Tag: history of hindutva

‘Netflix Shows Defaming Hindus and India’: Shiv Sena Member

Shiv Sena’s IT cell member has urged the police to take action against the online streaming platform for hosting hinduphobic content.

A member of the Shiv Sena, Ramesh Solanki has filed a complaint against  Netflix – a US-based online streaming platform – alleging that its content portrays India and Hindus in a bad light globally.

Solanki is Shiv Sena’s Information Technology cell member and has cited examples of Netflix series like Sacred Games, Leila and Ghoul, along with the episodes of standup comedian Hasan Minhaj to show how the streaming platform is “defaming Hindus and India.”

“Almost every series on Netflix India is with the intention to defame the country on a global level. It is with deep-rooted Hinduphobia that the platform is portraying the nation in a bad light,” Solanki told ANI

While speaking to DNA, Ramesh Solanki added, “They are putting out content that’s portraying our nation in a bad light and it’s being done in the name of freedom of expression.”

He further said that he will submit a copy of his complaint along with the CD as a piece of evidence to chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, commission of police and the cyber cell.

In the complaint, he mentioned that in Sacred Games, “Aham Brahmasami, a Vedic chant, and a sacred hymn have been framed as a war cry. People belonging to a cult greet each other with this hymn, suggesting that the hymn radicalises people to indulge in a war against humanity.”

Speaking to DNA, he also accused Netflix of demeaning “guru-shishya parampara with overtly sexual gestures” and targeting one of Rashtriya Swayamsevak’s leaders.

“One of our country’s social reformer is fondly called Guruji and this series seems to attack the revered person. To show the ruling dispensation is influenced by Guruji is to show that the Government of India is influenced by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and RSS’ Guruji will go for a nuclear war. That the RSS vide Guruji will use Muslims to spread terror. In order to avoid controversy, the producer suggested that the character is based on Rajneesh. Not the plot of the series but its agenda is a sinister plot,” he said.

Also read ‘Leila’ Review: Netflix’s New Original Series is Not ‘Anti-Hindu’

He also condemned the series Leila which, according to him, indicates that Aryavrat will be established in India.

“Aryavrat will be a land of bigots, casteists, Muslim-hating, women-hating patriarchal sect. The term ‘Aryavrat’ is an undertone to suggest that the Hindu Rashtra is/will be of this kind. The SC’s earlier verdict that was recently upheld said that Hindu is a way of life. And to suggest that the way of life will be like a radical cult is demeaning and hurts our religious sentiments,” he said.

Standup comedian Hasan Minhaj, according to him, is spreading false propaganda on the reading down of Article 370 by the central government.
In a similar picture, the Economic Times reported that Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinderpal Singh Bagga filed a complaint against Sacred Games director Anurag Kashyap accusing him of “disrespecting Sikhs and Hindu sentiments.”
Akali Dal Leader Majinder Singh Sirsa followed suit saying that the actor Saif Ali Khan is seen throwing away his Kada, a symbol of the Sikh community, into the sea.

According to NDTV, Solanki has urged the police to “take necessary legal action” against Netflix.

Also Read  ‘Sacred Games’ Goes Where Our Silent News Media Doesn’t

“I urge the authorities to look into all of the above-mentioned content and take the necessary steps from summoning their team to cancelling their licenses as deemed fit. One cannot allow an incorrect generalisation based on bogus rhetoric trying to defame a religious minority, that is, Hindu in countries other than India,” he added.

Featured image credit: Unsplash

The ‘Glorious’ History of Hindutva and its Hypocrisies

Hindutva history is a classic case of dogma driven history, which tries to recast a complex and contested past into a rigid ideological mould.

The Hindutva view of history is both puzzling and refracted.

Riddled with contradictions and paradoxes, it is marked by an obsessive concern with its own peculiar sense of history which tries to reify the mythological. In this sense, it appears to borrow from Abrahamic religions, most of which are built around historical figures such as Jesus Christ and the Prophet Muhammad.

This attempt at reification seems to diminish our mythological figures.

Ram, for example, would only be the king of a small kingdom, no more than a footnote in history if he were a historical figure. However, he appropriates a much wider appeal as a cultural and mythological icon. From ‘ram ram’ being a popular form of greeting in North India to marayada purushottam ram being the epitome of duty and virtue, Ram has become a part of our cultural and social vocabulary.

Secondly, the Hindutva version of history is underpinned by the Hindu sense of time, which is both cyclical and sees each age as a degeneration from the previous one. The idea of the four yugas and the consequent emphasis on Kaliyuga is a case in point.

All that is glorious belongs to the ancient past, which is edified as the ‘golden age’. It is supposedly the age of great achievements in all spheres of life, be it the arts, culture or science. Therefore, the belief in pushpak vimans and plastic surgery in ancient India (il)logically follows from such a view of history and time.

Not only does the Hindutva view of history distort our sense of the past, it also robs us of a sense of the future, because the future is only meant to be imitative of the past. The past cannot be judged on its own terms as fantasies of the present are projected on to the past. The Hindutva version of history turns it into a realm of fantasy, blurring the lines between the historical and the mythological.

The archaeological facet, too, occupies a central place in the Hindutva sense of the historical.

This was quite evident during the Ramjanmabhoomi controversy, when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and its allies cited archaeological evidence in court to support their claim of the existence of a temple where the Babri Mosque had stood.

Also read: Growing Up in a Hindu Bubble

There can be nothing better than excavating the remains of a ‘glorious past’. No wonder then, the Harappan dancing girl is relabelled as Parvati and there is great enthusiasm for excavation projects at Hastinapur or for finding the Saraswati river.

For Hindutva, history remains key to its sense of identity.

That we were great in the past justifies our aspiration for greatness as a civilisation today. Its view of history is underpinned by this tautological world view. Hindutva turns history into a battlefield over which the war of culture and identity is fiercely fought.

While leftists and Marxists are accused of offering a sanitised version of the medieval past, hiding instances of conversion and temple desecration and destruction by Muslim kings, the propagators of Hindutva configure the ancient past in ideal terms, erasing all instances of caste discrimination and bigotry from its pages.

From changing history textbooks to declaring Maharana Pratap as ‘Great’, or vilifying Tipu Sultan, the Hindutva version of history seeks to offer the correct and the ‘right’ view of history, as it sees it.

It marshals history to proclaim the greatness of the Hindu civilisation/nation. It takes a different view of colonial rule, which is supposed to include the medieval period and 800 years of ‘Muslim rule’.

In the words of the prime minister himself, the nation had to suffer ‘1200 years of slavery’. These 1200 years of slavery are then seen as a blot on the Hindu civilisation/nation. The response is inevitably a naked form of revisionism, which seeks to reclaim, rename and appropriate all symbols of the medieval past.

Taj Mahal thus becomes ‘Tejo Mahalya’ a Shiva temple and Allahabad is renamed Prayagraj. The Hindutva view of invasion though is also complicated and selective. While Muslims and Mughals are labelled as ‘invaders’, it vehemently opposes the Aryan invasion theory, considering Aryans to be the original inhabitants of the land.

The insistence on the indigenous origin of Aryans allows the followers of Hindutva to claim that all present-day Hindus descended from Aryans and are, therefore, the rightful heirs to the land.

It has often been pointed out that the Hindutva view of history has much in common with colonial historiography subscribing to the communal periodisation of history, given by James Mill, who, as historian D.N. Jha says, “divided Indian history into Hindu, Muslim and British periods.”

Hindutva thus mobilises the past for identity-oriented ends.

While one can surely argue against the ills of using history to serve ideological ends, as is often the case with Marxist history writing, there can be nothing worse than identity-driven history writing, for it has scant regard for the rules of the discipline itself and no regard at all for the authenticity of historical facts.

Hindutva history is a classic case of dogma driven history, which tries to recast a complex and contested past into a rigid ideological mould.

It is guided by contemporary political agendas rather than a concern for understanding and explaining the past.

We must be aware of its design and expose its hypocrisies if we wish to engage with our past more critically.

Madhav Nayar is a Master’s student of Modern South Asian History at SOAS. He can be reached at madhavnayar@gmail.com

Featured image credit: Pariplab Chakraborty