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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