Muskan Khan, the lone Karnataka (India) Muslim student in Hijab, standing up against Hindu extremists; Source: CNN In the past, there were no countries. There were civilizations and empires and then, there were nations of small ethnic and linguistic groups. ‘Country’, is a colonial construct and thus a very a recent idea. For example, before British colonised ‘India’, it did[Read More...]
Celebrated thinker Noam Chomsky said the “pathology of Islamophobia”, now growing throughout the West, was “taking its most lethal form in India where the Modi government is systematically dismantling Indian secular democracy and turning the country into a Hindu ethnocracy”. Chomsky’s comments came in a recorded message to a congressional briefing — the third in a month organised by US-based[Read More...]
Public institutions have evolved in post-colonial India in response to crisis created by colonial plunders. Public institutions led by the state and government were shaped by anticolonial struggles in India. In spite of all its limitations, these institutions were designed to ensure and expand democratic and citizenship rights of all Indians irrespective of their caste, class, gender, religion and region.[Read More...]
The Hindutva draws its ideological inspiration from the European fascist organisations like the National Fascist Party/Republican Fascist Party in Italy and the Italian Social Republic under Benito Mussolini, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi Party) in Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, The Fatherland Front in Austria under Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg, the National Union in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano, the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (‘Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx of the Councils of the National Syndicalist O
The open call for genocide against Muslims by some self-styled Hindu leaders at the recent ‘Dharam Sansad’ (Religious Parliament) at Haridwar has stirred a hornet nest. It has evoked a sharp reaction against the government’s complicity to shield such perpetrators of hate crime and more its inability to punish those disturbing communal peace. However, at another level, it has[Read More...]
India entered a new phase with the ascension of Narendra Modi to power as the Prime Minister in 2014. People were searching for an alternative to the Congress-led UPA government at the centre. Narendra Modi’s ‘Gujarat Model’ and his push of narratives aiming at Congress government’s ‘minority appeasement’ convinced the ‘majority’ that under the leadership of Modi, India will find[Read More...]
There has been some heated discussion in recent weeks in India about whether the term Hindutva is the same as Hinduism or not. For those supporting the ruling BJP regime and the Sangh Parivar– the network of organizations spawned by the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh – there is no doubt that these two are identical. For opponents of the Sangh Parivar[Read More...]
Natural rationalism, human engagement with natural reality, social institutions and production process are the only factors which have been playing important role in shaping the human way of way of life. But we convinced ourselves that it is religion that is prime factor. Even after agreeing that with living in the age of reason, we still believe that human life[Read More...]
On 15 December 2021, I continued my “HSS is RSS” tour by speaking in respectful rebuke at the Roseville, CA City Council meeting for their recent platforming and honoring of a local branch of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the international wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This speech marked my fourth city council appearance in three states in two[Read More...]
Salman Khurshid’s observation comparing Hindutva with jihadist Islam has quite predictably raised the hackles of the Sangh Parivar. To go back to the context in which he made this observation in his book, `Sunrise Over Ayodhya: Nationhood in Our Times,’ he was referring to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in December 1992. Describing the change that was taking place[Read More...]
