Every year for India’s Independence Day , I tend to try and put together a commentary in honour of the occasion.
Here’s the links to the past … half-decade’s suite of offerings in this regard. Plus some brief annotation as to the contents.
2018 – ‘Bharat Mata And The Indo-European Deific Of National Identity’
Our purpose with this was twofold. First, via our exploration we sought to demonstrate that Bharat Mata was not – contrary to some … insistent maligning out there – some sort of ‘fake’ figure of entirely modern and mundane artifice. But rather, the direct continuance and salient expression within the modern age of an entirely more archaic awareness … that of the Deific of National Identity (we might say ‘Nagara Devata’ as applies that of a city-state) – a pervasive Indo-European understanding which has logical theological correlation with Her perhaps more universally-known ‘Mountain’ linked Form(s). The broader exploration of this concept forms the (a)arti-cle’s second purpose.
2019 – ‘On The Gates Of Somnath Temple – An Essay Of Raksha(Pala) For Both Swaraj And Bandhan’
You’ll have to excuse the slightly stilted titling there – the zealous enthusiasm of a man some four years younger who had not yet mastered the art of restraint when having been awake for too long pressing to meet a deadline.
What was it? Many know the story of Somnath – reduced to ruin in the last major raid of Mahmud of Ghazni against Hindu India nearly a thousand years ago (and since, might I add, triumphantly rebuilt in the mid-20th century).
While this does prominently feature within the narrative – our attentions are directed somewhat later … and focus upon the vitriolic speech made by one Thomas Babington Macaulay in the British Parliament, in his castigation of a British official – the former Governor General of India, no less, the soon-to-be Lord Ellenborough – for the claimed crime of being apparently pro-Hindu.
Why it was worth a look, I felt, is because Macaulay was an eminent Classicist. He wrote his justly-famed Lays of Ancient Rome when he was himself stationed in India. He was fairly heavily well enamoured with those cultures of Classical antiquity characterized by their ‘pagan’ [indeed, Indo-European] religious adherences and customs. Yet he held such an incredibly animositic antipathy toward the living cousin of those spheres – being at pains to draw entirely artificial distinctions within his mind between the religious dimensions of Greece and Rome and the ‘Brahmanical’ religion. Indeed, taking the whole thing so far as to declare that the official policy of the Empire ought to be to favour the ‘Mohammedean’ over the Hindu.
Macaulay’s mindset was benightedly interesting to me – largely because we have often encountered fairly much the same thing some nearly two centuries later from a few European and American sorts out there who have a similar …insistent suite of blinders on.
2021 – ‘The Last Integral Aryan Civilization – A Manyu-Festo’
A rather … mammoth piece, examining exactly what it says in the title there [a concept which O.R. had mentioned to me some time afore]. What is an ‘Integral’ Aryan civilization ? And why does it matter – not just for India, but for the broader IE sphere as a whole, also.
And, speaking of O.R. ….
2022 – ‘“Our Mother, Who Reigns Supreme” – A Western Reflection of Indian Independence Observance’
This one is not my handiwork (some back-and-forth conversations as to its crafting, notwithstanding), but is rather a guest-post we were privileged to run, penned by my associate – it is a much more focused extolling of, to put it directly, why Bharat Mata matters … not only for Indian ‘native sons & daughters’, but also for those of us out here who have a more ‘adoptive’ style of relationship – or should consider doing so, in earnest.
2022 – ‘Glory, Even Amidst Ruins – The Lessons Of Some Previous Historic Resistances To Foreign Dominions’
Back to me this time, and an examination of some earlier struggles against foreign domination from Indian history – specifically, the protracted Last Stand of the Hindu Shahi (indeed, Hinduism in Afghanistan as a major sphere); as well as the intriguing observation as to what happened with regard to the Arab invasion of Sindh and more especially its aftermath , with regard to both Hindu and Buddhist communities located therein. And why.
Essence is – you fight for heritage, it is valued … and therefore is maintained.
2022 – ‘Hinduism in the Hinterlands’ – On Putting The ‘Vishvam’ Back Into ‘Krinvanto Vishvam Aryam’
Not strictly an Independence Day piece, perhaps, but we shall let that one’s subject-matter speak for itself.
arya-akasha 
Great set of articles. Always wondered why Buddhism did not seem to survive the invasions while Hinduism continued to thrive. Was not aware of the level of collaboration of the former and resistance of the latter to the invaders. Just goes to show how loyalty and fidelity are important to fighting off cultural genocide.
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