Creating an identity for Pakistan!

A book written by Aitzaz Ahsan, Pakistan Senate member, former minister and noted lawyer is seen discussed currently. Indus Saga and the making of Pakistan written twenty years back is interesting in the sense it was an attempt to provide a new framework to the identity of Pakistan without any “hyphenation” with India! The title of the book is a bit funny as it tries to connect Pakistan alone, a bit of former Bharat Varsha, a splinter and product of the communal divide in undivided India, which came into being in 1947 with a Bronz-age civilisation that emerged circa 2600 BCE along the Indus River valley in Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. How is this possible?

Well, for Aitzaz Ahsan it is elementary! Based on the Aryan Invasion Theory, that postulated that the Indus valley civilisation and Ganges civilisation were separate, he links back the Pakistani identity to the Indus Valley civilisation, maintaining that the identity of the people of Mohenjo-daro and Harappa was different from those living in the Gangetic plains. So clever?

In the embarrassing context of being classified as invaders, and hence outsiders along with the Muslims, the Christian missionaries who doubled as Indologist-historians invented a theory to describe the Aryans also as colonisers damaging their claim that they are the original inhabitants of this land! This effectively sowed the seeds of cultural divisiveness such as the Dravidian. With the Marxian historiographers assiduously propagating a theory of “many nationalities” in India, the now-disproved Aryan invasion theory had inflicted considerable damage to “the idea of India”, and unfortunately will continue to do so more many years.

I think it was in his book “The Myth of Independence” that I was astonished to read (in the extracts) Z A Bhutto stupidly delineating the history of Pakistan in a purely Islamic framework, staking claim to the advent of human civilization as seen in the archaeological sites, and describing even the pre-Mogul period wars as fought by “us,” and so on!

Aitzaz Ahsan in his book appears to employ a more crooked sophistry, building upon the assumption that Indus valley civilisation and Ganges civilisation were separate in order to pre-date and also validate the two-nation theory! Just because Radcliffe award placed the two major Indus valley sites in Pakistan, and that country is in control of archaeological ruins that researchers believe to be the origin of the Indian civilisation. But this is a civilisation that Pakistan onc wanted to dissociate from while struggling to carve its own separate Islamic history.

For example, the religious party Jamaat-i-Islami has been taking pains to deride the famed archaeological sites in the present-day Pakistan as belonging to the zamana-e-jahalliya, a pre-Islamic period when human civilisation was in a state of ignorance and darkness! As history writing is imposing a pattern on events that took place in the past Pakistanis cannot be faulted for creating a “nationalist fantasy” out of available material. After all, neither Bhutto, nor Aitzaz Ahsan is a historian. Look at what some of our historians were doing, knowing very well that their “research” and results create divisions in society; and indeed pave the way for national disintegration! Perhaps they intended to! Now their books will have now quotes from the research findings of Aitzaz Ahsan!

God is great! Whose God?

I fail to pass the political litmus test that many self-identified progressives see as their default position: namely, being “secular”, pro-minority. I am a hard core Hindu, and my views have to be taken as that of someone who lived most of his life as a member of the Sangh Parivar.

The other day I was watching a video clip received on Whatsapp. It was an unidentified Moulvi having a question-and-answer session, obviously after a discourse to Muslim Indian workers in some Gulf Country at an ‘Islamic Centre.’ After answering questions such as “can we eat food cooked by non-Muslim roommates?” Moulvi had greater concerns. He expressed shock at the Muslims who lived and ate with non-Muslims for years, and did nothing to stop them from a sure passage to hell! Why didn’t they try to bring them into the “True religion” and prepare them to go to Heaven?

I would take this Moulvi’s kind thoughts for the non-Muslims as genuine in the context of Quran 22.19-22 which offers horrendous punishments for those who fail to get converted to Islam. The position of Islam through all its violent and torturous history always had been that it was bringing a blessing to the lands that were conquered.

The Christian “Missionary position” is no different. Through the innumerable services, discourses, encyclicals, conventions and the like, the Church machinery reiterates what Jesus Christ himself said: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). This view is sacrosanct: adherents of any kind of Judaism, or non-religious Jews, Hindus or Muslims are "unbelievers". They don't believe in Christ, don't believe in His Holy Church, and hence they are unbelievers, and therefore out of favour with God, the Father, period. On either side of the pilgrim route to Sabarimala pronouncements similar to Quran 22.19-22 quoted from Bible are painted on walls. It doesn’t however get described as hate-speech or outside the realm of polite expressions within a secular society in which a huge majority are persons belonging to the category of “unbelievers.” Is this as simple and innocent as it is powerfully presented by many “secular” scholars and observers?

In fact, the point of friction, not only in the Indian society but worldwide, has been the propensity of Christianity and Islam to proselytise. Those of us who grew up in a culture that took in Bhagavad Gita and in general the Vedic wisdom (The Rig-Veda declares: "Truth is one; sages call it various names- Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti.") that inculcates a belief that all path leads to the same goal: “ekam sankhyam c yogam ca”, it is a sacrilege, and violation of their very identity in society to be told in unmistakable terms that they are the basest creatures on two legs. Hindus just don’t resort to Kalashnikov assault rifle and other sophisticated means to counter such demeaning insinuations. But they are no less agitated and upset!

Gandhiji was opposed to religious conversions, because “no religion can claim absolute truth, and all religions are fundamentally equal.” "Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me most glorious religion in the world” was Gandhiji’s view. He compared the religious fervour and the exclusivism was similar to finding one’s own wife the most beautiful woman in the world. The Father of the Nation especially hated Christian conversions of “untouchables” as it was exploitation of their pathetic conditions and he also accused the Church of using social services to net in converts. But astonishingly, the Minorities subcommittee of the CAI altered the wording of Article 25 was modified to include the right to propagate, i.e to convert! A wit has aptly put it as, “a seemingly equal right to peddle one’s religion becomes unequal and unfair, much like giving wolves and sheep the right to eat one another”.

There is a very sophisticated operation in place by the evangelical groups, with a clear target for souls, marketing campaigns, mass prayer and fraudulent healing meetings. Evidence is available in plenty on videos on YouTube, social media, press reports, and on the ground. Pastors have been openly tweeting about souls converted, and saving people from idol worshipers. Some pastors have tweeted with glee about converts reaching 60 million, declaring a target of 100 million, and have also requested for financial support for this openly.

When some very “active” Hindu organisations organised “ghar vaapasi” programmes for the re-entry of former coverts to other faiths, the proselytizing religions in India and in other parts of the world proclaimed that it was an attack on “religions freedom” Constitutionally guaranteed here. Xian/Muslim assertions against ‘Hindu communalism’ and Ghar vaapasi appear not only grotesque, counter-factual libels, but as a precise inversion of the truth! That the minorities who scrupulously and conscientiously practice/promote conversions and openly declare it as their “religious duty” find re-conversions to Hinduism bothersome is strange! Doesn’t this outrage over ghar wapsi, smack of double speak?

There indeed is a problem with this double speak. Even as Pope Francis approved Islam as “a religion of peace, one which is compatible with respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence,” Islamists consider Christian Church as a Trojan horse bearing rotten Western values and Western military invaders, within increasingly Islamized societies. The Islamic State and other Muslim militants are busy torturing and killing Christians (often using grisly methods such as crucifixion) in Nigeria, Indonesia, Somalia, Libya, Central African Republic, Uganda, Lebanon, Kenya, Pakistan, Sudan, and Iraq. How can the Christian Church deplore without convulsions and contortions the methods they had themselves employed in the past?

Currently the Hindus in Kerala who had somnolently watched ceaseless conversions of the tribal and other poor sections of the community over the years seem angry and upset about a new phenomenon called “love Jihad,” an alleged activity under which young Muslim boys and men are said to target young girls belonging to non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by feigning love. Official statistics confirm about dozens of girls reportedly missing under suspicious circumstances everyday in the State. Parents belonging to Hindu and Christian communities suffer from extreme anxiety and fear from the time their young daughters leave homes for schools or colleges till they are back home. Sangh Parivar organisations as well as Parish priests hare making public statements and passionate exhortations against this new attack on their way of life. Most of the cases are of couples falling in love, then eloping and marrying, and then disappearing for a while only to surface again in black hijabs, abaya. or burqa and not so uncommon these days, publicly expressing revulsion to their earlier life, belief systems et cetera. Some of them go to combat areas in the Middle-east to help Jihad! Those girls who refuse to get converted are sexually assaulted by multiple individuals, impregnated, and dumped!

Christians have elaborate Church machinery that can monitor, prevent or otherwise handle the issue nationally and internationally. Roman Catholic Church, in the forefront of the soul-harvesting business doesn’t take kindly any such activity in their midst. Pope Benedict XVI visiting Brazil in 2007 fulminated against “the rapacious rascals stealing” his lambs, more on the lines of the leaders of the CPI (M) reviling the CPI for accepting into their fold Marxist outcasts! Pope Francis is perturbed too, for more than 90 percent of Latin Americans were earlier identified as Catholics and that number has now hit 69 percent. Pew Research points out that in nearly every country surveyed, the Catholic Church has experienced net losses from religious switching, mostly to other spinoffs. So the thrust into Asia’s poorer regions for soul harvesting!

Whenever their conversion campaigns peak, the Hindus resist. Then Christians resort to “intolerance” campaign. In the Temple village Thiruvathavur, near Madurai in Tamil Nadu which had no Christians a church sprang up on unauthorized land just to force Hindus to remove it so that an “intolerance” campaign could be started with lavish media cooperation! Church attacks were stage-managed right in the National Capital Territory to embarrass the “Hindu Nationalist Government!” Rapes of Nuns were alleges dand the victims disappeared when the inquiry ordered.

So the Hindus are in the vice grip of two powerful international conversion armies. The main problem here is the Hindu's loose social organisation (if there is any left) which is a kind of open architecture, like the one O. Abdulla laughed at, in the "Hindu way of life," during an interview with me: "it is no great thing that in your school there are no period bells ringing, no compulsory attendance, and no examinations!" This coupled with the early Communist radicalization which made it intellectually fashionable, "progressive" and adventurous to reject and revile one's own faith, traditions and "decadent" life style. It is partly this attitude, particularly the adventurism of the adolescent and youth period that makes persuasion by other religions to convert easy. And once the trap is obvious, it’s too late and shameful to go back. What happens later is some kind of "trauma-bonding" with the oppressor similar to the Stockholm syndrome. Some of these people turn to extremism in their anxiety to make virtue of necessity!

For the media and politicians of the left persuasion, Hindu views opposing conversion and blatant Hindu-baiting by minority communities, cross the high threshold of expression to hate speech that can be legitimately prosecuted while that of Xians and Muslims, however offensive, do not!  The media can’t criticize Islam’s unreformed insistence on global domination. If Islam gets offended it would push the faithful to go trigger-happy, with Kalashnikovs, grenades and long knives. The ‘free’ press leapfrogs to protect “peace-loving” “secular” Islamist who needed only our “understanding”! If the Christian Church is offended, the enormous funds flowing through NGOs will stop irrigating the watering holes of the Fourth Estate! The Hindu majority is very much in a minority position, one that risks social and political ostracism, if not outright harassment if its case is defended! !The Hindu offers a lower cost of displeasure and danger than the others if censured, stigmatised and denounced! How long can the Hindus chant Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti with conviction?

God is great! Whose God?

I fail to pass the political litmus test that many self-identified progressives see as their default position: namely, being “secular”, pro-minority. I am a hard core Hindu, and my views have to be taken as that of someone who lived most of his life as a member of the Sangh Parivar.

The other day I was watching a video clip received on Whatsapp. It was an unidentified Moulvi having a question-and-answer session, obviously after a discourse to Muslim Indian workers in some Gulf Country at an ‘Islamic Centre.’ After answering questions such as “can we eat food cooked by non-Muslim roommates?” Moulvi had greater concerns. He expressed shock at the Muslims who lived and ate with non-Muslims for years, and did nothing to stop them from a sure passage to hell! Why didn’t they try to bring them into the “True religion” and prepare them to go to Heaven?

I would take this Moulvi’s kind thoughts for the non-Muslims as genuine in the context of Quran 22.19-22 which offers horrendous punishments for those who fail to get converted to Islam. The position of Islam through all its violent and torturous history always had been that it was bringing a blessing to the lands that were conquered.

The Christian “Missionary position” is no different. Through the innumerable services, discourses, encyclicals, conventions and the like, the Church machinery reiterates what Jesus Christ himself said: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6). This view is sacrosanct: adherents of any kind of Judaism, or non-religious Jews, Hindus or Muslims are "unbelievers". They don't believe in Christ, don't believe in His Holy Church, and hence they are unbelievers, and therefore out of favour with God, the Father, period. On either side of the pilgrim route to Sabarimala pronouncements similar to Quran 22.19-22 quoted from Bible are painted on walls. It doesn’t however get described as hate-speech or outside the realm of polite expressions within a secular society in which a huge majority are persons belonging to the category of “unbelievers.” Is this as simple and innocent as it is powerfully presented by many “secular” scholars and observers?

In fact, the point of friction, not only in the Indian society but worldwide, has been the propensity of Christianity and Islam to proselytise. Those of us who grew up in a culture that took in Bhagavad Gita and in general the Vedic wisdom (The Rig-Veda declares: "Truth is one; sages call it various names- Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti.") that inculcates a belief that all path leads to the same goal: “ekam sankhyam c yogam ca”, it is a sacrilege, and violation of their very identity in society to be told in unmistakable terms that they are the basest creatures on two legs. Hindus just don’t resort to Kalashnikov assault rifle and other sophisticated means to counter such demeaning insinuations. But they are no less agitated and upset!

Gandhiji was opposed to religious conversions, because “no religion can claim absolute truth, and all religions are fundamentally equal.” "Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me most glorious religion in the world” was Gandhiji’s view. He compared the religious fervour and the exclusivism was similar to finding one’s own wife the most beautiful woman in the world. The Father of the Nation especially hated Christian conversions of “untouchables” as it was exploitation of their pathetic conditions and he also accused the Church of using social services to net in converts. But astonishingly, the Minorities subcommittee of the CAI altered the wording of Article 25 was modified to include the right to propagate, i.e to convert! A wit has aptly put it as, “a seemingly equal right to peddle one’s religion becomes unequal and unfair, much like giving wolves and sheep the right to eat one another”.

There is a very sophisticated operation in place by the evangelical groups, with a clear target for souls, marketing campaigns, mass prayer and fraudulent healing meetings. Evidence is available in plenty on videos on YouTube, social media, press reports, and on the ground. Pastors have been openly tweeting about souls converted, and saving people from idol worshipers. Some pastors have tweeted with glee about converts reaching 60 million, declaring a target of 100 million, and have also requested for financial support for this openly.

When some very “active” Hindu organisations organised “ghar vaapasi” programmes for the re-entry of former coverts to other faiths, the proselytizing religions in India and in other parts of the world proclaimed that it was an attack on “religions freedom” Constitutionally guaranteed here. Xian/Muslim assertions against ‘Hindu communalism’ and Ghar vaapasi appear not only grotesque, counter-factual libels, but as a precise inversion of the truth! That the minorities who scrupulously and conscientiously practice/promote conversions and openly declare it as their “religious duty” find re-conversions to Hinduism bothersome is strange! Doesn’t this outrage over ghar wapsi, smack of double speak?

There indeed is a problem with this double speak. Even as Pope Francis approved Islam as “a religion of peace, one which is compatible with respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence,” Islamists consider Christian Church as a Trojan horse bearing rotten Western values and Western military invaders, within increasingly Islamized societies. The Islamic State and other Muslim militants are busy torturing and killing Christians (often using grisly methods such as crucifixion) in Nigeria, Indonesia, Somalia, Libya, Central African Republic, Uganda, Lebanon, Kenya, Pakistan, Sudan, and Iraq. How can the Christian Church deplore without convulsions and contortions the methods they had themselves employed in the past?

Currently the Hindus in Kerala who had somnolently watched ceaseless conversions of the tribal and other poor sections of the community over the years seem angry and upset about a new phenomenon called “love Jihad,” an alleged activity under which young Muslim boys and men are said to target young girls belonging to non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by feigning love. Official statistics confirm about dozens of girls reportedly missing under suspicious circumstances everyday in the State. Parents belonging to Hindu and Christian communities suffer from extreme anxiety and fear from the time their young daughters leave homes for schools or colleges till they are back home. Sangh Parivar organisations as well as Parish priests hare making public statements and passionate exhortations against this new attack on their way of life. Most of the cases are of couples falling in love, then eloping and marrying, and then disappearing for a while only to surface again in black hijabs, abaya. or burqa and not so uncommon these days, publicly expressing revulsion to their earlier life, belief systems et cetera. Some of them go to combat areas in the Middle-east to help Jihad! Those girls who refuse to get converted are sexually assaulted by multiple individuals, impregnated, and dumped!

Christians have elaborate Church machinery that can monitor, prevent or otherwise handle the issue nationally and internationally. Roman Catholic Church, in the forefront of the soul-harvesting business doesn’t take kindly any such activity in their midst. Pope Benedict XVI visiting Brazil in 2007 fulminated against “the rapacious rascals stealing” his lambs, more on the lines of the leaders of the CPI (M) reviling the CPI for accepting into their fold Marxist outcasts! Pope Francis is perturbed too, for more than 90 percent of Latin Americans were earlier identified as Catholics and that number has now hit 69 percent. Pew Research points out that in nearly every country surveyed, the Catholic Church has experienced net losses from religious switching, mostly to other spinoffs. So the thrust into Asia’s poorer regions for soul harvesting!

Whenever their conversion campaigns peak, the Hindus resist. Then Christians resort to “intolerance” campaign. In the Temple village Thiruvathavur, near Madurai in Tamil Nadu which had no Christians a church sprang up on unauthorized land just to force Hindus to remove it so that an “intolerance” campaign could be started with lavish media cooperation! Church attacks were stage-managed right in the National Capital Territory to embarrass the “Hindu Nationalist Government!” Rapes of Nuns were alleges dand the victims disappeared when the inquiry ordered.

So the Hindus are in the vice grip of two powerful international conversion armies. The main problem here is the Hindu's loose social organisation (if there is any left) which is a kind of open architecture, like the one O. Abdulla laughed at, in the "Hindu way of life," during an interview with me: "it is no great thing that in your school there are no period bells ringing, no compulsory attendance, and no examinations!" This coupled with the early Communist radicalization which made it intellectually fashionable, "progressive" and adventurous to reject and revile one's own faith, traditions and "decadent" life style. It is partly this attitude, particularly the adventurism of the adolescent and youth period that makes persuasion by other religions to convert easy. And once the trap is obvious, it’s too late and shameful to go back. What happens later is some kind of "trauma-bonding" with the oppressor similar to the Stockholm syndrome. Some of these people turn to extremism in their anxiety to make virtue of necessity!

For the media and politicians of the left persuasion, Hindu views opposing conversion and blatant Hindu-baiting by minority communities, cross the high threshold of expression to hate speech that can be legitimately prosecuted while that of Xians and Muslims, however offensive, do not!  The media can’t criticize Islam’s unreformed insistence on global domination. If Islam gets offended it would push the faithful to go trigger-happy, with Kalashnikovs, grenades and long knives. The ‘free’ press leapfrogs to protect “peace-loving” “secular” Islamist who needed only our “understanding”! If the Christian Church is offended, the enormous funds flowing through NGOs will stop irrigating the watering holes of the Fourth Estate! The Hindu majority is very much in a minority position, one that risks social and political ostracism, if not outright harassment if its case is defended! !The Hindu offers a lower cost of displeasure and danger than the others if censured, stigmatised and denounced! How long can the Hindus chant Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti with conviction?

NELL-VARSHAM!

“നെല്ലുല്പാദന മേഖലയ്ക്ക് പ്രാധാന്യം നല്‍കുന്നതിന്റെ ഭാഗമായി 2016 ഓണം മുതല്‍ 2017 ഓണം വരെയുളള കാലയളവ് കേരളത്തില്‍ നെല്‍ വര്‍ഷമായി ആചരിക്കുവാന്‍ തീരുമാനിച്ച് ഉത്തരവ് പുറപ്പെടുവിച്ചു. 2017 ഓണക്കാലത്ത് കേരളത്തിലെ ജനങ്ങള്‍ക്ക്, സംസ്ഥാനത്ത് തന്നെ ഉത്പാദിപ്പിച്ച് അരി നല്‍കുക എന്ന ലക്ഷ്യത്തോടെ, ഓരോ ജില്ലയിലും നെല്‍കൃഷി മേഖലയില്‍ 100 പ്രവര്‍ത്തനങ്ങള്‍ വീതം തുടങ്ങുവാന്‍ സര്‍ക്കാര്‍ ഉദ്ദേശിക്കുന്നു.”so goes a report from Kerala. That is, as part of its efforts to give importance to the State’s paddy production sector, the Kerala Government has passed an order to celebrate the period from the Onam of this year to the Onam of 2017 as Nellvarsham (year of the paddy).  The Government has plans afoot to have 100 different programmes in the fourteen districts of the State.

The State’s paddy lands are decreasing at an alarming rate. Despite laws prohibiting use of land designated as paddy fields in records for other uses including other farm products (!) and prosecution, punitive measures etc. Currently only 20% of the State’s requirement of rice is produced locally. Not just rice, fruits, vegetables, flowers, eggs, chicken, and even beef is coming from outside the State borders, mainly from Tamilnadu! So unless the government’s intention to supply rice produced in Kerala during the next Onam season is semantically interpreted to mean “some rice to some people,”(isn’t it the case right now?) I would call this project, in the revered Nehruvian style, a “fantastic nonsense!”

The LDF Government is up to the old tricks. "Nel-Varsham" is going to be yet another flop-show as it's promoters refuse to recognise the reason why farmers have abandoned cultivating paddy.The sight of paddy-fields lying fallow allong the length and breadth of Kerala is the result of diseconomy in the farm operations- the economic disadvantages such as an increase in cost, and subsequent poor financial yield amounting often loss. It will be foolish to expect reduction in farm wages. So the only future lies in corporate-style farming in larger land-holds to begin with by which the input costs can be calibrated, minimised and output increased using modern scientific farm implements and techniques. Is this possible in the prevailing political clmate in Kerala? The answer is an emphatic NO! Contract farming and Corporate farming are looked askance at, by the powers that be and their minians at large.

Kerala Government, I am told owes the paddy farmers in Kerala around Rs.175Cr on account of paddy collected from them partially as levy, and partially offering “support price.”The sad fact to be noted is that unless the farmers get the price of the paddy procured from they cannot start work on the next season’s paddy crop. My friend A A Menon, who lived in the US for 26 years returned to Chittur, a part of the “rice bowl” of the State, and volunteered to take care of the paddy fields after the demise of an uncle who used to manage the farming. Every time I called him to know how he fared I had to hear harrowing stories of the recalcitrant attitude of the farm labour, water shortage, increase in the cost of various inputs including farm wages. He was losing a couple of lakhs of rupees cultivating some 5 hectares of land belonging to his sisters. So he didn’t tell them! I remembered the joke about an old-time farmer who had won a lottery. To the journalist who asked him what he would do with all that money, he said: “I will do farming as long as it lasts!”My friend remains a bachelor, but he needs to live, and the savings have to last. So he quit farming. That is the case of my two brothers who are farmers.  Both stopped paddy farming and told me the reason: “If we continue, we’ll eventually starve!”Both let the few farm lands fallow and cultivate vegetables, Tapioca, and Plantain in the remaining land. Using the paddy-fields for owing anything else would invite prosecution, I am told!

Nell-varsham is on the way to becoming another empty slogan, a fad, a farce, fib, hype and theatre of the absurd!

The God Proposition

I had this series of arguments with a person who publicly claims that he is an atheist. Because he had a “scientific temperament” I said to him that statistically there was 69% probability in the existence of GOD. I was not supporting the existence of God using the statistical surmise; but I assumed that being the work by a scientific thinker, Dr.Unwin, (in his book ‘The Probability of God”) it would be something my atheist friend could find sensible! He didn’t; and chose to call Dr.Unwin a pseudoscientist! I argued in vain that Dr. Stephen D. Unwin began his career as a theoretical physicist working in the field of quantum gravity        and later turned his mathematical bent to risk analysis, etc.

DOES GOD EXIST? This is probably the most debated question in the history of mankind. Scholars, scientists, and philosophers have spent their lifetimes trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, only to have their theories crucified by other scholars, scientists, and philosophers. Where the debate breaks down is in the ambiguities and colloquialisms of language. But, by using a universal, unambiguous language—namely, mathematics—can this question finally be answered definitively? That’s what Dr. Stephen Unwin attempts to do in this riveting, accessible, and witty book, The Probability of God.

In fact I don't need any scientific authority to believe in God; I belong to the category who would like Him to be invented, if HE didn't exist! Then, if one feels like proving anything, enough evidence will be available depending one's intelligent inquiry and passion to prove/disprove! That is close to 'convenient reverse logic', looking for something to prove one's pet theory!

What I really can't figure out is what evangelical atheists achieve trying to propagate the non-existence of God. A Hindu's Vedic concept of God is genuinely harmless, if not positively benevolent. God is in you and I; "Aham Brahmasmi", the Brahman being the energizing principle behind the individual Atman, that which charges the creative imagination of the morally noble and god-like; that which inspires the dedicated selflessness that should go into all action...You don't need these metaphysical thoughts to carry on life; just as you don’t need the cosmic science to carry on. But Faith ameliorates excruciating circumstances when rationality blocks your way, convincing you that the road ends there! Faith alone cannot solve our problems if any either; just as a lottery ticket cannot in all probability solve one's financial difficulties. But both give you some hope for some time, and stops you from resorting to a rope with a noose; a temporary solace in many cases. If the purpose of Faith is not so crude and temporary, it is expected that you to rise above humanness to Godliness. The Hindu Faith and ideal Hindu way of life are considered to be a tortuous path leading to Godliness, realising Brahma! I am certainly not on that path!

Do I consider the Old Testament scourge who gave direct instructions to people to kill one another GOD? No! The New Testament God about whom, Jesus Christ talks as Father said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."The destructive, nihilistic cult of death that followed has a religious book that three times exhorts believers to slay unbelievers wherever they are found (2:191, 4:89, 9:5) also doesn’t have my God in it. My God tells Arjuna, after the long advice Gita, “Yadhecchasi tatha karu!”, you are free to choose! That freedom, to believe or not, is in the blood of all Hindus. Then there is this civilizational self-loathing that distorts educated Indians’ thoughts and torments their psyche thanks to the academic knowledge about our religion and our culture passed on to us by historians, and particularly sociologists and political scientists whose careers have been constructed entirely upon unsubstantiated allegations against Hindu religion and culture. In “secular” India, Scholars became wary of "Indian" philosophy, because it suddenly became “Hindu philosophy.” In the cultural establishment and particularly in the Universities, the idea took root, that to accommodate diversity; the depth of our culture had to be erased. To be a Hindu therefore is ‘infra-dig”! To be anything else is abominable, and hence to be an atheist is safe and dignified. That is the progression many Indian intellectuals were forced to take. There is yet another reason for the ‘evolution’; that is with respect to the so-called violent ideology of “communal Hindutva”. Just one request, honest to yourself, please survey the history of India, you will understand that there simply aren’t enough hate crimes to sustain the mythical narrative that Muslim-Indians or Christians are persecuted for their religion by Hindu ‘communalists’. So, don’t feel guilty, relax about being a Hindu; did you know, in Gita, Krishna says in many ways you become dear to Him, you don’t have to believe in God, just love people!

There are these lectures by Dr.N. Gopalakrishnan on Vedas? It would need some “willing suspension of disbelief”, but still worth it. I have a problem with the guy (I know him from my Thiruvananthapuram days) trying to explain everything about Sanatana Dharma in scientific terms, since I don’t want religion and science to mix!

I suppose the intellectual evolution is to become rational, secular, liberal and eventually a scientific atheist, “seeing to the very edge of the cosmos”(Carl Sagan expression?). There, indeed is no necessity for anyone sensible to commit to a set of awkward and absurd beliefs (like mine) that stick out against the background of modern life in a kind of continual, nervous resistance to scientific reality!

But what’s the gain, upalabdhi kya hai? Won’t the atheists feel bored/scared to sit watching the graveyard of those lovely Gods, goddesses, yaksha-gadharva-kimpuruishas (“Stone- and -bronze-age absurdities placed in our temples!”), myths and mythologies that gave meanings and some messages to generations of our people? Or do these evangelical atheists extract a stimulating hobby from the ridiculing thoughts of other people's beliefs like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens did? For the “faithful” the rational/scientific beliefs look like a series of ideas about the nature of the universe for which a truth-claim is being made- inconclusively yet, a set of propositions that you happen to sign up to.  Actual believers don't talk about their belief in this way, happy about the marshmallow foundations of fantasy supporting some of those complex intellectual structures built by Faiths, content with recognizable human experience along the path!

I wish the atheists would allow other people to believe their ducks are swans and their brass is gold, and plainly, their stone/panchaloha idols are or represent Gods as long as it gives them some pride, some solace and happiness, if you please! May be the atheists have Swans in their pond, and they eat off gold-plates indeed; their science will prove one day the rest of us are fools: and therefore they must be magnanimous letting the ‘believers’ their faux glory as long as it lasts!

The God Proposition

I had this series of arguments with a person who publicly claims that he is an atheist. Because he had a “scientific temperament” I said to him that statistically there was 69% probability in the existence of GOD. I was not supporting the existence of God using the statistical surmise; but I assumed that being the work by a scientific thinker, Dr.Unwin's, (in his book ‘The Probability of God”) would be something my atheist friend could find sensible! He didn’t; and chose to call Dr.Unwin a pseudoscientist! I argues in vain that Dr. Stephen D. Unwin began his career as a theoretical physicist working in the field of quantum gravity        and later turned his mathematical bent to risk analysis, etc.

DOES GOD EXIST? This is probably the most debated question in the history of mankind. Scholars, scientists, and philosophers have spent their lifetimes trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, only to have their theories crucified by other scholars, scientists, and philosophers. Where the debate breaks down is in the ambiguities and colloquialisms of language. But, by using a universal, unambiguous language—namely, mathematics—can this question finally be answered definitively? That’s what Dr. Stephen Unwin attempts to do in this riveting, accessible, and witty book, The Probability of God.

In fact I don't need any scientific authority to believe in God; I belong to the category who would like Him to be invented, if He didn't exist! Then, if one feels like proving anything, enough evidence will be available depending one's intelligent inquiry and passion to prove/disprove! That is close to 'convenient reverse logic', looking for something to prove one's pet theory!

What I really can't figure out is what evangelical atheists achieve trying to propagate the non-existence of God. A Hindu's Vedic concept of God is genuinely harmless, if not positively benevolent. God is in you and I; "Aham Brahmasmi", the Brahman being the energizing principle behind the individual Atman, that which charges the creative imagination of the morally noble and god-like; that which inspires the dedicated selflessness that should go into all action...You don't need these metaphysical thoughts to carry on life; just as you don’t need the cosmic science to carry on. But Faith ameliorates excruciating circumstances when rationality blocks your way, convincing you that the road ends there! Faith alone cannot solve our problems if any either; just as a lottery ticket cannot in all probability solve one's financial difficulties. But both give you some hope for some time, and stops you from resorting to a rope with a noose; a temporary solace in many cases. If the purpose of Faith is not so crude and temporary, it is expected that you to rise above humanness to Godliness. The Hindu Faith and ideal Hindu way of life are considered to be a tortuous path leading to Godliness, realising Brahma! I am certainly not on that path!

Do I consider the Old Testament scourge who gave direct instructions to people to kill one another GOD? No! The New Testament God about whom, Jesus Christ talks as Father said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."The destructive, nihilistic cult of death that followed has a religious book that three times exhorts believers to slay unbelievers wherever they are found (2:191, 4:89, 9:5) also doesn’t have my God in it. My God tells Arjuna, after the long advice Gita, “Yadhecchasi tatha karu!”, you are free to choose! That freedom, to believe or not, is in the blood of all Hindus. Then there is this civilizational self-loathing that distorts educated Indians’ thoughts and torments their psyche thanks to the academic knowledge about our religion and our culture passed on to us by historians, and particularly sociologists and political scientists whose careers have been constructed entirely upon unsubstantiated allegations against Hindu religion and culture. In “secular” India, Scholars became wary of "Indian" philosophy, because it suddenly became “Hindu philosophy.” In the cultural establishment and particularly in the Universities, the idea took root, that to accommodate diversity; the depth of our culture had to be erased. To be a Hindu therefore is ‘infra-dig”! To be anything else is abominable, and hence to be an atheist is safe and dignified. That is the progression many Indian intellectuals were forced to take. There is yet another reason for the ‘evolution’; that is with respect to the so-called violent ideology of “communal Hindutva”. Just one request, honest to yourself, please survey the history of India, you will understand that there simply aren’t enough hate crimes to sustain the mythical narrative that Muslim-Indians or Christians are persecuted for their religion by Hindu ‘communalists’. So, don’t feel guilty, relax about being a Hindu; did you know, in Gita, Krishna says in many ways you become dear to Him, you don’t have to believe in God, just love people!

There are these lectures by Dr.N. Gopalakrishnan on Vedas? It would need some “willing suspension of disbelief”, but still worth it. I have a problem with the guy (I know him from my Thiruvananthapuram days) trying to explain everything about Sanatana Dharma in scientific terms, since I don’t want religion and science to mix!

I suppose the intellectual evolution is to become rational, secular, liberal and eventually a scientific atheist, “seeing to the very edge of the cosmos”(Carl Sagan expression?). There, indeed is no necessity for anyone sensible to commit to a set of awkward and absurd beliefs (like mine) that stick out against the background of modern life in a kind of continual, nervous resistance to scientific reality!

But what’s the gain, upalabdhi kya hai? Won’t the atheists feel bored/scared to sit watching the graveyard of those lovely Gods, goddesses, yaksha-gadharva-kimpuruishas (“Stone- and -bronze-age absurdities placed in our temples!”), myths and mythologies that gave meanings and some messages to generations of our people? Or do these evangelical atheists extract a stimulating hobby from the ridiculing thoughts of other people's beliefs like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens did? For the “faithful” the rational/scientific beliefs look like a series of ideas about the nature of the universe for which a truth-claim is being made- inconclusively yet, a set of propositions that you happen to sign up to.  Actual believers don't talk about their belief in this way, happy about the marshmallow foundations of fantasy supporting some of those complex intellectual structures built by Faiths, content with recognizable human experience along the path!

I wish the atheists would allow other people to believe their ducks are swans and their brass is gold, and plainly, their stone/panchaloha idols are or represent Gods as long as it gives them some pride, some solace and happiness, if you please! May be the atheists have Swans in their pond, and they eat off gold-plates indeed; their science will prove one day the rest of us are fools: and therefore they must be magnanimous letting the ‘believers’ their faux glory as long as it lasts!

HINDUS versus MUSLIMS AGAIN?

Reports of Muslim violence against Hindus, desecration our sacred symbols and temples are appearing increasingly all over India. Young Muslims slipping out to fight Islamic wars abroad is alarming because there is this sentimental angle of families yearning for their come-back; and the External Affairs Ministry’s anxiety to score brownie points “returning” these “children” to their parents. I am agonizing over the prospect of these youths getting combat training and experience, returning to fight a war our soil!

Muslim violence is unfortunately embedded in the history and character of Islam which gives scriptural sanction to all sorts of violence against non-Muslims. Those who believe in earnest what is written in Quran will never see non-Muslims as equals; they are simply not allowed to! It is incumbent on Muslims to "terrify" non-Muslims (referring to the Koran 8:60). As Muslims, the faithful must of course agree to the Islamic duty of jihad against enemies, real or imagined, and help promote it. Daesh has already mentioned that India is one of their targets and published a map projecting the trajectory of conquest. In all the Muslim “pockets” in the country, Muslim intellectual, theologians and ordinary Mullahs and Moulvis are busy creating and propagating a contrived distinctiveness, assiduously sore-rubbing for generating communal sentiments where there existed none. In Kashmir they are already imitating “Intifada” and tunneling from Pakistani side into the valley to send armed combatants. Next would be the arrival of Palestine-style knife, gun and car-ramming terror attacks against Hindus anywhere and anytime in India.

The non-BJP politicians talk down to Hindus, dismiss their legitimate concerns, and sneer at our helplessness, even as they go on to pander to minorities. The Liberal “intellectuals” who are supposed to be able to think out of their skins and fight for the right causes; are often seen imprisoned themselves in exclusive ideological (?) boxes. Do you know why kept silence over M.F. Hussain’s perverse paintings of Hindu Goddesses? They stitched their mouths under the excuse that insulting Hindu Gods constituted freedom of expression. Secularists are in a state of denial when it comes to the threat facing Hindus and India. Given the “negative partisanship” these people, the minority communities in India, especially the Muslims ensure that the Hindus are cornered every whichever way. Sadly, while the primary communalists in this country are Muslims and other "minorities," substantial numbers of Hindus out of the sense of guilt injected into them by “secularism” or for ulterior motives believe that they benefit somehow by ostracizing their own people who voice concern against the minority communalism. A backlash against this skewed “political correctness” against the ultra-PC culture has begun its conquests and indeed looms large in the UP’s horizon too. There seems no escape from it! A horrid mix of accusations of genocide of Muslims in Gujarat during Congress/UPA government at Centre had created the worst of all moments for BJP. But look at where we are now!

The situation is clear: Left “progressives” of all hues and the INC believe in diversity; they want Maoists, Islamic terrorists and soul-harvesters, all at the table, but no Hindu Nationalists. Muslims have never been - and probably never will be-a strategic target group of BJP electoral campaigns. So let the BJP ignore the liberal/left propaganda against it to go ahead and unite all Hindus.

Reporting of numerous media sources is simply incomplete and one-sided, and at its worst deeply flawed. They look the other when atrocities take place against even the lowliest of the lowly Hindus while discreetly draws an assumptive reference to the mindsets of Hindus while graphically presenting even minor incidents affecting Muslims and Xians. Remember, it was thanks in part to television, the likes of the rabble-rousing Akbaruddin Owaisi and the fundamentalist preacher Zakir Naik wielded megaphones in India’s public squares. It is terrible to see how the mainstream media benevolently bless Islamic fundamentalists and Christian evangelists while hating Hindu nationalist patriots, even as the latter wield political power in most parts of this vast country and at the Centre! We don’t have to watch the TV channels that give airspace to anti-nationals. We do not have to buy the Times of India to read the libels published against BJP,; and each one of us who complains about such media needs to respond to each defamation. I for one discontinued my subscription of the Times of India and read it online if I feel like! We must also expose the media’s agenda by challenging its premises. Mr.T G Mohandas is doing a wonderful job in this respect with his weekly column POLICCHEZHUTTHU’ on JanamTV! He deconstructs and demolishes the political and media agenda against Hindutva/Nationalist forces with a fine flourish so far unfamiliar on Malayalam television.