Worshipping Dogmatic Tormentors

Goerge Orwell once famously said, “Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.” While our intelligentsia, by and large, has done hardly anything to refute, Dr Shashi Tharoor has often gone an extra mile to prove Orwell scarily accurate. During the first week of May 2018, Tharoor, joining Karnataka Assembly election trail in Bengaluru, made an important announcement, “Rahul Gandhi had a lot of commendable qualities that are becoming more and more apparent to the voters.”

 

By the way, interestingly followed up his statement with a lecture at Indian Institute of Science campus on ‘Role of Reason in Indian Politics.’ Bengalureans were also bestowed with this exciting thought of Dr. Tharoor, “Congress considers Tipu Sultan, a hero though he raided neighbouring kingdoms.”

 

 It would have significantly profited, if scholarly Dr Tharoor, was kind enough to have named this “neighbouring kingdoms” that Tipu invaded. Tharoor certainly knows these kingdoms, but he will surely NOT tell you. A few of Talukas of the present-day Palakkad District were once known as Tharoor Swarupam until Tharoor’s Party hero Tipu sultan razed it unrecognisably. Even before hapless Hindus were subjected to Mapilla riots of Malabar and Travancore, Tharoor Swarupam was razed to dust, thanks to Tipu Sultan. Notwithstanding Tharoor’s selective dumbness, Palakkad Fort, standing today on the ruins of decimated Tharoor Swarupam, is a glaring testimony to untold horror. Dr Tharoor has extensively written on his ancestors and Tharoor Swarupam. And, there is hardly any reason to believe that a person of his intellectual eminence, once poised to become the General Secretary of the United Nations, will not know how Tharoor Swarupam was decimated due to Talibani mindset. Tharoor very well knows Hindus cannot be Talibanised to retaliate in the same language.

 

 

No sooner did Tharoor make his Taliban/Pakistani statements against Hindus, many theories started making rounds as to his intent. While some say, it’s a discretionary tactic in the wake of tightening fist of law, some others pity Tharoor for having been under the trap of some vested interests. For an ordinary man, it’s tough to decipher the intent. So, it’s best left to the experts to delve into this realm.

 

In fact, a thorough study may be commissioned under the aegis of National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India’s apex centre for mental health and neuroscience education. Precisely five years ago (July 2013), NIMHANS was reported to have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with CBI to train latter’s officials who investigate senior politicians and bureaucrats accused in high profile and politically sensitive cases. A study into the brain-mind-behavioral axis of a person gripped in Semitic, or any other dogmatic ideology would be highly relevant in Bharat’s context because we, as a nation, are braced with severe challenges of integration.

 

It is indeed a travesty that an Indic mind has always remained an enigma wrapped in mystery for large sections of high profile individuals and intellectuals in our own country. Leave aside those who do it on purpose, a large segment of the intelligentsia, honestly fails to understand a syncretic Indic mind. On an honest note, it is nearly impossible for a positive thought to comprehend as to how seemingly or opposite philosophical dimensions – say Advaita and Dvaita or poor and rich – can coexist, in absolute harmony. Does it defy their logic as to how or rather why at all, castes should coexist in our society, given the graded inequities attributed to them? So, a herculean effort is unleashed by this divide India camp to engineer mitotic and meiotic divisions into castes and then pit them against one another, and then, against Hindu society at large.

 

When asked by a famous intellectual of the Macaulay breed, as to why at all Jains should coexist with Hindus, a famous Jain Saint is reported to have quipped back– I am a Sthanakvasi because I am a ?h?t?mbara Jain. I am a ?h?t?mbara Jain because I am Jain. I am a Jain because I am a Hindu. Now, take a bet, a positive mind cannot understand it at all! Yes, it’s a hopeless cause. A person gripped in a dogmatic religion somehow can make sense of it, but a Marxist mind grasped in slotting the whole of the humanity into compatible and irreconcilable contradictions, has never been able to make peace with a mind soaked in syncretic traditions. The great purge of the USSR, China and Mongolia and elsewhere, resulting in the killings of lakhs and lakhs of innocent people, besides the destruction of thousands of books, relics, and ancient monuments, is a glaring testimony to this fact. Hence, a mind trained in Marxist dogma can hardly make sense of Indic thought process.

 

Now, there is this fascinating dimension of a dogmatic that merits a mention. Two warring dogmas, appearing to be at war, are often at a grudging bonhomie with each other. Mihir Bose, who wrote the famous book From Midnight to Glorious Morning? India Since Independence, has dedicated one whole chapter chronicling and compiling views and writings – right from James Mill to his devout disciple Thomas Babington Macaulay and Sir George Campbell to Sir. Winston Churchill hated Hindus and loved Muslims.

 

Winston Churchill, during the heights of Quit India movement, is reported to have told Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, that, should the British be forced to leave India, “Eventually, the Moslems will become masters, because they are warriors, while the Hindus are windbags.”Some years ago, a letter written by Churchill in 1907 was discovered, wherein Churchill had expressed his strong desire to convert to Islam. Now, that explains the love-hate bonhomie of the dogmatic lot. A positive mind will never be able to understand a syncretic mind but will always have sympathy with another positive thought.

 

This should explain why Tharoor and his party, despite the destruction of Kerala, love to worship their hero Tipu Sultan but see Hindus as Talibanis. Girish Karnad in his Kannada play elevated Tipu to the level of a revolutionary ideologue who was influenced by the fraternity ideals of French Revolution. Karnad again is from the Saraswat community which was subjected by Tipu to untold miseries!

 

Now, let’s come back to Tharoor. Some of our Indic scholars and supporters were fascinated to listen to his speech entitled “Britain Does Owe Reparations”. There was hardly anything Indic in his constructor logical makeup. It is this breed of intellectuals who love to swing between the polarities but will never liberate themselves from the endless captivation or boredom of the pendulum. One may be tempted to draw an analogy from the Russian or Chinese Revolution. The USSR and China used the ‘demolition paraphernalia’ of the same make as that of their erstwhile oppressors. And precisely deployed the very same debris as their new building material. So, it was no revolution; it was a reversion of exploiters. Once you use the same building blocks, you are always bound to be swinging between polarities – once warring and then again infatuating but never liberating from its clutches. This was the precise problem with Nehru, who loved India but hated Bharat. Nehru never realised that the diametrically opposite perceptions have an innately interconnection. He discovered India but hopelessly lost Bharat.

 

And precisely, now, Hinduist Tharoor will never be able to either decipher or discover Hindutva. Tharoor will be perennially warring with Hindus…but simultaneously explaining to us, nay, to himself, why he is Hindu. Tharoor can never worship his gods. He will always worship dogmatic tormentors like Tipu despite the destruction of Tharoor Swarupam Empire but will still curse hapless syncretic Hindus as Talibanis and Pakistanis.