A short story:

In Nov 2018, a man from UP’s Shamli named Saleem gave an affidavit in local court that he and his family were changing religion. News leaked in local media and became national news. I also visited him and wrote a report +

Saleem was born in Hindu Jat family and named Susheel. He was left orphaned at 8. One Mohd Sabdar picked him from streets and took him in as assistant in his transport business. Sabdar changed his name to Saleem and even got him circumcised as Islamic ritual +
When he turned 15, Sabdar got him married to Wajida. As Saleem grew independent, he left Sabdar & began to work for another transporter, a Punjabi Hindu. Susheel told me Sabdar never paid him a salary

In 2018 when he was 31, he decided to revert to his original name and faith +
Wajida supported him. Things were fine till her father Israel arrived from Jharkhand. He tried to change Saleem’s mind. When he remained adamant, Israel brainwashed Wajida into leaving him. When Saleem went for a tour, Israel quietly took Wajida and their 5 kids to Jharkhand +
Saleem immediately went to Jharkhand on his return. Israel asked him to read kalma again and serve Tablighi Jamaat for 40 days as penance. Saleem refused. He did not have Wajida’s support anymore.

On 16 Jan, he sent me a Whatsapp video saying he was ready to commit suicide +
I called him in panic and told him not to do that. I made a call to @SanjeevSanskrit and @DharmaOfVedas. Together, we managed to convince him to return to Shamli immediately

It’s been a year since these developments. Today, Susheel is happy and lives with his family +
He doesn’t live in Shamli anymore as he fears his father-in-law taking his children away or his house getting attacked again by some neighbours.

Here’s the story of what all happened over the last year:

https://t.co/Zist8kzBP1
Here’s a video of Wajida and Susheel/Saleem when I visited them in Nov 2018 https://t.co/7IPuryPsTW

More from India

Some readers have been asking what #India2030 is all about.
Here’s a chapter-by-chapter thread on the 20 forecasts by 20 thought leaders on 20 themes that will define India in the 2020s.
1/n


Chapter 20 of #India2030 by @davidfrawleyved talks about how the Civilizational Resurgence of India will reconnect its ancient past to ride into a dharmic future
2/n

Chapter 19 of #India2030 by @devdip tells us what the new idea of Nationalism in the 2020s will be — an integral union of the nation with the self
3/n

Chapter 18 of #India2030 by @sandipanthedeb examines how ideologies and technologies will intrude into and redefine Friendships
4/n

Chapter 17 of #India2030 by @authoramish studies the Soft Power of India and says its global influence will be through the confluence of materialism and spiritualism
5/n
Hindutva does not belong to Modi nor his party, it belongs to the people as a unifying, decolonial ideology similar to pan-Africanism or Yugoslavism.

His own brand of "positive secularism" is even milder - deepening special rights and welfare schemes for religious minorities.


After the disbanding of the Hindu Mahasabha and Jana Sangh, Hindutva as a political ideology does not even exist, except as a bogeyman in the minds of the Anglophone elite.

Even the BJP gave up Hindutva for civic nationalism, Gandhian socialism, and positive secularism in 1980s.

Under Modi, there has been compete policy continuity on minority rights and welfare from the Congress era, with little to no "Hindutva agenda" coming to see the light of day.

The most radical policy they can dream of is religion-neutral laws and equal rights for equal citizens.

Hindutva was essential in forming a national consciousness, but was abandoned with time. The modern BJP refuses to self-identify as a Hindutva movement, adopting moderates like Sardar Patel, Deendayal Upadhyay, and JP Narayan as their icons, rather than Savarkar or the Mahasabha.

When they say Hindu Rashtra, all they mean is an "Indic polity".

When British India was partitioned into a Muslim homeland and a Dharmic homeland, one state became a 'Ghazi' garrison state, and one the successor state to the Indic

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