Thank you, Schroedinger’s Cat:
I am afraid that the scrapping of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution is just the beginning, it has little to do with the development of Kashmir. Prime Minister Modi’s agenda for India in his second term is to change India’s constitution and pave the way for a majoritarian state which is a democracy in name alone. 94 years after its formation the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) is the closest to achieving its goal of the Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation).
The international media is missing the RSS agenda behind Modi’s actions. Before he entered politics, Modi was a pracharak or a fulltime evangelist for the RSS. Just like the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime minister, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee before him. There is no daylight between what the Sangh wants and what the BJP wants.
BJP is the political front of the Sangh, an all male grassroots fraternal organization that has had only one non-brahmin sarsangchalak (chief of the Sangh) in its almost hundred years of existence. According to some estimates, a group that makes up around 5% of the population of India. Also with two exceptions spanning 16 years, all the other sarsangchalaks have been Marathi brahmins. The Sangh still does not admit women. For a group that purports to speak for all Hindus its leadership is drawn from a tiny slice of Hindu male brahmins.
India is as complex as Europe would be if it were one country. India is home to two major language families and twenty two official languages. India also has the second largest population of Muslims in the world. The Sangh sees this diversity be it religious or linguistic as inherently problematic. Their dream India, which they call Bharat, is united under the saffron banner of Hindutva speaking as one in one language, Hindi. Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists are considered Hindu for the purposes of this classification but Christians and Muslims are not. Sangh ideologues have argued that diversity made India weaker and an easy prey for the British in the 18th and the 19th centuries and the first wave of Muslim invaders from Central Asia a thousand years ago and later. The way for India to go back to its former greatness is to unite under a banner of a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation).
Britain has been forgiven but BJP and its sympathizers want Muslim citizens of India to pay for the sins of the central Asian invaders and also for the formation of Pakistan. Their claims about a Hindu rashtra are inspired more by the nationalistic fervor sweeping Europe in the early twentieth century than they are by ancient India. Here is what Madhav Golwalkar, the most influential sarsangchalak who held the post for 43 years had to say about Hitler’s Germany in a book published in the 1940s.
…To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of 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 root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.
Also the RSS map of Akhand Bharat (Greater India) is suspiciously close to that of British India.As I explained in my post on Kashmir, Kashmir’s special status given its Muslim majority was something that Sangh’s leaders could not stand right from the early years of independence. And before independence, hatred and the fear of Muslims was the foundational capstone of the Sangh and other Hindu right organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha. In their telling tiny Britain was able to subjugate mighty India because Hindus were cowed down by the Muslim rule of over a thousand years. The founding father of Hindutva, Vinayak Savarkar had this to say about Muslims in an interview to an American journalist in 1945:
Muslims in India should be treated as ‘Negroes’
Savarkar headed the Hindu Mahasabha and inspired, among others, Mohandas Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse. He was indicted in Gandhi’s assassination but not sentenced. The Mahasabha was currently in the news for reenacting the infamous assassination.
In today’s India Savarkar can count among his fans the current prime minister:
We bow to Veer Savarkar on his Jayanti. Veer Savarkar epitomises courage, patriotism and unflinching commitment to a strong India. He inspired many people to devote themselves towards nation building.
The partition of British India and the formation of Pakistan on the eve of independence is just added another item to their the mile long list of grievances against Indian Muslims. The ones who chose to stay in India believing the promise that the authors of the Indian Constitution made to all its minorities that India was for all Indians, irrespective of caste, gender, language or religion.
Actions taken in Kashmir this August are just the first steps in the RSS agenda. If you think all this does not affect you, you would be wrong because Hindu Sevak Sangh(HSS), the RSS offshoot in the United States has been propping up Tulsi Gabbard and has chapters all over the US.
schrodingers_cat
Thanks AL. If there are questions I will be around to answer them the best I can.
Paul W.
OT, but does anyone know how to watch the CNN town halls without a cable subscription.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: What I find interesting is that it’s all about heritage and religion.
JPL
@Paul W.: https://livenewschat.eu/top/
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks for your work on this, SC. How strong is BJP’s control in the states?
schrodingers_cat
@Paul W.: You can go to CNN they will have a link where they are live streaming it.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Strong in the Hindi heartland, Gujarat and Maharashtra, gaining ground in the northeast. I would say it is the strongest national party in India. The Indian National Congress has just withered away and the left parties fight among themselves.
schrodingers_cat
@JPL: What animates them are two things, hatred of Muslims and a belief in their own superiority. It has little to do with heritage, that’s the cover they use.
LesGS
So, is that map an aspiration?
schrodingers_cat
@LesGS: Yes. Pipe dream.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Do you see any hope of a renewed opposition now that the Gandhi family doesn’t have as much juice?
opiejeanne
Thanks for writing this and explaining it so that we can understand it.
Does this map of theirs suggest that if BJP gets complete control/power in India they will try to take back Tibet? Pakistan? Bangladesh?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: But they still have a floor of 30% of the vote in most of the states. So unless the opposition parties get together and there is a binary choice I don’t see the political calculus changing. Also, BJP-RSS are masters of propaganda, lies and intimidation. And sadly many upper caste people are quite happy with what is happening.
misterpuff
Wonder how the Christians feel about being equivalent to the Moooslims?
schrodingers_cat
@opiejeanne: The founders of the Sangh worshiped Hitler and their ideas and philosophy is recreating that in the Indian context. They want this to happen, but they don’t have a plan of making it happen, AFAIK.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Yeah, Trump buying Greenland was more realistic.
LesGS
@opiejeanne: And Afghanistan and “Burma”!
Cermet
This is a trend we are seeing many places, certainly the US as well. I partly (but far from solely) see AGW creating unstable conditions that promote this type of behavior. As the sub-continent becomes more and more uninhabitable due to increasing temperature combined with its associated high humidity, Indian is in deep, deep, trouble that I see no exit strategy as long as AGW continues; in fact, the ‘baked in temp’, even if we stopped all CO2 production now, that is coming might be too high for people to exist there.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Yeah, Trump had a plan(just not a very good one).
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I hate this kind of shit. Christ, we here have shown the world that E Pluribus Unum really can work, if the people want it to. It isn’t always easy, and it’s often messy. But, shit, look at us. We’re a big, sloppy, unwieldy country, and even in colonial times, we were from all over the world.
I’m not glossing over slavery or the slaughter of Native Americans. But still, it’s worth taking a look at how people thought two or three hundred years ago. Most people didn’t think the Irish, or people from southern and eastern Europe were the same race as northern and western Europeans. And still we found a way to make it work–much of the time, at least.
We had people who didn’t speak English, and there were people who belonged to all kinds of crazy–or so they were thought of at the time–German sects.
And in fits and starts, we’ve made it work. People don’t have to worship the same way, or even worship at all. People don’t have to speak the same way. It’s sad to see people clinging to this racist shit in 2019.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: They control the media and are using 1984 like tactics, a lot of people buy into this nonsense and lies.
RSS apparatchik claimed that Pakistan is going to be a part of India by 2025 .earlier this year.
schrodingers_cat
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): India has made it work for a thousand years. And since independence India’s creed was unity in diversity. These khaki clad men think that might is right and getting along is for sissies.
debbie
Not Kashmir, but any thoughts on the issue of the National Register of Citizens? Do you think the BJP will follow through?
schrodingers_cat
@debbie: Of course they will. They are already doing it in Assam.
Pavlov'sMan
@Cermet:
As big a concern, if not greater, is the water table that’s dropping at a precipitous rate.
There have been quarrels between states over water.
The long term consequences are frightening.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat:
So standard Fox News viewers
wvng
@Cermet: and then you add in the coming refugee swarm from Bangladesh. There will be so many mass refugee movements around the world in the coming years, the Syrian diaspora is just a taste.
Pavlov'sMan
@schrodingers_cat:
Trump’s kids, and daughter-in-law, visited numerous temples in several states, in the runup to Nov 20116.
My enemy’s enemy is my friend…
kindness
Sadly this is kinda what Evangelicals would like to do here in the US. Dominionists….they are Satan. And I don’t believe in the Devil or Hell for that matter.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
SC, how do you think the BJP-RSS, as well as the general Indian public would react to a unified Dem US federal government imposing sanctions on India? As well as UN imposed sanctions?
Patricia Kayden
@schrodingers_cat: How are Christians faring in India under this regime? Or is its ire solely focused on Muslims?
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
Like always, sigh.
I travelled to a number of countries in Asia in the oughts and India was the only one that felt “normal” to me – pluralistic, real free speech, real diversity. I hate seeing this direction.
schrodingers_cat
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Well sanctions are not going popular.
@Patricia Kayden: They hate Christians too, but they are too few to matter. They especially don’t like evangelists. The guy responsible for Graham Staines murder is a minister in Modi’s government. They also hate historians, rationalists and anyone who dares to speak the truth.
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: Its always possible that the fever will break and sanity will prevail. Authoritarian overreach backfired when Mrs. Gandhi tried it in the 1970s.
Steve in the ATL
@kindness: I just spent an hour squished into had an airplane seat by the obese foxbot sitting next to/on top of me. If we hadn’t been up front he wild have needed two full seats. He thinks Obama was a moron and trump a super genius (very stable, presumably).
Among other unsolicited bits of conversation, he hates all the Democratic candidates because they aren’t fully supporting Israel. I asked him why our country has any responsibility to support their country and his answer was of course “because they’re god’s chosen people”. I told him that his personal religious beliefs shouldn’t dictate US foreign policy. “But this country is a Christian nation founded by Christians!” No, Obese Man, it was founded by deists and with an establishment clause in the constitution intentionally.
He then tried to impress me that he had had two years of law school. Oh really, Comic Book Store Guy? “Yep—had a full ride to Thomas Cooley law school in Lansing!” Fucking Cooley—of course. The worst law school in the country.
He happily voted for trump because he hates all things Clinton, but was mad that trump attacked his two preferred candidates, Ted Cruz and Rick Perry. Is this god’s way of telling me to stop leaving my house?
The whole nightmare started when he made a comment that everyone who goes to Chicago gets shot.
I may turn into John Cole if I keep running into people like this guy.
ETA: I may have gotten a bit off topic here….
Cermet
@wvng: So true and so ignored by the media and even many here. This is THE issue driving so much now that we consider major problems; yet, these are just beginning trends! Things will get far, far worse in the future. India and the middle east are current leading hot stops as far as disruption is occurring despite that the arctic regions are undergoing the greatest heating. As BILLIONS of people are forced to leave in the next thirty to fifty years and no means to support them or even places to go, I’m lost on what will be done besides massive war, death, and destruction. Yet the world fiddles as the world burns; so to speak.
JPL
@Steve in the ATL: You talk to seat mates? Why?
Miss Bianca
Wow, I had no idea who the Sangh were. This was very informative. And scary.
Steve in the ATL
@JPL: he kept initiating it. I was trying to read! And kicking myself that I’d left my headphones in my bag.
Patricia Kayden
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks.
TenguPhule
@Steve in the ATL:
Gain 100 pounds and become a crazy cat person?
Jay
@Steve in the ATL:
“So, never been to Chicago?”
“Nobody moves to California anymore, it’s too popular.”
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
When was this period of greatness? It’s always sad when a country falls back on hazy memories of a supposedly wonderful past instead of boldly creating a better future for itself.
Muslims in India are not a magical elite taking up more resources than anyone else. And they certainly are not a remnant of the Mughal rulers. The depth of the antipathy seems unreasonable. What do these nationalists expect Muslims to do?
I also don’t see why this would appeal to Indian women or to anyone who was not from the Brahmin caste. What promise of glory is there for the average person?
Historically, how was this group dealt with as India gained Independence? Were they allowed to freely meet and to spread their noxious gospel? Have they always been represented in government?
Does anyone currently speak for Muslims in India?
Also, I can’t see either China or Pakistan cheering for any vision of Greater India that might involve their territory.
Alain
Thanks for this very informative post. It is quite clarifying.
Bill Arnold
@schrodingers_cat:
This aspect is especially disturbing for those of us on the outside peeking in. I’m concerned that Indian propaganda shops that provide international services will start to be a big thing if they don’t exist already. Can you share any links on BJP(RSS) propaganda that you’ve found helpful? (and also, if you/family aren’t ask risk, on the lies and intimidation.)
schrodingers_cat
@Bill Arnold: Its ongoing, I follow journalists that speak truth to power on Twitter who have taken on the BJP.
@waglenikhil (Nikhil Wagle, who is primarily a Marathi journalist/editor and was a TV anchor)
@HartoshSinghBal (editor of Caravan India)
@svaradarajan( editor of Wire India)
I am on Twitter too
@manyworlds1cat
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Mainly the era before Muslim invasions of India, Guptas, Mauryas etc. I am reading Savarkar’s works in their original Marathi right now. I don’t think they want to take on China right now, they are just happy intimidating Indian Muslims and other minorities.
Mr. Kite
@schrodingers_cat: Wow, that’s reaching pretty far for a golden age.
How the hell did we get this worldwide nationalism infection again?
(Thanks for the post! )
schrodingers_cat
@Mr. Kite: Savarkar includes Marathas also. Shivaji (17th century) is a great hero to RWNJs from my ancestral state although Shivaji himself had Muslim personnel, soldiers, officers etc working for him. Just like the Mughals had Rajputs in their employ. Its mostly revisionist history to see everything through the Hindu vs. Muslim lens.
schrodingers_cat
@Alain: @Patricia Kayden: You are welcome. I am glad you liked the post.
@Pavlov’sMan: Didn’t make much difference to the final outcome 84% Indian Americans voted for HRC.
schrodingers_cat
@Miss Bianca: They are scary because they are in power. Earlier when I was growing up we used to dismiss them as cranks.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Brachiator: I read somewhere that part of the antipathy between Hindus and Muslims was due to the fact that a lot of untouchables had converted to Islam, which would make Muslims basically uppity Indians who didn’t know their place.
But I’ve also read that according to strict Hindu theology everyone without a caste is supposed to be an untouchable, so the Brahmin were complete hypocrites for becoming chummy with the British during the centuries when the British ruled India.
schrodingers_cat
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Many lower caste people did change their religion to Islam and later to Christianity but that does not explain everything. Muslim society is as stratified if not more so than Hindu society in India. They are two social classes of Muslim, the one associated with the ruling class, with the exception of peninsular southern India, most of India has had many Muslim rulers in the last 1000 years and the one with working class poor. The wealthy and upper caste Muslims were the ones that primarily agitated for Pakistan.
Upper caste Muslims and Hindus both had the means and the abilities to learn English to survive and thrive in British India, while the lower castes didn’t.
And in the case of Goa replace English with Portuguese and Islam with Christianity. Upper caste converts would deride lower caste caste converts as “rice Christians” in Kerala or give-me-bread Christians in Goa.
J.A.Bibi
A few facts might help:
Pakistan: non-Muslim population
1947: 22%
today: 2%
Bangladesh: non-Muslim population
1947: 33% (it was East Pakistan then)
today: 7% and falling
India: Muslim population
1947: 8%
today:15%
In short, the proportion of Muslims in India has doubled since independence; during the same time, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, and other religious minorities have been nearly liquidated in Muslim-majority areas of the subcontinent.
Turning now to Kashmir (Indian part), some 300,000 Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs were ethnically cleansed by Kashmiri Muslims in 1990, after a terror campaign by mobs screaming “raliv, galiv ya chaliv” (convert to Islam, flee or be killed) and a slogan in Kashmiri that can be translated as “we will have independence, with Hindu women but without Hindu men.” Hundreds of Hindus and Sikhs were killed by the jihadis, and non-Muslim women raped. To this day, these people remain refugees and Kashmiri Muslims have threatened to behead anyone who tries to return. In the Pakistani part of Kashmir, non-Muslims were liquidated a long time ago.
Not surprisingly, Schrodinger’s cat omits all this in his blog post. For him, actual ethnic cleansing and liquidation of Hindus and Sikhs is not as interesting as imaginary ethnic cleansing by Hindus.
Here are some sources if you want to check my facts. Also Google is your friend. Use it.
1) https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/religious-minorities-experiencing-genocide-in-pakistan-scholar/articleshow/57391406.cms
2) https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/no-hindus-will-be-left-in-bangladesh-after-30-years-dhaka-university-economist/articleshow/55562708.cms
3) https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/propaganda-mongers-spreading-misinformation-about-article-370-says-us-based-kashmir-body/482996
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exodus_of_Kashmiri_Hindus
J.A.Bibi
As I wrote in my previous post, Hindus and Sikhs were eliminated from Kashmir back in 1990, a fact that Mr. Cat forgot to tell you. What is life like for Muslims in Kashmir under jihadi rule? More facts:
1) Cinema halls in Kashmir were closed a long time ago because the jihadis proclaimed that movies are un-Islamic (Islam prohibits depiction of the human form). Movie halls that tried to stay open were bombed by the jihadis and forced to close.
From https://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-after-saudi-now-kashmir-wants-cinema-halls-reopened-2567523
“The state doesn’t have any movie halls at present. Allah Tigers, now a defunct terror outfit, had banned cinema halls as well as sale and consumption of liquor in 1989. Led by self styled ‘Air Marshal’ Noor Khan, the outfit had ransacked and looted liquor shops and threatened to set ablaze cinema halls prompting them to shut down.”
2) A Kashmiri girl band that won a music competition in India was threatened with beheading, and the main mullah in Kashmir issued a fatwa denouncing them for bringing shame to Islam by performing music in public and not wearing hijabs. The girls shut down their band rather than risk being murdered by jihadists.
From https://www.dawn.com/news/783808
“SRINAGAR: An all-girl teenage rock band from Indian-administered Kashmir has decided to split after the region’s top Muslim cleric declared their music to be “un-Islamic”, their manager said Tuesday. Pragaash, a three-piece group whose members are still in high school, had been the target of an online hate campaign ever since winning a “Battle of the Bands” contest in December.”
3) Even Muslim policemen in Kashmir are tortured and killed by jihadists.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45365438
“At least 31 policemen in Indian-administered Kashmir have been killed by militants this year, according to official estimates. Sameer Yasir reports on how the state’s police force is bearing the brunt of the insurgency. Mohammad Ashraf Dar was killed in his kitchen in front of his one-year-old daughter on 22 August. It was the day of Eid-ul-Adha, a holy Muslim festival. The 45-year-old sub-inspector was posted to central Kashmir but he had come home to spend the holiday with his wife and three children.”
*********************
Questions for Senor Cat:
1) If your heart bleeds for oppressed minorities, why does it not bleed for Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs, who were a small and defenseless minority in Kashmir before they were ethnically cleansed by jihadists?
2) If your heart bleeds for vulnerable women #MeToo and all that, where were you when the girls of the Pragaash band were threatened with beheading for performing music in public and not wearing hijabs? Did you raise your voice when Hindu and Sikhs girls were raped and killed in the Kashmir valley in the 1980’s to terrorize minorities there?
3) If your heart bleeds for minorities, how many posts have you written about the terrible fate of non-Muslim minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh? A human rights organization in Pakistan estimates that more than 1000 young non-Muslims girls are kidnapped, raped and forcibly converted to Islam every year. Here are two articles:
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14574/pakistan-forced-conversion
https://www.newsbook.com.mt/artikli/2019/08/12/christian-women-forced-to-convert-to-islam-in-pakistan/?lang=en
Finally, a note to readers of this blog. I usually don’t post on any blog, let alone this one, but after reading the inane comments here, I came to realize that most of you know nothing about India or Kashmir, and that you are unquestioningly swallowing the swill put out by Mr. Cat. I have included a large number of links in my two posts. Before joining the echo chamber, it would be useful for you to read some of the articles. Don’t take my word for anything – read the links and do your own research (it takes a few seconds on Google). Then judge for yourself whether Mr. Cat gave you an accurate picture of what is happening in Kashmir and for that matter, everywhere in the Indian subcontinent where Muslims are a majority.
J.A.Bibi
No response from Schrodinger cat to my two posts even though it’s been more than 24 hours. I did make one error in my posts – I did not realize cat is a woman.
I posted a short and polite comment on her blog asking her why her narration of the events in Kashmir omitted the ethnic cleansing of all Kashmiri Hindus and Sikhs by jihadists in 1990. The comment stayed up for a few hours and was then “disappeared.”
As I wrote previously, you don’t need to believe a word I wrote about the situation in the subcontinent – you can follow the links I provided and judge for yourself. If you think my links are one-sided, use Google to find more material, now that you have an idea of what to search for (ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus, for a start). Educate yourself – it’s not just Nigerian scam artists who take advantage of people’s gullibility.