Ideas

Trivialising Tragedy: Death Is A Small Price To Pay For That 'Amazing Grace'

Aravindan Neelakandan

Jul 13, 2021, 08:47 PM | Updated 08:47 PM IST


A Church
A Church

There is a point of convergence between Christian rightwing and Marxist leftwing — they agree that the diversity should be wiped out for the oncoming utopia or kingdom of heaven.

Deaths of a few thousand pagan children or a few million pagans are then a small price to pay for the descent of that amazing 'grace'.

There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul. (Trader Eskel Gorov in Asimov’s Foundation)

When I read Declan Leary’s article in American Conservative justifying the deaths of native Indian children, my first reaction was that he was writing so much like the leftist-Nehruvian 'negationists' in India.

He was defending the indefensible and with arguments which sound so chillingly similar to that of Romilla Thapar — it was not Christianity silly, there were secular reasons.

In fact, it was the secular government not funding the missions enough that led to the deaths. And when you die you are buried. So do not sensationalise the mass graves of children. Satish Chandra and Thapar could be proud.

The only problem is that it has come from a white rightwing Christian. Let there be no doubt. The Christian establishment will not repeat this mistake. Soon a credible leftwing and if possible, a native 'Amerindian' professor from some university would write a book on the subject couching the same argument in leftist jargons. It would find traction not condemnation.

In India this method has done wonders for deep colonisation. Note the following words of Leary:

Whatever sacrifices were exacted in pursuit of that grace — the suffocation of a noble pagan culture; an increase in disease and bodily death due to government negligence; even the sundering of natural families — is worth it.

That should make any civilised human being feel bitter in his or her being. Right? Now read this — statement of Karl Marx on British rule in India on 10 June 1853:

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution. Then, whatever bitterness the spectacle of the crumbling of an ancient world may have for our personal feelings, we have the right, in point of history, to exclaim with Goethe: Should this torture then torment us Since it brings us greater pleasure? Were not through the rule of Timur Souls devoured without measure?”

Note the similarity. Note the trivialising of human suffering and destruction. Note how the end, conceived from the point of view of one who gloats to have the only truth, ultimately justifies whatever inhuman crimes that are heaped upon the humans perceived as less civilised, less developed and as worshipping false gods.

Unless you embrace Christianity, Islam or Marxism, in that order, your life is not completely human in the Western scheme of things. Do not think Leary is a typical rightwing aberration in the glorious heritage of 'Christendom'. No. His worldview is the norm. It is his blunt expression that is problematic.

But there is hope in the secular humanism of the West. That space the left is trying to steal.

The secular humanist tradition of the West which can very easily be mistaken for the Marxist-left is different. It can have biases and prejudices from its Christian heritage. But it has the wherewithal to question these biases and emerge on the side of universal humanism.

When left takes over this space it trivialises genuine concerns and fights for justice with silly fashion statements of 'wokism' and always silly fashion statements are always better than genuine regrets and transformations.

Once you point this out and at once the salvo is hurled at you, shall be "you Brahminical supremacist, you Hindu Fascist…"

Yes. That is what the British told the freedom fighters of India. They justified their gross impoverishing of India with the propaganda of Brahminical oppression. Never mind that the famines which killed millions of Indians under the British Raj killed essentially the economically deprived sections who were scheduled communities.

Never mind the fact that it was the British Raj which came with the classification of Indians communities into criminal castes and tribes — a scheme which even the most biased parts of Manu Smriti could not conceive. Never mind the fact that it was the British Raj and its aiding comrades in arm evangelical missions, which separated the children of the so-called criminal tribes from their parents and extracted slave labour from them within their missionary walls.

More importantly, never mind the fact that the colonised intelligentsia of India never called for justice to the crimes the civilising missions did to India’s scheduled communities.

Just say ‘Down with Brahminical Patriarchy’ and you are a progressive, anti-neo-colonial progressive.

Remember that Indian intelligentsia is not just the creation of colonial raj. But it has also been sculpted by the Soviet inputs, facilitated by the Nehruvian dynasty raj that ruled India for most of the time. So it is in their memetic DNA to not feel any human sympathy for any tragedy that happens to Hindus as Hindus or for that matter to Jews, and even other Pagans.

Naturally, they devalue the lives lost to civilising missions of Marxists, Maoists, evangelists and Islamists. So, 1971 genocide is nothing. Kashmiri ethnic cleansing is nothing. Hindus and Sikhs getting massacred in Afghanistan is nothing. Chakma tribals getting wiped out is nothing. Jamatiya tribals hunted down by Baptist Church backed NLFT is nothing. Reang tribals driven out of Mizoram for not converting to Christianity and made to live in sub-human conditions in Tripura is nothing.

You can remember the regular breast-beating that happens each time an iron-dome destroys a rocket from Gaza and the euphoria each time a Hamas rocket manages to land inside non-Gaza part of Israel. And the breast-beating and euphoria happens in India. There are op-eds written and demonstrations — not just by Islamists but also by leftist intellectuals. There are poems and painting exhibitions even.

But when was the last time the same 'humanist' activists did anything even remote for the Yazidi women and little girls raped and sold in sex market by terror group Islamic State?

You cannot remember of course, because there are almost none.

Their radar screens are programmed to not get a blip from all these human tragedies. They getting eliminated is a small price to pay for either ‘Thy Kingdom come' of the ‘Father thou art in Heaven’ or for the homogenised utopia of the Marxist state.

This is then the point of convergence of Declan Leary and Karl Marx, Chomsky supporting Polpot and Romilla Thapar inventing excuses for Gaznavi’s Somnath massacre of Hindus. This is also why even if the Pope happens to ask forgiveness of the native 'Amerindians', he will never ask the forgiveness of Hindus for Goa Inquisition — the longest inquisition in history.

Because Hindus, the last Pagans, are still living. That is their crime like that is the crime of Yazidi women who get sold in sex-markets by Islamic State, and that was the crime of the now dead children of native populations of Canada. Amen and Lal Salaam to that.

Aravindan is a contributing editor at Swarajya.


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