For how long can a falsehood be glorified and sold as truth? For how long can history be made to wear a burkha? For how long can the cap of deceit be worn to prevent India from its Bharatiya identity? The idea of India, coined by past historians and felicitated by the Congress party after the Partition, is a ‘con’ job of great magnitude. It was the lie that was thrust into our mindsets to make us glorify an invaded past by foreign plunders and looters, who came to reign, destroy, bully, hurt, convert and try their best to erode our ancient culture. Sadly, in our schools, we were only taught about those people and their ancestors.
To make that false narrative of brotherhood and the notion of a truly blended culture saleable, a term was coined and it began to be called the ‘Ganga Jamuna Tehzeeb’. This new term gave the impression that India was the land of a synchronised culture of sorts, where a foreign, forced and indoctrinated religion that arrived with our invaders, blended seamlessly with our centuries-old traditions and culture, resulting in a cultural ecosystem that has thrived for centuries in its bi-religious environment.
Shall I call this a lie, a misconception or merely a narrative to diminish the strength, depth, reality and existence of the age-old Hindu religion and culture in its original land and geography?
The lies even extended to our language. Urdu, a blended language, was given legitimacy as though it was a twin to Hindi, and above Sanskrit. Akbar, the Badshah was given precedence over the Maharana Prataps and Shivajis of Bharat. The Taj Mahal and not the beautiful Dilwara Jain Temples, exquisitely carved in pure white marble and an architectural wonder, became known as a wonder of the world. The Taj Mahal became synonymous with India and our splendid temples of the south of India were put aside from mention. The post-independence political appeasement extended to our Hindu Bhajans too where Ishwar and Allah took the context of Ram and Shyam.
The ridiculous and absurd idea and theory of India, a gimmick was sold and proliferated by the Congress party to dilute the pride of the Hindus only to appease the Muslims. The Hindu elite of New Delhi, mostly those from Lutyens’ neighbourhood, got so swayed by the falsehood and narrative the Congress was creating about the idea of India that those from Lutyens’ Delhi became ambassadors of the idea. Most still hold their faith in that lie till now.
Some Congress politicians have even gone to the extent of glorifying the Mughals by saying that they were not conquerors but one of us since they did not plunder and leave, but stayed in India for generations together! Which sensible invader would ever want to leave a land that promised every goodness on Earth? Which plunderer would let the golden goose fly away? Which conqueror would ever want to give up land where they could forcibly convert masses of people to follow their Islam through force, torture, fear and reprimand?
In recent decades, Delhi’s Khan Market became the Burra Bazaar of the most distorted thoughts and beliefs which India’s students, particularly Hindus from elite urban backgrounds, easily gobbled up like chaat. They were the lot who were brainwashed into loving the so-called idea of the combined tehzeeb to the extent that removing Aurangzeb’s name from an elite road in Lutyens’ Delhi and replacing it with the name of a much respected and loved President, APJ Abdul Kalam, irked them no end. Such a mentality became rampant since it was promoted and encouraged by the Congress who had more love for the Mughals than for India and more respect for evil conquerors like Khilji, Babur and Aurangzeb, than Indian Hindu sentiments.
It was only the BJP, a nation-loving, nationalistic political party which made it their mission to undo the past and return India to its lost glory. The only reason Aurangzeb’s name was not removed by the Congress party was because they believed that their exercise to make the Indian Muslims feel a special affinity towards the Mughals, the gifters of Islam to them had been so successful that removing the name of that terrible man would hamper their Muslim votes and negate their covert initiative to influence the Indian Muslims into believing that the Mughals were ‘their people’. Their hopeless mindset was so putrid that they, the Congress, wanted to ensure that the Mughals were continuously glorified at any cost. Even if our once Hindu Muslim converts felt no affinity towards the Mughals, the Congress party did all to somehow make them feel as if they were from Mughal blood and Aurangzeb was their beloved king as was Babur, the ruler who gave them their most important mosque!
It is ironical that for the Lutyens’ lot and pseudo-secular Indians, it was okay that our Ram temple had been destroyed by Babur, but it was not okay when the Babri masjid was demolished. The act of the destruction of the Babri masjid, for them, was a crime and a shame for India; a moment that would tarnish the reputation of Hindu-majority India, forever.
India that is Bharat, fully emerged as Bharat on January 22, 2024. That ridiculous idea of India once sold as India’s social and cultural foundation has finally been buried. January 22 was a day for the Indian civilisation to rejoice and revel, party and pray, holiday and heal. When people ask what Narendra Modi and the BJP’s biggest contribution to India has been, one can proudly say that they have given to India what was once beyond our dreams or expectations – the return of our Ram Temple in Shri Ram’s own Janmabhoomi. PM Modi has ensured the strong return of Bharat’s Hindu identity, Hindu values, Hindu sense of nationalism, Hindu religious comfort, Hindu sense of brotherhood and so much more. He has cleared our heads and eradicated forever any confusion about who we are and what our identity is.
India, instead of being known for its Hindu identity, was presented as a secular nation, as if secularism was equal to a singular national identity and secularism preceded the Ramayana and Mahabharata. As if ‘secularism’ denoted the religious and cultural genetics of India and was our tradition and history. Look how secularism was sold to overshadow India’s identity as the world’s only Hindu-majority nation or its Hindu character. Instead of being a Hindu nation, we took on a multi-religious identity. Instead of being defined by Sanskrit or Hindi, we became a multi-lingual democracy where Urdu became more significant at a national level than many other Indian languages. This led to repercussions. It caused a rift between the states and the Indian nation where some states vociferously began to reject the national language, Hindi, on the pretext that recognition of Hindi as Bharat’s common language would diminish the value and significance of their own languages.
Everything was tried by the Congress under Nehru to devalue, diminish and desecrate the Hindu civilisation and its vintage identity, from day one of India’s independence. The purpose was to create an environment which made India appear as if it was only born in 1947 and was a gift from the Moghuls to the Congress. The Congress then sold the notion that Bharat and Moghul India were an inseparable partnership since time immemorial, hence their proximity could never be separated.
On January 22, 2024, India, that is Bharat proudly defined itself in a manner befitting its greatness. We can now proudly say that we are Bharat, the land of Hinduism and Lord Ram, without worries about what anyone will think, because it is the whole truth, our original identity and our permanent introduction.
When an identity is returned, any fear or complexity from the past gets removed. Thank you, dear Prime Minister, for unburdening us of our centuries-old and post-independence complex of ‘if we wear our Hindu identity with pride then we might not appear secular or that we cannot pride in our religion and culture since it might make the minorities feel inadequate and unequal Indians’ thought.
Prime Minister Modi has returned to us everything we were nearly forgetting. We are back to recognising our ancestry and antecedents and are unfearful of saying ‘Jai Shree Ram, Jai Jai Shree Ram’, a call that once echoed on Bharat’s soil and would escape into the skies above Ayodhya.
Today, if you ask an Indian about his culture, his answer will not be confused as it was before. Earlier, he thought India’s culture could not be separated from India’s Mohammedan and Mughal history and this knowledge came from the biased and politically pleasing education curriculum, set by the Congress, which was more bothered about the inclusiveness of Mughal history rather than the memory and glory of our great kings and warriors. It was more important to teach us the ancestry of the Mughals than to acquaint us with our famous temples, our historical structures and our discoveries and contributions in the fields of medicine, math, astrology and science.
Akbar was made an icon and Maharaja Ranjit Singh was forgotten. This was the irony we have now overcome. The books that we read as students were specially commissioned so that they would ensure that the glory and importance of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj was relegated to the space of a region and not the entire India, which he had protected from the north to the south against the very same Mughals that the Congress revers till today.
From now on, Mahabharata and Ramayana will be taught to our children whose identity will be developed with pride as Indians, from the great land of Hinduism, aptly depicted by the character and persona of Lord Ram of Ayodhya. The Vedas, Puranas and Upanishads will once again become a part of our school curriculum and Indian art forms will find a place in the art classes at schools. In short, Bharat will once again return to India in its original form through an education system that will not separate the knowledge of the great south Indian kings and Indian empires from people of the north and vice versa. Where English will be considered important but not at the cost of the beauty and significance of a plethora of Indian languages and where the greatness of Bharat will be forged in the minds of our future generations.
Remember, how in the Congress days of India, titles of Hindi movies appeared in only three languages, English, Hindi and Urdu. The inclusion of Urdu was a political ploy. Why not Bengali or Gujarati or Marathi or Malayalam, one wonders. It was another plot to keep the Indian identity divided and in conflict with one another. Language was another means to achieve a divided mindset amongst one nation, one people.
Lord Ram returned to Ayodhya after fourteen long years of vanvaas and today, we are returning from decades of blindness to light, a blindness inflicted upon us by the Congress party and a light gifted to us by PM Modi and BJP. May darkness never return to the skies of Bharat. May our motherland thrive in the blessings of Lord Ram. May Ayodhya once again find glory. Long live Bharat. Vande Mataram!
The author is a columnist, educationist, social worker, advisor to Indian and foreign organizations and trainer and mentor of senior executives in corporate India. She is also a member of the BJP. Views expressed are personal.
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