An excerpt from Indian-born British writer Saurav Dutt’s new book ‘Modi And Me’, by the author himself.
Perhaps we have been asleep all this time. I certainly know that I had been. Whether Indian-born, a patriotic NRI, or an Indian heritage citizen living in a foreign land, we have all inherently denied it. What I am referring to is a truism that aligns one’s mind, spirit and body with what India, what Bharat, represents and specifically the magnificence of Hinduism and its political, cultural and trenchant character and individualistic cousin-Hindutva.
I certainly had been asleep before 2014 and that is a significant year indeed. It is the year Prime Minister Narendra Modi ascended to the premiership of the largest democracy in the world, the bastion of one of the oldest and respected faiths known to human existence. I was hitherto embedded in a state of mind that afflicted many Indians before that time, a disconsolate sense of abandonment from what it means to be a true Hindu, a true Indian, a true lover of the Mother Earth that shapes every Hindu from when they are born, to when they pass, and are reborn again. I was also a victim of the deft colonial gaze that has swept through the rubric of every generation since Robert Clive effectively birthed the British Empire, no matter how much I tried to deny it, it was there as it was within every Indian. To deny its nomadic eye is to be a fool.
You see before Narendra Modi gave the BJP and the RSS the wings which it needed to fly many Hindus and Indians were trapped in a kind of punishing cycle of self-psychosis and flagellation. Since India was ‘free’ after partition Indians the world over have grappled with what it means to embrace the identity of a new nation and the eminent religion and way of life that was always its undercurrent. We have been taught to be ashamed of the idea of a strident Hindu polity and philosophy, to accept all those years of imperialism and plunder at the hands of the British and Europeans, and the hundreds of years of barbaric bloodshed meted out by the power-hungry invaders of the Mughals, Arabs and Islamic invaders.
One would think an emergent nation would embrace its history, its culture, its Hindu and Indic foundation, instead the opposite has happened. Promoted by a faulty Nehruvian idealisation, and meek, obeisant nature, the Hindu, the Indian, has accepted second place. This acceptance has come about through a humbling which is entirely of its own doing.
I too accepted this punitive vision of India, one that was blunted by poverty, self-hatred, clinging to a sense of self that was secular and accepting of all religions within its contiguous boundaries, one that was too timid to proclaim Hindu identity as one worthy of pride.
The Hindu is unfortunately that most faulty of individuals, an individual deeply entrenched with truisms, philosophies, cultural edicts and an attachment to self-flagellation. We were happy to accept second best as long as we embraced Sanatana Dharma and the karmic justice and fortuity that was marked on our forehead. We would be humbled by the order and drum roll of the coming of the Englishman, happy to run into the night with no possessions when Islamic murderers sought to convert, rape, slaughter, and eradicate us.
And far too many of us accepted this with a shake of the head and an enthusiastic bow. Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full. That this was a civilisation that fought back relentlessly over centuries with the mighty march of the likes of Shivaji, Rani of Jhansi, Subhas Chandra Bose, Shaheed Udham Singh, Veer Savarkar, Chandrashekhar Azad, Rabindranath Tagore, and Ram Prasad Bismil, was conveniently forgotten in our history books. Somewhere along the line we forgot who we are and accepted the image of the whitewashed brown sahib that Nehru and his scions wished to promote and emulate. We became ashamed to be Hindus, to be Indians, chuckling as foreigners, who did not understand or appreciate a history bedevilled, told us we needed to be civilised, that the Mughals gave far more than they took, that we would all be better off had the Raj and the East India Company remained in place and continued to steal from us.
It was a long and treacherous road, a suicide note to our civilisation, history and culture that permitted the creation of a failed nation-Pakistan-the balkanisation of Jammu and Kashmir, the ethnocide of the Hindu Pandits from Kashmir, the creation of Bangladesh, insurgencies from Pakistan and China against our populace, and the permitting of the immolation of our nation state and its bedrock-Hinduism-from within by brown sahibs masquerading as Indians who are happy to disparage the nation and all its elements for foreign money, to foreign audiences, for foreign applause.
This sad tale of self-flagellation would have continued had it not been for the incredible ascent of the BJP, the RSS, the ideal of Hindutva, and one Narendra Damodardas Modi. At the time of writing Narendra Modi reigns supreme in his second term and the country has irrevocably changed-for the better. But Indians are a fickle lot, tainted by an inherent self-doubt and weakness, that mistakes strength for bigotry and vulnerable to radical left-wing idolatry and pusillanimous demagoguery. He has tried to accomplish in six to ten years what his predecessors could not, nor wanted to do, in seventy-five at the time of writing.
Only now have we seen the emergence of a nation that is proud to be Hindu, proud to be Indian, proud of its history, takes pride in its fight against colonialism and balkanization and which revels in the might of its cultural roots and vast history. That which was once cause for shame and internal doubt has now been dispelled. We now see a new generation of Indians that are proud of who they are, where they come from, and is thirsty for knowledge of its roots. We now see an Indian population (within Bharat and also outside it) that will not accept the narrative that others write for them.
What are some of these narratives? That India is steeped in poverty, constantly dirt poor, revels in fascism, bigotry and the daily lynching of Muslims, hounding of Christians, rapes its women every hour-the list yawns on and on. Now we fight back against this, we do not accept what critics of this united nation say about us, whether it is the efforts of the brown sepoys writing for US broadsheets and online publications, or through the Abrahamic lens of those foreigners that still think the great unwashed pagans of India need civility and the wonder of Christianity to save their desperate souls.
I titled this short book Modi and Me because it confirms my own political amelioration and better understanding of myself as a Hindu and Indian born individual, but it also applies to the journey of so many others who believed the propaganda, who saw their own country and heritage through a strictly Gandhian lens, who subconsciously hated that they were born in their country and worshipped at the altar of imperialism and the ‘structured’ and ‘orderly’ manipulation of conquerors, who are too afraid to acknowledge the punitive and damaging encroachment of radical Islam, and have no knowledge of their self.
It is an ongoing journey and the beauty of it is that Modi has already accomplished what this nation requires-agreement with and understanding of the rationale of the BJP and particularly the RSS, embracing Hindutva and helping shape its conflagration, and in doing so being proud to be an Indian, and a Hindu, proud enough that you will call out its enemies, critics, and those who demean it and seek to destroy it one affront at a time.
But it took a while for me to get here, as it may take for some of you reading this. That’s what happens when you believe the manipulation and lies that tell you India, and being a Hindu, are built on faulty foundations. It takes incredible fortitude and strength of mind to stay true to your convictions and fight and hopefully by the end of this book you too will not recoil when someone insults your motherland.
Modi and Me, and other books by Saurav Dutt, can be bought on Amazon from this link in both ebook and printed forms.
