Hindutvas thieves of history

By Robert Lindsay

First of all, in its present form, the state of India has no right to exist. Prior to 1947, there was no India. Prior to British colonialism, there was no India. There was really no Hinduism either.

It was British colonizers who made note of the varying South Asian forms of religions and collated them into a supposedly uni-variate object called "Hinduism". It was British anthropologists, colonizers and cartographers who invented this thing called "India".

The whole blasted Hindutva lie is based on the ludicrous notion of a "Bharat India". This Bharat India is a fake nation that has supposedly existed for at least hundreds and usually thousands of years. Its borders vary, but always include all of Pakistan and Bangladesh, not to mention the entirely to the failed state of India.

Yes, you have it right, Hindutvas and Indian nationalism in general rejects the right of either Bangladesh or Pakistan to self-determination. Both are "organic" parts of the Indian nation torn loose from the bosom of the bloody soil of Bharat, in need of a fascist irredentist war of national consolidation to bring them back into the fold.

Surely they claim Sri Lanka too.

There are many other places that lack an independent history. Hindutvas claim Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia and sometimes the Philippines. Bharat India extends past Pakistan, through Afghanistan to Iran and all the way to Azerbaijan. Why Iran and Azerbaijan, you ask sensibly? Because "Hindu" fire temples have been found there, that's why. Everyone else seems to think that these are Zoroastrian fire temples, but whatever.

One theory of the name of Azerbaijan is that jan is a word in Urdu, Farsi and Turkic meaning "life". In many Middle Eastern cultures (except Semitic), fire symbolized life. A burning fire meant a full, living life, and a dead fire meant death.

Azerbaijan had abundant oil and gas deposits even back before drilling was known. Apparently, the oil and gas bubbled to the surface and caught fire in places. Azerbaijan was "land of the fires". This is also the area where Zoroastrianism was said to have originated.

None of these lands have a history of their own. Hindutvas, thieves of historical dreams, claim their histories for them.

In fact, it incredibly extends even further. Hindutvas actually claim to have built Greek and Roman civilization! Yet somehow these brilliant Indians were unable to transport this great knowledge back to India where it could have done some good.

Hindutva lies and propaganda are nasty things. There are over 1 billion people in India, and if the most brilliant of them fall for the Hindutva trash (And they do!) you can imagine what fertile soil the minds of average ignorant Indian is for this garbage.

Pakistan was created by Britain, the evil colonist, they scream. It must be returned to the bosom of Bharat! But no, Chaudhry Rehmat Ali coined the name and the idea, and Ali Jinnah pushed for it. But these two were Islamic fundamentalists, the Hindutvas screech, ready to put 50 million more Hindus to the flames and finish the job the Mughals started.

But no again. Jinnah, the whiskey-loving Muslim, and Iqbal, were secular men. Jinnah was committed to equal rights for all, especially the Hindus of Pakistan. That his successors spat on his dreams is no fault of the great man. Instead of being an evil British plot to tear the heart of Bharat from its bloody chest, the notion of Pakistan was opposed by the sober and worried British.

Yes, Pakistan is a new state, but it is an old civilization. Italy was formed in the 1800's, but it is the inheritor of Roman civilization. The Greeks were not freed from the Ottoman yoke until the same century, yet they are children of Socrates and Plato. Iran did not become a state until 1935, yet it is properly recognized as the descendant of ancient Persian civilization.

Pakistan had a history before 1947 and even before Islam, and it was not necessarily entirely cognate with India's history (however defined!) at all.

Let us keep in mind that in 1947, the colony of India was freed from the British. As a fake new country with no history at all, the parts of that country had a right to self-determination.

At that time, India was composed of about 3,000 princely states. This was the nature of the Indian region before British colonialism, and the British never entirely dismantled it. 3,000 princely states were never incorporated into any kind of non-colonial entity remotely called "India" at any time.

A number of these states refused to join India, and India immediately dragooned an army together and attacked every one of these states full force, causing many deaths and injuries. All recalcitrant states were dragged into the fake new state kicking and screaming.

Kashmir, almost 90% Muslim, wanted to go to the new state of Pakistan, but it's governor was a Hindu who told the people to go to Hell and ordered Kashmir to be part of India. Kashmir had never been an integral part of any non-colonial entity called "India".

In 1947, the UN ordered India to hold a plebiscite on Kashmir so the people could have the right to self-determination. To this day, India has refused to implement this resolution. India must be placed, alongside Turkey, Israel, Indonesia and Morocco, as a colonial international scofflaw.

The entire Northeast of India is made up for the most part of East Asians or Mongoloids. Many are Buddhists and same are animists. In neither race, nor culture, nor history, nor religion do they resemble most Indians. The no-man's land of the Northeast was forcibly incorporated into India by British colonialists in the late 1800's, long after they first colonized India. The area is not even an original colony.

From the start, the entire northeast has refused to join India, and most of the region has been up in arms ever since. It's clear that India has no right whatsoever to this entire region. I include the states of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and even parts of Assam.

As the fascist Jewish nationalists run amok, turning their corner of Wikipedia into Judeopedia, so their fascist Hindutva allies run amok in their corner of Wikipedia, transforming it into Hindupedia. See the article on the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh for example. Who knew that the tracts, not to mention all of Bangladesh, are really part of India?

As Pakistani nationalists seek to assert their right to construct their own national identity free from fascist Hindutvas, so too to Bengalis from Bangladesh seek to assert their own history. Pakhub is a good spot for young Bangladeshi and Pakistani patriots, mostly secular, seek to ownership of their national narratives from Hindutva hegemony.

The liars of the Right are so wrong to marry fascism and Communism. The Left has always been about national sovereignty, cultural and linguistic freedom and even at the extreme, the right of self-determination.

The Bolsheviks were the originators of these themes, which now play out across our world, especially in Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Colombia, where indigenous peoples and linguistic minorities are granted freedom ranging from cultural and linguistic freedom all the way to tracts of land where they have significant political rights of governance.

On the other side is the Right and fascism and imperialism. All nation-building and wars of national consolidation are objectively imperialist or fascist. Where the Left seeks autonomy of nations, the fascists and imperialists wish to consolidate them all into a single land, crush everyone but the most numerous, and force everyone into one organic nation-state, eradicating centuries of linguistic and cultural history.

Where the Left fights colonialism and imperialism, the Right wages endless rhetorical and actual irredentist and revanchist wars to reclaim the lost lands of yore and subjugate or toss out the new owners.

Where Stalin and Mao crushed nations and imposed Russian and Han hegemony on languages and cultures, they were veering into fascist territory. There can be no progressive claim to such things.