Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars

by Koenraad Elst

‘Culture war’ is a term that originated with the nineteenth-century German nation-builder Otto von Bismarck, who initiated a struggle with the church on control over education, and called it ‘kulturkampf’ (culture war). the same issue—minus the churches a contentious one in India, with both the history curriculum and the Allotment of authority over education being much discussed. Other themes partly overlap with and partly differ from those in the culture Wars in the US, where the term has gained currency to designate the debate between modern and religious world views. Specific to India are the debates about the definition of Hinduism and secularism, and the antagonisms within both. In a country where religion is inextricably woven into the social fabric, and multiple stratifications exist, ‘culture’ becomes a pervasive reality in every sphere of life. In this context, culture Wars assume a significance of great consequence—both immediate and far reaching. In Hindu dharma and the culture Wars, Koenraad Elst broaches a discussion on Hindu ideology, Hindu TV a and the Indian National identity, hoping to take this uniquely National conversation forward.

Genres: India, History

272 pages, Paperback

First published May 20, 2019

About the author

Flemish writer and orientalist (without institutional affiliation).

Koenraad Elst was an editor of the New Right Flemish nationalist journal Tekos 1992 to 1995 and also contributed to other Flemish seperatist publications like Nucleus, 't Pallieterke, Secessie and The Brussels Journal.

Koenraad Elst is one of the most well-known western writers to actively defend the Hindutva movement.

Reviews

[Ashish Iyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant essays/articles!
Love the way Koenraad Elst writes. This guy makes you think. My favorites essays were on Yoga, Sati, Academic Hinduphobic, Ayodhya, Aurangzeb, Academic bullies, Macualay, A diversity of 'White Saviours' and Freedom of expression. I think he knows more about Hinduism and India than those who are living in India. This guy is sheer brilliant but sadly he doesn't get his due credit.

I have read his other books on Ayodhya, Gandhi Godse, Negationism In India and Demographic siege. Amazing books they were. Now I have two books of his Who Is A Hindu? and Decolonizing The Hindu Mind. Hope i get time to read them soon.

[Ajay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book by Koenraad Elst. This book is a collection of essays. Read it to educate yourself how propaganda is done to disdain the name of Hinduism. This book will answers some of them.
Must read

[Guruprasad · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Must Read Book for the People who have Hindu Interest in Mind and action , i believe its not for beginners but should be read by all .
each article or essay concentrate on a topic related to Hindu issue which either in currently in news or was .

[Hariprasad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great set of essays on topics ranging from nationalism to sati to our national anthem. Very good read.

[Avinash Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of very profound and scholarly essays written by the erudite Koenraad Elst. It incisively talks about the non-economic conflicts faced by the Hindu society in academia and media alongwith some solutions and shortcomings of Hindu organisations that aim for Hindu revivalism in India or elsewhere.

[Srikar Krishnatheeram · Rating 5 out of 5]

This attempt is to bring to notice how important it is for one to follow the ‘Hindu Dharma’ and also how to be on the loggerheads winning the ‘Culture wars’ that the lobby throws at you every now and then.
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Prof Elst in this book writes detailed essays on diverse topics which tend to be the catalyst in starting a Culture war, starting with the narrative of how Yoga is made non-Hindu, debunking the ‘Sati’ narrative, validation of the terms ‘Secular Indian State’ and the term ‘Secularism’ to the most commonly used Hinduphobic term of ‘Freedom of Expression’.
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Bharat Culture forms the soul of modern India in every geographically and psychologically divided state or city. Even though Bharat is known for its vibrant traditions, it becomes equally difficult to understand the altering visions of the world’s largest democracy. ‘Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars’ is the path that aims to make people or at least practising Hindus see the frontage of truth crated by religious teachers and exposes the former to more practical and logical ideologies that Hindu Dharma preaches.

[mahesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive analysis of Hindhu dharma and its culture wars through essays. The beauty of Koenraad's arguments is keeping the true spirit of discussion. He doesn't mind being offensive to the ideology he is subscribed to, where normal humans do lack that capability. In his essays, He doesn't want to appease anyone like modern intellectuals, He stands for his opinion at the risk of being offensive. After reading Koenraad's work, My opinion regarding RSS, BJP, and Ramakrishna's mission needs re-examination. There is no appeasement at all, Just an intellectual exploration with the intention of addressing the core issue.

Must read to shackle and destroy all the lies fed into our colonized brain in the name of secularism.

[Enakshi J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Indian Culture forms the soul of modern India in every geographically and psychologically divided state or city. Even though India is known for its vibrant traditions, it becomes equally difficult to understand the altering visions of the world’s largest democracy. While religion and its doctrines have been mutated by the masters or the preachers, the followers still follow the blind alleyway and prefer violence and verbal squabbles as tactics to muzzle intellectual discourse. ‘Hindu Dharma and Culture Wars’ is a doorway that aims to make the people see the façade of truth created by the religious propagandists and exposes the former to more pragmatic and logical ideologies that Hinduism preaches.

Read the complete review here: https://aliveshadow.com/category-book...

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

As stated by the author in the introduction, this is a collection of his papers from 2005 to 2018, on various topics, dealing with different aspects of India and Hinduism, and as the others see them or react to them.

Elst does persist in making asinine statements, whether to merely provoke or often from racism, ignorance et al.

Often Elst makes comments that leave one uncertain if he's ignorant about India, being racist, or trying to prove he hasn't gone native.

"Nonetheless, let me offer some general observations. If Hindus are wrong anywhere in their evaluation of Aurangzeb, it is not in misstating his record, which was highly reprehensible even by the standards of his own day. But because of the crimes he undeniably committed against the mass of non-Muslims and against a few unorthodox Muslims, Hindus tend to launch this shrill rhetoric against the person Aurangzeb, as if he were an evil man. He was not. ... "

Yes he was, in killing and maiming people to bend them to his will, apart from the general atmosphere of atrocities he encouraged perpetrated against nonmuslims. He not only blinded Sambhaji, elder son of Shivaji, for refusing to covert, but had sons of a Sikh guru beheaded before they were past mid-teens, and then there's the boiling a man alive to death because he was in love with a daughter of his. Those specific instances might not quite match achievements of Mengele or Eichmann, but the sadusm is only different in number of victims, if that. Evil, yes, on par with any Nazi war criminals, punished or otherwise.

One might equally well opine, on the lines of Elst - and of course, everyone on the other side - disclaiming evil of Aurangzeb, that Mengele wasn't evil, he was a normal medical doctor with an aesthetic bent, immaculately dressed, pleasant with most people including those he selected or otherwise, and deeply interested in the scientific experiments. It woukd be all true and attested for even by holocaust survivors, all except certification as "not evil".

Germans certainly do not think there was anything wrong with a young man choosing to join SS because alternative was to be sent to "Russia, where it was very cold; so what if one had to .... " - and that statement was from a Bavarian in his early twenties during mid 1980s, too young to experience any of it,


1.​Hindu Fearlessness through the Ages

"Hindus are often confined to the Gandhian niche of being infinitely tolerant. They are expected to take everything lying down. If they show some self-respect, they are told that this isn’t ‘really Hindu’.

"One hears it all too often: ‘Hindus are cowards, they only deserve what they are suffering.’ Mahatma Gandhi said it clearly enough: ‘The Muslim is a bully, the Hindu a coward.’** But Hindus are by no means cowards. Hindus as such have their problems, but lack of bravery is not one of them.

"Look at the Bangladesh war of 1971. The Pakistani army was brave enough as long as its job consisted of, among other things, perpetrating crimes against Bengali women, but as soon as the Indian Army appeared on the scene, all they could do was flee and surrender. The Indian Army liberated the oppressed Muslims and the persecuted Hindus of Bangladesh. Or look at the Kargil War of 1999. Though politicians forbade Indian soldiers from taking the war into enemy territory by crossing the Pak border, the Indian Army besieged the Kargil mountain which the Pak invaders had taken, and reconquered it.

"Let us look at the historical record. First off, the Vedas and the Hindu epics, like most ancient writings, extol bravery. The Bhagavad Gita also underpins its plea for bravery on the battlefield with a typically Hindu (at least very un-Christian and un-Islamic) philosophy, namely the belief in reincarnation. Cicero and Caesar had noted the Gallic men’s battlefield bravery and its connection to their belief in reincarnation. This was equally true of the Hindu warriors: they were not afraid of death.

"Then, Hindus stopped Alexander the Great. To be sure, this is old history, we have a paucity of reliable sources about what really happened. At any rate, Alexander’s soldiers were uniquely far from home and understandably unwilling to go farther even if they could. But the fact remains: the great Alexander was satisfied with the Iranian provinces of India’s frontier and declined to enter India proper. That was no mean achievement of the Hindus.

"Then the Shakas, Kushanas and Hunas managed to gain a foothold in India’s Northwest. The Shakas were defeated—the Vikram calendar begins with this victory. These conquering foreigners were not fully expelled, but at least they were absorbed. There is no distinct Shaka, Kushana or Huna community today, much less do they demand minority privileges.

"The Muslims entered Indian history with a naval attack north of present-day Mumbai a few years after Prophet Mohammed’s death. It was repelled. Then for half a century, they sent a number of expeditions overland from Mesopotamia to Sindh. Each expedition was defeated.

"While conquering North Africa was a cakewalk, there was a caliph who expressed his reluctance to send another army to Sindh, because those expeditions only cost the lives of so many good Muslims. But, of course, if you keep trying, you will break through one day. So eventually, Mohammed bin Qasim occupied Sindh in AD 712. But even then, his successor was soon defeated.

"Meanwhile, the Muslim armies conquered Central Asia, and their next attack was through Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass. Afghanistan was ruled by the Hindu Shahiya dynasty, which gave them a long-drawn-out fight. But towards the year AD 1000, the Muslims finally won, and the Shahiya king killed himself when he found himself unable to defend his subjects. From Afghanistan, Mahmud Ghaznavi entered India proper for what his court chroniclers described as raids.

"In fact, he would have been happy enough to occupy India permanently, but the Hindus were still too strong for that. However, what the Hindus had in bravery, they lacked in alertness. They didn’t realize that Islam was a new type of enemy, much more difficult to digest than the earlier invaders. In the peripheral Kashmir region, the king acted ‘secular’ and gave Muslims positions of power and confidence, which then gave them the opportunity to take steps towards the Islamization of the region. This scenario would be repeated many times, down to the present.

"Thus, the kings of the Vijayanagar empire showed off their broad-mindedness (now mis-termed ‘secularism’) by hiring Muslim troops, only to find in the battle of Talikota that their Muslim armies defected to the Muslim opponent camp and inflicted defeat on their erstwhile Hindu overlord. (For doubting Thomases, this inconvenient fact has even made it past Nehruvian controls into standard textbooks such as K.A. Nilakanta Sastri’s A History of South India: From Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar, or Hermann Kulke’s and Dietmar Rothermund’s A History of India.)

"Meanwhile, Mahmud’s nephew Salar Masud Ghaznavi made a successful foray into the Ganga basin. The Hindu kings in the neighbourhood got together to stop him. Led by Maharaja Sukh Dev, and including the famous philosopher-king Raja Bhoja, they defeated Ghaznavi in the battle of Bahraich near Ayodhya in AD 1033.

"It is a different matter that sentimental Hindu sleepwalkers of later years joined their Muslim neighbours in worshipping at Salar Masud Ghaznavi’s grave, not appreciating the bravery and foresight of the Hindu kings and soldiers who had defeated him. There are certain things very wrong with the Hindu mentality, but again, lack of bravery is not among them. For more than a century and a half, the people of the Ganga basin considered Islamic invasions a thing of the past."

"Hindu sleepwalkers of later years joined their Muslim neighbours in worshipping at Salar Masud Ghaznavi’s grave"???? Never heard of it.

"But then, the breakthrough came. It was not due to Hindu cowardice, but due to Hindu magnanimity and overconfidence. A year after being defeated by Prithviraj Chauhan, who had spared him, Mohammed Ghori did battle again and took his erstwhile victor captive. After blinding and executing Prithviraj, he and his generals conquered the entire Ganga plain, using newer battlefield strategies.

"From there, they would extend their power southwards to cover almost the whole subcontinent in due course. But for five centuries and a half, the Hindus had prevented this, while West Asia, North Africa and Spain had fallen within eighty years.

"The age of Muslim expansion was again marked by endless Hindu resistance. Wise Muslim rulers opted for a compromise with this unbeatable foe (misinterpreted by secularists as ‘secularism’), but more zealous rulers depleted their forces in endless wars.

"In this endeavour, they were helped by a stream of West-Asian adventurers and African slave-soldiers who came to India to increase the Delhi Sultanate’s large standing armies. The Muslim states were totally geared to warfare, something rare in Hindu history. For this reason, we can say with the comfort of hindsight that the Muslims could finally have conquered all of the subcontinent had they remained united.

"Even Hindu bravery could probably not have prevented it, any more than the brief acts of North African bravery could stop the Islamization of North Africa. But fortunately, Muslim states or Muslim ethnic lobbies within a state also fought each other, which gave Hindus a chance to regroup and mount another counter-attack.

"Also, some Hindu kings did what they thought best under the circumstances, viz. they surrendered without war, paid tribute and retained sufficient autonomy to house rebels from other areas or become rebellious themselves once circumstances allowed it.

"For a comeback, it was important to have these free territories (just like the reconquista of Spain was possible only because its Asturian region had managed to remain free since the beginning). Their collaboration was not cowardice but a ruse to gain time. All the same, this meant that many Hindus enlisted in the armed forces of sagacious Muslim rulers.

"Akbar, who had consolidated his power by defeating the Hindu ruler Himu, was smart enough to keep enough of the Hindus on his side to overpower rival Muslim claimants and to fight Hindu freedom fighters. Famously, the rebellious Rana Pratap was countered by Man Singh, who wielded the sword of the Moghul empire. Hindu bravery was employed by Muslim rulers.

"Finally, in the seventeenth century, a rebellious Shivaji, born in a family of collaborators, would arise and restore Hindu sovereignty. Where his Maratha army appeared, defeat of its enemies was a certainty. The Moghul empire became a mere shadow of its former self, while military power rested with the Marathas.

"In 1817, the Peshwas, who had taken over the Maratha confederacy, were terminally defeated by the British. But again, this was not for Hindus’ lack of bravery. They fought like lions, and on the other side, other Hindu divisions fought like lions for the British, who could conquer and rule India without doing too much fighting themselves.

"If something can be held against the Marathas and their Peshwa successors, it is not lack of bravery or military prowess, but lack of proper ideological motivation. This is why they spilt their energies in predatory raids against other Hindu populations, it is why their leader Mahadji Scindia prostrated before the powerless Moghul emperor in 1771, it is why some Peshwa descendants could be enticed into a Hindu-Muslim or Moghul-Maratha cooperation (which was really a case of mutual deception) in the Mutiny of 1857. They lapsed from Shivaji’s sense of mission as the liberator of the Hindus."

"They haven’t emulated the techniques by which the secularists, like the British of yore, exercise power totally out of proportion to their numbers. They haven’t figured out how to stop the phenomenon of ‘Hindus wielding the sword of Islam’, in which Akbar exulted, but which has become so commonplace under the guise of secularism. For that, an analysis of all the factors in the field is necessary."


2.​ Is Yoga Hindu? The Court Verdict


"In the debate over the definition of Hinduism, it is often asked whether yoga is Hindu."

"A county judge in San Diego, California, has ruled that yoga is not always religious (Washington Post, 2 July 2013). Parents in a San Diego school district had complained that yoga was intrinsically intertwined with the Hindu religion and that its practice in a public school setting violated the constitutional separation of church and state. The court ruling means that these parents had it wrong: It is possible to divorce yoga from Hinduism, and that is how the local school authorities have gone about their yoga classes.

"While yoga may be religious in some contexts, and then notably Hindu, it can also be practised and taught purely for its benefits. Modern school authorities see these benefits mostly in the form of strength, suppleness and nervous relaxation, as well as combating aggressiveness and bullying. Therapists might add the benefit of restoring or at least improving normalcy in individuals afflicted with burnout, nervous breakdown, certain complexes and other mental disorders. Serious practitioners would invoke calmness, renunciation, even liberation (howsoever defined), as worthy goals for human beings who are perfectly healthy from the beginning. But all of them would do so without reference to Shiva, or Ganesha, or whichever God it is that Hindu yogis invoke."


"YOGA IS INTRINSICALLY HINDU"


"This judgment is part of a broader struggle over the origins and nature of yoga. Some Christians, apparently including the litigating parents from San Diego, object that yoga is intrinsically Hindu and that it serves as a conduit for Hindu polytheistic god worship and even for ‘evil Hindu social mores’ such as caste discrimination, arranged marriage and widow-burning. It is, of course, also debated on how far these mores and this polytheism are bound with Hinduism, but it is universally agreed that, at least as a system of worship, Hinduism is different from Christianity.

"For the same reason, these circles had in the past opposed Transcendental Meditation, a simplified form of mantra meditation, for being obviously Hindu, even though advertised as ‘scientific’. They had hired specialized lawyers (or ‘cult busters’) to show that the various gurus who seduced Americans into yoga were salesmen of Hinduism-based cults.

"These Christians find odd allies in the Hindus who insist that yoga is indeed naturally Hindu, and that the bead-counting and incense-waving and greeting gestures and, indeed, prayers that Hindu yogis practise, all come with the yoga package and cannot be divorced from it. They criticize American yoga aficionados, such as many showbiz stars and, indeed, the San Diego yoga schoolteachers, for reducing yoga to a fitness system without its cultural roots."


"YOGA IS UP FOR GRABS"


"On the other side of the divide are those Hindus who say that yoga is scientific and universal, so that it is only normal for it to take on local cultural forms wherever it goes. The motorcar was invented in Germany, but few people driving a Japanese car still remember this. The aeroplane was invented in America, but this invention is now available to travellers all over the world. The Chinese don’t put a sign ‘invented in America’ on their planes, nor do they pay intellectual property rights on them. Of course, Chinese textbooks have a line or two on the aeroplane’s invention by the Wright brothers, and that nod to American honour will suffice. As the late Bal Thackeray used to say: ‘You cannot take the swadeshi (“national produce”) policy too far, for then Indians would have to do away with the light bulb.’ So Hindus should be happy that Americans are willing to practise their yoga, and apart from a historical detail of origins, India or Hinduism no longer come in the picture.

"And this still is a neutral rendering of the viewpoint of a sizable number of Hindus. We don’t even mention moneymakers like Deepak Chopra, who try to obscure yoga’s Hindu origins in order to claim certain yoga techniques as their own.* Aseem Shukla aptly calls him the front runner of ‘how to deconstruct, repackage and sell Hindu philosophy without calling it Hindu!’ Chopra likens the Hindu rejection of his appropriation of yoga as ‘the resentment of an inventor who discovered Coca-Cola or Teflon but neglected to patent it’, thus explicitly subjecting Hindu tradition to American commercialism.) Some yoga schools, whether manned by native Hindus or by Christian-born Westerners, have patented their own brand name and techniques, so that nobody, and certainly not Hindu tradition, can claim these.

"This tendency is strengthened by the attempt of some Hindus to deny a Hindu identity even to the worldview they themselves are advertising, e.g. as I have witnessed several times, the Hare Krishnas worship Krishna, a Hindu god par excellence, yet tell Western audiences that they are not Hindu; or the Ramakrishna Mission, founded in the late nineteenth century under the motto ‘Say with pride, we are Hindus’, now says that its message is ‘universal’ rather than ‘narrowly Hindu’ (as analysed in detail by Ram Swarup in The Ramakrishna Mission: In Search of a New Identity, 1986).

"Again, these Hindus find odd allies in many Christians, both the lukewarm and the activist kind. Lukewarm Christians, as well as New Age ex-Christians, see yoga as a neutral and universal commodity. For them, it can be practised as a fitness system without having any serious implications on their worldview or religion. Just as the European colonizers used the compass and gunpowder without bothering that these were Chinese inventions, American yogis have taken yoga for its tangible benefits without bothering about its Hindu origins. Even the Sanskrit names of the yoga exercises have been translated, so that you can become an accomplished yogi without even being reminded of its exotic origins.

"Activist Christians, by contrast, admit that yoga is not religiously neutral. They want to adapt yoga because of its inherent attractiveness, and transform it into ‘Christian yoga’, as they themselves call it (e.g. Yogafaith.org or Christianspracticingyoga. com). To them, yoga has indeed historically been linked with Hinduism, but can be delinked from it and tied to another religion. We have even reached the stage where some Christian centres and schools back in India offer classes in ‘Christian yoga’."

(Rest below.)