About

I am the ultimate and irrepressible critic, and in the words of Eric Hoffer, probably a “man of words”. I love life and all living things and therefore – hey snooping authorities, or paranoid governments! there is nothing to fear from me! I am too much of a critic to take sides blindly, and my “Guru” is Socrates. The only freedom I cherish is the freedom of my mind to think irrespective of what religions, races, or paranoia of small men demand that we all think.

There is no need to jump to conclusions about my ethnicity, or race or religion. Dikgaj is derived from the very ancient Indian language Sanskrit by conjoining two root words having Puranic and astronomical connotations but commonly used in the sense of a  “wise man” or a “seer”. The Indian subcontinent was always a fascination for me, and hence all its religions and cultures. I like India’s vibrant colours, scents, and its immense sense of humanity. By studying and preserving India I believe the world will study and preserve unique aspects of itself otherwise almost lost forever.  My interest in India has led me to learn  several of its ancient languages as well as some which were primarily used by the Islamic chroniclers. There are many individuals, not necessarily of Indian origin,  who  are quite sympathetic to and also fascinated  by the history and  culture of India.

I believe in the future, one day mankind will leave for space, and earth will then be the original homeland – the “Uhrheimat” left behind. I believe religions are “post” ideologies, they are attempts at making sense of past and immediate experience. At a very mundane level, systems that arise out of optimizing collections of interacting agents can appear to be too “complex” to be without “intelligent super design” – and this is how the concept of a supreme being comes about. In spite of my basic inability so far to accept a “super intelligent supreme supra-human authority” one aspect of Hinduism and Buddhism always attracted me – the chance to be reborn as a human being, – it is too tempting to think of the possibility of going to an unknown planet in a future lifetime, or explore space, or be a sailor on a warmer Titan!

I am against any ideological framework including religions that do not allow freedom of thought and the right of free speech. Both Christianity and Hinduism have lost this censorial power because of certain developmental components within these two faiths even from pre-modern periods that enabled protest and reform movements to form, emerge and modernize these faiths. In today’s world, I find that it is only the Islamic faith in all its major forms (frankly the Sunni a bit more than the Shia) which are absolutely a menace and danger to all that I hold as the most precious of the freedoms and birthrights of all humans – the power and right to think freely and speak freely. Islam has stubbornly refused to change, and is increasingly reviving its essentially militarist, violent, and devious methods of imposing hegemony. Christians have many “homelands”, as a result of colonial  misappropriation of the homelands of others,  but for “Hindus” and Buddhists and Jainas, the Indian subcontinent is the only undisputed homeland. Outside of India, they face subtle or not-so-subtle racism and broad hints that they should “get back where they belong”  whenever  the host populations feel insecure about their own qualifications and jobs. I have always admired my Hindu professional colleagues’  bemused and  rather philosophical tolerance of such racism.

I firmly believe that Indians should culturally unite and rise above divisions that have essentially been created or redefined with sinister aims by the colonial regimes of the Muslims as well as the British. Europeans are already realizing the costs of their violently racist and shortsighted policies that have led to a strengthening of Islamic hegemony over the world, and their economic greed may still cost them further losses. Hinduism has shown sufficient depth and flexibility  to modernize without much  objection, and  I personally would not feel threatened to  live  and think  under a modern Hindu order  but I  would be very very scared to  live under Islam, and I can understand very well  why many Hindus chose to  commit suicide  rather than survive under Muslim rule.

I do not support everything that passes for Hinduism, and have found in my researches that a lot of that stuff developed in reaction to external cultures but the modern Hindus are blamed for those “hindu” characteristics.

Non-Muslims of India, just as non-Muslims of the world, should unite to eradicate Islam as a practising philosophy to overcome this last challenge of our times to human freedom and progress. It is not my ambit to prescribe methods of doing this on a blog. Hindus and non-Muslims of India know much better than me what methods they will need to adapt, to eradicate Islam as a practised religion and embrace the ex-Muslims as their brothers and sisters.