Advice | New India and the rise of young Bharatiya thinkers

This would be the review of a new book Nastik: Why I am not an Atheist by Kushal Mehra. But somehow, when I thought about the book launch in Mumbai with brilliant young intellectuals like Harsh Madhusudan, Abhijit Iyer Mitra and Ami Ganatra, I went on a tangent even while reviewing this book.

The past few years have been quite satisfying to see more and more young thinkers, rooted in Bharatiya philosophy or the Hindu ethos, putting pens to paper, or fingers to keyboard. The spark was ignited long ago by Ram Swaroop and Sitaram Goel, who questioned the Western left models and put Abrahamic ideologies and Marxist history under their microscope. First generation RSS pracharak Babasaheb Apte started the movement for rewriting Bharatiya itihas in the 1960s with his interpretation of Dashaavataar and the start of the search for the Saraswati River.

Dharampal, the veteran Gandhian, came up with books written based on British documents that debunked the British claim that India had nothing to offer but poverty, dogmatism, casteism and ignorance. Unfortunately, his books disappeared from bookstores and libraries never got the chance to purchase them. I was lucky enough to get PDF files from the internet before they were recently reprinted.

RSS pracharak Deendayal Upadhyay, the founding general secretary of Bharatiya Jana Sangh, presented a pure Bharatiya model of political economy – Ekatma Manav Darshan – Integral Humanism (although not an ‘ism’, it is ‘darshan’ or philosophy). Dattopant Thengadi, one of the top intellectuals of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), elaborated this philosophy. He also founded labor organizations such as ABVP and Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh that were inspired by Bharatiya culture and eschewed the established leftist model of destructive student and trade unionism.

All this happened during the Nehruvian era. Those were still the days of the Marxist monopoly that had distorted Bharatiya history and intellectualism beyond recognition, copying and pasting Western arguments with hardly any original work. So these strong decolonization efforts have not gone mainstream. The scene changed dramatically with the rise of the Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir movement.

We saw some of the most brilliant minds speaking out openly in support of a national narrative of Bharat. Girilal Jain, Arun Shourie, Meenakshi Jain, Koenraad Elst, Swapan Dasgupta et al. created a new kind of intellectual capital at a time when it was a crime to identify with Hindutva and Bharatiya culture.

On the other side of the planet, Rajiv Malhotra launched an intellectual war against the most powerful left-wing, anti-Hindu academic centers in the US. Many academics like SN Gangadhara joined the growing ranks of Indian intellectuals who refused to accept the Western worldview. These scholars took the battle to the left forts. The left-wing academia tried to swat Rajiv like an annoying fly, but his intellectual rigor and countering the left-wing anti-Hindu lobby made them sit up and start responding to him. This was also the time when there was a frontal attack on Hindu dharma with terms like ‘saffron terror’ and ‘Hindu terror’.

This upset many Hindus. This was when younger Bharatiya intellectuals began to take notice of this strange aversion to all things Hindu and Bharatiya.

Researchers like Sanjeev Sanyal rewrote Indian history from a different perspective and with academic rigor. Writers like Amish Tripathi and Ashwin Sanghi used the magical world of ancient Bharatiya literature to weave together fiction that resonated with young people.

Then came 2014. It can be called the year when Bharatiya intellectuals rooted in Bharat felt liberated. We started to see some writers emerging. Finally, publishers began to see some value in publishing them and enjoyed a boom in sales of books based on Hindu dharma and sanskriti. The challenge to the Western, Marxist narrative began to take shape in its truest sense. Leftist intolerance became a major reason for an impeccable researcher like Vikram Sampath to write path-breaking books. Hindol Sengupta, another young intellectual, added his own weight to this emerging intellectual capital. We had Aravindan Nilakandan and RSS pracharaks like Sunil Ambekar and Nandakumar who presented Hindutva in contemporary terms.

There are scholars like Sandeep Balakrishna and Sandeep Singh who talk about the Dharmic framework for our history and public policy. Sandeep Balakrishna has revived the works of great historians who were banished from library shelves and written books that amplified the Bharatiya story. Aabhas Maldahiyar and many other bright young researchers have started writing history books with in-depth research. We have Sahana Singh and Bhaskar Kamble bringing us the glory of our education and knowledge systems and scholars like Ami Ganatra presenting ancient wisdom from our itihas of Ramayana and Mahabharata in new ways that resonate well with the current generation.

There are also many ‘secular’ writers who have milked the Bharatiya itihas and stories like Ramayana to make money. I started reading a retelling of the bestseller Ramayana, in which the author wrote in his foreword, “With this book I have taken Ram away from the communal forces.” Of course I dropped it.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, merely a representative list in view of limited column space. I haven’t touched the genre of political writing yet. Almost all of these books are excellent additions to the knowledge bases of our young citizens. They present an objective, well-researched history, challenge the Western-left narrative, present the Indian knowledge system or defend the Bharatiya worldview against aggressive leftist attacks.

However, very few Indian writers presented new models for our Dharmic society and our nation based on the foundation of Dharma. I can talk about Mr. Venkatesh whose Retaining Balance advocated a new economic model in Bharatiya based on the family as the basic unit of any economic policy. He spoke about a pure Bharatiya framework for the rule of law in Bharat. And then Kushal Mehra, a well-read intellectual but a rookie in the field of writing, enters the scene.

For someone who only started writing later in life with the urge to present Hindutva and RSS to a wider audience and take their ideas to mainstream literature, when non-left and right-wing people were still shunned and seen as untouchables of the intellectual world; it was an exciting experience.

So far, the predominant writings of non-left schools fall within the framework of the Western Challenge. Kushal, however, has presented his own framework for one of the most controversial issues of human society: atheist versus nastik, or atheism versus nastikata. He has set the terms of his commitment in the framework of the Eastern world; choosing not to use the Western worldview as a benchmark to which we can respond. This is the importance of Kushal’s work.

While pointing out the follies of religion, he claims that religion is necessary to human society. He is not willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A vacuum created due to the strong atheist movement in the Christian world has led to the rise of a dangerous infection called ‘Wokeism’. Nature hates a vacuum, he reminds us. His confidence and comfort in his Hindu skin and willingness to engage the West through our own construct is the most remarkable part of Kushal Mehra’s Nastik: Why I am not an atheist.

Kushal does not argue to win an argument. He is merely putting forward the views of the Western world, the analysis of the Abrahamic religion versus the Dharmic worldview. He criticizes both Abrahamic and Sanatani religious practices in an impartial manner. He then goes on to objectively show the distinction between a nastik and an atheist, claiming that one can be a nastik and still be Dharmic and a Hindu; while you cannot be an atheist and still be a follower of any Abrahamic religion. A Hindu can be a nastik but he can still be calm and equally calmly accepted by his society.

This book should be read by the young followers of various branches of Sanatana Dharma and various sampradayas, who are skeptical about their own religions and who think it is cool to say, ‘I am an atheist’ or ‘I am ‘spiritual’ but not religious. “, etc., without actually understanding his/her own religion. After reading this book, he/she will gain a new insight into his/her own religion and dharma, and still be open to an astik or a nastik It should also be read by Abrahamists turned ex-Muslims and ex-Christians, to understand that being angry at one’s own religion and becoming ‘woke’ only takes you down a blind alley and into another sect. is anti-society. You cannot build a good society based on hatred or negativity.

Kushal’s book to me signifies the emergence of the young Bharatiya thinkers in the true sense of the word, who now feel confident to engage with the world on their own terms and from a dharmic perspective and create their own paradigms.

Go ahead and read Nastik: Why I’m Not an Atheist to have faith in our philosophies and your beliefs, and then follow the path that would make you a better person who feels connected to his/her society and family.

The writer is a well-known author and political commentator. He has written several books on RSS such as RSS 360, Sangh & Swaraj, RSS: Evolution from an Organization to a Movement, Conflict Resolution: The RSS Way, and has completed his PhD on RSS. The opinions expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of News18.