Thursday, October 23, 2014

A brief history of the recent past.

Since the time last year when we discontinued blogging for a while; there have been a lot of decent developments. The activity on social media against the so called pseudo-secularism rose drammatically. The use of the term "Hindu" gained at least some popularity in political discussion. Against LKAdvani's resistance Narendra Modi was made the Prime Ministerial Candidate, and he delivered, in elections, that is.

However, this is just the begining. Election rhetoric is slowly subsiding and substantive issues are slowly emerging. Narendra Modi has a tough job on his hands. While he is bogged down by the weight of "lack of development" or rather presence of inhuman poverty and suffering of a great fraction of masses; the real threats facing us are different and much more formidable.

As Hindus we face two major threats to our civilization: External and Internal. External threats include threats from countries like US, China, Pakistan, etc. and ideologies like Islam, Church etc. And internal threats emanate from a lack of political unity which in our opinion is also borne out of a lack of social cohesion or rather an absence of an understanding which results in lack of social cohesion among Hindus. We can also view these as Civilizationally Existential Threats. The adversaries want to destroy our very existence. External is seeking to destroy us; and internal is weakening us. Externals want to encourage internals into weakening us faster; and internals want us to be blind to the gravity of the externals. This vicious circle needs to be broken; and rather a virtuous cycle needs to be put in place. Maoist terror is an example of the external-internal synergy. Using legitimate grievances of the "poor" to perpetrate delegitimization of Hindus and Hinduism. Legitimate grievances exist because of a lack of understanding; and this is exploited by the external powers that be. More often than not, this happens with active collusion of the powers that be in the within.

Unfortunately, there seems to be an unwillingness among Hindus. much more so among Hindu politicians, to discuss many of these issues thread-bare. We must understand that by this we are playing into the hands of adversaries. Equally bad, if not worse, is the tendency among some, most likely equally treasonous, to use the impending crisis to push for their own self-serving "solutions" or should we say "non-solutions"(?).

We can celebrate victories in recent elections. but we need not, rather must not, rejoice prematurely. It is more like a seriously ailing patient reaching the hospital and being admitted to intensive care unit. There can be some sigh of relief but no complacence should be allowed to set in. What is now needed is competent handling of the issues. It might take about a decade or two to come out of ICU but the movement in the right direction needs to begin at once.

While Narendra Modi has taken a few decisions, but they have not been what the Congress government itself could not have taken. NaMo has yet to show that he intends to take a course different from Congress. (Yes, we do know about China-Pak stance etc.) On the other hand, his current positions on Aadhar, foreign GM crops, recent appointments to posts of economic advisor, retaining RBI governor, etc., call for circumspection.

When Congress began its Garibi Hatao campaign, few could have imagined what lay in store; and therefore now when we hear of Development we must not let our guards down. And recall this is still just economics. What measures are being taken regarding civilizational existential threats?

While not being privy to internal decision making process, we must content ourselves with commenting on what we get as information for general public, and yet it will be foolish to mire in a vain belief that something really powerful is happening beind the scenes.

Until External and Internal threats are  at the very least named accurately, we should not trust the dignosis of the maladies. We are still far from it in our public discourse.

We intend to return to a bit of blogging and intend to try and cover some of these topics.

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous Deepavali.