Aakash is an interesting Indian Hindu living in the US who rejects much Indian Hindu culture as insipid, toxic and diseased, yet still embraces a Hindu identity. He also admits that caste is crap and it needs to go. Surely a casteless Hinduism could be formulated since all religions are human creations.
If religions are human creations, than Hinduism was created by man. If so, it could be constantly molded by men too.
Many religions have been through Reformations. The horrors of Early Christianity are long gone and probably never to return. Not long ago, non-Catholics were told to convert or die. That’s not happening anywhere no, and there are no Inquisitions on the horizon either. Lands are no longer conquered by Christendom, nor are heathens put to the sword. Christian heathens are not burned at the stake. Religious authorities are no longer in charge of Christian states via the throne or otherwise. In all of Christendom, separation of church and state is nearly complete. No Christian justifies slavery anymore or owns slaves.
If Christianity can go through a Reformation, Hinduism surely can too since it is generally less divinely inspired than Christianity.
Aakash:
Robert
While the attempt to finish partition is indeed a primary driving force for the Hindutvas, the bigger picture needs to be understood here.
Ask yourself the question: was the partition of India on religious basis fair or Justified? If anybody believes that it was, it was the most unfortunate event in the history of Hindus. The fact that by force (as in west Pakistan) or genocide (east Pakistan), Hindus have been eliminated in Pakistan and Bangladesh while Muslims still to this day have a strong presence in India has to hurt even the most rational of Hindus.
Ironically, this is where the Hindutvadis are barking up the wrong tree. Instead of focusing on the objective to expose the “nations” Pakistan and Bangladesh and showing solidarity with whatever number of Hindus that remain there, their hatred extends to all Muslims in general including Arabs, Turks, Persians etc who have nothing to do with present day India.
Hindutva movement is at best a display of high entropy randomness swinging from hating Muslims in general extending all the way to couples holding hands (most of them being Hindus themselves). There is no identity and will never be one simply because it has zero left wing element to it. Majority of poor in India are Hindus themselves and the Hindu right wing does nothing for them.
If, on the other hand, you believe (like I do) that the partition of India, if at all, should have been based on a more logical basis such as language/region, I urge you to start writing articles calling for the elimination of the rouge state of Pakistan and the shitty country that is Bangladesh.
I can understand Hindutva rage and where it is coming from. But the way they go about their business lacks reason and subtlety to say the least. This is in line with other South Asian crazies like Muslims.
Aakash is absolutely correct. The partition in a sense was a crime. Hindus were more or less ethnically cleansed in one way or another from both Pakistan and Bangladesh. In Pakistan, they were mostly just made to disappear via emigration and conversion to Islam (some of the conversion was pretty much forcible). In Bangladesh, Pakistani Muslims and their often Islamist collaborators massacred 3 million people, maybe 80% if whom were Hindus. It was truly a genocide. There are about 13% Hindus left in Bangladesh, and they are subject to regular serious persecution whereby their neighborhoods are burned to the ground and some of them are killed. It’s not quite Gujarat, but it’s nearly Kristallnacht.
Blaming Bangladeshi Muslims seems wrong as Bangladeshi society is horribly divided on this question. The more secular minded folks associated with a Congress-like party are outraged at the genocide, perhaps because a lot of Muslims were also killed. The more Islamist-minded mostly think the genocide was all well and good. An Islamist was recently put on trial for war crimes committed during the war, and this ignited passions in Bangladeshi society that have left a number of folks dead amid serious riots. Indian Hindus need to realize that a large section of Bangladeshi society thinks the genocide of 1971 was a horrific crime.
But on the surface, it does look unfair. Bangladesh and Pakistan were nearly cleansed of Hindus, yet there remains many Muslims in India. However, in the case of India and Bangladesh, the comparison is not a good one. India is 13% Muslim, and Bangladesh is 13% Hindu, so the proportions are the same, though the Hindus of Bangladesh look to be on the decline, and Muslims in India are set to rise.
One problem is that Islam always offers an out to the persecuted infidels, which does make Islam better than most forms of racism. In most racism, there really is no way out. In Nazi Germany, even converting to Christianity was enough to save a Jew as the persecution was racially inspired. One can hardly change one’s race at any rate.
Persecuted infidels in Muslim nations can always convert to Islam, and then the persecution will generally grind to a halt. This option is often heavily encouraged in Muslim nations as infidels are often under varying degrees of pressure to convert. Infidel females in particular are often kidnapped by Muslim men, raped and forced to convert. Intermarriage is another way as a Muslim man can marry an infidel woman and the children will all be raised Muslim, hence the infidel woman’s offspring are lost to the infidels. Female Muslims, the breed stock of Islam, are forbidden to marry out or if they do, the infidel man just convert. Islam gets the intermarried either way.
Muslims, no matter how they intermarry, end up having their offspring raised as Muslims. This is the sort of religion that is nearly programmed to multiply like a bacterium, a weed or an amphibian. In most societies, the Muslim population will tend to rise as the infidel population will tend to decrease. This simply another form of Islamic conquest, this one being the “jihad of the womb.”
I do not believe that Bangladesh or Pakistan should be broken up, at least not now. Pakistan actually needs breaking, but not until India breaks too. Neither one will split without or before the other, so neither will break up. If India breaks up, they lose to Pakistan. If Pakistan breaks up, they lose to India. Both nations are paranoid of the other, China and the US and they fear assimilation by outside powers.