This was presupposed to be the assessment of a brand new guide Nastik: Why I’m not an Atheist by Kushal Mehra. However by some means, once I mirrored upon the guide launch in Mumbai with good younger intellectuals like Harsh Madhusudan, Abhijit Iyer Mitra, and Ami Ganatra, I went on a tangent whilst I reviewed this guide.
The previous couple of years have been fairly satisfying when one sees increasingly younger thinkers rooted in Bharatiya philosophy or Hindu ethos placing their pens to paper, or fingers on the keyboard. The spark was lit lengthy again by Ram Swaroop and Sitaram Goel who questioned the Western leftist fashions and put Abrahamic ideologies and Marxist historical past beneath their microscopes. First-generation RSS pracharak Babasaheb Apte began the motion for rewriting Bharatiya itihas within the Sixties together with his interpretation of Dashaavataar and the initiation of the seek for the Saraswati river.
Dharampal, the veteran Gandhian got here up with books written on the idea of British paperwork that demolished the British competition that India had nothing to supply besides poverty, dogmatism, casteism, and ignorance. Sadly, his books vanished from bookshops and libraries by no means bought an opportunity to purchase them. I used to be fortunate to get PDF information from the online earlier than they had been reprinted just lately.
RSS pracharak Deendayal Upadhyay, the founding normal secretary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, offered a purely Bharatiya mannequin of political financial system — Ekatma Manav Darshan — Integral Humanism (although it’s not an ‘ism’, it’s ‘darshan’ or philosophy). Dattopant Thengadi, among the finest intellectuals of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), elaborated this philosophy. He additionally created labour organisations like ABVP and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh that had been impressed by Bharatiya tradition and shunned the established leftist mannequin of harmful pupil and labour unionism.
All this occurred through the Nehruvian period. These had been nonetheless the times of Marxist monopoly that had distorted Bharatiya historical past and intellectualism past recognition, copy-pasting Western arguments with hardly any authentic work. So, these highly effective decolonising efforts didn’t turn out to be mainstream. The scene modified dramatically with the rise of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir motion.
We noticed a number of the most good minds popping out brazenly in assist of a nationwide narrative of Bharat. Girilal Jain, Arun Shourie, Meenakshi Jain, Koenraad Elst, Swapan Dasgupta et al created a brand new sort of mental capital within the occasions when it was against the law to establish oneself with Hindutva and Bharatiya tradition.
On the opposite facet of the planet, Rajiv Malhotra launched an mental struggle towards essentially the most highly effective Left, anti-Hindu tutorial centres within the USA. Many academicians like SN Gangadhara joined the rising ranks of Indic intellectuals who refused to simply accept the Western worldview. These students took the battle into the Left fortresses. The Left academia tried to swat Rajiv like an irritating fly, however his mental rigour and countering of the Left anti-Hindu foyer made them sit up and start responding to him. This was additionally the time when there was a frontal assault on Hindu dharma with phrases like “saffron terror” and “Hindu terror”.
This upset many Hindus. That is when youthful Bharatiya intellectuals started being attentive to this unusual aversion to something Hindu and Bharatiya.
Researchers like Sanjeev Sanyal rewrote Indian historical past with a unique perspective with tutorial rigour. Writers like Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi used the magical world of historic Bharatiya literature to weave collectively fiction that echoed with the younger.
Then got here 2014. It may be referred to as the 12 months when Bharatiya intellectuals rooted in Bharat felt liberated. We started seeing quite a few writers rise. Lastly, publishers started to see some worth in publishing them and loved an enormous upsurge in gross sales of books primarily based on Hindu dharma and sanskriti. The problem to the Western, Marxist narrative started taking form within the true sense. Left intolerance turned an essential purpose for an immaculate researcher like Vikram Sampath to pen landmark books. Hindol Sengupta, one other younger mental, added his personal weight to this rising mental capital. We had Aravindan Nilakandan and RSS pracharaks like Sunil Ambekar and Nandakumar presenting Hindutva in modern phrases.
There are students like Sandeep Balakrishna and Sandeep Singh who speak in regards to the Dharmic framework for our historical past and public insurance policies. Sandeep Balakrishna has revived the works of nice historians who had been banished from library cabinets and wrote books that strengthened the Bharatiya narrative. Aabhas Maldahiyar and lots of different vivid younger researchers have begun writing historical past books with deep analysis. Now we have Sahana Singh and Bhaskar Kamble bringing to us the glory of our schooling and information methods and have students like Ami Ganatra presenting outdated knowledge of our itihas of Ramayana and Mahabharata in new ways in which tune nicely with the present era.
There are numerous ‘secular’ writers too who milked the Bharatiya itihas and tales like Ramayana to earn money. I started studying a best-seller retelling of Ramayana, the place the author in his preface wrote, “With this guide, I’ve snatched Ram away from the communal forces.” Naturally, I dropped it.
That is certainly not an exhaustive listing, only a consultant listing in view of restricted column house. I’ve not touched the style of political writing. Practically all these books are an impressive addition to the information banks of our younger residents. They current goal, well-researched historical past, problem the Western Left narrative, current the Indian information system, or defend the Bharatiya worldview towards aggressive Left assaults.
Nonetheless, only a few Indic writers offered new fashions for our Dharmic society and our nation primarily based on the inspiration of Dharma. I can speak about MR Venkatesh whose Retaining Stability argued for a brand new Bharatiya financial mannequin primarily based on household as the fundamental unit of any financial coverage. He talked of purely Bharatiya framework for the rule of legislation in Bharat. After which Kushal Mehra, a well-read mental however a greenhorn in writing, hits the scene.
For an individual who started writing very late in life with an urge to current Hindutva and RSS to a wider viewers and convey its concepts to the mainstream literature when the non-Left and Proper-wingers had been nonetheless shunned and seen as untouchables of the mental world; it has been an exhilarating expertise.
Thus far, predominant writings from non-Left colleges have been inside the framework of Western problem. Nonetheless, Kushal has offered his personal framework for one of the crucial contentious problems with human society — atheist vs nastik, or atheism vs nastikata. He has set the phrases of engagement within the Japanese world’s framework; selecting to not make the Western worldview as a benchmark to answer. That is the significance of Kushal’s work.
Whereas stating the follies of faith, he asserts that it’s needed for human society. He’s not able to throw the infant out with the tub water. A vacuum created because of the robust atheist motion within the Christian world has led to the rise of a harmful an infection referred to as ‘Wokeism’. Nature abhors vacuum, he reminds us. His confidence and luxury in his Hindu pores and skin and readiness to have interaction the West by means of our personal assemble is essentially the most outstanding a part of Kushal Mehra’s Nastik: Why I’m not an Atheist.
Kushal doesn’t argue to win an argument. He simply places forth the viewpoints of the Western world, the evaluation of the Abrahamic faith vs the Dharmic worldview. He dispassionately criticises each Abrahamic and Sanatani spiritual practices. He then goes on to indicate the excellence between a nastik and an atheist objectively and asserts that one could be a nastik however nonetheless be dharmic and a Hindu; whereas one can’t be atheist and nonetheless be a follower of any Abrahamic faith. A Hindu could be a nastik however he can nonetheless be calm and accepted equally calmly by his society.
This guide should be learn by the younger followers of various branches of Sanatana Dharma and numerous sampradayas, who’re sceptical about their very own religions and who suppose it’s cool to say “I’m an atheist” or “I’m ‘religious’ however not spiritual”, and many others, with out truly understanding his/her personal faith. After studying this guide, he/she is going to get a brand new perception into his/her personal faith and dharma, and nonetheless have an open thoughts to be an astik or a nastik. It must also be learn by Abrahamics who’ve turned ex-Muslims and ex-Christians to grasp that being indignant with one’s personal faith and turning ‘woke’ solely takes you down a blind alley and into one other cult that’s anti-society. You can’t construct a superb society primarily based on hate or negativity.
Kushal’s guide, to me, signifies the rise of the younger Bharatiya thinkers in a real sense who at the moment are assured in arguing with the world on their very own phrases from a dharmic perspective and creating their very own paradigms.
Go forward and skim Nastik: Why I’m not an Atheist to really feel assured about our philosophies and your beliefs, after which comply with the trail that might make you a greater human being who feels linked to his/her society and household.
The author is a widely known writer and political commentator. He has written a number of books on RSS like RSS 360, Sangh & Swaraj, RSS: Evolution from an Organisation to a Motion, Battle Decision: The RSS Method, and carried out a PhD on RSS. Views expressed within the above piece are private and solely these of the writer. They don’t essentially mirror News18’s views.