Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #237 - Unusual Lovers of Fakery
India's history has been defined by narratives led by the religious bigots and liberals with one central motive. To rid our civilization of itself. History keeps repeating in nauseating circles!
Image by Paula Frost from Pixabay
“I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” ― Mark Twain
The religious bigots and the liberals of the West have always decided India’s history. And fate.
We, the poor benighted people, pitiful in our existence and customs, either had to be rid of our entire history and ways. Or redeemed.
For ills that we did not even have. At least not in the same measure as those few who take their own lives every year.
When you know you cannot look yourself in the eye for the lies, falsehoods and the crimes you are committing for exercising power over others through violent and ideological means, you need an escape route.
Fake stories to demonize others is a great way. The so-called farmers’ protests by predominantly Khalistani and political hit-men. The Shaheen Bagh insurrection by Islamists and Jihadis. These were all led by religious bigots. But backed by liberals.
There must be something extremely disconcerting for both, the religious and the liberals, to bring them fornicating in such tight beds of flowery but stinking lies and falsehoods against everything Hindu.
Is it that whatever they can ever aspire for or dream of has not just been imagined within the realm of Hindu and Dharmic civilization. But perfected.
Are their orgies a reflection of their own inescapable irrelevance?
Thanks so much, Ranjitji for your contribution to Drishtikone. Humbled by your trust, Sir. 🙏
how India’s story was fabricated - fake narratives
The Christian story of Jesus is predicated on sacrifice. Human sacrifice. God, the “Father” sacrifices his “Son” - Jesus - for the “benefit of mankind.” Irrespective of how it really happened - Romans killed Jesus because they could not tolerate his meddling - the central theme of Christianity revolves around Human Sacrifice. In fact, it is not “God, the Father” who is interested in performing human sacrifice, but even Abraham, the origin of the Abrahamic belief systems.
That is how central the theme of human sacrifice was to the Judeo-Christian ethos.
However, for the British - led by evangelical anthropologists, historians and sociologists - themes like Human Sacrifice and Sati became critical in how they understood India and in particular Hindus.
The strange part is that whatever they reported about India was more out of prejudice than knowledge. One of the initial volumes on History of India were written by a man called James Mill. (Source)
These volumes on Indian history was considered to be one the greatest works on India. The aspiring students studying to be civil servants for the East India Company at colleges like Haileybury were trained using Mill’s work.
Thomas Babington Macaulay regarded it as the greatest work of history since Edward Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of Roman Empire” (Source - Philips (ed.), Historians of India, pp. 219–37, 405)
The Central precept of James Mill’s book was the barbarism in India and how it could only be redeemed through British governance which was based on Utilitarian principles and doctrines.
An important step in this direction would be to replace the “abominable existing system” of Indian law by the British system of judicial procedure.
It is fascinating how those who professed utilitarianism, which became the basis of liberal ideological construct, were so obsessed with painting Hindus and their history in an extraordinarily negative way!
So why did Mill, despite being an advocate of Utilitarian principles of logic and liberty, do such an ideological hit-job? The answer lies in the long-winding first sentence of his book series.
He may have been one for liberty and all the rest of it. But he wasn’t an idiot. His job was to extend the British interests in India. This book was to help in that.
But you know what was the most ridiculous part? James Mill had never ever set foot in India. Nor did all those who helped him write his volumes!
The initial attempts to define India were made by evangelicals. They were extremely frustrated by the stubborn nature of Brahmins in context of conversions. For example, Abbé J.A. Dubois, a French Catholic missionary of the Missions Étrangères de Paris to India, had published one of the first detailed ethnographic manuscript of India called Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies: The Classic First-Hand Account of India in the Nineteenth Century.
According to the preface, Dubois produced the manuscript to provide “authentic records” and observations in order to understand the “labyrinth of people and culture.” (2) Emphasizing the moral underpinnings of the work, Dubois sought to contrast the “incongruities of polytheism and idolatry” of India with that of the “beauties and perfections of Christianity.” (Source)
His entry point was not that of a social-scientist. But a Christian bigot.
(Please read Issue #121 - How was Caste System Installed in India)
Nicholas Dirk writes in his book “Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India” that Dubois had an ideological ax to grind - to demonize Brahmins who would not convert.
The social deconstruction of India was thus undertaken by a rather strange team of players - evangelicals (like Abbé Dubois) and Utilitarian/Liberal thinkers like James Mill. As opposed they may have been in their view of theology and religion, they were united in their approach to the Indian Civilization - or rather the Hindu history.
Their paths were different. While Evangelicals were convinced that Hinduism was too contemptible and pitiful to even be tolerated; the Utilitarians and the Liberals of the British elite wanted to save the Hindus and help in “suppression of heathen customs.” Customs like Human Sacrifice and Sati. We know Human Sacrifice was a notion for which there was absolutely no evidence.
Sati as well was highly exaggerated as being a terrible “practice” within the Hindu society. Subhodeep Mukhopadhyay investigates the claims around Sati in a very logical way in his article “Sati: Re-examining the Historical Evidence from 1900BCE to 1900CE.”
Rummaging through the scriptural texts, he found that to even call Sati as a “practice” would be a stretch.
It is evident that during the Vedic period at least, Sati was an exceedingly uncommon practice. In a span of 1500 years from 1900 BCE to 400 BCE, there are only 4 recorded instances! (Source)
Four recorded instances in at least 1500 years. And, this time period is per the bastardized understanding of Indian historical timelines by “historians” for whom civilized history could not predate Abraham! So, if the correct timelines, based on multiple investigative approaches, were laid out, the numbers would make the British claims of Hindu “practice” of Sati even more ridiculous. Halley’s comet may seem more “common” a sighting!
In any case, the best way to debunk a liar is to give him enough rope and still hang him comprehensively. So, Mukhopadhyay, uses the most conservative calculations to arrive at an interesting insight.
This translates to 10 lakh widows on average per year. Of these 10 lakh widows every year, only 20 committed self-immolation. (Source)
And he assumed that there was 95% under-reporting (only 5% of Sati immolations were “reported” in British times). Even then, the incidence of Sati was One in roughly 54000 widows in India!
By comparison, 1 in 20,000 women commit suicide in UK, 1 in 3500 women in Pakistan die from honor killings and 1 in 10,000 Americans die due to gun violence!
That is what the British Liberals were riding Hinduism of! And, in turn making Hindus grateful to them for carrying our moral burden. White Man’s burden.
Why is this history lesson so important?
Fake narratives can colonize and destroy civilizations
Indian history - of social ills, of caste system and of “Hindu savages” who were superstitious, meek and barbaric was written on the back of fake narratives. Narratives that were written by people as brazen and unscrupulous as James Mill.
What Washington Post, New York Times or BBC are doing even today is no different from what James Mill did in 1817! Just as his fake tomes became the basis of education on India for all the civil servants to work in India, the false narratives of the modern fake news factories like WP/NYT/BBC have become the way for the liberals to understand India.
Liberals’ approach to India - in order to “liberate it from the Hindu savages” was to suppress the Hindu civilization. The bigoted Christian evangelists, who cannot tolerate the heathen Hindus, however, wanted to rid India of Hinduism completely!
Some things just don’t change. Do they?
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video corner: the VP who compromised India?
In his book Mission R&AW, intelligence officer RK Yadav discusses Hamid Ansari in one chapter. He spends some time detailing the ordeal of the RAW operatives posted in Tehran and what they had to undergo during Ansari’s tenure.
“A few months after Ansari’s posting in Tehran, a young personal assistant, Kapoor, was kidnapped from Tehran airport by Iran’s intelligence men, while he was returning from India. He was tortured and drugged for three days before thrown on a lonely city road. Ansari did not pursue this matter with Iran government, much to the discomfiture of the staff. “One R&AW officer D.B. Mathur used to procure inside information about Kashmiris from India being indoctrinated at a center in Qom, near Tehran. Confidential reports were regularly sent to New Delhi, with Ansari’s knowledge; Ansari was against some of these reports. One morning, Mathur was kidnapped by the Iranian intelligence men. “Ansari sent a casual report on Mathur’s disappearance to New Delhi but did not take up the matter seriously with the Iranian government. The staff were agitated. After two days, the wives of over 30 staff members protested outside the embassy. Ansari refused to meet them. Mathur’s wife and other ladies barged into Ansari’s office and rebuked him for his inaction. (Source)
Those who keep up with the going ons and are not wearing blinkers know who ex-VP Hamid Ansari really was. A Jehadi.
But it took this unbending journalist to really expose Ansari’s real self.
Do watch it, please.
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