Hypocrisy of Indian Nationalism

18 million Indian citizens are living abroad, working or studying, according to a report published in Jan 2021. Now the number could be more. In addition to that number are people of Indian origin who live in other countries but are not Indian citizens. In short, there is a huge number of Indians living in other countries.

One of the interesting facts in the 2021 report is that the United Arab Emirates has the highest number of Indians, 3.5 million. That is a Muslim country. It is followed by the USA (2.7 million). Saudi Arabia, another Muslim country, is at the third place with 2.5 million Indians. Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan and Qatar have sizeable populations of Indians. These people working abroad contribute substantially to India’s revenue.

The irony is that quite many of them living out there are hardcore right-wing nationalists. Every day, invariably, you will find them writing in the social media against the Muslims of India and occasionally against Christians too. They have no qualms about living and earning that livelihood in Muslim and Christian countries.

The above is one of the many reactions that appeared in Facebook to the movie The Kashmir Files. The writer of that is working in Oman! This is just one example. You can find thousands of them all over social media. 

They have no qualms about setting up Hindu temples in those countries though they support organisations in India that bring down mosques and churches. There are over 450 Hindu temples across the Untied States. The New York region alone has over 135 of them. Wikipedia has an amazing list of Hindu temples across the world.

The RSS is the richest organisation in the country, according to A G Noorani’s book titled The RSS: A Menace to India. “Its Political Department is the richest in the field.” That’s the last sentence of Noorani’s book. A substantial amount of that wealth comes from Hindu nationalists working in Muslim and Christian countries.

The world is a village now, as the advocates of globalisation say. Long ago, the Hindu scriptures put it as “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam.” There are 281 million people living outside the country of their origin today. The above-mentioned 18 million Indians are among them. National borders have ceased to have relevance anymore except as security measures. Nationalism is a thing of the past, a defunct past. The way Indians are practising it today is as ironical, if not comical, as Prime Minister Modi advising Indians to go local while he himself uses foreign products for almost everything. Hypocrisy is as holy as the cow here!