Guardian's Hindu-phobia

You will look in vain for genuine news about India in the pages of the Guardian. All you will find is a singularly racist, anti-Hindu, view. 

Consider the following-  

The Guardian view on Modi in Ayodhya: an alarming new era for India

In 2002, Sonia Gandhi announced that she would build the Temple, under the auspices of a Shankaracharya, if her party won. However, her party was out of power when the Supreme Court ordered the construction of the temple in 2019. Thus, it was Modi, not Rahul, who was the chief guest at both the 'shilanyas' ceremony (in 2020) and now the 'pran prathishta' ceremony at the new Temple. Clearly there is no 'new era' here. President Rajendra Prasad did the 'pran prathishta' of Somnath Temple in 1951. This was after massive ethnic cleansing of Muslims presided over by Nehru. What India was then, it is now. 

Editorial

The inauguration of the temple erased divisions between politics and religion in a theoretically secular state

Indira, during the Emergency, inserted the words 'Secular' and 'Socialist' into the constitution. Thus, India became like Saddam's Iraq or Assad's Syria- a dynastic shithole where opposition leaders were locked up or killed.  

Mon 22 Jan 2024 18.42 GMT

Monday’s inauguration of the new Ram Mandir in Ayodhya by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was a moment decades in the making.

Seven decades in the making. The pran prathista ceremony was on the pattern of the 1951 Somnath ceremony. BTW, a Muslim invader had destroyed Somnath a thousand years previously. John Company said one of its aims in the first Afghan war was to get back the gates of Somnath.  

Yet it also came too early.

No it didn't. It came at just the right time. The garbha grha and shikhar had been completed. Thus the pran prathishta should have been done on an auspicious date- which is exactly what happened.  

Despite the grand spectacle of the ceremony, with celebrities, tycoons and politicians in attendance, the temple is still incomplete.

Somnath was much more incomplete when Rajendra Prasad did the pran prathishta ritual. The Guardian knows shit about India- let alone Sanatan Dharma.  

There is an obvious explanation for this rushed endeavour, and it is not religious.

Everybody could see on TV that the Temple was gorgeous and ready to be opened to the public. Already, thousands of ordinary people have gained entrance and completed 'darshan'. One complaint is that too many are using mobile phone to film inside the Temple which some feel is disrespectful. 

The Temple trust, created by the Supreme Court, has managed to make both the shilanyas and pran prathistha ceremonies into global events touching the hearts of over a billion Hindus and generating an unprecedented wave of religious emotion. The Guardian, foolishly, thinks this is merely a political stunt. 

India will go to the polls in late spring and while Mr Modi is all but guaranteed to win a third term,

because the Opposition parties hate each other more than they hate Modi 

he wants a large majority for his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

Whereas Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak hope and pray that their parties will be reduced to small minorities in Westminster.  

Mr Modi rode to power, and has entrenched it, on the back of rightwing Hindu nationalism.

Whereas Boris Johnson lost the elections because he was a left-wing advocate of Islamic internationalism.  

On Monday he went beyond the exploitation of ethno-religious sentiment.

No British PM has permitted religious ceremonies connected with the coronation of the Monarch.  

He did not merely attend the ceremony; he carried out rituals.

Like India's first President.  

Religion and authoritarianism have proceeded hand-in-hand in recent years.

No they haven't. Indira was authoritarian- she had jailed her opponents- when she amended the Constitution to make India a 'secular, socialist' Republic. 

But few strongmen have melded the political and religious to quite this degree.

The Guardian has never heard of the Ayatollah.  

As his biographer, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, observed, the event cast him as “the high priest of Hinduism”, disquieting some religious leaders.

In 2017 Yogi Adityanath- a monk of the Gorakhnath order- became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh- India's largest state. Perhaps this influenced the Supreme Court's 2019 decision.  

The constitution still calls India a secular republic.

Because India, unlike its Islamic neighbours is not actively ethnically cleansing minorities. But it did do so under Pundit Nehru- who, btw, was anointed as a Hindu King with a golden sceptre handed to him, after appropriate ritual cleansing by Hindu priests, by Viceroy Mountbatten.  

But the facts on the ground suggest otherwise. Mr Modi’s supporters treat the idea of secularism as a foreign imposition on a grand civilisation,

No. They treat it as stupid shit foisted on India by Indira who was imitating Iraq and Syria and other such dynastic shitholes.  

and as camouflage for the mistreatment and suppression of Hindus.

Sonia should have prevented some Cabinet Ministers sponsoring anti-Hindu measures under UPA. Congress had course corrected in this respect. Rahul came out as a 'janeodhari' Brahmin and started visiting Temples with great assiduity. Sadly, Kharge, the new Congress President, decided to boycott the ceremony. This may be good for his son, who wants to set up as an Ambedkarite Dalit leader, but it harms the Party. I suppose Sonia went along with it because she wants an excuse not to fight the upcoming elections. Kharge will get the blame for the Party being wiped out at the polls. Kharge doesn't care because he was only put in so as to be made a scapegoat. He may as well be hanged for a sheep rather than a lamb. Moreover, this way, his son gets something out of it. On the other hand, the Karnataka State Congress, which has just come to power, did good 'bundobast' for the public celebration of the glorious event.  

In reality it is their aggressive chauvinism that has cost Indian society dearly, and it is Muslims who are treated as second-class citizens.

Nehru stripped Muslims of reserved seats and passed an ordinance preventing the return of refugees who had fled across the border in panic. Ambedkar went the extra mile by stripping Muslim Dalits of affirmative action. Wealthy Muslims were harassed by the Custodian of Enemy Property and about two percent emigrated to Pakistan during the Fifties and Sixties. Salman Rushdie's father was one such.  

Human Rights Watch warned last year of the government’s “systematic discrimination and stigmatisation of religious and other minorities, particularly Muslims” and of increasing violence by BJP supporters against targeted groups.

Human Rights Watch also condemns the UK. It says ' The UK’s human rights record is in significant decline. It has introduced laws that violate rights and aim to dismantle the international protection framework.  The government is attempting to send asylum seekers who arrive to the UK irregularly, to Rwanda, a country that is not safe, and has proposed draconian immigration legislation that bans most asylum seekers from even claiming asylum. Rising food, rents, and energy prices, and inadequate social protections threaten the rights of people on the lowest incomes, including to food and housing. The UK government’s efforts to act multilaterally to promote human rights obligations in some contexts, was undermined by its aggressive domestic anti-rights agenda and refusal to acknowledge its serious violation of rights in colonial contexts such as its ongoing crimes against humanity against the Chagossian people.'

The new temple is not just a symbol of these political struggles, but part of them.

The use of Christian rituals in the coronation of King Charles was a slap in the face for Britain's Muslims. Moreover, the persistent refusal of the Prime Minister to undergo gender reassignment surgery is a kick in the slats for Trans people. 

It stands on the site of the 16th-century Babri Masjid mosque, built by the Mughal emperor Babur,

which was closed to Muslim worship in 1949. However, many Muslims in the region were killed or fled to Pakistan at that time.  

and razed in 1992 by a Hindu nationalist mob who believed a temple previously stood there; Ayodhya is said to be the birthplace of the deity Lord Ram.

The Supreme Court granted the suit of the temple deity on the grounds that worship of Him at that site had been ongoing in living memory.  

The BJP had inflamed sentiment and BJP politicians stood and watched as thousands tore down the mosque. Its destruction sparked communal violence in which more than 2,000 people died.

The Muslims were foolish enough to start the violence. They were stomped. This time around they have been as nice as pie.  

Then, in 2019, the supreme court ruled that the demolition of the mosque had been illegal – but that nonetheless the site belonged to Hindus, allowing the new building’s construction.

The CJI, channelling Amartya Sen, says it is cool to violate 'niti' (rules) so as to achieve 'nyaya' (justice). He has made a very public visit to Somnath and speaks of Courts as being like the 'dhvaja' religious flags to be found at Temples. 

Ayodhya’s story was central to the BJP’s rise.

No. It was central to its revival. Rajiv had stolen its clothes and emerged as a Lord Ram like, muscular Hindu. His assassination created the space in which the BJP could rise. But, initially, it was the dominant caste based Samajwadi parties which were more powerful. Their corruption, criminality, and incompetence was what helped the BJP become the default national party on the basis of better governance.  

But while Congress and other opposition parties boycotted the ceremony,

Kharge ensured that Sonia didn't attend. But plenty of Congress leaders did accept their invitations or else turned up one day early to perform Hindu rituals.  

they have failed to mount an effective challenge to Mr Modi’s dangerous majoritarianism

If Hindu majoritarianism really was so dangerous, the percentage of Muslims in the population would have fallen, not risen.  

and have at times succumbed to its dominance. The message is not simply of Hindu triumph, but of grievance and revenge. “We must not bow down any more. We must not sit down any more,” Mr Modi said on Monday.

Fuck does the Guardian think Nehru said?  

Despite the lengthy history of the Ayodhya dispute, he described the consecration as “the beginning of a new era”. It is not merely that thousands more mosques are being targeted nor that Muslims in Ayodhaya and beyond feel more vulnerable than ever. Many believe that the prime minister will rewrite the constitution if he gains a sufficient majority, though he has dismissed such speculation.

Because Constitutions don't matter. The Supreme Court arrogates to itself the right to interpret it in any manner it thinks fitting. But the Bench is to the right of the Government! 

Monday may mark another fateful step towards that moment. It may also indicate that he does not need to change the words on paper when he has reshaped his country so effectively already.

These cretins don't get that Modi rose after, not before, the Hindutva wave had gained momentum.  He himself knows that his party will lose- as it did in Himachal and Karnataka- if it is corrupt or incompetent or complacent. Only governance matters. Religion has high 'income elasticity of demand' in India. As the country becomes more prosperous, the Hindu religion will continue to burgeon. But, as people become more secure and more prosperous, they demand better 'last mile' delivery of public goods and services. In Kerala, orthodox Hindus and Muslims can vote for Communist candidates with a better track record of efficient administration than their rivals. Ideology does not matter. Good governance does. It is because Modi is miles ahead of any rival candidate for the top job that he will retain it- at least till 2029.