By
Amulya Ganguli
Which
of the saffron brotherhood’s legacies can be the most damaging for the country
– the anti-Muslim sentiments which it routinely fosters or its weird
“pseudo-science”?
A
measure of its animus towards the Muslims was evident in the glorification of a
convicted killer, Shambhulal Regar, in a tableau brought out by the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad in Rajasthan on the occasion of Ram Navami. Regar is now in jail
for attacking and burning alive a Muslim labourer while castigating him for
“love jihad”. Speaking on the incident on TV, an RSS spokesman focussed more on
the “threats” posed by “love jihad” involving Muslim men and Hindu women than
on the killing.
To
explain what drives an average saffronite to spew venom against Muslims, a
netizen has written: “Warning: Islam is not a religion, but a political
ideology which incites hate, violence, intolerance and terror. Islamists are
terminators. You cannot reason with them. They do not feel remorse or pity or
fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until all the infidels are dead
or have submitted to Islam.” (The blogger’s indebtedness to the language used
in the sci-fi film, Terminator, is obvious.)
Islamophobia
was the basis of the Hindutva lobby’s formation and its rise since the 1990s
when it held the Indian Muslims responsible for all of the country’s
misfortunes, starting from its “subjugation” by the invaders to the destruction
of temples to the partition of the country to the present-day terrorism.
Little
wonder that a saffron stalwart, Vinay Katiyar, M.P., would like all the Indian
Muslims to leave for either Pakistan or Bangladesh since their presence in
India poses both an immediate security threat and a gradual reduction of the
Hindus to a minority status because of the exponential growth of the Muslims
via their four wives. As Narendra Modi once said about the Muslim families: hum
panch, hamare pachis.
It
will not be easy to eradicate this poison of communalism which appears to have
infected a sizeable section of the Hindus if the venomous outpourings of the
saffron trolls and of some television anchors are taken into account.
Impressionable young minds cannot but be vitiated by this propaganda of hate.
But
how will such minds respond to the drivel which is being peddled by saffron
“scientists”? The cornerstone of their bizarre ideas is available from the
claims made by a saffron blogger who says that Hindus had mastered aviation
technology thousands of years ago. The evidence of this achievement is said to
be provided by the vimanas mentioned in ancient Sanskrit epics which were capable
of interplanetary flights, according to the writer.
The
reference to thousands of years is problematic because the last Ice Age ended
only 10,000 years ago, but let that be. It is outlandish claims of this nature
which were presented at one of the annual science congresses which made the
Nobel laureate Venkataraman Ramakrishnan describe the conclaves as a “circus”,
vowing never to attend them again.
The
latest Science Congress has seen similar outrageous claims such as that the
gravitational waves will soon be renamed as Narendra Modi waves and that the
gravitational lensing effect will become known as the Harsh Vardhan effect.
Harsh
Vardhan, incidentally, is the Union Minister for Science (!) and Technology,
who had argued that the Vedas had a theory which was superior to that of
Einstein’s E=MC2. The minister’s other claim to fame is his assertion about the
virtues of cow’s urine which, when mixed with cow dung, cow’s milk, curd and
ghee, becomes a nourishing meal. According to him, experiments are being
carried out on the efficacy of this concoction.
The
latest science congress also saw assertions about the Kauravas of the
Mahabharata having been test-tube babies and that scientists like Einstein,
Newton and Stephen Hawking were all wrong. Much of this would have been
laughable if this indulgence in voodoo did not carry the potential of deepening
the traits of irrationality and superstition which still exist and occasionally
lead to the killing of old women branded as witches or to child sacrifice.
Reports
of such medievalism generally emanate from the dark hinterland of the BIMARU
states. It is not surprising that in keeping with these regressive trends, the
director of an ayurvedic department in U.P. has said that eight medicines have
been prepared using “gau mutra” which can be useful in treating liver ailments,
joint pains and immunity deficiency.
Like
the cow, astrology and vaastu, the “science” of dwellings, are the Sangh
Parivar’s other obsessions. Out-patients departments in some hospitals in
BJP-run states are advising patients on the basis of these two subjects while a
“vishwavidyalaya” in Bhopal is promising pregnant women the child of their
choice and gives them the chance to write their child’s destiny in the foetal
stage. More than the ease of doing business, India may soon demonstrate the
ease of being pre-modern. (IPA Service)
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