Hindutva

I've finally got sucked in to writing on a controversial topic, especially during elections: Hindutva. For people who do not know, the word Hindu itself has come from a meaningless non-existing link of religion, and has come to stay to become a religion. Thats a word that will not go away, of course. The word Hindu, from the simplest trace among many similar, comes from Persians refering to us as Sindhus, those staying beyond the Sindhu river and their pronounciation of the phoneme si as hi and dhu as du. That continued to be related to the religion followed here, Sanathana Dharma (the eternal set of righteous rules, so to say) and became earmarked as Hindu, forever.

So what is sanAthana dharma? Among gazillion things, including atheism, through polytheism, to monotheism, without contradicting (surprising to people who take everything on face value), its a religion that classifies categories of people based on their work and since one usually follows work that runs in the family (a doctor's child mostly looks to be a doctor, a marwadi runs his father's business, and so on), its by birth too. A person that subscribes to this *thing* is termed a Hindu, one that voices it (me, with my trumpet!) is a Hinduvadi and this *thing* subscribed to, this *concept*, is Hindutva. With that logic, everyone can be categorized as a Hindu. Hence vasudhaiva kuTumbakam, the world is one family.

Back to political link, its all a contradictory governance, where on the one hand, brahmins are being made a singular minority in a country among a singular minority that is already made of Hindus, due to political nonsense and on the other, we voice that there shouldn't be SC, ST, OBC, untouchability and what not. For the record, there is nothing called untouchability in the Vedas, there are four classes of people, based on their birth-and-work. If its not clear, go back to basics, read them *yourself*, don't voice something that comes from polito-religious freaks who have never studied even basics, and if they have, they deliberately hide it from you in their vote-bank interest. I'll add it here for an easy look up, from the pancama veda that Mahabharata (and no, Mahabharata is not a mythological story, it is Itihaas, meaning history, and a much better recorded one, than our fake schoolbook history) is:

janmanA jAyate shUdrAh samskArAt bhavet dvijAh
veda-pAthAt bhavet vipro brahma jAnAtiti brAhmaNAh

I'm not going to write a commentary on it, but suffice it to say that everybody is a shUdrah by birth, only with values does one become a twice-born (the other three *classes* NOT *castes*), which is similar to a logic that modern education makes a person superior (yes, socially it is so; if not, why be in a society?), studying, reciting and understanding Vedas makes a person a pandit and knowing brahma (for simplicity, I'll translate this as: infinity), does one become a brAhmaNa.

Having said all that, I'll repeat, everybody is a Hindu. Finally, if that is really how great an advanced secular society we want to be, not calling ourselves Hindus, why not do two very simple things:

1. Remove caste from all government forms and other documents.
2. Then, remove religion from all government forms and other documents.

Whether we can do so, whether we do so, the fact that always was and will always remain is... ...vasudhaiva kuTumbakam. That has no change, na bhUto na bhavishyati.

Vande Mataram! Jai Hind!