He should also realise that the ideology now influencing India has grown from the country’s soil and going against it is bad politics

Udhayanidhi Stalin sought the eradication of Sanatana Dharma from the country, comparing it to diseases like dengue or COVID-19. Unfortunately, an MLA and son of a chief minister should be so ignorant and irresponsible. Does he not know that his and his father’s namesake Josef Stalin, despite his overwhelming power, could not abolish inequality? Rather, he widened the gap in wealth between the rich and the poor in a much larger number of people. The only difference was that most of the wealth of those who had it had to be in Switzerland (i.e., Swiss banks) to sustain the economic chastity of Stalin’s Soviets, Lenin’s legacy and Marx’s prophecy.

The communist experiment from Cuba in the West to China in the East has ranged from blood-soaked disasters to miserable flops. If Udhayanidhi knows all this, I am sorry, he is neither ignorant nor irresponsible but is an apostle of doubtful intentions. Perhaps he wishes to overtake Josef Stalin and become as great as Mao Zedong or match the current strongman Xi Jinping, and take over all conceivable assets of Tamil Nadu, including land, and administrative apparatus in the state, much like the Chinese Communist Party which owns virtually everything, including the armed forces; the country and its people, i.e., the Chinese, own very little. Otherwise, why should we wish to eradicate Sanatana Dharma and all its adherents?

If it is only for the sake of equality, this is not possible, as we have shown. The reason is simple – every individual’s karma is different and therefore, his/her bhagya (fate) is separate. It is scientific to realise that the output would be according to the input; the result will be dependent on the cause.

If Udhayanidhi Stalin studies his state property, he may well find that more of its citizens have faith in Sanatana Dharma and adhere to the Hindu mode of worship. The problem with his understanding is that the Hindu is mature and seldom reacts; he prefers to ignore. That is why Muslims were able to rule large parts of India for some seven hundred years, with the Hindu civilization surviving almost intact. Two centuries of British rule too left Hindus largely unscathed.

Now is the time when Hinduism is reawakening; hence it is a wholly wrong time for Udhayanidhi to try and provoke Sanatana Dharma and hope to ensnare it. Nor is it the time to pamper the anti-Hindus; they are nowhere near the majority. It is, therefore, not only bad politics but wholly wrong politics as well. The paucity of Hindu reaction has misled the junior Stalin; it equally misled the communist parties as well as the Congress and others. The strategy authored by Jawaharlal Nehru, who claimed he was a Hindu only by accident of birth, a Muslim by culture and an Englishman by education and upbringing might have paid dividends then.

Jawaharlal Nehru’s ultimate legacy was a European successor. Stalin ought to realise that now, the Hindu is reacting to assert his rights. Or else, how is a Yogi ruling Uttar Pradesh? And how very effectively? The TN chief minister’s son should also realise that the ideology now influencing India has grown from the country’s soil. That is why Hindus are taking to it like fish to water.

The new wind is not confined to India. The United Kingdom has a Prime Minister of Hindu birth who has no hesitation in proclaiming “Jai Shri Rama” at Cambridge. The USA has more than one Presidential candidate for the election of 2024. A significant number of global corporations based in the USA are headed by Indian Chief Executives who are Hindu by faith. The World Bank is headed by a chief of Indian origin. These are all men and women whose family origins date back to Sanatana Dharma. There is a phenomenon that causes this new tide in the affairs of the human world, as they become more educated and aware. Human beings are not satisfied with prescriptions dictated by prophets and messiahs. This is rather like the Ten Commandments of Prophet Moses. They would like to discover spirituality themselves, which Hinduism or Sanatana Dharma enables by not insisting upon either God or the Devil, but upon karma.

Since Udhayanidhi and his spokespersons are harping on equality, and wish to eradicate Sanatana Dharma because its adherents do not enjoy equality, let me again draw his attention to the prescription of Karl Marx, which spawned many communist regimes in the world in the form of countries that fell under the sway of this ideology, all of them striving to implement it rigorously and oftentimes, harshly. The only result was that the economies of all these countries crashed to the ground; China and North Korea have systems that are anything but Marxist, yet call themselves communist. That is the price equality extracted from the people on whom it was sought to be imposed. Udhayanidhi’s neighbouring state Kerala continues to flirt with equality. But how many Malayalis are equal? Intelligent and capable as they are, are they progressing? The reality is that if they want to do well in life, they have to emigrate from Kerala to be able to flourish.

(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal