India and The Changing World Order

To those who claim we are now living in a totalitarian, fascist, Hindu Rashtra, one must ask: What kind of a Hindu Rashtra is this where a billion-strong Hindus have been, through our parliament, through our courts, our education system, and our constitution, reduced to not just second-class but, rather, eighth-class citizens? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where Ram Navami, Hanuman Jayanti, Durga pooja processions, and even Garba celebrations, are attacked and stoned with impunity? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where a sitting Prime minister says minorities have the first right to resources? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where Hindus are forced to be refugees in their own land, where one can settle 40,000 Rohingya Muslims but not 700,000 Kashmiri Hindus, the land’s original inhabitants; where the judiciary says it is too late to prosecute those who raped, murdered, and ethnically cleansed lacs of Hindus? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where Hindu temples are exclusively controlled by the State, where Hindus must beg for Waqf land to celebrate their festival while the government usurps hundreds of thousands of acres of temple land and is responsible for more than 100,000 temples losing lakhs of crores in rental income? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where the Right to Education Act discriminates only against Hindus and their schools, forcing tens of thousands of them to shut down? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where monsters like Aurangzeb and Tipu who perpetrated large-scale Hindu genocides are eulogised through State sponsored publications, naming of roads and cities, and organising of festivals? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where a law was about to be enacted through with only the Hindus would have been held guilty in a communal riot even if they were in a minority for example in Kashmir? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where court judgments like the Sabarimala and legislative enactments like the Hindu Code Bill purport to reform only Hindu religious practices but dare not touch practices of other religions, and if they do, the decisions are promptly reversed like in the Shah Bano case? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where The Places of Worship Act continues to deny the Hindus their legitimate right to correct historical injustices and reclaim thousands of demolished temples? What kind of Hindu Rashtra is this where the Waqf Act gives overarching powers to Muslims to declare a 1500-year-old Hindu temple to be on Islamic land when Islam is only 1300 years old? If this is how a Hindu is rewarded in a Hindu Rashtra, he’d much rather be in a Muslim Rashtra because then at least there’d be no pretence of equality – a Kafir will get what he deserves. In this searing commentary penned with clinical precision, the author shreds to smithereens once and for all the guilt-tripping, self-loathing fake narrative that Hindus have been duped with since Independence. There is no pretence, no political correctness, only unvarnished truth – that the Hindus are living under State-sanctioned Apartheid.

Reclaiming Bharatavarsha is a collection of topical and exploratory essays organized around three broad themes. The first explores various facets of classical Bharatavarsha, which is defined as India before the advent of alien Islamic invaders and British colonisation. The second delves into the condition of an India under successive alien regimes. The impact of these regimes on our culture and society is contrasted with the conditions prevailing in the preceding classical era. The third studies the imprint of these bouts of foreign rule on contemporary national life. The three themes taken separately are complementary, and together they offer a scope for comparative analyses of the politics, culture, society, customs, and literature of different eras in the life of this ancient land.

From selected episodes drawn from the Puranas and the Mahabharata to the sacred history of the banana, from the 17th-century Bengali arrack to woke cinema, from the 1962 war with China to hair dyes, the book offers an eclectic mix of atypical essays, the narratives of which are filled with rare anecdotes and vivid details, all of which are backed by scholarly research.

The book also has a contemporary context—the unprecedented transformation of India over the last decade. A major outcome of this transformation is the surge in interest for recovering India’s national and civilizational past. This collective resurgence is an expression of cultural self-confidence, which had fallen by the wayside for centuries. Reclaiming Bharatavarsha is a humble addition to this national endeavour.

India became politically independent in 1947, but for economic freedom it had to wait for another four decades until P.V. Narasimha Rao, in tandem with Dr Manmohan Singh, chaperoned the country’s liberalization process in the summer of 1991. In 2014, another seismic revolution unravelled, the contours of which are still being drawn. For the first time, a ‘new India’ had not just seen an alternative model of governance that is truly divorced from the Nehruvian ethos but also initiated a process of democratization and decolonization of the largely ‘elitist, insular and compromised’ Lutyens’ world.

Argumentative and deeply researched, Bharat Rising combines the narrative style of journalism and the rigour and discipline of academia. It is as much about the resetting of Lutyens’ world as it is about a new India shedding its traditional distrust, if not distaste, for the country’s civilizational and cultural past.

History writing, especially of the subcontinent during the colonial era, is filled with preconception and misconception. Colonial historiography stripped Hinduism of its Hindu-ness and India of Bharat. Colonial historicity, according to the author, is merely descriptive and random interpretations of myths rather than engaging with the idea of mythmaking. Decolonizing Hinduism is an attempt to address that. In the book, the author places ecology, astronomy and timescale (yuga cycle) at the heart of the Hindu belief system.

These important dimensions of Hinduism are not taught in our history classes. Instead, perceptions about Hinduism are limited to polytheism, idol worship and caste system. The book tries to rescue Hinduism from these biases and give voice to a uniquely indigenous version of Hinduism. He does so by demystifying the deeper concepts of Hinduism and history with allegories drawn from modern technological innovation in the field of capitalist economy, artificial intelligence, quantum physics, block chain, etc., to make them interesting.