For quite some time, it has been evident that Indian liberalism is Western progressivism with a time lag. But it has never been more obvious than in the aftermath of the violent riots in the United States. As stores were pillaged by savage thugs on the prowl, the banality of the ideology of progressivism was revealed for all to see. However, for the unwilling, seeing reality as it is is indeed an arduous task even with fully functional eyes.
While liberals in the United States were busy inciting violence, justifying riots, celebrating them and then blame Trump supporters for causing it, their Indian counterparts struggled hard to draw a false equivalence between African Americans in the United States and the Muslim population in India. There is, of course, no equivalence that can be drawn between the two given the drastically different historical context, but that does not stop the zealot from engaging in deluded pursuits.
Indian ‘liberals’ decided that it was a good opportunity to equate Indian Muslims with the Black population in the USA and trend ‘Muslim Lives Matter’. Despite the fact that Muslims in India had never been subjected to slavery and enjoy constitutional privileges that the Hindu community does not, a false parallel was sought to be drawn between the two.
Speaking of history, Islamic invaders have committed the most heinous genocides of Hindus in history and Indian Muslims even partitioned the country in 1947 to establish the Islamic State of Pakistan. Blacks in the USA have no such history. Therefore, any parallel between the two only serves to whitewash the extent of the brutality the Black community had to suffer in the USA.
However, it is not the first time that Indian Muslims have been compared to actual victims of oppression abroad. They are often compared to Jews in Nazi Germany who were slaughtered en masse in the 1940s. Again, it’s a completely horrific analogy as in Independent India and in history, it was only the Hindu community that had to suffer a genocide due to the morbid hatred that prevails in significant sections of the Muslim community.
All of this is not surprising. Progressivism is the predominant religion of the western establishment and Indian liberals are devout adherents of it. The Western establishment evangelises for progressivism through the institutional mediums for spreading a faith. Its social institutions, the business corporations, the Universities, the entertainment industry, the mainstream media, every significant institution coordinates with each other to spread the doctrine of progressivism, which they consider sacred.
Thus, adherents of the religion of Progressivism in India believe Narendra Modi is “literally Hitler” while those in the United States consider Donald Trump to be the same. The Citizenship Amendment Act in India is interpreted as the Nuremberg Laws while the US President’s views on illegal immigration and border security garner much hate.
In a similar vein, Hindus are equated to White Supremacists despite the fact that these two groups loathe each other and can often be found involved in intense arguments, which often turn abusive, on social media. The racial hatred that Hindus suffer from White Supremacists in the West also does not affect such malicious comparisons.
It’s important to understand in this context that Progressivism is truly an internationalist religion. When we speak of progressivism, we are not speaking of a political ideology here, we are speaking of a counter-religion with its own set of Gods, the Great Evil, its doomsday theories, priests, preachers and evangelicals. Together, they form the Cathedral.
Of course, progressivism is adapted to the local context as per necessities just as Christian missionaries often present Jesus Christ as Krishna or Vishnu and other Hindu Gods. In the West, the ‘White Male’ is considered the demon on which is attributed the cause of every single negative attribute. Patriarchy, Racism, predatory and crony Capitalism, everything is the fault of the White Male.In India, Upper Caste Hindu Men in general and Brahmin Men in particular are blamed for all social evils. ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy,’ they scream while opposing a ban on Triple Talaq. ‘Smash Brahminism’, they yell while indulging in genocidal rhetoric against Brahmins. It is a feature and not a bug of the religion of progressivism.
Thus, when George Floyd was murdered by the Police in the United States and a chorus of Black Lives Matter resounded across the country, liberals in India immediately jumped in the bandwagon and chanted Muslim Lives Matter. Because progressivism mandates that the Muslim community is the designated victim group in India, despite the lack of any equivalence between the two situations.
Despite such differences on the surface, the core of it always remains the same. The Humanities professors at Universities are the priests of the religion of progressivism everywhere and it is they who have been tasked with the responsibility of transmitting their ideologies across generations. The mainstream media and journalists are the preachers, the entertainers are the evangelicals, Multiculturalism and Rainbow Feminism are its Gods and Global Warming its own version of the Doomsday Apocalypse.
Thus, while there are certain differences on the surface, at the heart of it, Indian liberalism and progressivism in the West are just the same. Therefore, we should not be surprised when Muslims in India re equated with the Black population in the United States. Or when Narendra Modi is equated to Adolf Hitler. These are religious zealots we are talking about here and religious zealots are often out of touch with reality.
