Modi Govt must dismantle all anti-Hindu intellectual base in different Govt and NGO handles.

Will the Modi Govt dismantle the large & complex anti-Hindu intellectual base in different Govt and NGO set up?

~ Rajiv Malhotra. 

HRD, the Department of Human Resources Development alone controls the following well funded institutions where anti-Hindu scholars thrive and from where they project influence far and wide.

ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Sciences Research): The entire Council and various Committees are filled/dominated by secular and pseudo-sec leaders, right from the chairman down. They research by targeting Hinduism to explain human rights abuses, women abuses, child abuse, minority abuse, promoting Dalitism, pseudo-secularism, fragmentation, breaking India elements, etc. They run powerful journals, conferences, select/influence PhD dissertation themes, funding of scholars, international travel to make their team into big shots, get them awards like Padam Shree and Padam Bhushan, etc. Hence the brand building of those on their ideology.

ICHR (Indian Council of Historical Research): Apex funding agency for research on Indian history. This is where Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib types got bred and nurtured, boosted into international stars each with his own parampara.

NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training): The junior level of textbook writing. There are many Hindus who are only targeting this (naively) but unless the rest of the mechanisms are dismantled any change in textbooks will be temporary at best. Many other organizations like Indian council of philosophical research, societies that govern research on psychology, human rights, women issues, etc. Other govt supported intellectual nexuses include:

ICCR (Indian Council for Cultural Relations): It is mainly operated by Karan Singh. ICCR gave away 1000s of crores to set up India studies chairs in 100+ locations worldwide. Gave the plum jobs to secularists, anti-Hindus, Dalitists,  Islamists, and other cronies of the old regime. This was the equivalent of getting an ambassador posting for a scholar of the humanities/social sciences. Some like the famous chair in oxford cost as much as $5 million each. Nehru centers worldwide and similar institutions are run by this org in delhi. I also knew the prior head Pawan Varma (who released BEING DIFFERENT but later joined some regional party…). I know that ICCR very well and have studied for 15 years what they funded, implications, politics etc.

ASI (Archaeological Survey of India): Tragic agreement with USA to allow them to infiltrate Indian archaeological discoveries just as the USA has done for Pakistan. Ironically the door got finally opened for the USA at Baroda University in Gujarat during Modi’s tenure. I posted a lot on this in the past and Dilip Chakrabarti of Cambridge wrote petitions complaining but never got any response. Many issues exist – why no public disclosure of findings at Qutab Minar, basement of Taj Mahal, Dwarka submarine/underwater excavations, etc…?

There are numerous other govt bodies like so-called Minorities Commission full of such notorious scholars.

I could go on but here just want to give a glimpse of the scale of the problem. If govt asked me for a comprehensive paper I could do it but dont want to waste time just restating what I wrote many times before.

There are major universities where Vice Chancellors need to be replaced. You expect a place like BHU to be very Hindu, but Infinity Foundation has had official dealings with BHU and held many events for my work. The profs tell me that since the present VC came, they squeezed anything sounding too Hindu, and now they cannot risk being branded “saffron”. You can imagine what its like in other universities.

BOTTOM LINE: Stop naming JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru university)  as the only one place with this problem. Those who write JNU as the problem are persons who are 20 years obsolete. The same problem is true of Delhi University, Calcutta University, Jamia Milia University, and 100s of other places. Localizing the problem trivializes it. Know the data and then do a diagnostic properly. It will take 500 Vice Chancellors and top level (Provost, Dean, Deptt chairs) appointments to clean this snake pit of academic Hinduphobia.

Then there are 100+ major anti-Hindu NGOs that require their top level trustees/management committees replaced.

In total the MINIMUM requirement for new scholars/intellectual appointments to get rid of Hinduphobia (not counting the media and other institutions here) is between 2,000 and 4,000 persons.

Where will these scholars come from?

Has anyone done global thinking of this problem with rigor, competence, backup? (I have been doing my own tracking of conceptual issues and my database of people who ought to be blacklisted is 700+ and there are many more to add. So far I shared this only with one man who promised to get it to the right place – lets see.)

My concern is that new folks will get appointed just to get friends/family of the new power structure inside the door. This will backfire just as it did in NDA-1 when not a single change they brought was sustained after NDA-1 fell. Part of the reason was that many mediocre people got appointed.

QUESTION: Do you want to serve Hindu dharma or a particular political institution? Big difference in how you make decisions. While its great that a cancerous party got defeated, it must (1) get removed completely, and (2) replaced by competent persons and not one set of cronies replaced by another set of cronies.

Even more important than replacing persons is replacing the discourse/intellectual lens: 
What is the content of the message that must get removed and whats the new content? This does not get developed overnight. Have the govt done this? Are there position papers for the Hindu public to review and comment? What I read in various Hindu celebrations shows lack of this understanding. I see too much emphasis on asking for change of mere symbolism. That is easy to do and will make many uninformed people happy; but its superficial and will NOT change the deep intellectual structures in the mindset. Institutional mechanisms must change and not just personalities. I don’t want to stick my nose in other people’s affairs, but want to express the state of affairs that needs to be faced squarely. This is a mammoth task and I wish the government the very best. We Hindus are counting on them to deliver. This opportunity came after lots of sacrifice by many people, and we cannot afford to miss the window of opportunity that might not come again if we fail this time. The risk now is that those in power might chase symbolic victories that have limited benefit and can get easily reversed later when the pendulum moves again.

• Rajiv Malhotra is a top Indian root intellectual based in USA and the reputed writer/co-writer of the books:   Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism, Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines, Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America and others. 
• Write-up collected from RajivMalhotraDiscussion@yahoogroups.com via Smt Sucheta Sinhal.