Addressing a gathering at Ravidas Jayanti in Mumbai recently, Dr. Mohan Bhagwat, the Sarsanghchalak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), as cited in the Organiser, dateline Feb 6, 2023, has said - “To our Creator, we are equal. There is no caste or sect. If some pundits citing scriptures are talking about caste-based discrimination, then it is false. .. We are confused in the whirlpool of the concept of caste and caste hierarchy. This confusion has to be removed.”
As a corollary, it can be said that without saying as much, Dr. Bhagwat had debunked the diabolical chātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛiṣhṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśhaḥ (v13, ch4) and such divisive verses from the eminently egalitarian Gita that were blue-penciled in the author’s Bhagvad-Gita Treatise of Self-help sans 110 inane interpolations, published way back in 2003. Be that as it may, before the veracity of the Sangh Pramukh’s “If some pundits citing scriptures are talking about caste-based discrimination, then it is false” averment is examined; it is imperative to delve into the cynical Dalit and Shudra Cards in play to affect the Double Hindu Squeeze.
Whereas the Muslim Sufis were the first to breach the caste fault lines to spread Islam into the Hindu hinterland that eventually led to its partition on religious grounds, in due course, more so in the truncated India, the Christian Evangelists too reinvigorated themselves to poach the leftover Dalit souls into their salvation fold with an eye on future religious dividends. But yet, for too long, the hindsight-less Hindus have been keeping a blind eye to the unbridled Muslim proliferation through procreation and infiltration on one hand and on the other the Christian expansionism through fraudulent conversions of its slighted souls.
However, as the Semitic demographic waters began to rise to their nose-level, the Hindus have realized, belatedly though, that it was the Dalit apathy towards their scriptural discrimination that came in handy for the Abrahamites to wean the embittered away from their tenuous Hindu folds into their respective faiths. So, the nonplussed Hindus began to assuage the aggrieved Dalits by downplaying the underlying caste-discrimination with ingenious propositions such as the Hindu varna is not to be seen in caste colours for to start with all are Shudras at birth and it is guna (nature) that makes one a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vysya, Shudra et al etc. Needless to say, this half-hearted attempt that is insincere at best failed to cut the caste ice and the evangelicals of the alien faiths continued to fish in the Hindu troubled waters to augment their Semitic numbers, catalyzed by the cynical Nehruvian political strategy of unifying the Abrahamic votes on religious grounds and fragmenting the Hindu franchise on the caste lines.
It was this Double Hindu Squeeze affected by the Dalit and Shudra Cards which enabled the Nehruvian forces to retain their political dominance in the post-colonial India for over six decades that was till Narendra Modi managed to unify some sections of the Shudras under his party’s Hindutva flag in 2014 only to add more such in 2019. What with the Hindu consolidation leading to the 2024 hustings is ever on the raise, the unraveled Nehruvians, driven by their craving for power, stoked up the Shudra flames of Ramcharitamanas in the hope of regaining their caste traction in the country’s political arena. Maybe, Dr. Bhagwat’s assertion supra is primarily meant to douse the Shudra political fire but if only carried forward, it has an immense potential to set the Hindu polity on its reformist course like none else before. It could be precisely for this reason that the Indian media, moulded in the Nehruvian ecosystem, by and large, has chosen not to transmit his revolutionary idea to the public though only recently it went out of its way to publicize his ‘Why look for shivling in every mosque’ advice to the Hindus that was in the wake of the developments in Varanasi’s Gyanvapi mosque.
Whatever, the Sarsanghchalak’s statement should be viewed in the light of the hypocritical explanations meant to downplay the vicious caste system, the hollowness of which was exposed in the author’s Inane Interpolations in Bhagvad-Gita (An Invocation for their Revocation) that is briefly dealt as under.
It would be apparent to any observant individual that the fake caste punditry began with the insertion of the verse 13 in Purusha Sukta (10.7.90.1-16) of the Rig Veda, the foremost of the four Vedas, thus:
V13: From His face (or the mouth) came the brahmanas. From His two arms came the rajanya (the kshatriyas). From His two thighs came the vaishyas. From His two feet came the shudras.
However, this interpolation as can be seen under is in juxtaposition to the original template of creation expostulated in,
V14: From His mind was born the moon. From His two eyes was born the sun. From His mouth were born Indra and Agni. From His breath was born the air.
V15: From (His) navel was produced the antariksha (the space between the earth and the heavens). Dyuloka (or heaven) came into existence from His head. The bhumi (the earth) evolved out of His feet, and deek (or spacial directions) from His ears. Similarly (the demigods) produced the worlds (too).
Thus, having disoriented the Vedic egalitarianism with caste discrimination, the pundits went on to pollute the Manu Smriti, an otherwise resplendent legal manual, if anything with caste toxicity, as elaborated in the author’s essay On Bashing Manu Smriti, Or Flogging A Dead Horse Riding a Blind Ass. Of course, the pollution started with the incorporation of the Purusha Sukta invention as 1.31 in the said Smriti is out of the context, as is evident below.
1.28. But to whatever course of action the Lord at first appointed each (kind of beings), that alone it has spontaneously adopted in each succeeding creation.
1.29. Whatever he assigned to each at the (first) creation, noxiousness or harmlessness, gentleness or ferocity, virtue or sin, truth or falsehood, that clung (afterwards) spontaneously to it.
1.30. As at the change of the seasons each season of its own accord assumes its distinctive marks, even so corporeal beings (resume in new births) their (appointed) course of action.
1.31. But for the sake of the prosperity of the worlds he caused the Brahmana, the Kshatriya, the Vaisya, and the Sudra to proceed from his mouth, his arms, his thighs, and his feet.
1.32. Dividing his own body, the Lord became half male and half female; with that (female) he produce.
But Bhagwat’s mischievous pundits would have been well-aware that their hitjob would not be complete without putting their self-serving words into Lord Krishna’s mouth in Bhagvad-Gita never mind He declared in ch.9, v 29, ‘None I favour, slight I none / Devout Mine all gain Me true ’. So they, inserted the infamous v13, ch 4, ‘chātur-varṇyaṁ mayā sṛiṣhṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśhaḥ / tasya kartāram api māṁ viddhyakartāram avyayam’, which incongruously means that ‘It is I who engineered the division of men into four varna (castes) based on their guna (innate nature) and karma (earthly duties) but yet although I am the creator of this system, know me to be the non-doer and eternal.
Not just that, as if to add the caste salt to the Shudra injury, the pundits (not Lord Krishna for any perceptive reader) having stated in v 41 ch 18 that ‘the duties of the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras—are distributed according to their qualities, in accordance with their guṇas,’ specify that ‘serving through work is the natural duty for those with the qualities of Shudras’ (v 44, ch 18). And what is worse, to tie the Shudras forever to their menial yoke, it is averred that ‘It is better to perform one’s own duty, even imperfectly, rather than indulge in another’s work perfectly for by doing one’s innate work, a person does not incur sin’ (v 46, ch 18) which is nothing but a rehash of v35, ch3, ‘It is far better to perform one’s natural prescribed duty, though tinged with faults, than to perform another’s prescribed duty, though perfectly. In fact, it is preferable to die in the discharge of one’s duty, than to follow the path of another, which is fraught with danger.’
So, it’s for the Hindus to look beyond their caste boundaries to visualize the improbability of their scriptures demeaning the Shudras and the Dalits among them for the most part they were scripted by them only.