The deconsecration of Tirupati with debased prasadam has struck at the very core of Hindu society. Petty propagandists of the ancient regime are faithfully resuscitating chants from their hoary toolkit. They claim that all is a conspiracy, even as their pauper-prince surreptitiously hobnobs with his foreign handlers. They divert attention through their usual tripe of communal politics, never mind their own zealous defence of the legalised theft of Hindu lands via the rapacious Waqf. These attempts are aimed at defusing the efforts of Hindus to organise themselves as a political community capable of defending its civilisation. They fear that Hindus will properly contextualise the assault in Tirupati as an attack on Sanatana Dharma.
The issue at hand is singular—the latest assault on the Hindu modus vivendi is not a stray case of food safety but another attempt at deracinating Hindus from their beliefs. White-pandering, brown sahibs need to be told firmly that the Tirupati laddu is not mere dessert. It represents the faith of a billion people in a particular way of life, and is sacred communion with their perception of the divine. The presence of beef tallow in the laddu is not a minor infraction of food adulteration rules. It is a terrifying poison in their intimate and sacred space, shaking devotees’ confidence in themselves and in their deities.
It ought to be recalled that invaders would, pursuant to forced conversions, make the vanquished consume beef as a final act of sacrilege to sever their relation with the faith of their ancestors. What has transpired in Tirupati is not a crime against particular persons, denominations, or ethnicities, but an act of civilisational defilement, identical to how invading forces would leave bovine carcasses to pollute temples, targeted against a civilisation which is only now reclaiming its lost space after enduring more than a millennium of spine-chilling persecution.
It ought not to be forgotten that Bharat, a holy kshetram and mandated as such by Hindu scriptures, has been under constant attack since 711 AD. It lies desolate and mutilated, with important temples and sites now lost in occupied lands, unable to defend their dignity and existence in the face of intense hostility and hatred. Civilisational space is defined by geography and we have lost many parts of our sacred geography. Now, the assault has entered the core regions. The concerted effort to wipe out Sanatana Dharma did not stop after partition and even in so-called independent India, riots, expulsions, and harassment have continued unabated; Hindus have all but been wiped out in Kashmir, once an epicentre of our civilisation. Happenings in Manipur’s hill districts are a pogrom unfolding before our eyes, where the Indian State dithers to even appoint Hindu officials. Foreign powers are said to be exploring carving a Christian country straddling northern Myanmar and India’s Northeast, and old religious insurgencies in Kashmir and Punjab are revitalising.
The cliques which have controlled the Indian State since its independence have a curious court religion of enforced secularisation for Hindus and simultaneous eulogising of imported faiths. Systematic restrictions have been placed on Sanatanis, while the minorities have full latitude to organise and carry out conversions. Crimes, including terrorism, have been actively hushed up and panegyrics of a hypothetical patriotic minority have been extolled. A so-called Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb has been foisted upon the heartland, regardless that it is on the banks of these two rivers that barely an ancient temple stands which has not been desecrated before. When all else failed, a false bogey of Hindu terror was attempted to be foisted on the people. Despite the sheer scale of the depravity in Ajmer, a verdict was delivered long after it would have embodied any justice; Sandeshkhali seems to be going in the same despicable direction. Nupur Sharma was publicly berated from the court’s bench for quoting a text verbatim, while those who steadfastly profess beheadings as a valid response to perceived blasphemy are free to roam our streets. The Constitution itself accords a premium to the minorities through the infamous Articles 25, 29 and 30, while the so-called essential practices test renders the faith of millions supine to godless institutions. Sanatana Dharma has been downgraded by legal sanction from the religious faith that it is to an anaemic way of life, eagerly embraced by those who claim they are spiritual but not religious.
These incidents also show that the conflation of a Hindu Rashtra or demands of dharmic governance, with the BJP, the RSS, or the Prime Minister, are discursive red herrings cleverly disseminated by our political classes. The incumbent government has clearly proven its status-quoist credentials by pronouncing its intention to not disturb a moribund constitution that has little consonance with the nation’s needs and aspirations, The government goes further—it openly and flagrantly worships a man-made document as a holy book.
More perniciously, it is in the cultural and educational spheres where Hindus have suffered most severely, whether before or after independence. The Islamic invaders, the British, or the brown sahibs after them, all occupying forces, had correctly identified temples as focal points of Hindu educational and cultural survival. The project of destroying the temple-affiliated gurukula system which began with Macaulay was taken forward fervently post-independence, contributing to the loss of knowledge of Sanatana Dharma and engendering allegiance to rootless secularism—all while missionary schools and madrassas multiplied. Our temples, including Tirupati Balaji, were placed under stifling government control.
With our temples fettered, Sanatanis cannot easily inculcate their values and knowledge in their children, nor can they foster a sense of political community and continuity. This leads to political balkanisation along caste lines and low bargaining power vis-à-vis the government. School textbooks eulogise invading occupants and relegate dharmic, indigenous heroes to ignominy while remaining silent on the horrific persecution of Hindus over the ages. Enforced secularisation continues in full swing in the legal domain too, and Hindu personal laws have been successively wrecked by the parliament and the judges. Bollywood has peddled a pseudo-colonial, ersatz culture where Urdu poetry and disdain of all things dharmic were quaintly and lovingly normalised through mass media, the so-called Mughal-e-Azam syndrome. Carnatic music, with its integral and implicit identification with the bhakti tradition and dharmic values, has come under assault with its recent identification with evangelism and disruptionist interventions of the Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb type by one of the more prominent music sabhas in Chennai.
The Deep State and the Marxist-Missionary-Maulvi combine have correctly identified that Hindus are slowly realising that it is only through their temples that their civilisation can be resurrected. They know that Hinduism is not a political religion like Islam and that political consolidation comes but slowly to Hindus. Hence, not only outright desecration, but also the opposition to temple freedom through concocted concerns such as so-called Brahmin dominance follow. Sanatani education, cultural continuity, and political consciousness is contingent on temples and their affiliated institutions.
The Ram Mandir struggle was one turning point, and Krishna Janmabhoomi along with Kashi Vishwanath may alter the situation completely. Following the sacrilege at Tirupati, Hindus must put their foot down and demand temple freedom in toto, with general supervision being vested in devotees while day-to-day administration remains with the priests, and yes, many of these priests will be Brahmins. The Sikhs have had autonomous gurdwaras run this way, even as they struggle with issues such as caste—the reticence to have Hindus do the same points towards vested interests and the imminent hazard posed to opponents of this civilisation. Let Hindus see what is fit for them, with different models being tested. We are neither so incompetent nor so impotent that the State must stifle our voice as it pretends to coddle us—leave us to our own devices, and revert control over our cultural repositories back to the community and our devatas. This matter is strictly between the comity of practising Sanatanis and their deities, no one else, especially not a State that is beholden to resident aliens, and therefore has no locus standi whatsoever.
Gautam Desiraju is a former president of the International Union of Crystallography. He is a Distinguished Professor in UPES Dehradun and Professor Emeritus in the Indian Institute of Science. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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