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LONG POST ALERT
Yati Narainghanand Saraswati, the most dangerous figure in the ecosystem of Hindu Terrorism, the ex-Chemical Engineer turned ‘Sadhu’ who runs the hate factory at Dasna, and issues regular and explicit calls for the genocide of Indian Muslims, and for showing Christians ‘their place’, has just been appointed the ‘mahamandaleshwar’, or supremo, of the Dashnami Juna Akhara, a militant monastic order of Hindu men that sees itself as an armed force.
The Juna Akhara is the largest organized body of men, in Hinduism. Many amongst these men bear arms, and are dedicated to a life committed to the cultivation of violence as a ritual requirement within the logic of the contemporary institutional-ritual structure of the Hindu faith.
The Juna Akhada is immensely wealthy in terms of liquid and immobile assets, particularly land and property. Much of its wealth is neither accounted for, nor accountable. It is very influential in local and state level politics, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand.
The ascension of a terrorist like Narsinghanand to a position of unchallenged power within one of the most influential and powerful bodies within institutionalised Hinduism is deeply dangerous. He can’t have come this far without the tacit endorsement of the Prime Minister and Home Minister of the country and of the Chief Minister of the state of Uttar Pradesh. This cannot, and must not be underestimated. It’s like an out and open Neo-Nazi being made the global head of the Jesuit order. People, not just in India, but everywhere in the world should take this very, very seriously.
Narsinghanand is a violent and hateful man. He is abusive and loud. He is also cold, conniving and calculating, and a rank misogynist. He has tremendous presence and reach on social media in Hindi speaking North India. He knows how to whip young men into states of rage and frenzy. He seduces them into romanticising ‘suicide missions’. He rationalizes violence against the poorest and the most vulnerable, even against children. He makes no secret of his hatred for people who are not Hindu. He also has a band of fanatical young male followers who, collectively, and individually, are all serial catastrophes waiting to unfold. He is connected to all the hate-mongering, random acts of violence, lynchings and thuggery and anti-Muslim, anti-Rohingya hatred, in the name of religion, ‘cow-protection’ and ‘anti-love-jihad militancy’, that have taken place of late in the Western Uttar Pradesh-Haryana-NCR-Uttarakhand belt. Narsinghanand’s men are directly implicated in the violence of the Delhi pogrom of February 2020, in the attacks on JNU and Jamia, and in aggressive campaigns of harrassment and intimidation of Muslim street vendors in the Delhi-NCR region.
He has enjoyed immense impunity, with the protection and patronage of the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. He is clearly poised to take a huge step forward with his new appointment. This clearly also has something to do with the forthcoming elections in Uttar Pradesh, but it’s real significance is even beyond the fate of an election.
I have been writing consistently about the danger that Narsinghanand represents, as have a few other people, Alishan Jafri, for instance. I find it deeply disturbing that despite our clear indication of the nature and intensity of the threat that Narsinghanand and his cohort represents, he continues to be seen by the completely deluded liberal commentariat of this country as the ‘loony fringe’. As if he were just some inconsequential, annoying but sinister clown. He is anything but inconsequential. And if he was once on the fringe, welll, then that fringe now squats dead centre on the mainstream. You don’t get to be in a more prominent place within Hinduism than at the summit of an entity like the Juna Akhara. It gilds naked terrorist ambitions with the patina of respectability and hallowed tradition.
The saddest aspect of this development is that it confirms what I had begun to suspect for a while, especially in the wake of the Akhadas complicity in the disaster of Covid 19 infections because of the deliberate holding of an untimely Kumbh Mela - and that is the hollowing out of the ethnic core of institutionalised Hinduism. But that is totally confirmed for me with a man like Narsinghanand enthroned. In the wake of the rapid ascent of Narsinghanand on the Holy Hindu Hierarchy, institutional Hinduism can no longer make the case for having l, or retaining, a spiritual or ethical core. It has turned into a thing of decadence and moral pollution. It is wedded to money, violent masculine sexuality, political power, weapons and sadism.
I had hoped that there might be individual renunciants, monks, men and women of religion within the Hindu faith who would not have sold themselves to the devil, and who would have a realistic idea of the distilled evil that has now made their faith a ‘home base’. I thought, perhaps naively, as a non-Hindu, that maybe the Ramakrishna Order, or some Hindu mystic or philosopher cleaving to an Upanishadic ideal might stand up and refuse to entertain a man like Narsinghanand being given the highest honours within the Hindu world. That hope has not yet been realised. As of now, the institutional vortex of the Hindu world is comatose, at least form an ethical perspective.
There are dark days ahead for those of us who happen to be non-Hindu citizens of this increasingly dystopic republic. But the darkest days are those that believing Hindus will face. A terrorist demands their veneration. And he doesn’t make ‘requests’. He commands. I know his voice. The choice, to offer that veneration, or not, is one which every Hindu believer will have to make now. We’ve done what we could to warn you of the place that you have allowed yourself to be dragged into. Your religious guides, gurus, leaders and authorities did absolutely nothing to resist the ascent of this man and to loosen the stranglehold that he and other men like him have on the majoritarian imagination of social and political life in North India.They garlanded and feted him. And you did not hold them accountable. They failed you, you failed yourselves.
Try getting out of this now, with your sanity intact, by yourselves. This is not our fight. We have other things to do, like figuiring out how best to defend ourselves when Yati Baba’s boys come calling.
Best of luck.
हरिद्वार: यति नरसिंहानंद गिरि बने जूना अखाड़े के महामंडलेश्वर, जूना पीठाधीश्वर ने कराया अभिषेक
Read more: https://www.amarujala.com/uttarakhand/haridwar/yati-narsinghanand-giri-becomes-mahamandaleshwar-of-juna-akhara
Read more: https://www.amarujala.com/uttarakhand/haridwar/yati-narsinghanand-giri-becomes-mahamandaleshwar-of-juna-akhara
