The Vacuity Of Religious/ Racial Nationalism

Religious/ racial nationalism is surging globally, and with more than a little help from the USA. This is hugely ironic, of course, given our putative constitutional mandate to enforce the separation of church and state. But hey, why let the Constitution get in the way of empire? In America, everything is sacrificed to empire- just like in ancient Rome.

The religious right here in the US is largely white, rural, southern, Protestant and Republican. But when Zionists are included, the mix is significantly broadened to include radicalized Jews, often urban and well educated, and many of whom consider themselves liberals. The same goes for Christian Zionists, who are much more numerous: they cross the political spectrum to include liberals, who avow hatred of racism yet embrace Zionist apartheid. This in fact includes every recent president and most of Congress, and goes a long way toward explaining the glorification of the defense budget. Of past living presidents, only Jimmy Carter has criticized Israel as a state sponsor of institutionalized racism, and for which he has been exiled by Democratic Party poohbahs.

Israel is a shining example to many avowed and closet white Christian supremacists for the astonishing success it has had with Zionist apartheid. Israel has done what no other country since the end of the second world war has done- with the exception of South Africa, but which racist experiment failed, in time. Israel remains a roaring success in state sponsored racism. The thinking of dedicated white Christian supremacists goes, if Israel can do it to the Palestinians, we can do it to the Coloreds. It is just a matter of adopting their methods. Hence, among other things, the wall.

We can thank 9/11 and “Shock and Awe” for enshrining Islamophobia as the enduring central basis of US foreign policy. Every president since George Bush has continued to support the entirely fabricated meme that Islam- and not rogue radicalized political actors, is responsible for world terrorism. This jingoistic prevarication is now largely directed at Iran as the primary sponsor of terrorism but which serves entirely to further the geopolitical aims of empire. Big Media, or corporate media, has shamelessly enabled this propaganda.

In India, the rise of the Hindutva BJP party seeks to radicalize the Indian population in a similar manner. Nehru’s legacy is  blamed for subverting India’s greatness with Marxism and secularism. The US and India share a raging Islamophobia as a reaction to the many problems in achieving political consensus in recent decades. Modi’s India would in fact delegitimize a thousand years of Indian Islamic history as an aberration that must be corrected. This absurdist propaganda nonetheless has considerable traction in India- and among Hindu chauvinists elsewhere.

Interestingly, this support comes from unexpected quarters in the most vocal and obnoxious way imaginable. David Frawley, founder of the American Institute of Vedic Studies based in Santa Fe, NM, is a convert to Hinduism and a priest in that faith. He has become more Hindu than the Shankaracharya (roughly, a Hindu Pope) in his utterly dogmatic insistence than Hinduism alone is appropriate to guide India’s destiny. This completely reverses the premise of modern India and, very importantly, authentic Indian spirituality.

India, like the US, has always, more than less, encouraged religious pluralism. The problem from the Hindutva point of view has been shifting political winds that created first Muslim dynasties and then the British Raj which disadvantaged Hindu dynasties. This spanned a time period of over a  thousand years preliminary to the time of independence in 1947. To adopt the position that the “real India” is a purely Vedic India that has been relentlessly compromised by the course of history is not simply jingoistic revisionism, but intellectually and spiritually pathetic.

What Frawley, Hindutvas and religionists so sadly get wrong is that authentic spirituality has little to do with religion – and has even less to do with politics. And that India’s greatest spiritual figures have consistently affirmed this by abjuring politics. That the BJP and the RSS- which organization is based on Hitler’s Brownshirts, along with religious figures turned politicians, and converts to priestly abracadabra- that they would lead (Hindu) India into a spiritual renaissance is laughable and highly destructive.

Ramakrishna, Vivekananda and his brother monks, Sri Aurobindo, Ramana Maharshi, and all the rest of India’s hidden and public saints and masters never got or get directly involved in politics, especially communal (religious) politics. Never.

Religionists never comprehend that the real and exalted masters of spirituality are not exclusively from a given faith, and that it is the exalted masters who represent in their person the acme of spirituality, not the religion which they may profess. This is kindergarten stuff, but completely ignored by the likes of Trump, Netanyahu, Modi and their sycophants.

Avatar Meher Baba, the descent of Vishnu into human form for our time, born in Puné, India, in 1894, emphatically endorsed a secular India and said of Nehru: “There will not be the like (the equal) of Nehru for seven hundred years”. Baba and Mahatma Gandhi met for the first time in 1931 on the SS Rajputana;  Gandhi was going to the Roundtable Conference in England, and for Baba it was the first of many trips to Europe, England and America. Baba advised Gandhi, and other independence leaders such as B. R. Ambedkar, on political strategy, particularly in regard to securing the rights of untouchables, in an independent India. Baba was also the primary source for Gandhi’s non-violent political strategy.

Avatar Meher Baba’s message of divine love has no religious or sectarian basis at all. It is based on Baba’s claim to be the Avatar, the descent of God into human form, the Prophet of our time. Baba was born into the Zoroastrian faith but placed absolutely no spiritual importance on religious beliefs and practices apart from the remembrance of God and the Master and the repetition of his/ her name.

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