Author of “Breaking India”. His book is a work of research and insight. It provides a refreshing, deep and upright account of the sophistication of the threats that India faces. To learn more about the book please visit the website
Would you be able to provide an overview of simple other steps that Hindus should in addition to their devoutness and Temple activities in the face of sophistication of threats.
Once upon a time, every Hindu temple also functioned as a community center and a knowledge center. Today we have to revive this. Most of our history, not only religious but also socio-economical and even political history, has been recovered from temple inscriptions. Today Hindus have to reinvent how to make temples again the center of Hindu social and intellectual life. In fact a holistic spirituality means all these. Temples should become centers that respond to the challenges that the surrounding society faces. For this the temple should cultivate an intellectual culture rooted in Dharma. This intellectual culture should encompass sociology as well history at macro and micro levels. If every temple can being up a robust study circle well versed both in Dharma as well as modern academic discourses and an attached library, then that shall be the crucial first step in the right direction.
The mainstream western society still thinks that evangelists are doing a good job in spreading their message of good spirit. How should our unease with their activities be communicated without offending the society?
Our book ‘Breaking India’ shows that Western interventions ultimately create human tragedies of extreme magnitudes. Evangelical activities are one of the worst forms of Western interventions. There is a silent majority of free thinkers in Western society who feel definitely uncomfortable with such western interventions. And as you rightly said they may even be thinking that Western interventions like evangelism may be a necessary intermediary step in ‘civilizing’ the rest of the world. So we need to show them through proper documentation that India has a better civilization and whatever problems she faces because of social stagnation and impoverishment due to colonization, Indic solutions are better and more holistic.
In our book we have extensively documented how evangelism leads to social conflicts which often escalate into full scale armed wars. We have shown how racial theories propounded by colonial evangelists based on Biblical myths like the Hamitic myth, has resulted in genocidal conflicts in Rwanda and Sri Lanka. If we can bring this to the attention of general western population then the secular humanist forces in the western society, which represent a major voice, will definitely start questioning the evangelical aggression happening in India fuelled by Western funding.
Can u tell us about your book, the research involved, and the time involved?
This book has emerged as a result of several experiences that have deeply influenced my research and scholarship over the past decade. In the 1990s, I chanced to meet an African-American scholar at Princeton University who casually told me of ‘Afro-Dalit Project’. The Afro-Dalit project purports to paint Dalits as the ‘Blacks’ of India and non-Dalits as India’s ‘ whites. I started tracing the institutional and financial trials. I started studying the ideological evolution of such ideas. I discovered that this is part of a huge process – almost 200 years old.
This is what I discovered. Identity needs, colonial ambition, evangelical necessities of the West have shaped faultlines in India for the last two centuries. Institutional mechanisms were developed to nurture these faultlines during the colonial period. In the post-colonial period these institutions have changed their jargons. But they still nurture the same divides. The aim is the subservience of India – culturally as well as economically. These colonial institutions have become nodes of global up-linking of local secessionist forces. Often what starts as some kind of innocent academic speculations are slowly and steadily nurtured by these institutional mechanisms into political narratives. For example, in India jati which is a function based social group, was transformed into ethnic groups. The inter-community relations also became transformed into racial relationships often antagonistic. In Sri Lanka the Singhalese-Aryan-Buddhist identity was pitted against Tamil-Dravidian-Saivaite identity. In Tamil Nadu the Tamil linguistic researches started by missionary and colonial scholars became racial theories which gave Tamils a separate racial identity. Later evangelical propagandists started peddling crack-pot theories about Saivism and Vaishanvism being distorted forms of an ancient form of Christianity.
I conducted parallel investigative research in both United States and India. I studied government agencies, think-tanks, academic institutions in the West and their Indian associates. Again I discovered an extremely large network, working to supplant Indian interests. They facilitate an activist-academic anti-India nexus. Together, all these form a strong anti-India advocacy in US government hearings, UN bodies, at strategic events like the Durban Conference in 2001, and in bodies like the parliament of the European Union.
Would you be able to tell us about your association with Mr. Aravindan Neelakandan
He started as my research assistant when i had compiled a lot of data and wanted someone in India to validate facts pertaining to India and to get more facts. Being Tamil speaking helped him translate and get into organizations that I would not have been able to. Then I decided that he deserved to be coauthor. I want to train younger scholars to think like me and continue the same line of research as I won’t be able to continue at this rate myself.
Unity issues are a common factor among other religions as well. What are the factors that needs to be addressed to bring in greater communication between other Hindu groups.
Awareness is the single most important factor that has to be addressed. Often Indians are unaware that in the present globalized society, it is not just individual merit but one’s cultural capital and standing of the groups from which they emerge and are anchored to, are also equally important. As I mention in one of the six provocations of the book, the role of soft power, becomes even more important than ever before. Religions and cultures are a key component of such soft power. Christian and Islamic civilizations are investing heavily in boosting their respective soft power, for both internal cohesiveness and external influence. Along with this there is undermining the soft power of rivals which is what we have brought out in the book with relation to India. If our groups and gurus understand this factor, then they will be able to overcome their sectarian divisions and unite for the greater cause of civilizational well being Indic Dharma and society. Then we will be able to develop a common minimum denominator for intellectual networking and cooperation among Dharmic traditions, groups and Gurus. This book will make our spiritual and social leaders wake up and take note of the global civilizational competition. It will make them realize their importance and role in the global geo-politics, the reality to which others are well aware.
Editor’s note:
We strongly believe that most Hindus are tounge tied when it comes to standing up. We urge our readers to send in their comments on what is the best strategy to help our fellow Hindus to open up and express themselves against unethical evangelism.Please email your suggestions to Undercurrent.ca will gift one copy of the above book to the best 2 suggestions.
