Barry Nirmal is the founder of many websites, e.g. www.myads.org, Hinduism Research website at www.myads.org/hindu, and the Journal of Rational Thought at www.myads.org/journal.
He founded the Hinduism Research website at www.myads.org/hindu,
after returning from Saudi Arabia in 1997 where he spent a few years working as a computer specialist. He witnessed first hand the hatred of the Saudi authorities for Hindus and Hinduism.
Barry graduated with a B.Tech degree from the world famous Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur. He also obtained his
Masters degree in engineering from University of Nebraska.
Building Hindu India by Refuting Gandhi’s Pacifist Philosophy
Barry Nirmal
In this essay I intend to show the vital link between the task of building Hindu India and the task of refuting Gandhi’s pacifist philosophy. M. K. Gandhi believed in non-violence not only in personal and societal relations but also in the political arena. He was also an ardent believer in the Western concept of secularism which stipulates that the government must support all religions practiced by the people without making any one religion as paramount. The governments of the West follow secularism and the United States is the best example of secularism in practice. The United States adopted secularism because when the U.S. was founded in 1776, its people, having migrated from Europe, believed in the many warring sects of Christianity, e.g. Catholicism, and the Protestant creed. So, the U.S. constitution stipulates that the government must support all religions and the people are free to practice any variety of religion. This was the best way to build a united country. The other option was to adopt atheism for which people were not yet psychologically prepared. Had the U.S. constitution not guaranteed religious freedom of the people, and the religious neutrality of the state, the various states within the union would have indulged in open warfare, thus greatly weakening the union.
At that time, Europe had a long history of warfare between the Catholics and Protestants. The Thirty Year War in Europe that lasted from 1618 to 1648 is the best example of such a warfare. When the modern European states were founded around the time of the French Revolution that shook the very foundations of European society between 1789 and 1799, these modern states adopted secularism because it held the promise of uniting the populace and avoiding religious warfare. It cannot be denied that secularism has served these countries well. It has kept the people united and has avoided religious warfare which has resulted in great progress in the scientific and industrial arena.
Gandhi adopted the European model and decided to implement the ideology of secularism. Gandhi was aware of the deep mistrust and animosity between Hindus and Muslims. Thus his vision of India was of a nation where Hindus and Muslims lived in harmony. But the British colonialist rulers like that of the Roman Empire had used the policy of divide and rule. They instigated and supported the Muslims whenever their party, the Muslim League, fought with the Congress Party. When the Muslim League demanded a separate country for the Muslims, the British rulers supported them by all means.
Thus the cunning British rulers of India threw a wrench into Gandhi’s plans to create an independent India where Hindus and Muslims would live in peace and harmony. Finally the great calamity of partition befell our Mother India. The partition of India in 1947 happened due to the bellicose demands of the Muslim League to separate, and with the active support of the British. During this partition more than a million people died in violent religious clashes between the Hindus and Muslims.
In the years prior to 1947, whenever the Muslim League incited its followers to attack the Hindus, Gandhi never supported the Hindus. He preached non-violence to the Hindus and expected them to take the attacks lying down.Meanwhile, Pakistan had launched its mission to attack and grab Jammu & Kashmir and was demanding that India hand over Rs 55 crores (550 million) which it claimed to be its share of the cash reserve inherited from the departing British colonial Government. The proverbial last straw was Gandhi’s threat to go on a fast to force the Government of India to accept Pakistan’s demand.
This angered the Hindu nationalists who witnessed how trains after trains arrived from Pakistan to Indian Punjab, full of corpses of Hindus and Sikhs. The Hindus had become passive and did not fight back because their leaders, Gandhi and Nehru, were constantly preaching non-violence to them. Finally the Hindu nationalists got fed up with the non-violent preaching of Gandhi and Nehru and the great suffering of the Hindus at the hands of the Muslim mobs, and some of them conspired to kill Gandhi.
Now the question arises, is secularism as taught by Gandhi and Nehru a wrong policy? Well, secularism is not a wrong policy for all countries. In fact, as shown above, it has served the Europeans nations and the U.S. and Canada very well. But for India, it is not the right policy because India does not have the same conditions that the countries of the West had when they adopted secularism.
The countries of the West had and have Christian majority and Christianity was not faced with the mortal danger of being wiped out by another religion. So, it was fine for them to adopt secularism. But India has a declining Hindu majority and a growing Muslim minority. While Hinduism does not preach proselytization and does not encourage Hindus to convert adherents of other religions, Islam and Christianity openly tell their followers to aggressively convert Hindus by hook or by crook.
To keep Muslims from abandoning their faith, Islam states and has practiced the notion that when a Muslim abandons his religion, he must be punished with death. This is evident from the fact that on February 23, 2015, the www.jihadwatch.org website reported that in Saudi Arabia a Saudi was accused of ripping a copy of the Koran and hitting it with shoe. [1]. He also captured this act on video and published it on social networks. For this a three-judge panel handed the death sentence to the man.
In Pakistan in the past few years many prominent lawyers and politicians who supported human rights for the minority community have been killed.
Islam teaches its followers that when they convert a non-Muslim into Islam, they can expect a huge reward from Allah and their place in paradise will be assured.
The Christians too openly and aggressively convert Hindus into their religion. For material gain and career advancement, some Hindus in the West embrace Christianity.
So, Hindus in India have faced a minority Muslim population whose religion is so aggressive while the Hindus themselves are so passive and their passivity has been aided and aggravated by the teachings of non-violence and secularism by Gandhi who is considered ‘the father of the nation’. In such a situation, for Hindus in India to continue to believe in secularism is poisonous and self-destructive, to say the least.
In fact under the present circumstances, the only correct policy for Hindus is to demand that India be declared a Hindu state, with Hinduism being the state religion and the state must enact all laws to ensure that Hindus remain and will remain a majority in India in the future, and the Hindu religion will be protected by the state.
Just as the people of India supported the BJP led by Narendra Modi and afforded it a thumping majority during the national elections of May 2014, the people now must get united and launch a new movement to demand that the present Indian government use its majority in the parliament to declare Hinduism the state religion and to finally and unequivocally declare that India is a Hindu state. This should be done in the same manner that the Jews have declared Israel as a Jewish state.
Gandhi was not a bad man, after all. His teachings of non-violence are not all wrong. In fact if Gandhi was a Hindu religious teacher, we would have little objection to his teachings. The Hindu religion, unlike Islam and Christianity, has always been a peaceful religion.
Our saints and rishis, unlike Islam, never asked Hindus to kill anyone for believing or not believing in any doctrine or religion. In fact, Sri Ramakrishna, the guru of Swami Vivekananda, openly declared that he found all religions including Islam to be valid and noble. If Gandhi was a saint like Sri Ramakrishna, it would be perfectly fine with the Hindu masses.
But the problem arose when Gandhi being a political leader- and the highest political leader at that – started to preach non-violence. In the entire history of mankind, no country that practiced non-violence ever became a great power. In fact once a journalist asked Gandhi during Hitler’s reign, if he would preach non-violence to the Jews who were being slaughtered at the hands of the Nazis in Germany. To this Gandhi replied firmly in the affirmative. If the Jews had listened to this charlatan, if they had followed the road of non-violence, they would never have been able to found a new state of their own, the state of Israel, where the Jews have finally established a homeland. The state of Israel is a beacon to all the Jews all over the world, who get discriminated for being a Jew. They can look to the state of Israel for moral and political support. They can migrate to Israel and feel safe in their own homeland.
In the same way, if India does not become a Hindu state, the Hindus will continue to be discriminated and attacked in numerous countries where we live. In February 2015, another attack on a Hindu temple in the U.S. spread concern among the Hindus in America. A Hindu temple was vandalized in Washington state with windows broken and the word “Fear” painted on it, less than a fortnight after another temple was attacked. [2] These attacks along with the experience of the Jews who after centuries of oppression finally established their own Jewish state, should convince all Hindus to demand that India be declared a Hindu state.
References
Source: WHN Media Network
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