#indiablr

About Sonam Wangchuk, he has gone on multiple hunger strikes for the statehood for Ladakh and the Sixth Schedule. For those of you who don't know what Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India is, it's a special provision that grants administrative autonomy to the tribal populations of India. This means that these decentralised administrative bodies, rather than Indian government, are the ones holding courts, dispensing justice, and collecting taxes. It also means that nobody from outside can own land there, and if a woman marries outside her tribe, she loses her right to land. The reason why it has not been granted to Ladakh is because Ladakh is a border state with high security concerns, infrastructure goals, and also it would set legal precedent that could lead to a domino effect.

What do I personally think? I think the government of India is absolutely right to not grant the Sixth Schedule to Ladakh and to ignore Mr. Wangchuk. I'm sorry but Indian internal security concerns are far greater than Mr. Wangchuk. I don't think Indians understand how important national security is. Mr. Wangchuk is trying to gain sympathy like Mahatma Gandhi by joining the CJP protest, but the key difference between the two is that at least Mahatma Gandhi walked through the whole land and reached out to communities (I have my personal opinions about this but it's for another time) and became almost deified because of the near monopoly he had over the Indian freedom struggle (his PR was really good), which is why his hunger strike worked. What is Mr. Wangchuk fighting for? Special rights to Ladakhis? Honestly, any state now can claim that they are tribal people and hold India at ransom. Mr. Wangchuk is also responsible for instigating riots which led to attacks on security personnel and deaths of multiple individuals in Ladakh. What you're seeing on social media is paid posts. I don't know if government of India is right or wrong in their non-response but it is for sure that if they had responded in for example the Shaheen bagh and Red Fort riots, the public opinion would've turned against the government. Indians are highly sensitive about government overreach on people, and are very emotional, some even have low impulse control. This is why you see highly emotional outbursts and nobody bothers to fact-check or learn about the situation. Which is why I do think that the current government chooses to stay silent, rather than taking action, hoping the criticism will die down.

Here's what I've written about the exam scandal / Dharmendra Pradhan

Here's about Nitin Gadkari

I do think BJP needs to immediately up their game, make Amit Malviya, Pradhan, Gadkari step down and revamp their strategy. As for CJP, it'll die on their own because they have no strategy except relying on Dipke, and this is his genius strategy ⬇️

Welcoming the Mumbai rains with a cuppa Masala Coffee (yes that’s a legit coffee) and a slab of murder.

Hi, first of all, I'm glad that you asked. Asking is highly encouraged always. This makes you a jigyasu - seeker of knowledge. Now to answer your question, there are quite a few definitions of Hinduism: one is that it's a geographical identity, and the other is the philosophical definition of Hinduism. Let me elaborate. The first definition of Hindus, the geographical one, meant all the people living on and beyond the Sindhu river. King Dariush I called a satrapy in his Achaemenid empire as Hindush, which corresponds to modern day Sindh and Punjab. The Greeks called people of India and Indoi. Sakas and Hunas called Indians as the people of Jambudvipa or used the names of the ruling dynasties at the time. Mind you, during the time of Achaemenid empire, the Indo-Greek kingdom and the Saka and Huna wars and assimilation, "Buddhists" and "Jains" already existed in India. I will come back to this later on. When European travellers, traders and ethnographers came to India, they labelled all the Indians that were not Muslim, Christian or Jew as Gentile / Gentio /Gentoo. The British East India Company had separate laws for the Moors (Muslims) and the Gentoos in the 1700s, ordered by Warren Hastings. Here's light reading (it's nearly 500 pages, if you're curious I recommend you to skim through it) on those laws.

On a side note, you'll understand how the Mughals and the British really rigidified the stratification of Hindu society with these laws, even if the Gupta era in India is credited to have begun the "caste" rigidity.

Anyway, this meant that "Jains", "Buddhists", "Sikhs", "Tribal Animists", and even Parsis were lumped together under the "Hindoo" label. In the early 19th century, a change came to this as the leaders of these different groups started pushing back against the British law that generalised the whole non-Muslim/Christian/Jew traditions. Now, coming to the second definition of Hindu, that is the philosophical definition. Religious life in India was organised around Sampradayas, and Kulas in the pre-medieval and medieval times. What people largely consider as fundamentally Hindu are the Vedas. All shad darshanas, or the six "viewpoints" are the six orthodox traditions of Hindu philosophy that got formulated and solidified in the Iron and Classical Ages. These six traditions are Samkhya (सांख्य), Yoga (योग), Nyaya (न्याय), Vaisheshika (वैषेशिक), (Purva)Mimamsa (मीमांसा) and Uttara Mimamsa a.k.a Vedanta (वेदान्त). The common thing about them is that they are āstika (आस्तिक), they hold Vedas as an authoritative source of knowledge and origin.

The Indian philosophical landscape during the Classical period also produced philosophical systems that share many concepts with the āstika traditions, yet at the same time fundamentally reject or oppose the Vedas. These philosophies are called nāstika , and they include "Buddhism", "Jainism", Charvaka and Ajivika. They differ from āstikas when it comes to metaphysics, ontology and epistemology, even if, on surface level, "Buddhists" and "Jains" seem to have similar concepts like dharma, karma, moksha, and even same deities like Lakshmi and Ganesha. Now, before the British came, "Buddhists" didn't call themselves that. They too had several, differing schools of thought that were united in the common belief in anicca (impermanence), dukkha (suffering) and anatma (dependent existence). But because their Supreme Guide is Buddha, they collectively got called Bauddha by Classical Indian writers. Similarly, the followers of the 24 Tirthankaras got, over the time , called Jaina, as the title Jina got solidified for the Tirthankaras. So, Jains and Buddhists were named after their Supreme teachers. What about Hindus? In Hinduism, the revealer of our sacred mantras are called Rishis. Ancient, classical and medieval Indian texts identified us with various terms: Arya, āstika, Arsheya (of Rishi, kind of like how Bauddhas are followers of Buddha and Jains are followers of Jina), and Vaidika. Then there were philosophical and devotional affiliations: practitioners of Yoga were Yogis, Nyaya were Nyayaikas, Nath sampradaya followers were Nathas, Vaishnavas, Shaivas, Shaktas, Ganapatyas, Kaumaras, and Kaulas followed the Kula traditions. They all held Vedas as their episteme, even the heterodox practices among them. But did ancient Indian texts call the astikas or Vaidikas Hindu? Well, the ancient Indian texts did not call the believers of the Vedas or Vedic gods as "Hindu". It was only during the late medieval period (roughly durin the 14th century CE), that Indian writers writing in Sanskrit, and regional languages, began adopting the word "Hindu" to mean a vaidika or an āstika person in order to differentiate themselves from the Turakas (Muslims). The reason for that is that in the classical era, our ancestors didn't have to differentiate themselves because their default world was dominated by their own Vedic religion (the religion of the victorious Bharata tribe). They identified other people by their Tribe name (there were several separate Vedic tribes) and even the people who were not Vedic, they interacted with them by using their Tribe names. During the classical era when philosophical development really started to bloom, there were astikas and nastikas. It's only when foreign tribes with a foreign religious affiliation, that had no respect for the Indian religious traditions, started invading that a geographical unifier term started to be used for the Indian people. For example, the Śārṅgadhara Paddhati (a 14th-century anthology), Brihaspati Agama and Kalika Purana began using the term Hindavah (Hindu) specifically to describe people who follow the Vedic path. That is not to say that the word Hindu, Hindavah or Haindavah did not exist prior to the Islamic invaders or even Persians like king Dariush I. In this post below I explain the origin of the word "Hindu" ⬇️

Now, about tribals, this is a very broad category. There are several different tribes in various parts of the Indian subcontinent, who are not Muslim of Christian. Many of these tribals worship their local deities, some may even worship Margiya devatas of the Hindu pantheon. In fact, an ethnography and "caste" taxonomy written by the British eugenicist Herbert Hope Risley states how a "non-Aryan" (bullshit made up term btw) "indigenous tribe" Barui tribe worshipped Rigvedic goddess Ushas. Today these Barui people are categorised as " Schedule caste / Dalit".

This paper by S.C Mitra mentions Rigvedic gods Mitra-Varuna, Rudra & Kalarudra in rural Bengali village. Notice the bhogas were offered by both Brahmins and Rajbongshis?

Today Rajbongshis are counted as OBC, SC or ST depending on the state. Makes you think how fake the "Hinduism isn't a religion, tribals and "low caste" were oppressed for 5000 years, "vedic and non-vedic are totally different" -discourse is, doesn't it?

Here is Rakkayi amman who is none other than the Vedic goddess Raka, one of the lunar tetrad goddesses along with Anumati, Shinibali, Kuhu. She is worshipped by Tamils in this video ⬇️

But you will hear the phrase "Tamils are not Hindus saar, Tamils are Dravidians not Aryan bastards saar" by the Periyarists, DMK, Christian fanatics, Islamists or other anti-Hindu elements.

This is a phenomenon called de-Sanskritization. Forcibly erasing and eradicating millennia of cultural and religious development and amalgamation. Its purpose is purely political, electoral, and it was first pushed in the English and Christian universities, and it was designed to destroy Indian or Hindu unity when the British started noticing that the Indians were rising up against the colonial tyrants.

Take a look at the Indian signatories

AS Dulat is among the signatories. This man was the chief of RAW. No wonder so many Indians died in Pakistani terrorist attacks when he was in control.

Why is Jawhar Sircar still alive? Also, look at the other names. Members of Opposition parties such as RJD, JDU, INC, PDP, Jamaat-e-Islami, TMC, CPI(M), Wire OP-ED writers, JNU professors, Marxist lecturers at DU, journalists for the Hindu, National Conference party, Samajwadi Party and literal Kashmiri separatists like Mehbooba Mufti.

Clearly, India doesn't have enough Hindutva because why the Fuck is even a single one of those bastards alive?