Brexit has created a vacuum in the Conservative Party leadership. The resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron after the referendum on EU membership has allowed various members of his party to bid to replace him as leader not just of his own political organisation, but the country. Among these is the Welfare and Pensions Secretary, Stephen Crabb. A relatively unknown compared to the others in the contest, Crabb’s entry should nevertheless be of concern to Hindus. When it comes to India and especially Hindus, both Left and Right, Labour and Conservative, have the same colonialist and racist residue of the White Man’s Burden.
They feel the need to civilise the Hindu ‘savage’, especially from that oppressive caste system – as if inequality and social hierarchy has never existed anywhere else. Crabb’s own political history has such skeletons which are not so much in his closet as on proud and brazen display.
His past close working association with right-wing extremist groups such as Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) and their Indian quislings should be cause for concern. These include praising Kancha Ilaiah, the director of the Centre for Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) in Hyderabad, who has made his career on baiting Hindus using racism and conspiracy theories. Crabb has never disassociated himself from such views. While he has spoken up for Muslim and Jewish communities facing discrimination, he has not done the same for Hindus. Indeed as just mentioned he has been part of the discourse which uses them as a scapegoat for India’s poverty and much else. Any attempt to enter dialogue with Mr Crabb which challenges this has been ignored or rebuffed.
Hindus should therefore think very carefully about supporting a Conservative Party led by Stephen Crabb. Underpinning his prejudice against Hindus and treating them in a manner which would be unacceptable if it was any other community, are his narrow religious beliefs which may see commonality of Christianity with Judaism and Islam as fellow monotheistic paths, but have nothing but utter contempt for the pagan and polytheistic beliefs of Hinduism.
Now while all this was going on the leadership contest enjoyed the participation of someone who is regarded at present as an outsider to lead the Tories. Stephen Crabb has been MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire in Wales since 2005. He has also been Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, since March 2016, was previously a government whip, a junior minister for Wales and the Secretary of State for Wales. Crabb grew up in what can be termed a dysfunctional family, where his mother eked out a living on a council estate having separated from her violent partner, leaving that abusive marriage when the future MP was just eight years old.
He has spoken in interviews of the “horrible decisions about what food and clothing was affordable” as he was growing up. Crabb has related with admiration of how his mother as a single parent was able to wean herself off state support, and become independent, and thus not get caught in the welfare trap and economically downward spiral which it has so often caused. As well as the kindness of friends and neighbours, the local church often supported the family at Christmas. The children were taken diligently by their mother to the library on Saturday and church on Sunday. Indeed to this day Crabb remains a committed Christian, something which influences his politics perhaps more than he would care to admit. Especially when it comes to unbelievers like Hindus.
Methodism, that brand of Protestant Christianity which emphasises “social holiness”, missionary zeal, charity and service to the poor and vulnerable is often assumed to be on the Left; Harold Wilson declared that the Labour Party “owed more to Methodism than to Marxism”. From the eighteenth century, Methodist preachers took the message to labourers and criminals who tended to be left outside organized religion at that time.
In Britain, the Methodist Church had a major effect in the early decades of the making of the working class. In the United States it became the religion of many slaves who later formed black churches in the Methodist tradition. But an austere Methodist upbringing and a deep lifelong faith also shaped Baroness Thatcher, whose own father was a preacher in that Christian faith. As a child, Margaret would sit in the pew listening to her father hammer home messages on the Protestant work ethic, God-given liberty and individualism. Indeed as with Labour and Marx, Thatcherism always owed more to Methodism than it ever did to monetarism.
Crabb’s Crusade
Mr Crabb has said God’s care for widows and orphans in the Bible is his “guiding star for social policy”. Hence it was with evident glee that the powerful Christian media outlet Premier announced on 29 June 2016:
Christian Action Research and Education (Care) has borrowed the tactics of America’s religious Right in its attempts to affect policy. Care describes itself as a “mainstream Christian charity bringing Christian insight and experience to matters of public policy”. A closer look at its website appears to contradict the claim to be “mainstream”. The organisation’s published doctrinal basis is distinctly fundamentalist and among other things talks of “the divine inspiration of Holy Scripture and its consequent entire trustworthiness and supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct”. In other words, the Bible is the literal truth.
Lyndon Bowring, the charity’s executive chairman, is on the board of Kensington Temple, one of London’s largest Pentecostal organisations. He is also on the board of Care for the Family, the European arm of Focus on the Family. Focus on the Family is one of the largest and best-resourced pressure groups of America’s religious Right, and it is not coy about its fundamentalist agenda. Its mission statement talks of “defending the God-ordained institution of the family and promoting biblical truths worldwide”.
The number of Indian people working in Britain is now at a record high at over 800,000. This impressive statistic tells a story about the enduring contribution that the 1.26 million-strong Indian community make to British life. Of course, this is part of a wider story. The UK and India have a unique friendship, as the world’s oldest democracy and largest democracy, and Indian culture has helped shape the identity of modern Britain.
As mentioned when it comes to Hindus, the Left and Right unite in an unholy alliance. Witness again that only Dalit representatives were allowed to speak. While CSW and their allies such as Stephen Crabb and Rob Marris denounce India’s anti-conversion laws, they compromise their own supposedly sacrosanct freedom of conscience by muzzling and censoring any Hindu input.
Well in that case I am sure that Mr Crabb will have no problem if I refuse to shy away from exposing what his real agenda has been in all this and also recognise the ‘friendship’ in that. CSW is an organisation that has used the issue of caste and Dalits as a convenient stick to attack Hindus. Any attempt at dialogue is met with blockage of all correspondence – a tad ironic considering how much these extremists hammer on about anti-conversion laws in India that stop well funded missionaries from exploiting famine, disease and poverty to push their ideas on unwilling victims.
Crabb is very keen to be associated with CSW, a hate group which in 2006 invited Dr Joseph D’Souza from its partner in Hinduphobia, the AICC (All India Christian Council) to speak in London’s Victoria, where he denounced Hinduism as the worst religion in the world. It was evil and demonic. The Dalits must be won over for Christ before the Muslims got to them. This is not guilt by association. Crabb has been active with CSW, even appearing in the film they show and sponsor, Rev Michael Lawson’s India’s Hidden Slavery.
In fact this slavery was so ‘hidden’ that they did not even need secret cameras to film it. Try doing that openly at certain warehouses in Britain and you will feel the brute fist of onsite security and possibly state law enforcement. The film in which Crabb appears also speaks of India’s Aryan invasion. Yet our seemingly jovial MP seems to also have no qualms about appearing in a hate video which revamps Nazi racial theories in order to further its aims at converting India and curing it from the Hindu disease which infects it.
Well if it was such a critical mind, why did Mr Crabb not highlight the American Baptist funded terrorists which have banned Diwali in India’s north eastern states of Nagaland, Meghalya and Mizoram? Also this sinister mention of 3000 years is no mere innocent statistic. It is again an affirmation of the outdated and racist Aryan Invasion Theory, invented to justify the rule of whites over other races.
Crabb mentions how anti-conversion laws prevent Dalits leaving for Buddhism, Islam and Christianity. Now while he later says that caste should not just be linked to Hinduism, this pathetic attempt at retraction is neutralised when he specifically mentions the four Hindu castes and also about conversion to those aforementioned faiths. The implication is clear. Hinduism is inherently unequal and oppressive, but other religions like Christianity offer equality.
It gets more disturbing:
So I have been saying and writing in one of my books that Hinduism is a kind of spiritual fascism because the Hindu books say that Aryans wrote that, and Nazi Germany Hitler believed he belonged to an Aryan race.
So the symbols that Hindus and Aryan Germans are the same, the swastika and the concept of a few people always being superior to the other. And these women’s equality is very seriously affected. In this all women are considered the Sutras, the feet born. So therefore women could never become spiritually equal or valued humans not even equality but they were not even valued in the spiritual realm. So Hinduism is a very spiritually fascist system and because of that our country has suffered in many ways.
It is interesting that in these discussions Mr Crabb was supported fully by Labour MPs Rob Marris and Jeremy Corbyn, both active with Dalit organisations which openly parade their Hinduphobia. Marris took great exception to having his association and links to CSW, Sikh separatist and other organisations exposed in an earlier article on Hinduphobia to the extent that we were sent rather nasty, threatening messages demanding that some of the material be retracted. This is how the anti-Hindu lobby work the so-called democratic process.
They hammer on about anti-conversion laws but make damn sure that Hindus cannot argue back. When it comes to Hindus, it makes no difference if they are atheist and hard Left such as Marris and Corbyn, or right-wing Christian extremists like Stephen Crabb. It is all part of the White Man’s Burden to get rid of the heathen beliefs of backward Hindus. Just like Robert De Nobili, ‘Saint’ Francis Xavier, Macaulay, Wilberforce, Marx and a host of other western cultural chauvinists have always done. Whether it is Christianity or communism, the same monotheist demiurge is always there. This god is not a spiritual being. It exists as a theory and one which has to be forced on others who are too stupid or stubborn to appreciate it.
Crabb as Apologist for Jihad
When the anti-Semitism in the Labour Party became rife under Corbyn’s leadership, his defence of terrorist groups became too obvious to ignore. To the patriotic unionists of the Conservative Party, Corbyn broke all accepted behavioural and professional boundaries by standing honour of eight members of an IRA gang who had been shot dead by the SAS in Loughgall in 1987, and demanding the withdrawal of British troops from Ulster. Soon after the Brighton bombing of 1984, in which the IRA tried to blow up the upper echelons of the Conservative government, Corbyn invited Irish Republicans to Parliament.
Many in Crabb’s own party were thus incensed at Corbyn becoming Labour leader. Following jihad attacks in Paris, the Labour leader said that the only way to deal with the threat from Isil was through a political settlement to Syria’s long-running civil war. He has referred to terrorist group Hamas as his “friends”. He supported the jihad and genocide against Hindus in Kashmir as “self-determination”. But it is in this latter part of jihad that Corbyn the arch supporter of Irish republicans and Stephen Crabb the Thatcherite have another meeting of minds. In that same 2015 Conservative Christian Fellowship conference, Crabb explained that extreme secularism was pushing Muslim youth to join ISIS.
“Crabb’s lurid claim that secularism fuels extremism is false not least because state secularism does not exist in the United Kingdom. Religion retains traditional privileges and tremendous elite-level influence disproportionate to its following in wider society.
While this is commendable, does it not who a serious case of double standards once again? Crabb is keen to disassociate Islam from terrorism, and yet is not so willing to delink caste issues from Hinduism. He brings in Muslims and others into discussions for issues that affect them, but excludes Hindus while blaming them for caste discrimination, atrocities and general inequality in India. But then it is easy for him to relate to a brother monotheistic faith rather than unfathomable polytheism.
It is merely a revamp of Winston Churchill’s brazen hatred of what he termed ‘caste Hindus’ and his support for the creation of Pakistan. When it comes to Hindus, even the monotheistic rivals know when to bury the hatchet. It is in this vein in which Crabb wants more religion in Britain but less of it in India.
Or should I say less of the ‘wrong’ religion. Anti-Hindu activists such as Kancha Ilaiah and Joseph D’Souza, as well as a host of Marxist outfits, Dalit groups their right-wing Christian allies are keen for India to remain ‘secular’, which means that all things Hindu are edged out of public space. Meanwhile aggressive missionary tactics are defended in the name of this very secularism by demagogues such as John Dayal and his All India Christian Council. In India, secularism means personal law for Muslims and Christians, rather than a common civil code.
Would Crabb be so keen for this to be adopted in Britain? Kancha Ilaiah, the man which our friend Mr Crabb has lauded in Parliament itself, has even called for the banning of Diwali. How would Mr Crabb react if Hindus were to demand the banning of Christmas in Britain?
If Crabb feels that Muslim youth are turning to ISIS because they keep getting fed in the mainstream media that Islam is linked to violence, where does he think that will take Hindus if people like him are constantly reducing Hinduism to just caste oppression?
Indeed there has been no corresponding Hindu counterpart to ISIS, unless of course we inhabit the dystopian alternate universe of the Crabb klan where apparently unidentified radical Hindu groups are as evil as Boko Haram. If our jovial and well educated friend and MP thinks secularism in Britain is pushing Muslims to radical jihad ideology, then by logical extension where does he think that will lead Hindus in a Hindu majority country who have to have the anti-Hindu brainwashing known as secularism forced down their throats by Crabb’s close friends in CSW and their collaborators such as Kancha Ilaiah?
As mentioned Crabb has appeared in Rev Michael Lawson’s hate video called India’s Hidden Slavery, which has long been promoted by CSW. This piece of propaganda and anti-Hindu muck raking purports to be trying to create a social awareness of how Hinduism oppresses Dalits. Again in this film Crabb emphasises how he is a ‘friend’ of India in trying to tackle this insidious form of apartheid.
Well by now I am sure we are all familiar what type of ‘friend’ Mr Crabb is. In trying to give it some sort of cuddly philanthropic gloss, the type of spin he and his ilk are executing is horrendously similar to the attempts by Dr Hendrik Verwoerd to explain away the very real apartheid in South Africa as being “good neighbourliness”. Of course apartheid came from the same devout Christian faith which Stephen Crabb professes: Verwoerd’s parents were Dutch missionaries, DF Malan was a dominee in the Dutch Reformed Church whose Calvinist Protestantism provided the theological foundations of apartheid, and racist South Africa was seen by America’s evangelical Christian Right as being in the forefront battling God’s cause against the anti-Christ forces of atheist communism.
In the hate video emphasis is put on the social disparity in India, with the blame squarely laid at the Hindu caste system. Hinduism has caused this whole problem since those nasty Aryans came 3000 years ago and forced the indigenous people to pick up human excrement with their hands. But in same vein how would our friend Mr Crabb explain the increasing social cleavage in his native Britain.
This would be especially the case in his native Wales which has suffered massively from the decline of old industries causing poverty, unemployment and social deprivation. In the meantime a revolving door or CEOs, company directors, MPs and assorted ‘fat cats’ grow rich with stratospheric levels of prosperity dubbed by one commentator as ‘Richistan’.
It is ironic and with dark humour that Stephen Crabb, who has been so keen for Dalits to get benefits in India, that when he was in a position to do something about social deprivation in his own native country, he decided to do the exact opposite. In April 2016, Crabb replaced the unpopular Iain Duncan Smith as welfare secretary in the Conservative government. IDS had gone full throttle with making cuts to people in the worst stages of poverty, especially the long term sick and the disabled who had least resources to fight back.
People were deemed fit to work as they lay literally on their death beds. Disabled people were committing suicide under thre stress and prospects of being left homeless and destitute. Unperturbed by all this social debris, IDS pushed ahead with making government cuts for the poorest. Of course if a person is dead from poverty, that means more savings for the exchequer. And they did not even have to pay to get rid of that ‘scrounger’. In fact they could congratulate themselves that the suicide was the ultimate example of self-help and personal initiative.
Millions in Britain face a life of poverty not due to the welfare trap so beloved of Crabb and his predecessor IDS, but due to having no choice but to take work in zero hours contracts. Praised by Crabbs’s own party and free market think tanks as being flexible labour they hide the ugly truth of harsh conditions, lack of health and safety, lack of progression and in many cases lack of even paid hours in horrendous conditions.
These are favoured most notoriously by Sports Direct and Amazon, setting up in areas where other industries have declined and there are lack of opportunities. Instead of tackling this, Crabb’s party has pushed those already on social margins by cutting state support to throw them on the mercy of powerful corporate entities that can use their buying power to lobby for tax breaks for the richest.
As mentioned Wilberforce did not want to abolish slavery, but only the slave trade. In any event the actual slave trade was abolished for economic reasons not because of Christian compassion or humanitarian reasons. The free market and liberal economics were said to be more effective then the protected trade cycle of mercantilism. Slavery in the British Empire became indentured labour, using a new form of slavery and slave trade.
As the British destroyed industries to make India into an impoverished wasteland to feed British manufacturing, people escaped the ensuing famine and poverty to work on the former slave plantations in Guyana, Mauritius, Trinidad, Jamaica and new ones in Fiji and South Africa. Tied to contracts for five years and suffering brutality, disease and death while in transit, this was just a new form of slavery after its supposed abolition. In America it took a civil war to end slavery in what was the most staunchly Christian part of that country, known even today as the Bible Belt. Even here abolition of slavery only meant its revamping as peonage, and the convict labour of chain gangs in this the evangelical heart of America.
