This is how it explains the seeming effortlessness with which a Bhima Koregaon eruption materialises almost overnight, or large masses of Indians launch mini-wars against themselves as in the ongoing Agniveer saga
Protesters shout slogans after setting a train on fire during a demonstration against the government’s new ‘Agnipath’ recruitment scheme for the army, navy, and air forces at a railway station in Secunderabad on 17 June, 2022. AFP
It is now commonplace to nonchalantly outrage about the destruction inflicted by the Communist-Marxist-Leftist clique, most notably, on our educational system. And specifically in the social sciences/humanities department, and more pointedly, their targeted massacre of history. But the ideological goal was not the destruction of these subjects but to create new, memory-free generations. The project has been a grand success to say the least.
But a relatively lesser-known, behind-the-scenes truth is the methodology that the Left employed to beget this destruction. Of course, it helped to have someone like Jawaharlal Nehru, who could and did create a conducive atmosphere but institutional infiltration, takeover and subversion on a national scale requires far greater sophistication and tactical operation to become generationally effective and sustainable. The prime element that makes — and made this possible was a solid understanding of the manner in which the bureaucracy, committees, commissions and academies function.
After all, professional politicians…more so of the Indian variety, can only do so much. And it is here that we must really congratulate our Left-Liberals for their superb and even sublime mastery over the inner workings of the bureaucracy. If only they had used their skills for nation-building instead of civilisational defacement and cultural vandalism, the congratulations would have been deserving.
The widely familiar outcome of the Leftist institutional conquest was a climate of fear in the academia and in the public discourse at large, which prevailed for about half a century. But while that stranglehold has been smashed, a vacuum of sorts remains. This is a comprehensive study of their methodology, a study that is desperately needed. Nothing illustrates this better than the Left itself…whatever it calls itself now: Liberal, woke, etc.
Over the last eight years, the Left has invested heavily in studying the success of the phenomenon called Narendra Modi and the national cultural institution named the RSS. Even as I write this, books, monographs, white papers, seminars and conferences are being conducted with feverish regularity, and all these are tinged with various hues. Needless, a major theme is the century-old demonisation of the RSS, Hindutva, and the Hindus as a community.
But this time a noticeable change has occurred: The Left has taken the RSS seriously and its root is their subconscious fear of going extinct. History has repeatedly shown that wherever the Left does not wield absolute political power — i.e., government — it needs political patronage, which translates into institutional monopoly. This among other reasons is why it is studying the RSS and the larger Hindu narrative in a way never seen before.
However, the Hindu civilisational side has barely invested in a similar effort and on a concomitant scale to unearth and understand the core reasons and the modus operandi that enabled their civilisational vandalism on an epic canvas for such a prolonged duration.
Perhaps the only quality work of this nature is Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. It is notable for its rigour, thoroughness and meticulous detail to say the least. But its real kernel lies in the tangential knowledge that it gives us about how the bureaucracy works: in this case, the ICHR and assorted bodies under the HRD ministry. It was precisely this blockbuster that thoroughly exposed and shattered the credibility of Marxist ideologues wrongly labelled as historians and transformed the term “eminent historians” into an obscenity in the Indian context.
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But more than 30 years have elapsed since that work and nothing comparable has emerged in the interim. Had a similar phenomenon occurred with the Leftists, an entire library dedicated to studying it would have sprung up all over the country. And speaking of libraries, the Left has scored even in this realm. For the longest time, thanks to their institutional monopoly, they stacked most government libraries with books parroting socialism, communism and Marxism. There was a practical side to this. The average library-goer, even to this day, goes to state-run libraries in the sense of a general interest…only a minuscule visit government libraries for serious scholarly work.
When these libraries are stuffed only with Leftist literature, even this general reader, having no other reading material, will inadvertently end up reading their ideology. And who knows which technique gains converts? But it is at least worth a try. Like we mentioned earlier, this is the level of the Leftist mastery over the bureaucracy and institutional functioning.
Of course, other techniques such as packing academies and assorted bodies with their compatriots, mutual back-scratching, forming closed clubs of book reviewers and “critics,” and so on, are now well-known.
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In 1987, the University of Chicago initiated the mammoth The Fundamentalism Project, aimed at studying various fundamentalisms throughout the world using a multidimensional approach including but not limited to religious scripture, history, sociology, and politics. The project was finally completed in 1995. While its reach was largely confined within the academic community, it gripped popular attention in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on America after a book titled Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms around the World was published in 2003.
The crux is not The Fundamentalism Project but the alacrity and constant watchfulness that was responsible for its sudden popularity. 9/11 irreversibly broke the notion that America was invincible and immune from external attacks and in this case, it was the ideological fount of the attacks that caught public widespread attention. Ever since mountains of research have been generated in America alone about Islamic fundamentalism and various dimensions thereof.
Which brings us back to where we began: why haven’t Hindus done similar research with the same dedication, scholarly rigour and patience about a phenomenon which has repeatedly proven as lethal and deadly as Islamic terrorism? America and the West have to contend primarily with Islamic terrorism while the Hindu civilisation has to contend with Islamic terror, missionary conversions and the Left Liberal ecosystem simultaneously… it is only in India that these forces have combined. And it is the Indian Left which has been the most powerful, effective and loyal ally of these transnational religious forces.
While the fatal consequences of this Leftist manipulation of our political system and public discourse are familiar, the how question is where the real answers are found. It is this how that explains the seeming effortlessness with which a Bhima Koregaon eruption materialises almost overnight or large masses of Indians launch mini-wars against themselves as in the ongoing Agniveer saga.
The study has to begin now, with the same earnestness and sense of purpose as that of The Fundamentalism Project.
The author is founder and chief editor, ‘The Dharma Dispatch’. Views expressed are personal
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