Vinod Kumar Shukla
Push to break up Hindus is not a standalone debate; it reflects a broader, coordinated effort to reshape the civilisational identity of Bharat.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, proponent of two-nation theory started Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh in 1875 that evolved to Aligarh Muslim University in 1920. It took just 66 years for the university to turn into an arsenal of Muslims and students as its best soldiers. This is what Mohammad Ali Jinnah told students of the university in March 1941.
Under Jinnah’s tutelage, a committee of writers from All India Muslim League was constituted with Jamil Uddin Ahmed, a teacher at AMU as its convener to bring out ‘Pakistan Literature Series’ to push for a separate homeland for Muslims.
The importance that Muslim League gave to AMU students can be discerned from the fact that ‘Muslim University Muslim League’ was given the status of a separate unit. The target was obviously Hindus and the project was to seek a separate land for Muslims.
In this backdrop, AMU or any other institution seeking to ‘Dismantle Hindutva’ or hold campaigns or seminars on hateful discourse like ‘Annihilate Hinduism’ should not come as a surprise. It’s part of a larger design.
Through these campaigns, unfinished Balkanisation project of India seem to be pursued rampantly.
Under the guise of ‘freedom of speech and expression’ and hiding behind hyperbolic academic jargons, a section of people not only target multi- millennia old ‘way of life’ Hindutva but dog-whistle against the faith they practice.
There seems to be a systemic onslaught from outside Bharat and within through corporate funding mechanisms. Exploiting faultlines within Hindu society seem to be the way to go.
Several educational institutions like AMU have become a tool to propagate anti-Hindu narrative and now technology has come handy to amplify these messages across platforms. A sari-clad man with beautiful ear pieces on a poster with ‘Annihilate Hinduism’ in the background at Azim Premji University went viral on social media last week.
Some claim that the poster was old. But that is irrelevant as such campaigns surface periodically with new plans. Otherwise how does one explain Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers and Artists Association’s ‘Sanatana Abolition Conference’ on September 2, 2023. The event was graced by then minister in Tamil Nadu government Udhayanidhi Stalin, son of M K Stalin. Udayanidhi equated Sanatana Dharma to “dengue” and “malaria”, calling for its complete ‘eradication’.
This extreme Hindumisia is institutionalized and such events happen routinely at institutions like Ashoka University, O P Jindal Global University, a few IITs and even some central universities. There is another set of institutions like AMU, Jamia Millia Islamia, Osmania University and Jadavpur University where ‘a reform agenda’ to ‘Sanatan dharma’ is articulated. Can such reforms be pursued say with Muslims or Christians?
Palestinian [Hamas] terrorists were glorified in November 2023 at IIT Bombay during an online talk delivered by radical Leftists. Ashoka University witnessed anti-Hindu hate speech when students demanding caste census and reservation raised slogans like “Brahmin – Baniyawaad Murdabad”.
In February 2024, a programme, “Ram Mandir: A Farcical Project of Brahmanical Hindutva Fascism” was held at O P Jindal University. A group which goes by Revolutionary Students League claimed that Pran Pratishtha Ceremony at Ayodhya Ram Temple on January 22, 2024, exposed “the inherent violence and anti-people nature of the Brahmanical Hindutva fascist state”.
Global push on “Dismantling Global Hindutva” (DGH) is equally strong and gets a big pat from their friends in India and vice versa. The DGH campaign was a three-day online academic conference in September 2021 seeking to mobilize scholars from dozens of US and other universities. These self-styled scholars were to examine Hindutva as a political ideology.
Hindu advocacy groups labelled the campaign as Hinduphobic which was backed by assorted forums in universities including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Columbia.
Employees at Tata Consultancy Service (TCS) were allegedly found to be involved in ‘Love Jihad’ and conversion activities was the unstated agenda of ‘Ghazwa e Hind’.
Azim Premji University, whose parent company is Wipro, ran a campaign to annihilate Hinduism. But, the university claimed that it did not host any event titled ‘Annihilate Hinduism,’ explaining that offending images came from a talk on ‘Politics of Emotions’ and were taken out of context.
Employees of IT behemoths, whether shouting slogans to Annihilate Hindutva or involving in conversion by deceit and management turning a blind eye on the cases of targeting Hindus, smacks of conspiracy at certain level. It’s also clear that conversion by any means is part of ‘Annihilate Sanatan’ agenda.
‘Smash Brahmanical [Hindutva] Patriarchy is universal woke symbol of modernity and liberation as former CEO of X (the then Twitter) Jack Dorsey posed with a group of journalists, activists and writers during his 2019 visit to Bharat. These activists held placards that read “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy”.
Institutionalizing dismantling of Hindutva is getting bigger with institutes like Azim Premji University, AMU, Ashoka, TCS, Accenture and Tech Mahindra besides many foreign institutions becoming the hotspots.
Universities like JNU celebrate demons like Mahishasura just to mock at Hindu deities like Goddess Durga. In several institutions students pursuing social sciences get roped in for anti-Hindu propaganda. These incidents revolve around insults heaped on Hindu deities, portraying Hindu traditions negatively and academic discussions that are blatantly biased.
IIT Bombay students staged a play titled “Raahovan” in 2024 that was derogatory and portraying characters in the Ramayana vulgarly. In a PhD entrance exam question paper of 2024, IIT Bombay asked students to discuss if “Hindutva is hegemonic or counter-hegemonic.”
A faculty member in humanities department of IIT Delhi told a foreign media outlet in 2023 that future of India would be without Hinduism. A conference at IIT Delhi faced intense backlash for promoting one-sided, anti-Hindu narratives and western critical race theory.
IIT Gandhinagar has been in news for its disproportionate focus on Islam-related topics while holding anti-Hindu viewpoints. A campaign initiated by a pseudonymized user alleged that a project named “DeepFaith,” described as an AI-powered Islamic research initiative was being funded by the institute. Several post graduate thesis titles submitted by Muslim students were alleged to be “Islamist” initiatives.
Narendra Singh Sarila in his book ‘The Shadow of Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition’ wrote, “The American thereafter advised Britain to keep India united. They feared that India’s Balkanisation would help communists.”
Communists and Islamists worked overtime to Balkanise Bharat and that led to partitioning India. But, to further its own interests, US had advised the then British Prime Minister not to let further Balkanisation which would benefit communists.
In the changed scenario, Sharia-Bolshevik group seem to be working in tandem to execute what they failed in the past.
(Author is a senior journalist and associated with Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies, a non-partisan think-tank based in New Delhi)
CIHS - Centre for Integrated and Holistic Studies 