In terms of status and career, a non-conformistic stance in favour of the temple cannot be maintained without sacrifice. By contrast, joining the ant… - Koenraad Elst
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In terms of status and career, a non-conformistic stance in favour of the temple cannot be maintained without sacrifice. By contrast, joining the anti-temple party has always been a smart career move. Far from requiring bravery, posturing as a “committed secularist” up in arms against “obscurantist and communalist history manipulation” will only earn you praise... India’s secularist academics and journalists form a society of mutual praise, and the cheapest way of getting applause in elite India is to attack the Hindu movement.
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Koenraad Elst
Koenraad Elst (born 7 August 1959) is a Flemish right wing Hindutva author, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and the Hindutva movement. Scholars have accused him of harboring Islamophobia.
We have to agree that it [Hindu nationalism] is a type of nationalism, though as such it really is only the most conspicuous tendency within a broader movement vaguely known as Hindu revivalism. Some Hindu thinkers usually classified with Hindu nationalism, such as Ram Swarup and Girilal Jain, explicitly questioned nationalism as the right paradigm for the concerns of Hinduism in the 20th century. ... Hindu nationalism entirely falls outside the category vaguely designated as "authoritarian nationalism".
Future books on the affair will certainly include a chapter on "the Ayodhya scandal": the unscrupled use of academic and media power positions by the secularists to suppress relevant evidence, and the gullibility of foreign scholars relying on hearsay from Indian colleagues whose bona fides is open to question. (...) Future scholars of political and communications science will study the reporting on the Ayodhya affair as an absolute classic of brilliantly successful disinformation. ...
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Many Hindus believe that Sati is an external contribution, probably triggered by the Muslim conquests. In reality, Sati is as old as scriptural Hinduism. Already the Rg-Veda (10:18:7-8, quoted and discussed on p.4--5) describes a funeral where the widow is lying down beside her husband on the pyre, but is led away from it, back to the world of the living. So it already provides a description of a Sati about to take place, as well as of the Brahmanical rejection of Sati.... Likewise, the Mahabharata, the best guide to living Hinduism, features several cases of Sati. Most prominent is the self-immolation by Pandu’s most beloved wife Madri. Less well-known perhaps is that Krishna’s father Vasudeva is followed on the pyre by four wives, and that Krishna’s death triggers the self-immolation (in his absence) of five of his many wives. But unlike Mohammed, Krishna need not be emulated by his followers. By contrast, Rama’s influence on the women in his life is not such that they commit Sati (on the contrary, his wife Sita comes unscathed out of the flames of her “trial by fire”),-- and he counts as the perfect man, the model whose behaviour should serve us as examplary.
