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missionaries realised 200 years ago that the biggest obstacle to fully

subjugating India was Hinduism, as it was ancient, woven into the fabric

of life and held the country together. They set upon defaming Hinduism, by

dwelling on what they perceived as its negatives: castes, sati,

superstition, etc. Simultaneously, they created in a span of two or three

generations a class of Indians who looked up only to the West.

Macaulay, the architect of the scheme, summed it up in his

Minute on Education: "We must do our best to form a class of

persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions,

in morals and in intellect." Macaulay despised Indian culture: "Hindus

have a literature of small intrinsic value, hardly reconcilable with

morality, full of monstrous superstitions...." The demonisation of

Hinduism was apace.

As a result, these Anglicised Indians became

ashamed of their own culture. This Western/anti-Hindu outlook was handed

down from generation to generation, right down to our age, where many of

India's brilliant and articulate Hindu-Marxist intellectuals, products all

of institutions like jnu, or St Stephen's, keep on repeating, as if by

rote, what their hoary forebears were taught by the British. And

unfortunately, they pass it back to their friends from the West, neatly

marking a full circle. How else could a film like Slumdog

Millionaire, made by an Englishman, which literally craps on India

from the very first frame, be feted by most of India's intelligentsia? How

else could India specialists like Christophe Jaffrelot peddle to his

gullible French readers the spurious theory that there is a "Hindu

tradition of terror"?

Politically, the Congress just took over from

the British, as I explain in my new book (A New History of India,

2008, Har Anand), and used its English-speaking press to present Hindu

social and political parties as fanatical and ridiculous. The goal was to

corner the Muslim vote, which was—and still remains—achieved. It does not

help today that the supreme leader of India is a Christian. Whether her

aides or her ministers (many of them capable people in their own right)

rush to gratify her in true bhakti spirit or whether she directly speaks

her will, one does not know. But what better way to please her than by

equating Hindu fundamentalism with the Muslim one and to turn the flak on

to small Hindu outfits which are amateur lambs compared to the Islamic

ones?

There are two standards today used by India's media and

intelligentsia. One for minorities and the other for Hindus. It is totally

illogical: if 4,00,000 Hindus are hounded out of the Kashmir Valley which

has always been their home, nobody protests; but New Delhi has been

rooting for Palestinians for four decades and recently donated a million

dollars for their welfare. When blast after blast wrecks Indian markets,

when trains are bombed, hotels attacked by men worse than animals,

intellectuals blame it on Babri Masjid (where nobody was killed) or

Gujarat (triggered by the burning of 59 innocent Hindus).But when a few

Hindus plan to establish a Hindu rashtra and plot a clumsy, small-scale

revenge, they are equated with deadly fundamentalists. A universal theorem

is made of their single act, which should stand out as isolated, because

Hindus have been for thousands of years tolerant to the point of

cowardice. Our intellectuals never theorised when, in Kashmir, militants

used to throw acid on women who did not cover up, but now devote reams to

the goons of Mangalore.

Finally, to be fair, one has to say that a

lot of prudishness has seeped into India because of the Islamic purdah

and, later, Victorian stuffiness. Yet, Hinduism always enjoined its

adherents to live life fully, including its sexual aspect. We do not want

an Indian youth which blindly apes the West: drinking, drugs and

promiscuity. But the Hindu political leadership should also shun rough,

prudish and moralistic acts which will only alienate its young voters.

(Francois Gautier is the

editor-in-chief of the Paris-based La Revue l'Inde)