Pejawar seer’s 10 powerful slaps in the face of communal hate-mongers

CD Network | Sumedha V
June 28, 2017

The ‘Sauhaarda Iftar Koota’ recently hosted by Sri Vishwesha Teertha Swamiji, the chief pontiff of Paryaya Pejawar Mutt in Udupi’s historic Krishna Temple/Mutt has triggered a widespread controversy as several hate-mongers have accused him of hurting the sentiments of Hindus.

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The seer has taken to social media to counter the continuous onslaught of the communal forces and uploaded a video wherein he made his stance clear. Here are the 10 interesting points from the video clip that not only promote communal harmony but also serve as a tight slap to the communalism.

1. The Krishna Temple’s dining hall is open to all irrespective of caste, creed and religion
The seer stated that he has seen thousands of Christians and Muslims eating in the temple’s dining hall in the past too. So, there the ‘iftar meet’ hosted by him is not an innovation in the temple’s customs.

2. Religious scriptures say “feed the hungry”
“When the religious scriptures also ask us to feed the hungry, how is it wrong on my part to invite the fasting Muslims and feed them?... When we can become friends, why can’t we call them for dinner?” questioned the seer.

3. Peace is good for all the communities, as well as for the country
The seer laid emphasis on the significance of maintaining peace in the society. Referring to recent communal clashes, the seer said that peace needs to be restored for the good of the country. Taking the first step will only bring good name to the Hindus; it cannot harm the Hindus in any way, he said.

4. “Madhvacharya promoted the Hindu-Muslim bond. I am walking in his footsteps”
The seer recalled the history of Madhvacharya who wanted good relationship with Muslim rulers of his time. He also narrated a story: “Once, Madhvacharya was surrounded by the soldiers of a Muslim ruler (outside the palace). He politely asked the soldiers not to harm him as they outnumbered him and his disciples. He told them that he just wanted to meet their king. The soldiers did not harm him. The king too was impressed by Madhvacharya and honored him.”

5. Muslim Sultans helped Hindu swamijis! 
“A Muslim Sultan (king) donated land to the Mantralaya Swamiji out of sheer respect. On the other hand, Satyabhoda Swamiji is known to have given suggestions to the Sultan during his time. I am only trying to continue the friendly bond between two communities they began ages ago” he said.

6. “Muslims honored me too”
“If people can call me to their programs in Bhatkal, Gangavati, Kasargod and other places and treat me well, why can’t I invite them and show some hospitality? I see this as a basic human etiquette. Religion is not at all in question here” he said.

7. Namaz is a way to pray to the Lord. It’s not anti-Hindu
“After iftar, the Namaz was performed atop of dining hall which is open to the public, not in the sanctum sanctorum. Namaz doesn’t contain anything that insults Hindus or their religion in any way… How is it wrong to let others follow their traditions?” he asked.

8. Muslims helped the Mutt always 
“A lot of Muslims have offered Hore Kaanike (offertory) to the Mutt during the Paryaya mahotsava. Udupi’s Haji Abdullah had also donated to the Mutt during the Paryaya of Parama-Guru Vishwajna Teertha in 1904. Muslims supported us and reassured our safety when a section of people (belonging to Hindu community) threatened to attack the Mutt recently. Such Muslims are always welcome here” he said.

9. Not only Muslims; many Hindus too eat beef!
The seer said that not only Muslims, but many Hindus too consume beef in India. “If Hindus or Muslims eat beef, one should convince them to shun it in friendly way and not by resorting to violence,” he opined.

10. I follow my religion and tolerate others’ faiths
The seer said that he always believed showing strict adherence to his religion while being tolerant towards other faiths. “I have always worked for the interest of Hindu religion. But I also want to continue having good relations with others as well” he said.

(The author, Sumedha V, is a student of mass communication and journalism. A native of Mysuru, she's currently residing in Mangaluru.)

Comments

Nidhin
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

A nice write up. Swamiji's bold statements are indeed praiseworthy.

Viren Kotian
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

Like all Hindus I am also a big fan of Pejawar Swamiji. But that doesn't mean whatever he does and says are 100% correct. Normally human beings lose their common sense when they become old. Still we respect our swamiji.

Bhageerata bhaira
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

Swamiji has boldly accepted the fact that many Hindus consume beef. It would have been great if he revealed the fact that Vedas too advocate beef consumption and that beef was considered a holy food for Brahmins during vedik period.

Umar Farooq Rao
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

In my opinion Sri Pejawar Swamiji is very close to Islam. Pious and practicing Muslims should get more closer to him and convince him what is Islam. Thanks sister Sumedha for this wonderful presentation. Thank you to CD too. You r doing a wonderful job.

Satyajit
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

We Hindus are always like this. We welcomed Muslims from other countries thinking they are also human beings like us. Unfortunately they cut country into many pieces and named it as Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. Now our swamiji is welcoming them to temples. I am worried whether in future they may think of converting krishna mutt into haji Abdulla mosque. We should always be careful about those people.

Sirajuddin Vittla
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

Swamiji has created a platform for interfaith debate. Now it's the responsibility of Muslims to take it forward as they have got a wonderful and historic opportunity.

Pratap
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

Today's Muslims are followers of Aurangzeb and Tippu Sultan who massacred innocent Hindus. They are not followers of haji Abdulla.

PK
 - 
Wednesday, 28 Jun 2017

Swamiji has not spoken the full truth. He has said Hindus also eat beef like Muslims. In fact Hindus are the major beef consumers and exporters in India. Most of the leading beef exporting companies in India are owned by Jains, Brahmins and other Hindus. some of the BJP leaders also doing this business. To fool others they keep Muslim names to their company. India's leading beef exporting company 'al-Kabeer' belong to Jains.

Arshi
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

Edda mele buddi bantu..may Allah guide him to turn more towards truth.

Viren ningyavaga buddi barodo?? pryada doshavo illa bhootada kaatavo huttisidavane balla!

Ranjan shetty
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

Even though I have immense respect for swamiji , but in principal we are against it . Swamijis should not hurt religious feelings and refrain out of politics . There is no need for debate with muslims . we have seen what we got in return when we showed immense love when they first entered india . do muslims allow us to celebrate dipavali in mosque and also ganeshotsav ? its wrong we hindus must give up this fake secularism . time has come to move towards hardcore hindutva . There is absolutely no need for this type of drama . They will back stab u from behind swamiji and history proved .

Mahesh
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

nothing wrong in swamiji's act, he should be the role model for every swamiji who always fight for non related issues.

Priyanka
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

he s the true swamiji atleast one swamiji s thr to work for hindu muslim unity. a big salute .

jayaraj
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

wonderful swamiji this s what we expect from all swamiji.

shilajith
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

one day all will die... in between why fight? live peacefully and allow others to live peacefully.

Kannadiga
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

This issue does not deserve this much of media publicity. There are many issues in the society. Forget this and move on instead of dragging and defaming the mutt.

sujith
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

Where is pink chaddi man ? Kick him out of karnataka. BJP ruled Goa also banned him. Then why Congress govt in karnataka allowing him to spread hatred?

Keshavamoorthy
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

One of the speciality of manuvaadi swamis is that they can tolerate Muslims and Christians but not Dalits. The one who vowed to build ram mandir and protect the interests of Hindus in India is now endorsing Muslim cause and trying to suppress Hindu voices. This is very unfortunate development. This has proved that upper caste Hindus are not true Hindus. They can change their loyalty anytime.

Pokar Beary
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

Dear Ranjan Shetty (comment 10)

Do you need burnol ? I have special saffron burnol and itch guard for u if you r not in a condition to bear this

M M Nesargi
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

Truly 10 powerful slaps in the face of hatemongers. The paid media is trying to bury swamijis statements by focusing more on statements of others. This online media has done a good job by highlighting it. Keep it up.

Chitra
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

Hahahaha. When pejavar swami giving deekshe to Muslims? Now only ashta mathas are there. You can take yet another 'bold' step to create 2 more mathas - beary matha and sayiber matha

Ahmd
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

Viren Kotian,

Swamiji is telling the truth, Accept it and dont forget, U will not stay YOUNG alwz... If Your arrogance continues... U might see your own Common sense lose in old age.

Reality YOu deny is Hindus eating Beef, if a hindu doesnt eat beef, he is not a good hindu according to the vedas... (Atleast READ your scriptures before U say U are a hindu)

Dont think RSS is following the Hindu scripture... They are following the devils book which is destruction of the society.

THINK and WAKE UP

nationalist
 - 
Thursday, 29 Jun 2017

I wanted to give a proper reply to all including swamiji. But, i am not ready to get arrested for this silly issue. So ignoring.

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News Network
February 21,2020

Bengaluru, Feb 21: Historian Ramachandra Guha on Thursday refuted Karnataka home minister Basavaraj Bommai's claim that the latter had apologised for police allegedly manhandling him during an anti-CAA protest in the city, saying he received no such call or apology.

The writer further said even if such an apology had been offered, he would have rejected it.

"The Home Minister of Karnataka has claimed on the floor of the State Assembly that he apologised to me by phone for the manhandling by the Bengaluru police on 19th December 2019. This is false.

I received no such call or apology," Guha tweeted.

"Even if such an apology had been offered, I would have rejected it.

The imposition of Section 144 was illegal (as the Karnataka High Court has since held) and I was proud to be one of thousands of peaceful protesters who defied the States arbitrary action on that day," he said in another tweet.

During his reply to the debate on law and order situation in the state, Bommai on Wednesday claimed that he had apologised to Guha.

The minister was apologising to senior Congress MLA and former Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar for police serving him notice and detaining him along with others at Mangaluru airport in December for trying to enter the city despite restrictions following violence there.

Stating that anti-CAA protests have taken place peacefully across the state, he had said, there might have been minor discrepancies, like that with historian Ramachandra Guha, being manhandled during a protest.

"I have called and apologised to him," he had said.

Guha was detained on December 19 for staging a demonstration against the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens at the Town Hall here, in defiance of the prohibitory orders imposed in the city.

He was taken away by police personnel and led to a police vehicle parked nearby.

Leader of Opposition in the assembly and former chief minister Siddaramaiah said Bommai has committed a "perjury" in the House, and asked him to apologise to people and Guha in front of media.

"Bommai has committed a perjury on the floor of the House. It answers the question of where @BJP4India workers derive their motivation to spread fake news.

Bommai has insulted the people whom he represents," he tweeted and demanded that he apologize to people and Guha.

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News Network
April 18,2020

Ballari, Apr 18: Hosapete town in Ballari district of Karnataka gasped in disbelief as it turned out that 11 members of one single family are positive for the coronavirus.

The whole town has been declared a containment zone and is being surveilled 24X7.

The family includes seven members whose tests returned positive today, three who tested Covid-19 positive on March 30 and one other member subsequently.

The seven who tested positive today had been negative when they were earlier tested along with the others.

They have all now been shifted to isolation wards at the District Hospital in Ballari.

Including this family of 11, Ballari has 13 positive cases so far, with one case each reported from Ballari and Siraguppa towns.

Startled by this sudden upsurge from Hosapete, the district administration has set up 16 fever clinics to screen people and six COVID care centres to treat positive cases. There are two dedicated COVID hospitals, one at Ballari and another at Torangallu in Sandur.

A team of psychological counsellors have been put on duty to provide support to the patients at the isolation centres.

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Ram Puniyani
April 7,2020

The carnage or to put it more precisely the anti Muslim violence in Delhi (February-March 2020) has shaken us all. Analysts are burning midnight oil yet again to understand the deeper causative factors of the same. 

One of the neglected aspects of analysis of communal violence has been the one related to prevalent factor of Caste in Indian society. Caste is inherent in the scriptures called as Hindu scriptures; caste has been the rigid frame work of Hindu society, which has also penetrated into other religious communities in India.

The deeper connection between Hindu nationalism or Hindutva and caste has been explored somewhat but not too many studies have taken up the relationship between the communal violence and caste in India.

Suraj Yengde (IE, Delhi Pogrom is an attempt to Divert attention from Government’s Failures, March 8, 2020) makes some points on this issue. Yengde points out, “Many are still downplaying the Delhi riot as an affliction of Hindutva or Hindu-Muslim binaries. It is neither. It is not religious but caste tensions that encourage such treacherous acts.”    

He quotes from the Gujarat activist Raju Solanki, “in the 2002 Godhra riots there were 2,945 arrests in Ahmadabad. Of these, 1,577 were Hindus and 1,368 Muslims. Among the Hindus arrested, 797 were OBCs, 747 Dalits, 19 Patels, two Baniyas, and two Brahmins. The upper castes became MLAs, the rest were jailed. Also, it is not an accident that Dalits constitute nearly 22% of the total arrests in India; Adivasis 11%, Muslims 20% and OBCs 31%. More than 55% of under trials also come from the same communities (NCRB 2015).”

While this data is on the dot it must be stated that while caste has lot of role in the emergence of politics of Hindutva, in the resultant violence the primary focus has been religion, here caste plays a role which is secondary in some ways.

To trace the outline of the Hindu nationalism’s prime mover RSS; one can definitely say that its formation and rise is primarily due to the rising caste consciousness and the beginnings of struggles aimed at injustices due to the caste Varna System. While Hindu Mahasabha was already on the scene as parallel and opposite to the Muslim League, these formations initially had only Kings and landlords. Later these formations were joined in by some elite, affluent sections of society.

RSS in particular was a response to the ground level changes resulting in coming up of low caste/average people in social and political space. It was the non-cooperation movement led by Gandhi and then the non Brahman movement in Nagpur-Vidarbha area which disturbed the Brahmanical sections, supported by landlord-kings, to take up the agenda of Hindu nation. The core articulation of Hindutva politics was to present the glorious ancient times, when Manu Smriti’s laws ruled the roost. These were getting a jolt now as the efforts of Joti Rao Phule and later the campaigns of Ambedkar started empowering the downtrodden dalits. This was a serious threat to Brahmanical system.

While this was the core an external threat was to be created to ‘unify’ Hindu society. And here the Muslims, Muslim Kings rule came in as handy. It is this anti Muslim tirade and actions which was the frontage for Hindutva, while the anti dalit-agenda was the real underlying motive. The whole of Shakha (RSS branches) baudhiks (intellectual sessions) were structured around this. The promotion of communal historiography, the hatred for Muslims was the visible part of RSS training, while glorification of past is the fulcrum which in a way is the code language for retaining the hierarchy of caste and also of gender.

Practically also if we see the strengthening of Hindutva began on the issue of a Muslim king destroying the temple of the birth place of Lord Ram, this campaign got its vitriol after the implementation of Mandal Commission in 1990. The anti Muslim Hate and promotion of values of caste and gender hierarchy are synthesized by Hindutva politics. That’s as far as the political agenda of Hindu nationalism goes. As far as communal violence is concerned, it has been an anti Muslim work through and through. All the statistics shows that victims of communal violence are primarily Muslims, around 80% of victims being Muslims. These Muslims do come from all sections of Muslims, more from the poor.

The caste comes into operation in the mechanism of riot production. Hindutva politics, through its extensive network has been working relentlessly among dalits. The recent book by Bhanwar Meghwanshi, “I was a Kar Sevak”, brilliantly describes the mechanism of co-opting dalits into the agenda of sectarian politics. RSS has floated innumerable organizations, like Samajik Samrasta Manch, which work among dalits to promote Brahmanical values and to integrate dalits into the scheme of Hindutva politics. They are made to act as foot soldiers of Hindu nationalist politics. Those who spread hate through indoctrination and propaganda are safe in their cozy houses or offices while the poor dalits are made to soil their hands with the blood of religious minorities.

The face of Gujarat violence, Ashok Mochi, now talks of dalit-Muslim unity. The data compiled by Raju Solanki and quoted by Yengde is the norm in the cases of violence in India. Those who are incited, those who are later charged with violence are not the ones who give donations to RSS or support its various activities. Most of these do come from the sections of indoctrinated youth from downtrodden communities.

Yengde has done a valuable job in drawing our attention to the role of caste in communal violence; the problem with his thesis is the undermining the role of ‘Hate against religious minorities’, which is the base on which the violence is orchestrated. The extent and degree of indoctrination done through shakhas is very powerful and effective. This can gauzed from the experiences of the likes of Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who tells us the difficulties he had to face to come to grips of reality of caste while overcoming the RSS propaganda.

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