No subject

to=20
the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, as evidenced by the laborious efforts at=
=20
reconstructing the chronology of the events depicted in the epics and turni=
ng=20
the principal characters into live historical figures who were the Moses,=
=20
Abraham, Isaac, and Christ of Hinduism, to the onslaught on the generally=
=20
accepted theory of an Aryan migration to India ? an onslaught first headed,=
=20
it is no accident, by an Indian aerospace engineer, N S Rajaram, who is=20
described as valiantly having temporarily set aside his career in the=20
interest of exposing, the largest ??hoax?? in human history ? the=20
Hindutvavadis have signified their attachment to historical discourses.

Historical discourses are preeminently the discourses of the nation, and th=
e=20
interest, which has something in common with the historical archive, making=
=20
it intrinsically hospitable to the modernist sensibility of the historian, =
is=20
poised to become the ground on which the advocates of Hindutva will stage=
=20
their revisionist histories. Whether cyberspace is ??Republican?? is a matt=
er=20
on which we can defer judgment, but it is poised, alarmingly, to become a=
=20
Hindutva domain, considering that there are scarcely any web sites which=20
offer competing narratives.

Dharmakshetre, Kurukshetre (on the field of dharma, righteousness; on the=
=20
field of the Kurus), says the Bhagavad Gita in its opening line, but today=
=20
this might well be: dharmakshetre, cyberkshetre.

If the computer scientist-historian types who inhabit Silicon Valley, and=
=20
their diasporic brethren, have it their way, Hinduism will become that very=
=20
??world historical religion?? they have craved to see, and Hindutva history=
=20
will be the most tangible product of the wave of globalisation over which=
=20
they preside from their diasporic vantagepoint.