Untouchables

Rajiv Malhotra starts off his latest article admiring Christian Church, its longest history of continuous governance, tremendous track record of protecting its interests under all circumstances, its invention of corporate management procedures and floating of the first commercial multinationals, such as the Knights Templar.

It is said that whatever we give attention to, is reinforced in our minds. There is the sory of Maricha who wanted to stop thinking about Sri Rama and in the process tried to avoid using even the words having ‘ra’ alphabet. He only ended up reinforcing Sri Rama’s memory in his mind, went on to get killed by Sri Rama and achieved moksha.

Malhotra says he studied with interest the governance systems of various Christian denominations, both formally in seminary courses and through attendance of various Church conferences. It is possible that the long hours spent in such study will influence the mind of a person on those lines. Malhotra’s earlier articles available at www.rajivmalhotra.com show significant influence of dharmik thoughts even though mixed with a tendency to enter into dialogues with the adharmik people. His latest article shows enamoured admiration of christian church and compulsion to adopt their practices. This seems to be the story of a person who went to study the tactics of the enemy in order to fight them effectively, but ended up becoming like them. 

A sample of the influence of adharmik is seen in the way the enemies’ way of viewing things have been adopted by the student. He says ‘The Church has learned a great deal through trial and error and has thus become robust’. Here he personalises the Church, as a being with cognitive abilities that learns lessons and takes corrective measures and becomes robust in the process.

What is Church actually ?

A front for self-aggrandizing individuals to indulge themselves, protected from scrutiny of inquiring minds using the deceptive cover of godly sanction.

By seeing the ‘Church’ as an individual, who acquired the ability to survive many scandals through learning from trial and errors and developing robustness and resilience, the student loses sight of the bunch of selfish, self-aggrandizing individuals who constitute this organisation, who often work at cross purposes, who are themselves indoctrinated and brainwashed into losing all sense of righteousness and who perpetuate a continuous line of similar rapacious zombies. This delusion of the student in not noticing the true constituent of Church leads him to admire that mirage.

Under this delusion, losing sight of dharma, the student sees admirable qualities in the chimera, which he feels compelled to adopt. So he wants to ‘professionalize the governance of Hindu institutions’, which in effect means ‘ape the working of the Church’ in order to be as ‘robust and resilient’.

This leads the student to observe that ‘Indian laws require compliance with regulations pertaining to trusts, societies and associations that are based almost entirely on Western corporate rules of governance which originated in the Church’. In other words, he says, it is not Dharmashastras or Arthashastras that provide the legal methods for governance in India.
Obviously he fails to note that perhaps this is precisely the reason why the Indian legal system and administration is so pathetic, why corruption is so rampant.
When the system is shaped on the lines of example set by self-aggrandizing, selfish minds, what else can be expected ?
What else can result, but rampant corruption that is seen.

The student plumbs new depths with this statement – ‘there is much our gurus can learn from modern corporate governance’.
Sure, it will help them peddle their wares profitably.

He says – ‘our tradition has a long history of assimilating new ideas from everywhere and adapting itself’.
Last known, the fundamental text, the srutis, are the same as they were millenniums ago. Apart from parashara smriti no other smriti has been formulated for this yuga. Puranas, itihasas that provide guidance remain unadulterated, so far.
The deluded student has bitten the fancy line propagated by the british and later continued with by the marxists, that Indian culture is a thorough mixture of ideas ‘contributed’ by different invaders to this land and that it is these ‘contributions’ that makes it rich. That it has always been willing to accept ‘ideas from everywhere’ and to ‘adapt itself’!
By parrotting these lines of the invaders, the students shows the extend to which he has been indoctrinated.

He then claims- ‘There is a clear history of dharma that shows change and evolution’.
It is not dharma that changes. It is the perception and cognition of dharma that does. And the results are obvious in the state of affairs today.

He further claims- “The scandal of SN provided an opportunity to test how Hindus might collectively respond in crisis management”
Really ?
One crook caught with his pants down(figuratively) is a crisis for ‘Hindus’ ?

The delusion of seeing organizational entity in the place of bunch of crooked individuals carrying out their own nefarious designs was displayed by the student earlier in the case of Church. Here he does it again, seeing in the discomfiture of one crooked individual, a crisis for the majority of this one billion plus country and its diaspora.
The cause for this delusion is easy to find- his admiration for World Council of Churches and the Catholic Church whom he had credited with resilience and robustness earlier, for thriving despite scandals involving sexual abuse of even children. He would like to see played out, a similar performance by his chosen collective of ‘hindus’ in this hour of ‘crisis’.

A tendency displayed by those bitten by the bug of such delusion is to try and appropriate organisations for personal aggrandizement. The Gramscian ideas of influencing academic institutions and media as means to gain societal control stems from that. So he calls for a Hindu body to be brought in to play a responsible role, either an institution or a panel of elders, such that there would be fair play by the system and not prosecution by an utterly biased and corrupt media.
Effective skill in wordplay to obfuscate issues is frequently practiced by crooks. Those who draw inspiration from such crooks inevitably acquire similar characteristics. In effect what is being proposed is an organisation that will provide unscrupulous crooks such as Rajasekara a.k.a SN, support and legitimacy. Later such organisations will conveniently form platforms for further deplorable deeds on the pretext of lofty and altruistic reasons, like its source of inspiration- Church. 

The student then introduces a favored tool of his teacher into the article- the element of fear. His worst fears came true when he discovered the absence of any such mechanism like World Council of Churches with hindus!

He appreciates the several individuals who, like him, ‘performed commendably’ in their personal capacities trying to help bring ‘dharmic justice.’ by coming out in support of a crook! Fortunately,  such ‘noble attempts’ failed.

He admires the Church for developing its robustness, even though it took centuries to do so, ‘with considerable enterprise by numerous risk takers’. All that the enterprising people of church probably risked and lost were their sense of righteousness and morality, which fact the devout student overlooks in his eagerness to mold HDAS in Father Church’s image.
 
So he asks rhetorically, ‘are Hindus willing to go through such processes that are not instant successes and bring no personal benefit ?’,  it may be added, forgoing considerations of dharma, morality and letting HDAS and its Popes set corporate agendas.

Even though Malhotra admits that ‘SN did not make his position clear enough, and nor was he consistent in what he said to various persons from one day to the next’, he does not recognise precisely this moral vacilitation on part of SN as the primary cause of the crisis. This inability to distinguish adharma led him to come out in support of that charlatan when the scandal broke.
 
But the trained businessperson that he is, appreciates the ‘corporate’ style Non-Disclosure Agreement(NDA) drafted by an American corporate lawyer and signed by lots of persons as a standard corporate NDA. This evident weakness for ‘corporates’ leads him to champion the idea of ‘Hindus Inc.’ in the guise of being concerned about self-governing competence of ‘hindus’.

The deterioration in this student’s ability to discriminate the right from the wrong  is starkly evident when even after  some parents told him of their daughters being compromised by SN, he only wonders whether the NDA will provide legal protection as proof that any alleged sex was between consenting adults.

This self-appointed spokesman for ‘Manu and other past leaders’  says the goal to unify Hindu groups in social-political matters is necessary if Hinduism is to survive. The student has learnt well from his padre teachers whose refrain for each of their selfish acts are- ‘This is what God wants done’.

Revival of hinduism entails inculcating kshatriya competence among a large number of individuals, he notes, but conveniently forgoes the fact that kshatriya is also about upholding dharma. Morality is integral part of dharma. Also, kshatriyas, vyshyas and sudras are to be guided by brahmanas for proper running of society, person’s varna being based on behaviour, independent of parentage.

Then rhetoric – ‘Such a revival entails courageous experimentation, risk taking, enterprising attempts to engage the real issues as and when they happen’ – to justify his recent ‘education’ in the hands of church,  ‘It also involves getting inside the large scale institutional management of other religions in order to learn their strengths and weaknesses as well what we could borrow from them.’

Before concluding he introduces the insinuation that his critics may well be double agents engaged in feeding material to opponents of ‘hinduism’, which is a rehash of George Bush’s memorable- ‘If you are not with us, then you are with them’ line, one step away from ‘If you are not a believer like us, then you are a kaffir, heathen, fit to be killed off in the name of my one and only true God/Allah’.

What stands out in Malhotra’s article is the influence of church, which he seems unaware of.
 
Indians in the past have been known to shun the company of the unrighteous- mlecchas, and to engage in purifying acts if interacting with them became inevitable. The adharmic influence from mlecchas affects those who interact with them. Rajiv Malhotra’s article shows the effects of this.

Untouchables are the unrighteous, adharmis– those who have suppresed their moral compass or have abandoned it altogether. It is not a genetic trait. Environment and upbringing does influence it. But it is possible for a person born to an unrighteous person to become a brahmana, similarly, the progeny of a brahmana may also grow up to be unrighteous. Besides, an unrighteous person himself could later become righteous and vice versa. Ratnakara who became Maharshi Valmiki, Prahlada, son of Hiranyakashipu, Ravana, son of Vishravas, are examples.

It is consciousness of dharma and the willingness to adhere to dharma at all cost that differentiates the righteous from the unrighteous. Just as a body without atman is a dead body, material success without dharma putrifies. While kama and artha are essential for dharma to manifest, pursuing either at the cost of dharma is counterproductive.

Those who seek to learn from the unrighteous may realise late that the lessons are unrighteous, developed and perfected for unrighteous purposes, and that, by imbibing the unrighteous lessons they themselves become unrighteous.