Bal Thackeray

By Francois Gautier

After Bal Thackeray’s death, which was covered extensively, the Media conveniently forgot how much it bashed the Thakeray family. Laughter, derision, mockery, horror, you found it all in the press. In fact, some of the Media made a common practice of bashing-up all Thackerays’ father, son and nephew. Most people, specially outside Maharashtra, gave credence to what they read for want of first-hand and balanced information When a country is colonized, say by the British. The first thing the British do, principally via the education system they impose, is to make you lose your indigenous identity and become like the English. There is that famous quotation of Macaulay where he expresses admiration for the Indians and then proceeds to say how he will break them.

Time for Indians to Reflect

(CHAKRA) To The People of India, Greetings, I address you collectively as a nation, as nation builders, and as individuals capable of rationale and reasoning.

As human beings we are endowed with an enhanced intellectual faculty, which is really the only thing that confers us a distinct position in the animal kingdom. Genetically, we are 99% similar to chimps, but that 1% sets us apart. This difference manifests itself in a very special place- the human mind.

Our choices define us, and it is the mind where all choices are made. In the mind alone, transformations that shape the external world are first conceived before being put into action. Indeed, it is a powerful tool, but with great power comes great responsibility. Unfortunately, we have been shirking our responsibilities for a long time now.

Today, we live in an age of social crisis. The trouble isn’t lack of intelligence or some debility; rather it is the lack of knowledge, and the subsequent inaction on our part that follows. Without knowledge, we cannot make informed decisions- crucial decisions that shape our future, and that of our nation.

A region having seismic fault-lines is most prone to geological disturbances- more commonly known as earthquakes. India too is replete with its own fault-lines, but on the political, educational, cultural, social, economic and intellectual fronts. These fault lines disintegrate the country from within, making it susceptible to exploitation in one form or another. I cannot possibly address all of the issues here- that would require a voluminous tome, not an essay. I will however give a bird’s eye view of it, touching upon the general ideas, providing the impetus to do your own subsequent research where required.

Time and time again we hear about “India rising”; sweeping remarks about its financial success, or last year’s GDP growth, at par with- at times even overtaking- China. In short, we hear only about the things that make us feel good as a nation, seldom do you hear about what goes about behind the scenes; the foreign and domestic forces at hand in demolishing the national structure, one day at a time, one unit at a time. These keenly neglected newsreels are precisely what we will present here, but first a brief history lesson.

LOOKING BACK IN TIME:

The Hindu/Indian culture was the cradle of advanced civilization. Everything flourished in this ancient land- Philosophy, Mathematics, Science, Literature, Commerce, Arts, Yoga, Ayurveda, Architecture, Governance, Logic, Astrology, Astronomy, Medicine- you name it, we had it. We even came up with the same postulates of Pythagorus’ theorem before he did, presented in Vedic scriptures, detailing the size and shapes of yajna altars. Thus the cornerstone of every great thought found its epicenter in India.

Being a highly evolved and peace-loving culture, we knew the value of our values. We gave birth to some of the most profound luminaries that walked this earth:- Vyasa, Vashishta, Adi Shankaracharya, Mahavira, Buddha, Valmiki, to name a few, and an endless, unbroken lineage of enlightened Acharyas in this Guru-Shishya Parampara (student-teacher tradition). Then things went awry.

When the Islamic invaders attacked India, there was large scale cultural dishevelment. Wealth was plundered, women were defiled, ancient religions were displaced, and scores of temples were demolished. It would be fitting to term the Mughals- perhaps with the exception of Akbar- as less of rulers and more of barbarians. Long lapses of time make us routinely forget that first it was Babar, who destroyed the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, creating an long-standing legacy of temple destruction throughout erstwhile India, which ended only with the demise of the last Mughul ruler, the ruthless Aurangzeb. Thus India underwent a painful transformation from being the most prolific producers and inventors, to passive ones, because we had to direct our minds and resources toward resisting the onslaught.

The next blow came from the Europeans, when they landed ashore under the pretext of trade. We did not them for an extended stay-back to sample more of our curry dishes- they invaded us. Already weakened by the Mughuls, and thus falling technologically behind, we did not put up much of a challenge to the British, and were once again at the mercy of another foreign power.

It is a well recognized fact that India was the world’s economic superpower for the most part of recorded history. However, due to the Islamic and British invasions, contrasted by the Industrial revolution hitting Europe, India fell behind in the GDP race in the early 19th century, and we never again regained our lost position again

It is crucial to note that in spite of our numerous successes, Indians never set out to conquer other nations, we have always been self sustaining and self satisfied. Even with the outsiders who ruled us, we tried to form amicable relationships, allowing them to assimilate into our way of living, despite their best attempts to extricate us from our own. It is in our cultural DNA to always be accommodating, and therein lies the greatness of our Hindu/Indian culture.

The Hindu-Jewish Summit was held in New Delhi, in 2010. The Jewish Rabbis graciously admitted that the Hindus alone gave them shelter when they were chased into exile by everyone else. Whether it was being ousted from their homeland by the Muslims in Arabia, the anti-Semitist movements of the Christians, or facing the holocaust at the hands of the Nazi regime; Jews have faced a long history of persecution. It is in India where they found their long awaited peace.

The same applied for Parsis- the Zoroastrians now integrated in India. Like the Jews, they too were harassed away from their native Persia by the Arabic Muslims, and thus made their way into the Hindu/Indian culture upon their arrival at Gujarat, into which they were peacefully assimilated.

A NEED FOR INTEGRATION OF CULTURES:

Today, India is a potpourri of many world religions, but it is fast losing its culture due to many eroding factors which we will explore. As we made abundantly clear above, historically, it is the Hindu/Indigenous culture alone that has allowed for the peaceful integration of people in our nation. The cultures associated with the major western religions- with all due respect- do not allow for this plurality in India, as they wish for others to do and believe in the same things that they do.

A sparkling example of this is Dr.Zakir Naik. If you have seen him on television or ‘Youtube’, you would know exactly what I mean. For those who haven’t, he is Islam’s answer to Televangelists, performing his theatrical antics on stage believing that the public is comprised of incompetents. Unfortunately that is true, as most of his audience consist of yes-men. The same applies to Christian Missionaries in India, whose primary motive for the most part is to convert the nation to their faith. That will be further discussed as we proceed.

Pre-Independence, Hindus and Muslims co-existed side-by-side in relative peace, until the seeds of divisiveness had been planted into the Indian soil by the colonizers. Almost all Muslims living in India are converts, and culturally are still very much Indian, but today they are being led astray with the solid influence of figures living in the Arab world, and their dialectics are contrary; even antagonistic to the Indian culture. Over time, those figures are transforming the psyche of Indian Muslims to that of the Arabic world. This breaks the nation from within.

Similarly, the Christian Missionaries who “work” in India are trying to mould India from a very Western angle and that has been causing a lot of friction in rural villages, which is responsible for scores of families falling apart.

In India, family has been the most important social unit, and these domestically implanted “push factors” coupled with foreign influenced “pull factors” are causing massive damage to the social structure of India.

The Hindu religion on the other hand does not require its followers to convert anybody; it prescribes a way of living for the adherents alone, and for no one else. We neither wish to be converted nor are we looking to convert, which is what makes the associated Hindu/Indian culture the most pluralistic and accommodating of all.

As a Hindu, one has no personal restrictions against entering a Church or a Mosque, just as freely as he worships in his own temple, but today it is some fundamentalist sitting in the Middle-East, who determines what Indian Muslims should and should not do.

Let me be very clear here. Adopting a Hindu culture does not mean one needs to adopt the Hindu religion, one can practice their own faith, just as the Jews, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs and the Vedic followers have merged seamlessly into a unified Hindu/Indian culture, and quite successfully too. This alone can save our country from internal fragmenting.

Our Ex- President Dr.APJ Abdul Kalam serves as a perfect example of this. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that he has been one of the greatest modern contributors to our national structure, and in his capacity has done more for the nation than credited for. His interest at heart has always been India, and despite being born in a Muslim family, he has shown no hesitation in appreciating his Indian roots.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do, it only makes perfect sense that those living in India follow the same principle, without having to give up their religious beliefs and practices. Thus we see that adopting an indigenous culture alone can stop the country from the internal fragmentation envisioned by divisive forces.

In this kind of unity alone lies strength. No one loses their identity; they simply become part of a greater Indian story.

UNDERSTANDING PSEUDO-SECULARISM:

When an organization or entity, in their pretentious bid to be overly secular, behaves in a totally un-secular fashion, this behaviour is termed as ‘Pseudo-Secularism’. When such pseudo-secularism is put into practice, the ones who primarily suffer are the majority inhabitants of the country; in our case, Hindus.

A functioning democracy should reflect the interest of the people, providing equal rights to all and sundry.  As we will discover, the major institutions in our country such as the government, media and educational system are severely crippling the nation through their non-secular practices. Let’s take them on one by one.

PSEUDO-SECULARISM IN THE GOVERNMENT:

Sonia Gandhi, born in Italy, under the name Edvige Antonia Albina Maino, and the rest of the Congress Party have time and again proven that their governance is detrimental to the development of our nation.

It is entirely frightening that in a country of nearly 1.2 billion people, most are oblivious to the facts surrounding the people they elect to power.

Dr. Subramaniam Swamy has collected plenty of incriminating evidence against the Congress officials on many counts, yet the proceedings are moving at a snail’s pace. It would appear that some are in fervent hope of outliving the prosecutor. The media too has unnecessarily been giving him a hard time, despite his efforts to expose corrupt individuals in power. The supporting evidences for Dr. Swamy’s claims are up for display on his website. You may draw your own conclusions from the same.

I can understand that we didn’t really have that much of a choice thwarting the British; what’s done is done, but honestly, must we make the same mistake with the Italian born as well? We need to wean off this colonized mentality and learn to elect one of our own; someone who understands the nation better, someone who is interested in its well being, and someone who can effectively govern it.

Trivia: The family name, ‘Gandhi’, has merely been adopted to play to the sentiments of the masses; sadly it worked. The lesser said about Mrs. Gandhi’s not-so- illustrious child, Rahul Gandhi, the better. One may also want to do some inquiry into what his real name is, as the family has a long history of adopting names that resonate well with the public.

Dressed in white, smiling and waving at the camera does not qualify one to run a nation of 120 crore people, competence does. On all counts, the Gandhi scion is unfit to bear this impending responsibility. It would be a shame to see him as our next Prime Minister in the 2014 General Elections.

MINORITY APPEASEMENT:

Now, the Congress Government partakes in an activity called ‘Minority Appeasement’, which you may consider one of the package deals under the provisions of Pseudo-Secularism.

Here is how and why it works to their advantage, and this will directly tie in to the need for Hindus to be more organized socio-culturally and politically.

In the process of Minority Appeasement, the Government will be extra nice to the Muslim and Christian populace, but they will conveniently ignore other minorities such as Sikhs, Jews, Jains etc. The reason is very simple. Muslims and Christians in India are highly organized in their joint decision making strategies. There is a very high level of agreement amongst them; hence if you can win the confidence of a few, you win them all. That is why an overwhelming majority of Muslims and Christians will vote for Congress alone, which is the reason they are appeased in the first place.

In the case of Hindus, our votes are divided. We cannot reach consensus even over regional MLAs- let alone electing a National Government. This is the reason why the Government must stoop to the level of Minority Appeasement, because the minorities are highly homogenized in their collective decisions. They have no reason to be nice to Hindus; hence the Hindus lie at the suffering end. This absolute lack of socio-political unity among Hindus is the main cause for anti-Hindu parties running the country.

Even Church and Mosque funds are mainly handled by their respective autonomous religious institutions, but when it comes to Temple funds, for some reason the Government often wants to interfere and take control.

Year 2011 presented a shameful incident regarding the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple. It is a matter of pride that the members of the Travancore Royal Family were the caretakers of an estimated US$26.76 billion; not having used it for themselves, and a matter of shame that the State Government wished to manage this fund.

For a very long time, Indian Muslims were being provided a Haj subsidy by the government to go to Mecca. In 2007 the government spent Rs. 47,454 per passenger. In December, 2011, Christians were accorded a subsidy to pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was only after much struggle that the Tamil Nadu Government extended the same rights to Hindus to visit Mansarovar.

United we stand, divided we fall. As Hindus, our lack of consensus on issues is one of the primary reasons for our downfall as a nation.

I once read a joke on the internet: “The second stupidest thing America did was elect Bush as President, but the stupidest thing they did was elect him again.” I sincerely hope our nation does not make the same mistake with the present Government, because if it does, we cannot blame anyone but ourselves. As the saying goes, “fool me once; shame on you, fool me twice; shame on me”.

PSEUDO-SECULARISM IN THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM:

Educational centers are the most important places to begin shaping our understanding of the world. What we learn in school and college is often what we develop a life-long affinity for.

When you infect the educational system, you are infecting minds; not one, but many. It spreads like an epidemic. Horizontally; it grows by infecting the contemporary population, and vertically; through the generations of culturally deprived children.

It should not come across as much of a surprise, that a large portion of our school and college syllabus is patterned after Western thought, but before I get into that I’d like to point out a fundamental flaw in the modern Indian Education System.

In ancient times, there was equal emphasis on the sciences as well as cultural ethos. Sanskrit Literature abounds with rigorous treatises on logic which would make the Greek philosophers look juvenile in comparison. For sampling purposes, please study one of our Nyaya Shastras. On the other hand, our texts also painted a gentler, more picturesque view of life. The ancients understood the importance of striking this balance and with good reason too.

The brain is divided into hemispheres; the left and the right. The right side is concerned with aesthetics, languages, emotions, intuition, empathy, self image, inter-personal relationships, and a holistic appreciation of things. The left side deals with logic, analysis, objectivity, goals, and is detail oriented. Too much of right with very little left would leave behind a sentimental wreck; irrational and lacking objectivity. Too much of left with little right would give rise to an automaton; a flesh and blood robot with no sentiments or appreciation of the finer side of life. Neither one of these individuals is socially fit.

A well developed person is adequately developed in both hemispheres. He caters to both his emotional and analytical needs as and when required. Unfortunately, our educational system is primarily focused only on the left, turning children into mechanical zombies before every exam, giving no chance to develop their creative side. Parents and teachers need to address this problem. The formative years of children are their school going years, and will vastly determine their future personality.

As the decades pass, we are giving lesser importance to value education and appreciation of Indian culture. The Board of Education needs to recognize this problem, and focus on finding a way to incorporate cultural activities into their education.

Introducing Indian dance forms such as Bharat Natyam, Oddisi, Kuchchipudi, Kathak etc- depending on the State you hail from; Yoga, for a sound mind and body as part of Physical Education, and Carnatic and Hindustani Sangeet, are good steps to take.

These need to find their way into the lives of children. If you are a parent concerned about negative influences on your little ones, try enrolling them into these Indo-cultural activities and mark the difference for yourselves. Even if the schools do not offer them, find a nearby cultural center for Indian arts; every major city in India has at least a few.

Small efforts on your part will turn them into well rounded children, and that can only happen if they are familiar with their cultural ethos.

PRESERVATION OF SANSKRIT:

For several reasons, attempts to bury Sanskrit as a language have been made. One of the primary reasons being that the majority of Hindu literature and scriptures have been written in Sanskrit, so when the language dies, automatically there are fewer people taking interest in these ancient works, so the associated religion and culture start dying along with it, leaving plenty of room for those with ulterior motives to take advantage of this situation.

If there exists an option between Sanskrit and a foreign language offered in school, opt for Sanskrit. It is only the pseudo-secular mentality in our heads that we feel something “foreign” is better, or “cooler”- well it isn’t, nor is it going to impress anyone. It is simply an idea that has been fed to us for a very long time, which we have digested quite successfully.

The good news is that Sanskrit is not a dead language yet. The bad news is it will be if you allow it to happen. Please don’t. We should be just as proud of it as we are of English. It is an important part of your heritage, and its preservation lies in your hands.

MARXIST CURRICULUM:

Every country having a rich and varied heritage would be proud of it. It is disparaging that in spite of living in the land of the Ramayana and Mahabharata; two of the lengthiest and culturally meaningful historical epics, they do not find their way into the school curriculum despite having some very good English translations, yet we find mention of Shakespeare, Gilgamesh and Rumi. Furthermore, we learn tales from Aesop’s Fables, for “Value Education”, but not beautiful ones from the Puranas or Panchatantra.

To illustrate, there is a story in the Puranas, where Ganesha and his brother Karthikeya decide to have a race to see who can go around the world the quickest. Karthikeya sets off like a bolt of lightning, while Ganesha slowly encircles his parents- Lord Shiva and Mother Parvati- 3 times before Karthikeya returns. Ganesha states that his parents mean the world to him, and is declared the winner.

This is what India is about; there is so much to learn from these little stories. It is painfully evident that however good things are, Pseudo-Secularism will always undermine the greatness of our culture.

Dance and music in India have always been hinged on devotion to the Lord, one cannot separate the means from the end, yet we find just that happening. In Kalakshetra, a renowned fine arts school in India, most Ganesha images on which (as per tradition) pooja would be performed, were removed in an attempt to be a more secular.

It gets even worse at University level; pointedly in the case of Liberal Arts majors. Now their entire syllabus not only ignores Hindu Literature, but is often antagonistic to it. Once again, it is very becoming of them to read philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Marx, Descartes and other Westerners, but not any Indian school of philosophical thought such as Vedanta, Tarka, Nyaya, Sankhya, Vaisheshika and etc. If they do happen to read ancient Indian texts, many do so only with a critical eye, not with the reverence that they were intended for, and how can they, when their schools did not provide them any appreciation of these texts via culture based value education? So they end up writing acidic papers on the Hindu culture in the light of their warped understanding of contexts and perspectives.

In summary, you have little kids that have grown up, all ready to be sent off to college, still traditionally impoverished in their thought process. Then due to their inadequate supplementary education, they set themselves up for more more-of-the-same, and get sucked right into the game of rebelling against their own culture, scoring self goal after another. It is truly a no-win situation for them.

These sadly misplaced students find their way into popular media by becoming Journalists, News Reporters, Authors, Historians, Social workers or Western styled Lobbyists. Several of them take up teaching positions, and they teach their students the same things that they had been taught. Thus the vicious circle completes itself, with another generation getting ready for the same treatment. It should be noted that there are still a few exceptional people that I appreciate in each of these disciplines cited above, who do have their understanding in right place; however the general trend is still downhill.

PSEUDO-SECULARISM IN THE MEDIA:

As mentioned, some of the graduating batches of pseudo-secular individuals are likely to pick careers in media/broadcasting, and here is where they wreak wide-spread havoc.

Already steeped in Marxist thought, having only a perfunctory academic knowledge of Indian tradition, and completely removed from our cultural ethos, these media men and women think they understand what is good for India better than many Indians who have fortunately not undergone such a cultural alienation as them.

So far we uncovered the mechanism at work, but who is pushing the buttons? As a common civilian lacking access to inside information, I will refrain from making any statements I cannot fully substantiate, so as an exercise, I do encourage typing the phrase ‘Who Owns the Indian Media’, and performing an internet search on it, from which you can draw your own conclusions.

It isn’t surprising that the vocabulary of some media personalities is replete with mocking adjectives for Hindus taking up some prominent public position; be it a Swami or a Politician. In other words, it is okay if you are a devout Christian or a Muslim, and taking part in politics, but if you are a Hindu, you are automatically associated with one or more of the following terms: “God-men”, “saffron brigade”, “fundamentalist”, “Right-winged terrorist”, “communal’ and more.

There are deviants found everywhere, but for every scandal one can associate a Hindu figure with, ten or more scandals could be pointed out connected to the Church. Would the Indian Media dare extend the same disrespect to Christian Clerics or Muslim Imams, as they do towards Swamis? Not by a long shot.

Another favorite pass-time of the Media is R.S.S. (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) bashing. We have all heard it on television and read it in the papers; the media spends more time dogging after R.S.S. than it does chastising real terrorist organizations.

However not everyone is that biased, here is what a former SC Judge, K.T. Thomas, has to say:

“There is a smear campaign that RSS was responsible for Gandhi’s assassination just because the assassin was once an RSS worker,” he said, adding that the organisation had been “completely exonerated” by the court. “This smear campaign must end against RSS,” he said.

“I am a Christian. I was born as a Christian and practise that religion. I am a church-going Christian. But I have also learnt many things about RSS,” he said.

“During the Emergency, RSS was the only non-political organisation which fought against it, he said. “We owe very much to RSS for sacrificing many lives for regaining our fundamental rights,” said Thomas.

That should put the matter at rest. Plenty more could be said about the media, but this gives the general idea.

Read PART 2: Open Letter to India: A Call to Action

By Prashant Parikh

Jawaharlal Nehru lighting a cigarette for the then British high commissioner's wife

“One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money. “ - Indira Gandhi

Disclaimer notice: First and foremost, the author seeks your invaluable blessings. The views in this article are those of the author only. Any and all faults of understanding the topic at hand are the shortcomings of the author. A healthy debate is always encouraged and all criticism (both constructive and destructive) is welcomed. The author and the readers should never lose sight of the main goal: seeking TRUTH.

Introduction – As a follow up to one of my previous articles, Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence Bill, 2011, I’ve decided to focus my grievances with the unscrupulous subversion of India’s population as perpetrated by the Nehru-Gandhi clan and its minions. I am quite upset by watching India celebrate the failures of the Nehru-Gandhi clan and its continued erosion of the country’s social, religious, political and economic fabric. You know, we usually hear people say things like: “you don’t give this woman or this man enough credit for all the good things he/she has done”. My task in this modest essay is to shed light on what we don’t hear people say enough: “you don’t give this woman or this man enough credit for all the bad things he/she has done”. So be forewarned, I’ll be quite negative in the following paragraphs. If you are a diehard fan of the Nehru-Gandhi family (the clan), then be prepared to get the wakeup call of your life. I will briefly highlight the failures of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, and that imbecilic brat unofficially known as Rahul Gandhi. Following the failures of the Nehru-Gandhi clan will be a brief list of present day malaises of India which can be attributed to the clan. I shall conclude with a juxtaposition of Mahatma Gandhi’s insights with the failures to live by those insights by the Congress Party figures and their corporate allies as one final jolt of reality.

Chacha Nehru my foot! Chacha Blunder is more befitting

I get really upset with some arrogant and stubborn historians who attempt to shove the belief that there is no “if” clause in history down my throat. This, to me, is the highest form of subversion! All disciplines should be analysed and reassessed based on the tweaking (up or down) or insertion/omission of certain variables (characters/events – for historical studies) in a model which explains a certain phenomena or occurrence. With your kind permission (dear readers), I shall use the “if” clause to better explain my grievances with the Nehru-Gandhi clan. So let us begin with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (affectionately known as Chacha Nehru). My own take on the fellow is that he was a power hungry cry baby. Nehru exhibited questionable morality – as his affairs with Lady Mountbatten and others are well documented. He was more at ease with experimenting with unproven foreign policy alternatives such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which went on to weaken Sino-Indian, Indo-American, Indo-Pak relations while it strengthened Indo-Soviet relations.

And now, let us insert my ‘if’ clause and look at Nehru’s tenure as Prime Minister (PM) of India. If Nehru was not such a cry baby, then he would have conceded his defeat to Sardar Patel in the Congress leadership vote. If Sardar Patel was the PM of India, then we could bet with a high degree of confidence that the map of India would be quite different (I’m alluding to Kashmir and other territorial disputes). If Patel was PM, then India would not be governed by the idiotic and experimental foreign policy dictates of Nehru’s “Pancha Sheel – Five Pillars” framework within the Non-Aligned Movement. Nehru’s idiocy is perfectly exemplified by his turning down of the American offer of a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council in 1955. Instead, our beloved Chacha Nehru chose to be the ‘chamcha’ of our shrewd and realistic neighbours, the Chinese. Nehru vouched for China to have a permanent seat on the council. Nehru’s arrogance in avoiding border discussions and over-confidence in his experimental ‘chamchagiri’ caused India to pay a heavy price on the battlefield in 1962. Nehru never recovered from this blunder and neither did India’s foreign policy. In addition, we should not forget that Nehru (at the insistence of Lord Mountbatten) even put the offer of a plebiscite on the table at the UN in order to resolve the Kashmir dispute. This stupid move is still costing India a high price! Thank you, Chacha Nehru! Next, we analyse Nehru’s daughter.

“Garibi Hatao” – Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi

Indira Gandhi

Where to start with Indira Gandhi? We give lots of credit to Mrs Gandhi for having chopped Pakistan in two pieces. She gave the green light for “Smiling Buddha” to make India a nuclear state. And she brought over to India the Green Revolution (a new age of agricultural best practices and research) which was to alleviate India’s food shortages.  That is where the positive vibes end. Mrs Gandhi was elected as PM for three consecutive terms from 1966-1977 (the third of which was rendered invalid by the courts) and came back to power from 1980-1984 until her assassination by a bodyguard.

Indira Gandhi holds two distinctions: 1) She was the only Indian Prime Minister to have declared a state of emergency so that she could ‘rule by decree’ and 2) She was the only Indian Prime Minister to have been incarcerated after holding the office (Mrs Gandhi committed election fraud in 1971 during her ‘Garibi Hatao’ campaign and was found guilty in 1975). The only ‘Garibi’ that Mrs Gandhi was concerned with was her own. Mrs Gandhi’s ‘rule by decree’ during the state of emergency was simply for two reasons: 1) to eliminate dissidents, and 2) to maintain her stranglehold on the country.

Mrs Gandhi’s son, Sanjay, was instrumental in implementing draconian measures in order to eliminate Congress and anti-Indira dissidents as well as to ravage slum dwellers and poor people during the state of emergency. The infamous ‘family planning’ campaign spearheaded by Sanjay is still fresh in the minds of many Indians. Sanjay’s mass vasectomy campaigns were not conducted under proper sanitary conditions and one can only imagine the pain of infection and death that some of the lured patients felt.  Also, to win the blessings of the Gandhis, many public officers and doctors performed more-than-necessary amounts of vasectomies in order to meet the quota prescribed by Sanjay. Mrs Gandhi failed the Indian people by ruling like a tyrant. She took away the rights and freedoms of Indians while projecting a persona of “Mother” of the nation. For what did she do this? For power!

Indira Gandhi’s failures also hit the Punjab. She let Bhindranwale and his followers get to the point where they could assassinate anyone that they deemed heretics (Nirankaris etc.) as they pleased. At the same time, Bhindranwale’s friends received training from the ISI and they all jointly devised a plan to create Khalistan by taking over the Golden Temple. Indira Gandhi was left with no choice but to show Bhindranwale who was boss. Operation Bluestar and the subsequent actions of India’s supercop, KPS Gill, virtually eradicated the Khalistan movement from India. However, there were some very negative consequences. Sikhs were alienated and violated as their holiest shrine was ravaged. We also had the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. As well, I would like to share that this conflict also took the lives of over 329 passengers of Air India flight 182 in 1985. The passengers of that flight were brutally killed by a time bomb placed in the aircraft planted by Canada-based Khalistanis. 291 innocent Indo-Canadians lost their lives due to Indira Gandhi and the Khalistanis!

As a final criticism, many foreign policy experts suggest that Mrs Gandhi did not push hard enough on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to make the LoC a permanent border between India and Pakistan (with respect to Kashmir). But that is a dwarfed issue as her victory in carving Pakistan in to two pieces overshadowed this criticism.

Indira Gandhi’s legacy is nothing short of tyranny. However, her assassination gained her sympathy and it seems that many people have forgotten all of the bad that she had committed. We now move on to her elder son, Rajiv.

Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi was a mixed bag. He came in to politics after the assassination of his mother. She had initially planned to push Sanjay (her younger son) in to the top seat of Prime Minister, but he died in an airplane accident. However, Sanjay did rule the country under his mother’s name. Oh, and what a horrific job he did. Rajiv Gandhi came in to politics by accident but left his mark on India’s history. He started off by promising to modernize India, to press for global nuclear disarmament, to decentralise power, to clean up the Holy Ganges and many other promises. However, he was only partially successful in keeping some of his promises. Rajiv Gandhi helped to pave the way for India’s modern economy and peace with China, but that is where the glory stops. He was voted out of office due to his role in the Bofors scandal.

Rajiv Gandhi’s glories of institutionalising peace with China and modernizing India’s economy were overshadowed by his failures. I’ll list some of TK Arun’s thoughts on Rajiv Gandhi’s failures verbatim:

• “The foremost failure is the contempt he showed for the Indian people….The strategy of serially appeasing first Muslim fundamentalists and then Hindu fundamentalists reflected cynical contempt for the people and their intelligence.”
• “A related failure was his tendency to see people as objects of development, rather than as its subjects, the driving force. This led Rajiv Gandhi to trust technology missions to deliver clearly defined development goals.”

Rajiv never got the opportunity to rectify his mistakes and was brutally assassinated by LTTE terrorists in a suicide bomb blast. Rajiv Gandhi had just started to show some political wisdom while in the opposition but never got the chance to prove himself. I suppose the torch needed to be passed on and his time on earth had come to an end.

Sonia and Rahul Gandhi

Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi (real name - Antonia Edvige Albina Maino Gandhi)

Take a moment to bow your heads in reverence to Dr Subramanian Swamy. If it wasn’t for his swift actions, then Sonia Gandhi would be the Prime Minister of India (instead of Manmohan Singh). This one man has singlehandedly taken down political powerhouses. Many of the corruption scandals that we hear of and which were perpetrated by the Nehru-Gandhi clan were exposed and brought to the Supreme Court by Dr Swamy’s petitions. I don’t have anything positive to say for Sonia Gandhi and her silly son, Rahul. They both have slapped the small positive legacy of Rajiv Gandhi in the face with the record-breaking levels of corruption and sheer incompetence. Sonia doesn’t speak English or Hindi well. She can only do one thing well, and that is corruption. It must have been something she learned from the infamous Mafia of Italy, her motherland. Sonia is going to be brought to justice eventually. Her role in the numerous scams of the day is being exposed. Her son-in-law, Robert Vadra, became a billionaire out of thin air due to the connections that she had. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

One should understand very carefully that Sonia runs and operates India and her Congress party much the same way as a Grand Patriarch in a Mafia of Italy would do. Sonia is the Grand Matriarch of the Congress party and not a single decision is made without her stamp of approval and cut in the share of profits. Politicians and business people know damn well that they must pay respects and hefty tributes to the Grand Matriarch, Sonia in order to rape and pillage the country. I’ll share an example of how desperate some lowly politicians are to get in to Sonia’s inner circle. A few years back, Amar Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar were attending a function in Delhi. Both gentlemen enjoyed their drinks but Aiyar had one too many. In a drunken stupor, he provoked Singh in to a mini-brawl. What was the reason? Aiyar was jealous that Singh and his leader (at the time) Mulayam Singh was gaining much clout with Sonia while Aiyar was struggling to get a berth in the Congress Working Committee. Enough about Sonia let us briefly discuss the brat, Rahul.

Sonia’s dear son Rahul does speak Hindi but he is a walking buffoon who has shown absolutely no political maturity. Rahul’s idea of being a man of the people is to roll up his sleeves and sit down at a villager’s home (near his constituency of Amethi) and eat puri-sabzi while NDTV and CNN-IBN report his every move as “Breaking News”. His staged humility is a sham!

Both Sonia and Rahul have dubious education records. However, Rahul takes the prize for the worst Gandhi as he is also an alleged rapist. If India elects Rahul Gandhi as its next PM, then nothing can save the country from pure and utter disaster. Also, what message will India be sending to the world if it elects an uneducated and alleged rapist to the posting of PM?

To sum up, the culture of failing the Indian people has been well preserved by Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul. One doesn’t even feel like wasting one’s time by discussing the endless list of failures that are attributed to these people. Let us now focus on the social, economic and political malaises that India suffers due to the aggregated efforts of the Nehru-Gandhi clan.

Thank you, Congress! You created the vote bank Beast!

Reservations

It is without doubt that reservation has helped the scheduled castes and tribes (SCST) ameliorate their social status – albeit at a snail’s pace. But there are some real positives that we should focus on: India has had an SCST President, Chief Justice, and female Chief Minister in Uttar Pradesh (the most populous state). So to an extent, India’s affirmative action project has been working. However, the sticky point is where there are other groups which desire reservations including: Brahmins (the poor ones), poor Hindus of other castes, Muslims, and Christians. These groups have also had the desire to derive some utility from the reservation system so that they could also land public jobs and send their children to IIMs and IITs to be competitive in the Indian market. However, countless governments on both ends of the political spectrum have been able to accomplish nothing for these unfortunate groups. There has been campaign promise rhetoric here and there by tyrants like Mayawati, but that holds no value unless some changes are made.

What the Hajj?

‘The Law of Double Standards’ is my term for the Congress Party’s special treatment given to our fellow Indian sisters and brothers of the Islamic faith. By special treatment, I mean that our Muslim sisters and brothers have huge, government sponsored subsidies which support and encourage them to go on their Hajj pilgrimages (to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina). Conversely, there are no such luxuries for Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists, Jews, and Hindus of India. India bends over backwards to protect only one group’s religious identity. I am sure that all jurists who are truly secular would not let any such luxury be enjoyed by any religious community. Also, these same jurists should also believe that there is no room for Sharia law in India’s legal system. All Indians should have to go through the same processes in order to file for divorce etc. I hold all political parties which have ever governed India responsible for this. It does not matter if we are talking of Congress or the BJP. The entire political spectrum is guilty of this double standard.

Biased Indian Media

Media Bias

If there is the Congress Party in the political realm, then its propaganda wing consists of most of the media outlets in the country. All leading news agencies are guilty of pro-Congress rhetoric. I will lash out on one specific individual who stands out the most. I must admit my endless disdain for the likes of Barkha Dutt and her Congress-biased colleagues in print and TV media. Barkha Dutt’s crocodile tears at the suffering of Hindu groups are not only wretched but quite comical. Ms Dutt will openly cry genuine tears of sorrow for the pain and suffering of our Muslim sisters and brothers in India and across India’s borders. Ms Dutt is also more pro-Kashmiri independence than the Hurriyat, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Sajjad Lone, Sheikh+Farooq+Omar Abdullah, and Syed Geelani combined! If I was Ms. Dutt’s career advisor, then I’d advise her to join hands with fellow sell-out Arundhati Roy to completely liquidate India’s borders!

The Scams

I won’t even elaborate on the exact details of the following scams. The list is actually much larger, but please have a quick peek at the table to get an idea of some of the high profile scams perpetrated by the Nehru-Gandhi clan and its minions.

• Jeep 1947
• ISRO spectrum Scam, Coal Scam and 3G scam
• Bofors
• Adarsh
• CWG
• IPL
• 2G
• Various Land Scams
• Rajiv Gandhi Trust

Disaster

India’s economy is growing at a fast rate and the demographics of the country are promising. However, corruption, lousy infrastructure, and poor governance are all great reasons for concern! Failure to plug these holes may pose the risk of devastating the country. You can thank the Nehru-Gandhi Clan + Congress for the majority of this mess. However, there is a way out.

A homeless young boy waves the Indian flag

Solutions

The first step to improving from the status quo is awareness. I’m not so sure if all Indians are aware of what is truly going on in the country. Media subversion (funded by Congress and its industrialist friends) has played a very negative role in misinforming the public. Alternative media must be further nurtured by the civil society to fight this subversion! It is fast, cheap, democratic, and self-policing. It will be the game changer!

Solutions to India’s problems will only be formulated and executed when the entire population of India knows about the current state of affairs and feels that enough is enough. A collective effort is needed to bring about positive and sustainable change in the Motherland. I would like to offer some food for thought and action:

Mahatma Gandhi gave his grandson, Arun Gandhi, a list of the Seven Blunders of the World that lead to violence. Arun Gandhi added his own idea to the list. Steven W. Gilbert has added four more blunders to the list which focus on teaching, learning, and technology. I’ve added some names beside each blunder (in the Indian context). You be the judge and decide whether my opinions carry any merit or not.

1. Wealth without work [Mahatma Gandhi]  –> Robert Vadra became a billionaire due to Sonia Gandhi’s connections (there are more cases but let us stick to one for now).
2. Pleasure without conscience [Mahatma Gandhi] –> Jawaharlal Nehru (womanizer), Rahul Gandhi (alleged rapist).
3. Knowledge without character [Mahatma Gandhi] –> Manmohan Singh (what use is your education when you have no spine to make decisions?).
4. Commerce without morality [Mahatma Gandhi] –> 2G and CWG Scandals (in recent times). Let us not forget Natwar Singh’s payoffs in the Iraq oil-for-food program!
5. Science without humanity [Mahatma Gandhi] –> Montek Singh Ahluwalia who is lobbying for Monsanto and European/American Pharmaceutical firms to destroy India’s food supply and affordable access to medication!
6. Worship without sacrifice [Mahatma Gandhi] –> All the vote bank seeking politicians who simply pay lip service to communities but are not true to their word.
7. Politics without principle [Mahatma Gandhi] –> P.Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Amar Singh, Salman Khurshid, Digvijay Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi (let’s stick to contemporary politicians only – or else the list will never end).
8. Rights without responsibilities [Arun Gandhi] –> The Apathetic voters who don’t stand up to corruption and tyranny but who complain that their lives are destroyed.
9. Technology without direction [Steven W. Gilbert] –> Nandan Nilekani’s UIDAI government venture has ballooned from Rs 3,023 crore to Rs 17,863 as Nilekani wants to increase his biometric capture mandate. Hmmm, this sounds like a typical consulting engagement which was agreed at one rate and then finalized at a rate which is grossly over budget. It builds dependence of the client on to the consultancy. Typical business model!
10. Connection without community [Steven W. Gilbert] –> Political or business leaders may have Social Media followers or may meet the common man or woman at a face-to-face public event, but that does not translate into true community building. Need I offer examples? I think not.
11. Teaching without joy [Steven W. Gilbert] –> Education is no longer a noble profession in India and elsewhere. It is simply a business! Not to discount the noble educators in the country.
12. Learning without hope [Steven W. Gilbert] –> All of those young students who are working so hard but feel that they have no future due to reservations, corruption, slow job creation, nepotism, and a lack of meritocracy in India!

With that, I sign off wishing you all peace, health, righteousness, self-awareness, and endless resolve to clean up the homeland and the world!

Your humble servant,

Abhaya Shanker Dube

Sangh Parivar

“An RSS man”, that is how the Indian media and the Western South Asia scholars label anyone known as or suspected of standing up for Hindu interests. In fact, there have always been Hindu activists outside the RSS Sangh, working as individuals or in smaller organizations. Today, the modernization of Indian society and especially the spread of the internet has facilitated the mushroom growth of new forms and networks of Hindu activism.

Most supposed experts refuse to see the existence of Hindu activism outside the Sangh and instead reduce any Hindu sign of life to “Hindutva” (thus incidentally flattering the Sangh). One reason is purely political: in the struggle against Hindu activism as a whole, it is simply more useful to extend all prevalent criticism of the Sangh, e.g. that it murdered Mahatma Gandhi or committed “genocide” in Gujarat 2002, to any and every form of Hindu resistance. It implies that if you hear a Hindu complain about, say, Christian missionary demonization of Hinduism, you must stop him for he is about to commit murder if not genocide. In the Indian media, this kind of innuendo is frequent enough.

The main reason, however, seems to be that India-watchers have settled for a conspiratorial explanation of the existence of Hindu activism. In their construction, you first have the Sangh, or its historic core, then you get Sangh propaganda, and as a result of this, you get a belief among large numbers of Hindus that they are suffering various injustices, historical and contemporary. This is the dominant paradigm in Hindutva studies: a Hindutva conspiracy has created for itself a large constituency by means of mendacious propaganda.

The existence of multiple independent sources of Hindu activism makes this Hindutva conspiracy theory harder to sustain. It becomes more likely that they had independently noticed a really existing state of affairs, which then aroused their indignation.

For example, in numerous media and academic accounts, the Ayodhya controversy is introduced with the explanation: “Hindu nationalists claim that the Babri mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple”, or something to that effect. While the Hindu nationalists do indeed assert as much, the formulation falsely insinuates that this “claim” is of the Hindu nationalists’ making. In fact, that “claim” has been made in all the historic sources that speak out on the matter: Muslim, Hindu and European. Before the controversy became politically important in the 1980s, it was accepted by all competent authorities, e.g. the 1989 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. So, the temple vandalization scenario was not a piece of propaganda deliberately floated to plant false consciousness in the minds of the Hindu masses. It had very solid historic credentials, and consequently, divergent people with no mutual organizational connection or common ideological allegiance could independently act upon it.

For another example, the “Hindutva claim” that the Indian state imposes some and tolerates other injustices against the Hindus, can simply be verified. Thus, when I asked Hindu activists of any stripe in the 1990s what motivated them, practically everyone of them would mention the constitutional exception for the non-Hindu majority state of Jammu & Kashmir (and likewise Nagaland and Mizoram) and the related expulsion of the near-total Hindu community from Kashmir in 1990. Well, has this expulsion taken place or not? From most Western studies of Hindu nationalism, you wouldn’t learn about it, and yet, the answer is that it really has. Moreover, no Indian or Kashmiri government has seriously attempted to resettle the expelled Hindus in their homeland. One need not be duped by a Hindutva conspiracy to notice this fact as well as the injustice of this fact. Consequently, non-Sangh Hindus as well as Sanghis have spoken out against this injustice. If the Sangh had not existed, Hindus would still speak out against this injustice.

When the Pope came to India in 1999, the Indian media loudly denounced as “Hindutva paranoia” the assertion that the Church was out to destroy the Indian religions by converting their adherents to Christianity. But of course it is official Church doctrine that only Christians are saved and that out of charity, all Pagans must be converted. Having gone through the Catholic school system myself, that is what I learned from the horse’s mouth. And when the Pope finally opened his mouth in Delhi, he said in so many words that the Church was in Asia in order to “reap a rich harvest of faith”, modern Church parlance for the harvesting of Pagan souls. He merely restated a generally known fact, one from which any Hindu could draw his own conclusions without anyhow being compromised with “Hindutva paranoia”.

For yet another example, the “Hindutva claim” that the absence of a Common Civil Code amounts to “pseudo-secularism”, or indeed to a simple absence of secularism in the Personal Law dimension of the Indian state, would have to be acknowledged as more than just a Hindutva claim. It is something that Hindus of all kinds including those hostile to the Sangh, and people of all denominations, can see. Indeed, were it not for the widespread assumption that anything coming from the RSS-BJP must be “Hindu fundamentalist” or “Hindu fascist”, all international observers would readily concede this point. By definition, a secular state is one that has laws applying to its citizens regardless of their religion. The usual insistence that “Hindu nationalists want to abolish secularism” and its implication that the Indian state is indeed secular, cannot stand scrutiny on this score. But admitting this much would upset the entire conceptual framework of Hindutva studies.

Anyone desiring to uphold the dominant construction of Hindu nationalism, viz. the Hindutva conspiracy paradigm, logically has an interest in denying or minimizing the existence of independent non-Sangh Hindu activism. But the facts on the ground show increasingly that concerned Hindus are emancipating themselves from this identification of their own work with Hindutva.

Some of these start from philosophies different from the nationalistic RSS narrative, others are not ideologically different but want to provide an alternative mode of action to complement or replace an RSS working-style in which they have become disappointed. For indeed, the BJP election defeats in 2004 and 2009 and the steady decline in RSS shakha attendance since 1998 highlight a longer-standing disappointment in Hindu revivalist circles with the Sangh Parivar and its version of Hindu nationalism. The media construed the BJP defeats as “proof that the Indian masses are turning away from Hindu nationalism”, when in reality, the former BJP voters have only turned their backs on the betrayers of Hindu nationalism. This disappointment continues to be nurtured by Sangh displays of incompetence, such as the failed textbook rewriting initiatives in India 2000-04 and California 2005-09; and acts of “treason” such as the NDA government’s passivity regarding the Ayodhya temple and the Kashmiri refugees, or its permission of foreign media ownership. Far from abolishing the Hajj subsidies, a financially marginal but highly symbolic instance of “Muslim appeasement”, the Vajpayee government actually increased the Hajj subsidy (hence the nickname given him by his Hindu critics, “Hajpayee”). On each of its distinctive old campaign themes, they had acted just like non-BJP governments had done before and have done since.

As former swayamsevak Shrikant Talageri argued in 2000 already, the BJP has proven that “more foreign agency, anti-nationalism and injustice are possible in India in the name of Hinduism and Hindutva than in the name of Islam and Christianity or Secularism and Leftism. And more dangerous since it is cloaked in the garb of Nationalism”. Talageri notes that this government policy was rooted in long-standing RSS mores, viz. a radical non-interest in Indian culture as such, in Indian wildlife, environment, handicrafts etc. (see the RSS’s Western uniform and marching band music), and a mindless reliance on slogans and rumours rather than on serious analysis and principled ideology. While the RSS undoubtedly started out as politically nationalist, its occasional self-description as “cultural nationalism” implies a claim on cultural awareness that proves hollow.

The RSS has never abandoned the working style introduced by its founder Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, who had been formed by the Revolutionary movement and adopted its secretiveness, discouraging written communication in favour of personal communication through travelling office-bearers. A lot of physical locomotion is a status symbol in the RSS hierarchy, but motion is not action. The numerous RSS self-praise brochures boast about mass campaigns with millions marching, but these have rarely translated into the realization of their stated goals. Thus, the anti-cow-slaughter campaign of the late 1960s achieved nothing, and the Ayodhya campaign in spite of its unprecedented magnitude has not realized the construction of the projected temple even twenty years later. Though it is part of Hindutva culture to deny failure (vide the way the California Hindu parents tried to present the disappointing court verdict in the textbook case as a victory), inevitably at least some people had to draw the logical conclusion from these failures and try something new.

This disillusionment with the Sangh is triggering the emergence of new independent centres of Hindu activism. Between such non-Sangh foci in India and similar-minded NRI initiatives, there is little structural connection except for exchanges on internet forums: the loose network is their more modern alternative to the organizational rigidity typical of the Sangh.

It must be stated at this point that there has always been a wide array of Hindu activism outside of the Sangh, though often overlapping with the Sangh’s work, and at any rate not standing in the way of cooperation or friendly personal relations. In my experience, Western observers who have started believing their own shrill rhetoric of “Hindu fascism” tend to be surprised and shocked and indignant when they see apolitical Hindu dignitaries, praised in East and West for their spiritual qualities and leadership, interact on a friendly basis with the Sangh. Thus, when RSS Sarsanghchalak Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiyya) visited the Netherlands, he first of all went to see the Maharshi Mahesh Yogi in his castle in Vlodrop, to the consternation of reporters for the New Age media, who had lapped up horror stories about the RSS. Likewise, Edward Luce in his book In Spite of the Gods, notes the close cooperation between peacenik celebrity guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and the RSS as if it were a dirty secret and a blot on the Guru’s name.

One reason for the Sangh’s respectability among the Hindu masses, though you might not know of it if you only read the expert studies on Hindutva, is its massive presence in social and relief work. After an earthquake, Sangh relief workers are the first to arrive in the disaster area. That doesn’s prove anything about its politics, and could be likened to the motivated social and relief work of the Christian Missions or the Hamas; but at least it ought to be noticed and reported. It helps explain why most criticisms of the Sangh among Hindus are restrained by an acknowledgment of its undeniable merits. But now it is dawning upon an increasing number of Hindu activists that all this charity is no substitute for ideological clarity. Therefore, while they may maintain contact with the Sangh, their initiatives and inspiration are clearly separate and distinct from the Sangh and its ideological line. Many Hindu activists who criticize the Sangh accept the intention of Sangh workers to serve Hindu society, and leave them to pursue this goal by their own lights. Also, sometimes they cannot bypass the relative omnipresence of the Sangh network. And finally, there is no definitive reason why Sangh workers shouldn’t be amenable to developing their understanding beyond the elementary level inculcated by the Sangh.

Some Hindu activists, however, have totally given up on the Sangh. Thus, when Muslim groups pressured the Jammu & Kashmir government into reneging on its promise to provide facilities for Hindu pilgrims to Amarnath in 2008, local Hindus in Jammu organised a non-violent protest campaign but purposely kept the Sangh at arm’s length. They feared that the RSS with its penchant for control would take the movement over, then with its equally typical craving for certificates of good conduct would abandon and dissolve the campaign in an attempt to prove its “secularism” and “reasonableness”. In the event, the Amarnath campaign, in contrast with so many Sangh campaigns, was successful: the original plan for pilgrim facilities was implemented overruling the Muslim objections.

The most pressing occasion for Hindu self-organization cocnsists in threats to their physical security. For quite a while groups have been sprouting here and there that promised to fill the void allegedly created by the Sangh’s insufficient militancy. During the Khalistani terror campaign, Hindus in Panjab started a local “Shiv Sena”, disappointed in the way the RSS failed to react in kind when its cadres were targeted for murder by the Khalistanis.

On internet forums, you frequently hear Hindus fumble that “if Muslims can get away with terrorism, why don’t we take to the gun, and the bomb?” Thus, a Delhi-based group calling itself the Aryavrt Government and a related outfit called Abhinava Bharat (after an armed revolutionary group in the independence struggle) does advocate paying the enemy back in the same coin. On its website its request for donations is strengthened with this warning: “Else keep ready for your doom. Remember! Whoever you are, you won’t be able to save your properties, women, motherland, Vedic culture & even your infants. Choice is yours, whether you stick to dreaded usurper Democracy & get eradicated or survive with your rights upon your property, freedom of faith & life with dignity?”

Mostly this is impotent rage by middle-class Hindus who have never seen or touched a gun, but of course the possibility exists that some young lads may act upon it. It has been alleged that the Malegaon bomb attacks in 2006 were committed by such an ad hoc Hindu terrorist group.

However, these rare cases of erratic and counterproductive Hindu violence should not obscure the actual need for self-protection in areas where Hindus are indeed prey for anti-Hindu mobs and militias, such as the Bengal border, where illegal Bangladeshi immigrants are trying to push out the Hindu villagers. That is where one sane and disciplined Hindu group for self-protection has come into being: the Hindu Samhati, founded in February 2008 by Tapan Ghosh. Until November 2007, and ever since graduating in Physics and spending three months in jail as a pro-democracy activist during the Emergency, he had been an RSS whole-timer for 31 years. But not seeing the desired results from RSS work, who started out on his own and soon attarcted a following.The group’s thrid anniversary celebration was attened by 14,000 people. It can already claim many successes on its local scale, such as protecting young couples where one of the partners is a Muslim joining a Hindu family, or ensuring the safety of Hindu festivals, which had become difficult to celebrate due to increasing Muslim harassment.

The one name towering over the whole field of non-Sangh Hindu activism is that of historian and publisher Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003), Gandhian then Marxist in his young days, later anti-Communist and finally reborn Hindu. In 1957 he stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the embryonic Swatantra Party (with whose founder Minoo Masani he cooperated in anti-Communist activism) on a Jana Sangh ticket for the Khajuraho seat. He subsequently contributed some articles to the RSS mouthpiece Organiser, until the RSS leadership intervened to have him expelled from its pages for being too unkind to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The stated reason was that if Nehru were ever murdered, criticism of Nehru in their own pages would cause them to get the blame. In the 1980s Goel was re-invited to contribute, until he was again expelled, this time for being too unkind to Islam. (It is routinely assumed that the RSS preaches hatred of Islam; but I award my bottom dollar to anyone who can show me an instance from the editorials of Organiser. And I will award it again for an authentic quotation from a Sangh leader that is more anti-Muslim than the revered Dr. Ambedkar’s book Pakistan or the Partition of India.) As a book author and publisher, he also had to deal with the Sangh, e.g. when he had to straighten out the BJP’s initially very muddled White Paper on Ayodhya. So, it is not as if he boycotted the Sangh, in spite of their treatment of him.

Yet his judgement of them was merciless. In writing, he diplomatically limited himself to intimating that “in the history of an organization, there comes a point when its original goal gets overshadowed by its concerns for itself”. But when speaking, he was much blunter. In the presence of myself and of prominent witnesses, he said for example: “The RSS is the biggest collection of duffers that ever came together in world history” (1989), “The RSS is leading Hindu society into a trap from which it may not recover” (1994), “Hindu society is doomed unless this RSS-BJP movement perishes” (2003).

Goel’s main criticism of the Sangh concerns its anti-intellectual prejudice, its refusal to analyze hostile ideologies, hence its lapse into emotionalism and erratic policies. Thus, instead of reactive anti-Muslim outbursts after every act of Islamic terrorism, he posits the need for an ideological critique of the Islamic belief system, equipped with all the methods and findings of modern scholarship: “The problem is not Muslims but Islam.” The difference is that those who refuse such critique (and that is the case of the RSS) has no one but the physical Muslim population to vent its anger on whenever another act of Islamic violence occurs. This way, a more incisive deconstruction of Islamic belief translates into less violence against actual Muslims. (The converse is also true: George W. Bush and Tony Blair have spoken out in praise of Islam but killed a great many Muslims.)

Goel and his mentor Ram Swarup (1920-98) took inspiration from the British liberal tradition of Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw and George Orwell, even before rediscovering the Hindu debating tradition of Yajnavalkya and Shankara. For them, free debate was a matter of course. Hindutva organizations, by contrast, in the Sangh as well as some new ones like the Hindu Jagruti Samiti, react to every insulting book or film or painting with calls for a ban, perfectly echoing Islamic organizations demanding a ban on the Danish cartoons or The Satanic Verses. Calls for banning unpalatable opinions stem from an inability to meet the challenge intellectually, which was never Shankara’s problem but is very much the Sangh’s.

Some NRI-PIO organizations created in the 21st century explicitly adopt their line. One is the Hindu Human Rights group in London, founded by a streetwise performing artist, Arjun Malik along with writer Ranbir Singh. His answer to the humourless RSS and its equally humourless secularist critics is to “put the fun back into fundamentalism”. The HHR publishes an on-line paper and occasionally stages demonstrations on matters of Hindu concern, such as human rights in Bangladesh. On the challenge of the Christian missions, it has monitored and promoted scholarly studies, outgrowing the simplistic Hindutva positions current in India and the diaspora, which tend to confuse “Christian” with “white”, as if the world and the Churches hadn’t changed since decolonization. It interacts critically with the official pan-Hindu platforms and with the British multiculturalism authorities. These sometimes solicit its views, knowing that it represents a really existing and growing segment of opinion in the British Hindu community. Typically, the HHR sometimes cooperates with Muslim organizations on matters of common concern, all while staying away from the usual Hindu platitude that “all religions essentially say the same thing”. Human understanding does not require suspension of the mental power of discrimination.

The second similarly inspired initiative in the diaspora is based in Houston. Like the HHR, it also explores contacts with post-Christian spiritual tendencies in Western society and encourages Hindus to transcend the “racism” many of them display vis-à-vis Black, White and East-Asian population they encounter abroad. Quite a few Hindu individuals and local Hindu temple associations in North America also evince or acknowledge some influence from this line of thought.

Ram Swarup’s idea of a common inspiration and interest between all traditional religions, jointly targeted for conversion by the “predatory” religions Christianity and Islam, has also gained a following mainly through Hindu leaders based outside India. Swami Dayananda Saraswati (based in Coimbatore and in Saylorsburg PA) has been building bridges with the Jewish community, culminating in a joint Jerusalem Declaration with the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger. It also has penetrated the Sangh in the initiative for cooperation with Native American, Yoruba, Maori and other traditional religionists, the World Council for the Elders of Ancient Traditions and Cultures founded by US-based pracharak Dr. Yashwant Pathak.

In India too, these ideas have been picked up in independent as well as in Sangh-related centres of Hindu awareness and activism. The influence is palpable in some publications of the Vigil Public Opinion Forum and of the Centre for Policy Studies, both in Chennai. Then again, in India the strictly nationalist viewpoint, with increasing anti-Western overtones, still seems to prevail against the universalistic critique of hostile religions and ideologies as pioneered by Ram Swarup and S.R. Goel. Thus, consider the title of an otherwise well-crafted study of NGO activities and financing by Vigil authors Radha Rajan and Krishan Kak: NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry (2006). Its main stated focus is on anti-national rather than anti-Hindu activities, in the mould of the RSS rhetoric about Babar as a “foreign” (rather than Muslim) invader and Rama as a “national” (rather than a Hindu) hero. In some cases, as in Sandhya Jain’s online medium Vijayvaani, this goes as far as supporting Muslim causes against the West, not too different from the traditional Congressite line exemplified by Nehru’s support to Nasser.

In the case of Hindutva, nationalism is proving to be the last resort of blockheads unable to construe conflicts and power equations in ideological terms. While Christianity has changed race several times in its history (from Levantine to North-African and South-European to North-European to non-white), and while most missionaries in India are now non-white and generally Indian-born, Hindutva polemicists keep on ranting against “white racist Christian missions”. This saves them the trouble of studying the scholarly critique of Biblical truth claims and the challenge of arguing the religious case for Hinduism and against Christianity with fellow Indians who happen to be Christian. One very useful experience of NRIs and PIOs in their non-Indic surroundings is that religious issues exist in their own right, by virtue of the distinctive mores inculcated and the truth claims of religions, and regardless of the ethnic origin of a religion’s followers. The modern identification of Sanatana Dharma with the geographical entity India, explicitly proposed by Hindutva ideologues, is negated by the NRI-PIOs’ experience, where Hindu traditions turn out to remain meaningful even after being severed from their geographical cradle. This makes them more receptive to the universalistic understanding of Hindu tradition as expounded by Goel’s mentor Ram Swarup and by some globe-trotting Gurus.

Most post-Sangh centres of Hindu activism avoid overdoing their quarrel with the Sangh. It just happens to be there, to be very large, and to attract the loyalty of numerous well-meaning fellow-Hindus. Also, its effectiveness in the many local centres of activity is highly dependent upon the individual qualities of the local Sangh workers. So, inter-Hindu infighting among activists is largely avoided. One prozaic reason is that criticism has never had a noticeable effect on the Sangh leadership, another is the common-sense realization that darkness is best fought not by decrying it but by lighting a lamp of your own. Extrapolating from present trends, the future is probably that alternative centres of Hindu activism will grow and prove successful in their respective fields of activity, and that the Sangh will transform itself and correct its course under the impact of their example.

By Dr Koenraad Elst

Standing up against Corruption is considered a Crime by the Congress Government

Corruption and Crime we have been told is ‘religionless’. But is it really? One would really have to ponder this today because it seems like the biggest criminals who are now obsessively hunted down by the Indian media are not individuals and political parties associated with the recent scams and crimes against India, but rather two very devout “Hindu” gurus- Sri Sathya Sai Baba and Baba Ramdev.

THEIR CRIME:

1) They stand against corruption
2) They uplift the downtrodden of India
3) They provide free services and basic necessities- free water, free education, free health care, etc. to millions of poor.
4) They preserve, protect and propagate the culture and spiritual ethos of India.
5) They provide support and guidance to millions of people

THEIR PUNISHMENT:

1) Maligning their image and stripping their dignity
2) Debasement of all the work they have done so far for India
3) Launching vicious intellectual as well as physical attacks on them and their followers (when they’re asleep for instance)
4) Rendering them slander and defamation on all news channels

Sathya Sai Baba and Ramdev are then perhaps the biggest ‘saffron criminals’ of India because they come from the most traditional and orthodox Hindu backgrounds and have become popular in a land where secularism and western ideals are now worshipped and cherished more than one’s own true cultural identity, especially in the Indian media which tries to portray itself as objective, secular and modern and presents the Hindu gurus as backward and corrupt.

Founder of FACT India, Francois Gautier stated- “Nowadays, the greatest adversaries of an ‘Indianised and spiritualised education’ are the descendents of the ‘Brown Sahibs’- the ‘secular’ politicians, the journalists, the top bureaucrats, in fact the whole westernised cream of India. And what is even more paradoxical, is that most of them are Hindus! It is they, who upon getting independence, have denied India its true identity and borrowed blindly from the British education system, without trying to adapt it to the unique Indian mentality and psychology… And what India is getting from this education is a youth which apes the West… They will grow-up like millions of other western clones in the developing world, who wear a tie, read the New York Times and swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries from doom. In time, they will reach elevated positions and write books and articles which make fun of India, they will preside human-right committees, be “secular” high bureaucrats who take the wrong decisions and generally do tremendous harm to India, because it has been programmed in their genes to always run down their own country. In a gist, they will be the ones who are always looking at the West for approval and forever perceive India through the western prism.”

This form of mental slavery emphasized by Gautier is exactly the problem today where the Indian media with its talentless and intellectually impotent breed of journalists now debases Hindu gurus, denigrates Hindu spirituality and indirectly belittles Hinduism and India as a whole. The TV debates they launch are not very different from a collective gathering of neighbours who meet to gossip, discuss their brainless opinions and spread more rumours and falsehood. Recently, CNN IBN (India) aired a show called the “God Industry”, as usual questioning the Hindu gurus- Sathya Sai Baba and Baba Ramdev on the “wealth they have accumulated”. Sagarika Ghose the anchor of the show first provided a limited and one-sided definition of spirituality linking it merely with ‘renunciation of the world’ (which in fact is not the accurate or holistic Hindu worldview) and then asked why these Gurus aren’t renouncing the world but rather enjoying the wealth. She displayed her ignorance of Hindu Dharma firstly by presenting it in a non-hindu template and then went on to judge them based on what? -Her expertise on Hinduism, Hindu Gurus and corruption of course. And better yet, no one specifically asked what the Gurus did with all the wealth that the devotees gave them. How could they ask? It might have led them to find out that Baba Ramdev and Sathya Sai Baba secretly spent all that money on Armani suits, on lavish meals, on extravagant parties, stylish cars, gigantic houses and other business investments that served their personal gain. Perhaps this Saffron Baba duo deserves the biased treatment meted out to them then. After all they can’t be expected to be as pure and infallible as the secular journalists who question them and the corruption-free government that condemns them.

Does Hinduism say that a Guru should renounce the world and walk away from his duties towards society, especially when he can spiritually guide people? Does Hinduism say that possessing money is criminal especially when that money is being used for the betterment of society? Were spiritual gurus like Dronacharya, Chanakya and Samarth Ramdas wrong for participating in the affairs of the state and advancing their nation? If Hinduism doesn’t preach such impractical ideals then what gives authority to the Indian media to suddenly become the expert jury on such matters, that passes judgment on these individuals who have actually served the society in tremendous ways?

We can safely now say that the only thing that the media and journalists have succeeded in exposing is “themselves”. For that we must thank them immensely for the ignorant masses would never have become aware of all the falsehood and lies that is being fed to them every day by this new breed of english-educated ignoramuses.

Moreover, this high-flying elite cult of secular journalists who don’t give news but give views have probably never done anything themselves for the down-trodden that they could ever boast of. Or perhaps the hindu-voice that has become more mobilized and consolidated under Ramdev and Sathya Sai now needs to be shut down by them lest it unleashes more saffron criminals on the society

By Sai Arjun