[Trebbinsa]

But I'm not anti-foreigner, you see. The people responsible for the present situation are long since dead. Nothing can be done about them. We should learn from what was done to us, and move on, and try to make sure that it never happens again. But in order to do that, we first have to accept that something like that happened at all, which is something we are not doing!

We must learn that the world does not follow our ideals, and it probably never will, and that thus we must make allowances for that. We always assumed that the common man would be unaffected by who the king was, we assumed that learned men would be patronised irrespective of who the king was. We never thought that something as depraved and just plain wrong as the Muslim iconoclasm could happen. We thought that others would respect our gods, as we still do theirs. We assume that, like Hindu kings were towards Buddhists, even if the administration did not patronise us, it would not be actively hostile to us. We were catastrophically wrong. We have to learn from that, we have to learn the fact that we never have had a friend and probably never will have one, that the world essentially consists of enemies trying to kill us, and we have to be constantly on our guard.

This is basic common sense and pragmatic foreign policy, not anti-foreigner rhetoric.

You still don't understand the ground reality here in India. I'll try to explain it to you.

The problem is, most people are today in denial. Most of the friends to whom I distributed this essay did not know of the universities which were destroyed. They had no idea of what we have lost. Not one of them knew that if the Muslim invasions hadn't happened, we'd have an unbroken university tradition stretching back into the BC years, with libraries to match - the largest repository of culture in the world. They had no idea of the atrocities which happened at that time. And there is a policy of the deliberate suppression of that period of history, of denying that anything bad ever happened. Our history textbooks, when they say that the Muslim empires of the time invaded India, talk as if they arrived in a tourist bus, then took some photos, created some nice architecture, and then gradually faded away. There is not a single mention of the negative consequences of the invasion, there is not a single word about anything negative they did at all! Even Aurangzeb, one of India's worst iconoclasts, is said to have destroyed temples for "purely economic reasons, not because of any religious motive". It is tripe like this that disillusions people and makes them hate all the more when they learn the truth. I try to make it clear that yes, this happened, that yes, it is shocking, that yes, it is horrible that there are people still trying to sweep it under the rug, but that even after all this, hatred is not the answer, there is another way out.

In fact, I'll make another thread about how much history is suppressed in India.

My understanding is limited, but this I know: in order to come to terms with history, you have to first accept it. Sweeping it under the rug is no answer, because it will cause even more trouble when it gets out, and truth always gets out. The more you hide it, the more hatred you will inspire when it is finally shown up. Expose it to the full light of day, debate it, come to terms with it, and finally get over it. But nobody has even got to the first state.

Note that I have never said anything about the current Muslim problems plaguing the nation. I've done that deliberately, because I really have no grouse with Muslims alive today (as a group, that is - I do have a problem with such "eminences" as the Shahi Imam, or other Muslim politicians who exploit the Muslims as a vote-bank and get elected on communal tickets).

My stance towards the Muslims is simple - as long as they let us be, we should let them be. If they don't want to integrate into the mainstream (something they have had over 500 years to do), that's their problem, not ours. Reform can come only from inside, and the more insistent we are that they should reform their crappy Shariah laws, the more they will feel that they are being "swallowed up" by the Hindus in some insidious ploy. Simply remove all pressure on them which is coming from us, and watch as the regressive ulema's control over the community blow itself to bits like a beached whale. Only when they themselves get fed up of their position will they reform themselves.

During the discussion, one friend asked me whether I thought India should become a declared Hindu nation.

My answer was an emphatic NO, for two reasons. In the first place, there is the pragmatic reason, which is that the state ruins everything it touches, so for the love of God, don't let it touch religion (even though it is still doing so). The second is the principle - nations that derive their national identity from religion inevitably tend towards fundamentalism, and I don't want that to happen here (even though Hinduism is not that sort of religion, but still, why take the chance?).



A rather long post, but it explains my stances on a number of things, so I think it's worth it.