Hindutva, Zionism, India and Palestine

[joeblow]

http://www.geocities.com/virodhi2001/In ... ce2001.htm

Hindutva, Zionism, India and Palestine

In this paper, I look at some features of Hindutva and compare it to Zionism. As ideological currents that are both powerfully placed with respect to U.S. imperialism's global ambitions, this comparison is meant to sound a warning to all peace-loving and democratic minded people; fascism is on the rise again, and with alliances developing like those between Hindutva and Zionism, lack of knowledge about either could lead to catastrophic consequences. The struggle of Palestine for freedom and self-determination is tied to the struggle of India for freedom from the neo-colonial order being imposed at the behest of the IMF-WTO regime and its U.S. sponsors and domestic lackeys. Zionism and Hindutva are global movements with a history that is both fascistic and pro-imperialist. Here are some reflections. I use lengthy quotes for the simple reason that it is better to allow authors to speak for themselves rather than paraphrase them; hopefully this curtails monologue and allows for a richer representation of the issues. The sources at the end of the document are to be treated as resources, many of them available over the internet for more in-depth study.

For Palestinians and Arabs interested in why India's solidarity with the Palestinian cause is under threat, I have gone into some detail about the historic affinities of Hindutva with European fascism, and most importantly, the anti-national, pro-imperialist past and present of Hindutva. For Indians and South Asians, I draw upon the similarities of Hindutva and Zionism because we are caught in wave after wave of imperialist nurtured and sponsored chauvinism, and are yet unable to grasp at the global dimensions of our histories. The longer we are left to the mercies of lunatics like the Hindutvadis (and their counterparts), the more distant any hope for real freedom, and revolutionary change will be. This is precisely what the Yankee imperialists want, and this is why they have always excelled in supporting all sides of fascism simultaneously. Let us meditate on the issues and develop global vision, so that we can more effectively work towards a decent future for South Asia.

What takes place in South Asia is crucial to the Arab world. For decades now, the Arab world is dominated by pro-imperialist regimes standing shakily between their people and their imperialist allegiances. Strangely enough, Saudi Arabia, which is a major U.S. ally, draws no condemnation for its medieval practices against its domestic and migrant population. Israel, which practices apartheid, and commits atrocities on a daily basis with no restraints on barbarity, is called a 'democratic friend,' by its U.S. puppeteers. The ability of the great numbers of dispossessed, and marginalized from South Asia and the Arab world to establish effective means to build on their solidarity and confront their common enemies is being targeted day and night by endless attempts by imperialism and its domestic lackeys. One of the means they have often used is by taking advantage of the incredible illiteracy and poverty endemic to great sections of these regions: fundamentalism has been a useful tool for the imperialists, from Talibanism, to Hindutva. Whether people have started growing beards, or whether they have started singing praise to Rama, theirs is a lot that is at the mercies of the global capitalists; and this is what the so-called fundamentalists have to show for their achievements: delivering their peoples to the slaughterhouse of yankee capitalism while torturing their capacity to resist out of them, by directing their suffering towards concocted enemies, almost always, people within our own societies. It is the people who suffer, and sacrifice endlessly. Global capitalists and the prison guards of the new world order (our so called 'leaders'), make grand proclamations about globalization, but in the same breath, use every means to disempower, dispossess, and disarm their victims.

This paper is part of a continuing effort to demolish the tower of lies and fallacies being built up by hateful and cowardly people and their disgusting institutions, practices and ideologies. I name three of them relevant to this paper: U.S. imperialism, the godfather, Zionism and Hindutva, the running bloodhounds of the former. This paper is copyLefted; meaning, you may freely spread it far and wide to like minded people who are interested in fighting against this monstrosity. Giving credit has the most important function of enabling someone to research by themselves, rather than taking your word for it. So in that spirit, let us embark on this brief, and hopefully fruitful meditation.
"A massive survey project by the Anthropological Survey of India published in the form of a series called People of India proves a number of points which give lie to the lies of the Sangh Parivar. It shows that approximately more than 4000-odd communities inhabit this country and their cultural profile is rooted and shaped by their relationship with their environment their occupational status their language, etc., primarily and that religion falls way down in the construction of their identities. This survey also shows that Hindus and Muslims share more than 95% characteristics of various kinds that are common and that it is shared lives that have given shape the diverse cultural expressions. Among other things the studies also show that nobody today can be characterised as an original inhabitant or a foreigner. (BJP's assault on Education and Educational Institutions. Nalini Taneja, Delhi University)"1

 

Note: Sangh Parivar: The coalition of Hindu extremist organizations who subscribe to the ideology of Hindutva

Brahmanism: pertaining to the culture, ideology and practices of Brahmanism, associated with Brahmins and upper caste Hindus. It is often related to the veneration of the Vedas, the sacred hymns (mytho-poetry) of the Brahmin priests; specifically I use it to denote the chauvinistic, elitist, and racist aspects of the ideology and practice of Brahmanism, or caste Hinduism.
"Hindutva is not embodied only by the most visible aspect - the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP - Indian people Party) but by an entire set of institutional arrangements and structures which all function together, in a reasonably coherent fashion to produce the ideological and material structures of the fascist complex."2

 

India, hostage to Hindutva's and its new friends

In recent years Israel's role in the colonization and military occupation of Palestine has been increasingly overlooked and ignored by leaders in several countries of the world. For half a century countries of the global south by and large expressed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, seeing it as another anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle, something familiar to most of the former colonies of the European imperialist powers, and easy to identify with. However in the last decade some countries have seen momentous changes both in their societies as well as in the roles played by their governments in the realm of international issues. India is one such country.

Going back to the very foundation of the independent Indian state and the ideas of Gandhi, there was a clear and principled basis for condemning the dispossession and oppression of Palestine by the newly instituted state of Israel, as practices abhorrent to the idea of secular, democratic and free humanity; these were ideals deeply instilled at least in the minds of the masses of Indians who gave their lives to the struggle and forced the British imperialists to surrender their claims on India. Gandhi's views on Palestine are well known. In a paper titled "Mahatma Gandhi's Approach to Zionism and the Palestine Question" Professor A.K. Ramakrishnan brings to light some of Gandhi's views on Palestine and the claims made by the Zionist movement for a separate state. Under pressure by Zionists to make a statement, Gandhi, while expressing his deepest sympathies for the Jewish victims of Nazism went on to say:
"My sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and in the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after their return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?"3

Gandhi did not like the idea of a national state founded on a religious chauvinistic basis. He was also firmly supportive of the Palestinian people's struggle for national liberation against the British colonialists and their Zionists allies.

He also added, "Palestine of the Biblical conception is not a geographical tract," a statement coming from a person who had considerable knowledge of the world's religions. In other words, he dismissed the religious basis for the claims of Zionism.

Seeing the Palestinian struggle against Zionist claims in the light of the anti-imperialist struggle being waged in India and the colonies, Gandhi stated that,
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home."

According to Professor A.K. Ramakrishnan,
'Gandhi, in his role as leader of the national struggle and the Indian National Congress (the organization embodying that struggle), had been actively engaged during the 1930s and 1940s in molding the perception of the people of India to the nationalist and anti-imperialist struggles in the Arab world. The 1937 Calcutta meeting of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) "emphatically protested against the reign of terror as well as the partition proposals relating to Palestine" and expressed the solidarity of the Indian people with the Arab peoples' struggle for national freedom. The Delhi AICC of September 1938 said in its resolution that Britain should leave the Jews and the Arabs to amicably settle the issues between the two parties, and it urged the Jews "not to take shelter behind British Imperialism." Gandhi wanted the Jews in Palestine to seek the goodwill of the Arabs by discarding "the help of the British bayonet."

The BJP's effort is to erase India's anti-colonial history, and tie India to the shoelaces of the American imperialists.

Indian foreign policy over the last fifty years maintained a consistent stand in support of Palestine, and opposed to settler colonial Zionism. According to Aijaz Ahmed, one of India's foremost political thinkers,
'This aspect of Indian foreign policy was noted and admired, I might add, by Arab diplomats and intellectuals. I remember visiting a number of the Arab countries and regularly meeting a broad cross-section of the intellectuals there, in the 1960s and 1970 s. I was very young then and it was always very striking to me that Pakistan's support for Palestine was usually seen as shallow and Islamicist, whereas the Indian solidarity with the Palestinian cause was regarded as a natural and secular, non-religious response from a country that had played so seminal a role in the making of the non-aligned movement.'4

However since the rise of the BJP (Bharatitya Janata Party) a political wing of a movement known as Hindutva, whose ideological mother organization is called the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or 'National Volunteers Organization'), things have taken an about turn both in terms of India's progressive heritage of secular and principled foreign policy, as well as the role played by government in the welfare of the people. Since the 1990's the growth of the Hindu extremist movement has brought tyranny and oppression for India's Muslims, India's Christians, as well as India's oppressed castes and Dalits. The latter make up the vast majority of the Indian people but are victims of centuries of social oppression under the tyrannical caste system. Additionally, women's rights, the access of tribal people to land and resources, the rights of workers, agricultural workers, peasants, all under threat, while with much nuclear fanfare, the BJP works hard to recast India from the anti-colonial pro-third world nation, to a Hindu Rashtra (nation), under U.S. and Israeli Zionist tutelage. 'Human rights' is a term looked at with derision and contempt by triumphant Hindutvadis. And in this process India's progressive position of solidarity with Palestine has come under attack by these self-proclaimed "nationalists." So we have a two pronged effort: one, against the toiling masses of India, the vast majority of the Indian people: workers, peasants, traditionally oppressed sections such as the Dalits, Adivasis ("tribals"), etc.: at the behest of the U.S. imperialist multinational brigades. Secondly, the ideological enemy, specifically members of India's religious minorities, specifically Muslims, and Christians, but also Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Nastikas (atheists, often called "pseudo-secularists" by the rabid sections of the Hindutva movement). In the context of the second, Hindutva's pro-imperialist stand takes on an international dimension: all Muslims are seen as enemies, therefore, the enemy of the enemy (ie. U.S. Imperialism/Zionist Israel) is taken as the friend! This is the staggering depth of Hindutva's worldview, the cesspool of chicanery and spineless capitulation!

Ahmed continues,
'I was therefore very surprised when I read the statement of Jaswant Singh, during the course of his recent visit to Israel, that India's foreign policy in the past decades was held hostage by the Muslim vote bank and that the government was now going to correct that error. India's anti-colonialist past was simply being erased, and what even Arab intellectuals, from their great distance, could see as an expression of India's secular solidarity with anti-Zionist forces in Palestine was now being presented , by a suave and insufferable Foreign Minister, as an error forced by the Muslim minority in the country upon those whom the Bharatiya Janata Party is fond of calling "pseudo-secularists". Hindutva was now going to undo all that and make a strategic alliance with its natural counterpart: Zionism.'

More money is being spent today on bombs and weapons, rockets and tanks than on education, health, and the well-being of the growing number of people who live in extreme poverty. While sections of the middle classes have become rich, promoting their worldview and upper caste elite cultural affinities as "Indian" culture to the world, every day we hear of farmers committing suicide, workers losing jobs as factories are sold off to local privateers and multinationals; extreme hardships brought on by the anti-people policies of the Hindu fundamentalist government, which will spare no effort to roll in the dirt for the benefit of U.S. economic and geopolitical interests. When the junior Bush recently announced plans to initiate the so called "son of star wars" plan, the world unanimously rejected it, while India's pathetic Hindu fundamentalist leaders bowed low and cheered the American president's plan, a response I am sure his gigantic lack of intellect would have been baffled by, as much as the world was baffled and irritated by the sheer servility shown by the Hindu right leadership. Servility towards imperialism and chauvinistic violence against minorities, qualities that bode ill for the people of India and South Asia.

What happened to the anti-imperialist anti-Zionist pro-Palestinian heritage of India? First, we might want to start with Gandhi. Towards the end of 1947, Gandhi made his statement, in response to a question by Doon Campbell of Reuters.
"It has become a problem which seems almost insoluble. If I were a Jew, I would tell them: 'Do not be so silly as to resort to terrorism...' The Jews should meet the Arabs, make friends with them and not depend on British aid or American aid, save what descends from Jehovah."

It is interesting to note that Gandhi recognized the actions of the Zionists in the 1940s as "terrorism." On January 31, 1948 barely months later, a man by the name Nathuram Godse shot Gandhi and committed one of the centuries most heinous political assassinations. Nathuram Godse was a committed member of the RSS or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the mother organization of the present day BJP, Bharatiya Janata Party. The organization though banned after the assassination of Gandhi, continued to grow in strength partly due to the lukewarm opposition to its activities by the upper caste dominated leadership of the Congress rulers, which used communal and religious strife to attack popular dissent in regions such as Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Assam and Kashmir during its fifty odd dynastic years in power.

During the 1920s and 30s, while nationalist revolutionaries of such stature as Bhagat Singh, Chandrasekhar Azad, Ashfaqullah, Rajguru, Sukhdev, Jatin Das, and thousands of others gave their lives fighting against the British imperialists, the RSS 'volunteers' were consistently instructed by their leaders to be 'apolitical.' Bhagat Singh's organization forbade membership to any individuals working with religious fundamentalist groups like the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha. This was clearly an action intended to convey that these Hindu fundamentalist groups were lackeys of British imperialism and were not to be trusted. Yet today proponents of Hindutva shamelessly lay claim to the revolutionary heritage of these great sons and daughters of India, conveniently forgetting that their own organizations were on the wrong side of the struggle during the critical years of the 1920s and 30s.

During the 1942 Quit India movement, one of greatest anti-colonial mobilizations of humanity, when millions of Indians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians from every corner if the country, boldly challenged the arrogant might of the British occupiers, the RSS leadership instructed its cadres not to participate, ridiculing the efforts of the oppressed masses and also having the audacity to support the British war effort, when Indians were being crushed under the heels of colonial repression. Yet when the opportunity arose for creating communal, religious disturbances, the 'volunteers' were always ready. RSS ideology even during the time of Gandhi was fascist in its leanings.

The following are the words of Vallabhai Patel, a senior Congressman, close to Gandhi and Nehru,

"Organizing the Hindus and helping them is one thing but going in for revenge for its sufferings on innocent people and helpless men, women and children is quite another thing... All their speeches were full of poison. It was not at all necessary to spread poison in order to enthuse the Hindus and organize for their protection. As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji... Opposition turned even more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji's death. Under these conditions it became inevitable for the government to take action against the RSS."5

Reply to Golwalkar's letter seeking to lift the ban imposed on the RSS after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination, September 11, 1948.

Patel himself was not altogether unfriendly to Hindutva and the RSS. Yet, even such support diminished after the assassination of Gandhi. The RSS plan to whip up religious hysteria backfired and they were confined to "cultural" work for a few years. Yet, one might wonder, without the help and sympathies of leaders and cadres in the Congress, the RSS could not have survived after their trashing in 1948? This is why, the Hindutva movement has to be seen as not merely a fringe fanatic ideological movement, but an important element in a wider betrayal of India's independence. The culpability of the Congressites in placing themselves at the helm of affairs and then rewriting the country's anti-colonial history as one long lesson in 'cheek-turning' ethics, completely diminishing the role played by the masses of India allowed for the enemies of the Indian people to gather strength over the years. Hindutvadis could always condemn the Congressites, since the latter had little or no defences against charges of corruption, nepotism, tyranny, and overall cynicism and paternalism towards the Indian people. The gradual crumbling of the Congress behemoth coincides with the resurgence of the Hindutvadis, as the false democratic pretences of the Congress give way to the blunt and megalomaniacal assertions of the Hindutvadis. It seems India's elites never intended to free India, but only intended and conspired to share power against the people of India.

Hindutva, Fascism and Zionism: alliances of convenience?

The RSS leader Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar openly admired Hitler and the idea of the 'separation of the races.' He saw an affinity to Nazism in the Brahmanical concept of caste purity, now applied in a religious sense to 'Hindus' and 'Muslims.' It is rather surprising that the Zionists of today see an 'ally' in the Hindutva movement, given the fascist roots of this movement. Marzia Casolari, an Italian scholar has documented archival evidence proving without doubt that Hindu extremist groups like the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha had direct links with the Italian fascist state. I quote Casolari's conclusions at length:6

a) The main historical organizations and leaders of Hindu nationalism had a distinctive and sustained interest in fascism and nazism;

b) Fascist ideological influences on Hindu nationalism were present and relevant;

c) To a certain extent, these influences were channelled through direct contacts between Hindu nationalists and members of the Italian fascist State. No doubt, beginning with the early 1920s, and up to the second world war, Hindu nationalists looked at the political reality of fascist Italy, and subsequently of nazi Germany, as a source of inspiration.

The following quote is from a statement issued by the Hindu Mahasabha in 1939:
'Germany's solemn idea of the revival of the Aryan culture, the glorification of the Swastika, her patronage of Vedic learning and the ardent championship of the tradition of Indo-Germanic civilization are welcomed by the religious and sensible Hindus of India with a jubilant hope. Only a few socialists headed by Pandit J. Nehru have created a bubble of resentment against the present Government of Germany, but their activities are far from having any significance in India. The vain imprecations of Mahatma Gandhi against Germany's indispensable vigour in matters of internal policy obtain but little regard in so far as they are uttered by a man who has always betrayed and confused the country with an affected mysticism. I think that Germany's crusade against the enemies of Aryan culture will bring all the Aryan nations of the World to their senses and awaken the Indian Hindus for the restoration of their lost glory.'

In a book titled "We, or our nationhood defined," Golwalkar, who became general secretary of the RSS, stated:
'German national pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races - the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the mot [?], to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.'

Who were the equivalents of the Jews in the estimation of the author of these words? India's Muslims without a doubt. By extrapolating German racial ideas to Indian society, Golwalkar and Savarkar recast a complex religious-cultural historical identity into blunt European racial terms. Accordingly in their eyes, 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' became, 'Germans and 'Jews.'

The fact that even fifty odd years after the end of Nazism and Italian fascism, the RSS and its various Hindutva offspring like the BJP have neither denied nor repudiated these ties, or the valorization and glorification of Nazism by their founding leaders, speaks volumes about their real character. V.D. Savarkar, a militant anti-colonialist turned proto-fascist leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, regarding the goals of his organization: (quoted by Casolari)
'But now that our interests were so closely bound together the essential thing was for Hinduism and Great Britain to be friends; and the old antagonism was no longer necessary. The Hindu Mahasabha, he went on to say, favoured an unambiguous undertaking of Dominion Status at the end of the war.'

These words from the leader of an organization that refused to participate in the Quit India movement, and which offered its services to the British War Office in support of the colonial occupier in the inter-imperialist war. In a revealing twist of irony, Savarkar in the 1950s was also full of praise for the settler colonialism of the Israeli Zionist state, and saw an affinity between Hindutva ideology and Zionism.

More recently, one Aravind Ghosh, a "Research Associate" with the U.S. based Zionist organization "The Freeman Center." This organization has a magazine called "The Maccabean" in which Ariel Sharon (who currently has cases pending against him in Belgium and Lebanon for war crimes committed in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps during Israel's invasion of Lebanon) of Israel is a "frequent contributor." Aravind Ghosh's title is "Hindu Historian & Publisher." In the center's own words, "It is his expertize on Moslem behavior and atrocities in the Indian sub-continent that makes him a valuable contributor to the Freeman Center."7

Here is a sample of this self-proclaimed "leading historian:"
'Hindus should thus recognise that Israel can be one of its few reliable allies. From Israel Bharat has much to learn. Instead of peace treaties it should have followed the Jewish state'' example in annexing the lands of the aggressor. Pakistan is eager for war again. This time it will be different if Hindus follow the Israeli example. The jawans should carry the saffron into Lahore, which is the natural capital of East Punjab and the city of Lav. How could Lahore become a city of Islam any more than Jerusalem? These are just two of the examples of Islam's theft of the cultural icons of others...Islamic fascists see Bharat as the soft spot to propagate their irrational creed and foment violence. India tries to placate them. Israel expels them, This is what Bharat should do. If they hate Hindu Rashtra so much they are free to leave for dar'ul Islam.'

As foul and hateful as this lunatic sounds, it is curious that he also hails Savarkar as a pro-zionist in his article. It was Savarkar who praised Hitler's policies towards Germany's Jews and saw in it an analogy to his own fantasies. If we were to go with the understanding that Zionism is opposed to Nazism and the holocaust, then one would wonder how come, a pro-Israel Zionist organization like the Freeman Center calls a follower of the Hindutva creed, a valuable contributor to its cause? Would Jewish people not be offended by this alliance? Or is it possible that the legacy of the Jewish people is perhaps secondary to the interests of Zionism?

In that case, Zionism rhymes and sounds like Hindutva: an ideology that makes use of a particular set of symbols and cultural ideas towards ends that not only political and territorial, but also racist and chauvinist. In other words, fascist. The enemy is clearly expressed by this alliance: the Indian Muslims and the largely Muslim Palestinians, and Arabs. If Savarkar's two views, 1) that Hitler's policy towards the Jews was commendable and applicable to Muslims in India, and 2) that Zionism's policy towards the Palestinians is commendable and worthy of emulation, are not logically contradictory views, but part of the same single logic, then the Zionist alliance with Hindutva is one that will certainly offend any Jewish person. Is this an issue being raised by non-Zionist Jewish people? How can the people who suffered so greatly under the tyrannical evil of Hitler allow such an insult to their heritage by those who claim to speak for all Jewish people, the Zionists? As Hindus and Muslims who are opposed to Hindutva mobilize their opposition to this 21st century fascism, which claims to speak for all Hindus, it will be heartening to see that Jewish people also mobilize to fight the evil of Hindutva's ally, Zionism. Nevertheless, this alliance ties Zionism with a heritage its victims have easily seen, but which Zionists unfailingly deny: that Zionism, is fascism. It is more akin to Nazism, than say to the ideology of liberal democracy. In the latter, pretences notwithstanding, there is at least no explicit assertion that one group of people have their rights enshrined under divine, man-made and whatever other laws, while another group is to be targeted and exterminated as their rights to exist are not only completely absent, but considered inimical to the favored group. There are striking parallels between the assertions made by Zionists and those made by the Nazis. Consider for example the following statements made by Cal Thomas, a Zionist spokesperson masquerading as a journalist/columnist in a 21st century American news outlet and Joseph Goebbels, the unsavoury and bloodthirsty megalomaniac who was Propaganda Minister in the Nazi regime:

Cal Thomas, 2001: "Israel should declare its intention to transfer large numbers of its Palestinian residents to Arab nations... Eviction is a better avenue to stability. Will it happen? Probably not. Should it? Yes."

Joseph Goebbels, 1942: "The Jewish question will have to be written up in a plan on a pan-European scale. There remain more than eleven million Jews in Europe. In the first place it is necessary to concentrate them all in the east. After the war we will be able eventually to assign them an island, perhaps Madagascar. In any case, there will be no peace in Europe as
long as the Jews on the Continent are not totally excluded."

(excerpted from an essay "Meeting of Minds," by this author)

To advocate the 'ethnic cleansing' of Palestinians, Cal Thomas resorts to the usual fascistic routine: declare the Palestinians as a problem that only Israeli, and American military brutishness can solve, through murder, and mayhem, in other words, a 'final solution.' This mentality unites all fascists no matter which hole they crawl out of; Hindutvadis claim a false 'victim' status as the excuse to launch a genocide against their enemies, the Muslims and minorities of India, while their buddies in crime, the Zionists dutifully proclaim that theirs is the only humanity worth worrying about since after all, they can always point to the horrors of the second world war and Nazism, even when they continue to terrorize and massacre Palestinians every day. Zionists who claim to represent all Jews should check the history of Zionism and wonder about why for a long time, the Zionists were more interested in taking Palestinian land than in fighting for the survival of Jews in Germany. Why for instance did Zionist leaders acquiese with Hitler's goal of turning a religious minority (the Jewish Germans) into a 'race,' and hence a 'nation within a nation,' the core argument propounded by the Nazis? By putting their stamp of approval on this change of discourse, did the Zionists in effect betray the Jewish people in Germany? Questions like this need to be asked when tyrants and mass murderers rampage and blabber on about their 'Jewish' cause. People of the Jewish faith opposed to the criminal racism of Zionism, must assert the fact that Zionism's reading of Jewish identity as an essentially racist one, is part of the Nazi heritage and completely at odds with the history of the Jewish people. When the idea that Jews are a race goes to hell, then the raison d'etre of Zionism, with respect to the Palestinian people, will crumble. The same goes with the Hindutvadi claim that Muslims are a separate people and that Hindus have always been victims,' arguments that are merely the routine fascistic assertions of ill-intentioned mysognists.

The rampage of the Hindutvadis; BJP and India's current plight.

With the coming to power of the BJP in 1999, India's last vestiges of independence have been deliberately handed over lock stock and barrel to western multinationals and the tutelage of a new colonial master, the United States. The BJP has literally sold the country down the river, having little shame in denying basic emergency food distribution to starving poverty stricken people, while government food surplus stocks stored in hygienically challenged storage containers, get eaten by rats at the rate of 10 percent per year. Privatizing at the drop of a hat as per the colonial master's dictates, thousands of workers are losing their jobs, and the average real income of the Indian worker has been reduced to half of what it was a decade ago.

The only possible explanation for this total subservience to the dictates of the U.S. imperialists is that Hindutva ideology from its early days as a supposedly 'apolitical' fringe fanatic group, to its present day triumphant charade, is at the service of and most comfortable with imperialism. It is an anti-people alien ideology having no place in Indian society. What has enabled such a movement to become so powerful? The relentless pursuit of the U.S. imperialists and their lackeys in the service of global capital working hand in glove with sections of India's capitalist classes. The BJP is the most neo-liberal of all of India's governments to date. It is also the most U.S. friendly, and Zionist friendly of all governments so far. Its subservience to the U.S. is embarrassing to all self-respecting Indians. Yet, it is bent on both strangulating the population with the imposition of U.S. IMF neoliberal "market medicine," always willing to jump higher than the masters demand, and simultaneously communalizing the whole country in a crusade to divide the working classes who they fear, as do their masters, and creating an atmosphere of paranoia and fear, ideal conditions for fascism.

Meanwhile, politically the BJP has embraced Israel and turned a cold shoulder to the Palestinians, betraying the bonds of friendship shared by the Palestinian and Indian people in this process. Hindutva ideologues are talking about Hindu-Yahudi unity and the need to fight against 'terrorism,' a euphemism for Palestine's and India's Muslims. Hindu extremist websites gloat about the need to work together with Israel to target Muslims in South Asia. Recently a virulent organization calling itself "hinduunity.org" had its website shut down. It came back without a problem when the virulent Jewish extremist Kahane organization (Haktiva) came to the rescue. Rabid extremists working together for a common cause: Muslims are the targets, but also most importantly, the entire peoples of the Arab and Iranian nations, and the great masses of people in South Asia are targets for these two running dogs of American imperialism. Hindutvadis are happy to see such cooperation, while Israel murders Palestinians with impunity, and India reels under the Hindutva onslaught.

Israel has also been suspected of involvement in the incitement of virulent anti-Muslim activities in India, as has been pointed out by Faisal Kutty, a writer from Kerala state who noted that a meeting took place, shrouded in secrecy between BJP high officials and Israeli officials preceding a completely uncharacteristic violent communal anti-Muslim riot in the normally peaceful and harmonious state of Kerala in 1992. 8

Kerala's Muslims are the oldest Muslim community in India, tracing their roots to the early Arab Muslim traders who plied the Indian Ocean Arabian Sea trade route. They make up 20 percent of the population in Kerala while Hindus are 60 percent and Christians 20 percent. Kerala has the highest rate of literacy in the country, in no small part due to the work of the ruling Communist Party over the last several decades to build a literate and thriving, secular state. Comparatively, the other South Indian states under the heel of chauvinistic ethnocentric parties have no comparable achievements. Faisal Kutty also notes that the first serious communal clash between Sri Lankan Tamil Hindus and Muslims occurred shortly after the opening of an Israeli interests section in the U.S. Embassy in Colombo. The section was later closed by the Sri Lankan government.

These suspicions cannot be unfounded because of similar reports about Israeli agents wandering in Kashmir as well as the BJP government's fascination with 'security cooperation,' a code word for 'how to keep the natives in line,' and the overt statements made by Hindutva ideologues about "Hindu-Yahudi" unity. Recently the BJP has built close security ties with the U.S. and Israel under the guise of "fighting terrorism." It is certain that this is a step towards turning India into a "security" state as both the U.S. and Israel will provide technological support in terms of arms, intelligence and who knows what else. This will most definitely be used in the BJP's attack on India's people, especially Muslims, Christians, Dalits, and anyone opposed to Hindutva, those they call with contempt, "pseudo-secularists." The people of Kashmir will no doubt also be targeted by these new alliances, as well as Andhra, Punjab, Assam and the North East where militant struggles for human rights and freedom have continued for most of the half century following the British exit.

Organizations like the Bajrang Dal, a Hindutva version of the Storm Troopers, the same group who last year burned to death an elderly Australian missionary and his children, also find inspiration and who knows what else in Zionist Israel. The Indian Express, June 30, 2000 had an article titled "Desi Mossad is getting ready at Bajrang Dal's Ayodhya camp." In begins: "I, as a member of Bajrang Dal, swear in the name of Lord Hanuman to always remain prepared to protect my country, religion and culture," 150 young men, between 15 and 21 years of age, recite in unison. On several occasions, the cadres and their leaders mention Israel and the Mossad as their inspiration.9

'Asked what he did at the camp, an activist whispers, ``I am from the secret service of Bajrang Dal. Israel's Mossad is my inspiration. I can't tell you more.'''

'Dal leaders in their defence, cite example of Israel where all citizens have to undergo a mandatory training in physical fitness and arms handling. But, isn't Israel's geographical situation peculiar? "`India's even worse. Israel has threat only from outsiders while India faces threat from even those inhabiting it,'' Sharma replies.

These are words from people who frequently terrorize India's Muslims and Christians. They are the paramilitary mobs of Hindutva, not boy scouts or martial artists.

In recent years Israeli "counter-terrorism" assistance is also being mobilized, most evidently in (though not restricted to) Jammu and Kashmir, where the government of India sees a political issue as a 'security' issue, in the age-old imperialistic tradition of ignoring the human, civil and political rights of the Kashmiri people while making every effort to suppress the voice of Kashmiris.10

The Times of India, Friday 22 September 2000 reports that

'A high-level team of Israeli counter-terrorism experts is now touring Jammu and Kashmir and several other states in India at the invitation of Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani to make an assessment of New Delhi's security needs, high-level government sources said.'

'The Israeli team, headed by Eli Katzir of the Counter-Terrorism Combat Unit of the Prime Minister's Office, includes a senior Israel Police commander and Israeli military intelligence officials. The team will prepare a "feasibility study" of Indian security needs and assess the areas in which Israel can offer assistance to New Delhi in tackling the activities of insurgent and terrorist groups.'

So this is the invitation of the Home Minister L.K. Advani, Home Minister, and an important member of the RSS. India is now open to Zionist intelligence intrusion and the various struggles in the country for human, civil and political rights among the millions of oppressed and dispossessed people in India will now be translatable to "terrorism," or the like. Zionist Israel is playing with fire by running alongside Hindutva in its war against the people of India. It is only a matter of time before secular forces mobilize under various fronts and launch an all out struggle against the anti-national and anti-people usurpers.

Uncle Sam wants Hindu fascism as long as it does his bidding, so no problem says the BJP!

Since the 1980's the United States has encouraged and fanned the flames of Hindu upper caste revivalism. In the U.S. organizations like the "Overseas Friends of the BJP," and others have been working hard to shape the direction of South Asian studies, lending it a chauvinistic, Hindu upper caste, orientalist direction, and mobilizing the opinion and funds of Indian Americans towards what the latter, far removed from their land, often innocently see as their "culture." U.S. officials have been hand in glove with the Hindu right wing as has been evident in the high level meetings afforded to people like Jaswanth Singh, and Murli Manohar Joshi, Hindutva's leaders, when they came to the United States even before the BJP came to power.

Additionally, Hindu right wingers have also embarked upon a campaign of warmongering that suspiciously falls within the lap of the United States' imperialist interests in South and Central Asia. As the Times of India reported a few years ago, it is a practice that whenever the BJP's senior leaders visit the United States, they hold meetings, often secretive, with Zionist groups, 'experts' from think tanks such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and State Department officials. Conspiracy is the main method of fascism since they cannot obtain the support of the people of India through honest means!

More recently, the BJP has gone so far as to invite the US armed forces to visit the Indian army's training facilities, particularly focusing on "jungle warfare," and also holding joint training exercises in "infiltration of enemy territory." What this holds for the future well being of Indians, Pakistanis and South Asians in general is horrific to envision. The United States military is a global imperialist force; by inviting them into India is nothing short of surrendering the sovereignty of India. This is the aim of Hindutva, to crawl at the feet of imperialism so that there may arise a chance to march with jackboots, as after all Uncle Sam loves anyone who marches with jackboots as long as he marches for him. The BJP will open the markets, while the Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena and VHP will frighten the people into compliance with both violence and the threats of more violence. This is the significance of the nuclear explosions, and not the self-righteous "why should the west stop a third world country from possessing nuclear power?" posture adopted by the anti-third world and pro-imperialist BJP.11

BJP's corruption: money for nothing, and a few lousy Barak missiles, Hindutva Zionism in action.

In the short span of time that the BJP has been in power in Delhi, its claims of being patriotic and honest have been thrown in the dustbin. Earlier this year, a team of investigative journalists videotaped a series of bribe taking and bribe negotiating episodes involving people in the highest levels of government including the armed forces. Using a fictitious arms deal the team easily bribed its way into the offices of high-ranking Indian officials in the armed forces and the government. The ease with which it was possible to bribe these officials shocked the country. Imagine what levels of corruption might be possible when very efficient efforts at the same are carried out by international professional arms dealers, mercenaries and other organizations?12

The most damaging episode in this was a videotaped recording of the leader of the BJP, yes, the party leader, taking a wad of money and also mentioning that he prefers dollars! Overnight, the BJP's never ending charade of patriotism and honesty turned into outright guilt and defensive noises about 'foreign conspiracy!' As if the taking of bribes by the highest officials of the land especially for defense related deals, itself does not constitute treason and conspiracy of the highest order! These so-called 'patriots' of the BJP are willing to send Indian soldiers as cannon fodder to their stupid warmongering disasters, with equipment that is sub standard, and available only because the officials procuring them were bribed into doing so. Thus the so-called Barak missile found its way from Israel to India, while India's own Trishul missile, which outperforms the Barak, got pushed out, perhaps because the Indian defense industries couldn't match the Mossadis in bribery and intrigue!?

The internationally renowned scientist Abdul Kalam, the founding architect of India's missile and rocket program, got a cold shoulder from these very same 'patriots' when he criticized the government decision to favor the Barak. So much for the BJP's alleged 'patriotism' and 'honesty.' It proves what most progressives and leftists have been pointing out for years: that the BJP and the Hindutva movement of which it is part, is neither patriotic, nor religious, but really an alien ideology planted and nurtured by imperialism for the destruction and subjugation of the subcontinent. Its open ties to U.S. imperialism and Israeli Zionism confirms this conclusion.

Such developments pose a challenge to freedom loving and progressive Indians, Palestinians and people of all of Asia, to redouble their efforts to thwart the criminal conspiracies of imperialism, in what is now a common struggle against Zionism and Hindutva, the twin agents of American imperialism. Rather than run to a corner and hide behind like minded ideologies of hatred and ignorance, we should strive to increase the common bridges of resistance and renewal between us in this effort and expose the lies and myths of those who intend to destroy our peoples because of their ignorant self-deluding fantasies.

Unfortunately for Hindutva, the Indian people are a very resilient lot. Historically, Indian societies have always exhibited resistance to homogenizing tendencies; while the oppressive system of caste persisted for millennia, growing in strength after the Brahmanic usurpation of Buddhist India, Indian societies have strongly resisted attempts to homogenize their cultural and religious practices. More importantly, India's masses are overwhelmingly from the oppressed, lower castes and Dalits; the greater involvement and militancy from these true owners of India will eventually turn the tables on the Brahmanists who have foisted an alien and dangerously suicidal course upon India's people. Secular forces are not going to take the rampages of Hindutva lying down; the 1920s and 30s was a renaissance era in the Indian peoples' efforts to bring the rulers of India to account. The 2000s should be no different as is already evident from the rumblings from within.13

Hindutva's ideological basis and claims:

P.R. Ram succinctly sums up the Hindutva movement:
'The core of a fascist movement is to suppress and suspend the rights of the oppressed. It is a social agenda of shaken, threatened middle class in the service of big bourgeisie. It is a mass movement, Hindutva is the political agenda of petty industrialists, sections of middle classes and rich peasantry blessed by capital. Hindutva aims to create the new ghettoized untouchables, the poor muslims, a la the shudra of the olden times and keeping this goal in mind it wants to suppress/sidetrack the social and political aspirations of dalits, workers and women.'14

Drawing inspiration from the Brahmanical religion, Hindutva has no problem dealing with the idea of an openly unequal order in society; thus it is quite well attuned to the notion of a enforcing a second-class citizenry.

413. But a Sudra, whether bought or unbought, he may compel to do servile work; for he was created by the Self-existent (Svayambhu) to be the slave of a Brahmana.

416. A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is (acquired) for him to whom they belong.

417. A Brahmana may confidently seize the goods of (his) Sudra (slave); for, as that (slave) can have no property, his master may take his possessions.

Manusmriti, the 'Laws of Manu,' an ancient text, which formed the bedrock of Brahmanical caste society.15

The tyrannical Brahmanical caste system has from its earliest days been an inhibiting force in Indian civilization. While most of India's greatest achievements in the ancient past had their roots in non-Brahmanical movements like Buddhism, this ideology of caste became strengthened after the usurpation of Buddhist influenced India in the latter half of the first millennium C.E , has sanctified a life of immeasurable oppression for great numbers of Indians. Much of what became popular 'Hinduism' is the cultural traditions of the oppressed peoples of India, appropriated by Brahmanical movements at various stages, coinciding with the strengthening of rigid caste ideology.

In religious terms, Hindutva neither represents nor contributes positively to the religious heritage of popular Hinduism, the religious practices of the vast majority of those people classified as 'Hindus.' It is a concerted attempt to Semitize the religious traditions of the subcontinent under one hegemonic construction which P.R. Ram calls 'syndicated Hinduism.' Thus it is their aim to suppress all divergent views, which in India's case would mean nothing short of chaos since Hindus in almost all parts of the country exhibit incredible variations and emphases in their religious practices. There is no single book of authority in Hinduism like in Islam or Judaism; but there is the Vedas of the Brahmans and Hindutva is an attempt to foist the Vedas and related texts onto the altar of respectability reserved for 'people of the book.'

Additionally they have targeted historical monuments from the Mughal, and Sultanate era by making preposterous claims that all these monuments were built upon demolished temples. The recent barbaric destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 at Ayodhya, took place with the active encouragement and connivance of the BJP, though the persons doing the actual destroying came from a host of fanatical groups linked to the BJP's mother organization, the RSS. The historical claims made by the BJP on the Babri Masjid have been more than adequately demolished by archaeologists, historians and scholars in India; there is absolutely no evidence of a Ram Temple (alleged to be a temple dedicated to the God-king Rama who in Hindu mythology lived in a place called Ayodhya tens of thousands of years ago). To date there is no evidence to prove anything claimed by the Hindutvadis, as their efforts are clearly an attempt to mythologize history and obscure the past with wild claims, an unsurprising approach given their desire to obscure their own history to begin with!16

Historians of international repute who have pointed to the total lack of any archaeological evidence to suggest any truth to the claims made by the Hindutvadis have been targeted and forced out of national organizations like the Indian Council for Historical Research, and important research programs aiming to develop India's historical databases and also develop criteria for the analysis of solid, physical data, have been scrapped, as the BJP's fears that its Hindutva claims, made largely on unfounded assertions and fallacious myths, will definitely be relegated to the dustbin once solid, scientific reason were applied to Indian history. They seek to pull the wool over the eyes of the Indian people!

Hindutva 'Ramrajya' and Zionist 'ancient Israel': contrived myths to legitimate fascist atrocities

In defiance of the total lack of evidence, the fanatics spare no effort to claim that a Ram Temple will be built on the site of the now destroyed 16th century Mughal monument. The temple building business is suspiciously similar to the Zionist claims on the Haram Al Sharif, and needs to be seen in the general context of the semitization of Hinduism that Hindutvadis desire to engineer. While Zionist claims draw from the western intellectual tradition of biblical studies, Hindutva rests on Orientalism, the insulting western myth that India is an essentially spiritual, Hindu country. Zionism cannot expect much help from the discipline of history to support its claims to Palestine, since there is little evidence of an 'ancient Israel'; however, as Keith Whitelam points out, they rely on Biblical studies, a field that allows for loose religious dogmatic interpretations, especially when evidence is seriously lacking! One important way this Biblical Studies approach can establish the myth of ancient Israel is by arbitrarily using the Jewish biblical tradition as the main source of interpretation; all other sources are welcome only if they confirm what is already in the biblical body of claims! Additionally, the biblical scholars, have arbitrarily excised any historical concerns with the actual ethnography, or archaeology of historical Palestine. They are not interested in investigating the culture and achievements of the people of Canaan for example. In other words, their scholarly focus is merely on legitimating the Zionist claims of the 1948 established state of Israel and its western Christian sympathies.17 On the other hand, their new friends the Hindutvadis are more or less locked within the British imperialist narrative of Indian history. They would rather believe the myths propagated by the colonizers of India than the ample evidence provided by Indian and world historians, archaeologists and anthropologists.

It was British imperialism that constructed an ideological counterpart to their military and political ambitions: the alleged fundamental distinction between Muslims and Hindus, cast as homogenous, monolithic and irreconcilable peoples. Divide and rule, a statement used so much but rarely appreciated for its historical implications. This imperialist, orientalist view of reality is what inspires and sustains Hindutva. In 1857, following the failed revolt, the British embarked on a major effort to snuff out any resistance from the remnants of the Mughal empire. Muslims were banned from the armed forces. The building up of a pliant Hindu elite was seen as a necessary colonial policy. This is the context for the emergence of the nationalists. It was also the period when British policies imposed differences with violence where there was mutual commonality and interaction among peoples. The partition of Bengal is a case in point. European scholars like Max Muller inadvertently gave a veneer of credibility to Brahmanical tradition by translating and making available to western readers the 'sacred texts,' of what he erroneously called, 'the Hindus.' Most of these Brahmanical texts were traditionally 'forbidden' to large sections of those categorized as 'the Hindus.'

Hindutva is eager to establish a single central 'holy site,' a la Zionism's "Temple Mount," in the city of Ayodhya. A single central 'holy site,' is rather silly in Hindu culture because there are literally thousands of 'holy sites' everywhere from monuments, to ancient Banyan trees, from sacred snake pits to small animistic shrines, from tombs of great saints to shrines containing relics. What is a holy site to one group within Hindu society might be completely irrelevant to another. Yet what the Hindutvadis want to do is to establish a semitic equivalent to the Jewish temple: a center from which their claims on the subcontinent can emanate and to which these claims can center on. Doubtless, they would equally love to create a new priesthood, a 'church' like organization and perhaps even an inquisition to force-march India into the abyss of medieval chauvinism.

It is of course terribly inconvenient for them to mention that Brahmanical Hindu temples were historically restricted areas, where the soul of Hindu caste segregation came alive: Dalits, and lower castes were never allowed near the magnificent temples of the Brahmans, except when they had to build them for the priests and warriors who supervised and punished as per their own scriptural obligations. So if there were any temples in India that were destroyed in the course of a rampage by Turkish, Afghan or Mughal rulers, one needs to ask, how much did the Dalits, and lower caste people, the vast majority of Indians suffer? On the contrary, once Masjids came up (if it were the case) in the place of these temples, many Dalits and lower caste people found immensely greater human dignity accorded to them within the walls of these monuments than in the forbidden shadows of the Hindu temples.

Romila Thapar points out that in Mughal, Turkish or Afghan temple-demolishing episodes, religion was a marginal factor compared to more important factors such as temples being centers of immense accumulated wealth, and also being symbols of state power and authority of kings and kingdoms. These factors were more important than religion or religious conflict; to support this argument, there is evidence of firmans issued by Mughal emperors including the much reviled, Aurangzeb, in support of temple construction and maintenance, and also evidence of temple demolition activities going back in Indian history; Hindu kings destroyed other Hindu kings' temples, Buddhist, Jain and later Muslim religious and cultural monuments for a period of a thousand years before the Turkish and Afghan sultanates.

"Besides, when a temple is built by royalty, it is also the declaration of a political statement, it is a declaration of power. What is being said is, that I am so powerful, I'm so well established, I can now built this magnificent temple or, I can build this magnificent mosque or I can build a marvelous church, as the case may be. Thus, these religious monuments are not just religious monuments they are also symbols of economic power, political power, social status. I am not only referring to religious monuments of the past, it is the same for the religious monuments of today. Every time a new temple goes up, you must go and ask who has built it? With who's money? How much money is it going to collect? Which caste or sect controls the management of the temple? All of this is relevant to the building of a temple, a mosque, or a church."18

Iconoclasm, bigotry and oppression were not the privileged domain of even the most tyrannical Turkish, Afghan or Mughal Sultan, as the ample evidence of widespread destruction and oppression of Buddhist and Jain India at the hands of the Brahmanical Hindu revival movement shows.

The desire to semitize Hinduism also belies a deep-seated inferiority complex with regard to the more animistic, multi-dimensional character of religious practices in India. Hindutvadis do not want to bear the shame of being associated with the notion of ahimsa (nonviolence) or the universality of humanity. On the other hand they want Hinduism to be a militaristic, aggressive, mean and chauvinistic neo-capitalist ideology, subordinate to the idea of national purity and aggression against anything that represents a challenge to the grotesque homogenization implicit in their vision. It is an ideology that runs counter to the best traditions in India's manifold religions.

Buddhism the original force behind Indian civilization.

Buddhism was the most prominent and popular mass based religion in India for more than a thousand years; it made India's culture traverse the world and influenced a great many nations in Asia. With its simple moral message and its criticism of the caste system, Buddhism quickly became a mass religion with the greatest proportion of its adherents drawn from the lower castes. Brahmanism never had this universalist appeal simply because with its foundations in the caste system, it was not interested in a universal emancipatory ideology. Brahmanism used Sanskrit, the priestly scriptural language, and had explicit laws forbidding Sudras and lower caste people from access to the sacred texts, particularly the Vedas.

There is one ancient Brahmanical document called the 'Apasthamba Sutra,' which recommends the pouring of molten metal into the ears of a Sudra (lower caste person) who willingly or unwillingly hears the recitation of the Vedas! In contrast to this, Buddhism was a peoples' religion, it used Pali the common language of the people of the Indo-Gangetic plains and established learning centers where people from all ranks in society could learn together. While Brahmanism developed a notion of 'Karma' along lines of caste duties and predestined caste-fate, Buddhism developed a rich conception of 'Karma' as action that begets fruits, a universalistic moral basis for the evaluation of actions, opposed to predestined caste formulae as propagated by Brahmanism. These were only some of the major differences, which highlight that Buddhism was an oppositional force to Brahmanism and that the people of the subcontinent easily identified with its universalism, while rejecting Brahmanism simultaneously. From the 5th century B.C.E. to about the 6th century C.E. Buddhism established the fundamental contours of Indian civilization that today exists often unknown or grossly distorted to Indians caught in a haze of historic forgetfulness.

Brahmanism was opposed to universalistic trends in Indian history ever since the first conflicts between the invading Aryans and indigenous Indians took place about three thousand years ago. In the first millennium C.E., Brahman priests and upper caste warriors worked hard to usurp and overthrow the influence of Buddhism in India. They wanted to reconstitute societies under the rubric of a more orthodox and severely repressive caste ideology, something that had been greatly undermined during the Buddhist era.19

Thus the reversal of the universalization of Indian culture coincided with the return of Brahmin hegemony and the subsequent de-Buddhistification of India. It is also no small coincidence that when the first Turkish and Afghan invaders came to India, there were only weak, inconsequential Hindu kingdoms fighting with each other over stagnating war torn societies reeling under the resurgence of an oppressive caste order. This fact the Hindutva propagandists lament as the disunity of India; it no doubt was true that India's northern kingdoms were weak and ineffective against the militarily efficient and zealous invaders from Central Asia. In many cases Hindu kings attempted to win favor with the Turkish or Afghan invaders by aligning themselves against a cousin or a neighboring kingdom; this was duly made use of and soon most of Northern India was under the rule of a Turkish Sultanate in Delhi. For instance, Jaichand of Kannauj, allied with Muhammad Ghori against his own cousin Prithviraj Chauhan.

While wars of conquest, plunder, and pillage were the norm of the day, especially given the fact that thousands of Buddhists and Jains were violently persecuted and numerous Buddhist and Jain monuments were destroyed to make way for Brahmanist Hindu temples, Hindutva ideologues only like to point out the excesses of the Sultanate and the Mughal empire which followed.20 This myopia is convenient for them because it is only an excuse to target Muslims in India, and establish Islam as a threat to India in the consciousness of Hindutvadis. The history of Islam in India is being recast by these ideologues as one of total oppression and destruction, a patently false and historical nonsensical idea. While Turkish, Afghan and Mongol rulers in various times committed excesses against the subject populations often in r

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416. A wife, a son, and a slave, these three are declared to have no property; the wealth which they earn is (acquired) for him to whom they belong.

What is the relationship between Freedom and private property? In this particular case and all cases the slave can never improve his materially condition since they can not benefit from their labour. Furthermore since all governments reserve the right to secure the property of their citizens or non-citizens on behave of the collective good therefore all men are currently slaves. The illusion of freedom is maintained since some men have the right to keep their property. These exception are used to demonstrate that we are all free. Moreover, since not all property is not equally valuable not all property is commandeered for the collective good! This is the defining point of slavery.