Oct 26, 2017 01:03 AM
How ‘Hindutva’ recast multi-faith India as the Hindu homeland
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-hindutva-recas...u-homeland
EXCERPT: [...] The Hindu nationalist vision of India hinges on an imagined, culturally pure Vedic golden age, a Hindu rashtra, or nation. It’s usually represented by the ancient kingdom of Ram, the godly hero of India’s national epic, the Ramayana. The BJP gained popular support in the 1980s by launching a campaign against the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century Mughal-built mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya, claiming that it had been built over a shrine marking Ram’s birthplace. In 1992, Hindu rioters, incited by politicians, stormed the mosque.
The resurgence of Hindutva was spurred, in part, by India’s transformation from a socialist to a market economy. The demolition of the Babri Masjid directly followed the 1991 economic liberalisation of India, which quadrupled the country’s GDP by opening up to foreign investment and adopting a policy of trickle-down economics. With widening income gaps and a barrage of foreign goods, Savarkar’s writings, which denounced caste divisions and emphasised cultural nationalism over economic equality, held a new appeal. The lure of a harmonious, Hindu-helmed past served as a galvanising fiction, propelling the ideology of Hindutva to mainstream acceptability. BJP leaders are still focused on having Ram’s temple reinstated. This motive of ‘return’ to a purer, idealised nation informs the Hindutva claim to the Indian nation as a unique Hindu homeland...
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-hindutva-recas...u-homeland
He died as he lived: David Hume, philosopher and infidel
https://aeon.co/ideas/he-died-as-he-live...nd-infidel
EXCERPT: As the Scottish philosopher David Hume lay on his deathbed in the summer of 1776, his passing became a highly anticipated event. Few people in 18th-century Britain were as forthright in their lack of religious faith as Hume was, and his skepticism had earned him a lifetime of abuse and reproach from the pious, including a concerted effort to excommunicate him from the Church of Scotland. Now everyone wanted to know how the notorious infidel would face his end. Would he show remorse or perhaps even recant his skepticism? Would he die in a state of distress, having none of the usual consolations afforded by belief in an afterlife? In the event, Hume died as he had lived, with remarkable good humour and without religion.
The most famous depiction of Hume’s dying days, at least in our time, comes from James Boswell, who managed to contrive a visit with him on Sunday, 7 July 1776. As his account of their conversation makes plain, the purpose of Boswell’s visit was less to pay his respects to a dying man, or even to gratify a sense of morbid curiosity, than to try to fortify his own religious convictions by confirming that even Hume could not remain a sincere non-believer to the end. In this, he failed utterly....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/he-died-as-he-live...nd-infidel
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-hindutva-recas...u-homeland
EXCERPT: [...] The Hindu nationalist vision of India hinges on an imagined, culturally pure Vedic golden age, a Hindu rashtra, or nation. It’s usually represented by the ancient kingdom of Ram, the godly hero of India’s national epic, the Ramayana. The BJP gained popular support in the 1980s by launching a campaign against the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century Mughal-built mosque in the northern city of Ayodhya, claiming that it had been built over a shrine marking Ram’s birthplace. In 1992, Hindu rioters, incited by politicians, stormed the mosque.
The resurgence of Hindutva was spurred, in part, by India’s transformation from a socialist to a market economy. The demolition of the Babri Masjid directly followed the 1991 economic liberalisation of India, which quadrupled the country’s GDP by opening up to foreign investment and adopting a policy of trickle-down economics. With widening income gaps and a barrage of foreign goods, Savarkar’s writings, which denounced caste divisions and emphasised cultural nationalism over economic equality, held a new appeal. The lure of a harmonious, Hindu-helmed past served as a galvanising fiction, propelling the ideology of Hindutva to mainstream acceptability. BJP leaders are still focused on having Ram’s temple reinstated. This motive of ‘return’ to a purer, idealised nation informs the Hindutva claim to the Indian nation as a unique Hindu homeland...
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/how-hindutva-recas...u-homeland
He died as he lived: David Hume, philosopher and infidel
https://aeon.co/ideas/he-died-as-he-live...nd-infidel
EXCERPT: As the Scottish philosopher David Hume lay on his deathbed in the summer of 1776, his passing became a highly anticipated event. Few people in 18th-century Britain were as forthright in their lack of religious faith as Hume was, and his skepticism had earned him a lifetime of abuse and reproach from the pious, including a concerted effort to excommunicate him from the Church of Scotland. Now everyone wanted to know how the notorious infidel would face his end. Would he show remorse or perhaps even recant his skepticism? Would he die in a state of distress, having none of the usual consolations afforded by belief in an afterlife? In the event, Hume died as he had lived, with remarkable good humour and without religion.
The most famous depiction of Hume’s dying days, at least in our time, comes from James Boswell, who managed to contrive a visit with him on Sunday, 7 July 1776. As his account of their conversation makes plain, the purpose of Boswell’s visit was less to pay his respects to a dying man, or even to gratify a sense of morbid curiosity, than to try to fortify his own religious convictions by confirming that even Hume could not remain a sincere non-believer to the end. In this, he failed utterly....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/he-died-as-he-live...nd-infidel