Summary of the Month

 Dear Reader,

Today is the fourth Saturday of the month and so as per my schedule I will be writing a summary of the posts that I have written during this month.

The first post I wrote this month was "Pew Survey on India and Religion".

 In it I discussed a report the the Pew Research Center made and released this month. That report was about a survey that Pew had conducted in India in 2019 and 2020 before the pandemic. In this survey they asked Indians questions about religion.

They were asked about religious tolerance, diversity, their beliefs and practices. 

This was done to learn and understand the religious views of Indians. 

The results of the survey showed that first of all the vast majority - 97% - of Indians are religious and that most of them respect other religions. Some other findings were that Indians of different religions have some shared beliefs such as karma, re-incarnation, heaven and hell etc.

In my post I said that this survey shows that Indians are a very tolerant people. I explained why this is. It is because the majority of Indians follow a Dharmic religion be it Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism or Jainism. These religions espouse the idea of equality of all religions. They do not say that only their religion is correct.

I went on to explain that Indians who follow the Abrahamic religions like Islam and Christianity also respect other religions. This is despite their religions teaching them that only their religion is true and all others are false. This is proof that they have imbibed the beliefs and teachings of the majority Hindus.

This survey shows that the accusations of religious intolerance towards Indians that come from foreign media are not accurate. India is a religiously diverse and tolerant country and should be respected as such.

The second post of the month was " Narendra Modi and his Impact on Indian Nationalism ".

In that post I wrote about Narendra Modi's career in politics from the time he was CM of Gujarat till today. I wrote about how he supports nationalism and how he has encouraged nationalism to grown in our country. 

I called him the leading figure of Indian nationalism in the present era. 

I compared him and his party the BJP to the Congress. The BJP are more nationalistic then Congress and I attributed their victories in the 2014 and '19 elections to their nationalism. The Balakot airstrikes in February 2019 proved their nationalistic credentials to the Indian people which is why they were re-elected. Through these and other actions like the surgical strikes in 2016, Modi showed that he was motivated to and capable of protecting the security of the nation.

The rising support for nationalism in the Indian people caused the opposition parties to support nationalism. Rahul Gandhi claimed that he was a Hindu and several other politicians started supporting nationalistic causes, for example speaking against Pakistan.

When the Supreme Court gave its verdict in the Ram Janmabhoomi case that the Ram Temple should be rebuilt, the Congress and other opposition parties came out in support of the temple when they had previously been against it. The BJP on the other hand had always supported the Ram Mandir. This is another example of how the BJP was popularising nationalism in India.

I went on to write how more Indian movies are being made that are nationalistic.

I ended my post by saying how inspiring it was to see the effect that one man - Narendra Modi - was having on the whole nation.

On the third Saturday of the month I wrote a post titled " A Nationalistic Analysis of The Conflict Between the Afghan Government and the Taliban".

In it I gave a brief overview of the history of Afghanistan from the 18th century to the present. 

I started with the Durrani Empire founded by Ahmed Shah Durrani.  The empire ruled Afghanistan from 1747 to 1823.

The empire established a national Afghan identity amongst the Afghan people. Sunni Islam became a commonality amongst all Afghans and their national identity became intertwined with their religious identity.

In 1823 the Durrani Empire was ruled by a very unpopular emperor named Shuja Shah Durrani and so another ruler Dost Mohammed Khan took over. 

The Russians had expanded their empire until the northern borders of Afghanistan which made the British insecure. This is because they ruled India and they feared that if Russia conquered Afghanistan then they would attack British India. Therefore the British invaded Afghanistan in the first Anglo-Afghan war. They deposed Dost Mohammed Khan and replaced him with the previous Durrani ruler and most of their forces came back to India.

Because the previous Durrani emperor was unpopular the Afghan people revolted and drove out the remaining British troops and re-instated Dost Mohammed Khan on the throne.

The British again attacked Afghanistan in the second Anglo-Afghan war which was from 1878 to 1880.  The British were defeated but the Afghans agreed to become a protectorate of the British. They maintained control over their Domestic affairs but their foreign affairs were controlled by the British.

Then in the 20th century the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and fought a war from 1979 to 1989.

The Americans created the Taliban and the Mujahideen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Taliban defeated the USSR and then the U.S abandoned them. This is similar to how the British supported the Durrani ruler against Dost Mohammed Khan to oppose Russia.

Afghanistan had a civil war which went on until 1996 when the Taliban took over. They were religiously fanatic and forced everyone to practise Islam. 

They allowed al - Qaeda into Afghanistan and al-Qaeda attacked the U.S on September 11th. This caused America to invade Afghanistan and remove the Taliban from power. A President was elected by the Afghan people.

In 2020 the Taliban and the U.S made an agreement. The U.S would withdraw troops and the Talibaan would not let terrorists to use Afghanistan.

The Agreement has failed after Biden took over. 

The Taliban are now attacking the Afghan government. They may take over Afghanistan. They are being supported directly by Pakistan and indirectly by China.

I do not think that they will rule in the interest of the Afghan people. I fear that they will have to give concessions to Pakistan and China which would give these two countries more control over Afghanistan which would hurt Afghanistan's sovereignty. On the other hand they do support Sunni Islam which is the official religion of Afghanistan and so I think they will protect the culture and religion of the Afghan people. 

The current government is democratically elected and so is still the legitimate government. However it is strongly controlled by the West and is disconnected from the Afghan people.

So neither party can be called truly nationalistic.

I just hope that whatever does happen Afghanistan's national interests are protected.

The fourth post of the month was "Rand Paul Seeks Criminal Referral Against Anthony Fauci ".

In it I wrote about the questions Senator Paul asked Dr. Fauci in the latter's Congressional hearing on the 20th of July.

In it Paul accused Fauci of lying to Congress because in a previous hearing he had claimed that the NIAID and NIH - institutions that he heads - did not fund gain of function research in Wuhan.

The Senator presented a paper from 2017 that was made by the Wuhan Institute of Virology which said that they had been given funding by the NIH for research that involved increasing the transmissibility of viruses found in mammals to make them more infectious towards humans. This is the definition of Gain-of-function research. Therefore I believe that Fauci did lie. 

However the matter needs to be investigated further before his guilt can be proven.

There were several commonalities in these posts. One of the most prominent ones was the impact of people on their respective nations.

The Pew Research Center Survey showed how the religiously tolerant and accepting views of the majority of Indians who are Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains have influenced Muslims and Christians whose religions are not tolerant of others. 

In the post on Modi, I described how he has contributed to a resurgence of nationalism in India. He is not the creator of Indian nationalism but he is its biggest influence.

In the post about Afghanistan I showed how individuals like Emperor Ahmed Shah Durrani and Dost Mohammed Khan had a positive influence on their nation while people like Shuja Shah Durrani damaged their nation. I described how Joe Biden has single-handedly caused the Doha Agreement to fall through which resulted in the current conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan Government while Donald Trump had tried to improve the situation by signing the deal in the first place.

While writing about the Congressional Hearing with Dr. Fauci I explained how Rand Paul's actions of questioning the Doctor have brought to light his corruption and lies. Senator Paul is performing his duties as a Congressmen very well.

Therefore one thing I can learn from my posts this month is that the individual has the power to influence his or her nation and that he must use this power responsibly. Nationalism is served best by nationalists.

Thank you for Reading,

Vande Mataram