In 2014, Shri Narendra Modi swept clean electorally the national scene, arousing great hope he would be a dharmarakshak though, in fairness, there was little to justify this in his party’s election manifesto.
Some disillusionment set in but so striking was his effectiveness across many national sectors that he swept clean electorally the national scene again in 2019.
But he has enemies, bitter enemies, who see their own survival doomed if he wins again in 2024. We call them the “panch makkaars’’ – mullahs, missionaries, marxists, macaulayputras, and mercenaries. One can add mainstream media and minority-appeasers but these are really subcategories of the main ones.
For the makkaars it is a no-holds-barred winner-takes-all scorched-earth war to finish him off.
The makkaars identify him as a Hindu leader, and Hinduism and self-identifying Hindus are targeted as collateral damage.
Ordinary Hindus are beginning to defend ourselves, to fight back, but increasingly believe there is a lack of support from Shri Narendra Modi, and now the so-called Modi model of development is beginning to be seen as the Modi model for minority appeasement.
Recall that Shri Modi at one time wanted to join the Ramakrishna Mission as a monk, but was ‘‘advised that sanyas was not for him and that he should work among people.’’[1]
It is not unreasonable to assume that Shri Modi is conditioned by Ramakrishnaism, especially by that of the Mission’s founder Swami Vivekananda and that, wittingly or not, his ‘‘work among people’’ involves the message of Ramakrishnaism.
What is this message?
Whatever the historical reality of the tenets of Ramakrishnaism, it is a historical fact that its monks believed not only in sarvadharma samabhava but also in Ram Rahim ek hai and Ishwar Allah tere naam – that ‘‘the RKM professes a syncretism, combining elements from different religions. Ramakrishnaism is the syncretism par excellence, affirming ‘all’ religions to be true’’.[2]
It is also a historical fact that the Mission did ‘‘the dishonourable thing…like a rat leaving a sinking ship’’ of repudiating Hinduism and seeking legal recognition that the Mission was not Hindu.[3]
It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that, influenced by Ramakrishnaism, the foundation of Shri Modi’s prescription for India – officially sabka saath, sabka vikas, sabka vishwas to which he later added sabka prayaas – is built on Swami Vivekananda’s prescription for India,
So what did Swami Vivekananda want for India?
An answer can be found in the first three chapters of “The Master As I Saw Him” by his disciple Sister Nivedita (nee Margaret Noble) who wrote eloquently of her understanding of him.
Hers is a book for Western (and Westernised) readers that has not been found persuasive by abrahamists. This is relevant, because Ramakrishnaism is not found persuasive by abrahamists either.
Sister Nivedita’s statements, in just the first three chapters, raise questions enough.
Was Swami Vivekananda a siddhacharya, or an acharya albeit a brilliant one? He was very much a theist. Was he primarily a theologian or a religious “politician”?
His theism is a matter of faith, not of reason. But his “political” mission, of restoring the glory of the motherland, can be examined. How much was he aware of abrahamic political practice and history? Had he read for himself the Bible and the Koran, which are their defining and definitive texts and which no devout Christian or Muslim can deny?
To say, as Swami Vivekananda did, that “love” is the highest religious emotion is neither true for the abrahamisms nor of the dharma.
The highest religious emotion in the abrahamisms is not love but fear, not love for their angry, vengeful god but a blind loyalty, a fearful obedience to him.[4]
The dharma is not at all about love but about duty. Brahman is Consciousness, not Love.[5] “Love” (bhakti?) is only one form of the duty to a saguna interpretation of Brahman (there are ways too for duty – karma, jnana, raja…..none of these has anything necessarily to do with “love”).
The “equal respect for / truth of all religions” (and such other mawkish twaddle) is a dangerous Hindu self-delusion.[6]
Swami Vivekananda suggested Christ was a reincarnation of Buddha – did Buddha ever teach that those who did not believe in him must be killed?
He praised the glory of Islamic rule in India. This is rank negationism.[7]
The reality of the global historical experience of Islam and Christianity is absolutely to the contrary. Nowhere, but nowhere, in the world where they have conquered have they allowed significant pagan populations to survive. Nowhere in the territories of these monotheisms is there a meaningful survival of any pre-monotheism, any paganism. There is not one significant exception to this worldwide historical fact. We Hindus are the world’s last pagans and our time has come now, as the makkaars daily remind us.[8]
And what is the global historical reality of what Swami Vivekananda called (we shall see this later) an “Islam body”?
Islam closes ranks against kafirs (a modern expression of the ummah is the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) but, within itself, its momins have been and still are busy slaughtering each other.
And was Swami Vivekananda ignorant of the hierarchies within Islam bodies?[9]
Swami Vivekananda’s hallucination of who protects whom makes an interesting story – but is suicidal politics:
The philosopher Ramachandra Gandhi’s Sita’s Kitchen: A Testimony of Faith and Inquiry famously recalls an episode: “Swami Vivekananda was in Kashmir towards the end of his life but his heart was heavy even in that paradise on earth. Large-hearted though he was, he felt tormented by the fact that successive invaders had desecrated and destroyed countless sacred images of Hinduism’s gods and goddesses and pulled down Hindu temples and built mosques over their ruins. Unable to bear the burden of this humiliating testimony of history, Vivekananda poured out his anguish at the feet of the Divine Mother in a Kali temple. ‘How could you let this happen, Mother? Why did you permit this desecration?’ he asked despairingly. Swamiji has himself recorded all this, and reports that Kali whispered in his heart: ‘What is it to you, Vivekananda, if the invader breaks my images? Do you protect me, or do I protect you?’”[10]
Recall the dharmic duty that requires that the mother protect her child and then, later, the child protect the mother. This, according to Swami Vivekananda, does not apply to the Divine Mother. And, by extrapolation, it would not apply to Bharat Mata either.
What of dharmo rakshati rakshitah, and where is the Divine Mother or “love” in this? Note too “the gods came later” in RV 10.129, a theological implication of which is that humans create the gods – and so do humans protect their Divine Mother or does she protect us?
If the glory of the dharma is to be revived, as was Swami Vivekananda’s mission, it needs a dharmastan on and through which this revival can be expressed.
A tree will not flourish unless it is firmly rooted in fertile soil. There can be no paganism without a land in which pagan culture and polity can freely flourish. There can be no Hindus without a Hindustan. The paganism that extended from Gandhara across Kashmir and Tibet right upto the East Asian coast, and down through Sri Lanka and Myanmar, has steadily shrunk till, in 1947, courtesy MK Gandhi, it lost a third of its remaining portion of the subcontinent itself. Post-1947, we pagans have been eliminated from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kashmir, and much of the northeast. We have been seeing our elimination elsewhere across India under a ‘secular’ Constitutional dispensation that is anti-pagan, that extends to ravening world-conquering religions in India advantages over the Hindu majority that neither Muslims nor Christians where they are a majority, or where they rule (as in the Vatican State, or in any of the Islamic States), extend to Hindus within their domains.[11]
The creation and protection of a dharmastan is a political enterprise. Swami Vivekananda’s prescription for this enterprise was quite explicitly, unambiguously and effusively of an India with an Islam body.
“For our own motherland a junction of the two great systems, Hinduism and Islam — Vedanta brain and Islam body — is the only hope.’’[12]
And he saw this primarily as an endeavour to build Hindu physical strength and moral character by playing football and eating meat.
Swami Vivekananda negated over a millennium of the global historical lesson that faithfully still follows the Koran literally and the reality of which his followers do not comprehend.
The Modi minority-appeasement model appears rooted in Swami Vivekananda’s teaching, but abrahimists do not interpret sabka saath as the Modi model does. Prayaas for the Christian is Mark 13.10 and Revelations 15.4 read with Luke 19.27; and prayaas for the Muslim is towards the ghazwa e hind, which goes back all the way to Mohammad himself.[13]
Does the Modi model seriously expect that Swami Vivekananda’s sarvadharma sambhava piety will emasculate Mohammad’s enduring bloodthirsty mandate?
Certainly the mission to revive the motherland is the Hindu imperative – and certainly too is the extent to which Swami Vivekananda can be used as a politically correct symbol for doing so. But to what extent is his Ramakrishnaism effective (Gandhism certainly hasn’t been)? Was he himself effective? Recall that the Ramakrishna Mission tried legally to repudiate Hinduism.
MK Gandhi parallels Swami Vivekananda. Gandhi wanted a “khudai raj” over India.[14]
Akhand Bharat, physically and demographically, has steadily been shrinking over the centuries, and continues to shrink.
Of what use has been “morality” or “love” here? If it be the Divine Mother’s desire that her children shrink, even disappear, then so be it. And if her children disappear, so will she. Of what relevance the Nordic or Hellenic gods today except as mockingly funny characters in contemporary fiction for children by bestseller writers such as Rick Riordan?
To the sacred existence of Hindu divinities, of what relevance then Swami Vivekananda or anyone else?
The greatest imperative for Hindu survival is the awakening of Hindu political self-consciousness.
Let us face it – in terms of empowering Hindus as politically self-conscious Hindus, Swami Vivekananda or, for that matter, the RSS are failures (its R could as well stand for Ramakrishnaism). Shri Modi is nuanced, with an understanding of realpolitik – ‘‘1200 साल की गुलामी की मानसिकता हमें परेशान कर रही है’’’ – but even he seems unable to overcome his conditioning by the vivekanandan precept.
Chanakyaniti would use SV (or MKG) to win votes. We need to be dharmarakshaks. We cannot wait for the Divine Mother to change her mind and start protecting her children.[15]
Swami Vivekananda was a great theistic master, but his understanding of (religious) realpolitik was unreal.
The RKM ultimately has no choice but to admit that for the past so many decades, it has been spreading an erroneous and harmful belief. It should announce out loud that all struggles over its exact identity are over, because it owns up to its natural Hindu identity. Indeed, it should rediscover and second its founder, Swami Vivekananda, who declared: “Say with pride, we are Hindus!”[16] – but he never disavowed that ‘‘Islam body’’.
Nor does Shri Narendra Modi. Shri Modi is a vivekanandi.
And that, for the dharmi, is becoming apparent as the core weakness of the Modi model in the war the makkaars are waging against us.[17]
Notes:
[1] The link between PM Modi and Ramakrishna Mission, explained, Jan 12, 2020,
https://www.oneindia.com/india/the-link-between-pm-modi-and-ramakrishna-mission-explained-3012984.html?story=3
[2] Koenraad Elst, Did Sri Ramakrishna embrace Christianity and Islam? Aug 19, 2013, https://bharatabharati.in/2013/08/19/did-sri-ramakrishna-embrace-christianity-and-islam-koenraad-elst/
[3] Koenraad Elst, Ram Swarup and Hinduphobia, July 22, 2021, https://voiceofindia.me/tag/ramakrishnaism/
[4] Islam is the Arabic for ‘submission (to God)’. As for Jesus and love, https://krishenkak.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/108-slay-them-before-me/
[5] https://krishenkak.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/the-rational-foundation-of-the-dharma/
[6] e.g., Harsh Narain, Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of All Religions, New Delhi: Voice of India, 1990, https://archive.org/stream/MythOfCompositeCultureHarshNarain/Myth%20of%20Composite%20Culture-%20Harsh%20Narain_djvu.txt . As a Hindu, ask yourself a simple question. If abrahamists respect Hinduism as “equal”, why do they need to convert us? – https://krishenkak.wordpress.com/2017/09/21/who-is-a-hindu/
[7] Koenraad Elst, Negationism in India, New Delhi: Voice of India, 1992, http://voiceofdharma.org/books/negaind/
[8] see pp. 155-156, https://krishenkak.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/ngos_activists_and_foreign_funds.pdf
[9] scroll down to “Hierarchical structure in Islam and Christianity” at https://krishenkak.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/dharma-transcending-biology/
[10] Chandan Gowda, Arise, Awake, Fight! Outlook, Feb 5, 2022, https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/arise-awake-fight/282828
[11] Radha Rajan and Krishen Kak, eds., NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds, Chennai: Vigil, 2nd edn, 2007:156 ; https://krishenkak.files.wordpress.com/d2017/09/ngos_activists_and_foreign_funds.pdf.
For the ‘’Indosphere’’ – Akhand Bharat – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_cultural_zone.svg accessed on 02 Aug 2022. For its shrinking in the Indian subcontinent, see the front cover of Radha Rajan, The Shrinking Hindu Nation, New Delhi:Voice of India, 2019, which book also ‘‘establishes Gandhi as directly responsible for the Partition of 1947’’.
[12] The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 6/Epistles – Second Series/CXLII Friend, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_6/Epistles_-_Second_Series/CXLII_Friend, reproduced at Radha Rajan, The Shrinking Hindu Nation, New Delhi: Voice of India, 2019:21.
[13] https://krishenkak.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/what-jesus-says-for-hindus/ ; https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Ghazwa-e-hind_(the_Conquest_of_India
[14] Radha Rajan, The Shrinking Hindu Nation, New Delhi: Voice of India, 2019:15.
[15] see footnotes 4 and 5 on pp.12 -13 in Radha Rajan, Jammu & Kashmir Dilemma of Accession, New Delhi: Voice of India, 2nd edn, 2018.
[16] Koenraad Elst, Did Sri Ramakrishna embrace Christianity and Islam? Aug 19, 2013, https://bharatabharati.in/2013/08/19/did-sri-ramakrishna-embrace-christianity-and-islam-koenraad-elst/
[17] As a contrast to the political submissiveness of the Ramakrishna Mission is the political assertiveness of the Nath Sampradaya with its centre as the Gorakhnath Math currently led by a mahant now admiringly called Bulldozer Baba by Hindus. The Modi model paving the way for the Yogi model?
