Articles

The Benign Face of Modern Hatred

An egg gets thrown at a lecture on a university campus in London, and it misses. It makes a horrible yellow mess on the wall. Nobody is physically hurt. There is shock in the room, and the temperature rises by at least one degree. The “moderator” of the debate murmurs something which blames an Indian political party for the act, at which the speaker, attempting to hide the fact that she has been sprung for her insulting and racist behaviour, tries to make a humorous remark which hints that the cadres of that movement are present. It seems odd that members of a political party in India would travel all the way to England just to throw an egg, but then it is perhaps rational in comparison to causing such a fuss over one raw egg when “international terrorists” were travelling to London from far and wide to plant incendiary devices which would cause not only real physical harm, but political mayhem, a sense of paranoia, and above all the real human tragedies that would result. But all this is lost on both the moderator and the speaker, who are outraged that one egg was projected in their direction, simply because they did not have the decency, as events would later prove, to discuss their perverse theories with anyone who had an opposing point of view.

The event being referred to was the talk on the Ramayana, an ancient Hindu epic, by Chicago academic Dr. Wendy Doniger, in November 2003 at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. The moderator was the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple. If anyone wanted to be educated on aspects of Hindu culture they would be sorely disappointed. Doniger launched into a vitriolic attack on Hinduism and Hindu culture. While Hindus have long been used to Marxists using their discredited utopian ideas to reduce Hinduism to three words, namely caste oppression, superstition, and proto-fascism, Doniger reduced it to juts one element, that of sexual frustration. To her the Ramayana was just a book full of sex, with its central hero Rama, having his wife Sita at risk from the lust of his half-brother Lakshmana. This is what finally brought the introduction of the projectile. Now any such violence, even that of eggs which are thrown at close quarters and are designed to deliberately miss any human target, is deplorable but why even do such a thing. Can disagreement in an academic forum not be resolved by debate?

Well evidently not. Dalrymple stopped a question from the audience which was in complete disagreement with Doniger’s own perverted ideas. The questioner was threatened with ejection by a self-appointed security guard if she did not, as was eloquently put, “shut up”. Now anyone who puts sex into everything they study certainly has to be questioned on if they are mentally fit to be an authority on that subject at all. There have been many commentaries on Ramayana and other aspects of Hinduism, but deep spiritually enlightened figures such as Tulsidas, Valmiki, Swami Vivekenanda, Dayananda, and Ramakrishna to name just a few. But Doniger seemed to have access to levels of consciousness that was beyond the reach of even these individuals who spent the best part of their lives in Vedic practice rather than sit in some isolated ivory tower. To her Ganesha symbolises a limp male genitalia, and ancient Hindu culture can be reduced to the Kamasutra. The Ramayana and Mahabharata are not historical in any way, despite all recent archaeological discoveries to the contrary, India was invaded by white-skinned Aryan invaders, and anyone who defends Ramayana as in any way historical is a psychopathic Hindu fascist of the BJP. Now just ask yourselves if it is possible to talk like this about any other religion, people and civilisation from an academic platform and get respect? It is not just a point of view, as there will always be various perspectives and bones of contention. But to stop even constructive debate on the issues at hand, one must reconsider the term “fascist” and to just who it must be applied.

It is perhaps difficult for the reader to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation. But to demean a people it is first necessary to destroy anything that is sacred to them. Then the adherents of the said belief system can also be considered dirt, unworthy of the treatment due to them as human beings. It is this which underlies the media silence on how Hindus are ethnically cleansed from Kashmir, Kerela, Assam, Tripura, Bangladesh and Pakistan. If there is any reason for doubt as to whether DR. Doniger herself is really impartial and simply being academically honest in the way she knows best then just listen to her response to a question that was allowed. When asked what her own religious and cultural background was she said she had no religion originally but had come to like the Upanishads. This was immediately followed by hasty denial of “But I’m not a Hindu” as if she did not want to be categorised as a follower of some sexually degenerate civilisation. It is like the avid reader of pornographic magazines (reading is of course used here in its widest sense) denying that he or she is some sort of sex maniac, an analogy which Doniger, judging by the licentious nature of her own work, will have no trouble comprehending.

After the debate had finished one could get more of the anti-Hindu ideology which the speaker and moderator had envisaged as dominating western intelligentsia. When asked how Doniger could call belief in the Ramayana as racist or fascist when she herself referred to the “settling of the Gangetic plain” (an obvious reference in itself to the Aryan Invasion Theory), she became irate at how dare some dark-skinned idol worshipping Hindu even dare to ask her such a question. Now ask yourself who exactly is intolerant and a fascist?

If this sounds bad, that night, William Dalrymple was beyond all hope. An acclaimed writer, it is a shame that anti-Hindu thinking is standard in his work. A man strangely obsessed by the phenomenon of Hindu fundamentalism (which does not even exist), and conspiracy theories where the BJP travel thousands of miles just to throw an egg at him. A man who claims that Indian nationalist and Hindu reformer Veer Savarkar was a pro-Nazi, when that man had actually urged support for the Allied cause in the war, and later was the solitary voice in independent India to demand recognition of the newly created state of Israel. A man who then turns his back when told the truth to speak to his white audience and his Indian slavish admirers who have a weakness for his white skin and the fact that he wears a cotton kurta (Indian style shirt). A man who does nopt give his email address out to anyone who disagrees with him just so he does not have to debate the venom he writes. A man who not content with fanning hatred of Hindus, has to then cross what was once the forbidden line, and has now started fuming at “Israeli bullying” and even defend the murder of journalist Daniel Pearl as an act by a person who was the victim of racism. Well not all victims of racism travel to a foreign land to behead innocent people, and the term “Israeli bullying” is perhaps the perfect euphemism for “Jewish arrogance” which would not at all be out of place on David Duke’s website. A man so degenerate in thinking, he can somehow find some justification for the terrorist bombs that go off with deadly frequency in Israel and India. A man who would no doubt act as some apologist of the terrorist bombs were to eventually go off in London, as they did in Madrid.

What then was the lesson to be learnt from all this. Media and academia are powerful tools in shaping opinion. Of that there has never been any doubt. Yet it has been hard to fathom their wide ranging impact. Human rights abuses are reported the world over. So why are Hindus , almost one quarter of humanity ignored? If you are constantly told that these people follow backward superstition, are sexually degenerate and sick, are prone to the worst cruelties, are essentially modern day Nazis, and are just out of place in the modern world like the dodo, then one should not be surprised when not an eyebrow is raised when they are killed, raped, enslaved, and mutilated in their millions as these words are being written. One should not be surprised when Doniger and Dalrymple in their racist and colonialist arrogance refuse to even debate the issue, as it does after all only concern the subhuman Hindus. One should therefore not be surprised that an egg was eventually thrown. Any people who are constantly persecuted, attacked and denied the legitimate means of airing their concerns will unfortunately feel the temptation of such acts. William Dalrymple should know this, as he writes in defence of the “Palestinian” terrorists who want to wipe Jews off the face of the Earth, as having legitimate reasons for doing so.