Breaking Manipur : Western Interventions in Manipuri Faultines

By RK Rishikesh Sinha

Thanks to Rajiv Malhotra’s path breaking book “Breaking India – Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines”, that shook people like me out of their comfort zone. He is the rarest breed of Indian intellectual who has disrupted the whole Indian narrative of our history, Indology, sociology, anthropology, Sanskrit, South Asian Studies and other related fields.

After reading the book, I am assured that there are lot of forces working in Manipur, and Hinduism is at receiving end. The Hindu Meitei are in siege. The practitioners of the Hindu Dharma are fighting a war against a well orchestrated enemy of US and European churches, academics, think-tanks, foundations, governments and human rights groups. The script followed in Dravidian and Dalit chauvinism has been photocopied in Manipur.

It is impossible to study done by Rajiv Malhotra in his fatty 626-page book ‘Breaking India’ to be narrated here. The body of work (in the form of books) done by the author has not been done in India since centuries. The West starting with colonialism and till today is studying India at various capacities. And we Indians never studied them. We accepted every western-originated stuff without an iota of doubt and happily implemented it in India. As all this stuff are God-given.

Here is the summary of the book that is carried in the jacket of the book.

India’s integrity is being undermined by three global networks that have well-established operating bases inside India: (i) Islamic radicalism linked with Pakistan; (ii) Maoists and Marxist radicals supported by China via intermediaries such as Nepal; and (iii) Dravidian and Dalit identity separatism being fostered by the West in the name of human rights. The book focuses on the third: the role of the US and European churches, academics, think-tanks, foundations, governments and human rights groups in fostering separation of the identities of Dravidian and Dalit communities from the rest of India. […] The book reveals how outdated racial theories continue to provide academic frameworks and fuel the rhetoric that can trigger civil wars and genocides. The Dravidian movement’s 200-year history has such worrying origins.

Western Academic Construction of Aryan Race

The book beautifully traces back the circumstances in which the Aryan/ Aryan Race was invented in western academic circles and its implication in Europe, India, Sri Lanka, and Africa. The book gives a death blow to all those who are riding in the Aryan Race bandwagon.

In the case of Europe

In the eighteenth century, when the traditional religious belief of be Europe was threatened by the Enlightenment, Europeans looked for a golden past. Many hoped they could find it in India, which had been the source of much of Europe’s imports for centuries. In this search for identity, they began to hypothesise and construct an idealized ‘Aryan race’ through distorted reading of Indian scriptures. Fed by virulent German nationalism, anti-Semitism and Race Science, this manipulation ultimately led to the Nazism and the Holocaust.

In case of India

In the late eighteenth century, the Indologist Max Muller proposed the Aryan category strictly as a linguistic group, but it soon got transformed into the Aryan race by colonial administrators who used Race Science to make a taxonomical division of traditional Indian communities. The castes designated as ‘non-Aryan’ were marginalized or excluded in depictions of Hindu society. In parallel, the Church evangelists working in South India constructed a Dravidian race identity. They de-linked Tamil Culture from its pan-Indian cultural matrix, and claimed that its spirituality was closer to Christianity than to the Aryan North Indian culture

Applying the same in Manipur, we find the same script. There has been and it is going on to delink Manipuri culture from pan Indian Hindu cultural matrix by Church evangelist and ethnic identity sympathizers. In this separation process, Hinduism has been sidelined; consequently the Hindu meitei population is falling to Christianity like the Dravidians. And those who are following the native religion like Sanamahism, it is very visibly written on the wall that once Hindu dharmic thought gets demised, in no time the local faith will be presented in state museum. Since only the Hindu thought can accommodate any localized religious faith. Neither Islam nor Christianity can accommodate localized religion.

A must-read book for every Indian shows how in the study of India, the Aryan race that was actually the creation for the European Identity politics took its path. The role played by the colonial Indologists, European Romanticists, German-identity crisis, Race Science gave the grand shape of Aryans, and later transforming it into the Aryan Race.

The author joins the dots of the works done by Sir William Jones (explained the relationship between Sanskrit and European languages through the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel. This myth became the blueprint for the racist interpretation of Indian society; justified British rule in India as a civilizing mission to rescue the Indians, who had corrupted the ‘original Biblical truth’), Franz Bopp (he coined ‘Indo European’ to end the schism between Germanic and non-Germanic European), Johann Gottfried (claimed Sanskrit belonged to his Indo-European ‘Aryan’ past; the discovery of India was the re-discovery of Europe); Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (claimed modern Germans had migrated from India); Ernest Renan (hypothesized Aryans were more creative because of their mythology and the proliferation of gods); Friedrich Max Muller (a functionary for the colonialists and for Christian evangelist, he saw Indian civilization, especially its multiple gods, as a corrupt form of ancient glory); Adolphe Pictet (claimed ancient Indians had primitive monotheism, later fell into polytheism in order to explain natural phenomena); Rudolph Friedrich Grau (his books were used by missionaries to embed Vedic thought within Christian symbols for the Hindu people conversion); Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau (claimed European Aryans got debased by mixing with darker native races); Houston Stewart Chamberlain (his book linked Indian caste with race), Herbert Hope Risley (his research classified Indians into seven major races with Aryans and Dravidians as the two opposite poles, and morphs Jati-Varna into race), Sheldon Pollock (he is a Padmashri awardee Government of India, Sanskrit scholar, he claims Sanskrit/ Ramayana/ Mahabharata is political, oppressive, dead; Valimiki Ramayan came after Buddhist influence).

It is unfortunate that still we Indians are carrying the baggage of Aryan and Aryan race description that was developed by Christianized Eurocentric people to understand the Indian society.

Inventing the Dravidian Race/ Dravidian Christianity

The book then goes into describing how the Dravidian Race is invented by Reverend John Stevenson, who was sent by the Scottish Missionary Society, and Brian Houghton Hodgson. It goes further stating how the conspiracy is born that is of cunning Aryan Brahmins exploited innocent Dravidians. In the section ‘De-Indianizing the Tamil traditions’, the author writes : since colonial days, there has been an ongoing attempt to construct an ethnic-religious Tamil identity separate from the rest of India, and to find Christian roots for this so-called ‘Tamil Religion’.

Social Institutional Control of Social Discourse in India

The West axis with Academy, Funding Agencies, Churches, Government influence Indian intellectuals, academic institutions in the academy, media and NGOs. For example, the US government uses USAID to channel funds through transnational evangelical organisations such as World Vision. Funding Agencies: Infemit, a transnational network of evangelicals targeting India, is funded by Crowell Trust, a US-based Christian fundamentalist funding agency. Academy: the academic study of India overlaps with a type of activism that encourages centrifugal forces in India. Churches: the US-based evangelical movement launched Dalit Freedom Network, which is in turn has an Indian associate called All India Christian Council (AICC). Church backed institutional networks in India have considerable influence and support of Western government organisations. Media: there is an extensive Christian evangelical media network in India aligned with 'secular' media. 

Conclusion

Today the Hindu Meitei in particular and Hindus all over India are oblivious of the danger we have been engulfed. Our so-called secular media/ academicians/ politicians / intellectuals are corrupt and are anti-Hindu. Manipur has been turned into a laboratory to convert Hindus by Christians. The community has been targeted by notorious Christian organization Joshua Project. Like the Tamil / Dravidian identity separatism that has been constructed with the backing of western government-church-academic-think tanks nexus, Manipur and Hindu Meitei are under siege from this forces. The million dollar question is when Hindu Meitei would turn their gaze towards the Christian forces in Manipur and come out with a book similar to Rajiv Malhotra book with the title “Breaking Manipur- Western Interventions in Manipuri Faultines”.