Sir, the Hindu population in Kerala are generally pliant and have gone to great lengths to accommodate not just other religious groups but also sustained attacks from Leftists. The resentment at these continuous assaults on what is a non-hostile culture has been a hallmark ever since the Left gained political prominence in the 1950s. A parallel to this can be drawn with what happened in Eastern Europe after its Soviet takeover. Certainly, the Leftist attacks are inspired from those episodes of history. With certain other religious groups (you know who I mean), so much as a hint of a query, leave alone an attack, is met with ferocious resistance and unmitigated violence. The Hindus of Kerala have been pliant so far. In the view of all that, this act of vandalism on the Sabarimala shrine has really struck a raw nerve. You can bet the non-Hindus in Kerala are worried about the “influx” of “radical” Hindu ideologies into Kerala. This is the term they use for people getting a backbone. While at the same time, the increasing radicalization, with international consequences, of a certain religious “minority” is going unchecked and there is an unseen gag on such conversations.

The verdict of the Supreme Court has all the attributes of the missive of a Louis XIV or another despot. The architect of the Swiss Constitution, which has heavily influenced the Indian Constitution, himself took care to mention that laws which are not popular simply won’t be obeyed. Laws must be rooted in the common sense of justice among the people. There is little in the verdict that is popular among the common practitioners. There is no especial male privilege in having access to the shrine; men don’t get anything that women can’t get get by visiting the shrine. The deity of the shrine is a renunciate and does not wish to be disturbed or have his penance perturbed by sexual diversions (yes, we talk about sex quite openly in India and it is not as taboo as one might expect). Hence, women of child-rearing are not allowed in his shrine by his authority first. It is up to the practitioners to follow. There is no compulsion in Indian religions; women who so choose are free to open a shrine of their own where they can have their way with the deity. In a country where it is considered acceptable to respect rats and dedicate a temple to sexual pleasure, anything goes. These activists have vandalized a shrine based on an idiotic, foreign-inspired narrative and have rightly gotten slammed by the locals.

Sir, yes Indians as a whole move overseas a lot but it is especially acute in Kerala where a very large percentage of the productive age group has left the state and the country. Kerala is facing first-world problems with third-world income, including the mother of all ageing crises. Not a great place to be in. With no manufacturing base, there are no mass employment avenues. Thank the heavens Kerala does not have an army of its own or its own currency - it would be the Venezuela of the East. With Comrade Vijayan, you have India’s version of Maduro.

This whole education plank is just empty propaganda. Kerala is highly literate. Literate is a very long way from being educated. To think, if you can work your way through WhatsApp you are literate functionally. Productive people are too decent and wise to indulge in political fights so they vote with their feet. The feet are not voting for Kerala at all. The right way to assess Kerala’s GDP, and its real state of affairs, is to measure its production. Kerala has high consumption thanks to remittances from overseas, but its production economy equates probably to a war-torn sub-Saharan country. There are hardly any graduates from Kerala who today want to spend their working age and build their career in Kerala itself. The situation in Tamil Nadu, India’s Detroit, brings Kerala’s predicament to even greater relief.

From Kerala myself, I mourn for the death spiral the state has fallen into. Don’t let the green vistas fool you - Nature does not need people to do its work. The people have digested that Kerala is not a place to be productive so they don’t complain.

Sir, the Balkanization had already happened once - the formation of Pakistan. In retrospect, it was the best decision to have happened to the Indian people. Further Balkanization happened in 1971. The violence which followed the award is often the singular highlight, but looking at it, it really is indicative of administrative incompetence, even connivance. Population transfers were not new; Turkey and Greece exchanged populations; Turkey and Iran exchanges populations; heck, after WW2, even Germany and Russia exchanged populations. Most of it happened in the background of terrible violence and seething resentment, but the transfers themselves were rather mundane affairs. The only regret with Partition is that it was not carried out to its full extent in an orderly, peaceful manner which was eminently possible. It has left, in India, with a large remnant population who are subject to all sorts of political football and are a boon to the politicians who use them at will.

Looking at it historically, the general struggle against Muslim overlordship in India by native states was the milieu in which the EIC found itself when it first started with its political ambitions in India. People often forget that the EIC did not take over all India in one fell swoop; it was a gradual takeover. Perhaps because the English were interested mostly in commerce rather than cultural expansion, the British rule in India presented an opportunity for the natives, of all colours, to claw back to normality from the centuries of subjugation to a minority that was intent on cultural replacement. Which is why, British rule, at least until 1914, was generally popular, even if people were apathetic. It also seems that the British were generally enamoured by India, and treated her with an affection she did not have for many of her other colonial territories. At best, the British interregnum was but a recess in the ongoing struggle between the natives and the Muslims. Pakistan is the manifestation of that struggle. Which is why, to my mind, Indians are a freer people than Pakistan, for we simply don’t bear, except for some sections, a studied resentment of Muslims. Indians are more concerned with their own progress and productivity, not unlike a Japanese or a Taiwanese.

The Muslims on the other hand, whether in India or Pakistan, are fully aware that an improved, or improving, native population certainly wouldn’t fold to them as easily as their books would have them believe. A native resurgence is the stuff of their nightmares, but for reasons not commonly thought. It is not that a resurgent native population will slaughter all Muslims or such; Indians in general think twice before slaughtering chicken, leave alone people. The Muslims know this very well. It is that a resurgent native population will no longer be receptive to their religious doctrine and proselytization; plus the potential that relatively recent converts, drawn to the Muslim doctrine through a typical Marxist-like exercise in resentment peddling and oppression olympics, will revert back to their ancestral traditions and renounce Islam.

Muslims know well, like most socialists, that general misery is a ripe arena for resentment peddling and oppression Olympics. It is why they have an incentive in painting “Hinduism” and Hindus in the worst light possible; a developing India, or rather resurgent Indians, is not one bit to their liking. Journals influenced by Muslims make little secret of their ecstatic joy and glee when they publish, in full detail an alleged instance of rape or other violence, especially sexual, committed by Hindus, or some other story which paints the Hindus as backward.

They are not interested in India sending a probe to Mars; they aren’t interested in Indians being dominant in Silicon Valley; they are interested in this muck-raking. They have some temporary respite with the monetary support they get from the GCC countries, but that is a short-lived enterprise. In general, there is a broad difference in the broad productivities of the two societies. This makes itself especially relevant in Indian societies outside of India - the educational attainment and general social-economic indicators vary significantly between Muslims and non-Muslims. Their life priorities are very different. The Leftists being useful idiots jump willy-nilly into their camp without realizing the larger context.

Where red did we start and where did we end? Lol.

I think you misunderstood me, dear sir. I am the last one who would object to criticism of India or Indians in general. There is so much that needs improvement there it can’t fit a beefy binder. All I am saying, from observations I have made, is that there is a vested interest for certain communities in having the native traditions of India, whether hostile or non-hostile, in being painted with the same slanderous brush. I don’t say it doesn’t take place with other societies across the world; the backlash there too is similar.

I too am not comfortable with religion in politics. Indeed, I find the whole thing utterly nauseating. But you must remember, it is doctrinal faiths such as Islam and Christianity which delineates people based on their belief. Clergy or a clerical class is an Abrahamic institution. Things like heresy, apostasy, kaffir, pagan are all Abrahamic doctrinal creations, alien to India.

In Ottoman times, their society was divided into various millets based on religion, each of whom had their clerical representatives. So, you had the Armenian Clergy dealing with all matters Armenian, the Orthodox clergy dealing with matters Orthodox, the Jewish clergy dealt with matters Jewish, there were few Shias, but they too would have organized on a millet basis. It is that model which was adopted by the Muslims in India when they organized into a political grouping first called the Muslim League. Thing is, Ottoman society so based on religious divisions depended so heavily on the stability of the crown that any rupture would mean that the various millets, living in ossified communities without mutual interaction or at best minimal interaction, would be at each others’ throats. This is what happened with the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the Greek genocide etc.

The broad coalition of Indian religions called Hinduism coalesced into a unified political movement only as a reaction to the religion-based politics of the Muslims. There is little need for a common Hindu identity in political terms except when in contest with a group that identifies them as such and competes with resources on that basis. This is the common “Hindu”, a practitioner but not politically active or at best apathetic. Is that the case with the Muslims? The Muslims in India have so isolated themselves from others, thanks to millet politics, by and large, from the rest of India that there is little trust between them and the other communities. This is why they swear by platitudes such as secularism and tolerance, not because they genuinely like the others etc just that this is the law, or the barrier, that keeps them from going to town on the natives. Tell me, how safe are the natives supposed to feel? How is anyone supposed to plan a common venture when the partners don't trust each other? The Ottoman brand of secularism applied in India simply means the creation of a low-trust society with rampant corruption kept together by a Sultan who plays off the mutual antagonisms, resulting in a slowly stagnating society. I would hate for this to be the fate of Indians. I sense a good portion of Indians are sick and tired of this whole charade of secularism. There is no great talk of the need for mutual tolerance between Hindus and Sikhs, Buddhists and Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, Shinto and Buddhists etc. There is a lot of talk for tolerance between a Muslims and “fill in the blank”, why? Precisely because there is a crying lack of tolerance among Muslims for anything not Muslim. You think Hindus are intolerant and Muslims aren’t? Why don’t you check with Asia Bibi? Or the Coptics in Egypt? Or the Yezidis in Syria?

On the flip, in popular conversation it is not uncommon to find scathing reports and write-ups against Pakistan in the Indian press and media. Mostly, this is done with an aim to whip up petty nationalistic sentiments. I find this futile. By historical accident, Indians and Muslims had to rub along within the same geographic space for a period of time. The future is infinite, and the places where these two cultures want to end up are worlds apart. It is an utter waste of time, in my view, to square this circle.

Indians are a hugely productive people with great skills and abilities, much like the Chinese, Japanese or Koreans. The Ottoman-style state trying to manage inter-communal relations instead of just letting people work things out is a big part of the reason Indians are a backward bunch today. I agree with you that Hinduism is not better than Islam or any other religion for that matter. It is just that we don’t want to see our culture bite the dust at the hands of alien cultures. Hindus don’t proselytize. How hard is it for people to live and let live?

As for politics and religion, if it two can’t be kept away from each other, I’d rather them at least attempt to sort out their differences through the political process rather than outside of it like in Iraq or Syria. There is one doctrine here that demands its followers eschew and hate and condemn all other creeds or traditions, and that is not Hinduism, a polytheistic paganism.