For the purposes of this write-up, I’ve decided to just use citations instead of providing clickable links. The amount of work I put into this and the prior three chapters was so much that I need to find an efficient way to cut time and honestly, if people don’t believe anything I have to say or think I’m a bigot after I put so much effort into copiously providing evidence to support my arguments, then nothing I say will be valued by such people. I hope it is the understanding of readers that this is all coming from a sincere place and I’m doing my best in a commitment to truth and honesty.

Incidentally as a side note; as I was researching, reading, and writing for this piece, I stumbled a passing mention of a person named V.S. Naipaul after finishing a lengthy chapter of my re-read of Clash of Civilizations by Samuel P. Huntington. It was in his lengthiest chapter before Part II of his book; Huntington mentioned V.S. Naipaul had an enthusiastic support for Western Triumphalism. This led to an intellectual scuffle with Palestinian scholar Edward Said who ridiculed V.S. Naipaul’s position in less than polite terms with words I’d rather not share on here. I got curious from Huntington’s description of how V.S. Naipaul essentially suffered from an identity crisis his entire life and I decided to google search V.S. Naipaul. I found an old NY Times article which seemed to corroborate Huntington’s brief reference to V.S. Naipaul’s political position on Western Universalism. It also seemed to support the White Savior narrative in tandem to that. The article portrayed V.S. Naipaul’s position as one where he wrote about revolutionary characters with a “fake it till you make it” mentality who were then manipulated by evil Indigenous groups (Indigenous within their respective South American and Trinidad communities that his fictional stories were set in) who were only interested in furthering corrupt practices in their countries and falling to further corruption without the benign guiding hand of White imperialists; he apparently wrote this as a way to understand himself.  I later found an article from The Guardian that mentioned V.S. Naipaul openly discussed beating women who were his romantic partners due to his uncontrollable anger issues. I was quite appalled by this and wondered what sort of background could lead to such behavior as an identity crisis certainly is no excuse for physical violence of any kind.

I read V.S. Naipaul’s wiki page and held back in laughing at how pathetic he and his immediate family must have been to abandon their culture in favor of this Western triumphalist perspective of supporting British culture. This man spent his entire life asking the question “Who Am I?” because British culture failed to satisfy him and he was too stupid to realize it. He actually kept writing narratives about how the “third-world” would devolve into corruption and evil without the “guiding hand” of White British Imperialists, he beat women because he couldn’t control his own aggressive behavior, and he was evidently never able to satisfy the identity crisis within himself despite espousing how Western values were superior to all others. Imagine if he had actually valued the Hindu philosophies and values that his family had abandoned as he was growing up? Imagine instead of beating women – a long and proud tradition of Western history up until Northern Native American theology was imported and whitewashed of its theological roots by early White Feminists to argue against such behavior through the 1700s and finally gaining traction in the 1900s – imagine instead that he’d practiced non-violence from Jainism and Hinduism, detachment from want in Buddhism, or Dharmic meditation techniques more generally. Imagine instead of aping British society as a moral paragon, he’d researched the four genocides that Britain had committed upon India and one of which was the reason that his family moved to Trinidad and Tobago in the first place. So much for those benign White imperialists, eh? It’s easy for me to understand why he was never able to satisfy the identity crisis within himself; he was never able to find Dharma. He stupidly perceived revolutionaries as harboring the same “fake it till you make it” lunacy that he had for his own identity. They actually fight for ideals that they believe in, not an identity-crisis within themselves. They have no such identity crisis and I certainly stopped having it the more I read about both history and Dharma.

I’m struck by how utterly worthless V.S. Naipaul’s perspective and arguments are in modern times. I’m of the belief that his legacy is probably already being lost to the amnesia of time, because if the NY Times review and the information in Clash of Civilizations is correct (and they both argue the same general points), then V.S. Naipaul’s entire body of work can’t provide anything of value to modern social issues anywhere. His legacy already seems to have become no different than the British crackpot, Anthony Ludovici.

I fucking laugh at this dumbass. Here’s what motivates me to write these critiques, it is definitely not “fake it till you make it” or whatever dumbfuckery Western society has argued using paltry Christian value judgments:

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Table of Contents for A Hindu Critiques Islam:

1. Chapters 1-3: Doctrinal Failings, Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta Critique, What “Islamophobia” Shields
2. Chapter 4: Social Status and Genocide Denial
3. Chapter 5:  Neoliberalism Empowers Islamism
4. Chapter 6: Did the British Partition of 1947 Gradually Decline the UK and Bolster India?
5. Chapter 7: Islamic Terrorism’s 1st-Generation was Al Qaeda, 2nd-Generation was ISIS, and a 3rd-Generation’s making a Digital Caliphate from “Islamophobia” Censorship
6. Chapter 8: The Partition of Free Speech
7. Chapters 9 and 10: Follies of Islam Repurposed and Islamism Always Creates Failed States

Extras: Islam’s 200-years of Mass Genocide of Iran, Islam’s 500-years of Mass Genocide of India, and judging from Wikipedia, Islamic Terrorism makes-up 58% of all Terror incidents in India between 1980 – 2024 and that’s lowballing it.

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I’m honestly unsure how to fully articulate this part of the issue, and I hope I provide a decent enough explanation, but please bear in mind that this might be difficult for some to accept. The term Islamophobia obscures the disturbing reality that this is really an attempt to create an unequal social status system whereby Muslims are held as more important and superior to all other groups of people. Anytime an Atheist, Jewish person, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, or Christian does something offensive then they are correctly viewed as a bigot; anytime a Muslim does something offensive, it is viewed as an outcry of being oppressed by the wider society. If you doubt this unequal treatment, seriously consider the following: everyone that criticizes Islam is viewed as secretly hating Muslims. All of these other groups supposedly secretly have an evil agenda of wanting to cause the most harm to Muslims; this is despite the fact that it isn’t what they have said at all. All the historical, religious, and cultural criticisms that they provide are part of some “conspiracy” or “subconscious bigotry” to oppress and kill Muslims somehow despite the fact that the vast majority of critics have never said this at all nor behaved in such ways. Among those of you who agree with the term Islamophobia, shutting down these discussions is thus giving a self-satisfied honorable and righteous feeling, because you’re somehow preventing those “bigots” from spreading “hate” against Muslims. Even though these critics aren’t actually saying they hate Muslims, they aren’t saying they want to kill Muslims, and – at least for most atheists – they don’t make special exemptions to other religious beliefs; somehow, anyone who criticizes Islam is either a bigot or a “useful stooge” for bigots.

Where are these ideas coming from? Why have so many in Western countries been brought up to believe that the term Islamophobia is necessary to protect Muslims from bigots? And, if you don’t know anything about the religion of Islam, how exactly are you able to determine the difference between what is genuine criticism of the theology and what is bigotry that is untrue about Islam? These feelings of self-righteousness, the shutting down of religious debate and acting “above” it, and the shielding of Muslims from any criticism of their faith tradition is really about enforcing a 7^th century social standard upon the modern world and normalizing it in your own community. If you believe that anyone who critiques Islam on the basis of Free Speech is either a bigot or a useful pawn of bigots who are doing harm to Muslims, then you are honestly being conditioned into a 7^th century mindset; that may sound insane, but – for reasons stated prior – the ideology of Islam really is a form of 7^th century Arab fundamentalism that tries to enforce its views upon modernity.

It’s important to make a clear distinction: there is somewhat of a difference between Islamists and regular Muslims in this case of shielding Islam from any criticism. Islamists want to propagate the concept of Islamophobia in order to pursue their political interests of making everything closer to the standards of the 7^th century as outlined in their theology; this is for the purposes of normalizing conversion, even forced conversions, to Islam. Regular Muslims will likely feel offended and want to shut down criticisms, but they’re likely to view it in a similar way to the protective social taboo on public forums of never involving ourselves in religious arguments within Western cultures and shutting them down whenever they happen under the misguided belief it leads to peaceful outcomes. The intent is different, and the two will advocate it for mutually contradictory purposes, even if the outcome is the same. A regular Muslim typically just doesn’t want to involve themselves in religious debates, an Islamist typically feels it is a necessary step for the normalization and enforcement of the Sharia within the broader society. That is why they propagate these ideas and that is why these smug, self-righteous “protectors” are really analogous to guard dogs protecting harmful views. And just think of this, what other religion has so many figurative guard dogs as Islam? Whenever Hinduism is brought up in an online conversation, it’s immediately mocked for the caste system which people wrongly think is still the majority view in India, despite the Pew Research statistics showing it has overwhelmingly declined in many ways and criticized within intra-Hindu contexts as bigotry against fellow Hindus.[1] It hasn’t vanished to the point that inter-caste marriage is normalized yet; there is still internal family bigotry in that regard, but the discrimination within the broader society has declined to approximately nineteen percent of India’s population according to Pew Research surveys.[2]

What both Islamists and regular Muslims actually seek to do is create a bubble to shield Islam from any and all criticism; they will use every iota of excuse possible to protect Islam from any sort of meaningful criticism. The reason for this is because they believe that Islam is the revealed truth of the Abrahamic God and therefore only the “Islamic scholars” – the Muslim Imams – have any right to an opinion on it. Muslims largely believe that any distress in making Muslims doubt their faith should be completely forbidden. They will use the protective social taboo of not being allowed to criticize religion in the wider society, they will use false arguments of racism and economic inequality to shield their faith, and they will repeatedly talk about how their feelings are hurt to shut down discussions even when Muslim grooming gangs are raping children. They view all of that as a test to shield Islam from scrutiny, because they believe they are not allowed to criticize Islam and that non-Muslims are not allowed to criticize Islam. Due to Islam being “revealed truth” that they cannot question due to their unyielding faith in the Abrahamic God, they will invent outside reasons for why Islamic societies are suffering from worse discrimination or why Muslim enclaves have more social problems in Western and Dharmic societies. Shielding them from criticism genuinely encourages them to seek out conspiratorial thinking as the reasons for why increasing Islamic influence in society is leading to worse outcomes. What Islamophobia encourages is imbibing Islamic conspiracy theories to find rationalizations for why their beliefs lead to worse outcomes compared to those who don’t believe in their religion. Moreover, because it is being shielded by non-Muslims acting as figurative guard dogs, Muslims are more likely to believe that their beliefs are incapable of being challenged because they’re correct. If Muslims never hear why their beliefs could be wrong, then there’s no reason for them to ever doubt their beliefs.

When a person argues in defense of the term Islamophobia with the strong feelings that everyone who criticizes Islam is either a closet bigot or a useful idiot for bigots who have an evil agenda, then unfortunately that is simply conspiratorial thinking. If you argue from that standpoint, then you’re not actually evaluating critics based upon what they say, and you’re wrongly assuming what beliefs another person holds instead of listening to them. This leads to the same 7th century Middle Eastern conspiratorial thinking and when you shut down debate this way, it really does encourage the breakdown of society. That is the 7^th century mindset that Islamism is imposing upon all of us. Please think of the consequences instead of thinking of me as some anti-Muslim bigot; grooming gangs, forcing 9-year old children into being raped, the sexual slavery of women, the inability to criticize these beliefs and practices due to Islamic views on Divine Command theory, the murder of apostates and anyone who criticizes the Prophet Mohammad, and how terrorism really is never going to end so long as this belief system exists due to the theological teachings of bid’ah and that the Quran cannot be questioned by either Muslims or non-Muslims. Even terms like “far-right” are becoming problematic because it’s insinuating that anyone who has criticisms of Islam is somehow a Nazi; even when Jewish people are the ones criticizing Islam.

For any Muslim reading this and who strongly disagrees with me, consider the behavior of Catholics and Catholicism as a comparison point. The hatred against consensual sex between unmarried adults and the forbidding of Catholic Priests from marriage, masturbation, or unmarried consensual adult sex is largely what critics argue to be the reason for child rape cases that were possibly happening for over a thousand years within Catholic institutions. Yet, what do strong believing Catholics think when this discussion comes up? Usually they argue that it’s really a conspiracy from Satan causing it to deceive Catholics away from their faith, the more anti-Semitic will argue that it is obviously a Jewish conspiracy and that Jews somehow entered the Catholic Church (a Pakistani Catholic living in Pakistan argued this exact point to me on Discord and believed it was “obvious” that Jews were magically responsible for their religion’s problems), or that it’s all exaggerated claims and that other places are equally as bad as their institutions. Why do they make these claims? Because they’re not allowed to question the dogma of their religion, so they come-up with conspiracy theories to “make sense” of why their religious beliefs lead to bad outcomes for vulnerable children in their own communities.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest targets of Muslim conspiracy theories are Hindus like myself. Muslims largely view Hindus as polytheist, this is inaccurate as Hinduism has a wide spectrum of beliefs due to historical debates for the purpose of truthseeking and the current dominant view is pantheism. Atheism became part of Hinduism due to the influence of a pro-materialist movement called the Charvakas in approximately 600 BCE from approximately one-hundred years of debates on truth claims and by 500 BCE, the evidence suggests that the debates were so uncontested with atheists dominating Northeast India for one-hundred years, that Vedic followers decided to incorporate atheism into two schools of thought of Hinduism. To better understand why polytheism is an inaccurate view, here is Will Durant’s explanation of what India’s Northeastern princely states were like approximately around 600 BCE in Chapter Fifteen of Our Oriental Heritage:

And further on in the same section, but separate subsection of Chapter Fifteen:

Please note that he had to oversimplify a bit since he was making a series of history books that encompassed the entire world. It would be more accurate to say that Hindus of the time period self-described themselves as the Vedic people and whether the Charvaka philosophers would consider themselves part of the Dharmic fold seems like a debatable historical argument. However, two key points should be noted: Vedic texts gave an open-ended view to the perspective of Agnosticism since the Rigveda’s time approximately around 3000 – 2000 BCE[1] and by 500 BCE; due to the Charvaka philosophy’s dominance for approximately 100 years, Vedic practitioners of the Samkhya and Mimamsa schools adapted their atheistic perspective into the Vedic tradition and they both remain part of Hinduism. Judging from the historical evidence, the Buddha himself was agnostic to the question of whether a God exists and left it up to each Buddhist to decide for themselves. Eventually, through the debate and inquiry of Adi Shankara centuries later, pantheism became the dominant view within India and still remains so amongst the majority of Hindus to this day.

Despite these historical facts, the perception most Muslims have of Hindus remains unchanged and the nuances of Hinduism are ignored by the majority of the world. Obviously, it shouldn’t matter whether someone is polytheistic or not, but the teachings of the Quran are what inform Muslim views that they’re not allowed to question. These teachings do inform behavior; the only exception within Muslim-majority countries to the best of my knowledge, and only very recently, seems to be the United Arab Emirates and it seems conditioned on the expectation that increased tourism and economic trade will remain beneficial to the UAE. I would like to believe that this could spark genuine change towards modernity, but if an economic recession occurs and Hindus are no longer perceived as economically useful by the majority of the UAE government and Muslim-majority public, who will be the first targets of blame? Who will suffer violence first? It’s possible that the uniqueness of the UAE government will help protect vulnerable religious minorities, but only time will tell. In the interests of fairness, while other Muslim-majority countries have horribly mistreated and persecuted Hindus, the UAE government does stand as a singular outlier so far, but conditioned on the expectation of future economic gains.

The Quranic teachings of those perceived as “polytheist” and “disbelievers” makes it clear exactly what the majority of Muslims in the world think of we Hindus. Both these teachings and their consequences continue to be ignored when it comes to most Muslim majority countries treatment of their Hindu minority groups and other religious minority groups:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 5:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 17:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 28:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 33:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 36:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 66:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 109:

Quran Chapter 9, Verse 113:

 

 

Quran Chapter 10, Verse 13:

Quran Chapter 98, Verse 6:

And the historic consequences of these hateful teachings in the Quran; this is what Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and others of India suffered, according to Chapter Sixteen of Will Durant’s Our Oriental Heritage:

Currently in India’s schools, this history is not taught. Instead, Indian schoolchildren are taught the utter myth that Hindus and Muslims lived in harmony and that these Muslim warlords were somehow benign rulers. Most Muslims will tell people that Islam came into South Asia through a fabricated myth of trade until South Asians gradually converted. The true history of India has been mocked, insulted, treated with indifference, and falsely argued to be a myth itself despite Islam’s own history and even how the vast number of Muslim-majority countries treat Hindus and other religious minorities to this day. It wasn’t until I had listened to the arguments of mostly Pakistani and Iranian Ex-Muslim Atheists living in Canada and the United States that I was better able to distinguish the facts from the falsehoods. Yet, why do these distortions of history continue to persist? Why is basic information about history treated as a conspiracy theory meant to harm Muslims? The answer is both simple and disturbing upon a better understanding of Islamic theology itself; Muslims are conditioned to view Islam as completely beyond doubt and anything that makes Muslims question or feel moral distress regarding their faith is considered less important than the feelings Muslims have about their faith; this is especially true for their feelings for the Prophet Mohammad. In other words, Muslims are conditioned to view their personal feelings as more important than the historic abuses, genocides, and generational traumas that their religion has caused non-Muslims. In twenty or thirty years, nobody should be surprised if there’s attempts by Muslim “historians” or their supporters to claim the Yazidi genocide, the Syrian Christian genocide, or the violence towards Hindus and Christians happening in Bangladesh are somehow “distortions” or “conspiracies” so that Muslims continue to feel good about their faith. It is no different than how the majority of Muslims in the world have dismissed the Islamic conquest of India and the Armenian Christian genocide as “conspiracies” meant to make Muslims doubt their faith.

What has been the effect of this censorship and distortion of history? The false narrative is that both Hindus and Muslims were peaceful up until the British committed divide-and-conquer policies. This has caused the majority of Muslims to believe that Hindus became deluded by British culture causing them to react with unjustified extremism and that Muslims are somehow oppressed. The truth is that Hindus and Muslims were never at peace in the early contact period of their history, Hindus and other Dharmic followers were largely the victims of genocide under Muslim rule in a massive death toll that’s estimated to have been approximately 80 million[1], and Hindus of India are forbidden to even talk about it and accused of being conspiracy theorists when trying to discuss our historic trauma. It is likely that many of my fellow Hindus unfortunately still believe that this history is a falsehood, because they’ve imbibed the falsifications of self-stylized experts from Western Indology who readily confess in their Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy that they know nothing about India’s history. Yet, they readily claim the mass death tolls written by all of the Muslim historians who were serving under Muslim rulers; in which they were celebrating the mass murder of Hindus for approximately 700 years; are exaggerations and distortions.[2] These Western Indologists like Sheldon Pollock, Cynthia Talbot, and Andrew Nicholson and Indian Indologists like Romila Thapar readily and gleefully participate in this form of genocide denial and claim Hindus are bigots for wanting to discuss our historic trauma.[3] They use claims of expertise that they do not have to explicitly support genocide denial. They don’t study history, they don’t study archaeology, they don’t even study the theological concepts of Hinduism, and their only knowledge seems to be knowing how to translate words without understanding the social, cultural, and theological contexts of Dharmic theology.

As I don’t want to be seen as singling only them out and for those who doubt this criticism of mine, here is my brief examination and review of the Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy that I had written as a subsection of Chapter Twenty-Seven of my earlier book, Faith in Doubt, in which I critiqued the purported methodology of Western Indology:

The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy

            I’ll begin my critique with The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy of 2017, which was reprinted in 2018, and since I can’t make lengthy quotes of any portion of the book without the express permission of Oxford University Press, I’ll have to lay out in explicit terms what I find problematic with these Indologist critiques and may sometimes list both the chapters and pages of those chapters when necessary. While my primary aim is criticizing US Indology, I’ve chosen to critique others in Western Indology insofar as they show the same failings of US Indology and sustain arguments based on either insufficient or bad evidence. Usually it is a complete lack of evidence on their part. Essentially, the underlying assumptions should be highlighted and then critiqued in order to expose the failings of what may well be this entire department on a global scale throughout the West, if the most current version of The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy as of 2019 serves as an indication. As it would be beyond the scope of this book to give a general review of the entirety of its contents, I’ve narrowed the focus to pertinent specifics that I’ll be addressing, I’ve settled for critiquing the Introduction and the four chapters of Part 1: Methods, Literatures, and Histories of The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy which exists as the main thesis of the textbook; it is geared to explain to an audience of upcoming Indologists about what to expect in the academic discipline. I’ve chosen this method due to constraints, as I’m of the opinion that the entirety of the text is problematic due to ample evidence from the textbook itself and the chapters I’ve read outside of Part 1.

I’ll begin with the introductory chapter, “Introduction: Why Indian Philosophy? Why Now?” by the editor of the textbook, Jonardon Ganeri, who is listed as a Global Network Professor of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University and a visiting Professor at King’s College.^[1] His chapter shows no evidence that he has any awareness or knowledge of the mass genocides of the Indian population during the Islamic conquests of India^[2]; on page 4, he refers to the purported Aryan settlers that Indian archaeologists have shown to be a falsehood with extensive evidence that’ll be detailed in another section below and the introductory page itself mentions the so-called impact of British colonialism but never mentions the Islamic colonialism prior to that.^[3] On page 8, he briefly touches upon so-called Mughal patronage but fails to mention the massacres and colossal death toll of Islam’s ravaging, plundering, and enslavement of Indians throughout the entirety of the Indian subcontinent.^[4] This has been copiously documented by legendary historian, Will Durant. In volume 1 of his series The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage, Will Durant details the mass genocides perpetuated by Islamic invaders in Chapter 16 from subsection “VI. The Moslem Conquest” to the very end of Chapter 16 of The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage.^[5] Will Durant himself refers to it as “probably the bloodiest story in history” before going into the grizzly details.^[6] At no point does Jonardon Ganeri show any indication that he is knowledgeable about this history at all throughout the Introduction of The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy and seems to depict interactions between Indians and the Islamic invaders as congenial when the only time period that could credibly be argued would be under Akbar the Great after he had de-converted from Islam, ordered the shut down of the mosques throughout India, and forbade the teachings of the Quran.^[7][8] However, before and after Akbar under more pious Islamic rulers, the story is an unambiguous bloodbath and Will Durant doesn’t mince words or soften the details of the horror that Islam brought upon India.^[9] If you doubt this, feel free to read Chapter 16, subsection VI all the way to the end of Chapter 16 of The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage.^[10] The only time the practitioners of Sanatana Dharma – be it Hindu, or Buddhist, or Jain, or later on the Sikhs – ever lived in any peace during Islamic rule was when a Islamic ruler de-converted from Islam and rejected the Islamic religion. At no point does Jonardon Ganeri put this in proper context and doesn’t even seem to be aware of this history in his introductory chapter.^[11]

The next chapter was what made me lose confidence in Western Indology and gradually caused me to change my views on this entire enterprise called Indology within the US, but this view may be applicable throughout the West too. I had assumed that they based their views on hard evidence, but “Chapter 1: Interpreting Indian Philosophy Three Parables” by Matthew T. Kapstein, a Professor at the University of Chicago who purportedly specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, makes it clear that this isn’t true.^[12] Kapstein explains without any ambiguity on pages 15-16 of the book that Western Indologists have absolutely no criteria for determining what interpretations are valid and what aren’t valid.^[13] They don’t base their understanding from any deep understanding of the ancient Sanatana Dharma theology and they hold no special knowledge or criterion of procedures for how to develop an understanding of Indian philosophies.^[14] In short, they haven’t developed any method at all that can make accurate and reliable judgments on the theology of Hinduism.^[15] In fact, Kapstein outright explains on page 16 that hermeneutics, with the exclusion of legal hermeneutics, offers absolutely nothing as a guideline to demarcate valid and honest interpretations from dishonest or unreliable interpretations.^[16] This means that they have no method at all for separating their own make-believe with any potentially credible scholarship. Kapstein claims that Indology attempts to utilize archaeology, but this is plainly proven false since they never accepted information from Indian archaeologists who reliably and credibly debunked the Aryan Race Conspiracy Theory with scientific and historical evidence.^[17] The Aryan Race theory was supported by Nazism and Adolf Hitler. Western Indologists have held onto those Nazi viewpoints which pervades the entirety of The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy of 2017-2018 despite the Aryan Race theory having been debunked in 2014-2015 by Indian archaeologists through empirical and scientific evidence.^[18][19][20] For whatever reason, Western Indologists have since tried to push these Nazi theories that they’ve held as sacrosanct into the work of modern Western geneticists, possibly without the awareness of the broader scientific community that the methods of Indology are arbitrary, unreliable, and seem to be pure guesswork without any basis on historic evidence. One must question why these Western Indologists hold onto these Nazi theories so strongly and dismiss any criticism from outside as not part of their arbitrary consensus that isn’t based on empirical evidence. And, if the scientific community doesn’t know about how unreliable their methods are, then why weren’t Western scientists duly informed and instead have had their meaningful scientific work, their trust, and goodwill co-opted by Western Indologists? Further along in Chapter 1, on pages 20 – 23 in the subsection titled “The Meaning of Moksa” in the book, Kapstein cherry-picks three philosophers – Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes – in order to ignorantly assert that Western philosophy’s entire body of work on the terminology of the word freedom is based upon civic governments and political participation.^[21] He demonstrates no understanding of Dharmic teachings of Moksha being an existential philosophical disposition and he shows no indication that existential philosophers of so-called Anglophone and continental philosophy such as Schopenhauer was influenced by the Upanishads^[22]; Nietzsche was profoundly influenced and impressed by Buddhism even declaring it, and the intellectual capacity of the Brahmins of Sanatana Dharma, as entirely superior to Christianity in The Anti-Christ.^[23][24] How did Kapstein miss not only the basic usage of Moksha’s terminology of freedom, but also two of the most famous Western philosophers who were influenced by Dharmic views on freedom? Why did he use a reductionist argument on the various philosophical dispositions of Western Philosophy’s views on freedom? Even from his chosen selection, he doesn’t seem to be aware of the extent Rousseau praised and had his philosophy influenced by Islamic theology.

However, another equally compelling issue must be asked: how can any so-called “consensus” within the sphere of Western Indology be allowed to dismiss empirical scientific evidence by Indian archaeologists?^[25][26] Moreover, on what grounds can Western Indology claim any special privilege on knowledge of Hinduism over any random Hindu individual when they have no methods and their so-called research is the equivalent of any random person making a blind guess?^[27] How can they dismiss Rajiv Malhotra or any other Hindu who has criticism on the basis of consensus, when their consensus is pure blind guessing with no real methodology, they have no recognition of Hindu practices like Yogi, and there is no evidence from their behavior of any interest in archaeology that disproves Nazi theories that they harbor? To my surprise, throughout The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy, Western Indologists demonstrate no awareness of the mass genocide by Islamic conquests elaborated by historian Will Durant in The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage and the subsequent mass starvation policies which may also credibly constitute genocide caused by British colonialism as copiously documented by historian and Marxist Mike Davis in his work, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World in which he collected and referenced numerous documented accounts by mostly US Christian missionaries and US journalists who spoke out against the British policies in defense of the human rights of the people of India.^[28][29] How can they claim to be searching for proper context and a better understanding of India’s changing philosophies throughout the history of the subcontinent, if they categorically ignore the most notorious impacts of Islamic and British imperialism?^[30][31][32] Judging from their lack of methodology, I don’t quite understand why Indians of the Dharmic faiths within India even bother protesting or view anything Western Indologists say as credible when any random opinion that they have on their own religion is actually more valid than the so-called hermeneutic methodology which is quite honestly just pure, blind guesswork on the part of these so-called scholars in the West.^[33] It’s a methodology that claims to have no methodology and just makes random guesses with the hopes that others who are equally as uninformed about Hinduism agree with them. This insularity can be comparable with the Tafsir of Islam, but with the clear difference that they claim nobody outside their insular community has any right to an opinion on a religion that isn’t even theirs. Kapstein ends the chapter by emphasizing that Western Indologists have no conceptual framework except for hypothetical ideas that they critique each other with and it is thus a reaffirmation that they have no knowledge beyond pure, blind guesswork.^[34]

Chapter 2 “History and Doxography of the Philosophical Schools” by Ashok Aklujkar, a Sanskritist and Indologist working at the University of British Columbia^[35], falsely assumes an isolated distinction between Western Philosophy and Sanatana Dharma on page 32 since it isn’t as clearly demarcated as he assumed and will be explained further below.^[36] He asserts that proper guidance is required (assuming Western Indologists) but fails to detail specific procedures since Western Indology has none according to the chapter prior to his chapter.^[37][38] Finally, he contradicts himself on page 35 and continuing on to page 36 by first correctly asserting that Indian Philosophy isn’t irrational and then using the very stereotype that he just stated was wrong by demarcating philosophy as purely rational and then implying religion that isn’t based on rational arguments should have its definition broadened as somehow conforming to rationality.^[39] This is simply a self-contradiction that is trying to re-contextualize words by redefining illogical beliefs within Hinduism as somehow rational, but refusing to simply use actual rational arguments within Hinduism itself. Chapter 3 “Philosophy As A Distinct Cultural Practice” by Justin E. H. Smith, listed as a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the Universite Paris Diderot (Paris 7)^[40], explicitly begins on page 56 by asserting the audience of Indology is for people of “European” or “Western” backgrounds and then goes onto explain that comparative studies should never include comparing philosophies of two distinct cultural backgrounds.^[41] On page 57, he asserts that Greece and India only had significant contact in geography and astronomy, he explains how the philosophical exchange that created Pyrrhonian skepticism by Christopher Beckworth has been dismissed without any explanation why, and goes onto explain that there seems to be no evidence of a philosophical exchange between Greece and India because there is no “smoking gun” at all.^[42] Evidently, Smith is either utterly ignorant of or entirely dismissive of the period of Hellenization of India that occurred shortly after the defeat of Alexander the Great^[43]; many Greek people migrated in droves.^[44] The cities and military colonies of Alexander the Great were expanded by the Greek migration from approximately 70 to an additional 250 and eventually, the Greco-Bactarian kingdom was formed by King Demetrius I of Bactria from his successful invasion of Northern India in which there is evidence to indicate that he effectively ruled over it.^[45] A cultural syncretism that is unparallel in history proceeded for almost 200 years from 180 BCE to 10 CE.^[46] This astonishing level of peaceful intermingling of what is known as the Indo-Greek kingdoms is shown from several compelling pieces of evidence. The Greek and Indian languages and symbols fused within the coinage such as the Greek language in the front and the Pali language in the back.^[47] Archaeological evidence shows the blending of Ancient Greek and Ancient Sanatana Dharma practices; statues of the Buddha protected by the Greek God Herakles/Heracles, statues of Mahayana Buddhist deities, and Greco-Buddhist statues of the Buddha in general.^[48] Given all of this fascinating history, which Smith doesn’t demonstrate to have any knowledge of in Chapter 3^[49], is it reasonable to believe that there was no cultural exchange of philosophical viewpoints or a shared philosophy? There is ample, compelling evidence that indicates Buddhism flourished as a result of this cultural exchange which may have conceivably helped spread Buddhism to East Asia.^[50] Yet, despite this astonishing history, Western Indologists expect people to believe that there was no philosophical exchange or perhaps that this almost 200 years of history doesn’t count as a significant and compelling wealth of evidence of such exchange?^[51][52] Does that honestly make sense? Further along on pages 58-59, Justin E. H. Smith demonstrates no understanding that Adivasi is a term coined in the 1930s for people in India who didn’t own land and doesn’t mean that they were the original inhabitants as he heavily implies since all Indians are the original inhabitants of India.^[53] On page 59, he wrongfully presumes that the debunked Nazi Aryan Race theory is true by claiming that Adivasi traditions show evidence of pre-Aryan origins.^[54] He can only claim that it is pre-Aryan, if he assumes the Nazi conspiracy theory is true.^[55] He goes on in page 59 to argue the dubious claim that all philosophical positions have anthropological roots which implies that people throughout history can’t have used their reasoning faculties or imagination.^[56] Finally, the only useful content that can be gleaned on page 70 is that a Mughal leader attempted to fuse the psychotic teachings of the book, the Quran, as being somehow proved true by the mostly more intellectual and interesting Upanishads; Smith demonstrates no knowledge as to how utterly absurd such a task is, but instead Smith discusses some insane translator by the name of Francois Bernier who cut open animals in front of a Hindu pandit to teach the pandit philosophy and Smith acts as if this was a failure of cultural exchange instead of the act itself being entirely insane on the part of Bernier as it is doubtful most people in the West would begin a cultural exchange by butchering a living animal (in this case, a goat) in front of non-Westerners.^[57] Finally, there isn’t much to be said about Chapter 4, “Comparison or Confluence of Philosophy” by Mark Siderits, a retired Analytical Asian Philosophy Professor from Seoul National University^[58]. The entirety of the chapter reaffirms comparative philosophy being unwilling to mix philosophies with the pretense that they’re isolated and then he mentions fusion philosophy, but then warns that it could be a form of cultural appropriation and mangling an Indian philosophical school’s ideas.^[59] One wonders why on earth a person couldn’t simply reference where they got an idea and then explain how their new idea departs from it before exploring their own philosophical inquiry.

The Consequences of Genocide Denial? More Genocide Denial:

What these mostly Western Indologists did was a self-serving act to propel their own fame by purposefully insulting what they perceived to be easy targets; they will sign letters and support Audrey Truschke for academic freedom, but they do not condemn Islamists of India who would kill Hindus, other Dharmic followers, and Christians who exercised their Free Speech to insult the Prophet Mohammad; for example, they never condemned or criticized crimes such as the horrifying pre-planned murder of Kamlesh Tiwari. In fact, they did not stand-up for Free Speech when Islamists murdered people in any South Asian country. They went on Indian national newspapers to project themselves as aggrieved scholars facing persecution from angry Hindu mobs, but they never discussed or condemned the burning of Christian homes in Pakistan, the Pakistani Muslim gangs raping religious minorities in Pakistan, and they did not stand up for Pakistani Catholic Asia Bibi or Pakistani Hindu Ashok Kumar when gangs of Pakistani Muslims threatened to murder them for specious rumors of insulting the Prophet Mohammad. Even now, with horrific stories of the burning of Hindu temples, the burning of Christian homes, and the physical assaults by Islamist mobs in Bangladesh upon Hindus, likely other Dharmic followers, and upon Christians; it has been complete silence from these supposedly persecuted experts who constantly gained fame and publicity from making caricatures of Hindus as angry mobs. They have repeatedly shown that they’re willing to ignore the violent, angry Muslim mobs who murder people over specious rumors of insulting the Prophet Mohammad in all three South Asian countries. It shows exactly the kind of craven people they truly are. Like all moral cowards, they only cared about one thing: themselves.

What has been the effect of propagating falsehoods? Muslims of South Asia continue to feel justified in committing violence against other religious groups; some Muslims see it as a religious duty and view it in terms of heroism. As a result, the act of genocide upon Hindus and its denial still continues unimpeded to this day. The Kashmir conflict is a prime example of this. While treated as an aggrieved Kashmiri Muslim minority group struggling for independence against Hindu-majority India, the genocide of Kashmiri Hindu pandits has been systematically ignored because it doesn’t serve the mythic narrative of oppressed Muslims. In an article published on April 6^th, 2016 for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), journalist Zubair Ahmed explained in the bluntly titled “Kashmiri Hindus: Driven out and insignificant” the following:

Muslim militant groups targeted Hindus by killing their men, burning their homes and damaging their places of worship. Mosques would make calls for them to leave the valley.

Saifullah, a former militant, tells the BBC that he regrets participating in driving Kashmiri Hindus out. “We want them back. We want them to live in peace. Kashmir is theirs too,” he says.[1]

[1] Ahmed, Zubair. “Kashmiri Hindus: Driven out and Insignificant.” BBC News, BBC, 6 Apr. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35923237.

Further in the BBC article, he articulates:

According to one estimate, 3,000-5,000 Pandits are left in the valley today – a far cry from the 300,000 who used to live there. These few thousand are scattered over 185 places in the valley, where seven million people live.

Today the Pandits are condemned to live a life of anonymity in their own homeland.

 

‘Painful times’

Mr Tikku and Mohan Lal Bhat, like most Hindus who did not leave Kashmir, lived nightmarish existences during the initial phase of the conflict.

“In the beginning there was a lot of fear, nights were eerily silent. If a cat jumped on to the roof we thought militants had come to kill us”, Mr Tikku tells the BBC.

Mr Bhat, a retired policeman, also recalls the “painful times” he used to be up all night “in case someone came to kill us”.

“I would look out of the window to see if an intruder was coming to kill us,” he says.

The Bhats never left the valley and poverty never left them. A young son was killed in a terror attack. The other is unemployed. Like many others in the valley, they have their own homes, but ready cash is scarce.

For the community, the scars undoubtedly run deep, but it seems that time has nearly healed their wounds. They now enjoy healthy relationships with their Muslim neighbours.

 

Peace problems

But relative peace comes with its own set of problems.

Many complain about a lack of priests. This becomes an issue during occasions like weddings, and also during deaths, when priests are needed to perform the last rites.

Another problem, according to Mr Tikku, is finding partners for their children.

He estimates that there are around 900 Pandit boys and girls of marriageable age in the valley. Mr Pandita himself has three daughters, none of them married yet. “We would like to get our daughters married in the valley but it’s not easy to find the boys in our community,” he says.

Children’s education is another worry.

Many young parents are unwilling to raise their children in a predominantly Muslim Kashmir, where all children “have to learn Arabic and the Koran”.

Sonica Bhatt is 30 and has three children. The oldest is six. She says she has not told them about their Hindu background yet, because their friends are all Muslim. “We want to send them to Jammu where they will be raised as Hindus,” she says.[1]

 

[1] Ahmed, Zubair. “Kashmiri Hindus: Driven out and Insignificant.” BBC News, BBC, 6 Apr. 2016, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35923237.

What happened to Kashmiri Hindu Pandits was a genocide, yet their narrative is categorically ignored and silenced as less important than the lives of Kashmiri Muslims. It is an inherently unequal and discriminatory narrative that purposefully dehumanizes Hindus as unworthy of human rights and equal protection. Whereas the US still hasn’t formally recognized the Kashmiri genocide of Hindus by Kashmiri Islamists, in 2016 the US government under President Obama and the EU immediately, and correctly, recognized the genocide of Syrian Christians, Yazidis, Jews, minority Islamic faiths, and other faiths by ISIS. The US State Department cited Open Doors USA, which unfortunately I’ve found exaggerates claims when it came to religious discrimination of Christians in India as they had citations that didn’t result in any sources at all, but I don’t believe that they would lie or exaggerate about the genocide of Christians, Yazidis, Jews, and others in Syria suffering under ISIS terrorism. From “Section I” of the Executive Summary of the “2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: Syria” which had the following:

The U.S. government estimates the total population at 21.6 million (midyear 2022). At year’s end, according to the UN, more than half of the country’s prewar population was displaced; there were approximately 5.7 million refugees in neighboring countries as well as 6.9 million IDPs. Continued population displacement adds a degree of uncertainty to demographic analyses, but the U.S. government estimates 74 percent of the population is Sunni Muslim, which includes ethnic Arabs, Kurds, Circassians, Chechens, and some Turkmen. Other Muslim groups, including Alawites, Ismailis, and Shia, together constitute 13 percent of the population, while Druze constitute 3 percent.

The U.S. government estimates 10 percent of the population is Christian. There are reports, however, that indicate that number is considerably lower – approximately 2.5 percent. Of the 2.2 million Christians who lived in the country prior to the war, the NGO Open Doors USA estimates that only approximately 638,000 remain, approximately 3 percent of the population and a decrease of 39,000 Christians from the previous year.

Before the civil war, there were small Jewish populations in Aleppo and Damascus, but in 2020, the Jewish Chronicle reported that there were no known Jews still living in the country. Before the civil war, the country also had a Yezidi population of approximately 80,000. While there are no updated official figures on the number of Yezidis in the country, the Afrin Yazidi Union estimates that approximately 2,000 Yezidis remain in Afrin, compared with approximately 50-60,000 prior to 2011.[1]

[1] U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/syria/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2025.

 

While it may seem unfair to categorically list various global instances of Islamic violence on religious minority groups, the truth is that once you understand the general framework of the theology, then the violence displays similar patterns despite the sociopolitical and geographic differences. In other words, the unquestioned obedience to the Quran and the Quran’s own violent passages, such as the entirety of Chapter 9 of the Quran, really does explain the global patterns of Islamic terrorism and Islamic violence better than any other method of attempting to discern primary causes. The fact remains that beliefs inform opinions and behavior. Thus, the religious beliefs do explain the purveyance of systemic patterns of violence of Islam. Time after time, the violence against Hindus, other Dharmic followers, Christians, and other faith traditions like the Yazidis remains proof that unquestioned obedience to the Quran encourages violence. Mob violence is horrifically common in most Muslim-majority countries towards any specious rumors of insulting the Prophet Mohammad.

The Consequences of Ignoring Islamic Violence? It Emboldens Islamists:

While Sheldon Pollock was arguing on a personal interview with the The Indian Express at the Taj Mahal hotel in the safe confines of New Delhi of how he was “a target for being an outsider” due to receiving harsh criticisms from Hindus of India who criticized his characterization of Hinduism; a year earlier on January 29^th, 2017, Anugrah Kumar, a contributor of the Christian Post, citing The Indian Express which itself cited the Press Trust of India (PTI), published an article titled “Pakistan Acquits All 115 Suspects in Burning of Christians’ Homes” which read as follows:

A court in Pakistan on Saturday cited lack of evidence to acquit all 115 suspects in the burning of more than 150 houses of Christians in 2013 over alleged blasphemy of the Prophet Muhammad.

Chaudhry Muhammad Azam, Lahore’s anti-terrorism court judge, said the prosecutors failed to produce sufficient evidence against the accused, who had been charged under various laws, including the Anti-Terrorism Act, attempted murder, robbery, arson and terrorism, according to The Indian Express.

A prosecution lawyer, however, disputed the judge’s conclusion and was quoted as saying, “This incident not only spread a wave of terrorism in Lahore but also brought a bad to name to Pakistan.”

The March 8, 2013, attack was seen as the largest anti-Christian violence since the attacks in 2009 that killed nine Christians in the town of Gojra in the same province of Punjab.

Police arrested the accused two days after a mob of about 3,000 Muslims armed with sticks, clubs and stones burned at least 150 houses of Christians, a church and shops in the Joseph Colony area in Lahore over allegations that a Christian had made derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad.

After the incident, a Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, reprimanded the government of Punjab and the province’s police for failing to protect members of the minority community. Justice Azmat Saeed Sheikh, a member of the bench, said the violence took place “right under the nose of Punjab Police and there was total inaction.”

The court also said at the time that police at the “highest level” may have been told not to take action when the violence erupted.

The accused in the blasphemy case, identified as 26-year-old Sawan Masih, and the complainant, his Muslim friend identified as Imran Shahid, had quarreled under the influence of liquor, but the latter claimed it was a case of insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

“Both Imran and Sawan are close friends and the former has made the allegation only to settle a personal score because they had quarreled over some petty matter,” a local resident, Dilawar Masih, who lost his house and shop in the attack, was quoted as saying at the time. He added that the attackers burned their houses even after the accused had been arrested.

Blasphemy is punishable by life in prison or even death in Pakistan.

The blasphemy law, embedded in Sections 295 and 298 of the Pakistan Penal Code, is frequently misused to target religious minorities – Christians, Shi’as, Ahmadiyyas and Hindus – and allows Islamists and others to justify killings. Extremist Islamists believe that killing a “blasphemous” person earns a heavenly reward.

Just an accusation under the controversial law is enough to have a person arrested, and there is no provision to punish a false accuser or a false witness of blasphemy. Some local Muslims seek revenge by making an allegation against his or her adversary who is a non-Muslim. Many who are accused of blasphemy are also often killed by mobs extra-judicially.[1]

[1] Kumar, Anugrah. “Pakistan Acquits All 115 Suspects in Burning of Christians’ Homes.” The Christian Post, 29 Jan. 2017, www.christianpost.com/news/pakistan-acquits-all-115-suspects-in-burning-of-christians-homes.html.

A year after the gross miscarriage of justice in Pakistan, and five months prior to Sheldon Pollock’s comfortable interview in India; on January 5^th, 2018, The Indian Express, citing the PTI news agency, reported that two Pakistani Hindu businessmen were shot dead for no explicable reason in a predominately Hindu community within Pakistan in an article titled “Two Pakistani Hindu businessmen shot dead in Sindh” which explains as follows:

Two Hindu brothers were on Friday shot dead outside their grain shop by bike-borne robbers in Tharparkar district of Pakistan’s Sindh province, triggering protests from the minority community. The victims, identified as Dileep Kumar and Chandar Maheshwari were grain traders. They were opening their shop in the grain market in Mithi area of the district when the incident took place, the Express Tribune reported.

According to police, in the first ever robbery incident in the city, bike-borne dacoits tried to snatch the money from the brothers, but when they resisted, the robbers shot them.

Following the incident, traders shut their business in Hindu-dominated areas in the district in protest and people blocked main roads and staged sit-ins, leading to traffic jams.[1]

[1] “Two Pakistani Hindu Businessmen Shot Dead in Sindh.” The Indian Express, Thursday, June 07, 2018, 5 Jan. 2018, web.archive.org/web/20180607183942/https://indianexpress.com/article/pakistan/two-pakistani-hindu-businessmen-shot-dead-in-sindh-5012781/.

Unfortunately, the patterns of Islamist violence continue even in more recent times. Last year, after the fall of Bangladesh’s former ruler, Sheikh Hasina, fled Bangladesh on August 5^th, 2024; the results have been repression of ISKCON faith leaders such as the incident of Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari being arrested at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport over fatuous claims of sedition because youths in his protest had allegedly put a Saffron flag above the Bangladeshi flag on November 25^th, 2024.[1][2] Two other Hindu ISKCON followers who had visited him in prison were arrested when attempting to leave with no formal charges brought upon them on November 29^th, 2024.[3] An article published on December 1^st, 2024 by the Times of India titled “Bangladesh stops dozens of Iskcon members from crossing into India amid rising tensions: Report” summarizes the major events thus far:

Bangladesh’s immigration authorities at the Benapole border crossing turned away 54 members of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon) on Sunday, despite them possessing valid passports and visas.

The immigration police cited a lack of specific government approval for their travel as the reason for barring their entry. “We consulted the special branch of police and received instructions from the higher authorities not to permit them (to cross the border),” officer-in-charge of Benapole immigration police, Imtiaz Ahsanul Quader Bhuiyan was quoted as saying by The Daily Star newspaper.

He added that while the devotees carried valid passports and visas, they were “lacking specific government permission.”

The group of 54 members, including devotees from various districts in Bangladesh, had arrived at the check post between Saturday night and Sunday morning. They waited for hours, hoping for permission to proceed, only to be informed their travel was not authorized.

“We came to participate in a religious ceremony taking place in India, but immigration officials stopped us, citing the absence of government permission,” said Iskcon member Saurabh Tapandar Cheli.

This incident comes amid heightened scrutiny of Iskcon in Bangladesh following the arrest of Hindu leader Chinmoy Krishna Das on November 27. Das, a spokesperson for the Bangladesh Sammilita Sanatani Jagran Jote, was detained at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on charges of sedition. The case alleges that he and others hoisted a saffron flag above the Bangladeshi national flag during a rally on October 25 in Chattogram.

Das’s arrest sparked protests among his supporters, leading to violent clashes that resulted in the death of a lawyer in Chattogram.

Bangladeshi authorities froze the bank accounts of 17 individuals associated with Iskcon, including Das, for a 30-day period.

Adding to the tension, two Iskcon monks, Adi Purush Shyam Das and Ranganath Das, were arrested on Friday while returning from delivering prasad to Das in prison. Both monks, natives of Chattogram, were detained amid heightened concerns over violence targeting Hindu minorities since the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government in August.

The Bangladesh high court, however, declined to issue a suo motu order to ban Iskcon in the country.

(With PTI inputs)[1]

[1] TOI World Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Updated: Dec 1, 2024. “Bangladesh Stops Dozens of ISKCON Members from Crossing into India amid Rising Tensions: Report – Times of India.” The Times of India, TOI, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/bangladesh-stops-dozens-of-iskcon-members-from-crossing-into-india-amid-rising-tensions/articleshow/115871437.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.

The Associated Press News was the only US-based corporate news organization brave enough to cover stories about Bangladesh after the other US corporate news organizations curiously went into a collective blackout the moment the truth of Bangladeshi Muslims oppressing Bangladeshi Hindus, Christians, and other minority religious groups started to come out. The unchecked mob violence by Islamists upon religious minorities hurt the image of the Biden administration who had openly supported the interim government of Muhammad Yunus at that time. Julhas Alam of the Associated Press News released an article on November 2^nd, 2024 titled “Hindus in Muslim-majority Bangladesh rally to demand protection from attacks” which contained the following:

Hindu groups say there have been thousands of attacks against Hindus since early August, when the secular government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was overthrown and Hasina fled the country following a student-led uprising. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel peace laureate named to lead an interim government after Hasina’s downfall, says those figures have been exaggerated.

Hindus make up about 8% of the country’s nearly 170 million people, while Muslims are about 91%.

The country’s influential minority group Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council has said there have been more than 2,000 attacks on Hindus since Aug. 4, as the interim government has struggled to restore order.

United Nations human rights officials and other rights groups have expressed concern over human rights in the country under Yunus.

Hindus and other minority communities say the interim government hasn’t adequately protected them and that hard-line Islamists are becoming increasingly influential since Hasina’s ouster.

The issue has reached beyond Bangladesh, with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi voicing concern over reports of attacks.

While the administration of United States President Joe Biden has said it is monitoring Bangladesh’s human rights issues since Hasina’s ouster, U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump has condemned what he described as “barbaric” violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities in Bangladesh.

In a post on X, he said: “I strongly condemn the barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh, which remains in a total state of chaos.”

Hindu activists have been staging protest rallies in the capital, Dhaka, and elsewhere since August to press a set of eight demands including a law to protect minorities, a ministry for minorities and a tribunal to prosecute acts of oppression against minorities. They also seek a five-day holiday for their largest festival, the Durga Puja.

Friday’s protest in Chattogram was hastily organized after sedition charges were filed Wednesday against 19 Hindu leaders, including prominent priest Chandan Kumar Dhar, over an Oct. 25 rally in that city. Police arrested two of the leaders, angering Hindus.

The charges stem from an event in which a group of rally-goers allegedly placed a saffron flag above the Bangladesh flag on a pillar, which was considered disrespecting the national flag.

Hindu community leaders say the cases are politically motivated and demanded Thursday that they be withdrawn within 72 hours. Another Hindu rally was planned for Saturday in Dhaka.

Separately, supporters of Hasina’s Awami League party and its allied Jatiya Party have said they also have been targeted since Hasina’s ouster. Jatiya’s headquarters was vandalized and set on fire late Thursday.

On Friday, Jatiya Party Chair G.M. Quader said his supporters would continue to hold rallies to demand their rights despite risking their lives. He said they would hold a rally Saturday at the party headquarters in Dhaka to protest price hikes of commodities, and what they call false charges against their leaders and activists.

Later Friday, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police announced it was banning any rallies near the Jatiya Party’s headquarters. Hours after the police decision, the party said it postponed their rally to show respect to the law and a new date for the rally would be announced soon.

The police decision came after a student group strongly criticized the police administration for initially granting permission for the rally, and threatened to block it.[1]

[1] Alam, Julhas. “Hindus in Muslim-Majority Bangladesh Rally to Demand Protection from Attacks.” AP News, AP News, 2 Nov. 2024, apnews.com/article/bangladesh-hindu-minority-attacks-hasina-yunus-beaddefd93f1b9dcf14d287543b023f5.

Almost like clockwork from the behavior of Islamists, Bangladeshi Islamists committed a similar attack to the horrifying 2013 attack by Pakistani Muslims upon the Pakistani Christian community quoted earlier. This incident in Bangladesh appears to have a particular element of sadism due to being purposefully and willfully conducted on Christmas Eve in 2024. While the US Corporate media conveniently ignored the attack on Christian homes with a continued media blackout over Bangladeshi Islamist attacks upon Bangladeshi Christians, the Times of India valiantly reported the harrowing incident in an article titled “Houses of Christian Tripura community torched in Bangladesh on Christmas eve” on December 25^th, 2024. The incident happened within a subdistrict of Chittagong, Bangladesh and the article citing the Bangladeshi Daily Star mentions as follows:

At least 17 houses belonging to the Christian Tripura community were allegedly set ablaze on Christmas Eve night at Sarai Union in Lama upazila, Bandarban, reported the Daily Star.

The arson attack left the residents, who were away in a nearby village for prayers and Christmas celebrations, homeless and devastated.

According to victims, the miscreants targeted the new Tongjhiri Tripura Para, where the community had rebuilt their homes after being displaced several years ago.

Locals reported that 17 out of 19 houses in the village were completely gutted, leaving little to salvage.

 

History of displacement

Tongjhiri has long been home to the Tripura community, but residents alleged they were forcibly evicted several years ago and claimed that the land on which they were living, had been leased to the wife of a high-ranking police officer during the Awami League regime.

Paisapru Tripura, the head of the community, told the outlet, “We have been living here for three or four generations. A group of people, identifying themselves as ‘SP’s men,’ evicted us four to five years ago.”

The community returned and rebuilt their homes following the fall of the Awami League government.

Gungamani Tripura, one of the victims, shared his anguish, “Our houses have been completely burned to ashes. We could not save anything. Today is supposed to be our happiest day, but this has turned into a nightmare. We demand exemplary punishment for the criminals.”

Authorities respond

 

Md Idris, chairman of Sarai Union Parishad, confirmed about the incident, adding that 17 houses were destroyed. Acting Lama Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO), Ruppayan Deb, visited the site and provided initial relief, including a blanket and a sack of rice for each affected family.

“I have asked the families to file a written complaint,” Ruppayan Deb said. “We will coordinate with the deputy commissioner and the upazila project implementation officer for further action”, Deb added.

Md Enamul Haque Bhuiyan, inspector (investigation) of Lama Police Station, noted that land disputes in the remote area have been ongoing, with complaints and counter-complaints of land grabbing reported since August 5. He assured that law enforcement is working diligently to identify the perpetrators and conduct a fair investigation.[1]

[1] “Houses of Christian Tripura Community Torched in Bangladesh on Christmas Eve – Times of India.” The Times of India, TOI, 25 Dec. 2024, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/houses-of-christian-tripura-community-torched-in-bangladesh-on-christmas-eve/articleshow/116658938.cms.

One final takeaway that should be obvious by now is this: they are never going to stop. Please take that statement seriously and take the time to understand what this means; this is not fear-mongering, this is the reality that Muslim organizations will continue to pursue as they grow in population size. They are never going to stop Muslim grooming gangs such as what has happened in Great Britain due to the Quranic teachings about slave girls, they are never going to stop trying to normalize FGM such as what nearly happened in the US due to the Shafi’i school of Islam, and they are never going to stop the normalization of murdering people for offending Muslim sensibilities in disrespecting the Prophet Mohammad or the Quran as what happened in India to Kamlesh Tiwari. They will gradually attempt to normalize the murders of Ex-Muslims who try to leave due to Quran 4:89. They are never going to stop making secret communities or pressuring politicians to remove legal protections for children in order to support forced child marriage in full faith to the 7^th century Arab fundamentalist beliefs that it is morally acceptable to rape nine-year olds because the Prophet Mohammad did it. They are never going to stop formulating conspiracy theories or accusations of phobias in order to protect their religion from receiving any criticism. They are never going to stop the social, technological, and political revisionist project that is Islamism in order to bring everything into a 7^th century living standard, because they believe their version of Jesus Christ’s Second Coming requires it. They will never stop trying to impose the Sharia (the Divine Law of the Abrahamic God) upon all democracies throughout the world. When did they ever stop trying to do any of that to India for hundreds of years, even after Great Britain broke India into two pieces and created Pakistan and what was then East Pakistan? This is not a joke, this is not an attempt to insult Muslims as inferior, and this is not me being a bigot. This is what Islam simply is. Even now in India, some Muslim men seek out and commit sexual violence upon Hindu, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, and other young girls. It is not as frequent on a per capita basis as Christian and Sikh Indians according to India’s crime statistics, but it still happens.[1] The US news media and US scholars treat them as an aggrieved minority group while conveniently trying to compartmentalize the existence of Pakistan and Bangladesh and the violence that happens in those countries. If you want to understand where Western Europe is heading as a result of mass Muslim immigration, then look no further than what Great Britain helped Islamists do to India with the partition of 1947.

To Be Continued in Chapter V . . . Neoliberalism Empowers Islamism.

---

Bibliography of Chapter Four:

1. Ahmed, Zubair. “Kashmiri Hindus: Driven out and Insignificant.” BBC News, BBC, 6 Apr. 2016, bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-35923237.
2. Alam, Julhas. “Hindus in Muslim-Majority Bangladesh Rally to Demand Protection from Attacks.” AP News, AP News, 2 Nov. 2024, apnews.com/article/bangladesh-hindu-minority-attacks-hasina-yunus-beaddefd93f1b9dcf14d287543b023f5.
3. Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World. Penguin Random House Publisher Services, 2001.
4. Durant, Will. Chapter XIV: The Foundations of India: VII. The Philosophy of the Upanishads (9463 – 9469). Our Oriental Heritage: Being a History of Civilization in Egypt and the Near East to the Death of Alexander, and in India, China and Japan from the Beginning to Our Own Day. Simon and Schuster, 1935.
5. Durant, Will. Chapter XVI: From Alexander to Aurangzeb: VI. The Moslem Conquest (Pgs. 10447-10520). Our Oriental Heritage: Being a History of Civilization in Egypt and the Near East to the Death of Alexander, and in India, China and Japan from the Beginning to Our Own Day. Simon and Schuster, 1935.
6. Elst, Koenraad. Chapter Two: Negationism in India (pgs. 56 – 59). Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam. Voice of India, 2014. For reference:

The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure struggle of life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. Every new invader made (often literally) his hills of Hindus skulls. Thus, the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital plus large areas of Karnataka depopulated. And so on.

As a contribution to research on the quantity of the Islamic crimes against humanity, we may mention Prof. K.S.Lal’s estimates about the population figures in medieval India (Growth of Muslim Population in India). According to his calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). More research is needed before we can settle for a quantitatively accurate evaluation of Muslim rule in India, but at least we know for sure that the term crime against humanity is not exaggerated.

7. Ghose, Sanujit. “Cultural Links between India & the Greco-Roman World.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, Ancient History Encyclopedia, 30 Apr. 2019, ancient.eu/article/208/cultural-links-between-india–the-greco-roman-worl/.
8. “Houses of Christian Tripura Community Torched in Bangladesh on Christmas Eve – Times of India.” The Times of India, TOI, 25 Dec. 2024, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/houses-of-christian-tripura-community-torched-in-bangladesh-on-christmas-eve/articleshow/116658938.cms.
9. Kapstein, Matthew T., et al. Contributors (IX – XVII). The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri, Oxford University Press, 2018.
10. Kapstein, Matthew T., et al. Introduction: Why Indian Philosophy? Why now? by Jonardon Ganeri (1-14). The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri, Oxford University Press, 2018.
11. Kapstein, Matthew T., et al. Chapter 1: Interpreting Indian Philosophy Three Parables by Matthew Kapstein (15-31). The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri, Oxford University Press, 2018.
12. Kapstein, Matthew T., et al. Chapter 2: History and Doxography of the Philosophical Schools by Ashok Aklujkar (32-55). The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri, Oxford University Press, 2018.
13. Kapstein, Matthew T., et al. Chapter 3: Philosophy as a Distinct Cultural Practice: The Transregional Context by Justin E.H. Smith (56-74). The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri, Oxford University Press, 2018.
14. Kapstein, Matthew T., et al. Chapter 4: Comparison or Confluence in Philosophy? by Mark Sideritis (75-92). The Oxford Handbook of Indian Philosophy. Edited by Jonardon Ganeri, Oxford University Press, 2018.
15. Kumar, Anugrah. “Pakistan Acquits All 115 Suspects in Burning of Christians’ Homes.” The Christian Post, 29 Jan. 2017, christianpost.com/news/pakistan-acquits-all-115-suspects-in-burning-of-christians-homes.html.
16. Mallapur, Chaitanya. “Sikhs, Christians More Likely to Be Jailed than Hindus and Muslims.” Hindustan Times, Hindustan Times, 24 Oct. 2015, hindustantimes.com/india/hindus-least-likely-to-be-jailed-sikhs-christians-most-likely/story-Og4PhnhYsPlVLJglKyeOKL.html.
17. Nicholson, Andrew J. Chapter 10: Hindu Unity And The Non-Hindu Other (4806-5293). Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (South Asia Across the Disciplines). Columbia University Press, 2010.
18. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. Aphorism 23. THE ANTICHRIST. Translated by H. L. Mencken, The Project Gutenberg, 2006.
19. Sahgal, Neha, et al. “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 29 June 2021, pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/#2cadb6b1e440f0bf00cd84d9a5e73d3a.
20. Sekhar, – Metla Sudha, et al. “Who Is Chinmoy Krishna Das and Why Has He Been Arrested in Bangladesh?” The Economic Times, economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/all-about-the-iskcon-priest-who-has-been-arrested-in-bangladesh/articleshow/115694394.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.
21. Sridhar, Nithin. “No Evidence for Warfare or Invasion; Aryan Migration Too Is a Myth: B B Lal.” NewsGram, 30 Nov. 2015, newsgram.com/no-evidence-for-warfare-or-invasion-aryan-migration-too-is-a-myth-b-b-lal
22. Sridhar, Nithin. “Vedic and Harappan Are Respectively Literary and Material Facets of Same Civilization: B. B. Lal.” NewsGram, 2 Dec. 2015, newsgram.com/vedic-and-harappan-are-respectively-literary-and-material-facets-of-same-civilization-b-b-lal
23. “Surat Al-Bayyinah (the Clear Proof) – سورة البينة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/98/6. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
24. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/109. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
25. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/113. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
26. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/17. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
27. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/28. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
28. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/33. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
29. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/36. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
30. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/5. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
31. “Surat At-Tawbah (the Repentance) – سورة التوبة.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/9/66. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
32. “Surat Yūnus (Jonah) – سورة يونس.” The Noble Qur’an, quran.com, legacy.quran.com/10/13. Accessed 22 Mar. 2025.
33. TNN / Nov 29, 2024. “Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari: Bangladesh Monk Who’s Sparked Calls for a Ban on ISKCON: India News.” The Times of India, TOI, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/chinmoy-krishna-das-brahmachari-bangladesh-monk-whos-sparked-calls-for-a-ban-on-iskcon/articleshow/115787770.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.
34. TOI News Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Updated: Nov 30, 2024. “Two More ISKCON Priests Arrested in Bangladesh Following Chinmoy Krishna Das’s Detention: India News – Times of India.” The Times of India, TOI, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/two-more-iskcon-priests-arrested-in-bangladesh-following-chinmoy-krishna-dass-detention/articleshow/115848147.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.
35. TOI World Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Updated: Dec 1, 2024. “Bangladesh Stops Dozens of ISKCON Members from Crossing into India amid Rising Tensions: Report – Times of India.” The Times of India, TOI, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/bangladesh-stops-dozens-of-iskcon-members-from-crossing-into-india-amid-rising-tensions/articleshow/115871437.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.
36. “Two Pakistani Hindu Businessmen Shot Dead in Sindh.” The Indian Express, Thursday, June 07, 2018, 5 Jan. 2018, web.archive.org/web/20180607183942/https://indianexpress.com/article/pakistan/two-pakistani-hindu-businessmen-shot-dead-in-sindh-5012781/.
37. S. Department of State, U.S. Department of State, http://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/syria/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2025. For Reference:

The U.S. government estimates 10 percent of the population is Christian. There are reports, however, that indicate that number is considerably lower – approximately 2.5 percent. Of the 2.2 million Christians who lived in the country prior to the war, the NGO Open Doors USA estimates that only approximately 638,000 remain, approximately 3 percent of the population and a decrease of 39,000 Christians from the previous year.

Before the civil war, there were small Jewish populations in Aleppo and Damascus, but in 2020, the Jewish Chronicle reported that there were no known Jews still living in the country. Before the civil war, the country also had a Yezidi population of approximately 80,000. While there are no updated official figures on the number of Yezidis in the country, the Afrin Yazidi Union estimates that approximately 2,000 Yezidis remain in Afrin, compared with approximately 50-60,000 prior to 2011.

38. White, Ed. “Judge Dismisses Charges Tied to Genital Mutilation Case.” AP News, AP News, 28 Sept. 2021, apnews.com/article/religion-courts-detroit-183a427558377e73a150719d2205860e.

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Endnotes:

[1] Mallapur, Chaitanya. “Sikhs, Christians More Likely to Be Jailed than Hindus and Muslims.” Hindustan Times, Hindustan Times, 24 Oct. 2015, www.hindustantimes.com/india/hindus-least-likely-to-be-jailed-sikhs-christians-most-likely/story-Og4PhnhYsPlVLJglKyeOKL.html.

[1] Sekhar, – Metla Sudha, et al. “Who Is Chinmoy Krishna Das and Why Has He Been Arrested in Bangladesh?” The Economic Times, economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/new-updates/all-about-the-iskcon-priest-who-has-been-arrested-in-bangladesh/articleshow/115694394.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.

[2] TNN /  Nov 29, 2024. “Chinmoy Krishna Das Brahmachari: Bangladesh Monk Who’s Sparked Calls for a Ban on ISKCON: India News.” The Times of India, TOI, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/chinmoy-krishna-das-brahmachari-bangladesh-monk-whos-sparked-calls-for-a-ban-on-iskcon/articleshow/115787770.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.

[3] TOI News Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Updated: Nov 30, 2024. “Two More ISKCON Priests Arrested in Bangladesh Following Chinmoy Krishna Das’s Detention: India News – Times of India.” The Times of India, TOI, timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/two-more-iskcon-priests-arrested-in-bangladesh-following-chinmoy-krishna-dass-detention/articleshow/115848147.cms. Accessed 11 Mar. 2025.

[1] Elst, Koenraad. Chapter Two: Negationism in India (pgs. 56 – 59). Negationism in India: Concealing the Record of Islam. Voice of India, 2014. For reference:

The Muslim conquests, down to the 16th century, were for the Hindus a pure struggle of life and death. Entire cities were burnt down and the populations massacred, with hundreds of thousands killed in every campaign, and similar numbers deported as slaves. Every new invader made (often literally) his hills of Hindus skulls. Thus, the conquest of Afghanistan in the year 1000 was followed by the annihilation of the Hindu population; the region is still called the Hindu Kush, i.e. Hindu slaughter. The Bahmani sultans (1347-1480) in central India made it a rule to kill 100,000 captives in a single day, and many more on other occasions. The conquest of the Vijayanagar empire in 1564 left the capital plus large areas of Karnataka depopulated. And so on.

As a contribution to research on the quantity of the Islamic crimes against humanity, we may mention Prof. K.S.Lal’s estimates about the population figures in medieval India (Growth of Muslim Population in India). According to his calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). More research is needed before we can settle for a quantitatively accurate evaluation of Muslim rule in India, but at least we know for sure that the term crime against humanity is not exaggerated.

[2] Nicholson, Andrew J. Chapter 10: Hindu Unity And The Non-Hindu Other (4806-5293). Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (South Asia Across the Disciplines). Columbia University Press, 2010.

[3] Nicholson, Andrew J. Chapter 10: Hindu Unity And The Non-Hindu Other (4806-5293). Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (South Asia Across the Disciplines). Columbia University Press, 2010.

[1] Sridhar, Nithin. “Vedic and Harappan Are Respectively Literary and Material Facets of Same Civilization: B. B. Lal.” NewsGram, 2 Dec. 2015, www.newsgram.com/vedic-and-harappan-are-respectively-literary-and-material-facets-of-same-civilization-b-b-lal

[1] Sahgal, Neha, et al. “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 29 June 2021, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/#2cadb6b1e440f0bf00cd84d9a5e73d3a.

[2] Sahgal, Neha, et al. “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 29 June 2021, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/#2cadb6b1e440f0bf00cd84d9a5e73d3a.