The Battle for Sanskrit, a review

(Hinduism Today, Hawaii, May-July 2016) 

Rajiv Malhotra, now headquartered in Princeton NJ, was originally a computer scientist working as a senior executive in the telecom industries. In spite of a very successful business career he took early retirement at 44 and started the Infinity Foundation to organize studies concerning the power equations underlying the way Western scholars construe India. Though by now very well-informed and very productive in developing and documenting relevant concepts, he has remained an outsider to academe. That is why he is lambasted as not having the adhikāra (prerogative) to criticize developments in the academic world – both by academics and by his Hindu nationalist detractors, who have an uppity status-consciousness in common. They still live in the feudal age, when status trumped the humble consideration whether you spoke the truth or not.

In the modern age, things work differently. Albert Einstein was a mere clerk with no adhikāra when he launched the revolutionary Relativity Theory. Closer to home, Shrikant Talageri was belittled as a mere bank clerk when he showed the academics that the very readings and Vedic analyses by which they swore, when logically thought through, were evidence for an Indian Homeland of Indo-European. Status tells you very little about whether you are right or wrong. Malhotra may not have an academic status, but with the thesis of the present book, he is essentially right – and frontally challenging the academic India-watchers.

The battlefield

The Battle for Sanskrit. Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred? Oppressive or Liberating? Dead or Alive? (HarperCollins, Delhi 2016, 468 pp.) is not a piece of Sanskrit scholarship. It is not about grammar or literature, but about the politics of Sanskrit scholarship. It reveals and studies knowledge production and intellectual control mechanisms in the globalized postmodern world. In particular, it documents the American attempt to wrest control over the Sanskrit tradition from the indigenous Pandits, disempowering the backbone of Hindu tradition.

Most Hindus are not aware that a war is raging for the destruction of their civilization. They don’t come out of their comfort zone, out of their career and family concerns, and hence have never developed a sense of the enormous hostility that is targeting them in the ugly wide world. Foreign experts in Arabic or Chinese tend to sympathize with the civilization or polity they study, and to defend it against prejudices and hostile stereotypes; but in “South Asian” Studies (the terms “Indian” and “Hindu” are taboo in those circles), the opposite is the case. Thus, like every immigrant group, US-based Hindus wish to correct the school books to make them less hostile and more accurate regarding Hindu history, and then the South Asia scholars move in not to support but to thwart them.

Yet, in the face of this aggression by “experts”, Hindus think that Sanatana Dharma has survived several onslaughts and has nothing to fear from the present one. Here then is a meritorious role that Malhotra has increasingly played since he started his series of books: getting Hindus up from their cosy unconcern and into reality. In particular, he has taught them to scan the forces in the field and take an objective look at the hostile agents approaching Hindu society with flattering smiles and on idealistic-sounding pretexts.

For the past, this job was done by the likes of the late historian Sita Ram Goel. But very few people are equipped to map out the situation in the present, particularly the interaction between the academic world in the US and the intellectual sphere in India. Americans are now definitely giving the lead, though their agenda is not simply the promotion of the American self-interest. Rather, it is mutually nurtured with the agenda of the Indian secularists, for whom the American universities have become a staging-ground for their anti-Hindu assault.

Under British rule, the foreigners’ view of India had only limited consequences (though in the end, they managed at least to bequeath to India a Nehruvian elite). Today, the “deconstruction” of Hinduism by “experts” influences policies and socio-cultural evolutions inside India and gets broadcast into every Indian village. Indeed, even Hindu leaders (Malhotra calls them “moron Swamis”) have come to intone destructive messages, such as: “All religions say the same thing” (so don’t worry if your daughter converts), or: “Yoga is not Hindu.” The Sringeri Math was on the point of entrusting its traditions to the care of American Sanskritists, but Malhotra warned them, hopefully in time.      

So, on one side of the battlefield is a sleep-walking Hindu society that doesn’t realize what is happening, clueless to the wiles of the enemy. On the other is an ever-growing army of foreign scholars and India-watchers, allied with every divisive force inside India.

Pollock

The occasion for this book is wealthy Infosys industrialist Narayan Murthy’s gift of millions of dollars to Sheldon Pollock of Columbia University for overseeing the translation of 500 classics by US-based Sanskritists. As Makarand Paranjpe has observed in the ensuing debate: this reverses the secret of Infosys’s business success, for building computers turned out to be much cheaper in India than in the US, so wouldn’t sponsoring Pandits to do this job be far more cost-effective?

Apart from financial nonsense, the spending of Hindu funds on non-Hindu interventions is unworthy and dangerous. Pollock’s approach to Sanskrit studies is what he calls “political philology”. He has consistently undervalued the spiritual dimension that Hindus associate with Sanskrit, and portrayed it as a language of oppression. This is not out of malice, he deserves the benefit of the doubt regarding his motives (he has for instance deplored the decline of classical studies in India, leaving a void which he now steps in to fill). All the same, he reproduces the widespread negative valuation of Hinduism which Western India-watchers are spoonfed. Do we want that aversion for Hinduism to have control over the Sanskrit heritage? 

Malhotra observes that it “would hand over the authority of Sanskrit studies to westernized scholars using [Pollock’s] political philology and not Sanskrit’s own literary theories or Indian socio-political resources. Persons who are outsiders to the Indian traditions would call the shots, and even become the proxies to represent the downtrodden.” (p.178)

Ever-more born Hindus are patronized by the likes of Pollock or Wendy Doniger to become sepoys, native mercenaries serving in the attack on Hinduism. This comprises both people from secularist backgrounds who get selected to acquire the scholarly equipment for making their hatred more effective and sophisticated; and well-meaning American-born Hindus who honestly want to study their ancestral traditions but get shunted towards anti-Hindu views: “The effect of Pollock’s project on some Hindus is alienation from their roots and the development of an inferiority complex (…) This alienation spreads quickly. Bright young Indians (…) rush to enter the university factories of this nexus and end up spreading the indoctrination to the public.” (p.327)

Many Hindus, including the Murthy family, are under the impression that scholarship including translation is an ideologically neutral job. For them, extra payment for Pollock rather than the Pandits only means buying American prestige rather than Indian shabbiness. In reality, translation comes with a interpretative framework that insinuates a number of anti-Hindu assumptions. Pollock’s earlier work, even more than his record of signing anti-Hindu petitions, gives a clue.

Rama

Thus, a nice case of Pollock’s warped politicized interpretation, which he terms “political philology”, concerns Valmiki’s Ramayana. Anything good in it is of course the product of “borrowing from Buddhism” (in accord with the reigning assumption: “Hinduism bad, Buddhism good”), so that he juggles the chronology to make the Buddha predate Valmiki: “Pollock’s overarching motive is to make a chronology according to which all Hindu innovations came only after the Buddha, the idea being that prior to Buddhism the Hindus were incapable of innovation as a result of their oral tradition (…) Rationality entered India only after the Buddha came, according to him, and only then did it become possible to compose complex rational texts.” (p.390)

But at heart, Pollock argues the epic to be evil: it is a trick by Brahmins and monarchs to justify royal power, priestly authority and caste apartheid. Moreover, in justifying the war against Ravana, the Ramayana essentially declares war on all outsiders, particularly the Muslims, though these invaders only were to arrive a thousand years later. So Pollock, like Hernán Cortés subduing the Aztecs with the help of the Mexican subalterns, champions the Muslims along with the low-castes and Dravidians against Rama’s wicked aggression, thus to dislodge whatever remains of the oppressive Sanskrit tradition’s power and prestige. 

In this now-dominant construct, Ravana is presented as a resister against Aryan aggression who is shown his place by the Aryan hegemon Rama. Even the boon of invulnerability which Ravana receives, cannot save him from Aryan revenge against his ethnic pride. In reality, however, the Rama narrative does not extol ethnic oppression at all, as Malhotra observes: “Hindus are taught that (1) bad conduct after getting the boon is what makes Ravana an enemy, and nothing else, and (2) being a brahmin (…) does not exempt him from being considered wicked. Pollock ignores this significance, perhaps because it would undermine his depiction that brahmins were always considered good.” (p.189)   

Hitler

Malhotra discovers where so many India-watchers have gotten their rabid hatred for Hinduism from: “Pollock takes the blame game against Sanskrit to new heights when he argues that German Indologists (…) borrowed ideas of racial purity and ethnic violence from their study of Sanskrit” which then “prompted the Nazi holocaust”. (p.169) Yet Pollock fails to pinpoint these ideas of “racial” purity in the Sanskrit tradition.

Fact is that Adolf Hitler repeatedly expressed his contempt for Hindus. He supported British colonialism and told Subhas Chandra Bose to his face that India was better off under the rule of superior white men – just like Murthy thinks Sanskrit literature is safer in the hands of white Americans rather then of brown natives. Hitler had become a religious skeptic, like the Indian secularists, yet he thought highly of the Catholic priesthood because, being a celibate class, it was perforce recruited from the common people – unlike the elitist hereditary priesthood of the Brahmins. At Pollock’s rate of Nazi associations, Pollock himself shares his anti-Brahminism (India’s equivalent of anti-Semitism) with Hitler.

Pollock actually tries to make us believe that there is something Nazi about asserting an Out-of-India Theory for the Indo-European languages. In fact, the Nazis had a militant belief in Pollock’s cherished Aryan Invasion Theory. It was a cornerstone of their worldview: dynamic Aryans moving in to rule the indolent natives; white Aryans banning intermarriage to preserve their racial purity, thus creating caste; yet submitting to at least some admixture and thereby becoming inferior to their purer white cousins, thus needing their rule. Hitler, Pollock: same struggle!

At any rate, in the West, “Nazi!” counts as the single worst allegation. Would you entrust the care of your heritage to someone who slanders Sanskrit like that?

 

Conclusion

With this book, Rajiv Malhotra has taken a powerful stand for the self-respect of Dharmic tradition, warding off a clear and present danger. Every Hindu who can contribute is called upon to join him in the struggle.

Read more!

Cultural astronomy and star worship in Bath

 (28 June 2016)

On the historic day of 24 June 2016, when it became known that the British people had voted for  Britain's exit from the European Union, I took the ferryboat from the French-occupied Flemish town of Kales (Calais) to Dover. In years past I had always taken the Eurostar superfast train, which emerges from underground near Folkestone, but this time I could see the white cliffs of Dover, ever since Julius Caesar the emblematic first sign of Britain. As most of you know, they are the reason why Britain is also known as Albion, from Latin albus, “white”.

I was going to the Conference on Cultural Astronomy in Bath on 25-26 June 2016, organized by the Sophia Centre belonging to the University of Wales in Lampeter. It is pleasant to think that the choice of this town was, in cosmic terms, not a coincidence. It is here that William Herschel lived when he made the first-ever discovery of a new planet, Uranus.

This year the topic was “Worship of the Stars”, a subject that overlaps with the subject of the European-level Conference on Cultural Astronomy hosted by its British section in this same town in September. At that conference, I will present a paper myself (on the Semitic concept of Shirk, “associating (a dying hero with a star)”, which Islam later transformed into meaning “idolatry”). Here I only attended other people’s lectures. But this gave me ample time to listen and think, so I shall briefly report on the lectures before giving my own thoughts.

And by the way, I earned many a smirk by introducing myself as being “from Brussels” (actually at a small distance from it, not worthy of mention on an international scale), that hell-hole and focal point of EU tyranny. So, that much for the Sitz im Leben behind this reflection.

The worldwide religion

The worldwide array of instances of star worship presented here shows that star worship is really the universal religion. In this regard it competes with ancestor worship, also near-universal. Or rather, the two are often intertwined, for deceased ancestors are deemed to be in heaven, often actually associated with a specific star. The identification of stars with gods is not only implicit in a common etymology of words for “god” (Deva = “the radiant one”), it is even affirmed by serious philosophers like Socrates (Apology 226d) and Plato (Laws, 821c or 886d). This view often had to deal with a skeptical counterpoint, exemplified by the position of philosopher Anaxagoras and of playwright Aristophanes (“The Clouds” and “The Birds”) that the sun and the stars are only pieces of burning stone. From a religious viewpoint, this expulsion of the sacred was disrepect to the gods, or what the Greeks called Hubris, “foolish pride”, “conceit”, as explained by Stavroula Konstantopoloulou.

Several speakers went deeper into the alreay well-established role of the Mesopotamian traditions in this regard. A lesser-known instance, here discussed by Hannelore Goos, is the role of the stars in Germanic religion. We heard details about the roles of sun and moon in the Edda, sometimes in disguise. The Germanic pantheon is often reputed to be sombre and full of ice, but here we saw that it, too, often symbolically refers to more luminous lore about the bright ones in the heavens.

In Germany today, we notice a revival of Solstice gatherings at ancient woodhenge sites (several have only recently been discovered) or rock formations. Reinhard Mussik reported that these were less an expression of neo-Paganism than of a heightened interest in archaeo-astronomy. In particular, he found a widespread belief in a transnational solar cult that must anciently have been spread across Europe.   

I apologize to those speakers whose name or research I don’t mention in this limited space, and move on to Marcello De Martino’s important thesis on Hestia/Vesta, goddess of the hearth, i.e. the focal (from focus, “hearth”) or central fire. The Pythagorean philosopher Philolaus of Croton conceived of a model of the universe wherein the earth is central vis-à-vis the planets and then the fixed stars, much like in the usual geocentric model, except that the earth itself revolves around something even more central, the focal fire. This pyrocentric model is but the high-brow formulation of a tradition that goes back to at least Proto-Indo-European times (some 4000 BCE). In this system, the gods are personifications of celestial bodies and phenomena, conceived as peripheral to the real centre of the universe, Hestia as the hearth fire.

I add that in this respect, some Paganisms were ready from the beginning for the concept of “discarding the gods”, which Christianity or Islam would later impose by force (though only to replace them with their own god). But before that, we already see how Stoicism, which takes some distance from state-approved theism, becomes the accepted worldview among educated Greeks and Romans. Or how the Vedic cult of the gods gets replaced with a pursuit of knowledge, of the Absolute (Brahman), in the Upanishads. These developments only explicitated a relativisation of the gods that had been there all along, because the heavenly beings had always been conceived as peripheral and subordinate to the central fire.  

I may also add that in Christian cosmology, this central fire reappears as the centrality of hell within the planet standing in the centre of the geocentric universe. Theologians had a conscience problem here, for situating hell-fire underground amounted to putting Satan in the centre of the universe. You have to pay Satan his due, but this was just too much honour.

The Biblical religions

The Tenach (Old Testament) recognizes the importance of star worship, even when prohibiting it for the Israelites: “Pay attention lest ye lift your eyes up to the sky for seeing sun, moon and stars, that you be led astray and adore and serve them, those whom the Lord your God hath assigned to all the nations under heaven." (Deut. 4:19) As an application of this instruction among the Jews themselves, we learned here from speaker Meira Epstein that the Talmud describes rituals for the first appearance of t, with Helios in his chariot at the centre,he New Moon, but that after verifying the moon’s visibility, the officiant is then directed to look at his prayer text and never at the moon itself during the ritual, so as it make clear that this is not moon worship. Nonetheless, as excavated synagogue floors from the early Christian centuries show (documented by Rachel Schmid), the Zodiac became an integral part of the really existing Jewish worldview.

As Christianity brought the Biblical worldview to the Pagans, it busied itself with eradicating star worship, partly simply eliminating it and consigning it to oblivion, partly adopting it in disguise. Thus, the eulogy to Mary as “Queen of Heaven” is directly taken from the Pagan lore about Venus. Church buildings were oriented to the rising sun. The Pentecost as the feast of the Holy Spirit and of communication across language barriers was put in Gemini, All Saints’ Day as feast of the dead in Scorpio, etc. Stellar divination even gained an explicit place in the Jesus narrative with the visit of the Magi. Jesus was often likened to the sun with its well-attested myths of death and resurrection. As Konstatinos Gravanis showed, theologians also likened Jesus to a conjunction of sun and moon: the sun being his divine nature, radiant and unchanging, and the moon his human nature, imperfect and transient.

Astrology was very influential in the Middle East and in the Roman Empire, so the Church ended up incorporating some of it. The Church Fathers condemned its supposed determinism, but later doctores such as Thomas Aquinas created a space for it within the Christian worldview. Christian astrologers merely had to explicitate that the heavenly bodies were not gods (in fact, they were deemed to be set and kept in motion by angels), and on that condition their own form of horoscopy could flourish.

An instance of very elementary astrology in Christian art was presented by my Serbian friend Dragana Ilič. On a Jesus painting in a Serbian monastery, we find a depiction of two seeming space ships, with one cosmonaut in each, in the heavenly background to scenes from Jesus’ life. Since Erich von Däniken, many New-Agers see this as proof that aliens have come, and that cosmonauts from up there even triggered the genesis of religion down here. Alas, she showed that these were ultimately just fanciful images of sun and moon. 

Islam

The Quran simply and strictly prohibits star worship. Again, this went hand in hand with a high tide of astrology, but on the condition that astrologers emphasized how the planets were not gods but mere cogwheels in a machinery set in motion by the Creator. Pre-Islamic religion was actually also largely star worship (next to ancestor worship and the worship of special stones like the Black Stone in Mecca’s Ka’ba). Thus, the three Meccan goddesses of Satanic Verses fame, al-Lat, al-Uzza and al-Manat, are roughly the Sun, Venus and the Moon. One of the most original papers dealt with one pre-Islamic Arabian form of practical star lore.

We learned from Arab researcher Mai Lootah that in pre-Islamic Arabia, the quasi-Babylonian lore about the heliacal rising (i.e. as the last to visibly rise before daybreak) of a number of stars and planets, or about their opposition (rising when the sun sets) had been encapsulated in a series of verses or rhymed prose texts, generally with a prediction attached. This art was called anwā’. Most commonly they generally predicted the weather, like astrological versions of our weather proverbs: “Red sky at night,/ shepherd’s delight;/ red sky in the morning,/ shepherd take warning.” You might compare them also to the little stories that go with a specific throw of the oracle stones in different oracle systems from China to Congo, where each outcome contains a prediction applicable to the questioners’ situation.

The art seems to have some status, for city dwellers from Saudi Arabia have mastered it, the way Westerners nowadays complete courses in fengshui or indeed in astrology. Traditionally, however, it was passed on from father to sun in Beduin communities, and she could interview a number of those hereditary specialists in Kuwait. The verses were preserved all across the Islamic period by these Beduin soothsayers (baru’), who of course had to assure their environments that the stars were not gods and that this lore implied nothing detrimental to monotheism. However, since urbanization struck in Arabia in the 1960s, the specialists are losing touch with nature and with direct observation of the starry sky, so that this lore is now getting hazy. Modernization is destroying what fourteen centuries of prohibitive monotheism could not.  

Rebels against the world order

An often neglected ideological impact upon evolving astrology is Mazdeism or Zoroastrianism, the Persian religion. The Persians ruled Babylon in the 6th-4th century BCE, where they adopted but also influenced local astrology. They were a major presence in Greek life, and in subsequent centuries, after Alexander, remained a major influence upon Hellenism. As is fairly well-known, they worshipped Ahura Mazda (“Lord Wisdom”), a form of address of the Vedic god Varuna, personification of the world order incarnated in the orderly configuration of the night sky.

The great rebel against Ahura Mazda was Angra Mainyu (“Furious Spirit”), signifying disorder.  From philological studies, we know that he can be equated with the Vedic god Indra, the thunder-god (Thor, Jupiter, Zeus, Marduk), whom the Iranians had demonized. In Vedic polytheism there are, apart from the ultimate poles of Heaven and Earth, three classes of gods: 12 heavenly ones, 11 atmospheric ones, and 8 earthly ones. The first category signifies celestial order, not coincidentally the number of the Zodiac signs, or that which in Iranian dualism comes to be symbolized by Ahura Mazda. The third one signifies the wordly riches undergoing the influences from above. The second category is the one that interests us here: it signifies dynamism and disorder, symbolized by the unwieldy number 11 and by the unpredictable wind. It is here that storm-god Indra belongs.

Above the earth with its intractable and hidden pathways, but below the seemingly orderly and unchanging array of the fixed stars, therefore also reckoned as part of the “atmosphere”, of the in-between sphere, there are also the disorderly phenomena of heaven. These include comets, eclipses, the occasional nova, and come to think of it, in a sense also the planets. These are more predictable than the earthly events, also more than the weather or the comets, but less than the fixed stars. It is, for instance, hardly necessary to calculate an ephemeris for the stars, for their positions remain unchanging for a long time; by contrast, it is necessary to map out the movements of the planets.

This way, the planets partly partake of the orderly and unchanging divine world, but also participate in the sphere of disorder. Speaker Paul Bembridge demonstrated a remarkable confluence, around the time of Christ, of beliefs that a war was raging in heaven between the stars and the planets: the “Gnostic crisis”. In that sense, it could be said that the planets partially signify the adversary of the world order. He probably went too far when he tied this in with the nickname of  Venus, the brightest of the planets, as Lucifer. He tried to associate Venus, and through her the planets in general, with the Devil (“the slanderer”), the Satan (“the adversary”), the opponent of the divine order par excellence. However, Lucifer means the “light-bringer”, apparently because as morning-star, Venus announces the dawn; and not too much should be looked for behind this.

On the other hand, while exaggerated, it does point to a reality. As is known, in Bible-based theology, Satan is meant to try and test us, to “lead us into temptation”. And that exactly is what the planets are: signifiers of the unruly passions, the wild sea we have to learn to navigate, and from which we ultimately have to emancipate ourselves.

Hindu astrology

The whole conference was exceptional, but I especially enjoyed the papers on Hindu astrology by Kenneth Miller and Freedom Cole. One of the Sanskrit terms for “astrologer”, at least since its mention in a 4th-century dictionary, is Daiva-jña, “knower of the gods”, or in practice, “knower of fate”. Another is Daiva-lekhaka, “gods-writer”, “fate-writer”, i.e. horoscope-maker. Obviously, the stars here were seen as gods regulating man’s destiny.

The Bhagavad-Gita 5:12 says that men desiring success in action worship Devas/gods, and that for them, success gets accomplished through ritual action. It is in this spirit that astrology is still practised in India today: the client will get advice on what ritual to practise, when and how and for which god, to ward off the negative influences of the stellar configurations indicated in his horoscope. This will remove the obstacles to his well-being and the fulfilment of his desires.

By contrast, Sadhana or what is nowadays called “the spiritual path” falls outside the ambit of astrology. In Sadhana, the point is to decrease your desires, to renounce, to abandon. A monk is usually expected to refrain from astrology. His aim is not to navigate the circumstances of life, the risks and opportunities signified by the stellar configurations, but to grow out of this world, to become indifferent to fate.

In the West, astrology appeals mostly to starry-eyed aficionaos of “spirituality”. Though cultivating a soft and mushy worldview, they tend to be stern in their disapproval when they hear that in the Orient (not just India, but also China and other places, where the bourgeoisie takes astrological advice very seriously) people are very “materialistic” in the questions they ask, as are the astrologers in their matter-of-fact answers. But in fact, it is only natural, ever since the beginning of sooth-saying, that oracle-readers, palmists and star-gazers are down-to-earth in the advice they give. Everyone is free to “indulge” in the spiritual path during his free time; but in the grim business of making a living, choosing where and how to build a house, or marrying off your daughter to a worthy candidate, clear and lucre-conscious counsel is called for. 

Hindu civilization probably borrowed its present system of horoscopy from the Greeks, who in turn had freshly adopted it from the Babylonians. It is, at any rate, not mentioned in India before Alexander, in fact only six or so centuries later. One of the speakers, like many Hindus, wasn’t so sure about this. Thus, the very first book on horoscopy in India is admittedly called Yavana Jataka, “Ionian Birth Astrology”, but that doesn’t strictly prove that non-Greek astrology wasn’t known. But this sounds like special pleading: the common-sense conclusion from the available data is that the existing tradition of Babylonian horoscopy was first adopted and transformed by the Greeks after Alexander’s conquest, and in subsequent centuries transmitted by the Indo-Greeks to the Indians.

However, the borrowed nature of Indian nativity-reading doesn’t prove the absence of astrology. All major civilizations cultivated some more or less systematized stellar lore, along with other forms of divination. And indeed, Vedic civilization knew at least two distinct forms of astrology. One was omen-reading, described in the Mahabharata, comparable to what existed in Mesopotamia in pre-horoscope days and amply attested there in clay tablets from the 2nd millennium BCE. This was by its very nature haphazard, based on any celestial revelation which the gods of their own volition chose to make concerning their own mood: eclipse, comet, or sudden darkening of (what we now know to be) double-stars of when its weaker partner came to occult the brighter partner.

The other was based on the 28 lunar houses, already mentioned in the Vedas, a system cognate to the 28 Xiu in China or the 28 Manāzil in Arabia. Each house was roughly the angular distance traversed by the moon in a day. It was succinctly but systematically described in the Jyotishi Vedanga, a work which Cole confirmed to be from the 14th century BCE, pace David Pingree’s estimate of ca. the 5th century BCE. This book dates itself in two independent passages through the precessional correlation of the constellations with both the Solstice axis and the Equinox axis to ca. 1350 BCE, and nowhere to any other date. It is not acceptable to overrule or ignore this direct testimony, as academics wedded to an artificially low chronology for Indian civilization usually do.

The Jyotishi Vedanga gives instructions under which stellar configurations to perform rituals. But why should this be important? At face value, this seems to be only astronomical, only technical, but the fact that ritualists should attach importance to stellar configurations indicates a sense of astrology, of attaching a significance to celestial positions. Only, this significance is not yet tied to individuals and their birth times, not yet nativity-astrological, not yet horoscopic. It only decides on generally auspicious times for starting an entreprise, for laying the first stone of a house, or for concluding a wedding. It is what we would call “electional astrology”.

The most common remnant of this form of astrology, persisting long after Hellenistic-originated horoscopy came centre-stage, is the existence of wedding-seasons. If in an Indian city you consider hiring a festival tent or a brass-band for your company’s garden party, it is best to choose the off season, for at certain times of the year, cities are just full of wedding parties. All new couples want to tune in to a good stellar configuration to solemnize their wedding. Only militant skeptics organize weddings under a configuration that is deemed inauspicious.  

Conclusion

This conference was great. Coincidentally or not, it took place when Jupiter conjoined Rahu (who, as Matthew Kosuta detailed, is the special object of worship in Thailand), and both were in opposition with the Moon conjoining Neptune. Rahu is the cosmic monster that devours the sun or moon during eclipses; or more rationally, the point where lunar and solar orbit intersect. Astrologers believe that with Jupiter, Rahu indicates glorious new beginnings, or meetings with great sequels. Moreover, on this occasion they oppose Neptune, the planet of illusions and confusion. The growth and expansion they promise, sets itself against flaky dead-ends and entanglements. Yet Neptune happens to be at his strongest in Pisces, bringing out positive sides like a rich imagination and inspired art.

I do not know enough of astrology to discern what should be the downside, but I suppose we’ll run into that at some point. That is what most of us, lesser mortals, do: undergo our destiny, because we tend to be underlings. Then again, this is a great time for starting an upward curve. Meanwhile, I am satisfied with having had a good time.

Read more!

Interview in the monthly Swarajya

(Paper version of Swarajya, May 2016)

·        While Swarajya has published articles exposing how Marxist historians hound peers who disagree with them out of academic institutions, we have got news from different sources that you are finding it difficult to get employed even in Belgium. Is it true? If yes, what precisely is the objection of your detractors? Can you name the people who have raised objection to your appointment in a Belgian university? Did you receive regret letters from Belgian academic authorities, explaining why they couldn’t appoint you? Did they communicate verbally to you why they thought you were unemployable?

After giving this matter some thought, I have decided against offering much detail here. Firstly, I am not privileged to know the details of decision-making instances that lead to my own exclusion. Even if sending an official “regret letter”, they would not give in writing the real reason behind their decision (as anyone experienced with job applications knows).

Secondly, eventhough no law was broken, going into this still has the character of an allegation, and that requires proof. Some cases of deliberate exclusion or disinvitation were simply obvious, but my standards of proof are higher than that. Thus, recently I missed an appointment at a Belgian university and in that rare case I was unofficially but fully informed of the details by an insider (of course I was vetoed for reputedly being too embroiled with Islam criticism), but now that this crown witness has died, it would only be my word against theirs; which would not be good enough. So, I simply want to close this chapter. Let’s not bother, everybody has his problems, and these career hurdles are mine. In fact, I have had quite a bit of luck in my life, including help from individual Hindus whenever the need arose (air tickets paid, hospitality etc.), so any fussing about this boycott against me would be disproportionate. Let’s just assume I missed those opportunities because I was not good enough. Or because of Karma, whatever.  

The topic in general is important, though. The Leftist dominance of the Humanities departments in India, often amounting to total control, results from the wilful and systematic “ethnic cleansing” (to borrow Madhu Kishwar’s term) of any young scholar suspected of pro-Hindu sympathies. Exceptions are the people who entered on the strength of ideologically neutral work, or of initially toeing the line, but coming out with pro-Hindu convictions only after getting tenure.

This cleansing of enemies stems from the old Marxist mentality: a war psychology treating everyone with a different opinion as an enemy inviting merciless destruction; and a boundless self-righteousness rooted in the belief of being on the forward side of history. As an ideological wave, Marxism is waning even in India, but that attitude is still rife among the anti-Hindu forces, both in India and among Western India-watchers.

·        We refer to the established historians in India as Marxist historians, not to their knowledge because they look at this country through the Marxist lens of “class conflicts”. You refer to them sarcastically as “eminent” historians. Please explain your choice of words.

“Eminent historians” is what they call one another, and what their fans call them. When they don’t have an answer to an opponent’s arguments, they pompously dismiss him as not having enough “eminence”. So when Arun Shourie wrote about some abuses in this sector, he called his book Eminent Historians. It is also a pun on an old book about prominent colonial-age personalities, Eminent Victorians.

“Eminence” in this case refers to their position and relative glory. The Communists always made sure to confer position and prestige, as opposed to the Sangh Parivar, which fawns over people with position but doesn’t realize that those people have only acquired their position by toeing the anti-Hindu line. In a way, you have to concede that the Left has honestly fought for its power position. Half their battle was already won by the Hindu side’s complete absence from the battlefield.

One example of the Sangh’s ineptness at playing this game. In 2002, the supposedly Hindu government of AB Vajpayee founded the Chair for Indic Studies in Oxford. The media cried “saffronization” and, as usual, portrayed the BJP as a wily party fanatically committed to Hindu causes. However, the clueless time-servers at the head of the BJP nominated a known and proven opponent of Hindu Nationalism, Sanjay Subrahmaniam, who thus became the poster-boy for “saffronization”. This way, they hoped to achieve their highest ambition in life: a pat on the shoulder by the secularists. That pat on the shoulder, already begged for so many times, remained elusive, but the tangible result was that they too had conferred even more prestige on an “Eminent Historian”, all while denying it to their own scholars (if any).

·        What would you tell your peers who say that the “Out of India” Theory (OIT) is a fringe theory?

Of course it is a fringe theory, at least internationally, where the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is still the official paradigm. In India, though, it has the support of most archaeologists, who fail to find a trace of this Aryan influx and instead find cultural continuity. As for the situation abroad: most scholars assume the invasionist paradigm, but only very few also argue in an informed manner for the invasionist theory, not many more than those who argue against it. But anyway, this “fringe” aspect doesn’t impress me at all. When Copernicus put the sun rather than the earth in the middle of the solar system, he was in a minority of one, very “fringe” indeed; but he won the day.

·        What is the evidence against the Aryan Invasion Theory?

First of all: that there is no evidence in its favour. Archaeologists have spent a century of well-funded excavations for a trace, any trace, of the Aryans moving into India. Even the invasionists concede that “as yet” no such thing has been found. The new genetic evidence, while still immature, generally goes in favour of emigrations from India and, while leaving room for immigrations too, is emphatically failing to pinpoint an invasion coinciding in time with the hypothetical Aryan invasion.

Meanwhile, the written record emphatically points to an emigration scenario. That the Iranians lived in India and had to leave westwards is reported in the Rg-Veda, a text thoroughly analysed and shown to support an “Aryan emigration” by Shrikant Talageri. It can equally be deduced from the Avesta. Even earlier migrations are mentioned in the Puranas. These are of course very mixed and unreliable as a source of history, but it is a bad historian who discards them altogether. Their core, later fancifully embellished, consists in dynastic lists. Keeping that ancestral information was the proper job of court poets, and they devised mnemotechnical tricks to transmit it for many generations. In this case, it too does convey a basic scenario of indigenousness and emigration.

Finally, there is the linguistic evidence. Many Indians believe the hearsay that it has somehow proven the invasion. It hasn’t. But permit me to forego discussing those data: too technical for an interview.

  

·        Of late, the Marxist historians have revised “invasion” to “migration”. They say that there might not have been a war when the so-called Aryans arrived here, but they have no doubt that the ancestors of today’s north Indians, especially the upper castes, by and large migrated from central Asia into India. In other words, the Marxists say that we Indians were originally not Indians—invasion or no invasion! Does this “revision” satisfy you?

Exasperated at not finding a visible trace of this invasion, conformist scholars have theorized an alternative that doesn’t require such visible remains: a migration under the radar. Often, when they try to give details, they still mean a military invasion rather than a gradual migration, since they bring in the military advantage of horses and chariots to explain how such a large and civilized Harappan population could be overrun by a handful of outsiders.

But even if they genuinely mean a migration, it still amounts to the same scenario as an invasion, viz. the Vedic Aryans came from abroad and the natives took over the language and religion of the intruders. So, anyone who thinks that the migration theory is a breakthrough away from the invasion theory really shows he doesn’t understand the issue. “Migration” effectively means “invasion” but avoids the burden of proof that the more dramatic term “invasion” implies.

To be sure, it doesn’t much matter who came from where. The so-called adivasis (a British term coined in ca. 1930) or “natives” of Nagalim in the Northeast have settled in their present habitat only a thousand years ago; which is fairly recent by Indian standards. So, ironically, they are genuine “immigrants” or “invaders”, yet no Indian begrudges them their place inside India. Many countries have an immigration or conquest of their present territory as a proud part of their national myth: Madagascar, Romania, the Siberian part of Russia, Hungary, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, etc. If the Indo-Aryans, or indeed the Dravidians (theorized to have come from Iran or even Central Asia), had really immigrated, that would then have been a pre-Vedic event, at least 3500 years ago, and that time-span ought to have been enough for integration into the national mainstream.

So this Homeland debate ought to have been a non-issue, only of interest to ivory-tower scholars. But different non- or anti-Hindu forces decided to politicize it. Abroad, these were the British colonialists, White supremacists in the US and Europe, and among them the Nazis, who considered the AIT as a cornerstone and eloquent illustration of their worldview. Inside India, first of all the Christian missionaries, then followed by the non-Brahmin movement, the Dravidianists, Nehruvians and Ambedkarites, followed in turn by their Western supporters. The AIT was used to break up Indian unity and pit upper castes against lower castes, non-tribals against tribals, and North-Indians against South-Indians. After this massive politicization, the partisans of Indian unity finally decided to give some feeble support to the fledgling Out-of-India Theory (OIT). Yet, scholars rejecting the OIT because of its alleged political use have no qualms about espousing the AIT, politicized since far longer, in many more countries, and not as a pastime of a few historians but as the basis for government policies.

·        On the one hand, the unaffiliated or apolitical Indian student loves your theories; your passages are quoted widely in debates on ancient Indian history. On the other, you do not seem to get along well with the so-called right-wing historians of this country either. You have written a blog against them. Please comment.

Well, I have nothing but good to say about some Indian researchers, both naturalized ones like Michel Danino and natives like Meenakshi Jain or Srikant Talageri. But then, there are others too. Certainly the name PN Oak rings a bell? In the second half of last century, he spread all these theories that the Taj Mahal was a Shiva temple; that the Kaaba was built by Vikramaditya as a Shiva temple; that the Vatican (originally the Roman “Poets’ Hill”) is really “Veda-Vatika”; that my mother tongue, Dutch, is the language of the Daityas (demons), etc. The bad thing is that numerous Hindus have run away with these stories, and even some NRI surgeons and engineers of my acquaintance believe in diluted versions of the same. In a less extreme manner, this disdain for historical method is widespread among traditionalist Hindu “history-rewriters”. They frequently put out claims that would make legitimate historians shudder.

Many of these rewriters thought that with Narendra Modi’s accession to power, their time had come. I know, for instance, that many of them have sent in proposals to the ICHR. None of these was accepted because they ignored the elementary rules of scholarship. Any student writing a thesis knows that before you can develop your own hypothesis, you first have to survey the field and assess what previous scholars have found or theorized. But these traditionalist history-rewriters just don’t bother about the rest of the world, they are satisfied to have convinced themselves. Their horizon is not larger than an internet list of like-minded people.

In itself, it is no problem that their knowledge and method leave much to be desired. People can learn. Unfortunately, they are too smug to do that. They actively misinform Hindus by claiming that the Aryan Invasion Theory has long been discarded. They also do a lot of harm to the bonafide historians with whom they get juxtaposed. So it is true that I have lost patience with them.

·        Since the Narendra Modi government came to power in 2014, has there been an effort to revise the subject of Indian history in academic curricula, which, many in India believe, is politically motivated? Has the Government of India approached you with the request of being a part of any such initiative? If yes, how is the project going?

No, there has been no such request at all. However, I myself have sent in an application to the Indian Council of Historical Research, but that has run into technical difficulties, mainly to do with my foreign passport. So, the situation is and remains that institutionally, I have nothing to do with the Indian history scene.

The version of history taught by the Nehruvians was politically motivated. The feeble Hindu attempt to counterbalance this (“saffronization”) in ca. 2002 was confused and largely incompetent. Humbled by this experience, the BJP today is not even trying to impose its own version. Contrary to the Nehruvians’ hue and cry, allegations about the BJP’s interference in history-teaching or more generally in academe are simply not true.

Here we are only talking of changing some lines in the textbooks, and even that seems a Himalayan effort to the BJP. Yet, what is really needed is a far more thorough overhaul. Except for some scholars without any power, nobody is even thinking about this very needed long-term job.

·        If no, could the reason be that RSS-affiliated historians and you are not particularly fond of each other and this government is influenced by the Sangh?

Any Sangh-affiliated historians would not need me to arrive at their positions or to devise a policy if called upon to do so by the present Government. But again, I am not aware of any governmental interest in correcting the distorted history propagated by the Nehruvians. I would welcome it if it happened, but so far the BJP, still begging to be recognized as “secular”, only has its eye on “development”.

I am happy to report that there are some as yet insignificant private initiatives, though. Once they achieve results, there will be more to say on them.

·        Would you say or agree that the Government of India, regardless of the political party that runs it, would be uncomfortable appointing or commissioning an academic who is perceived as being anti-Muslim?

Certainly.  Though it never had any problem with anti-Hindu candidates to even the highest post. Long ago, it even managed to appoint to the chair of the Constitution Commission, no less, a man who had expressed his outspoken aversion to both Hinduism and Islam: Dr. BR Ambedkar.

·        Does the genesis of your problem with anti-left historians in India lie in the fact that on the issue of Babri Masjid, if you do not agree with the left, you do not agree with the right wing either? If it is something else, please explain the problem.

On Ayodhya, there has never been a conflict with any non-Left historian. To be sure, I have my disagreements on some minor points, but they have never been the object of a controversy. So: no, on Ayodhya I may have minor and friendly differences of opinion with “right-wing” historians, but no serious quarrel. In that debate, the long-standing quarrel has been with the Eminent Historians, their supporters in media and politics, and their foreign dupes. They were on the wrong side of the history debate all along, and it is time they concede it.

In the case of the Eminent Historians, it is also time for the surviving ones to own up their responsibility for the whole conflict. The then PM, Rajiv Gandhi, was on course towards a peaceful settlement, allotting the site to the Hindus and buying the militant Muslim leadership off with some typically Congressite horse-trading. Not too principled, but at least with the virtue of avoiding bloodshed. It is the shrill and mendacious declaration of the Eminent Historians in 1989, amplified by all the vocal secularists, that made the politicians back off.

Not only have they falsely alleged that no Rama temple ever stood on the contentious site: their more fundamental lie was to bring in history at all. Ayodhya belongs to the Hindus not because it was their pilgrimage site a thousand years ago, nor because of “revenge” for a temple destruction effected eight hundred or five hundred years ago, but because it is a Hindu sacred site today. No Muslim ever cares to go to Ayodhya, and in spite of being egged on by the Eminent Historians, enough Muslim leaders have expressed their willingness to leave the site to the Hindus. This whole controversy was unnecessary, but for the Nehruvians’ pathetic nomination of the Babri Masjid as the last bulwark of secularism.

·        If all the archaeological findings from Ayodhya are arranged chronologically, what story of the disputed plot of land comes to the fore? Did a temple of Lord Rama stand there, which Babar’s general Mir Baqi demolished to build the mosque? Or, did Mir Baqi find ruins on the spot, which were a mix of a dilapidated Muslim graveyard and remains of a temple of an even older generation?

That a Hindu temple was demolished by Muslim invaders is certain, on that we all agree. But there is less consensus around, or even awareness of, the fact that this happened several times: by Salar Masud Ghaznavi in 1030 (the rebuilt Rajput temple after this must be the one of the excavated pillar-bases), by Qutbuddin Aibak’s troops in 1193, and by Mir Baqi on Babar’s behalf in 1526.

What it was that was replaced by Babar’s mosque, is not fully clear. I speculate that in the rough and tumble of the collapsing Delhi Sultanate, Hindus had managed to take over the site and started worship there eventhough the building they used was a mosque imposed on the site. That was exactly the situation in 1949-92, and I think it also applied towards 1526. Babar destroyed a Hindu pilgrimage centre, a Hindu presence at the site, but not the Rajput temple from the 11th century of which the foundations were excavated in 2003.

Was the temple’s demolition just an odd event, or was it the necessary materialization of an ideology, repeated many times and in many places? When Mohammed Shahabuddin Ghori and his lieutenants conquered the entire Ganga basin in 1192-94, they destroyed every Hindu temple they could find. Only a few survived, and that is because they lay out of the way of the Muslim armies, in the (then) forest, notably in Khajuraho and in Bodh Gaya. But all the Buddhist universities, all the temples in Varanasi etc. were destroyed. Ayodhya became a provincial capital of the Delhi Sultanate, and it is inconceivable that the Sultanate regime would have allowed a major temple to remain standing there.

So, the narrative propagated by the Sangh Parivar, that Babar destroyed the 11^th-century temple, cannot be true, for that temple was no longer there. When Babar arrived on the scene, Hindus may have worshipped Rama in a makeshift temple, or in a mosque building provisionally used as a temple, but the main temple that used to be there, had already been destroyed in 1193. See, Ayodhya’s history becomes more interesting once you discard the lies of the Eminent Historians as well as the naïve version of the Sangh Parivar.

The controversial part lies herein, that the persistence of the temple all through the Sultanate period would have implied a certain tolerance even during the fiercest part of Muslim rule. In reality, the demolition of Rama’s birthplace temple was not an odd and single event, but a repeated event in application of a general theology of iconoclasm imposed by the Prophet.

·        Was it a temple of Lord Vishnu rather? Or, were they quite a few temples of one or more deities built in different periods by different kings?

In her book from 2013, Rama and Ayodhya, Prof. Meenakshi Jain has detailed all the scholarly evidence and the debate around it, including the embarrassing collapse of the Eminent Historians’ case once they took the witness stand in Court. She shows that the Rama cult has already left traces more than 2000 years ago. Attempts to make Rama worship a recent phenomenon were just part of the sabotage attempts by the Eminent Historians. Also, the site of Ayodhya, though probably older, is at least beyond doubt since Vikramaditya in the 1^st century BC. All indications are that the disputed site was already visited by pilgrims as Rama’s birthplace since well before the Muslim conquest.

So, this was a long-standing pilgrimage site for Rama. Against the utter simplicity of this scenario, anti-Hindu polemicists of various stripes have tried all kinds of diversionary tactics: saying that Rama was born elsewhere, or that the temple belonged to other cults. This Vishnu-but-not-his-incarnation-Rama theory, or the claim of a Shaiva or Buddhist origin, came about as some of those diversionary tactics; they are totally inauthentic and artificial. Alright, among historians we can discuss every possible hypothesis. But from the very relevant viewpoint of Islamic iconoclasm, all these distinctions don’t matter: all those sects were false, leading men astray, away from the one true religion, and therefore they all, and certainly their idols and idol-houses, were to be destroyed.

·        Whatever be the story, which community do you believe has a greater right of ownership over that disputed site?

The community that holds the site sacred. Muslims go through all this trouble to travel to far-away Mecca, why don’t they go on a cheap and easy pilgrimage to Ayodhya instead? It seems they have made their choice. So let us respect their choice, and also the choice of the Rama worshippers who do care for Ayodhya, by leaving the site to the latter. Case closed.

·        Do you hate Muslims or Islam?

No, I do not hate Muslims. They are people like ourselves. Having travelled in Pakistan and the Gulf States, I even dare say I feel good in Muslim environments. And if I desire the liberation of Muslims from Islam, that is precisely because I like them. Suppose you discover that a friend of you still believes in fairy-tales: wouldn’t you consider it your duty to set him straight and confront him with the true story, precisely because he is your friend?

But then, perhaps the writer of the Quran “hated” the unbelievers when he wished them godspeed to hell.

And I do not “hate” Islam either. If a teacher uses his red pencil to cross out a grammatical mistake in a pupil’s homework, we do not say that he “hates” the mistake. He simply notices very dispassionately that it is wrong. The use of the word “hate” in this case stems from an attempt to distort the debate and misrepresent the argument by means of emotive language. The belief that someone heard the word of God, dictating the Quranic verses, is just one of the many irrational and mistaken beliefs that have plagued mankind since the beginning.

·        You have been on record saying at a function in Goa in late 2014 that a general impression must be created that being a Muslim is “uncool”! Representatives of some Islamic countries reportedly walked out of the venue in protest of your statement. Would you explain what happened at that event?

We had been given to understand that it was going to be a Hindu thinkfest where the only constraint on our free discussion was going to be the truth. Satyameva jayate! The offer of first-class airplane tickets (which I refused as unnecessarily luxurious) should already have alerted me to a different agenda: a glamorous diplomatic show. Arriving on-site, and seeing some high-profile Muslim guests from West Asia (what were they doing at an “India Ideas Conclave”?), I proposed the organizers to change the topic from what I had been invited for: the roots of religious terrorism. Thus, an evaluation of the BJP Government’s record from the angle of its Hindu reputation seemed to me an excellent topic that as yet no one was scheduled to talk about. But no, they insisted I talk about the roots of Islamic terrorism, then colourfully illustrated by the frequent video reports of beheadings by the Islamic State, apart from the more usual bomb attacks. Even when I warned them that I was not going to parrot the diplomatic white lies churned out by Obama and Cameron (and, very recently, in my presence, by Narendra Modi speaking in Brussels), viz. that jihad “has nothing to do with Islam”, they still persisted.

So they got what they had bargained for. I detailed the justification for all of the IS’s actions from the Quran and the Prophet’s precedents. The reaction of the Hindu audience was very warm and enthusiastic. Finally someone who didn’t try to shift the blame to the victims, as the Nehruvians always do. A few foreigners were not so happy, and neither were the BJP organizers. They had preferred a diplomatic lie to the truth, so I had spoiled their show, intended to prove how nice and “secular” those ugly Hindu Nationalists really were.

On the panel there was also the advocate of “moderate Islam”, Sultan Shahin. I liked him as a person, and I also understand that the stand he took was risky. For Muslims, it is more dangerous to stray from the orthodox line than for non-Muslims to even criticize Islam. I have to knock on wood here, given the attacks on the Satanic Verses translators and the Danish or French certoonists, but still Kafirs (Pagans) have more leeway than Muslims who risk being treated as apostates. So, I concede the bravery of “moderate Muslims”. But all the same, they are wrong.  They are probably being truthful when they swear that they themselves would never countenance such terrorist violence. But that is because of their normal inborn human feelings, not because of (but rather, in spite of) their later conditioning by Islam. They try to reconcile their human tolerance with the religion they have been taught by their beloved parents. It is humanly understandable, and I sympathize with them, being myself an apostate from my home religion, Catholicism. But alas, I cannot spare them the difficulties inherent in outgrowing your native religions. And I can testify that the end result is worth these steps on the way.

As Taslima Nasreen has said: “What the Muslim world needs is not moderate Muslims but ex-Muslims.”

Making Islam uncool? I have been part of a massive walk-out from the Church. For intellectuals, the decisive reason was the dawning insight that Christian belief was irrational. But for the masses, it was mainly that it was no longer cool to be a believer. People started feeling embarrassed for still being associated with this untenable doctrine, and are none the worse for having left the beliefs they were brought up in. I wish Muslims a similar evolution, a similar liberation. I do not wish on them anything that I have not been through myself.

·        How do you view the recent terrorist attack on Belgium? To what extent is migration from Islamic countries responsible for terrorism on European soil?

As Ché Guevara said, a Guerrilla fighter is among the masses like a fish in the water. In this case, the Jihad fighters had found safety and comfort in the Muslim community. So the demographic Islamization of some neighbourhoods in Brussels (due to our own silly policies) has indeed played a role. But I expect you to retort that there were also other factors, and that is true.

·        How do you react to the Muslim refrain that the terrorists in their community are a creation of America and NATO’s flawed foreign policy and interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc?

It is simply not true that Ghaznavi or Aurangzeb took to Jihad and iconoclasm in reaction to British colonialism or American bombings. They were inspired by an older source, viz. the Prophet’s precedent, Islam. However, it is true that many contemporary Jihad fighters have indeed been fired up by a specific circumstance, viz. Western aggression against Muslim countries.

Assenting to Quranic lessons about Jihad is one thing, but actually volunteering for the frontline of Jihad it quite another. In most people, it needs a trigger. The illegal invasions of Iraq or Libya, or footage of an Afghan wedding bombed from American jets, provided such a trigger. I am very aware that being bombed is just as unpleasant for wedding guests in Kandahar as for commuters in Brussels or Mumbai. Right now, even little Belgium has five bomber planes in Iraq as part of the US-led war effort against IS. These bombers must already have killed, along with some Jihad fighters, more civilians than were killed in the terrorist attacks in Brussels.  

In Belgium, I have drawn some attention with my defence of the Syria volunteers: young Muslims grown up in Brussels or Antwerp and going to fight for the Islamic State. Our politicians call them “monsters”, “crazy” and other derogatory names, but in fact they are pious idealists. They may be misguided in their beliefs, and I dare say they are, but they do have the courage of their conviction. Without any pressure on them, they volunteer for putting their lives on the line in the Syrian desert. You cannot deny them bravery and self-sacrifice.

The Western invasions and bombings in Muslim countries have brought nothing but misery, and I have opposed them all along. What the Muslim world needs, is not more civil wars, sectarian wars, foreign military interventions, which all serve to polarize the minds, to freeze them in existing antagonisms. What it needs is a thaw. Here again, I speak from my own experience: the post-war climate of peace and prosperity in Europe has allowed a genuine cultural revolution, an emancipation from the stranglehold of Christianity. The Muslim world will only evolve if it attains a modicum of peace and stability.

Note that the military interventions have nothing to do with Islam criticism, nowadays slandered as “Islamophobia”. On the contrary. Without exception, all the politicians ordering interventions in Muslim countries have praised Islam, calling it “the religion of peace” that is being “misused” by the terrorists. Not a single word of Islam criticism has ever crossed their lips. A legitimate Islam critic like the late historian Sita Ram Goel has never harmed a hair on the head of a Muslim. Islamophiles such as these politicians, by contrast, have killed many thousands of innocent Muslims.

·        How would you advise Indians to fight terrorism?

Security measures and repression are not my field nor my favourite solution, but I understand that sometimes they are necessary. So I want to spare a moment to praise the men in uniform who risk their lives to provide safety. However, this approach won’t go very far and won’t provide a lasting solution if it is not accompanied by a more fundamental ideological struggle. That is what I am working on.

Read more!