Ten people, including Samajwadi Party’s (SP) Swami Prasad Maurya, have been booked for burning pages of Shri Ramcharitmanas. The despicable act was done in UP’s (Uttar Pradesh) Vrindavan by members of an organization identified as Akhil Bharatiya OBC Mahasabha. The members said they burnt copies of the Hindu Grantha to ‘express solidarity’ with Maurya.

That this condemnable act occurred in Goswami Tulsidas ji’s UP is both sad and hurtful. UP is the birthplace of Prabhu Sri Ram, the state where Prabhu has left His footprints all over, where Goswami Tulsidas ji composed the Ramcharitmanas Grantha. It is nothing but the decline of political morality and the height of Hindu hate that UP witnessed the burning of one of the holiest Granthas of Hindu Dharma.

The act was allegedly done in protest against certain ‘objectionable’ verses. However, it appears to be a political strategy. The political strategy seems to be to break the OBCs or so-called backward castes vote bank of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

An FIR (First Information Report) was filed against Swami Prasad Maurya, Devendra Pratap Yadav, Yashpal Singh Lodhi, Satyendra Kushwaha, Mahendra Pratap Yadav, Sujit Yadav, Naresh Singh, S S Yadav, Santosh Verma and Saleem.

The accused were booked under IPC sections 142 (unlawful assembly), 143, 153A (wanton vilification or attacks upon the religion, race, place of birth, residence etc), 295 (injuring on defiling place of worship), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings), and 298 (uttering words with the deliberate intention to wound religious feelings) among others. Republic World reported that five of the ten booked in the case have been arrested.

Maurya on Sunday sparked a major controversy after he demanded the deletion of “insulting comments and sarcasm” targeted at particular castes and sects in Ramcharitmanas. The SP leader said: “I don’t have any issue with Ramcharitramanas but parts of it have insulting comments and sarcasm directed at particular castes and sects. Those should be removed”. He further claimed that in the Ramcharitmanas, some words hurt the sentiments of the Dalit community.

That this act is political, becomes clear from Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav’s statement as claimed in a tweet. Journalist Sudhir Mishra shared a video showing Yadav raising questions on verses of Ramcharitmanas. Far from condemning Maurya, Yadav is not just condoning him but right from Maurya’s statement demanding a ban on the Grantha to the burning of Ramcharitmanas, Yadav seems to be the mastermind.

The complicity of Yadav is also clear from the fact that Maurya was made the party’s National General Secretary. Hindu Dharma and Dharmic Granthas can’t be slaughtered for Yadav’s political ambitions. Will Yadav dare to do such politics with scriptures of other religions?

Are the society and the government being run today on the basis of systems prevalent in ancient times? Does the constitution mandate that after its official implementation, the Dharmic Granthas must conform to the definitions mentioned in it?

This question arises because when the constitution isn’t based on the system mentioned in the Hindu Dharma, then why should classes and systems mentioned in Hindu Granthas conform to the definitions given in the constitution? Why are all the principles and interpretations of Hindu Dharma judged on the basis of the so-called ‘social system’?

This has become a toolkit of sorts where loose tongues like Maurya are allowed to comment on Hindu Granthas at will and the party later washes its hands off saying the comments are the ‘personal views’ of the leader in question. However, in reality, the Hinduphobic leaders have the total backing of their party heads. Recently, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Shivanand Tiwari also said there is a lot of ‘kooda karkat’ (garbage) in Ramanaya along with diamonds and pearls.

Bihar Education Minister RJD MLA Chandrashekhar Yadav opined that Ramcharitmanas spreads ‘hatred’. He demanded the burning of books such as Manusmriti, Ramcharitmanas by Goswami Tulsidas and Bunch of Thoughts by Madhav Sadashivrao Golwalkar saying these worked towards keeping a majority of the population backwards.

Yadav opined that Islam was the only religion giving the message of love and honesty. Leftist Hinduphobic author KS Bhagawan from Karnataka, who received protection from the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government, demeaned Bhagwan Ram by calling Him a ‘drunkard’.

With the grand Ram Mandir’s construction apace and Home Minister Amit Shah saying it would be ready, Hindudveshi politicians like Maurya, Yadav and their cronies like Bhagawan are coming out all guns blazing with their cooked-up stories & theories.

There seems to be a toolkit to deliberately target Prabhu Ram, Ramcharitmanas, and Ramayana. Earlier, Manusmriti was targeted by Hindudveshis who took its verses out of context to propagate falsehoods about the Grantha. The same template is now being repeated with Ramcharitmanas.

What started with ill-informed and selective targeting of Manusmriti, has now descended into slandering and distortion of Hindu Granthas such as Ramcharitmanas, Vedas, and Gita among others. The anti-Hindu secular republic of ‘Hindu majority’ Bharat appears to have sanctioned and fuelled this Hinduphobia, overtly or covertly.

In no other country would abuse of deities held sacred by the majority be tolerated. However, in Bharat Sri Ayyappa Swamy, Maa Durga, Sri Ram, Sri Krishna, Maa Saraswati, and Sri Murugan are openly abused and Hindu Dharmic Granthas are openly burned. Has the inaction of the Republic and the silence of Hindus emboldened these elements to repeatedly attack and hurt Hindu sentiments?

Hindus should make it clear to politicians like Yadav and Maurya that Dharma should be kept out of their political agenda and propaganda. Insulting Hindu Granthas and subjecting them to their ‘definitions’ cannot be accepted particularly when the ‘majority’ is unfairly treated citing the constitution which is in itself biased against Hindus.