Christianity: West's Default Religion - Not A Hindu
Dharm-yudh (Crusades Continue)
25 December 2009By Sandhya Jain
Switzerland' s
recent vote against the construction of minarets as
part of mosque architecture in that nation symbolises
a frontal return of Christianity as the Western
world's default religion and culture, and a
corresponding downsizing of the discourse on
`secularism' and `multi-culturalism, ' which gave
Islam an opportunity to seize political and social
space in the western public realm.
As other European nations gear up to challenge the
public display of symbols of Muslim identity – most
notably the hijab and head scarf, though the beard and
skull cap may prove more difficult – a build-up of
religio-cultural tensions is inevitable. Violent
outbursts cannot be ruled out.
It is not a Hindu dharm-yudh
The Swiss vote has caused a frisson of excitement in
traditional and secular circles in India, with some
Hindus hallucinating about a `natural' alliance with
the Christian West to mutually crush Islam. This
foolish hope once soared after the 2001 attack on the
Twin Towers in New York, and Hindus in particular and
Indians in general failed to comprehend why Pakistan
emerged as the West's leading non-NATO ally. Dr.
Manmohan Singh is similarly clueless why two hostile
votes in the IAEA against a friendly Iran still led to
President Obama declaring China the leading Asian
power.
Should Hindus respond to a Western Crusade against
Islam, the result will be similar to our experience in
World War II, where the 2.5 million-strong Indian Army
won the war for the colonial West, only to be betrayed
back at home. The British eventually quit India in
1947 only because of the military mutinies inspired by
Subhash Chandra Bose, and they successfully cut up the
nation before leaving, retaining critical territory in
the form of a land bank called Pakistan, from which
they (and the US) could overlook (and operate in)
Tibet, Central Asia, China, Russia, and the Gulf.
Further, they manipulated the mess in Jammu & Kashmir,
and continue to stir the pot, to our discomfort.
The purpose of this article is to stress that Hindus
lack the agility, self-confidence, or even stake, to
participate in the emerging War of Religions in
Europe. They would do well to keep out of this schism
within the Semitic fold. The West will never support
Hindu affirmation and primacy in India (or Asia), and
will always support Indian (and Pakistani /
Bangladeshi) Muslims and Jihadis against the Hindu
nation and the Indian State, for its own geo-strategic
dominance.
Terrorists David Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana are
not accidentally linked to the CIA and FBI. [Ignore
the denials; please understand that a `rogue' CIA
agent is only a person CIA has decided to `sacrifice'
once the job is done; that is, one who is not a
voluntary suicide bomber. Remember that Mumbai
terrorist survivor Ajmal Kasab revealed that the
terrorists were all assured of an `exit' plan, and
were not suicide terrorists – a significant
revelation). Similarly, Kashmiri separatists do not
casually visit the United States and Britain.
The Jihadi menace in our part of the world is the
direct consequence of Western politics, which we can
ignore only at our own peril. The Sonia Gandhi-led
UPA's decision to appoint the Ranganath Mishra
Commission and examine ways to extend constitutional
benefits of Hindu Scheduled Castes to Christian and
Muslim converts is part of this continuing assault on
Hindu dharma and dharmis in this country. So is the
`quiet diplomacy' with Kashmiri separatists; the
decision to declare a Muslim-centric Telengana state
in the old Hyderabad domains of the Pak-oriented Nizam
on Sonia Gandhi's birthday; and the proposal to bring
an Equal Opportunities legislation to push Muslim
employment in the private sector.
Hindus must realise that they will have to fight for
their rights vis-à-vis politically assertive and
West-backed minorities (both Muslims and Christians)
in India with their own innate skills and resources.
To outsource legitimate Hindu concerns to the West is
abdication of responsibility, a sell-out.
Hindus have no stake in a Christian-Islamic
confrontation in Europe (or anywhere else). Indeed,
such a conflict, if it concentrates Islamic energies
and resources in Europe, is certain to reduce jihad in
India. Rising incidents of jihad in Europe –
especially a fight to make Christian Europe an Islamic
Eurabia – could prove a saving grace for India,
similar to the Mongol rush to Baghdad and Europe that
bypassed India.
Europe's forked tongue
Notwithstanding Western rhetoric aimed at undermining
non-Christian traditions in the post-World War II era,
religion has always been a marker of political
identity. And religion and culture are intimately
connected. In India, the Hindu religion and culture
rose simultaneously from the same soil and people over
the centuries, and cannot be separated. In Islam, the
Arab tribes, Arabic language and culture centred round
the minor irrigation near the oases and the caravan
trade provided the core structure of the early
community. To this day, Islam is uncomfortable with
cultural traits not rooted in Arab Islam.
Christianity, however, rose as a political community
in Europe long after the death of Jesus, by taking
over the declining Roman Empire. It claims origin from
a man born in Galilee (or Bethlehem, or Nazareth); its
culture from the extinct Graeco-Roman civilisation,
and has spread by cannibalizing the traditions and
cultures it encountered on its onward march. The
divide between religion and culture is thus exclusive
to Christian tradition, and cannot be extended to the
experience of more homogenous societies and peoples.
Equally pertinently, Christianity has no native bhumi,
much less a native region or ethnicity to call its
own, because Jesus led the early believers away from
his native Judaism and roots, and opened the doors to
other groups. When the fledgling community moved to
Rome, it moved to another continent, and grew by
gobbling up the religion, culture and people of the
dying Roman Empire. The Christian claim to conquer and
enjoy the whole Creation and its creatures, human and
non-human alike, is grounded in the Jewish Old
Testament. Ironically, the Jews like their Christian
offspring, also lack a clearly defined place of origin
(where was Abraham born, or Noah, or Moses?); the
first kingdom established by Joshua in Jericho was by
conquest and the complete annihilation of the native
population there.
Post Second World War, Europe (including America)
played a complex game to keep the Christian religion
and culture as the default religion and culture of the
world, while paying lip service to concepts of
`secularism' and `multi-culturalism' which, as I have
argued before, are nothing but the Masks of the
Christian God to disempower the gods and cultures of
other non-monotheistic civilisations. Hindus in India,
and those who left in search of financial
opportunities abroad, have been willing to make this
compromise with the Christian West.
Islam, which views itself as an exclusive nationhood,
or ummah, is unable to compromise its religious and
cultural identity, especially as hundreds of ordinary
Muslims feel that the West has politically and
economically disempowered the Muslim world by
purchasing a handful of elites in Muslim lands,
especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
and made proxy colonies out of them.
In both the Christian and the Muslim mind, there is
little doubt that the current contest is a
continuation of the intra-Semitic struggle that began
with the Prophet's launching of his religious mission
in Arabia, climaxed in the Crusades, and festered
thereafter. All religions have a political facet. But
Prophet Mohammad sought political expression and
expansion for his religious community as part of his
mission, and thus made Islam both a political ideology
and a religious nationalism. He did not define racial,
cultural, or geographical frontiers, which did not
matter in the early heady centuries of conquest.
Today, however, Islam does not know how to cope with
limits to its expansion placed by other peoples and
cultures; continuing tribal and old civilisational
identities within Islam, modern nationalism, and the
nation-state.
Yet without adjusting to the nation-state and the
natural limits to its geographical expansion, Islam
will not be able to combat the pro-Western political
elites who have subordinated and humiliated Muslim
countries and peoples to Western Corporate entities.
Without being proud, stable, and ascendant in the
Arabian homeland, Islam cannot hope to survive as a
viable entity anywhere in the world. The Saudi refusal
to permit other religious structures in Saudi Arabia
is hollow as the dynasty survives on Western support,
and operates as a subsidiary of the Imperial West.
The brutalized and brutalizing face of Islam in
Pakistan and Afghanistan reflects an aridity and
brittleness that is doomed to failure. The famed Hindu
resilience after Mumbai 2008 and other less
spectacular jihadi assaults is only an inward
understanding of this deeper impotence; Hindus are not
afraid of jihad; the real danger comes from the
rampaging and manipulative West.
Crusades continue
Initially, as Islam spread rapidly westwards,
Christian Europe felt the heat. The Crusades were
launched to recover the Holy Land, but more
pertinently, to break Muslim control over the trade
routes to Asia. Christendom lost the Crusades, but
Europe's mercantile class opened the sea route to the
East, and later to Africa, putting Muslims at bay on
two ocean fronts. Jerusalem was retaken in 1917; Gen.
Allenby famously remarked that the Crusades were
finally completed! Damascus was taken in 1920; the
French commander went to the tomb of Salaudin in the
Great Mosque and said: Nous revenons, Salaudin! (We
are back, Salaudin!).
Post Second World War, the western world encouraged
substantial Muslim immigration for cheap labour in the
wake of prosperity stimulated by the Marshall Plan.
Muslim intellectuals were encouraged to migrate west
as `dissidents' against their respective national
regimes (mostly West-supported dictatorships! ).
Muslim integration into European civil society was not
given a thought then; now Muslims are a dissatisfied
and vocal minority.
Integration is now seen by both sides as accepting the
Default Culture of the West, i.e., the culture of
Christian Europe, and tailoring Islam to conform to
this culture. [This formula works with Hindus in
America, Europe, the Gulf, and even Australia, where
Hindus cannot understand the growing white animosity
to their presence there. This is because most Hindus
sundered their links with religion and culture before
leaving the shores of Bharat, egged on by ambitious
parents who valued monetary success above everything
else; a handful had other reasons].
But Islam is the last of the Revealed Semitic Faiths –
supposedly the Final and most perfect Revelation –
hence marginalised and besieged Muslim groups fight to
retain their distinctive identity (hijab) and
traditions (multiple marriages, Sharia). Islam
challenges western secularism and multi-cultural
claims with its insistence to live in its own way on
soil long dominated by Christianity; the consequences
of this increasing tension cannot but be volatile.
As part of its contest with Islam and quest for world
dominion, the Christian-Colonial world made early
inroads into the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires.
Jesuit monk Rudolf Acquaviva came to Agra for
religious debates at the invitation of Emperor Akbar;
the Delhi Diocese was established in the reign of
Akbar. Unnoticed by Indian historians, the white
missionary and trader were fairly entrenched in many
strategic locations by the time the Mughal Empire
formally declined and the Maratha and Sikh Empires had
peaked.
All this ultimately deepened the religious conflict
and triggered revivalist movements in Islam, which
Europeans proved adept in penetrating and
manipulating. Wahabi Islam and indeed, all militant
Muslim movements that have accompanied the rise of
Political Islam in the modern Colonial Era have
intensified the de facto disempowerment of the Muslim
world, a reality Muslims cannot wish away, and to
which they accord a frustrated recognition.
Ayatollah Khomeini's success in overthrowing the
pro-American Pehlavi dynasty failed to quieten the
seething discontent in the Islamic world. As
pro-Western Sunni regimes generally survived the
growing radicalization of the Muslim world, the
Khomeini Revolution only intensified the Shia-Sunni
divide.
In India, the traditional structures of Hindu society
(jati, varna, parampara, sampradaya) have the
intrinsic elasticity to cope with and contain sharply
divergent cultural streams. India's unique
civilisational ethos has learnt to co-exist with
ethnic, racial, and religious groups (Jews, Parsis,
Muslims) that do not desire to be assimilated into the
dominant culture. Muslims have long been negotiating
political space while protecting their religion and
culture. This involved delicate balancing and was
possible only because, as Aristotle observed
(Politics), Hindus were the only people in the world
to have successfully made dharma the basis of their
public life. To this day, this remains India's default
cultural trait; it survived the colonial
divide-and-rule that inhibited Muslims from adjusting
to a larger pan-Indian unity.
The Christian West is incapable of accommodating the
growing assertion of socio-cultural- religious
identity by its Muslim population. Hence cultural
pluralism, the suspension of the dominant cultural-civilisati
onal framework so other groups can find space to
define themselves, has to make way for a more overt
assertion of Europe's traditional Christian identity.
In reaction, pan-Islamism compresses the religious
traditions of Muslim groups into a one-dimensional
Arabized identity to respond to the West's
economic-political hegemony in Muslim countries and
regions where Muslims are minority populations.
As a corollary, the overt assertion of the West's
Christian identity is a natural extension of
continuing Western economic, cultural, and religious
imperialism. Hence the rising budgets for evangelism
in non-Christian countries like India, Nepal, Sri
Lanka, Bhutan and Myanmar, but also Muslim regions
like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia (first East
Timor, now Aceh), and our own Srinagar Valley.
It is in this context alone that one must view the
frenzied French ban on head scarves in 2004, on the
plea that it involved the submission of women, and the
even more specious argument that the harsh lampooning
of the Prophet in a Danish magazine in 2005 was about
free speech.
Pigeons come home to roost
For Europe, the pigeons have come home to roost. After
decades of strenuous denial that religion is crucial
in shaping national identity, and that the religion
and culture of the majority must legitimately be the
dominant identity in multi-religious societies like
India, Europe is in a blue funk trying to manufacture
a discourse over national identity without using the
word `religion.' Best of luck.
The truth is that religion is the bedrock of identity,
and religion always expresses itself in culture. Islam
cannot accept Christian culture without accepting
Christian faith.
Another unpleasant truth is that religion cannot be
kept out of the public domain, because it is not an
individual or family affair, but has social and
community aspects that demand expression and respect.
The European Union's 20 million Muslims are giving
goose-bumps to 500 million Christians. Long centuries
of familiarity and common descent from the Patriarch
Abraham have failed to yield a common ground of mutual
respect and peaceful coexistence. One country wants to
put the Cross on its national flag.
Things can only get worse. The post 9/11 `War on
Terror' is viewed by both Muslims and Christians as
another Crusade – a symbol of the West's failure to
separate the religious from the political.
For Islam, this is a moment of catharsis and choice.
Islam stands at a major crossroad in its historical
trajectory. Hitherto, it has been Janus-faced like the
Greek god who looked simultaneously east and west.
Those days of luxury – of hating the west and hurting
the east – are now over. To survive as a viable
religion, culture, polity, Islam must free its own
lands and peoples from the vice-like grip of the
Crusaders and the Capitalists who are its real
tormentors and oppressors. It must deny itself the
temptation of crushing `soft' targets like India that
have the resilience and the resources to bounce back
and to hit back.
Islam will do well to concentrate its fight on the
Arabian peninsula, the European mainland, and the
United States. Hindus should think in terms of
restoring the Hindu civilisational frontier up to
eastern Persia in the west, Myanmar and Nepal in the
east and Tibet in the north.
The writer is Editor, www.vijayvaani. com Email:
sandhya206@bol.net.in
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments