Rearming Hinduism

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.

Snakes in the Ganga unveils uncomfortable truths concerning India’s vulnerabilities:

• Intense warfare against India’s integrity is the work of a wellorchestrated global machinery driven by a new ideology.
• Marxism has been reincarnated as critical race theory in US academia and serves as the framework to address America’s racism. This has been recklessly mapped on to India: Caste is equated with Race. Marginalized communities of India are considered as Blacks and Brahmins as the Whites of India. Groups claiming grievances (like Muslims and LGBTQ+) are artificially clubbed together.
• Popularly called the woke movement, the mission is to dismantle Indian civilization and heritage by waging an uncompromising war against India’s government, educational institutions, culture, industry, and society.
• Harvard University is ground zero of these social theories developed in collaboration with Indian scholars, activists, journalists, and artists. This represents a clear and present danger to India’s sovereignty and national security.
• Several Indian elites are hoisting Harvard as the vishwa guru with their money and family names. Some private universities within India are importing wokeism that has serious repercussions for India’s stability.
• Indian corporates are bringing the latest Western rubric of environmental, social, and governance ratings into their workplaces. This is aligned with the global social justice movement.
• China has exploited this latest infrastructure as a passage to India.
• Wokeism has penetrated some of the Indian government’s policies. For instance, the National Education Policy 2020 is propagating Harvard’s liberal arts.
• An entire ecosystem of ideologies, institutions, and young leaders is emerging for the recolonization of India.

Is India for sale?

In this paperback edition, the back matter has been trimmed to shed some weight in the interest of portability. Readers can, however, still access it by scanning the QR code printed after the last chapter.

Kashi: The Valiant History of a Sacred Geography tells the story of the most sacred of all Hindu holy cities through the prism of sacred geography as is extensively documented in the Sthala Purana. The book features a summary of the Kashi Khanda from the Skanda Purana, an ancient text on the divine origin and leela surrounding the kshetra of Kashi. The history of this kshetra is enriched by the accounts of warrior sadhus, sages, kings, queens, devotees and ordinary citizens who dedicated their lives to preserving and reviving this sacred geography by doggedly building and rebuilding temples, taking up arms against invaders, meticulously documenting Kashi’s history and lore, and tenaciously sustaining pilgrimage routes and practices covering the holy sites of this pivotal city.

In particular, the lesser-known story of the warrior sadhus who defended the Kashi Vishwanath temple from marauding invaders is explored through the lens of sacred geography. Studied in this light, Kashi is both a spatial and metaphysical contestation. The current controversy and litigation over the Gyanvapi site cannot therefore be satisfactorily resolved without taking recourse to the idea of sacred geography, which has since time immemorial informed Hindus and indigenous societies worldwide about their identity and the relevance of space and place, culture and metaphysics, civilization and the development of nationhood.

When Qutub-ud-din Aibak died in a polo game 1210, he had left behind a rickety, fledgling Muslim kingdom in Delhi. For the next eighty-odd years, its fortunes swayed wildly, witnessing a record twelve kings. It was a period of incessant palace coups and serial political murders. The death of Balban extinguishes the so-called Muslim Slave dynasty and with it ends the shortlived Turkic Muslim imperialism. It also heralds the ascent of the Afghanistan-based Khaljis, classed as “low-born.” A straight line connects the origin of the Khaljis with the military airport built by the US in Zabul in 2006. By this time, Hindu political power in northern India is in total disarray with no unifying leader who has the vision to combat and expel the alien oppressor lodged in Delhi. No Hindu ruler exploits the repeated openings and vulnerabilities provided by internecine Sultanate warfare. Book 2 of Invaders and Infidels traces the unlikely rise of Jalal-ud-din Khalji as an illsuited monarch and ends with the maiden Islamic raid of Devagiri, the gateway to southern India. The incident will have far-reaching consequences for the history of India for the next six hundred years. It is a heady tale of a period rife with bloody intrigues, aggressive campaigns of Islamic expansionism, heroic wars of Hindu resistance and squandered chances for civilizational reclamation. The narrative in this book is marked by a flair of vivid historical storytelling, juxtaposing the oscillating fortunes of both Islamic conquests and the ensuing Hindu responses. It unearths a slew of eye-opening and forgotten details about the socio-political and economic life of the era whose impact is visible even today. Written in a fast-paced and engaging style, Book 2 of Invaders and Infidels is a riveting read of a critical juncture in the history of early Muslim rule of India.

My Freedom of Expression is a collection of 22 articles published in recent years mostly by the Statesman newspaper. The anthology—varied in its themes ranging from Indic civilization to democracy, scientific temper to religious bigotry and identity to governance—is an exploration of what holds India back to become a global leader. The author picked some of contemporary’s most contentious topics, such as global warming, scientific marvels, the mysteries of life and the universe, cultural and religious superstitions, illusions and prejudices in the practise of science, and the importance of religion in society, and dissected them one by one with a rationalist knife. So what his writings essentially do is show a mirror to society. By being both accessible and arresting at once, the book deserves a place in everyone’s library.