In 58 posts with close to 100k words, we shared a lot in 2024! Explore 2024’s biggest geopolitical shifts, cultural battles, and bold insights with Drishtikone’s year in review. See you in 2025! Happy New Year! Be safe!
When you see Russia get into existential war over Ukraine, or Israel bomb Syria or India battle with Pakistan or Bangladesh, it is not because of some whim. It has a historical and geographical context. That is critical to understand for analyzing geopolitics.
Dive into the shadowy world of the Deep State—its hidden structures, powerful networks, and the far-reaching impact on global events and control.
The concept of righteousness is integral to the Christian idea of God and entire theology. It is also the foundation on which the entire power structure is built. Any power structure.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” ― Anatole France
Who holds the reins of power and why? Who gets to make decisions behind the scenes? How can the power to define morality and make it available to the chosen few - the believers - be concentrated into an entity of your choosing?
That has been the quest of the religious and the political elites.
The whole structure of power and the web of morality and righteousness was weighed against those who didn’t believe in the Church’s dogma. It has been the same way for those who do not hold the entrenched political gods as infallible.
If the social ways have to change and freedom from dogma unleashed, then this framework of righteousness has to be understood and worked upon.
For humanity to be free, the heavens of righteousness have to fall.
Thank you so much Bhavdeepji for your contribution to Drishtikone. Truly humbled, Sir. 🙏
To understand the world that we live in, we need to understand the frameworks that rule its ways.
It is very common in the Western framework to install someone as the highest authority and then use it to certify the correctness of others. Others by definition are relegated to a lower level. No matter what their scholarship or strength of greatness, they cannot, or rather are not considered nor allowed, to measure up to the word of that one authority.
This installing of one person or group as the arbiter of correctness is done via the power of collective decree and continuous reinforcement. To make it all-powerful, it necessarily involves persecution, all couched in high-sounding words that cannot be questioned. If anyone questions, then that person is put down mercilessly and in a spectacularly gruesome manner. So - one, no one dares to question again, and two, if someone does then that sole wayward can be derided and made an invalid voice.
All this persecution happens until the narrative of the ones who want to be the deciding authority becomes an established norm. An unspoken truth.
It doesn’t matter how ridiculously juvenile that “unspoken truth” is. It’s now an established social narrative and fact.
Any opposition or questioning now can be quashed just by comparing the critique to the fact that the argument being denied has been established as the “truth.”
A circular argument, where one end has to be fixed. And, that is done via persecution and complete annihilation of the others’ voice and credibility.
This is how political discourse works in the West. This is the way that was borrowed by the Nehruvian gang in India.
But where does this framework of installing the source of righteousness and then the methodology of imputing and infusing that righteousness to select few come from?
William Lane Craig is an American theologian who had a few arguments about God, Morality, and theology, fundamental being:
Of course, he explained God and morality emanating from “Him” based on the Biblical theology. And, that is how the Christological argument for the existence of God is built. It has three parts to the argument.
That remains the basis of most evangelical work. Jesus is introduced as a certainty in terms of historic existence. Then his infallibility is built as the “Son of God” by making his “resurrection” an irrefutable claim.
Now, based on that the entire Christological argument was then established.
Once such a God has been installed, then it becomes the only arbiter of Morality and Good.
Why is this important?
Righteousness is a concept that is derived from Christian theology. It is “The quality of being morally right or justifiable.” (Source)
Only the Christian God, as the arbiter of morality, is the sole preserve of righteousness, as per theology in New Testament.
For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Source - Romans 10:3-13)
So basically faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the only real way to achieve righteousness. A righteousness that isn’t yours but imputed to you via Christ through a transaction - your sin imputed to him and his righteousness imputed to you.
God, Christian God, is, therefore, the only valid source of righteousness. A quality that humans neither possess nor deserve as per Christian theology. Except for Christ, who inherits it from God.
Righteousness is therefore either imputed or infused to humans.
Imputation of righteousness is when righteousness (with Christ and God in its original sense) is credited to a believer’s account because of his faith in Christ.
Through our faith in Christ, the righteousness of God is given to us. This is called “imputed” righteousness. To impute something is to ascribe or attribute something to someone. When we place our faith in Christ, God ascribes the perfect righteousness of Christ to our account so that we become perfect in His sight. “For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
The only way to achieve righteousness - the quality of being morally right or justifiable - is through faith in Jesus - and therefore the Christian God. A God, whose existence is predicated on, well, Jesus’ historical existence and the “miracle of resurrection”, which installs him as God’s own son.
See how circular the whole argument is?
But that is how the claim to righteousness is built.
Nehru was right and almost “divine”. So anyone who believes in Nehru is righteous. For, Nehru’s righteousness is imputed to his believers. Anyone who does not believe in Nehru’s claim to righteousness is doomed and a sinner. The imputation of righteousness can only be imputed by a progeny or apostles of Nehru.
Why was Nehru right? Because he did great deeds and was a statesman and if you ever contradicted what he said or did you had to be a fanatic bigoted Hindu (condemned to ‘secular’ hell).
Of course, just as Constantine and later Christians ensured that any critic of Christianity was obliterated and killed, Nehru and his successors ensured the same fate awaited his critics as well.
The extreme severity of targeting of Modi, therefore, is not a random act. It is following a pattern. The Christian framework of retaining the infallibility of righteousness in Christ (and their God) and obliteration of anyone who dares to argue to the contrary.
To create the infallibility of Christian God and Christ, two things have been used - Persecution (Violence, killing, and annihilation) and Large scale narrative building with complex links and intertwining arguments that were established as facts over time because (1) they were repeated and (2) no one refuted them out of fear or derision while the Christian power dominated.
That is how everyone who wants to dominate the world of power works. Even the Communists.
Of course, there are many assumptions and loopholes in the Christian understanding:
The whole edifice around God, its gender, “his” qualities, “his” ability to bear progeny without any proof of physical existence, and the need for his own creation to suck up to him is quite nonsensical. Yet, it was peddled as truth and facts. As for Jesus, it doesn’t matter who he was. His name has meant death for millions on this planet in the last 2000 years. At least 3 continents have been wiped out of their natives in his name. That should be enough for any normal sane person to ensure his own name is never again appears in history.
In the early days of Christianity, philosophers like Celsus, Galen, and Porphyry were very articulate about why Christianity was the “unreasoning faith.”
Nothing of their writings survive.
Just as references, facts, and works of people like Netaji, Syama Prasad Mukherjee, countless freedom fighters, Sardar Patel, and many others were basically obliterated.
The real power of righteousness remained with the Nehru family as the highest keepers of morality and righteousness. It didn’t matter whether 1984 massacres happened or Tamils were massacred in Sri Lanka or the Sadhus were shot in Delhi - the family went scot-free with respect to any blame on their “sanctity”.
The power of righteousness can be imputed to anyone by Nehru and his progeny. That is why Congress could never be led by anyone other than from the Nehru/Gandhi family.
Anyone else in Congress could get the imputed righteousness, but could not be the source of righteousness. You see, Kapil Sibal can be righteous by imputation. But he cannot ascribe righteousness to anyone else.
And he gets the imputed righteousness assigned to him as long as he believes in the supremacy of Gandhis as they leaders of Congress. The moment that belief is lost or he rebels, he ceases to have the imputed righteousness.
Hasn’t that worked for every Congressman who left the party or rebelled against the Gandhis or ruled the party and nation while having no role from the Gandhi family? Sitaram Kesari and PV Narasimha Rao cases exemplify that.
They had their imputed righteousness snatched from them once their Faith in Nehru/Gandhi supremacy was gone. Just as it would happen to Christian apostates.
In his comments on Galatians 5:4, "Ye are fallen from grace," Luther writes, "To fall from grace means to lose the atonement, the forgiveness of sins, the righteousness, liberty, and life which Jesus has merited for us by His death and resurrection. To lose the grace of God means to gain the wrath and judgment of God, death, the bondage of the devil, and everlasting condemnation." (Source)
Sitaram Kesari was an apostate in the Nehruvian world. As is Jyotiraditya Scindia.
The only way to restore humanity based on seeking, spiritual sadhana, and honesty in the world is to set aside the beliefs in Christian God, Jesus, and challenge the infallibility of the dogma just as Celsus and Porphyry did.
On the political side, Nehru and Gandhi need to be evaluated for who they were. That Nehru was a megalomaniacal cheat is a fact of history and it should be brought out. That Gandhi was a pedophile and a sociopath is another fact.
Until the artificial sanctification of made-up Gods is challenged and brought down while their stories are discredited because they lack sanity - things will not change.
The real battle in the fight for power is the ability to define the source of righteousness. That alone is the basis of power.
Unless this generation brings the Gods - political and theological - down, we will merely straighten the deck of Titanic.
Propaganda and Vaccine: Hoaxes, doctored videos, and far-fetched rumors are emerging as some of the biggest threats to India's massive coronavirus vaccine drive, with misinformation blamed for sluggish initial take-ups. India has endured a torrent of misinformation for the duration of the pandemic. (Source)
OTT Regulation: A growing number of instances of online content on social media and Over the Top (OTT) platforms running foul of public and political sentiments has prompted the government to examine regulatory mechanisms for OTT in other countries that suggest the need for a regulatory framework. (Source)
Right to sperm: The Calcutta High Court on January 19 ruled that a father does not have any "fundamental right" to collect preserved sperm of his dead son, irrespective of the permission of the deceased donor's wife. The bench of Justice Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya dismissed a petition wherein the petitioner, a father, on the basis of his parental relationship with the deceased, sought permission to collect preserved sperm. (Source)
Genocide in labs: A controversial new study claims that more than 110 million of the mammals used in American scientific laboratories for experiments are either mice or rats — an assertion that, if true, is astonishing for what it implies about humanity's attitudes towards the tiny, intelligent creatures. The paper, which was published in the scholarly journal Scientific Reports last week, was written by Larry Carbone DVM PhD, who has specialty certifications in Animal Welfare and in Laboratory Animal Medicine. (Source)
Oxygen theft: Thefts of oxygen mounted as Mexico reported its highest daily death toll since the coronavirus pandemic began. The thefts came as authorities launched a campaign urging people to return rented oxygen tanks they no longer need, saying enormous demand amid the pandemic has created a shortage of the cylinders. (Source)
Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist who has some interesting insights into the future of mankind. Some of his insights on the possibility multi-planetary life were quite revealing for me.
Carl Sagan believed humanity needed to become a multi-planet species as an insurance policy against the next huge catastrophe on Earth. Now, Elon Musk is working to see that mission through, starting with a colony of a million humans on Mars. Where will our species go next? Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku looks decades into the future and makes three bold predictions about human space travel, the potential of 'brain net', and our coming victory over cancer.
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