The Scholarship of Surrender

We are told that as Hindus, we must focus on universal brotherhood because all paths lead to the divine. Thus we should not create animosity where there is opportunity for dialogue.

Which means not discussing documented temple demolitions. No dates, no locations or archaeological evidence shall be mentioned because it becomes "divisive."

Muslims destroy a temple in 1198. British archaeologists document it in 1847. Independent scholars analyze it in 1967. Hindu intellectuals explain it away in 2024.

How ?

• Step one: "This requires nuanced understanding of medieval complexities."
• Step two: "We must consider socio-economic factors beyond religious identity."
• Step three: "The real issue was poverty, not religion."
• Step four: "Ancient wisdom teaches us to transcend such divisions."

By step four, the demolished temple has become a lesson in spiritual evolution. The destroyers never had to lift another finger. Our intellectuals finished the job.

Take any Hindu academic at any decent university. Ask them about, say, systemic persecution of their own community—suddenly they develop amnesia, moral relativism, and an urgent need to quote the Upanishads.

The same person who can spot propaganda in American foreign policy will insist that thirteen centuries of documented iconoclasm was actually "interfaith dialogue with occasional misunderstandings."

They're not stupid. They're scared.

Scared of being labeled "communal." Scared of losing positions. Scared of dinner party awkwardness. Scared of seeming unsophisticated to their non-Hindu colleagues. So they preemptively surrender the intellectual ground before anyone even asks them to.

And intellectual cowardice? it compounds quickly.

Each rationalization requires the next one. Each euphemism demands supporting euphemisms and each denial creates the need for more elaborate denials.

Pretty soon you're not just explaining away one temple destruction, but mass forced conversion and repeated massacres—the entire historical record. You soon become a full-time revisionist of your own tradition.

The most sophisticated Hindu minds in the world are now employed explaining why Hindu suffering doesn't count as suffering. A Hindu family gets driven out of their ancestral village in Kashmir. The immediate response from Hindu intellectuals:

• "This is not a Hindu-Muslim issue."
• "This is about economic inequality."
• "This is about political manipulation."
• "This is about anything except what it obviously is."

Meanwhile, the family is still homeless.

When you let intellectuals manage your civilization's memory then all you get is a managed decline.

They'll write brilliant papers about "composite culture" while the composite gets less composite every year. They'll organize conferences on "pluralistic traditions" while the pluralism gets less plural every month and books on "syncretic evolution" get less and less syncretic with every iteration.

It's like hiring arsonists to run the fire department because they understand combustion better than anyone else. But the solution isn't anti-intellectualism. The solution is intellectual honesty.

Here's a simple test: can you describe what happened to your community using the same analytical standards you'd apply to any other community?

If Buddhists got systematically expelled from Afghanistan, you'd call it persecution. If Jews got systematically expelled from Iraq, you'd call it ethnic cleansing. If Christians got systematically expelled from Turkey, you'd call it demographic engineering. But when Hindus get systematically chased out of Pakistan, it becomes "partition migration."

When Yazidis get targeted by ISIS, it's genocide. When Hindus get targeted in Bangladesh, it's "communal tension."

When Rohingya get driven from Myanmar, it's ethnic cleansing. When Kashmiri Pandits get driven from Kashmir, it's "insurgency-related displacement."

Same pattern. Different vocabulary. Different moral weight.

Your own intellectuals are maintaining this double standard more rigorously than your enemies ever could.

Clarity requires courage and being willing to see what's actually happening instead of what you wish was happening. It requires calling things by their right names even when those names make people uncomfortable.

It requires admitting that your community is actually under attack, and the attacks are often systematic. It also requires giving up the comfortable fiction that your intellectual sophistication makes you morally superior to the people who've lived through it.

Your grandmother who doesn't trust certain neighborhoods isn't ignorant. She's experienced. Your uncle who keeps talking about demographic changes isn't paranoid. He's seen it in realtime.

They're not less enlightened than you. They just haven't been trained to ignore their own eyes.

You can keep doing the opposition's intellectual work for them, or you can start doing your own. But you can't do both forever.