Monday, January 15, 2024

To,
Hon’able Sri Narendra Modi
Prime Minister
Government of India
New Delhi, India

Honorable Modiji,
You have succeeded in making idol-worship India’s #1 political issue for January 2024. It is a milestone in Hindutva’s effort to make India a Hindu nation. Therefore, please allow me to explain why our founding fathers did not promote worship of mythical gods and goddesses. Instead, they adopted “Jan Gan Man” as our national anthem. It teaches us to pray to the sovereign Creator, the shaper of India’s destiny (Bharat Bhagya Vidhata).

Our fathers accepted Pandit M. M. Malviya’s suggestion to make Satyameva Jayate (Truth Alone Triumphs) our national motto because they wanted Truth to replace myth as our authority. They agreed with reformers such as Mahatma Jyotiba Phule that Truth liberates, while myths are made to enslave.

God is a Spirit. He has no physical shape or form. That’s why every effort to make an image of the invisible God, creates false gods.

Worshipping man-made gods, creation, or creatures made by God or human imagination, weakened India. That is because we are created to seek Truth; to believe what is true. That is scientific temper. It is necessary to establish our dominion over creation. A culture that worships creation makes itself incapable of understanding and governing creation.

Human culture flourishes when we seek God’s kingdom and do His will on earth. Myths may be good entertainment. They may impart some wisdom and societal values. However, allowing myth-makers to make our gods put us on a downward slide into deception’s abyss.

Religion influences the way we live. When temples teach myths as the foundation of a culture, why shouldn’t businessmen use fake account books? Or, the police fabricate false cases to harass innocent citizens? Why should lawyers coach witnesses to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Our courts — the temples of justice — are rapidly losing their credibility, because our culture of myth-making is turning them into centers of corruption.

Whoever makes our gods has to create our ethics. This is the great dilemma, sir, that you are facing, as you prepare to inaugurate the Ram Temple in Ayodhya on January 22nd.

The Shankaracharyas, the archbishops of the “Sanatan Dharma,” are telling you that since you are married, you cannot participate in Pran Prathishtha without your wife. As a young man, you followed god Rama when you abandoned her without divorcing.

Is wife a husband’s property that can be abandoned or gambled away at will as did Rama and the Pandavas? Or, does she have a dignity that must be protected? If marriage is sacred, then is it not necessary to grant her a legitimate divorce? The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 rejected the Ramayana’s myth-made ethics in order to restore to Hindu wives the dignity that God had bestowed upon them. Would your attempt to make India a Hindu Nation drive our women back into dark ages?

Please allow me to mention one more consequence of Idolatry: Your attempt to inaugurate the new Ram Temple has run into troubled waters. Many Pundits, including the Shankaracharyas, are insisting that as a non-Brahmin you cannot be the Chief Guest at the Pran Prathishta ceremony. They are saying that you are abusing their religion for your political gain. You are violating, not promoting, the “Sanatan” Caste-system. According to them, Brahmin dharma gurus must have the seat of honor: you ought to sit at their feet.

I commend your attempt to violate hierarchical caste system. Yet, the learned pundits are right. Making India a Hindu Nation requires reviving the Hindu social ethics of intrinsic inequity of castes. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

Is human equality a divinely revealed Truth? If so, shouldn’t new India make EQUALITY its cultural foundation? Or, must Hindutva drive India back into caste-based inequality? Should Sanatan culture weaken India by making the vast majority — the Bahujan — fourth and fifth class citizens?

Sir, the Ram Mandir movement could deliver votes to you. But India will become a great nation only if it is built on Truth. Myth-makers want their will to be done in India: our Anthem prays that God’s will may be done in India:

Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
Dispenser of India’s destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindhu,
Gujarat and Maratha,
Of the Dravida and Orissa and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
mingles in the music of Jamuna and Ganges and is
chanted by the waves of the Indian Sea.
They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
Thou dispenser of India’s destiny.
Victory, victory, victory to thee.

Respectfully Yours For Truth’s Triumph,

Vishal Mangalwadi

PS. Click here to read my letter >>> Idolatry: Essence and Consequences written to Mr. Arun Shourie in 1994 (30th Aug). It was published in my book, “Missionary Conspiracy: Letters To A Postmodern Hindu.”