Many of us are aghast at how a group of people from within our own society have had their thinking twisted out to such an extent that they now want to celebrate Ravana in place of Rama or celebrate Mahishasura in place of Maa Kaali.

This has been bothering me from a long time. My first suspect for this kind of ideological perversion amongst these populations is of course, the Marxist. Tragically, this Marxist in the Indian context in some cases happens to be someone who grew up in orthodox Hindu family. The convergence of Sri Vaishnavism with Marxism is a phenomenon that needs a closer study as some ardent supporters of Marxism come from families which have roots in Sri Vaishnavism. This clan of people must've had certain background of working for the cause of social justice seeing the elders in their families who were inspired by the tenets of Sri Vaishnavism post the Bhakti movement. But then these seedlings that were planted in their homes were watered and nourished in the fertile lands of Marxist dominated educational institutions.

Many of these individuals have grown into mighty fruit bearing trees and have provided both the nourishment and the shelter needed to have many seeds that fell from these trees to take roots and grow into a dense forest. As poisonous as these trees are, there is very little we are able to do as these trees have surplus supply of nourishments that is generously pumped in the form of grants to run educational institutions. All our efforts are limited to throwing stones on these trees by way of our criticizing their heinous acts every time we see a celebration (such as glorifying Ravana over Rama) that hurts our sensibilities.

I would still not bother much about these perverts if all of their obnoxious celebrations were restricted to their own little circles. But that is not really the case as we know. These perverts have made inroads into the very heart of Bharat which is the rural and tribal population of India. Flushed with money that poured in through anti national fronts that have facades as NGOs, these Marxist groups have established networks to keep these gullible people on their grid. For 70+ years, they've had unrestricted access to these gullible people to use them any which way they want to break India that is Bharat. And this Breaking of people has alienated many of these folks from their rich ancestral heritage rooted in Sanatana Dharma.

This alienation of these folks from Hindu fold and understanding how they did it is crucial for those of us who have skin the game. Those of us who worry about losing the ground to rampant Christian conversions that turn these converts into visceral haters of not just Hinduism but everything Bharat have to take time to understand the ways of Marxist propaganda. While the conversion to Christianity by itself is not something that we have to lose sleep over, it is how these conversions are used to create an environment of hatred and contempt in these people for the larger Hindu society that needs a careful study.

We will now see how our own Puranic anecdotes have been subverted and propagated amongst these simple people by these Marxist propogandists who also are expert story tellers, albeit those who twist the stories to suit their own vicious agenda of turning our people into our bitter enemies.

A Marxist historian who is notoriously famous for subversion of Hindu texts is the 99-yr old Ranajit Guha. No, I don’t think Ranajit Guha is related by blood to Ramachandra Guha but they happen to have a “kinship” of the minds…

Ranajit Guha was born in 1923, to a family of prosperous landowners in East Bengal. He moved to Calcutta for his university education and got caught up in the heavily left-wing student milieu of the 1940s, during the last years of British rule. In 1947, upon the attainment of Independence, Guha was sent as a student representative to Europe by the Communist Party of India. He travelled widely in Europe and the Middle East and took the Trans-Siberian railway to China shortly after the Communist revolution there. He returned to India in 1953 and taught there till 1959. Between 1959 and 1980 he worked in England, first at the University of Manchester and then at the University of Sussex. It was at Sussex, in the 1970s, that he and a group of his students and like-minded associates would begin to have discussions about radical history that would eventually feed into the Subaltern Studies project.

Subaltern studies aims to uncover the histories of groups that within the colonial and nationalist archives went largely shunted to the margins or undocumented altogether. Turning towards popular accounts of public history and memory to combat what Guha terms as “elitism,” the subaltern studies group’s primary focus was and is to recover, examine, and privilege the agency of the underclass within the networks of capitalism, colonialism, and nationalism.

Ranajit Guha’s specific obsession was to establish that Bharatiya society had an inherent hegemony (towards the underclass) built into its fabric due to caste hierarchy where the so called “elitists” have been economically exploiting the peasants, tribals and artisan populations from time immemorial and squarely place the blame for this divide in the society on religious and cultural moorings of Bharat. He sees the people of Bharat from ancient times as two distinct groups – a small minority that dominates and a vast majority that gets dominated. Hegemony as he sees it in Bharat is on account of intellectual and moral leadership directed by contradictory political and cultural agents. He says Culture is a political product of intellectuals and is developed through ideological indoctrination. He further argues that the cultural moorings of Bharat supported this hegemony and points to customs and rituals amongst different populations of Bharat surrounding the Solar Eclipse to bolster his Marxist ideological standpoint.

The idea that a solar eclipse meant a demon was swallowing the sun shows up in eclipse folklore across the globe. These kinds of associations of natural phenomenon with local folklores are not unique to ancient Bharat. What is unique to Bharat is that the complexity and diversity of its population afforded an opportunity for different groups of people to come up with their own unique rituals during these natural phenomena.

Many populations across ancient Bharat like in other parts of the globe associated darkening of the sun to gods getting angry with humanity for its follies. As a way to appease these angry higher powers and render symbolic apology for their follies, people in some section of Bharat followed a custom of making special offerings to gods and goddesses in the temples after the solar eclipse.

In some parts of Bharat, we also see huge celebration by way of exchanging gifts, dancing, singing and communal cooking and eating once the solar eclipse ends. This of course is not without reason as people saw surviving a solar eclipse and coming out at the other of the eclipse safely as some kind of divine blessing. Before taking part in these celebrations, people of Bharat across all societies undergo a purification process. The temporary disappearance of Sun (which is worshipped as a major life force in the universe) during an eclipse was seen as a bad omen. Several rituals are conducted to minimize the negative effects of this natural phenomenon. So, there is a ritual of people taking a bath, and changing into fresh and clean clothes. Depending on the availability and access to holy water from the Ganges, people either sprinkle holy water from Ganges on their heads or take a dip in the Ganges for this ritualistic bath to wash away the evil done by an eclipse.

It is these rituals surrounding the Solar eclipse that Ranajit Guha used as a canvass to paint a caricatured image of Bharat using the Marxist hues and brushes. He went to great lengths to establish that among what were reduced to “untouchable” communities, the puranic anecdotes transform and reverse their values. The Marxist devious agenda turned Rahu from eclipse folklore into an exploited peasant in the hands of abusive landlords. Not just landlords- the Marxist also added to this list of abusers, the very Vishnu.

Ranajit Guha propagated the Mahabharata version of events following the churning of the ocean turning Shri Vishnu into a mean trickster who perpetrated a mean trick on asuras in general and Rahu in particular. He argued that this cosmic drama plays out in heightened colors the banality of daily evil on earth. Just like Vishnu (egged on by sneaky Sun and Moon) played a mean trick on asuras in general and Rahu in particular, the abusive landlords (egged on by present day religious heads - read as Brahmin pujaris, priests, temple personnel) have unleashed inexhaustible repertoire of brutality and deception on laboring castes. By inserting the present day exploited peasant into the cosmic drama in the role of Rahu, Guha turned the spurned and impure Asura Rahu into a victim of manifest injustice. This victim is also an outcaste who is relentlessly exploited and shunned by all those who are above him in the caste hierarchy. This master stroke of the Marxist mind turned Shri Vishnu, the very protector of all three lokas into someone who is manipulated by the Devas to be a tormentor of Rahu, the ancestor of present-day labor communities.

Guha didn’t stop here but also categorized the rituals surrounding the solar eclipse based on his own whims and fancies into those prevalent among untouchables (made up of peasants, artisans and tribals) and those prevalent among the landlord communities which have appropriated priestly class, local administrators, and police personnel. Guha restricted the ritualistic purification ceremonies to the priestly class and their close associates who in addition to taking purification baths also wash the temples and everything within the temple premises. This social behavior, Guha argues is consistent with a thought process where the ascendancy of Rahu over the Sun during eclipse spells danger to the purity of the upper-caste existence.

At the other end of the social order, Guha says are celebrations of labor communities which are celebrating their short-lived victory over the oppressors which during an eclipse is a brief shadow cast on Sun. Just like an eclipse creates a stage for frontal collisions between the two orders of being, from time to time there are also frontal collisions between the one who exploits and the one who gets exploited. When the exploiter finds himself cornered every once in a long while like in the case of a solar eclipse, he resorts to placatory gestures such as giving gifts to the labor communities. This gift giving during solar eclipse that is customary in Bharat is seen by Guha as an acknowledgement of the power germinating in the womb of the most degraded form of laboring life at a time when the lower orders of the society come very close to upper orders. Guha continues that the labor communities return gift to the priestly community during the eclipse is the labor communities’ restraint to unleashing social violence.

It is these kinds of tactful distortions of the puranic stories that are spread among those who have been exploited and rendered absolutely poor after the British rule in India which form the bedrock for an atmosphere of suspicion between different groups of people in Indian society. Many a gullible youth have fallen prey to the Marxist propogandists who used our own puranic stories to create huge divisions in our society which eventually lead to many estranged amongst us to walk into the enemy trap and become puppets in the hands of those who have taken a vow to break India that is Bharat.

The greatest of deceptions of these intellectually dishonest Marxists who substituted Rahu with impoverished tribal or an exploited peasant was to underplay the colonial exploitation that was the real culprit responsible for the pathetic plight of these populations. This under playing the role of colonial exploitation was driven by an agenda to depict the Bharatiya society as being inherently hegemonic from ancient times.

It is important for those of us who are worried about rampant conversions and alienation of our very own from Sanatana Dharma to know what was cooked in the Marxist kitchens and dished out to many gullible people. In this knowing, we develop a sense of empathy for those who have gone astray which will enable us to make more informed decisions when it comes to working on issues concerning nation building.

Image source:ostour.dohainstitute.org