ethnic cleansing in Kashmir in the 1990s. In a matter of a few months, the entire Kashmir Valley was swept clean of Kashmiri Pandits through arson, murder and rape. The sad fact is that this gruesome tale of bigotry and violence is not widely reported in the media and not discussed in society. 700,000 people were displaced from Kashmir of which only 500 were repatriated after taking away Kashmir’s special status in 2019. Of these five hundred, 25 have been killed already in targeted assassinations. Tourists are safe in Kashmir as the local people don’t want to scuttle their livelihood and economy. In this way, tourism is alleged to be paying for jihad. The author laments that Kashmiri Hindus are the Jews, but unfortunately, India is not Israel. The judiciary is also shirking from its duty to render justice to the victims citing the long time that has elapsed since. The author also accuses the judiciary of selective intervention in bringing about religious reforms. It is hell-bent on focusing on Hindu customs as it is the path of least resistance. A secular state which removes discriminatory practices from one religion turns a blind eye to egregious customs such as polygamy, dissolution of marriages at the whim of the husband and discrimination against women in parental property in another. The book concludes that such a nation is not a secular state, but rather a scared state (p.72).

 

This book’s discussion on the huge amounts of land designated as Waqf (Islamic religious property) and the overarching powers granted to its administrative body called the Waqf Board are both illuminating and horrifying. Once a property is marked as Waqf, it remains so ever after and the Board has powers to evict the actual inhabitants of that land even after the expiry of any amount of time. Waqf is the third largest landowner in India after Defence and Railways. 77% of Delhi is Waqf land as effected by the give-and-take between the British and Muslims. In March 2014, just two months before his demitting office, the then prime minister Manmohan Singh withdrew the government’s claim on 123 prime Central Delhi properties which in effect gifted them to the Waqf. If the Waqf Board claims a property as its own, the cost of surveying it must be borne by the state and its higher officials are given the power of a civil court by the Waqf Act of 1995. Moreover, the Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that a civil court has no jurisdiction in the matter of a dispute pertaining to Waqf property. Only a Waqf tribunal is entitled to examine the case. Section 28 of the act makes it mandatory for district magistrates to carry out the orders of Waqf Board. In short, if this Act is not amended considerably or revoked outright, it sets the stage for the eventual and complete takeover of the country once the percentage of Muslim population crosses a critical threshold. If this argument is factual, it forecasts a scary predicament for non-Muslims in this country.

 

In this vein, the author discusses eight issues on which the Hindus are discriminated against. Many of the subjects were earlier shared in Ranganathan’s social media forums where he argues his points with conviction and verve in a booming voice. He ridicules the Indian custom of honouring the invaders who killed and raped their ancestors. Bakhtiyarpur in Nalanda is named after the warrior who destroyed that ancient university. Many roads and places are named after Aurangzeb who is reported to have killed 4.6 million infidels. Similar is the case of Tipu Sultan in the south. Ranganathan then mockingly asks whether there will ever be a Hitler Road in Tel Aviv in Israel. The book is very informative and a must-read for all Indians. The text is sandwiched between an excellent foreword by J. Sai Deepak and a worthy afterword by Vikram Sampath. The author’s writing style is very evocative and in a manner which feels like the author is directly talking to the reader. The language is powerful throughout the narrative and appears more like that of a propaganda leaflet. The book also assigns on readers the moral responsibility of verifying the veracity of Ranganathan’s claims for themselves. If they find them to be true, they must ask themselves why nobody had told these hard truths before and why.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 4 Star