Politics

The Reply That The Prime Minister May Not Make To Rahul Gandhi's Remark On 'Hindus'

  • The prime minister, his team, and then the Hindus of India should remember what is at stake.

Aravindan NeelakandanJul 02, 2024, 10:54 AM | Updated 11:03 AM IST
Prime Minister Narendra Modi At Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple in Tirumala.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi At Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple in Tirumala.


When Rahul Gandhi, as the leader of the opposition, made his maiden speech in parliament on 2 June 2024, he attacked not only Prime Minister Narendra Modi but also an entire section of Hindus, labeling them as violent and hateful.

Unfortunately, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trying to twist this as his characterising the entire Hindu society as hateful and violent is not going to go well with people, because they are intelligent enough to know that such a characterisation is gross distortion. It never pays to underestimate people, particularly when you are shown as being on the defensive.

In reality, what Rahul Gandhi spoke was more hateful and more dangerous.

Rahul Gandhi accused all the Hindus who resist conversion attempts and who resent the hateful and violent attacks on their sacred realm, day in and day out by an assorted coalition of civilizational enemies — from Nehruvians to Marxists, from ‘Dravidianist’ racists to anti-Hindu casteists. He accused the Hindus who democratically resist such a powerful onslaught, as refusing to be passive victims of such an onslaught.

This is not just a verbal debate in the Parliament. This has serious effects on the ground reality of the larger Indian land mass.

Narendra Modi and his team may not realise the civilisational burden they are carrying on their shoulders. Probably the Hindus who may cheer Rahul Gandhi today, may not realise that the 73-year-old Prime Minister is, as of today, the last wall of protection between their children and them meeting the destiny of the children of minorities in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

This is particularly true for Tamil Hindus. Even a die-hard Dravidianist Hindu, if she is true to her conscience, knows deep in her heart, that the 2009 mass killing of Tamils in Mullaivaikal would not have happened if Narendra Modi had been the prime minister then. Manmohan Singh's government with Sonia Gandhi and family being the puppet ringmasters, made India a silent partner in what was probably the worst mass killings of people of Indian origin, in the recent history of ‘South Asia.’

Sonia remained the characteristic sphinx. Rahul cared not a nano-iota. And our children died in heaps, our women were violated by bayonets and our youths died naked in the swamps with bullets entering their hindbrains.

All that would not have happened had Narendra Modi been the Prime Minister. He was indeed the first prime minister to visit Sri Lankan Tamils in their homeland and made Sri Lanka realise that the Tamils of Sri Lanka are cherished by the Indian mainland and hence their lives should be valued. He does not have a voter base there. He does not have popularity in Tamil Nadu. In fact, during the 2024 campaign, even as the BJP spoke in an unexplained way on Kachha Theevu, they did not even mention what Modi has achieved for Sri Lankan Tamils. The contrast cannot be more conspicuous as to who hates Tamils with deceiving grins on their faces and who actually loves Tamils as part and parcel of India’s larger heritage.

Jawaharlal Nehru refused to consider the problems of Sri Lankan Tamils. He admired with racial undertones the civilizational superiority of Singhalese. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi made the lives of Sri Lankan Tamils pawns in their political games. Sonia and Rahul Gandhi maintained a stoic silence when Tamils were brutally and humiliatingly mass murdered and Narendra Modi provided the healing touch.

Forget Modi, even if India had re-elected Vajpayee in that fateful 2004 election, the 2009 genocide in Sri Lanka would not have happened.


Modi, most probably, will not talk about this in his reply.

Or consider the hatred.

Rahul Gandhi during his yatra met and discussed theology with Rev. George Ponnaiah. Rev. George Ponniah had just then made a hateful speech against Hindus and made disparaging remarks against Bharat Mata. He was later arrested by even the Dravidianist DMK Government for hate speech.

It was with such a personality that Rahul Gandhi chose to discuss theology. Rahul Gandhi did not dare to launch his sermon of tolerance and sarva-dharma samabhava to the reverend. One should remember that in a Christian-dominated district like Kanyakumari where the Catholic Church has the same clout that it has in Rwanda, the hateful theology of the reverend, has a very dire impact on the lives of Hindus. But Rahul Gandhi listened admiringly passively to the hate rant.

And now he talks about peace and harmony of religion in the parliament to Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi is the one who despite knowing that the Christians would more probably listen to the dictates of the Church in voting for him, still made sure that the Christian aid workers were released from Islamists in Afghanistan — mostly Christian nurses were brought safely back home during Arab conflicts and Christian fishermen were brought safe home from Sri Lanka. Because Narendra Modi has the wisdom and heart to see them as primarily humans and Indians and not Christians.

Yet Rahul Gandhi, a passive listener of Christian hate against Hindus, would preach kindness and heart to Narendra Modi whose heart of Hindutva saw only humanity in rescuing Indian citizens irrespective of their religion.

Modi, most probably, will not talk about this in his reply.

Or take another prominent personality that Rahul Gandhi defended and promoted, and who joined Gandhi’s walk — Kancha Ilaiah.

Ilaiah was promoted with vigour during UPA-I and UPA-II. He peddles hatred in the garb of academia in a way that would shame the worst of Nazis and fascists. He envisions a post-Hindu India, nothing less. Imagine a book written as ‘post-Muslim India.’ That would directly be called hate literature and rightfully so. But such was the stranglehold of anti-Hindu hatred during the UPA Reich that this book was published by a leading academic publisher — SAGE. And the book said inside, this:

One should understand that here Ilaiah is constructing a robust ideology of hatred. It starts with his characterisation of Brahmins of ‘genetic’ deficiency and their worldview arising from the ‘shared animal instinct of not being able to produce anything from the earth.’ Thus, here Brahmins are axiomatically genetically inferior and hence socially cunning. Then Hinduism is the outcome of it. This efficiently makes all non-Brahmin Hindus who consider themselves Hindus as zombies under Brahmin influence.

Rahul Gandhi has always supported Ilaiah proactively and demanded that his hate-peddling texts be reinstated in the Delhi University syllabus. He made sure that this demagogue of hatred joined him in his Yatra.

There is a strong logical and ideological connection between what Ilaiah says and what Rahul Gandhi says in parliament. Ilaiah says that Hinduism is the outcome of genetically and socially parasitic Brahminism, which in turn means the Hindus who are consciously Hindus are actually mindless zombies of Brahminism. Rahul Gandhi calls such Hindus — Hindus who resist conversions and caste distinctions — violent and hateful. This is nothing but plain hatred of truly racist and fascist variety, masquerading as love.

Modi, most probably, will not talk about this in his reply.


In terms of performance and heart, the rule of Narendra Modi belongs to the common Indian. Nevertheless, the strategic blunder he has committed is primarily in terms of optics. He appears to belong to the affluent. But make no mistake, Rahul Gandhi, whose optics are very much hyped as in favour of the poor, has a visceral aversion for Hindus as civilizational people.

And in democracy, there are times when appearances can be fatally deceiving to the real welfare and future of the civilization. We are at one such crucial juncture. The Prime Minister, his team and then the Hindus of India should remember that what is at stake is the future of Hindu children as Hindus.

I wish and pray that the reply of the Prime Minister today takes into consideration all these factors.

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