Al Jazeera & Internet Hindus

So the newest entrant in the English TV news media in India is Al Jazeera the famous Arabic channel. One imagines they would mostly be covering international news with an Indian flavour. To break into the minds of viewers some special event was in order. What better than a discussion on some contentious topic! And so it was about ‘Internet Hindus’ (IH). On the night of July 9 through the LiveStream (@AJStream) on the internet they had a discussion with a panel that included Dr.Subramanian Swamy(SS), Sagarika Ghose (SG) and Sadanand Dhume (SD). (Youtube)We all know about Dr.Swamy. Who in the world doesn’t know Sagarika? About Sadanand Dhume I have heard little. Other than reading a stray column of his I knew nothing about his stance. I didn’t know if he took an Off-stump or Leg-Stump guard, but from the debate it is fair to assume he prefers Middle-stump. More of all this minor discussion later! Let’s start at the beginning with the one who takes immense pride in coining the term ‘Internet Hindus’, Sagarika Ghose, of course.

IH is just one of many inventions and concepts that Sagarika has introduced into our lives. The list is too long to run here. Let me make it absolutely clear that she didn’t coin the IH term in frustration or anger. And it’s wrong to suggest that Sagarika bears any hatred towards or is against the IH. That is as far from the truth as Earth is from the planet Moronus. Sagarika is just against logic, reason, accountability and science. Umm.. maybe even against civilisation itself. Her latest piece of brilliance was seen in her tweet on the day the Higgs-Boson (God Particle) was announced. Have you educated yourself? Did you read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins? (Read the whole lot at Sudhir Kumar’s Blog). Now, since she is so enamoured by Dawkins, and so passionately calls herself and her media gang ‘liberals’, I thought it best to quote a post from The Richard Dawkins Foundation itself. The birth of IH can be partially explained by this (Emphasis mine):

Most people are aware of Karl Popper as the father of the modern scientific method, and especially as the creator of the logic known as 'Popper falsifiability'. Somewhat less known is just how well Popper applied his prodigious logical powers to issues of society. In particular, to an issue much in the news these days...that of 'tolerance'. And in that respect, Popper made what to me is the defining statement on the matter:-

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.”

This should be framed and mounted on the wall of every liberal's house. Especially those liberals...and there are all too many of them....who are so enamoured with tolerant thinking that they demand tolerance even of the intolerant. To my mind, that level of unthinking and unlimited tolerance is akin to those Trojans who rather stupidly thought the nice wooden horse outside the city was a gift.

Fatwas, open call for murder of cartoonists, chopping off arms of professors! Tolerance! Well, now that we have set a few things in place we can get back to the AJStream discussion. A lot of questions, particularly by Sagarika, were sprinkled into the discussion on Hindu tolerance. Lisa Fletcher, the host, started off with this question:

Who are the Internet Hindus? Why do they oppose a secular India?

Did I hear you say WHAT? Okay, I have to assume this is her first foray into any Hindu related topic, so I’ll choose to forgive the stupidity in her innocent question. I don’t want to recall history of the Mughals or the British but if at all anybody in India is secular it has to be the Hindus. I am tempted to rephrase John Bradford and suggest: “But for the grace of Hindus, India would have been a Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran or even Bangladesh”. And though Lisa works for an Arabic channel she doesn’t seem to have looked deep into Arabian society to be asking such a question.

And in her first draw Sagarika states there are many online ‘organised’ communities on FB, Twitter etc. who follow the ideology of Hindu Nationalism. They attack you if you differ with them. And lo and behold the best of Sagarika: “Hindutva becomes a message for violence on the ground”. Then she gets upset when the so called fake liberals are called “paid media, servants of the Congress or the govt” and oozes emotions suggesting Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi, the well-known Bollywood couple, can’t find a house in Mumbai. Really? So Javed and Shabana are struggling to find a flat? Where did that one come from? If Al Jazeera or Lisa Fletcher ever wanted stories from the crypt about the Indian MSM’s misdeeds and crimes then I hope they visit this site. They can close their eyes and click on any post here and they would be alarmed at what they find. And this is not the only one, there are many other sites which have repeatedly exposed the MSM’s lies, manipulations and extreme bias against Hindus. This is all the more evident when the media handles the issue of terrorism.

Naturally, Atirath Aich, formerly associated with AJStream himself, tweets this question during the discussions. Even an average eye can clearly see that the Indian media has mostly been covering up Islamic fanaticism and terrorism and trigger-happy with the so-called saffron terrorism. It’s another story that some of the saffron terror-accused are not convicted, not tried and some have proven to be spurious cases. And Sagarika claimed they have done many exposes on Islamic fanaticism. Oh yeah? I would like to challenge her to prove this silly point she makes. Subramanian Swamy made some telling points, that India is secular because Hindus are still in majority. He points to the state of Kashmir where Hindus are a minority and speaks the truth when he says a Hindu in Kashmir suffers more discrimination than Muslims do in the rest of India where they are minorities.

SS also pointed out the incident in Kerala where a quack Sharia court ordered the arms of a professor chopped because he inadvertently wrote something negative about Islam. The order was carried out and his arms were chopped off. This is the danger that Islamic fanaticism has brought to every society where it has lived with other communities. No sane Hindu would suggest discrimination against Muslims. But Muslims are certainly responsible for their own backward condition. If Hindus had continued to practice many of the social evils of their own society they would have been just as backward too. Muslims refuse to reform and have a notorious intolerance for other communities. It is this intolerance that has grown to a point, supported by indiscriminate appeasement by the Congress and other Socialist and Leftist parties that has brought about the IH. And some of the IH are belligerent and abusive as well. By Sagarika’s measure most of her own tweets would fall under the belligerent, intolerant and abusive category. Some could even be called racist.

As far as Sadanand Dhume is concerned he mostly played the balancing act. That is a splendid achievement considering the two wings of panellists he had. But he did make an important point: “Name a country in Asia that is more tolerant of its minority” than India. The current churning against the media, the Congress+Socialists+Leftists and even intolerant Muslims did not happen overnight. This was waiting to happen. Distortion of their history, abuse of their rights, discrimination through constitution and appeasement of minorities have made many Hindus say “Enough is Enough”! The Internet blogs and social media have helped bring out the truth about the distorted history and the lies the media and historians have peddled for years. Sagarika must learn to accept that fact.

If Lisa Fletcher and AlJazeera look deeper into Hindu society they will realise the undeniable fact that Hindus are not bound together as a community by their religion. They are bound together by their traditions, social customs and practices. In her opening statements Lisa mentions “Hindutva is a core principle of the RSS”. Now, RSS doesn’t influence all Hindus nor is it a concept similar to the ‘universal brotherhood’ that applies to Muslims. And the great scientist that Sagarika is, she suggests “Hindus don’t need to fear anything”. No, they don’t need to fear anything but they are also not willing to welcome any more Trojan horses. If some IH are belligerent and abusive they would have been so even without the internet. Trust me the Muslims don’t even need the internet for that. As someone tweeted jokingly, their equivalent of IH, the IM, is already a terrorist organisation.

Here’s the last word dear Cacofonix! You may have coined the IH term to ridicule Hindus but given that you’re very scientific, you didn’t foresee the response. The panellists even debated it as an offensive term. That’s seriously a laugh. THEY ARE WRONG! Far from seeing it as ridicule or offensive, many Hindus on the net have worn it proudly as their identity. The aggressive Hindus who would have otherwise have gone by their own names or other funny names have exploded into a huge mass with different variants of the term IH. That’s called Hindu tolerance, even embracing an intended ridicule as a badge of honour. That’s the true Hindu Liberal. Go figure! 

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