Of Pseudo-Seculars and xenophobes…
The below rant contains some very strong words and is not for the faint hearted! Lets start by clearing the definitions of certain words that I am going to use in my article.
- Xenophobe: Xenophobia is a dislike or fear of people from other countries or of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophobia). Xenophobes are the people suffering from Xenophobia.
- Pseudo-Seculars: Pseudo-secularism is the state of implicit non-secular trends in the face of pledged secularism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudo-secularism). Pseudo-seculars are the people who either implicitly or explicitly support pseudo-secularism.
- Secularism: Secularism is the principle of separation of government institutions, and the persons mandated to represent the State, from religious institutions and religious dignitaries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism).
Now with the above three words clear and out of our way, I will start on how pseudo-seculars turn into xenophobes and how xenophobes reinforce pseudo-seculars. India is a rich culture, not just the indigenous type but the one which has assimilated a mix of other cultures, customs and people as and when it got a chance to do so. If you are an acute reader of history, it is quite easy to understand how India survived and is surviving against the onslaught of invasions, be it economic, social or cultural. But after the Indian Independence, a new age of Nehruvian teaching has threatened to destabilize and destroy the assimilation achieved over the past thousands of years. The new age teaching of denouncing indigenous culture (read Hindu customs and traditions) even while explicitly encouraging foreign cultures and traditions and create an environment of distrust against native Indians is quite striking!
An environment is created where talking about Hinduism/Hindu values is considered alien, an attack on secularism, out of fashion and can frame one as a fundamentalist. At the same time, talking about other cultures and values, showing support for such cultures even when no one knows shit about them and denigrating Hindu values and customs is encouraged and is seen as a sign of progressive thinking! The environment in turn creates xenophobes who are afraid of their own values and culture, find them to be foreign and strange and strive in the pool of pseudo-secular values. These xenophobes are the reinforcements for the brains which have developed in a social degrading, self-injuring and poisonous environment which finally attains the goals of inferiority complex in a manner such that every indigenous person has 2 faces: 1. A private face where he follows his faith, culture and customs and loves all and 2. A public face where he publicly distances himself from the very things he is doing privately.
The worst part is that such a public face also looses all moral values such as empathy, love, non-violence, equality, forbearance, etc. The person instead turns into a mechanical zombie whose only job is to disgrace and distance himself from his own self and show utter humility to violent, rejective and immoral behavior in the name of human rights and/or secularism giving birth to pseudo-secularism. Such a person will accept when a Muslim says he is a Muslim, when a Christian says that he is Christian, but when a Hindu asserts his Hinduism, suddenly such a pseudo-secular person becomes quite hostile.
And I personally have experienced it at many places. Not to go through all such incidents, I will just write about an incident that happened yesterday (11th Feb 2013). Besides my job, I am also involved with Indians in Malmö and helping out the IAIM organization. ISKCON in Malmö is organizing Rath Yatra every year as a part of Festival of India celebrations in Scandinavia. My humble request was to send out an email to all Indian members to spread the information of the Rath Yatra and where/when it was happening. Instantly I received a lot of opposition from people who were following the same faith as mine! In other words, the pseudo-seculars and xenophobes made a hue and cry about it. One person went up to the option of saying that Eid and Christmas should also be celebrated if we want to send out such information! Now that is what I call height of xenophobia.
But not all is lost. I have my utmost respect to the one and only truly secular person in the whole forum yesterday who (in-spite of following a different faith) understood the value of Indian-ness and India and its socio-cultural diversity. I do applause and respect you for that my dear friend. And hopefully we together can bring an end to the xenophobes and pseudo-seculars and bring/pass-on the true Indian values across the globe.
End to my rant. Hare Krishna, Jai Sri Krishna...
Am confused. Is somebody a xenophobe when they are saying that all religions should be celebrated? Maybe I just misunderstood the incident you are talking about. Also while I understand that governments can be called secular vs. non-secular, how do you define secular individual? You define it in context of government in your blog but not in context of Individual. Can you define that please.
Thanks for writing Samir. And those are some very interesting questions that you pose. Maybe in my haste to rant, I haven’t explained myself clearly. I will try to answer your questions below. Please feel free to rebuke and comment further.
Q1. How do you define a secular individual?
A1. According to me, a secular individual should respect all the religions equally. i.e. should not shun/abuse/abhor a particular religion because of preconceived notions, personal or political agenda.
In the rant I had, I talked about some certain individuals who wanted to show their secular credentials by celebrating other religious festivals when a proposal to send out information on a particular festival was discussed. You need to see the difference.
Proposal: Was to propagate information on some other group organizing a particular religious festival.
Response: If we could propagate that information then we need to celebrate some other religious festivals!
You probably get it now. BTW: There is a representative for these other religion who quite frankly provided a particular comment that there were no people in our group to grant such celebrations of the other religious festivals!
In short, I think the some certain individuals were trying aggressively to mark themselves secular to the point of being pseudo-secular and xenophobe.
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Seems, today we are both thinking of Hinduisam at a same time. So great friends we are !
I just wrote a reply to someone who questions some believes in Hinduisam, find on my blog. ( It’s not wrong to do so though !)
About, what you have mentioned is just perfect. Though here ISKCON do send hindus( or rather all who they can find ! ) an invitation for rath yatra / Janmastami etc. Sometimes we play safe just being over cautious portraying a meek / coward religion. Many even in India, believe it’s derogatory to say they are Hindu publicly( All politicians of Congress ! ).
May sanity prevails !
Yes Hardik, we definitely are great friends
. The environment created by the communists and nehruvian education has made it such a coward that as you say, we find it derogatory to accept our faith in public! I do hope Sanity prevails but am so weary of the stupidity of the sheeps who will not use their brain even for a second. And the worst part itself is that they claim to be masters of Hinduism!
@wolverine2k http://t.co/sSoSurby