Just when a reputed regional writer like Patricia Mukhim had described the present order in Manipur as a “reign of terror”, the Government of India assured UN experts, “The situation in Manipur is peaceful and stable”!

The authorities seem to take offense at any other suggestion. Thus, the official position of the Government continues to be an outright denial of all the horrors that have been described in detail by most reliable sources. The entire world is full of Manipur accounts today. Emphatic denial does not produce truth, nor earn trust. Indian credibility has dipped.

Filing a case to assert the veracity of your statements merely establishes the hollowness of your claims, the shallowness of your pretensions. The Government of Manipur filed a police case against the Editors’ Guild of India over their description of the situation based on verified findings. After all, Chief Minister Biren Singh himself had admitted, at an unguarded moment, that hundreds of cases of horrors had taken place, so that he felt compelled to shut down the internet.

Filing cases against each other has become national sports in India today: leader against leader, party against party, Manipur Police against Assam Rifles, Manipur Government against Editors’ Guild, falsehood against truth.

Fatwas from Ayodhya

Of late, a Fatwa was reported from an Ayodhya seer against Stalin Junior: behead the offender for his statements on Sanatana Dharma! If such aggressive stands are encouraged by those in power, we need not wonder why no healing of emotions takes place in Kashmir, why Khalistan issue is taking a bad turn, why mutual alienation intensifies, why neighbours like Maldives want to keep India at a distance. Cultural nationalistic ‘exclusivism’ and aggressiveness have intensified in our neighbourhood from Sri Lanka to Nepal. BJP-RSS set the model.

With the ‘climate change’ in politics that Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced at home, climate has changed abroad. New York Times says, “Lecture halls at Canadian and American universities have become battlegrounds for critics and defenders of Hindu nationalism, punctuated by threats of violence and even death…Mr. Modi’s Hindu-first policies and increasing intolerance of scrutiny have spilled over into Indian communities worldwide, intensifying historical divisions among Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and different castes.” 

Dalits have pressed against discrimination from upper caste Hindus in Toronto, Seattle and California. Tensions and violence among Indian immigrants are reported from Leicester, UK. Government of India’s style of “imposed cultural loyalty” stirs storm worldwide.

Emotional Alienation

When Udhayanidhi Stalin said that Sanatana Dharma should be eradicated, what he meant was that the caste scourge must go. He wanted the abolition of social inequality, cultural distancing, unfair hierarchies, caste rigidities, devaluation of women. His intention was to criticise those who appropriated Sanatana Dharma for their own interest and made it a form of oppression than a blessing. A. Raja MP was more forthright; he compared Sanatana Dharma to HIV, leprosy; dengue, malaria. Jagdanand Singh of the RJP pointed to the unfairness imposed on the poor by the elite. Those who put tilak on forehead enslave others, he said.

Both sides must remember: Persuasion is the language of democracy, not force. Reasonableness convinces. An African proverb says, “A man who uses force is afraid of reasoning”. That is what is happening in Kashmir, Punjab, Manipur. The Armed Forces Special Power is extended in the hill districts of Manipur, not in the plains. Why this evident one-sidedness, hill people ask.

When you have placed your government in the hands of people who were only used to addressing street mobs and frenzied crowds, you are destined to hear howls like “Goli Maro” from a Home Minister. India’s deadlock with China has a single origin: Amit Shah’s promising to liberate Occupied Kashmir after the abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution. It sounded thrilling to BJP-RSS-Hindutva closed-minded masses, but provocative to Chinese leaders who were worried about their position in the Aksai Chin area. We are heading for more of it with the revival of the Khalistan-like sentiments being roused at national peripheries.

Biometric Data, Reasonable or Racist?

Recently the Centre has sent out a directive to Manipur and Mizoram to collect biometric data of Myanmar refugees, as though they can establish people’s national identity. Manipur has sought time to complete the process. Mizoram refuses to do it, alleging discrimination. Well, what else decides issues in Delhi these days except discrimination? The prevailing silence alone is as “criminal” as the terrors that are taking place in Manipur, just like the continuation of Biren Singh in office under whom “hundreds” of crimes were committed. It is his own admission! Zoramthanga of Mizoram refuses to collaborate in making ‘racial’ distinctions. Chins are our brothers, he says. Moreover, can national identities be decided on biometric data? Of Rishi Sunak or Kamala Harris? Of Sonia or Obama?

In 19^th century Europe, with the rise of nationalism, there was a rise of interest in racial studies and an eagerness to affirm the superiority of one’s own race.  We Indians cannot forget that Manu was keen on racial purity to a fanatical extent centuries earlier. Romila Thapar in her “Which of Us Are Aryans?” (Aleph Book Co, New Delhi, 2019) traces the abuses to which racism led. Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau in France, for example, cautioned his society against interbreeding of Aryans with non-Aryans. Linnaeus provided the biological principles. “Race-science” became a highly respected science (Thapar 40).  Herbert Risley took another step forward, developing craniology: skull types -- cephalic index, nasal index.

Aryan Superiority Claims

The greatness of the Greeks was specifically attributed to their Aryan superiority. Nazism was already round the corner! Though Hindutva intellectuals often blame European scholars for having damaged the image of ancient Hindu greatness, the fact is that Max Muller only raised it higher constructing Indian civilization on the Vedas. He did the upper castes the greatest favour possible, relating them closely with European Aryans. He edited the Rig Veda and exalted it to the skies. Europe was thrilled. Thus, he laid the foundation of modern Brahminism.

Max Muller glorified the courage of Aryans invading India and subduing the natives (dasas), explained the development of Arya-varna and Dasa-varna and the rise of caste-system. “The lower castes, untouchables and tribal were descended from the Dasas” (Thapar 43-44). Such studied conclusions seemed extremely flattering to the Indian upper castes. Their all-round superiority was being scientifically proved, they thought.

Aryan Migration

Today’s Saffron Think Tank would like to reject the Aryan Invasion theory, as it establishes their ‘foreignness’ in reference to indigenous communities. However, Michael Witzel contends that archaeology, linguistics, and population genetics perfectly agree on an Aryan migration into India from the Urals through Bactria and Persia (Thapar 1). Initially, the local people (Dasyus) greeted them ‘with a smile’, according to Jaiminiya Brahmana 2.423 (Thapar 4). We remember how European adventurers were welcomed by American Indians with gifts at the first stage. But the invading forces were of another mind-set.

Similarly, Rig Veda shows, Aryans were dead set on storming the fortresses of the Dasyus and raiding their cattle. When the Dasyus were attacked, they showed their strength. The non-Aryan Chieftain Sambara in his 99 stone fortresses in west Pakistan, could not be overcome for 40 years (Thapar 6). But ultimately the aggressive triumphed.

Hindu nationalists wish to appropriate the Harappan civilization which is generally attributed to the Dravidians. They argue that Aryans were indigenous to India, that they migrated to West from here. But mature Harappan culture was around 2600-1700 BC (Thapar 32), while Rig Veda was composed about 1200-1000 BC, as revealed by language analysis (Thapar 11). Further, there is no sign of the use of horse in Harappa, while Aryans were constantly on the move with horses and regularly in conflict with Dasyus on chariots.

Again, the Harappan was an urban civilization, with well-planned cities, greatly advanced in production, trade, exchange, and seals, while Rig Veda speaks of wandering agro-pastoralists, forests, rivers, villages, cattle, fields; wealth calculated in cows and horses; cattle-raids, water-sources. Aryan movement was from present day Punjab to the Gangetic plains (Thapar 62).

‘Foreign’ Origin of Aryans

Archaeology and linguistics today confirm, without any doubt, the migration of Indo-Aryan speakers from Central Asia. Brahmins and Bhumihars of North India (Thapar 20) have Central Asian traits to 57% and about 11% even in the South (21).

Rig Veda reflects Indus plains, the later Vedas the Gangetic plains. The Aryans kept moving to the Doab (Thapar 31). They were not in control of Magadha region yet, from where Buddhism and Jainism rose.

Caste-system developed after the Rig Vedic period, after many indigenous communities were subdued and made Shudras. Only in the later Vedas we find references to Varnas and tribal chief addressed as king (Thapar 33).

Though today’s Hindu nationalists do not recognize their immigrant status, when the Aryan immigration was first proposed by European scholars, the Indian upper classes felt elated. German Romantics had begun to look deep into Indian history, Sanskrit language, and Vedic concepts to trace their own Aryan roots.  Herder and Schlegel were eager to explore their own Aryan heritage through Sanskrit texts (Thapar 39).

Many things promoted the theory in India with ease. On the one hand, the British could claim that they had saved the Indians from the Muslims (Thapar 46), on the other, the Brahmins could lay a claim to superiority being of the same race as the rulers (Thapar 47). Keshab Chunder Sen saw the meeting of parted cousins. Bond between upper castes and ruling class was strengthened (Thapar 51). That is what is happening today, alienating the sober-minded.

Myth-creation

Now, Indian myth-creators take over, claiming millions of years of ancestry from the Vedas. Bal Gangadhar Tilak placed the Vedas around 4500 BC, arguing from planetary positions in Rig Vedic hymns (Thapar 50). Dayanand Saraswati, a Brahmin, founded the Arya Samaj to return to the culture of the Vedas. For him, Vedas are the source of ‘all knowledge, including modern science’! (Thapar 52). This mania continues to our own days, with head-transplantation tales and Ramayana stories of aircraft.

Arya Samaj began insisting on the purity of the upper castes. Madame Blavatsky promoted Aryan superiority like Col. Olcott, who argued that Aryans took civilization from India to the West. RSS exultantly agreed, insisting on the religious identity. Thus rose the conviction: caste Hindus are Aryans and Aryans are indigenous to India. Non-Hindus are foreigners and they are Muslims, Christians, Parsis, and Communists (Thapar 54).

Hindutva scholars have been pushing “alternative facts” in the place of truth (Thapar 5). History is made to suit upper caste communities and dominant religious groups (Thapar 55). They quote not historians but Aurobindo, Vivekananda, Dayananda Saraswati and Tilak, who all had cute political agendas too. After all, they were caught in a ‘colonial debate’.

Hemchandra Raychaudhury (1923) begins his Indian history with Parikshit, subsequent to the Mahabharata war! (Thapar 57-58). Indus Valley and Harappa achievements of the Indian civilization are coldly set aside.

In the same way, ‘Brahmanas’ want to forget the heights that the ‘Shramanas’ (Buddhists, Jains) reached in wise teachings from which they themselves benefited for their Upanishadic reflections. Johannes Bronkhorst in his “Greater Magadha” considers these two independent civilizations that merged after lengthy conflicts. For over seven centuries, Buddhism dominated the subcontinent, and India served as a Guru to the Eastern world.  No one remembers this today.

“Rising India”

Shramana sects (Buddhists, Jains, Ajivikas, Carvakas) did not accept Brahmins as religious authorities, and rejected Rig Vedic texts as revealed. There were serious confrontations, even “vitriolic exchange” (Thapar 78). As the Buddhists stood for the poor, they were gradually edged out. Inequality aggravated. Recently, Mohan Bhagwat himself admitted that the lower castes lived like animals for 2000 years, and therefore 200 years of reservation was legitimate.  

Hindutva rise today is the assertion of the dominance of the upper castes, ‘red in tooth and claw’. Others have no rights. For Amit Shah, recognition of minority rights is ‘minority appeasement’. Teach them a lesson, he says. Modiji speaks of ‘an inclusive’ G20 and criticizes China’s ‘might is right’ philosophy.

Meanwhile, cases come up against opposition leaders and their dependents: Kharge’s, Stalin’s sons, and others in hundreds. Cases against Opposition leaders keep the Judiciary busy, Enforcement Directorate hunts down critics, a “failed” Chief Minister remains protected in Manipur.

If Russia has arrested 20,000 anti-war activists and filed 3,400 criminal cases against critics, BJP-India shows itself a good learner. However, Modi-admirers ensure a “carefully curated image of a rising India”, says Ashoka Mody. For how long? When we hear of Khalistani posters appearing in Delhi flyovers and Kashmiri gate, we pray: save the nation, Lord, from leaders who keep alienating people.