This book by the editor of Panchjanya, is aimed to stress on the fact that despite India being a Hindu-majority nation, even a Hindu, in his own country feels low and persecuted because what is missing in this land is leadership and a champion for their cause.
In the first part, giving a very impressive analogy taken from the epic Mahabharata about bodily ascendance to the heavens, the author talks of Arjuna who asks his elder brother Yudhishthira what he finds so attractive in the rough Himalaya when he himself could find nothing but rocks and an unfriendly environment. Yudhishthira'sreply is, ?I don'tlike the Himalaya because it gives me something in return. I love it for being just what it is?Himalaya.? Similarly, the author says that it was this power of unselfish love or one-way faith for the truth that allowed the Hindus to survive centuries of vicissitudes and upheavals caused due to repeated foreign invasions. For them the world was like a family?vasudeva kutumbakam and they believed in sarve bhavantu sukhinah sarve santu niramaya?let everyone be happy and live without disease. This message of karuna, compassion, is present in every Indian, which prevents him/her from being cruel and unkind.
Beginning with India celebrating completion of 150 years of the 1857 revolution against the colonialists, the author talks essentially of the irony that the Hindus are their own enemy. He points out that on one side are the Hindutvavadis and on the other, the Hindus influenced by communist ideology which is ?expressed with innocent-looking names and supported by ?once upon a time? nationalist Congress and sundry political parties.? Criticising the government in power, he says, ?Parliament has a predominant percentage of Hindu members and this government runs on a major share of revenue collected from the Hindus.?
Tarun Vijay has a point when he says that ?Hindus feel unwanted and Hindu organisations behave as if they are in a minority. Those who take up Hindu cause like banning cow slaughter and building the Ram temple or entering the Bhojshala are rebuked and attacked by Hindus.? He asks, ?We fear even remembering our dead. How many books in India tell our children about the sacrifices their ancestors made to retain and protect the culture and Dharma of the nation??
He very rightly expresses his sorrow – ?More than a million Hindus were killed during the partition of India. They paid the price of their leaders? weaknesses and defeatism. They didn'tdemand division. Muslims wanted it and got it at the cost of Hindu lives. We celebrate 15th August with a fanfare and gaiety that matches a New York carnival. Not a single reference is made to the barbarism faced by the Hindus.? In a scathing attack, he points out that the northeast has been made into a laboratory by all non-Hindu forces to eliminate Hindus wherever they can, like the Kashmiris from Kashmir and rightly asks, ?Pray why do we feel shy to even offer a word of solace to the unfortunate Kashmiri Hindus, who were driven out of their homes and hearth by the jihadis??
In the second part of the book, Tarun Vijay lists the subjects of grave concern like ethnic cleansing of Hindus from the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, politics of hate and revenge in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the arrest of Shankaracharya in the name of law and order on Diwali night, refusal to execute non-bailable warrants against the Imam, stopping of bhajans in trains, subsidy to Haj and silence on Hindu pilgrimages. He, however, sees a silver lining in the dark clouds when he says that a day will come when the Hindus will arise as one group and so will the march to Santana Dharma take place with momentum.
(Har-Anand Publications Private Limited, E-49/3 Okhla Industrial Area, Phase II, New Delhi-110020.)
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