Opinion All in the name of Hindu culture

Well,maybe there are Pakistanis who can vote for Advani,but after his silence on the events in Karnataka,which have now caused the suicide of a young girl,he has lost my vote and he should lose yours. All he deserves are many garlands of pink chaddis. Nobody expects much from Rajnath Singh but as someone who has had,for many years,a certain respect for Advani,I had expected that he would stand up and say that it was against Hindu culture to attack women. Or at least that it defiled the name of Rama to have thugs doing this in his name.

How ironic that the RSS and its criminal ‘senas’ have done more damage to Hindu culture than the foreign invaders did. The revival of Hindu culture should be a noble project. We need it to understand what made India the country it is. This column has long argued for the de-colonisation of Indian education to this end. Indian poets and writers from ancient to modern times must be taught in Indian schools as part of this process. To this day the most ardent supporters of Hindutva have done nothing about this.

In the name of ‘secularism’ Indian children have long been taught that there is something unmentionable about ancient India and something un-secular about the word Hindu. The result is that the best teachers of Sanskrit are now in foreign universities and the best translations of Sanskrit poetry and literature that I have read come from the Clay Sanskrit Library in America. The library was created by a generous bequest from an American billionaire called John Clay. Why have no Indian billionaires thought of doing something like this?

Let me answer that. The pressure from our ‘secularists’ has been so great that most Indians of my generation hesitate to use the word Hindu except in a derogatory way. We grew up in an India that was forced to forget her ancient history because it was Hindu and not ‘composite’. So the ‘Hindu’ space has now been filled by semi-literate thugs who wander about our cities breaking up pubs and getting hysterical about Valentine’s Day as if these things were a major threat to Indian civilisation. They are no better than their Islamist brothers in Waziristan and Bajaur. But,because we are not a country whose raison d’etre is religion,we have a right to object to them being seen in public. They must be put where violent criminals belong: in sunless prison cells.

Meanwhile,when the BJP’s canvassers come around asking for your votes,you need to have handy large garlands of pink chaddis to send to Shri L.K. Advani. It will be fun to see how far he gets towards achieving his dream of becoming Prime Minister of India by seeking votes in Pakistan. By the way,what a very,very weird thing for him to be doing,but then we must remember that he risked losing his job as BJP president by expressing his deep admiration of Jinnah.