रोम रोम में रमे राम की जन्मभूमि पर नित रहते हैं
फिर भी राघव के मंदिर को बाबर की मस्जिद कहते हैं
-Sadhvi Ritambhara, on how a structure built by an outsider to the civilisation and an invader is being chosen over one of the most important deities of the civilisation, Ram, over whose temple it was built.
What is Middle-Eastern Consciousness and How does it Differ from Western Consciousness?
When we talk about Western Consciousness and Colonialism, Christianity is the point of focus. Similarly, the Middle-Eastern Consciousness is based on the culture and practices of Islam as practiced in the region. As it spread out to various regions, the OET of Islam being that of an expansionist ideology, it had certain common points wherever it went.
While the Christian conversions weren’t any less bloody, in the context of Bharat, Islam exercised a particularly bloodier conquest to try to root out its consciousness and the Hindu dharma and religion native to it. In the rest of the world too, most conversions in the early era (7th-8th Century when the spread was starting) happened at pointed edges of swords rather than by intrinsic belief systems being sown or by brainwash.
The Western imperialism tried to take control of the developmental narrative i.e. what development meant, which cultures were to be considered civilized enough, what colour on your skin was to be considered superior (i.e. racism) etc. to spread Christianity to ‘civilise the heathens’. The Mid-Eastern coloniality, however, itself being categorized alongside Bharat in the ‘heathens’ category by the Western consciousness never took on the developmental narrative as their agenda. It used brute force on most occasions and instead, tried taking religious narrative under its control.
Indoctrination, though used as a tool on both sides, will be found stronger in the Mid-Eastern coloniality, where, as J. Sai Deepak’s ‘India, Bharat and Pakistan’ emphasizes, each time there is a struggle with the temporal power of Islam, scholars are automatically produced who want to restore power by reverting to the purest i.e. earliest form of Islam. The earliest form of Islam, without syncretism, is itself incompatible with the culture and fabric of a Hindu-majority India, which it must view as a land of war (i.e. ‘Dar ul Harb’) since it views all Hindu practices as blasphemy.
[Historically, the bloody conversion campaign from the first time Islam walked into Bharat, the attempt at having Afghanistan invade Bharat to make it an Islamic State rather than a Hindu Rashtra when separation from the British colonisers became a reality and the ‘Ralive, Galive, Chalive’ slongs (Convert, Die or Run) in Kashmir, all stand as examples of this in addition to ones provided further in this article.]
In this, indoctrination, especially with the Madrassa network, works as a perfect tool to spread this coloniality which views Islam in its normative form.
These are a few basic thoughts about the Mid-Eastern Consciousness, its Colonialism and campaigns & its OET and how it differs from the other kind of colonialism, i.e. Western, that Bharat suffered under.
A Brief Into Why The Middle Eastern Colonialism Should In Fact Be Viewed As Colonialism
Since the very midnight of 15th August, 1947 and even before, all of us have been taught to view the British as colonisers. This is because they came to Bharat with their imperialist Western mindset and wished to ‘civilise’ the people of Bharat (‘heathens’ as per the white man’s burden) into not only following their way of life but also their religion. Though the education curriculum might try to hide the fact just stated to tell the readers of history that the main objective of the British was trade, the fact remains that the same history also almost mandates that the Britishers be seen as colonisers.
Western colonialism is not the only kind that Bharat suffered from; there is one that is older and much more entrenched- Middle Eastern Coloniality- that started in the 7th Century with Islamic invaders entering Bharat. However, what is extremely surprising is that despite ticking all the boxes that Western colonialism does (whether it be ‘civilization of heathens’ through spreading a ‘purer’ religion or be it looting and marauding Bharat) people are hesitant to call this colonialism and that, leave alone the history books that glorify this kind of Mid-Eastern colonialism, very little independent literature exists that does so too.
Rarely are people belonging to any country taught to respect their invaders and even more rarely do they feel such pride in them that they oppose the renaming of places that bear their name or rebuilding of places they tore down during their reign! In India, however, this is but normal.
To make it simple, any sort of forceful imposition of one consciousness onto another is the most basic form of colonialism. The very goal of moulding the colonised into the image of the coloniser is what the physical form of colonialism (i.e. colonisation) targets.
Bharat is one of the only few countries that has been able to put up resistance against such kinds of colonization and attempts at both conversion of religion and subversion of consciousness. However, what is also true of late is that Bharat suffers, at the very least, from historical amnesia. Bharat is a Hindu majority nation. Being anti-Hindu, thus, directly translates to being against the very fabric of the nation. Various invaders and rulers, from Aurangzeb to Tipu Sultan are commemorated today in the kindest of words. Here are a few brief examples:
· Tipu Sultan
Ashutosh Rana’s famous poem ‘He Bharat ke Ram Jago’ says:
“छत्रसाल बुंदेला जागे, पंजाबी कृपाण जगे,
दो दिन जिया शेर के माफिक, वो टीपू सुल्तान जगे”
Tipu Sultan, who desecrated and destroyed more than 5,000 Hindu temples and converted and killed more than 4.5 million Hindus is remembered almost as our saviour!
· Aurangzeb
Almost all Bharatiyas are taught to remember the lineage of the Mughals by heart when I am sure not even half could recite that of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj.
The same Babur who demolished the Ayodhyan Temple is praised. There's a road named after him even now!
Aurangzeb who destroyed hundreds of temples is praised with the false narrative that he built more temples than he destroyed. In fact, Aurangzeb hated the Hindu culture so much that he enforced a strict ban on various kinds of musical instruments that, he considered, essentially came from the Hindu culture. Making clay figures of Gods such as Sri Ganesh and Maa Lakshmi was banned on festivals such as Diwali!
Recently, when a road in Delhi named after Aurangzeb was renamed to honour Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, our former President and a brilliant scientific mind, various parts of India saw massive protests against the same.
· Sikandar Shah Miri (Butshikan)
Ruthless to the core, Butshikan destroyed all Hindu temples in the areas he ruled. He killed enough brahmins to collect 37kgs of janeu (or kalaawa or moli- the thread tied on the wrist of your right hand) and burnt it. The brahmins were buried in mass graves at the ‘Batta Mazaar’ that can still be visited today.
· Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji
The destroyer of the famous Nalanda University, Khalji chopped off the hands of all the brahmins at the University, locked them in and burnt the building. With most information having been stored in dry leaf-scrolls, which hardly take a few seconds to burn, Nalanda contained so much information that the fire did not die down for months!
Left historians like Romila Thapar have now tried rewriting history and claim that this was a job done by a few drunkards!
More shameful is the fact that while the loss of Nalanda is mourned, Nalanda itself is situated an hour away from Bakhtiyarpur, named in the honour of its destroyer!
In the Indian Context:
- When Akbar itself means ‘The Great’, why do people refer to Jalal-ud-Din Muhammad as ‘Akbar, the Great’. The simple answer is that while it may make no sense to say ‘The Great, The Great’ people are brainwashed into internalizing it every time the epithet is repeated.
- The construction of the Babri-alternative being built on the 5 acre land in Ayodhya will be started only after a brick has been flown in from the Mecca. Why? Is there not a Jama Masjid that is apparently sacred to the Muslims?
- Derogatory phrases always teach us to demean the Hindu culture, never any other, from 'hawas ka pujaari' (where the term 'pujaari' is used instead of a maulana/father), to 'hagu-Ram' (where only the Hindu God 'Lord Ram' is demeaned).
In the Global Context:
- When protests and pro-Palestinian rallies are organised (or Khalistan rallies, which is closely related to the Mid-Eastern Consciousness as well- this may be covered in a later article), more often than not, you will notice that flags of Non-Islamic nations, often of the one where the protest is being organised, are disrespected, often burned.
These are some of the hundreds of examples of middle-eastern consciousness in action that can be cited on this topic. All of these prove how the Mid-Eastern coloniality has been deliberately allowed to seep into the Bharatiya consciousness.
What you do each time you honour an invader is that you treat him like one of the community! In doing this two things are ensured, plain and simple: white-washing of unsecular and uncomfortable facts & the comfortable adjustment that Mid-Eastern invasions are not labelled as colonialism.
In fact, our educational system that was devised under the left-liberals is so deeply flawed in this regard that the history manufactured around several invaders is still peddled in history textbooks. Ghori and Ghazni, for example, are shown as invaders (or ‘lootera’) to give the impression that they came to India only to loot the wealth and went away after doing so. One might, if this is true, want to then ask himself why Somnath was attacked 17 times when it was reduced to a small shrine, barely an image of its past self, after just the first time! In fact, during these conquests, it was a ritual routine for these so-called invaders to destroy the temples that lay in their paths!
When these invaders and rulers were so obviously anti-Hindu, and consequently against the very culture of Bharat, and regularly attacked places of worship and exercised conversion, was it not the imposition of one consciousness on a pre-existing one? In this light, it becomes obvious that the Abrahamic consciousness is a part and package of colonialism in India too; albeit Mid-Eastern rather than Western Coloniality.
Why is this Discussion Relevant Today?
Firstly, when identified as colonialism, differentiating this from the consciousness of Bharat seems easier and the decolonial effort being made towards the Western imprint in Bharat can also be made towards the Mid-Eastern footprint.
Secondly, the Bharatiya or Sanatan consciousness are attached to this particular land that we view as our mother (‘Bharat Mata’) and so, the ummah consciousness that has been ingrained to take priority over the Bharatiya consciousness can finally be defeated. Till the time this is not done and people within the country stop looking for guidance from Islamic nations outside on any matter whatsoever the theoretical Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb that never made it off the papers will keep eluding real life.
Lastly, it is the first decisive step towards civilizational reclamation of various spots of value to the Bharatiya consciousness such as the 40,000 temples broken during the Islamic reign and invasions in Bharat.
Reclamation and How Far is Too Far?
As stated above, only once one realizes that the Islamic invasions and reigns thereof were a part of the Mid-Eastern colonialism, can one try to decolonialize himself and until that happens, ‘Swaraj’ can never be achieved in practice.
Swaraj, in its true sense, means not only the reclamation of one’s identity that is based in his civilizational ethos, but also that he can reclaim physical spaces that were taken from him forcefully under unjust reign of the coloniser!
In this sense, there are thousands of illegal structures that were made atop existing temples by first demolishing them and then using their rubble to construct these structures, often breaking the idols in the process to bury them into the stairs of a Masjid so as to disrespect the Hindu religion. Jama Masjid or the Jahan-ara Mosque, that contains the idol of Keshav Devji Temple of Mathura is just one example. Victory monuments were made such as the Quwwat-ul-Islam Mosque (‘Might of Islam’ in English), made after demolishing 26 temples, most of them Jain, and dragging out their debris over miles to the site of the mosque. These serve as a brutal reminder of this terror filled reign. Most of these places neither hold any significance to the Islamic side nor do they see regular Islamic practices due to the presence of Hindu symbols on various debris pieces.
Why, then, should there be a problem in reclaiming these sites and erasing these cruel reminders of colonization? Whether you had 3 homes or 30, if a person, outsider to your nation, came and took over them, would you not strive at least after he left or perished to reclaim ALL that you could?
Decolonialization, thus, holds supreme importance because it should tell you that no step is too far as long as it to reclaim, rather than capture, both your mental as well as your physical space.
Conclusion
Most problems that have arisen today with regards to the blatant white-washing of history, problems in the reclamation of Hindu places of worship, hatred towards Brahmins, suppressing of voices citing facts by calling them Islamophobic (Nupur Sharma remains a prime example) are all a direct result of coloniality- some Western but a lot of it, Mid-Eastern too! Till the time the Mid-Eastern coloniality is not wiped away from the Bharatiya-Sanatan consciousness, it will keep eating away at the Indian culture by the means of worship of false ideals, which then takes the form of both extremism and stoppage of rights to reclamation.
We are not a nation-state but a civilization-state that runs off of its own consciousness. To surrender that in favour of an outside consciousness would be a terrible blunder to make and would defeat the very purpose of resistance, both against the British and against various Islamic invaders and rulers.
After all, true independence can only be achieved when the person gaining it has not become the image of the coloniser himself!
Image Source: https://hindupost.in/history/how-a-brave-unknown-hindu-avenged-destruction-of-somnath-temple-by-the-barbaric-mahmud-ghazn/
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