No newspaper or periodical worth its name in India will publish what I write in the lines that follow. Not because the subject matter is seditious or sacrilegious or obscene, or even controversial, but simply because it defies the Emergency imposed on this country by Muslim theologians and politicians backed by ‘secularist’ intellectuals and politicians and riotous Muslim mobs and plain terrorists.” — Sita Ram Goel, Islam Imposes an Emergency on India, Freedom of Expression, Voice of India, New Delhi
Through Bloomsbury India, the secular-liberals of Bharat have again shown their true colours. The book on Delhi Riots 2020, was sabotaged in the name of invitation to a guest in the pre-launch event. The sequence of events clearly identifies the real culprits behind this plot. The pressure was created from the established lobby that believes they have a monopoly over the truth. In reality, this is not a new story; what has changed is the strategy.
Historically, narrating anything from Hindu/Indic point of view was negated as unsubstantiated research or some identities were used to target the publication legally. The same people who use all the might to denigrate or demean Bharatiya faiths and traditions, stand up with the slogan of ‘Secularism in Danger’ if some intellectual inquiry is made into any of the fundamentals of Abrahamic faiths. Right from the pre-independence period any assertion from Hindu point of view has been easily branded as ‘communal’. If someone like Swami Shraddhanand or scholars like Sita Ram Goyal and Ram Swarup went ahead with publishing their research works, they were admonished through different means, sometimes intimidation or even elimination. Even if they passed the legal hurdle, academic partners of illeberals would ensure that such works do not find a place in libraries or bookstalls. ‘How dare you’ has been their version of liberalism.
Times have changed now. Their blatant gate-keeping techniques are no longer applicable. Their stranglehold over the systemic manipulation of intellectualism has weakened. With the awakening of the masses, the ‘illiberal’ manipulations of liberal intellectuals got exposed. The publishers also realised that without taking the Indic point of view on board, their publications would not resonate with the masses. No wonder, still media houses criticising this approach by the publishers with usual sarcasm – oh, where are ‘right-wing’ intellectuals? There cannot be substantive research with Indic methods is their preconceived notion. Naturally establishing oneself with a truly Bharatiya point of view has been a systemic challenge at all levels. Even the true Gandhians like Acharya Dharmapal had to go through the experience of being outcaste for telling the truth. Earlier it used to be through blatant Islamists like Syed Shahabuddin with their legal might. Alternatively, the PFI kind of organisations are used.
As the real and innate desire of Bharatiyata that celebrates diversity and negates any form of uniformity, even in the way of worship, is on ascendance; social media censorship and using the might of international networks is the new strategy. The kind of pressure tactics being used on through Twitter, Facebook or so-called fact-checkers is nothing but an attempt to regain the lost ground of monotheistic intellectualism.
The Shaheen Bagh protests and subsequent riots were rooted in the same kind of thinking that prevailed over Bharat’s political milieu from Khilafat movement to the Partition on religious lines. Expressing insecurity on a non-issue, then blatant provocation in the name of religion and justifying violence as a peaceful movement to save ‘secularism’ is the standard modus-operandi of the Islamists; communists under the garb of liberal intellectualism provide a cover to them. The book by three brave women, Delhi Riots 2020 – The Untold Story, set to expose this strategy, hence the method of shadow ban through Bloomsbury.
@PrafullaKetkar
