Tag: Indian Politics

We are publishing this humorous piece at a time of heightened communal tension in India. Ever since the new government of Narendra Modi came in to power, Hindu extremists have repeatedly said that all Muslims and Christians in India need to get back to Hinduism. This “conversion” they term as “gharwapasi” which means homecoming. Hope, Mike’s mild humor will please our readers and also give them an understanding of the issue. -EDITOR

Ghar Wapsi – i.e. homecoming. It is the biggest news in India. That is ,bringing Christians and Muslims back into the fold of Hinduism – through allurements and or coercion.

Religion is for sale now – it takes 5 lakh Rupees to convert a Muslim to Hinduism and 2 lakh Rupees to convert a Christian to be a Hindu.

Times of India reports, “Dharam Jagran Samiti, an RSS offshoot, has distributed pamphlets in Aligarh seeking donations for converting Christians and Muslims to Hinduism. The pamphlet says it costs Rs 2 lakh to convert a Christian and Rs 5 lakh to convert a Muslim. It has set December 25 as the date for a major conversion ceremony and put down an annual target of 2 lakh conversions – 1 lakh Muslims and 1 lakh Christians.” (1 lakh is 100,000).

I urge the Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhist and Muslims of India, comprising roughly 200 Million to make a collective offer to the mis-representatives of Hinduism to come up with 500,000 x 200 Million Rupees, plus a job for each one to convert to Hinduism. We need to be Brahmins. All monies must be deposited into their bank accounts. Here is my offer; I will become a Hindu Brahmin for 5,000 Crore Indian Rupees.

Prime Minister Modi’s Plan to have a bank account and jobs for Indians will be fulfilled at once. He will become the greatest leader on the earth with that achievement; creating 200 million jobs and opening 200 Million bank accounts, there is no parallel in the history, and indeed he would have matched the record of the Vedic times, restoring India’s glory of ancient Vedic Banking.

The fascist trend to dictate what one eats or believes is eventually going to be bad for Hindus as well. The only way to save Hindus and non-Hindus from rogue Hindus is for good Hindus to speak up. So what if all Indian’s become Hindu? Will you be safe as a Hindu? Would the mistreatment of Dalits and other “untouchables” go away?

Modi should thank Owaisi for doing his work. Modi is unable to control the happenings, the radical Hindus are hijacking his agenda, a guy like Owaisi will mirror their stupidities and hopefully, the nation will be back on the track. His stand will show how ridiculous both are. I have never liked Owaisi for his rhetoric, but I see him as instrument of bringing sanity to governance. If good Hindus cannot stop the extremists among them, Owaisi will do that.

Here is my take on conversions; Let everyone drink, eat, wear or believe whatever the hell he or she wants to believe in the pursuit of his or her happiness. Every Indians should have the freedom to be lured by cash, offer of a job, home, education or whatever, and change his or her religion any number of times to the religions of the highest bidder. We change jobs for better money or benefits, proximity or safety, and some donkeys divorce their spouse for a better model (both ways), and the politicians change parties for position or money. Why shouldn’t a common man do the same? Offer me $5 Million, I will become a Hindu, Christian or a Jew – the offer remains open until I win a lottery of higher value.

What Aurangzeb, Ghazni and other Kings did was wrong; noone in India is related to them now, even if they are, what have they got to do with the wrongs of his or her great great-great grandfather? A majority of North Indians carry the genes of Genghis Khan, does that make us all bad people? It is not religion that does wrong, it is individuals. The near annihilation of Jewish people cannot be blamed on today’s German Christians; the near annihilation of Native Americans cannot be blamed on today’s Americans; the near annihilation of Buddhism and Jainism in India cannot be blamed on today’s Hindus.

Clean Kings – with a few exceptions, kings of the past, be it Christian, Muslim, Hindu or others had only one business – to annex the next door empire, tax the people, rob the wealth of neighbors, bring their women to their harems (Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or Christian). These guys were in war with everyone around them. If you find a good Hindu King, there will be a good Christian and a Muslim King and if you find a bad one in one, there will be in others too. The Discovery Magazine in an article writes about the genetic makeup of the kings, “The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms.”

If we care about India, we need to respect all Indiansregardless of what they believe. We cannot have two mouths to speak foul and good at the same time. The same blood runs through all of us. To an Average American, if he were to film us, he or she cannot distinguish between a common Hindu and a Muslim; we look the same, we dress the same, we eat our food with our fingers, and wipe our asses with water. On the social side, we all get angry with injustice; we all cry when someone dies, we beat up on a guy who wrongly touches a woman in a bus. We all like the same movies – that is why movies make it a big hit based on commonality and not religiosity.

The film PK has outdone all Indian Movies in the last 100 years the film PK has many ideas that I wrote in teaching Pluralism.
Thanks to the harassment by the right wing Hindus, more Indians have seen this movie because of the negative publicity. I urge them to do more protests, so more people can see the movie.

The right thing for them is to go quite on it. Remember Salman Rushdie? The more the right wing Muslims protested it, the more copies of the books were sold, and Rushdie became a Rich man. I have learned something new about the film business – in the movie I am making, I will sure add the material to get the right wing Hindus and Muslims to protest and agitate to make my movie do well in the box office.

The managers of every religion have abused the poor and innocent, it is the responsibility of the society to warn the public of such people, so they are not taken. I would have expected RSS to endorse the film, as Mr. Advani did; it separates the bad apples from the good ones. Unless Baba Ramdev is guilty, he should not be going against the movie but promoting it.

What we need is education, all of us, who justify wrong doingof one or the other. A wrong is a wrong no matter who commits it. A rapist must be punished as rapist and not as a Hindu or a Muslim; a terrorist must be punished as a terrorist and not as a Muslim or a Hindu. Blame the individual and not the religion. You can punish the guy and restore justice in the society, but you cannot punish the religion, it is not a thing – and you cannot kill, kick, hang, beat up, shoot or bury the religion, then why bark at it like a stupid? Here is my poem in Hindi and English about blaming and punishing the wrong doer and not his religion. Site: www.UrduHindi.net Link:
http://urduhindinet.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-mera-dharam-kahan-tha.html

 

We need to understand the wisdom of Vasudhaiva Kutumbukum of Hinduism, and from Islam, Christianity and Judaism, “We are all one family from a single couple; Adam and eve.” In a democracy what difference does it make if you are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Jew or whatever?You mind your space, food and loved ones and I do mind my business. As long as I don’t take over your space, steal your food, or hurt your loved ones – what is it to you? We need to grow up and be mature, and then Hindustan will be on the path of pragati (progress) instead of getting stuck in religion. Prime Minister Modi has a great slogan, and he needs to control his men, otherwise they will dictate his agenda, and all of us would lose it in the end including Hindus.His election slogan, “sab ka sath, sab ka vikas” that is every one’s support, brings prosperity to all will become meaningless. Instead it will become, “Hindutva ka saaz BJP ki bakwas.” The right wing will play the music on BJP’s non-sense chatter.

 

His election slogan, “sab ka sath, sab ka vikas” that is every one’s support, brings prosperity to all will become meaningless. Instead it will become, “Hindutva ka saaz BJP ki bakwas.” The right wing will play the music on BJP’s non-sense chatter.

The Hindutva Generals are acting like brainless Pakistani leaders beating up on Kashmir; they cannot manage their own nation but want Kashmir and make a bigger mess of all. Instead of delivering safety and progress to Pakistan, they are getting the public hung up on Kashmir, how long can they do that? I hope Prime Minister Modi is not doing the same, impotent to produce jobs, bring black money back and build toilets instead of temples, he is letting the rogues from his party distract and mislead the Indian public to focus on communalism rather than sab ka vikas (every one’s prosperity).

I hope you know the difference between hard core Hindutva and Hinduism, hard core Islamists and Islam, hard core Zionisist and Judaism, Neocons and Christianity… one is political and other is religious.

Let every Indian is free to eat, drink, wear and believe whatever the hell he or she wants to believe.

Thank you. Mike

(The author is a public speaker, thinker, writer and a commentator on Pluralism at work place, politics, religion, society, gender, race, culture, ethnicity, food and foreign policy. A staunch defender of human rights his book ‘Standing up for Others’ will be out soon, and a movie “Americans Together” is in the making.
He is a frequent guest commentator on Fox News and syndicated Talk Radio shows and a writer at major news papers including Dallas Morning News, Huffington Post and The Indian Panorama. All about him is listed in 63 links atwww.MikeGhouse.net and his writings are at www.TheGhousediary.com and 10 other blogs. He is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day. He can be reached at mikeghouse@aol.com and on 214-325-1916.)

Opportunity to use American money and technology

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s diplomatic coup in inviting President Barack Obama, and securing his assent, to be the chief guest at next year’s Republic Day parade has obscured the deeper meaning of the move. In essence, the ceremonial occasion has been used by him to take a leaf out of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping’s book in wooing the United States for his country’s dramatic economic development.

Deng realized that notwithstanding his official Communist creed, the only country that could make a Chinese economic transformation possible was America. While guarding his ideological legacy, he was prepared to wear cowboy hats in his assiduous efforts to please his hosts during his US visit. Mr. Modi has come to the conclusion that he needs President Obama’s support and that of a largely sympathetic Capitol Hill to push his economic reform agenda by securing American investment and technology. And he is willing to move towards Washington in geopolitical terms to achieve his goals.

In parallel, while Deng did not sacrifice the traditional dictatorial form of government since the Communists came to power under Mao, Mr. Modi believes he can tap American technology and investment while retaining the parameters of the Sangh Parivar’s ideology of maintaining a mixture of myths with his brand of Hindu nationalism. India crossed a hurdle in forging a deal that was in danger of endangering a happy outcome in the World Trade Organization.

But there are a number of problems, some of long standing, between India and the United States. It is ironical that former President George W. Bush, who did much to bring India into the world’s legitimate nuclear powers from its pariah status, was deprived of its benefits. A further paradox is that the Bharatiya Janata Party was the cheer leader in imposing steep penalties on nuclear suppliers for civilian nuclear plants in a parliamentary resolution. It is now Mr. Modi’s task to untangle this puzzle to encourage American nuclear suppliers to bid for plants.

It is well recognized that Prime Minister Modi’s first six months in office have been disappointing in his inability to launch big bang economic reform measures. He has thus far preferred a more deliberate pace. Washington is more understanding of his problems than other investors. But he has to make things happen in a time span of up to two years before his reputation for decisive governance takes a hit.

After President Obama’s recent agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping to diminish polluting substances – their carbon footprints – in a given framework, there will be increasing pressure on India to make a pledge to reduce its pollution by a target date. The traditional Indian argument that it needs more time to take people out of poverty does not wash. Although far behind the US and China in the carbon dioxide they emit, India is the third largest emitter of polluting substances in the world.

In the larger geopolitical context, the objectives of India and the US converge in many areas, particularly in Asia and the Far East. It is significant that Mr. Modi’s outreach to two of America’s major allies in the region, Japan and Australia, disregard the earlier shibboleths of keeping a certain distance from US military allies. The Prime Minister has no inhibitions in seeking military cooperation with them or in hiding the close ties with the main US ally in the Middle East, Israel. India’s defense cooperation with the United States, in terms of arms purchases and technology, has already accelerated.

But securing access to high technology is very much a work in progress. Experts suggest that it will take at least two years for US policymakers to shed their inhibitions on parting with state-of-art technology. While the Prime Minister has made significant moves in the field of foreign policy, his cupboard is somewhat bare in domestic affairs. He would have helped matters in passing legislation in Parliament if he had had the courtesy of giving the shattered Congress Party the official position of Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, rather than going by the rulebook as interpreted by the BJP. A jarring note in the six months of the Modi Government is his meanderings as a doughty fighter for his party’s cause in state assembly elections. His street-fighter instincts sit ill with the demeanor of a sitting Prime Minister.

Here, the BJP’s interests in capturing as many states as possible have taken precedence over national interest. Mr. Modi must thank the decade-long UPAled government for some of the good it has done, despite its poor record in other respects. It gave India nuclear legitimacy in the world and two of the significant measures the Prime Minister is now seeking to promote, which his party had also previously opposed, are the higher rate of permissible foreign investment in insurance and in enacting a goods and services tax regime which would give an instant boost to the country’s GDP.

The advantage Mr. Modi has is that outside his fads and belief in myths he has been nurtured in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh such as the prevalence of plastic surgery and space travel in ancient India, he is very much in tune with American ways. His partiality for US public relations outfits and methods is well documented. And he is in sympathy with American freewheeling methods of making money. As he has himself put it, money-making is very much in the Gujarati blood. We have come a long way from the early days of non-alignment. For one thing, we live in a starkly different world in the 21st century.

For another, the economic reforms initiated by the then Congress government in 1991 out of compulsion were bound to take the country in another direction, more in keeping with a technology-savvy contracting world. It is for Mr. Modi to grasp the opportunity to take India to a fast-moving economy and work towards a prosperous India.

In parallel, while Deng did not sacrifice the traditional dictatorial form of government since the Communists came to power under Mao, Mr. Modi believes he can tap American technology and investment while retaining the parameters of the Sangh Parivar’s ideology of maintaining a mixture of myths with his brand of Hindu nationalism,” says the author

(The author, a senior journalist, is a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines. He can be contacted at snihalsingh@gmail.com)