In­di­an­ism and con­nected Hin­duism is a colo­nial­ist, im­pe­ri­al­ist mind­set. In­se­cure, para­noid and all cen­tred on power, con­trol, con­sol­i­da­tion and cen­tral­i­sa­tion. Most aca­d­e­mics, jour­nal­ists, me­dia sources and politi­cians are too fear­ful, op­por­tunist, ig­no­rant and ex­pe­di­ent to speak out on this. For rea­sons of ex­pe­di­ency, lack of ca­pac­ity and con­scious­ness, many do not talk about it.
“I am not squea­mish about call­ing these dis­guised terms what they ac­tu­ally are. I re­ject both as op­pres­sive, im­pe­ri­al­is­tic and sub­juga­tive,” says UK-based self-de­ter­min­ist and Pan­jaabi na­tion­al­ist Jagdeesh Singh.

HINDU AND IN­TRIN­SI­CALLY CON­NECTED IN­DIA, are both mu­tu­ally serv­ing im­pe­ri­al­ist terms. Both terms and their pro­tag­o­nists and those who con­spic­u­ously es­pouse and ad­vo­cate these wide-rang­ing, all-en­gulf­ing, um­brella terms; seek to en­com­pass and ‘uni­fy’ all dis­parate, di­verse and even con­tra­dic­tory com­mu­ni­ties across the map of South Asia un­der this sin­gu­lar, su­per­im­pos­ing cat­e­gori­sa­tion. It serves the in­her­ent, in­trin­sic im­pe­ri­al­is­tic, con­trol­ling, dom­i­neer­ing, cen­tral­is­ing and sin­gu­lar pur­pose of Hin­duism, In­dia, In­di­an­ism and In­di­an­i­sa­tion.

If they could, they would sub­sume Pak­istan, Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myan­mar and Afghanistan as well! 

In­dia and its ar­ro­gant up­per-caste Hindu core elite are by de­fault, na­ture, im­pulse pur­pose, prac­tise and de­sign -wired and struc­tured to seek con­trol and su­per­im­pose it­self all over South Asia. 

Hin­duism and In­di­an­ism rely on power, con­trol, force and su­per­im­po­si­tion. They have done so through­out their thou­sands of years.  Even South Asia has been po­lit­i­cally and cul­tur­ally termed, mis­la­belled and mis­cat­e­go­rized as ‘In­dia’, ‘Hin­dus­tan’ and ‘Bharat’ to serve that all-con­sum­ing pur­pose. 

These same forces talk of di­ver­sity, but only so long as it is within the con­text of all-pow­er­ful and su­per­im­pos­ing Hindu-In­dia and In­dia-Hindu.  It is sim­i­lar to Hitler’s vi­sion of his Eu­ro­pean-wide Ger­man Third Re­ich. 

In­di­a’s rul­ing BJP and its 25,000-man (or even more) ag­gres­sive RSS -Rashtriya Swayam­se­wak Sangh mili­tia (di­rectly founded on the lines of Hitler Youth) ex­press ad­mi­ra­tion for Hitler’s achieve­ments. Like­wise, Hitler ex­pressed ad­mi­ra­tion for the or­dered, con­trolled, struc­tured so­ci­ety that Hin­duism has en­gen­dered in In­dia over cen­turies. He as­pired for the same ef­fi­cient and ro­bust model in Ger­many. 

By ar­ti­cle 25 of the In­dian Con­sti­tu­tion, all dis­parate and di­verse peo­ple across the en­tire In­dian su­per­state, ex­cept Mus­lims and Chris­tians, are to be treated un­der law and pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and in law, as ‘HIN­DU’. A Sikh of Pan­jaab mar­ry­ing in ac­cor­dance with Sikh rules, tra­di­tions and cus­toms, is still is­sued by In­dian pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and courts with a ‘Hindu Mar­riage Cer­tifi­cate’ by law. The in­de­pen­dent and sep­a­rate Pan­jaabi-Sikh Anand Mar­riage is wholly dere­cog­nised in prac­tice. Sim­i­larly, In­come Tax laws, Suc­ces­sion laws, et al, deem Sikhs to be Hin­dus.

This su­per­pos­ing, smoth­er­ing, sub­ju­gat­ing ex­tends to much more – lan­guage, na­tion­al­ity, pol­i­tics, cul­tural in­de­pen­dence and the lack of it in all these do­mains. We are all ‘In­di­ans’ and by de­fault ‘Hin­dus’, and vice-versa.  

Try­ing to say you are not, is the equiv­a­lent of a crim­i­nal act in In­dia. It is sedi­tious. A crime against the state.  Anti-na­tional. All com­mu­ni­ties, cul­tures, re­li­gions and his­to­ries are told by the mighty In­dian state and polity, that they are Hindu and In­dian. Very neat, tidy and sim­ple. To want to be any­thing dif­fer­ent is anti-In­dian and sedi­tious. 

Hindu-In­dia is a suf­fo­cat­ing, re­pres­sive, caste-op­press­ing, re­li­giously to­tal­i­tar­ian,  con­trol-cen­tric and su­per­im­pos­ing block. Calls for ref­er­en­dums in Kash­mir, Pan­jaab, the north­east, have been re­sisted with the most pu­trid and bru­tal In­dian po­lit­i­cal and me­dia re­jec­tions and con­dem­na­tions. If you live un­der In­dia-Hindu rule, you must be  ‘In­di­an’ and ‘Hin­du’. That is it! Don’t dare to be any­thing else!

I am pos­i­tively and eth­i­cally anti-In­dian and anti-Hindu, not be­cause of any in­her­ent ha­tred, bias or po­lit­i­cal in­cli­na­tion, but be­cause of the cruel op­pres­sion, geno­cide, casteism, racism and sub­ju­ga­tion -that these la­bels fun­da­men­tally and thor­oughly rep­re­sent. Both are like the white slave traders and colo­nial­ists of the past cen­turies. I am not squea­mish and po­lit­i­cally cor­rect about stat­ing this po­lit­i­cally in­con­ve­nient, harsh truth. Plus, I am not in In­dia, so I can speak with some free­dom.  

I am in­spired by the fa­ther of Pan­jaab, Guru Nanak’s de­fi­ant, rev­o­lu­tion­ary stance in Pan­jaab in the 15th cen­tury when he pro­foundly and re­bel­liously de­clared, ‘I am nei­ther Hindu nor Mus­lim!’. Guru Nanak and the se­quence of re­bel­lious Ten Gu­rus in­spired Pan­jaab to main­tain its unique and dis­tinct iden­tity and fight for its sov­er­eignty -not to sub­ju­gate, but for self-rule and to fur­ther the good of the teach­ings of the Gu­rus and their prac­tices, to no longer be a cul­tural or hege­monis­tic colony to the pu­tre­fy­ing Hindu gi­gan­tism. The Sikh re­li­gious scrip­tures and the his­tory of the Sikhs since the ad­vent of Guru Nanak is tes­ti­mony to the self-de­ter­mi­na­tion of the Sikhs.

Pan­jaab does not fit into the false, dis­torted Mus­lim-Hindu bi­nary on which In­dia and Pak­istan, as il­le­git­i­mate pro­duce of the British In­dia em­pire were, geno­ci­dally and un­de­mo­c­ra­t­i­cally cre­ated in 1947.  

We are Pan­jaab! We are Pan­jaabi. Sikhi is our oxy­gen and con­scious­ness. That is our crime! That is our con­scious­ness! That is our as­pi­ra­tion!

Jagdeesh Singh is a UK-based so­cial and po­lit­i­cal ac­tivist. A pro­lific writer -al­ways de­ter­mined to un­spar­ingly call a spade a spade. He is a staunch pro­tag­o­nist for the right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion of all those who so de­sire, any­where on planet earth. He is also a die-hard an­i­mal rights cam­paigner.