Articles

Looting of Hindu temples in Kerela

2006-12-31T06:58:00.000-08:00

The Hindu people of India, even if belatedly, are now awakening to the humiliation, tragedy and tremendous loss inflicted on them through the savage destruction of their ageless, holy temples by invading hordes in the name of their religion of the Arabian desert.

In spite of this heartening fact that the nation has now woken up and is carefully taking stock of the unspeakable atrocities and national loss it had suffered at the hands of the butchering, bestial invaders, sadly enough the devastation suffered by the temples of Kerala has not attracted the nation's attention. On the one hand the impression that the Kerala temples had escaped destruction has gained ground: probably because unlike in the other parts of India, in Kerala mosques are not seen squatting on top of temple foundations; nor is the Kerala landscape pockmarked with heartbreaking rotting mounds that were once the holy temples of the Hindus.

But it certainly is not that Kerala was more fortunate than the rest of India in the matter of the destruction of temples. The stark truth is that the devastation suffered by Kerala temples at the hands of foreigners and local quislings is as direful as that suffered by temples elsewhere in India. The only difference is that as most of the damage was perpetrated by the cunning British, it was accomplished insidiously, like murder being committed by slow suffocation without any wound being seen on the outside.

While the rabidly fanatic Tipu Sultan "the bandit of Mysore" destroyed two thousand temples in the Malabar region to establish Islam, it was the British rulers acting at the behest of Christian missionaries who, starting from two hundred years ago, dug the grave of the Kerala temples. The wily British accomplished this not by resorting to anything so crude and beastly as demolishing them: but by simply confiscating all of them "in the name of the state of course" along with all their landed properties and then making sure that the temples rotted away from calculated, steady attrition.

The present [1991] United Democratic Government of Kerala, under the command of the Muslim League and the Kerala Congress (a front party for the Churches) is now living up to the tradition of all former Kerala governments by following this same policy with enthusiasm and vigour.

Not only the British overlords but also the governments that came into power in Kerala after 1947 were never content with this wholesale robbery alone of temple properties. They continuously plundered, and helped others plunder, the relatively better off temples of even parts of the grounds the temples stood on; and also of the offerings of devotees. The latest of these forays is the still standing order (now under review by the High Court) of K. Karunakaran, the Chief Minister of Kerala, that the Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple Dewaswom (the management appointed by the Government) withdraw ten crores from the banks and deposit the amount with the state treasury to help the Government out of its present financial crisis.

This grave and sinister development has for once jolted the lethargic Hindus of Kerala out of their perennial slumber and into awareness of the pitiful plight their temples have been reduced to as a direct result of the suzeranity the Kerala Government had usurped over them. When Hindu organisations and long-suffering devotees vehemently protested, the chief minister issued an unctuous rationale to the effect that the ten crores would be as safe with the Government as with the banks, and that interest would be paid. He also added duplicitously that "there will be no compulsion to obtain funds from the houses of worship of any religion". He was feigning that the places of worship of all religions had always been treated equally by the state, when the truth is that it was the temples and temples alone "that had been subjected to ruthless plunder by the Government; so much so that they now have practically no assets left except the offerings of devotees. And this too had been steadily looted by the politicians running the Government.

This operation to annihilate the temples of Kerala was first organised and put into effect two hundred years ago by Colonel Munro, the British Resident in the erstwhile State of Travancore (the former princely States of Travancore and Cochin, along with Malabar, formerly a district of the Madras Presidency, together form the Kerala State). The British in 1810 made the then ruler of Travancore, Rani Lakshmi Bai, appoint the British Resident, Col. Munro, as Dewan of the state also. With supreme audacity Munro would convert his "advice" to the Rani as Dewan into commands by virtue of his position as Resident. Munro who was a committed Christian missionary as well as a ruthless colonialist, naturally considered it his pious duty to debilitate the Hindu religion and at the same time foster Christianity. He also realised that this would help cement Christian colonialism in the region. He achieved both these aims at one shot by the simple expedient of taking over by fiat (euphemistically called "proclamation") nearly all the temples of Travancore and Cochin and also by seizing all their landed properties without any compensation whatsoever. When he was thus busily confiscating temple lands without compensation, Munro parallelly issued hundreds of munificent land grants to the Christian Churches.

The cultivated and cultivable temple lands thus expropriated were so vast and the income from them so enormous that within the year the annual land revenue accruing to the state doubled. Of course as part of his well-laid plan to extirpate the Hindu religion and temples, Munro kept all the income from the expropriated temple lands with the state and did not remit any amount at all to the temples. Very soon the temples, thus impoverished and effectively devitalized, fell into wrack and ruin.

The disorganised, apathetic Hindus were very slow to awaken to the catastrophe inflicted on them by Munro. Apart from the usual spiritlessness of the Hindus, this submission was also due to the fact that at that time the Christian and Muslim population was very small and Hindus for this reason deluded themselves into believing that the confiscated lands, even if with the Government, still belonged to them.

Soon vast demographic changes took place. The Muslim population through forcible conversions by Tipu Sultan and the Christian population through British sponsored fierce proselytism, increased by leaps and bounds. These now powerful minorities lost no time in making it clear to the faction ridden, enervated Hindus that the temple lands, now that they had been vested with the state, belonged to them as much as to the Hindus.

When at long last the Hindus awoke to the awful disaster that had been wreaked upon them and made bold to demand the return of the seized lands to the temples, they found to their dismay that Munro had been too clever for them. The Resident Dewan missionary had seen to it that the records of the sequestered temple lands and of state-owned lands were thoroughly intermixed; so much so that it had been made quite impossible to catalogue temple lands separately from government lands.

This convenient excuse "that it was no longer possible to distinguish temple lands from state lands "which made shameless use of outright brigandage, was to be used in the future times without number by the Government and double crossing politicians not only to hang on to the temple properties but also to foil the feeble attempts made by Hindus from time to time to claim compensation for the seized lands.

To remit even part of the huge income from the confiscated lands to the temples for their upkeep was not even thought of. It was a full hundred years later that a commission was appointed to look into the matter. This commission determined the income from the temple lands at the absurdly low rate of land revenue levied on them; and recommended not that at least this puny amount be paid to the temples, but only that the interest due on it and that too only at three percent be paid. Even this the Government did not do for a decade. This commission's recommendation that the temples which were falling into ruins be repaired by the Government (as it had taken over their property) was studiously ignored.

After years of agitation, in 1922, the interest on the income payment of compensation or of the actual income was never again to be considered at all due to the temples was fixed at a paltry twenty-two lakhs. In 1948, again after prolonged agitation the amount was increased to fifty one lakhs, but without any provision for compensation for inflation. This amount of fifty one lakhs today is worth less than one lakh at 1948 value of the rupee. And yet the Kerala Government has arrogantly ignored the urgent pleas of Hindu organisations for upward revision of the amount to compensate for the dismal fall in the value of the rupee.

Because of the wholesale confiscation of the properties bestowed on the temples for rituals and upkeep, thousands of temples in Kerala do not have the wherewithal even for token rituals; thousands more have fallen into ruins. Thus the shrewd and crafty missionary-cum-Resident-cum-Dewam accomplished through his single bloodless coup the ruin and devastation of Hindu temples and Hindu pride "which the Muslim raiders through the centuries and local born despicable tyrants like Aurangzeb could only do after numberless battles, massacres, rape and arson.

This war of attrition waged on the temples of Kerala for a century and a half actually picked up momentum after independence. The double dealing politicians, wearing the mask of secularism, were only too glad to betray the Hindu community by heaping further blows on the temples. For they knew that this would secure their positions with the "minorities", who with their monolithic, anti-secular and powerful organisations were holding the reigns of power in the state. Very soon after independence the Congress Government enacted the Land Reforms Act which was so crafted that it effectively denuded the temples" but not the churches and mosques "of what little bits of land that still remained with them. The Central Government also did its secular act of destroying temples by confiscating by special legislation "again with absolutely no compensation the vast forest lands of the Malabar temples which were promptly taken over by Christian and Muslim encroachers. It is well known that the greatest beneficiaries of the Land Reforms Act in the whole of Kerala were Christians and Muslims, and the greatest losers the Hindu temples and Hindus.

While this sequestration and annexation of temple lands had been going on for the last two hundred years, no Government of Kerala past or present, had ever dared to take over one single church or mosque or just one cent of their vast land holdings. Not only this; some years ago the Kerala Government with much fanfare sanctioned as annual grant "that is to say, a yearly free gift for all time to come of fifteen lakhs for pension for the mukris of mosques. This when priests of the temples, properties of which had been stolen by the state, had no such pension and were miserably paid besides. Moreover, to get Muslim goodwill all the immense wakf properties in Kerala (and in the whole of the rest of India, as this is a Central Government Act) have been exempted from the Buildings and Rent Control Act, which is now strangling the remaining few buildings of temples and ashrams in Kerala, not to speak of the rest of India.

At present forty-five percent of the population of Kerala is Christian and Muslim and a section of Hindus, being communists, are atheists. Hence the Government is not only mostly non-Hindu, but anti-Hindu. In these circumstances, and also being fervidly "secular", the only right course for the Government to follow is to dissociate itself completely from the temples and vest their administration with true devotees. But with unbelievable brazenness and hypocrisy the Kerala Government is not only clinging to ownership rights over the temples but is also claiming rights the maharajas of old, who were real protectors of temples, never even dreamed of. Today it is heart breaking to see the holy, ancient temples of Kerala debased to the status of a lowly, inconsequential department of a Government that is in effect run by Christian and Muslim religious leadership. This is not all; the temples are also under the mercy of greedy quislings all too ready to further bleed them to satisfy their masters.

While the number of grand churches and mosques in Kerala has increased more than a hundred times in the last five decades, not a single temple of significance has been built during this time. Worse still, during this period hundreds of temples have fallen down and disappeared into the dust.

When India was at war with China, the Guruvayur Dewa-swom was "persuaded" to transfer to the Central Government a huge quantity of gold. As far as is known this gold was never returned to the temple. The Guruvayur Dewaswom was also "persuaded" by the Kerala Government to invest one crore of rupees in the Indira Vikas Patrika. Huge amounts were plundered for political shows like the Congress Party souvenir. A nondescript motion picture was also made on Guruvayur temple which made the temple poorer by twenty lakhs. It has become a practice to disburse money under false headings to politicians, their relatives and friends. More crores would have been looted from the temple by politicians but for the timely intervention of courageous devotees who blew the whistle in time.

Not even during times of national emergency like the time of war when Hindu women donated their gold mangalya sutras, did the Kerala Government dare to make any effort to obtain deposits from the opulent churches and mosques—nor did the bishops or the moulvis offer any deposit or donation. To put it in a nutshell, where the Hindus are concerned, for the Kerala Government it is loot, loot, loot; and where the churches and mosques are concerned, it is give, give, give.

While the Kerala Government thus considers the accumulated offerings of devotees at the great temples as their own to pocket and squander as they please, they consider it an anathema to provide even the minimum facilities for pilgrims at the great temples of holy pilgrimage. Repeated frantic requests for a few acres of forest land for the provision of some basic amenities for the millions of pilgrims converging on the forest temple at the Sabarimala Sri Sasta Temple have been flatly turned down on the ground that forest land cannot be alienated without the permission of the Centre. At the same time ten hectares of forest land were granted in a jiffy to build a church" proclaimed by the bishops as a rival pilgrim centre "close to the Sabarimala temple. And the successive Governments of Kerala in the last fifteen years have been falling over each other to provide free titles to the well organised, Church-backed encroachers—all of them Christians of course "to huge areas of forest land, running into more than a million acres.

Thus it is not only that every government in Kerala had been ruthlessly sabotaging and destroying temples for the last two centuries with no let up till today; these governments have also during this time deliberately and eagerly functioned as the transhipment point for the transferring of Hindu wealth to non-Hindus.

It is against this shockingly larcenous background that the latest demand of the Kerala Government for ten crores from the Guruvayur temple should be viewed by the Hindus of India. While much noise is being made about the availability of ten crores with the Guruvayur Dewaswom (offerings of mostly poor devotees for temple purposes only), the case of thousands of temples in Kerala without the wherewithal for rituals or repairs is carefully concealed. And this ten crores with the Guruvayur Dewaswom is but a microscopic sum when compared to the vast funds—running into thousands of crores "available with the lavishly foreign-funded churches and mosques. And of course they have kept their colossal landed properties also. It is well-known that the Churches in Kerala are the biggest landowner after the state. In just one instance, a missionary outfit in Malabar owns such a huge area of land in a single holding that they renamed the place "Bibleland". And what is more the Postal Department of secular India has also named their office in the area Bibleland Post Office. The Churches own countless plantations which have been carefully left outside the purview of the Land Reforms Act.

In addition the Churches in Kerala own vast extents of urban land in the best part of every city and town. (This is of course the case in the rest of India also.) In Tiruvananthapuram the palace of just one bishop—among several bishops and their palaces "stands on nearly thirty acres of land abutting on the Raj Bhavan compound. This bishop, not one to hide his might and power, has also built a high-profile church practically touching the Raj Bhavan entrance. And this bishop, and the other bishops and convents own hundreds of acres in the city. The Churches have been for quite some time investing in a big way in multi-storeyed shopping and office complexes. They also have huge holdings in other real estate, publishing houses, banks and companies.

But of course in Kerala the limitless flow of treasure into the Churches is from the education sector. They have established from British times a near monopoly in education, from primary schools to first grade colleges. More than fifty percent of the hundreds of crores the Kerala Government spends on education is commandeered by the bishops and mother superiors.

In spite of this golden flow from the state into the Church coffers, and in spite of all their colossal wealth and foreign funds, the Government will never dare to request them for funds, no matter how critical the financial crunch. At the same time the Government considers the small bits of the remaining assets and funds of the temples to be their ordained targets for regular booty taking much of it to be used to further destroy the temples.

For the Hindus of Kerala to retrieve even part of their lost honour and dignity, firstly the present niggardly payment of fifty one lakhs (such is the perfidy and hatred of the perfidy and hatred of the anti-Hindu politicians towards the temples that they regularly refer to this sum as a "grant"), should be raised sufficiently to tally with the income from the seized temple lands at present rates. A small beginning can be made by increasing the present insulting, measly payment of fifty one lakhs to compensate for the steep fall in the value of the rupee since 1948; and this newly determined amount should be revised every year henceforward. After all the Kerala Government is doing exactly this in every area except, of course, in the case of the temples.

Secondly, the Hindus have to get the confiscated temples released from the stranglehold of the politicians (themselves the willing hostages of the Muslim League, Kerala Congress and atheists) who happen to be born as Hindus but are avowedly anti-Hindu by conviction. Interestingly these politicians who declare they are not Hindus see nothing dishonourable and dishonest in voting on temple matters as Hindus "with the open aim of snatching the maximum spoils for themselves and their cohorts.

When the Kerala chief minister equates the depositing of Guruvayur temple funds with the treasury with bank deposits the crucial fact that there is no withdrawal facility in the treasury is kept under wraps. And if by some horrible chance the ten crores are placed in the treasury, we can expect a replay of the Munro scenario—the Government seizing the capital for ever, and later with pious protestations of fair intentions, offering to pay the interest on the interest on the ten crores "if and when it chooses.

We hear a great deal day in and day out about the wonderful religious harmony that prevails in Kerala as exemplified by a church, a mosque and a temple standing close together in Palayam, in the heart of Tiruvananthapuram. One close look at these places of worship will prove that what they actually demonstrate is something quite different: the impoverishment, abasement and servitude of the Hindus. The church in Palayam is a magnificent edifice on a vast tract of priceless land; the mosque too is an imposing new building on spacious grounds. But the temple it is just a dilapidated hutment standing on just four cents of land.

This in general is the pathetic, degraded condition of the Hindu temples, brought on by the ceaseless plundering first by the British colonialists intent on spreading Christianity, by the studied negligence of the state governments, wholesale destruction by Tipu Sultan, and in post-independence days, by the looting by governments owned and operated by powerful Christian and Muslim vested interests; not to mention the greedy quislings out to fatten themselves at the expense of the temples.

How did it happen that the Hindus of Kerala stood silently by when their hallowed, highly venerated temples were thus plundered, dishonoured and reduced to beggary? The fact is, in the course of centuries of slavery we Hindus have assiduously taught ourselves to mistake apathy for tolerance, servility for gentleness and cowardice for pacifism. The process is still continuing, with the Hindus tricked into accepting self-hate and self-destruction as secularism.

Thorough rethinking and strong corrective measures based on the truly Hindu principles of truth and fearlessness on the part of the downtrodden Hindus of Kerala has become imperative if the Hindu temples, religion and culture are to survive at all. Fearless and concerted action is also needed for regaining the lost honour and dignity of the Hindus.

http://hamsa.org/appendixes.htm

Gandhi, the moulana of Muslim appeasement-II

2006-12-31T06:54:00.000-08:00

Posted on 28 December, 2006
The atrocities committed by the Moplah rebels were widely reported in the English and vernacular newspapers of the day throughout India and the British Empire. Mahatma Gandhi was fully aware of every development in Malabar during this time. But his overweening egoism blinded his eyes to such an extent that he was unable to see the realities on the ground. - V SUNDARAM

Dr B R Ambedkar paid his tribute to the Muslim Appeasement Bible of Moulana Mahatma Gandhi in these brilliant words: 'Gandhi has never called the Muslims to account even when they have been guilty of gross crimes against Hindus. It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi Movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans. The leading Muslims never condemned these criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs.... This attitude of the Muslims is understandable. What is not understandable is the attitude of Mr Gandhi.'

Dr Ambedkar was not talking through his hat about the anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim attitude of Mahatma Gandhi. When thousands of women were raped and many of them killed by the Moplah Muslims during the Moplah rebellion in 1921, the brutalised women of Malabar led by the senior Rani of Nilambur gave a heart-rending petition to Lady Reading, the wife of the then Viceroy of India. I am quoting only the first two paragraphs from this historic petition:

'We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, take the liberty to supplicate your Ladyship for sympathy and succour.'

'Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of the last 100 years, the present rebellion is unexampled in its magnitude as well as unprecedented in its ferocity. But it is possible that your Ladyship is not fully appraised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the fiendish rebels of the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers; of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungles, with the unborn babies protruding from the mangled corpses; of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes and of our husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive; of our helpless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these inhuman hellhounds could conceive of; of thousands of our homesteads reduced to circular mounds out of sheer savagery in a wanton spirit of destruction; of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie, or else smashed to pieces; of the wholesale looting of hard earned wealth of generations reducing many who were formerly rich and prosperous to publicly beg for a pie or two in the streets of Calicut, to buy salt or betal leaf rice being mercifully provided by the various relief agencies of Government. These are not fables. The wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruins which once were our dear homes, the heaps of stones which once were our places of worship these are still here to attest to the truth. The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our memory till our own death brings us peace.'

The atrocities committed by the Moplah rebels were widely reported in the English and vernacular newspapers of the day throughout India and the British Empire. Mahatma Gandhi was fully aware of every development in Malabar during this time. But his overweening egoism blinded his eyes to such an extent that he was unable to see the realities on the ground. A Peoples' Conference presided over by the Zamorin, Maharaja of Malabar, was held in 1921. The following resolution was passed at this Conference:

'This Conference views with indignation and sorrow the attempts made in various quarters by interested parties to ignore or minimise the crimes committed by the Moplah rebels such as:

a) Brutality dishonouring women

b) Flaying people alive

c) Wholesale slaughter of men, women and children

d) Burning alive entire families

e) Forcibly converting people in thousands and slaying those who refused to get converted

f) Throwing half dead people into wells and leaving the victims for hours to struggle for escape till finally released from their suffering by death

g) Burning a great many and looting practically all Hindu and Christian houses in the disturbed areas in which even Moplah women and children took part and robbing women of even the garments on their bodies, in short, reducing the whole non-Muslim population to abject destitution.

h) Cruelly insulting the religious sentiments of the Hindus by desecrating and destroying numerous temples in the disturbed areas, killing cows within the temple precincts, putting their entrails on the holy image and hanging the skulls on the walls and roofs.

Annie Besant was a fearless and impartial woman quite unlike Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi was a double talking, multiple tongued Moulana layer upon layer of orchestrated fraud, dissemblance and deceit. Annie Besant had been elected President of the Indian National Congress in 1913 two years before the final return of Mahatma Gandhi to India from South Africa. She was one of the tallest leaders of India at that time and loved by the masses of India. She created a new public awakening about the intentions of the Moplah marauders. Annie Besant visited the affected areas of Malabar soon after the Moplah rebellion in 1921 and wrote a series of powerful articles about the carnage let loose by the Moplah Muslims which opened the eyes of the government of India and that of Britain. I am quoting below a few words from Annie Besant's article titled Malabar's Agony in New India of 29 November, 1921: 'It would be well if Mr M K Gandhi could be taken into Malabar to see with his own eyes the ghastly horrors which have been created by the preaching of himself and his 'LOVED BROTHERS' Muhommad and Shaukat Ali. The Khilafat Raj is established there; on 1 August, 1921, sharp to the date first announced by Gandhi for the beginning of Swaraj and the vanishing of British Rule, a Police Inspector was surrounded by Moplahs, revolting against that Rule. From that date onwards thousands of the forbidden war knives were secretly made and hidden away and on 20 August, the rebellion broke out. Khilafat flags were hoisted on Police Stations and Government Offices. .... Eyes full of appeal, and agonised despair, of hopeless entreaty of helpless anguish, thousands of them camp after camp which I visited. Mr Gandhi says 'Shameful Inhumanity'. Shameful inhumanity indeed, wrought by the Moplahs, and these are the victims saved from extermination by British and Indian Swords. For be it remembered the Moplahs began the whole horrible business; the Government intervened to save their victims and these thousands have been saved. Mr Gandhi would have hostilities suspended so that the Moplahs may swoop down on the refugee camps and finish their work! Mahatma Gandhi was least concerned about the Hindu victims of Moplah violence in Malabar at that time.

Annie Besant exposed the atrocities committed by the Moplah rebels in Malabar as a fearless journalist. Let us hear her describe an act and scene of rape in Malabar: 'Words fail to express my feelings of indignation and abhorrence which I experienced when I came to know of an instance of rape, committed by the rebels under Chembrasseri Thangal. A respectable Nair lady at Melathur was stripped naked by the rebels in the presence of her husband and brothers who were made to stand close by with their hands tied behind. When they shut their eyes in abhorrence, they were compelled at the point of a sword to open their eyes and witness the rape committed by the brute in their presence. I loathe even to write of such a mean action. This instance of rape was communicated to me by one of her brothers confidentially. There are several instances of such mean atrocities which are not revealed by people....'

Mahatma Gandhi at that time gave a great finding to the effect that every Muslim is a bully and every Hindu a coward. On the one hand he called every Hindu a coward and on the other hand he exhorted all the Hindus to remain calm and non-violent even when they went all out to defend themselves against the attacking Moplah Muslims. The truth is Mahatma Gandhi displayed all his courage only to suppress the Hindus. In so far as the Muslims were concerned, he was a typical Hindu coward. He was mortally scared of them. So was Jawaharlal Nehru. Therefore Gandhi had no moral sanction to talk about the cowardice of the Hindus. And here is the callous, sadistic and barbarous message he gave to the Hindu victims of Moplah rebellion in Young India of 29 September, 1921: 'The ending of the Moplah revolt is a matter not only of urgency, but of simple humanity. The Hindus must have the courage and the faith to feel that they can protect their religion in spite of such fanatical eruptions. ... Be the Moplahs be ever so bad, they deserve to be treated as human beings.' By saying all this, Mahatma Gandhi broke the track record of Babar, Nadir Shah and Aurangazib in the never ending vistas of Islamic compassion and Hindu fundamentalism.

(To be contd...)

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)

e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com

http://newstodaynet.com/2006sud/06dec/2712ss1.htm

Gandhi, the Moulana of Muslim appeasement

2006-12-31T06:26:00.000-08:00

Posted on 26 December, 2006
Mahatma Gandhi was a devout Hindu, yet he turned more and more anti-Hindu after 1920 as his public life progressed. - By V Sunderam

It is a well known fact of history that although personally Mahatma Gandhi was a devout Hindu, yet he turned more and more anti-Hindu after 1920 as his public life progressed. The driving passion of his political life was to throw the British out of India. In order to achieve this objective, he was obsessed in his conviction that Hindu - Muslim unity was absolutely necessary and indispensable. There can be two views or more on whether he was right or justified in holding these convictions. However, the irrefutable fact is that again and again he demonstrated his combat readiness to sacrifice or sell out vital Hindu interests, Hindu honour and Hindu blood all the time in deference to the feelings of minorities in general and Muslims in particular. To quote the appropriate words of Prafull Goradia in this context: 'For Mahatma Gandhi, no price was too great for appeasing Muslims, so that they did not oppose Hindus. That he did not understand the Muslims was proved by the conduct of the Muslim League and by the vivisection of the country.'

After the Mutiny of 1857, the incidence of Hindu-Muslim riots in India had come down sharply. By lending support to the Khilafat Movement of Ali Brothers in 1920, Mahatma Gandhi inaugurated a new era of a fresh wave of Hindu-Muslim riots. Mahatma Gandhi was a confused man. How could his Satyagraha which was to be effective for attaining our Swaraj could be equally effective for saving the Caliph on his Turkish throne. Gandhi did not understand that restoration of the Caliph would only result in making him again a shining symbol of Pan-Islamism or the Supranationalism of Islam as a world religion with its people forming the Ummah. This inherent impending danger was clearly foreseen by Sir.Sankaran Nair, a Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1922. In his book prophetically titled as 'Gandhi and Anarchy' published by Tagore and Company, Madras in 1922 he wrote: 'It is impossible to believe that Gandhi and his adherents are not aware that this claim of the Mahomedans to be judged only by the Law of the Koran, is a claim which is the fons et origo of all Khilafat claims of whatever kind. It is well to be clear about this, for not only does the acceptance of the claim mean the death knell of the British Empire or Indo-British Commonwealth, WHATEVER NAME WE MAY CARE TO GIVE TO THE GREAT FRATERNITY OF NATIONS TO WHICH WE BELONG, BUT SPECIFICALLY AS REGARDS INDIA IT MEANS A REAL DENIAL OF SWARAJ. FOR IT INVOLVES MAHOMEDAN RULE AND HINDU SUBJECTION.' Thus Sir Sankaran Nair clearly saw the danger signal when Mahatma Gandhi was leading the Muslims of India to convert the Hindus into permanent Serfs. Dr Manmohan Singh's recent declaration on Muslim hegemony is only a logical culmination of the process initiated by Mahatma Gandhi and clearly foreseen by Sir Sankaran Nair in 1922.

During the Moplah rebellion in Kerala in 1921, thousands of Hindu men, women and children were killed by the Muslims. Hundreds of women were raped. And yet Gandhi supported the Moplahs and not the Hindu victims of Moplah violence and oppression. In fact Gandhi had no sympathy for the Hindus. Mahatma Gandhi wrote in his 'Young India', 'it is wrong to say that Islam has employed force. No religion in this world has spread through the use of force. No Musalman, to my knowledge, has ever approved of compulsion.' Does this not show that Gandhi practiced political deception? According to Gandhi, the Moplah Muslims were guilty of no crime.

But the politically spurious and culturally disastrous view of Mahatma Gandhi on the Moplah rebellion was not shared by Lord Reading, the then Viceroy of India and Sir.Sankaran Nair, a member of his Council. Sir.Sankaran Nair wrote: 'For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember anything in history to match the Malabar rebellion. It broke out on 20 August, 1921. Even by the 6 September, the results were dreadful. There was complete breakdown of Civil Government resulting in widespread disorder, in political chaos, in anarchy and in ruin.' Let us contrast this with Mahatma Gandhi's conclusion: 'The Moplahs are among the bravest in the land. They are god-fearing.' How did Gandhi overlook the brutal fact that Moplah Muslims were men-slaughtering, children-strangling and women-raping? I am asking this question in the light of the speech of Lord Reading, viceroy of India, on 20th of August 1921: 'A few Europeans and many Hindus have been murdered, communications have been obstructed. Hindu temples sacked, houses of Europeans and Hindus burnt. According to reports Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam... The result has been the temporary collapse of the Civil Government and offices and courts have ceased to function and ordinary business has been brought to a standstill. European and Hindu refugees of all classes are concentrated at Calicut and it is satisfactory to note that they are safe there. One trembles to think of the consequences if the forces of order had not prevailed for the protection of Calicut. Those who are responsible for causing this grave outbreak of violence and crime must be brought to justice and made to suffer the punishment of the guilty.'

Annie Besant wrote a series of articles in her journal 'New India' on 29 November and 6 December 1921 under the caption Malabar's Agony. She challenged the stand taken by Mahatma Gandhi on the peaceful and humanitarian overtures of the Moplah Muslims towards non-Muslims in Malabar. The shock of the Moplah riots was so widespread that a Committee of Distinguished Citizens was appointed to tour the affected areas. The Committee consisted of K P Keshava Menon, Secretary Kerala Provincial Committee, T V Mohammed, Secretary, Ernad Khilafat Committee, K Madhavan Nair, Secretary, Calicut District Congress Committee and K V Gopal Menon. In their fact-finding report they concluded: 'Truth is infinitely of more paramount importance than Hindu Muslim unity or Swaraj and therefore we tell the Maulana Sahib and his co-religionists and India's revered leader Mahatma Gandhi� IF HE TOO IS UNAWARE OF THE EVENTS HERE� that atrocities committed by the Moplahs on the Hindus are unfortunately too true and that there is nothing in the deeds of Moplah rebels which a true non-violent, non-co-operator can congratulate them for.. Their wanton and unprovoked attack on the Hindus, the all but wholesale looting of their houses.. Brutal murder of inoffensive Hindus, men, women and children in cold blood without the slightest reason except that they are Kafirs... Their wholesale conversion through threat of death.'

Mahatma Gandhi treated the report of the above Committee with Islamic contempt. Mahatma Gandhi and the Working Committee of the Congress shamelessly whitewashed the criminal atrocities committed by the Moplah Muslims against the Hindus of Malabar by passing the following resolution:

'The Working Committee places on record its sense of deep regret over the deeds of violence done by Moplahs in certain areas of Malabar, these deeds being evidence of the fact that there are still people in India who have not understood the message of the Congress and the Central Khilafat Committee, and calls upon every Congress and Khilafat worker to spread the message of non-violence even under the gravest provocation throughout the length and breadth of India.'

This was political rascality of the meanest kind. Gandhi's callousness rose to Himalayan heights when he wrote the following in 'Young India' on 29 September : 'We have forgotten the divine out of dying for our faiths without retaliation... 'Be the Moplahs be ever so bad, they deserve to be treated as human beings.'

Dr Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Arjun Singh, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Karunanidhi and many other known Islamists in Indian politics owe the fountain head of their infatuation for the peace loving and compassionate Muslims to the sage like wickedness of Mahatma Gandhi detailed above.

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)

http://newstodaynet.com/2006sud/06dec/2612ss2.htm

THE MAN WHO KILLED GANDHI10

2006-12-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

THE MAN WHO KILLED GANDHI10/28/2006 1:36:05 AM M P Ajithkumar
Reality always differs from ignorant popular beliefs brought in by propaganda. This is what happened in the general belief regarding the Mahatma Gandhi murder case. Brought down to the level of an election propaganda subject, the issue of Gandhi murder case has been exploited by the very party, which though garlanded the photo of Gandhi, had treated him (to quote Gandhi himself) like a ‘sweeper’. Ceased to be even a four ana member of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi turned out to the leading Congress workers something moth-like to be brushed aside with indifference. And had he lived for more years than he did he would have been spurned with vengeance by his own party workers to whom the Gandhian ideals would have proved real hindrance in their unscrupulous way to eke out a recklessly luxurious life. By the time India got independence Congress had changed so much, had been irreparably damaged to the state of being not only non-Gandhian but anti-Gandhian too. The prestigious patriotic outfit of India, which enjoyed the leadership of the leonine figures like Lajpatroy, Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, C R Das, Sri Aurobindo, and Gandhi later, became the asylum of unscrupulous politicians with no regard for the people or democratic values. Naturally in a party wherein bandicoots abounded Gandhi became an odd man deservedly to be out. The Congress had thus completed the ideological murder of the Mahatma prior to his being physically assassinated by Godse. And even the physical assassination, the Congress workers and leaders have been exploiting at the hustings as a political bullet against their enemies. Those who have defiled his ideals are capitalizing on his death for defiling the nation he made independent of foreign domination. But still they pretend to be the followers of Gandhi and the champions of Gandhian values! The devil is audaciously quoting the Bible!
\n False propaganda had always an ample bearing upon the political psyche of the people with the result that political parties tried to tarnish the image of their opponents by blackmailing them with allegations, which may bring national chorus of disapproval upon the latter. No example would be more fitting for this than the allegation the Indian National Congress leveled against its most implacable foe, the Bharathiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the present BJP, which was backed by the RSS, that an RSS man had murdered Mahatma Gandhi. The BJS spearheaded in Indian politics and Parliament by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookherji was a terror to the leaders with their heads sparse of both hair and ideas. His personal integrity, pugnacious patriotism and the undaunted sincerity in regard to each and every issue that adversely\n affected the national cause were qualities the Nehruvians hated. And it became a political imperative that the rightist wing of Indian politics was to be cowed down, and they designed many weapons to this end. One of them, indeed the most powerful, was the story of RSS and Gandhi murder. Otherwise what was the need of the Congress workers’ stereotyping the allegation even as all the evidences regarding the Mahathma’s murder ran in contrast to the cooked up story of the RSS involvement? \n Or was it indeed an RSS man that killed Gandhiji? Evidences rule it out. Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the then Home Minister of India wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru on 27 February 1948 that amidst many findings regarding the Mahathma’s murder “It also clearly emerges from the statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all” (Sardar Patel’s Correspondences, Vol. VI, 1945-50, edited by Durga Das). It is interesting to note that Sri. C K Daphtary, the then Advocate General, Bombay who was in charge of the prosecution did not involve RSS in the controversy. The prosecution did not even hint, much less prove even the remotest connection of RSS with the murder of the Mahathma. RSS is not blamed anywhere in the judgement delivered in the case.",1]
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False propaganda had always an ample bearing upon the political psyche of the people with the result that political parties tried to tarnish the image of their opponents by blackmailing them with allegations, which may bring national chorus of disapproval upon the latter. No example would be more fitting for this than the allegation the Indian National Congress leveled against its most implacable foe, the Bharathiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor of the present BJP, which was backed by the RSS, that an RSS man had murdered Mahatma Gandhi. The BJS spearheaded in Indian politics and Parliament by Dr. Syama Prasad Mookherji was a terror to the leaders with their heads sparse of both hair and ideas. His personal integrity, pugnacious patriotism and the undaunted sincerity in regard to each and every issue that adversely affected the national cause were qualities the Nehruvians hated. And it became a political imperative that the rightist wing of Indian politics was to be cowed down, and they designed many weapons to this end. One of them, indeed the most powerful, was the story of RSS and Gandhi murder. Otherwise what was the need of the Congress workers’ stereotyping the allegation even as all the evidences regarding the Mahathma’s murder ran in contrast to the cooked up story of the RSS involvement?
Or was it indeed an RSS man that killed Gandhiji? Evidences rule it out. Sardar Vallabhai Patel, the then Home Minister of India wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru on 27 February 1948 that amidst many findings regarding the Mahathma’s murder “It also clearly emerges from the statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all” (Sardar Patel’s Correspondences, Vol. VI, 1945-50, edited by Durga Das). It is interesting to note that Sri. C K Daphtary, the then Advocate General, Bombay who was in charge of the prosecution did not involve RSS in the controversy. The prosecution did not even hint, much less prove even the remotest connection of RSS with the murder of the Mahathma. RSS is not blamed anywhere in the judgement delivered in the case.
\n Not even a single inquiry the Government of India later made into the Mahatma murder case involved the RSS in it. In 1966 the government set up a commission under Sri. J L Kapur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to make a fresh and thorough inquiry into the conspiracy that led to the murder of Gandhiji. The Commission, which sat at different places and examined about 101 witnesses and 407 documents, published its reports in 1969. It nowhere blamed RSS as the Gandhi assassin, and cleared the organisation of any connection with the crime. One of the important witnesses, Sri R N Banerjee, ICS (witness 19) who was the Home Secretary of the Central Government at the time of Gandhi murder had given the evidence that “It has not been proved that they (the accused) were members\n of the RSS” (Kapur Commission Report, Part I, p. 165). The witness further says that even if the RSS had been banned earlier, it would not have affected the conspirators or the course of events, “because they have not been proved to have been members of the RSS nor has that organization been shown to have a hand in the murder” (Kapur Commission Report, Part I, p. 186). R N Banerjee further stated, “ Although RSS was banned it should be taken to be an acceptance by the Government of the allegation that the murder of Mahatma Gandhi was by the members of RSS as such” (Kapur Commission Report, Part II, p. 62). The Commission further comments: “In Delhi also there is no evidence that the RSS as such was indulging in violent activities as against Mahatma Gandhi or the top leaders of the Congress” (Kapur Commission Report, Part II, p. 66). The facts are thus by all means self evident and more eloquent than all the propaganda by the interested parties.\n \n RSS was thus not the organization that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. Then who killed him physically and later ideologically? It was as Vallabhai Patel’s letter stated a “wing of the Hindu Maha Sabha that hatched plot and saw it through”(Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol, 6, 1945-50, edited by Durga Das). But it is also important that one may take into account many unknown aspects of this most serious case, which shuddered the conscience of our nation as well as the entire world. First, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the first accused in the case was never guilty conscious of what he did and which he firmly believed was for the sake of his nation. He justified his action in his one hundred and fifty points statement presented to the jury wherein he accused Gandhiji as having “proved to be the Father of Pakistan” instead\n of the “Father of the nation – an epithet of high reverence”. Gandhiji, Godse accused, through the successive policies like the support given to the extra territorial and purely communal issue of Khilaphat, the moral support to Suhrawardy, the final silence over the plan of partition, the post-partition days’ fasting to mobilize money to Pakistan and many such pro-Muslim policies was pampering the venom of Muslim communalism. The Father of the nation forgot his “paternal duty”, he said in his statements. And to the very time of his being hung to death he stuck to his own convictions. We may also look into the statements of Justice G D Khosla who was involved in the Gandhi murder case trial. Concluding his book ",1]
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Not even a single inquiry the Government of India later made into the Mahatma murder case involved the RSS in it. In 1966 the government set up a commission under Sri. J L Kapur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to make a fresh and thorough inquiry into the conspiracy that led to the murder of Gandhiji. The Commission, which sat at different places and examined about 101 witnesses and 407 documents, published its reports in 1969. It nowhere blamed RSS as the Gandhi assassin, and cleared the organisation of any connection with the crime. One of the important witnesses, Sri R N Banerjee, ICS (witness 19) who was the Home Secretary of the Central Government at the time of Gandhi murder had given the evidence that “It has not been proved that they (the accused) were members of the RSS” (Kapur Commission Report, Part I, p. 165). The witness further says that even if the RSS had been banned earlier, it would not have affected the conspirators or the course of events, “because they have not been proved to have been members of the RSS nor has that organization been shown to have a hand in the murder” (Kapur Commission Report, Part I, p. 186). R N Banerjee further stated, “ Although RSS was banned it should be taken to be an acceptance by the Government of the allegation that the murder of Mahatma Gandhi was by the members of RSS as such” (Kapur Commission Report, Part II, p. 62). The Commission further comments: “In Delhi also there is no evidence that the RSS as such was indulging in violent activities as against Mahatma Gandhi or the top leaders of the Congress” (Kapur Commission Report, Part II, p. 66). The facts are thus by all means self evident and more eloquent than all the propaganda by the interested parties.

RSS was thus not the organization that assassinated Mahatma Gandhi. Then who killed him physically and later ideologically? It was as Vallabhai Patel’s letter stated a “wing of the Hindu Maha Sabha that hatched plot and saw it through”(Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol, 6, 1945-50, edited by Durga Das). But it is also important that one may take into account many unknown aspects of this most serious case, which shuddered the conscience of our nation as well as the entire world. First, Nathuram Vinayak Godse, the first accused in the case was never guilty conscious of what he did and which he firmly believed was for the sake of his nation. He justified his action in his one hundred and fifty points statement presented to the jury wherein he accused Gandhiji as having “proved to be the Father of Pakistan” instead of the “Father of the nation – an epithet of high reverence”. Gandhiji, Godse accused, through the successive policies like the support given to the extra territorial and purely communal issue of Khilaphat, the moral support to Suhrawardy, the final silence over the plan of partition, the post-partition days’ fasting to mobilize money to Pakistan and many such pro-Muslim policies was pampering the venom of Muslim communalism. The Father of the nation forgot his “paternal duty”, he said in his statements. And to the very time of his being hung to death he stuck to his own convictions. We may also look into the statements of Justice G D Khosla who was involved in the Gandhi murder case trial. Concluding his book
The Murder of the Mahatma, Khosla wrote, “I have … no doubt that had the audience of that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have brought in a verdict of ‘not guilty’ by an\n overwhelming majority” (G. D. Khosla, Murder of the Mahatma, Jaico, Bombay, 1977, p. 306). But to quote Godse, his life also came to an end simultaneously with the shots fired by him at Gandhiji. And the reasons for the trial done in secrecy and the authorities’ reluctance to reveal before the public Godse’s replays to the charges leveled against him still remain something enigmatic. And, he walked away to the world of the dead, carrying with him in his hands the Bhagavad Gita, the map of undivided Hindustan and a Saffron flag.\n No doubt it was Godse who physically assassinated Gandhiji. But he did not continue to kill Gandhiji and his lofty ideals, like the political bandicoots falsely claiming to be the descendents of Gandhian tradition.\n It is an irony of history that the Mahatma who led India’s pilgrimage to freedom ceased to be even an ordinary member of the Indian National Congress in the evening of his life. It may not be surprising to hear that it was Gandhi’s suggestion to give the Prime Ministerial chair to Jinnah as the last ditch attempt to avoid the partition, a suggestion that dashed itself on the rock of Nehru’s power hunger. Such an act, Gandhiji knew, would make Jinnah’s contention that in a Hindu ruled India Muslims would be a suffering lot untenable. But by that time Gandhiji had become an archaic object to be defied and defiled at will to the new leader who claimed himself as the great disciple of Gandhiji. However, it would surely be most surprising to know that the very Father of the nation was the only\n individual who never saluted India’s National Flag! It was perhaps one of his last desires that his most trusted disciple threw to winds. India’s old man with no desires however had the desire to see the national emblem representing the working class of India. A hard worker, Gandhiji identified himself with the working community of the nation whose toil and sweated labour formed the national life and vitality. He had given the masses a symbol of their work, which they were advised to work on while chanting the spell of freedom from the alien rule. The spinning wheel thus became a household instrument in each Indian family whose members were pugnacious freedom fighters. The humming sound of the spinning wheel imparted music to the patriotic slogans. It was this wheel that speeded up India towards freedom. Naturally Gandhiji’s desire to see the National Flag of India designed with spinning wheel was born out of his strong conviction that India and her new emblem should\n symbolize the toiling masses that formed the main stay of the nation he made free. But to Nehru it appeared a cranky old man’s mad dream. India’s National Flag was to him not an object upon which Gandhi’s ‘toy’ was to be placed! Thus the Asokan wheel, the wheel of law that rolled in with the imperial orders of an ancient monarch became the new national symbol instead of the Gandhian wheel, which was not the symbol of imperial force, but of the soul-force. But nothing could be done to correct an incorrigible dilettante whose readings about the heartbeats of an ancient culture Gandhiji had represented fell wide off the mark. No wonder, when requested to pay his obeisance to the National Flag the Mahatma had his clear reservations. He would not salute it ‘however artistic’ it might be. But whether Gandhiji saluted it was not the concern of the new generation of the Leaders of the Congress who swept him to the dustbin of history and trod a totally anti-Gandhian\n track to feather their nest. In their squalid fight for power and their lust to cut a figure for them in the modern world Gandhiji turned out to be an archaic object of little relevance. And he remained as irrelevant as dead till he breathed the last though in later time he continued to be politically capitalized by the very people who assassinated his ideology. The issue of Gandhi murder lubricated the Congress’ wheel in its march against the opposing political parties at the hustings. It gave political mileage to the Congress, an organization, which Gandhiji wanted to see dispersed after achieving independence. But that the means which Gandhiji used to reach the end, the national independence, became an end in itself turning out to be the means to mock even his memory with the new ‘Gandhis’ with no Gandhism stealing the Congress show, remains an\n irony.",1]
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The Murder of the Mahatma, Khosla wrote, “I have … no doubt that had the audience of that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have brought in a verdict of ‘not guilty’ by an overwhelming majority” (G. D. Khosla, Murder of the Mahatma, Jaico, Bombay, 1977, p. 306). But to quote Godse, his life also came to an end simultaneously with the shots fired by him at Gandhiji. And the reasons for the trial done in secrecy and the authorities’ reluctance to reveal before the public Godse’s replays to the charges leveled against him still remain something enigmatic. And, he walked away to the world of the dead, carrying with him in his hands the Bhagavad Gita, the map of undivided Hindustan and a Saffron flag.

No doubt it was Godse who physically assassinated Gandhiji. But he did not continue to kill Gandhiji and his lofty ideals, like the political bandicoots falsely claiming to be the descendents of Gandhian tradition.

It is an irony of history that the Mahatma who led India’s pilgrimage to freedom ceased to be even an ordinary member of the Indian National Congress in the evening of his life. It may not be surprising to hear that it was Gandhi’s suggestion to give the Prime Ministerial chair to Jinnah as the last ditch attempt to avoid the partition, a suggestion that dashed itself on the rock of Nehru’s power hunger. Such an act, Gandhiji knew, would make Jinnah’s contention that in a Hindu ruled India Muslims would be a suffering lot untenable. But by that time Gandhiji had become an archaic object to be defied and defiled at will to the new leader who claimed himself as the great disciple of Gandhiji. However, it would surely be most surprising to know that the very Father of the nation was the only individual who never saluted India’s National Flag! It was perhaps one of his last desires that his most trusted disciple threw to winds. India’s old man with no desires however had the desire to see the national emblem representing the working class of India. A hard worker, Gandhiji identified himself with the working community of the nation whose toil and sweated labour formed the national life and vitality. He had given the masses a symbol of their work, which they were advised to work on while chanting the spell of freedom from the alien rule. The spinning wheel thus became a household instrument in each Indian family whose members were pugnacious freedom fighters. The humming sound of the spinning wheel imparted music to the patriotic slogans. It was this wheel that speeded up India towards freedom. Naturally Gandhiji’s desire to see the National Flag of India designed with spinning wheel was born out of his strong conviction that India and her new emblem should symbolize the toiling masses that formed the main stay of the nation he made free. But to Nehru it appeared a cranky old man’s mad dream. India’s National Flag was to him not an object upon which Gandhi’s ‘toy’ was to be placed! Thus the Asokan wheel, the wheel of law that rolled in with the imperial orders of an ancient monarch became the new national symbol instead of the Gandhian wheel, which was not the symbol of imperial force, but of the soul-force. But nothing could be done to correct an incorrigible dilettante whose readings about the heartbeats of an ancient culture Gandhiji had represented fell wide off the mark. No wonder, when requested to pay his obeisance to the National Flag the Mahatma had his clear reservations. He would not salute it ‘however artistic’ it might be. But whether Gandhiji saluted it was not the concern of the new generation of the Leaders of the Congress who swept him to the dustbin of history and trod a totally anti-Gandhian track to feather their nest. In their squalid fight for power and their lust to cut a figure for them in the modern world Gandhiji turned out to be an archaic object of little relevance. And he remained as irrelevant as dead till he breathed the last though in later time he continued to be politically capitalized by the very people who assassinated his ideology. The issue of Gandhi murder lubricated the Congress’ wheel in its march against the opposing political parties at the hustings. It gave political mileage to the Congress, an organization, which Gandhiji wanted to see dispersed after achieving independence. But that the means which Gandhiji used to reach the end, the national independence, became an end in itself turning out to be the means to mock even his memory with the new ‘Gandhis’ with no Gandhism stealing the Congress show, remains an irony.

",1]
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(The author of this article is a Lecturer in History, Sanathana Dharma College, Alappuzha)

Europe’s demographic crisis

2006-10-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

Europe’s demographic crisis
The three time bombs and civilized depopulation

By Daya Krishna

Europe is facing a population crisis of a very serious nature. Home to the 22 of the 25 lowest fertility rate countries of the world, Europe will lose 30 million people by 2030, in spite of the strong currents of immigration. The biggest decline is in rural Europe. As Italians, Spaniards, Germans and other Europeans produce barely three-fifth of the children needed to maintain a status quo in the population. It is due to a triple time bomb: i) Too few children, ii) Too many old people, and iii) Young people leaving the villages in search of better means of livelihood in the towns and cities.

Demographic Change

Rural Europe is an interesting study of the demographic change. In a Greek village only a dozen old people are left out of a population of 1,000 a few decades back. With the death of these 12 persons everything will be abandoned. Never has the rural birth rate been so slow as it is now. The governments are devising policies for slowing down the rate of demographic decline. In France and the UK, large parts of countryside are reviving due to influence of families from urban middle class. A Swedish investor has brought an entire village and turned it into a complex of hotels for tourists.

But, once the baby boomers people born at the end of World War II in 1945 start dying around 2020, population will start declining at an accelerated rate and there will not be enough people for every town. Experts call it “Civilized Depopulation”.

In Eastern Germany, expenditure of $234 billion in rural areas has not brought any fall in the speed of decline of population. Some districts started one room schools, but in many places even this was difficult to sustain. In Sweden, a university is pushing online learning in order to make students stay in their villages while getting education.

Another pioneer in a small town in Spain has started offering “free airfare and housing” in order to make people settle in a town of about 600. Now this town has 130 families mostly from Argentina and Romania. The town’s only school now has 54 students.

Increasingly worried European governments are crafting policies to nudge people to have more children. They hope to copy France, which first implemented such policies in the 1930s and remains one of the Europe’s few growing countries. But, while these measures might raise the birth rate slightly across much of the ageing continent, there are few potential parents around.

In several areas there is a trend for abandoning productive land. But for thousands of years, Europeans have been used to fields and orchards and pastures around their towns. It is now part of their genes.

The landscape called Kulturlandscaft—a landscape shaped by centuries of human care. Today’s unprecedented decline of population, amplified by the shifting economies of farming, puts in doubt the future of many of those precious heritages.

Many Europeans are reluctant just to let nature do its thing. They cry when the woods close in. But, this is the cycle of nature they cannot reverse.

A strategy to combat terrorism in India

2006-10-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

By Subramanian Swamy

Recognising that targeting of Hindus is being widely perceived, and that Muslims of India are mostly just passive spectators, the foreign patrons of Islamic terrorists led by Pakistan are beginning to engage in terrorist acts that could pit Muslims against Hindus in nation-wide conflagration and possible civil war as in Serbia and Bosnia. The incident in Malegaon has therefore to be seen in that light.

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh after meeting Pakistan President Musharraf in Havana recently made a ridiculous statement that Pakistan is also a “victim of terrorism” like India ! Has the PM’s loyalty to Ms. Sonia Gandhi fogged his cognitive faculties?

It may be true that Musharraf is personally a target of terrorists because of his association with US President Bush. But who can now deny that training camps breeding terrorists exist all over Pakistan? The world knows that ISI, the Pak Intelligence agency is financing any and every anti-Indian terrorist organisation that exists anywhere in the world. Is this the definition of a victim ? This is instead the definition of a terrorism facilitating state. Pakistan is a cesspool for terrorist breeding.

Terrorism is defined as the use of force to overawe the civilian population to do or not do an act against their will and well being. By this definition all the recent acts of violence in India have been terrorists attacks. In 2004, according to the US National Counter-Terrorism Centre publication: A Chronology of International Terrorism, “India suffered more terrorist acts than any other country”. According to India’s Union Home Ministry 2004-05 Annual Report to Parliament, of the 35 states of India, 29 are afflicted by terrorism. There are about 25 terrorist attacks per month in the country. That, Mr. Prime Minister, is the definition of a victim !!

What is significant for us in India is that these attacks have been carried out to target and demoralise the Hindu, to make Hindus yield that which they should not, with the aim of undermining and ultimately to dismantle the Hindu foundation of India.

Even in the latest atrocity in Mumbai, of killing nearly two hundred and maiming almost a thousand in the suburban train bombings, the target may be taken to be Hindus because the bombs were detonated in the first class compartment in which Hindu traders from South Mumbai usually travel to their homes in the suburbs, while Muslims and Christian commuters, mostly employees and labourers, do not.

Recognising that targeting of Hindus is being widely perceived, and that Muslims of India are mostly just passive spectators, the foreign patrons of Islamic terrorists led by Pakistan are beginning to engage in terrorist acts that could pit Muslims against Hindus in nation-wide conflagration and possible civil war as in Serbia and Bosnia. The incident in Malegaon has therefore to be seen in that light.

Hence, the fundamental truth about terrorism in India is that the Hindu is the target and that Muslims of India are being programmed to slide into committing suicide terror attacks against Hindus. It is to undermine the Hindu psyche, and create fear of civil war to make Hindus capitulate that terror attacks are being organised.

And therefore, since the Hindu is the target, Hindus must collectively respond as Hindus against the terrorist and not feel individually isolated or worse, be complacent because he or she is not personally affected. Nor should the Hindu rationalise his being passive as in the interest of communal harmony. The pious bleating of Ms. Sonia Gandhi that ‘the people must remain calm’ is a prescription for the collapse of India’s Hindu foundation.

Instead, we need a mindset that if a Hindu dies merely because he or she was a Hindu, then a bit of every Hindu also dies. This is an essential mental attitude, a necessary part of a virat Hindu[ for fuller discussion of the concept of virat Hindu, see my Hindus Under Siege: The Way Out; Haranand, 2006].

Therefore we have to have a collective mindset as Hindus to stand against the terrorist. In this response, Muslims and Christians of India can join us if they genuinely feel for the Hindu. They can begin to do that if they acknowledge with pride that though they may be Muslims or Christians, their ancestors are Hindus. That is, they affirm their Hindustani identity. That is India is their matrubhoomi.

The Islamic terrorist outfits, e.g., the SIMI being the latest, have already resolved that India instead is Darul Harab, and they are committed to make it Darul Islam. That makes them free of any moral compunction whatsoever in killing or humiliating Hindus. Therefore, if a Muslim of India does not believe that our nation is Darul Harab, then he must declare with pride that his ancestors are Hindus.

Do not Muslims in India already so acknowledge their obvious Hindu past? My last one year study of the communal problem leads me to believe that at the individual level, they do. But something goes wrong with their outlook at the collective level. Recently, in a tour of Tamil Nadu I had visited two areas—one, Thondi in Ramanathapuram district and another Rasathipuram in Vellore district, where Muslims are in a majority and have captured the muncipality through the ballot box. In these two areas the Hindu minority is facing deprivation because the Muslim-led muncipality has shut off water supply, stopped civic works and collection of garbage. The word is out there that unless the Hindus convert to Islam, the deprivation will not end. In case the reader of this column thinks that there is an isolated case, let him know that same situation prevail in pockets of Meerut, Mau, Assam, Kerala, not to mention the Kashmir valley and the plight of Kashmiri Pundits.

There is a mentality problem with Muslims. Their behavioral pattern differs when in majority and in minority. Even if they are in a minority in an all India context, in a micro setting, if Muslims are in a majority, they behave differently even while as a minority in the macro all India context. The paradox in India is that Hindus are, as of now, 83 per cent of the population, i.e., in the macro context. And yet Darul Islam has arrived in pockets of India. Islamic India exists in pockets today !

Hence, to begin with, any policy to combat terrorism requires that each and every Hindu become committed to being virat Hindu, or otherwise be regarded a ‘tankhiya’ by Hindu society. By this it is meant that it is not enough commitment if one claims to be Hindu, or goes to temples, does puja, and celebrates festivals. That is not sufficient to be a committed or virat Hindu. To be a virat Hindu one must have a Hindu mindset.

That mindset requires that Hindus never capitulate to, and never concede any demand of the terrorists. Terrorists are encouraged by appeasement but never satisfied by it. Therefore, no matter how many Hindus have to die for it, the basic policy has to be: never yield to any demand of the terrorists. That necessary resolve has not been shown in our recent history. Instead ever since we conceded Pakistan in 1947 under duress, we have been mostly yielding time and time again.

Such a mindset also requires that whatever and however small the terrorist incident, the Hindustan must retaliate-not by measured and “sober” responses but by massive retaliation. For example, when Ayodhya Temple was sought to be attacked, or the Institute of Science in Bangalore was targeted, these were not big terrorist incidents but we should have massively retaliated. If we have clinching proof of terrorist training camps in PoK and Bangladesh, we should bomb them by despatching our airforce. There is some evidence that the US agency, the FBI, has presented to a district court in California satellite photos that do establish that terror training camps exist in near Balakot in northeast Pakistan. Indian government claims proof which has not been made public that there are 57 terrorist training camps in Pakistani—held territory and 36 such camps in Bangladesh.

If instead of being supportive, Pakistan and Bangladesh protest or retaliate if India bombs these camps, then it means that they are sponsors and not unwilling hosts to free lancing terrorists. Hence we should be ready for war. We could retaliate then by fulfilling our pre-1947 commitment to NWFP, and openly help the Baluchis and Sindhis to meet their legitimate aspirations. We could demand territory from Bangladesh for all those illegal Bangladeshis settled in India. After all, Partition was for those Muslims who could not bear to live with Hindus. Hence, the territory of Bangladesh should be reduced in proportion to millions of Bangladesis that have come to India and the Hindus pushed out since 1947. Strategically, northern one-third of Bangladesh cutting across from Khulna to Sylhet could then be annexed if Bangladesh goes to war with us.

Otherwise what is the alternative? Expect that our “sober” responses will be rewarded by our neighbours and their patrons ? We will be back to 1100 AD, by our suicidal credulity. We should not be ghouls for punishment from terrorists and their patrons. This is Kaliyug, and hence there is no room for sattvic responses to evil people. Hindu religion has a concept of apat dharma for such dire circumstances, and we should invoke it.

What then should be our measured retaliatory response to terrorist attacks, viz., our strategy to deter terrorists? It is argued by secular ‘liberals’ that no retaliation against terrorists can be effective because of the nature and character of terrorists.

What motivates the Islamic terrorists in India ? Many are advising us Hindus to deal with the root “cause” of terrorism rather than concentrating on eradicating terrorists by retaliation. And pray what is the root “cause”?

According bleeding heart liberals, terrorists are born or bred because of illiteracy, poverty, oppression, and discrimination. They argue that instead of eliminating them, the root cause of these four disabilities in society should be removed. Only then terrorism will disappear. Moreover they argue, terrorists cannot be deterred by force since they are irrational, willing to commit suicide, and have no ‘return address’. Before replying to this, let us understand that I have serious doubts about the integrity of these liberals, or more appropriately, these promiscuous intellectuals. They seek to deaden the emotive power of the individual and render him passive. A nation cannot survive for long with such a capitulationist mentality.

That is, more than the overt threat of the terrorists in India, the more sinister corrosion of our nation state occurs from within. This corrosion provides ‘a force multiplier’ to the terrorists. That is, the terrorists are able to leverage the influence of highly placed individuals in the government, media and academia, posing as liberals or human rights activists, who have been compromised by the terrorists and blackmailed on sex, drug money and illegitimate favours, into collaborating with them.

It is rubbish to say that terrorists who master-mind the attacks are poor. Osama Bin laden for example is a billionaire. Islamic terrorists are patronised by those states that have grown rich from oil revenues. In Britain, the terrorists arrested so far for the bombings are all well to do persons. Nor are terrorists uneducated. Most of terrorist leaders are doctors , chartered accountants, and teachers. Islamic terrorists certainly do not face discrimination and oppression in their own countries. In fact in these countries it is the non-Islamic religious minority which is discriminated and oppressed. In Kashmir valley, where Muslims are in majority, not only Article 370 of the Constitution provides privileges to the majority but it is the minority Hindus who have been slaughtered, or raped, and dispossessed. They have become refuges in squalid conditions in their own country. The gang of 9 persons which hijacked four planes on September 11, 2001 and flew them into the World Trade Towers in New York and other targets were certainly not discriminated or oppressed in the United States. Hence it utter rubbish to say that terror is the outcome of the poverty of terrorists.

It is also a ridiculous idea that terrorists cannot be deterred because they are irrational, willing to die, and have no ‘return address’. Terrorist master-minds have political goals and a method in their madness. An effective strategy to deter terrorism is therefore to defeat those political goals and to rubbish them by counter-terrorist action. How is that strategy to be structured ? In a brilliant research paper published by Robert Trager and Dessislava Zagorcheva this year [“Deterring Terrorism” International Security, vol. 30, No.3, Winter 2005/06, pp. 87-123] has provided the general principles to structure such a strategy.

Unusual CPM lobbying

2006-10-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

It is unprecedented in the country’s democratic history that a political party interferes with the foreign policy and foreign direct investment issues. The Congress, the BJP or smaller regional formations have never pressurised their governments to support a particular country or a firm as blatantly as the CPM is doing today. And with every passing day this pressure is becoming increasingly audacious.

Take for instance the CPM stand on Chinese investments in 13 Indian ports. The other day party general secretary Prakash Karat asked the government to spell out the security considerations for blacklisting the Chinese companies wanting to invest in Indian ports. The Cabinet Committee on Security had earlier vetoed Chinese investments and management of Indian ports. The Chinese had plans to invest Rs 61,000 crore in 13 Indian ports. Security agencies rejected the Chinese initiative, pointing out that the Chinese Harbour Engineering Company was building a strategic port, Gwadar Deep Sea Port in Pakistan and it could pose a serious threat to India’s maritime security. The Intelligence Bureau, RAW and the defence ministry are unanimous that Chinese entry in the Indian Ocean is a serious national security threat.

The CPM’s latest intervention came as a sequel to the Chinese envoy in India Sun Yuxi’s allegation of unequal treatment for Chinese businessmen. The CPM leader echoing the Chinese envoy says, “What are these security considerations? We would like to know why this old mind-set. George Fernandes had called China enemy number one. I am sure the Congress does not think on these lines. Then why are Chinese companies being blacklisted?”

Since when has your party become a lobbying firm for foreign firms on FDI, comrade? Are you getting a cut for facilitating such clearances? In the hey-day of the Indo-Soviet friendship, it used to be the practice that for all transactions with that country the Indian communists got a dividend. Normally, responsible political parties keep a safe distance from such deals.

The Communist Party in India split on the question of a section’s support to China during the 1962 war with India and the CPM is made up of that faction. But the party all these years kept its Chinese patriotism behind a clever façade. But the power without responsibility status, the party has come to enjoy, has made it very brazen.

In a characteristic disdain for national sentiment, in another instance, the CPM central leadership asked the President of India to pardon terrorist Mohammad Afzal. They want the President to stop the death sentence from being carried out. The party’s J&K unit had earlier made a similar demand. A few months ago the party had demanded the release of the Coimbatore blast accused Madani after entering into a pact with the fanatic Muslim outfit PDP.

Similarly, the party wanted the centre to bend before Pervez Musharraf at Havana, and was hassling the Prime Minister for this. The CPM’s admiration for the Venezuelan leader is such that it wants India to canvass for that country’s Security Council seat. What does all this add up to? Has the CPM lost all sense of propriety? Or is it determined to cross all limits to project itself as the umbrella party of terrorists, ruffians, commission agents and India-bashers?

When it comes to China, CPM does not mind brokering deals. When it comes to conceding the country’s geographic boundaries, the CPM has no problems, if the beneficiaries are China, Pakistan or Bangladesh. Even a Supreme Court verdict can be set aside, if it will save the life of a Muslim terrorist, who attacked Indian Parliament, so goes the CPM argument. The party will plead for a UN Security Council membership for Hugo Chavez—after all he is good at abusing President Bush—even if that will undermine India’s chance for a seat in the UNSC. The party has no qualms in cohabiting with Hajis and namazis, bartering support for votes with SIMI, Jamaat-e-Islami or Madani’s PDP. But it will punish its minister for visiting a temple. It would blame Hindus for the spread of Islamic terrorism, and will even condemn the police for trying to search in Muslim localities, for the criminals of serial blasts in different parts of the country. It will promote special economic zones (SEZs) in West Bengal, but protest them in Congress and BJP-ruled states. Political hypocrisy cannot be more immodest. Treason has never been so couched in dialectical secular mask. Ideological double-speak never had such currency as now under the UPA regime.

Salva Judum experiment in Chhattisgarh

2006-09-10T05:13:00.000-07:00

Salva Judum experiment in Chhattisgarh
Political offensive and ideological architecture
By Dr Parakala Prabhakar

The gruesome massacre of tribals in Chattisgarh is a typical Maoist retaliation. Anybody who is familiar with their tactics will not be surprised at the barbarity of the attack. The State as well as those who are out to destroy it have trained their guns against each other in the thick Bastar forests. The irony, however, is that on both the sides the arms are mounted on the shoulders of the simple and the credulous tribal.

The police term the tribal outfit Salva Judum as the people’s response to the left-wing extremist group. Military training and material is provided by the police to the tribal youth to fight the Maoists. The number of tribals fighting on the side of Maoists is put at about a thousand under the leadership of the wily plainsmen mostly from the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.

The newly formed small State is now a testing ground both for the police as well as the extremists. Happenings in these jungles will have long term implications for both the combatants in the larger theatre. On the one hand the police will know whether it is politically and militarily sustainable to wage a proxy war against the Maoists by arming and training the local population. The extremists, on the other hand, will discover whether their strategy to bleed the Indian State white from a thousand cuts is practicable in the face of a determined and armed opposition from the local people.

For both the combatants, this is a new situation. The extremists so far could take the sympathy of the local populations for granted. Whether in tribal areas or in plains, in their fight against the State, the Maoists hitherto did not have to work hard to earn the goodwill of the locals. In fact, it was always the police that had to operate under the unsympathetic and at times hostile gaze of the local people. Even the few informants they had were available only for monetary rewards. From that dismal situation to a stage where large groups are motivated to bear arms is, indeed, a big leap for the forces of the State.

But is this situation sustainable there? And is it replicable elsewhere? These are the questions before the State. And can the locals who took arms against the Maoists be terrorised into submission by such inhuman acts is the question before the extremists. The nature and form of the future engagements between the State and its challenger will depend upon the outcome of their Chattisgarh experiment.

The Maoists are very clear about their objectives and the means they will adopt to achieve them. They have never minced words. Even before, during, and after the aborted peace talks with the AP government, they made it clear that the ceasefire was only a tactical move and a temporary phase in their march to seize power. They never swore by any values. Nor have they made themselves accountable to any norms in so far as their means are concerned. They conceded no room to the Constitution nor agreed to give up arms.

But what about our Establishment? Examine the kind of reaction whenever there is mindless bloodletting by the Maoists, like the one in Erraboru. Undoubtedly, there is an all round condemnation. But it is laced with an unstated yet noticeable endorsement of their self-proclaimed objectives. The Establishment voices ask, ‘Do these acts serve the poor’? As though it is alright if they do! Does the Establishment, in effect, concede that while the challenger’s ends are lofty, it is only his methods that are objectionable?

One of our distinguished leaders in the past said that the naxals were patriots; others declared that their agenda was the same as the Maoists’. Some others said that Maoists were misguided only about the means but their objectives were splendid. If these leaders really meant what they said, they are first rate subversives of their own creed. And if they didn’t, it is utter hypocrisy. It shows that they lack courage of conviction to stand up and be counted. Why is it that they can’t say that not only the extremists’ means but their ends too are despicable; and that the ends they espouse are against the grain of the Constitution and democratic values on which our civic life stands?

It is not merely a question of unacceptability of Maoist’s means. It is a fundamental clash between divergent world views and antithetical belief systems. Wherever the cohorts of our Maoists seized power, they turned those countries to open air prisons and pushed the populations to death, starvation, squalor and utter poverty. Doesn’t our Establishment remember the Soviet gulags, Siberian exiles, Stalinists murders, Cambodian Pol Pot, the Hungarian Caucescaeu, the Vietnamese Khmer Rouge, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution? The Establishment need not espouse its own values with guilt conscience and shame; and with a low ideological self-esteem. It doesn’t have to be unsure about its own moral superiority. Even the most fall guy of our Establishment is perhaps morally far superior to the ones who presided over those brutal dispensations.

Public discourse should, therefore, condemn not only the means of the Maoists. It should unsparingly interrogate their ends. Not only their means be fought politically, but the poison hidden in ends of their project should also be exposed. Without proper ideological architecture that supports this political offensive, any number of socio-economic measures will not win this war for the establishment. It is time that the Clauswitzian dictum that ‘war is a continuation of politics by other means’ is reversed. It is politics that should now be a continuation of war by other means. Only then can the cancer of extremism be excised from our body politic.

Was the Kaaba Originally a Hindu Temple? By P.N. Oak

2006-08-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.sikhpal.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1012

Was the Kaaba Originally a Hindu Temple? By P.N. Oak (Historian)
Glancing through some research material recently, I was pleasantly surprised to come across a reference to a king Vikramaditya inscription found in the Kaaba in Mecca proving beyond doubt that the Arabian Peninsula formed a part of his Indian Empire.The text of the crucial Vikramaditya inscription, found inscribed on a gold dish hung inside the Kaaba shrine in Mecca, is found recorded on page 315 of a volume known as ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ treasured in the Makhtab-e-Sultania library in Istanbul, Turkey. Rendered in free English the inscription says:
"Fortunate are those who were born (and lived) during king Vikram’s reign. He was a noble, generous dutiful ruler, devoted to the welfare of his subjects. But at that time we Arabs, oblivious of God, were lost in sensual pleasures. Plotting and torture were rampant. The darkness of ignorance had enveloped our country. Like the lamb struggling for her life in the cruel paws of a wolf we Arabs were caught up in ignorance. The entire country was enveloped in a darkness so intense as on a new moon night. But the present dawn and pleasant sunshine of education is the result of the favour of the noble king Vikramaditya whose benevolent supervision did not lose sight of us- foreigners as we were. He spread his sacred religion amongst us and sent scholars whose brilliance shone like that of the sun from his country to ours. These scholars and preceptors through whose benevolence we were once again made cognisant of the presence of God, introduced to His sacred existence and put on the road of Truth, had come to our country to preach their religion and impart education at king Vikramaditya’s behest."
For those who would like to read the Arabic wording I reproduce it hereunder in Roman script:
"Itrashaphai Santu Ibikramatul Phahalameen Karimun Yartapheeha Wayosassaru Bihillahaya Samaini Ela Motakabberen Sihillaha Yuhee Quid min howa Yapakhara phajjal asari nahone osirom bayjayhalem. Yundan blabin Kajan blnaya khtoryaha sadunya kanateph netephi bejehalin Atadari bilamasa- rateen phakef tasabuhu kaunnieja majekaralhada walador. As hmiman burukankad toluho watastaru hihila Yakajibaymana balay kulk amarena phaneya jaunabilamary Bikramatum". (Page 315 Sayar-ul-okul). [Note: The title ‘Saya-ul-okul’ signifies memorable words.]
A careful analysis of the above inscription enables us to draw the following conclusions:
That the ancient Indian empires may have extended up to the eastern boundaries of Arabia until Vikramaditya and that it was he who for the first time conquered Arabia. Because the inscription says that king Vikram who dispelled the darkness of ignorance from Arabia.
1. That, whatever their earlier faith, King Vikrama’s preachers had succeeded in spreading the Vedic (based on the Vedas, the Hindu sacred scriptures)) way of life in Arabia.
2. That the knowledge of Indian arts and sciences was imparted by Indians to the Arabs directly by founding schools, academies and cultural centres. The belief, therefore, that visiting Arabs conveyed that knowledge to their own lands through their own indefatigable efforts and scholarship is unfounded.
An ancillary conclusion could be that the so-called Kutub Minar (in Delhi, India) could well be king Vikramadiya’s tower commemorating his conquest of Arabia. This conclusion is strengthened by two pointers. Firstly, the inscription on the iron pillar near the so-called Kutub Minar refers to the marriage of the victorious king Vikramaditya to the princess of Balhika. This Balhika is none other than the Balkh region in West Asia. It could be that Arabia was wrestled by king Vikramaditya from the ruler of Balkh who concluded a treaty by giving his daughter in marriage to the victor. Secondly, the township adjoining the so called Kutub Minar is named Mehrauli after Mihira who was the renowned astronomer-mathematician of king Vikram’s court. Mehrauli is the corrupt form of Sanskrit ‘Mihira-Awali’ signifying a row of houses raised for Mihira and his helpers and assistants working on astronomical observations made from the tower.Having seen the far reaching and history shaking implications of the Arabic inscription concerning king Vikrama, we shall now piece together the story of its find. How it came to be recorded and hung in the Kaaba in Mecca. What are the other proofs reinforcing the belief that Arabs were once followers of the Indian Vedic way of life and that tranquillity and education were ushered into Arabia by king Vikramaditya’s scholars, educationists from an uneasy period of "ignorance and turmoil" mentioned in the inscription.
In Istanbul, Turkey, there is a famous library called Makhatab-e-Sultania, which is reputed to have the largest collection of ancient West Asian literature. In the Arabic section of that library is an anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. That anthology was compiled from an earlier work in A.D. 1742 under the orders of the Turkish ruler Sultan Salim.
The pages of that volume are of Hareer – a kind of silk used for writing on. Each page has a decorative gilded border. That anthology is known as Sayar-ul-Okul. It is divided into three parts. The first part contains biographic details and the poetic compositions of pre-Islamic Arabian poets. The second part embodies accounts and verses of poets of the period beginning just after prophet Mohammad’s times, up to the end of the Banee-Um-Mayya dynasty. The third part deals with later poets up to the end of Khalif Harun-al-Rashid’s times.
Abu Amir Asamai, an Arabian bard who was the poet Laureate of Harun-al-Rashid’s court, has compiled and edited the anthology.
The first modern edition of ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ was printed and published in Berlin in 1864. A subsequent edition is the one published in Beirut in 1932.
The collection is regarded as the most important and authoritative anthology of ancient Arabic poetry. It throws considerable light on the social life, customs, manners and entertainment modes of ancient Arabia. The book also contains an elaborate description of the ancient shrine of Mecca, the town and the annual fair known as OKAJ which used to be held every year around the Kaaba temple in Mecca. This should convince readers that the annual haj of the Muslims to the Kaaba is of earlier pre-Islamic congregation.
But the OKAJ fair was far from a carnival. It provided a forum for the elite and the learned to discuss the social, religious, political, literary and other aspects of the Vedic culture then pervading Arabia. ‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ asserts that the conclusion reached at those discussions were widely respected throughout Arabia. Mecca, therefore, followed the Varanasi tradition (of India) of providing a venue for important discussions among the learned while the masses congregated there for spiritual bliss. The principal shrines at both Varanasi in India and at Mecca in Arvasthan (Arabia) were Siva temples. Even to this day ancient Mahadev (Siva) emblems can be seen. It is the Shankara (Siva) stone that Muslim pilgrims reverently touch and kiss in the Kaaba.
Arabic tradition has lost trace of the founding of the Kaaba temple. The discovery of the Vikramaditya inscription affords a clue. King Vikramaditya is known for his great devotion to Lord Mahadev (Siva). At Ujjain (India), the capital of Vikramaditya, exists the famous shrine of Mahankal, i.e., of Lord Shankara (Siva) associated with Vikramaditya. Since according to the Vikramaditya inscription he spread the Vedic religion, who else but he could have founded the Kaaba temple in Mecca?
A few miles away from Mecca is a big signboard which bars the entry of any non-Muslim into the area. This is a reminder of the days when the Kaaba was stormed and captured solely for the newly established faith of Islam. The object in barring entry of non-Muslims was obviously to prevent its recapture.
As the pilgrim proceeds towards Mecca he is asked to shave his head and beard and to don special sacred attire that consists of two seamless sheets of white cloth. One is to be worn round the waist and the other over the shoulders. Both these rites are remnants of the old Vedic practice of entering Hindu temples clean- and with holy seamless white sheets.
The main shrine in Mecca, which houses the Siva emblem, is known as the Kaaba. It is clothed in a black shroud. That custom also originates from the days when it was thought necessary to discourage its recapture by camouflaging it.
According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Kaaba has 360 images. Traditional accounts mention that one of the deities among the 360 destroyed when the place was stormed, was that of Saturn; another was of the Moon and yet another was one called Allah. That shows that in the Kaaba the Arabs worshipped the nine planets in pre-Islamic days. In India the practice of ‘Navagraha’ puja, that is worship of the nine planets, is still in vogue. Two of these nine are Saturn and Moon.
In India the crescent moon is always painted across the forehead of the Siva symbol. Since that symbol was associated with the Siva emblem in Kaaba it came to be grafted on the flag of Islam.
Another Hindu tradition associated with the Kaaba is that of the sacred stream Ganga (sacred waters of the Ganges river). According to the Hindu tradition Ganga is also inseparable from the Shiva emblem as the crescent moon. Wherever there is a Siva emblem, Ganga must co-exist. True to that association a sacred fount exists near the Kaaba. Its water is held sacred because it has been traditionally regarded as Ganga since pre-Islamic times (Zam-Zam water).
[Note: Even today, Muslim pilgrims who go to the Kaaba for Haj regard this Zam-Zam water with reverence and take some bottled water with them as sacred water.]
Muslim pilgrims visiting the Kaaba temple go around it seven times. In no other mosque does the circumambulation prevail. Hindus invariably circumambulate around their deities. This is yet another proof that the Kaaba shrine is a pre-Islamic Indian Shiva temple where the Hindu practice of circumambulation is still meticulously observed.
The practice of taking seven steps- known as Saptapadi in Sanskrit- is associated with Hindu marriage ceremony and fire worship. The culminating rite in a Hindu marriage enjoins upon the bride and groom to go round the sacred fire four times (but misunderstood by many as seven times). Since "Makha" means fire, the seven circumambulations also prove that Mecca was the seat of Indian fire-worship in the West Asia.
It might come as a stunning revelation to many that the word ‘ALLAH’ itself is Sanskrit. In Sanskrit language Allah, Akka and Amba are synonyms. They signify a goddess or mother. The term ‘ALLAH’ forms part of Sanskrit chants invoking goddess Durga, also known as Bhavani, Chandi and Mahishasurmardini. The Islamic word for God is., therefore, not an innovation but the ancient Sanskrit appellation retained and continued by Islam. Allah means mother or goddess and mother goddess.
One Koranic verse is an exact translation of a stanza in the Yajurveda. This was pointed out by the great research scholar Pandit Satavlekar of Pardi in one of his articles.
[Note: Another scholar points out that the following teaching from the Koran is exactly similar to the teaching of the Kena Upanishad (1.7).
The Koran:"Sight perceives Him not. But He perceives men's sights; for He is the knower of secrets , the Aware."
Kena Upanishad:"That which cannot be seen by the eye but through which the eye itself sees, know That to be Brahman (God) and not what people worship here (in the manifested world)."
A simplified meaning of both the above verses reads:
God is one and that He is beyond man's sensory experience.]
The identity of Unani and Ayurvedic systems shows that Unani is just the Arabic term for the Ayurvedic system of healing taught to them and administered in Arabia when Arabia formed part of the Indian empire.It will now be easy to comprehend the various Hindu customs still prevailing in West Asian countries even after the existence of Islam during the last 1300 years. Let us review some Hindu traditions which exist as the core of Islamic practice.
The Hindus have a pantheon of 33 gods. People in Asia Minor too worshipped 33 gods before the spread of Islam. The lunar calendar was introduced in West Asia during the Indian rule. The Muslim month ‘Safar’ signifying the ‘extra’ month (Adhik Maas) in the Hindu calendar. The Muslim month Rabi is the corrupt form of Ravi meaning the sun because Sanskrit ‘V’ changes into Prakrit ‘B’ (Prakrit being the popular version of Sanskrit language). The Muslim sanctity for Gyrahwi Sharif is nothing but the Hindu Ekadashi (Gyrah = elevan or Gyaarah). Both are identical in meaning.The Islamic practice of Bakari Eed derives from the Go-Medh and Ashva-Medh Yagnas or sacrifices of Vedic times. Eed in Sanskrit means worship. The Islamic word Eed for festive days, signifying days of worship, is therefore a pure Sanskrit word. The word MESH in the Hindu zodiac signifies a lamb. Since in ancient times the year used to begin with the entry of the sun in Aries, the occasion was celebrated with mutton feasting. That is the origin of the Bakari Eed festival.
[Note: The word Bakari is an Indian language word for a goat.]
Since Eed means worship and Griha means ‘house’, the Islamic word Idgah signifies a ‘House of worship’ which is the exact Sanskrit connotation of the term. Similarly the word ‘Namaz’ derives from two Sanskrit roots ‘Nama’ and ‘Yajna’ (NAMa yAJna) meaning bowing and worshipping.Vedic descriptions about the moon, the different stellar constellations and the creation of the universe have been incorporated from the Vedas in Koran part 1 chapter 2, stanza 113, 114, 115, and 158, 189, chapter 9, stanza 37 and chapter 10, stanzas 4 to 7.
Recital of the Namaz five times a day owes its origin to the Vedic injunction of Panchmahayagna (five daily worship- Panch-Maha-Yagna) which is part of the daily Vedic ritual prescribed for all individuals.Muslims are enjoined cleanliness of five parts of the body before commencing prayers. This derives from the Vedic injuction ‘Shareer Shydhyartham Panchanga Nyasah’.Four months of the year are regarded as very sacred in Islamic custom. The devout are enjoined to abstain from plunder and other evil deeds during that period. This originates in the Chaturmasa i.e., the four-month period of special vows and austerities in Hindu tradition. Shabibarat is the corrupt form of Shiva Vrat and Shiva Ratra. Since the Kaaba has been an important centre of Shiva (Siva) worship from times immemorial, the Shivaratri festival used to be celebrated there with great gusto. It is that festival which is signified by the Islamic word Shabibarat.Encyclopaedias tell us that there are inscriptions on the side of the Kaaba walls. What they are, no body has been allowed to study, according to the correspondence I had with an American scholar of Arabic. But according to hearsay at least some of those inscriptions are in Sanskrit, and some of them are stanzas from the Bhagavad Gita.
According to extant Islamic records, Indian merchants had settled in Arabia, particularly in Yemen, and their life and manners deeply influenced those who came in touch with them. At Ubla there was a large number of Indian settlements. This shows that Indians were in Arabia and Yemen in sufficient strength and commanding position to be able to influence the local people. This could not be possible unless they belonged to the ruling class.It is mentioned in the Abadis i.e., the authentic traditions of Prophet Mohammad compiled by Imam Bukhari that the Indian tribe of Jats had settled in Arabia before Prophet Mohammad’s times. Once when Hazrat Ayesha, wife of the Prophet, was taken ill, her nephew sent for a Jat physician for her treatment. This proves that Indians enjoyed a high and esteemed status in Arabia. Such a status could not be theirs unless they were the rulers. Bukhari also tells us that an Indian Raja (king) sent a jar of ginger pickles to the Prophet. This shows that the Indian Jat Raja ruled an adjacent area so as to be in a position to send such an insignificant present as ginger pickles. The Prophet is said to have so highly relished it as to have told his colleagues also to partake of it. These references show that even during Prophet Mohammad’s times Indians retained their influential role in Arabia, which was a dwindling legacy from Vikramaditya’s times.
The Islamic term ‘Eed-ul-Fitr’ derives from the ‘Eed of Piters’ that is worship of forefathers in Sanskrit tradition. In India, Hindus commemorate their ancestors during the Pitr-Paksha that is the fortnight reserved for their remembrance. The very same is the significance of ‘Eed-ul-Fitr’ (worship of forefathers).The Islamic practice of observing the moon rise before deciding on celebrating the occasion derives from the Hindu custom of breaking fast on Sankranti and Vinayaki Chaturthi only after sighting the moon.Barah Vafat, the Muslim festival for commemorating those dead in battle or by weapons, derives from a similar Sanskrit tradition because in Sanskrit ‘Phiphaut’ is ‘death’. Hindus observe Chayal Chaturdashi in memory of those who have died in battle.
The word Arabia is itself the abbreviation of a Sanskrit word. The original word is ‘Arabasthan’. Since Prakrit ‘B’ is Sanskrit ‘V’ the original Sanskrit name of the land is ‘Arvasthan’. ‘Arva’ in Sanskrit means a horse. Arvasthan signifies a land of horses., and as well all know, Arabia is famous for its horses.
This discovery changes the entire complexion of the history of ancient India. Firstly we may have to revise our concepts about the king who had the largest empire in history. It could be that the expanse of king Vikramaditya’s empire was greater than that of all others. Secondly, the idea that the Indian empire spread only to the east and not in the west beyond say, Afghanisthan may have to be abandoned. Thirdly the effeminate and pathetic belief that India, unlike any other country in the world could by some age spread her benign and beatific cultural influence, language, customs, manners and education over distant lands without militarily conquering them is baseless. India did conquer all those countries physically wherever traces of its culture and language are still extant and the region extended from Bali island in the south Pacific to the Baltic in Northern Europe and from Korea to Kaaba. The only difference was that while Indian rulers identified themselves with the local population and established welfare states, Moghuls and others who ruled conquered lands perpetuated untold atrocities over the vanquished.
‘Sayar-ul-Okul’ tells us that a pan-Arabic poetic symposium used to be held in Mecca at the annual Okaj fair in pre-Islamic times. All leading poets used to participate in it.
Poems considered best were awarded prizes. The best-engraved on gold plate were hung inside the temple. Others etched on camel or goatskin were hung outside. Thus for thousands of years the Kaaba was the treasure house of the best Arabian poetic thought inspired by the Indian Vedic tradition.
That tradition being of immemorial antiquity many poetic compositions were engraved and hung inside and outside on the walls of the Kaaba. But most of the poems got lost and destroyed during the storming of the Kaaba by Prophet Mohammad’s troops. The Prophet’s court poet, Hassan-bin-Sawik, who was among the invaders, captured some of the treasured poems and dumped the gold plate on which they were inscribed in his own home. Sawik’s grandson, hoping to earn a reward carried those gold plates to Khalif’s court where he met the well-known Arab scholar Abu Amir Asamai. The latter received from the bearer five gold plates and 16 leather sheets with the prize-winning poems engraved on them. The bearer was sent away happy bestowed with a good reward.On the five gold plates were inscribed verses by ancient Arab poets like Labi Baynay, Akhatab-bin-Turfa and Jarrham Bintoi. That discovery made Harun-al-Rashid order Abu Amir to compile a collection of all earlier compositions. One of the compositions in the collection is a tribute in verse paid by Jarrham Bintoi, a renowned Arab poet, to king Vikramaditya. Bintoi who lived 165 years before Prophet Mohammad had received the highest award for the best poetic compositions for three years in succession in the pan-Arabic symposiums held in Mecca every year. All those three poems of Bintoi adjudged best were hung inside the Kaaba temple, inscribed on gold plates. One of these constituted an unreserved tribute to King Vikramaditya for his paternal and filial rule over Arabia. That has already been quoted above.
Pre-Islamic Arabian poet Bintoi’s tribute to king Vikramaditya is a decisive evidence that it was king Vikramaditya who first conquered the Arabian Peninsula and made it a part of the Indian Empire. This explains why starting from India towards the west we have all Sanskrit names like Afghanisthan (now Afghanistan), Baluchisthan, Kurdisthan, Tajikiathan, Uzbekisthan, Iran, Sivisthan, Iraq, Arvasthan, Turkesthan (Turkmenisthan) etc.
Historians have blundered in not giving due weight to the evidence provided by Sanskrit names pervading over the entire west Asian region. Let us take a contemporary instance. Why did a part of India get named Nagaland even after the end of British rule over India? After all historical traces are wiped out of human memory, will a future age historian be wrong if he concludes from the name Nagaland that the British or some English speaking power must have ruled over India? Why is Portuguese spoken in Goa (part of India), and French in Pondichery (part of India), and both French and English in Canada? Is it not because those people ruled over the territories where their languages are spoken? Can we not then justly conclude that wherever traces of Sanskrit names and traditions exist Indians once held sway? It is unfortunate that this important piece of decisive evidence has been ignored all these centuries.
Another question which should have presented itself to historians for consideration is how could it be that Indian empires could extend in the east as far as Korea and Japan, while not being able to make headway beyond Afghanisthan? In fact land campaigns are much easier to conduct than by sea. It was the Indians who ruled the entire West Asian region from Karachi to Hedjaz and who gave Sanskrit names to those lands and the towns therein, introduce their pantheon of the fire-worship, imparted education and established law and order.
It may be that Arabia itself was not part of the Indian empire until king Vikrama , since Bintoi says that it was king Vikrama who for the first time brought about a radical change in the social, cultural and political life of Arabia. It may be that the whole of West Asia except Arabia was under Indian rule before Vikrama. The latter added Arabia too to the Indian Empire. Or as a remote possibility it could be that king Vikramaditya himself conducted a series of brilliant campaigns annexing to his empire the vast region between Afghanisthan and Hedjaz.
Incidentally this also explains why king Vikramaditya is so famous in history. Apart from the nobility and truthfulness of heart and his impartial filial affection for all his subjects, whether Indian or Arab, as testified by Bintoi, king Vikramaditya has been permanently enshrined in the pages of history because he was the world’s greatest ruler having the largest empire. It should be remembered that only a monarch with a vast empire gets famous in world history. Vikram Samvat (calendar still widely in use in India today) which he initiated over 2000 years ago may well mark his victory over Arabia, and the so called Kutub Minar (Kutub Tower in Delhi), a pillar commemorating that victory and the consequential marriage with the Vaihika (Balkh) princess as testified by the nearby iron pillar inscription.
A great many puzzles of ancient world history get automatically solved by a proper understanding of these great conquests of king Vikramaditya. As recorded by the Arab poet Bintoi, Indian scholars, preachers and social workers spread the fire-worship ceremony, preached the Vedic way of life, manned schools, set up Ayurvedic (healing) centres, trained the local people in irrigation and agriculture and established in those regions a democratic, orderly, peaceful, enlightened and religious way of life. That was of course, a Vedic Hindu way of life.
It is from such ancient times that Indian Kshtriya royal families, like the Pahalvis and Barmaks, have held sway over Iran and Iraq. It is those conquests, which made the Parsees Agnihotris i.e., fire-worshippers. It is therefore that we find the Kurds of Kurdisthan speaking a Sanskritised dialect, fire temples existing thousands of miles away from India, and scores of sites of ancient Indian cultural centres like Navbahar in West Asia and the numerous viharas in Soviet Russia spread throughout the world. Ever since so many viharas are often dug up in Soviet Russia, ancient Indian sculptures are also found in excavations in Central Asia. The same goes for West Asia.
[Note: Ancient Indian sculptures include metal statues of the Hindu deity Ganesh (the elephant headed god); the most recent find being in Kuwait].
Unfortunately these chapters of world history have been almost obliterated from public memory. They need to be carefully deciphered and rewritten. When these chapters are rewritten they might change the entire concept and orientation of ancient history.
In view of the overwhelming evidence led above, historians, scholars, students of history and lay men alike should take note that they had better revise their text books of ancient world history. The existence of Hindu customs, shrines, Sanskrit names of whole regions, countries and towns and the Vikramaditya inscriptions reproduced at the beginning are a thumping proof that Indian Kshatriyas once ruled over the vast region from Bali to Baltic and Korea to Kaaba in Mecca, Arabia at the very least.

Terrorism is a battle within the Muslim community

2006-08-03T00:07:00.000-07:00

Till yesterday the debate was why and how Indian Muslims are free from the contagious effect of the so-called jehad sweeping the Islamic world, having no concern, barring some in Kashmir, with the business of Al Qaeda, the ISI and terrorism. Indeed, in 2003 security expert B Raman wrote, ‘‘The overwhelming majority of Indian Muslims are loyal, law-abiding citizens. They have not allowed their anger against the Indian government or the Hindus for any reason to drive them into the arms of terrorist organisations. India has the most modern, peaceful and forward-looking Muslim community in the world.’’

More recently, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh boasted that not even a single Indian Muslim is on the rolls of Al Qaeda. For this relative freedom of Muslims from the jehad ideology we credited our democratic system, the Sufi ethos of Indian Islam and a culture that discouraged any kind of extremism in thought and action.

After a series of blasts ripping through different cities of India and its religious places, however, it is now clear that Indian Muslim youths, however small in number, are working in India as foot-soldiers of international terrorist organizations. They still may not be fighting with the ranks of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or in Iraq or Palestine, but doubtless some of them are colluding with the global jehadis in the latter’s mission to weaken and destabilise India.

It is estimated, for example, that at least 100 people participated in the execution of the July 11 Mumbai blasts. Without committed local Muslim support such a despicable act would not have been possible. Intelligence experts say that at least 25 Muslim organizations are working on Indian soil to breed alienation among the Indian Muslim youths and to suck them into the global whirl of jehad. And the response of the Muslim masses to these organizations is not that of complete apathy.

The collusion of local Muslims with the global jehadi enlarges the scope of the battle against terrorism. Because it is not just inimical to the existence of Indian state, and its stability, but also against the Muslim community itself, it becomes obligatory for every Muslim also to work actively to defeat this offensive. In a way, it is doubly perilous for the Muslims of India: first, as common citizens vulnerable to the risk of terrorist attacks and second, as a supposed culpable minority susceptible to majority communal backlash, prejudices, suspicion and harassment by security agencies. Because it is more sinister to the Muslim interest they will have to contribute at two levels, as citizens of India and as fellow community members, located at a vantage point, to understand the psychology and motive of terrorists and to subvert their operations.

Till now the response of the Muslim intelligentsia, activists and the community in general to this challenge has been absolutely lukewarm to say the least. After every act of terrorism, they chose to, at most, issue a muted condemnation and express disapproval from their safe confines. When the ideology of terrorism has invaded Muslim homes and seminaries, and it is drawing legitimacy from the Islamic faith, such a response from the community is by no account adequate.

The Muslim community must take the extremists’ act more seriously because the consequences of terrorism on Indian soil, in a multi-religious society, are enormous. An act of terrorism, even one perpetrated by Kashmiri militants or the ISI, throws peace and communal harmony out of gear across the country. It makes a Muslim’s Indian-ness less credible in the eyes of many. A situation where boys born and brought up in UP and Bihar plant explosives in temples and trains would certainly script a terrible destiny for over 140 million Indian Muslims.

To eradicate this ideology, the Muslims need to make serious, perceptible and relentless efforts. Counter-terrorism requires a systematic plan of action to insulate the general youth and de-toxicate those infected with the ideology. The thinking Muslims will have to go out of the comforts of homes and offices and work in gullis, seminaries, mosques and other public places to acquaint common Muslims of the consequences of terrorist acts for the community. For every one SIMI-like organisation perverting the minds of youths, they will have to raise 10 organisations alerting Muslims to the dangers of such an ideology. They will have to espouse the duty which the Koran assigns to every Muslim: ‘‘You are the best community that has ever been brought into being for the sake of mankind. You enjoin what is right and fair and you forbid what is wrong and unfair (3:110)’’.

Terrorism is also a battle within the Muslim community; a battle between the life instinct of the many and the death wish of a handful of lunatics. A Muslim has reason to fight and win this battle for the good of many of their brethrens, besides for the larger interest of India.

(The writer, an IPS officer, is SP, Lahaul-Spiti)

How to Protect Dharma?

2006-08-02T23:35:00.000-07:00

How to Protect Dharma?

Protect your Dharma yourself

The solution of the problems and challenges before the Hindus, as enumerated in the preceding pages, is to face them and reverse their process as has been very clearly provided in our Shastras themselves. And the first basic principle is ''to act yourself to protect yourselves and your Dharma'.

In this context Manusmriti quotes ''Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitaha'' i.e. ''the Dharma protects those who protect the Dharma themselves.'' Hence the need of the hour is first to understand and realise the gravity of the situation confronting before the Hindus and Hindu Dharma. And each and every Hindu individual man, woman, youth etc. should take a pledge to understand and adopt the basic tenets of Hindu Dharma and take a vow to defend it, as ft is mandatory for each Hindu.

Further, as pointed out earlier that in ancient times, in Hindu monarchy system, the king used to defend the territory of the state, its people and their Dharma. And if need be, even the common people used to fight against the invaders along with the state army. But in the present democratic set up of our secular government, the same is not going to defend, particularly the Hindus and Hindu Dharma, in this period of crisis. Further, the existing political parties and their leaders will also not save the Hindus as they are afraid of loosing possible votes of the non-Hindus.

It should not be forgotten that the entire areas of the present Indonesia, Malayasia of South East Asia and Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Middle-east now under Islamic rule, were parts of Hindu Empires. And at present, in the remaining India, Islam is the greatest threat to the very survival of Hindus and Hindu Dharma under the name of 'pseudo-secularism' of our constitution, and all pseudo-secular political parties are actually working for the Islamisation of India.

It is therefore, the Hindus will have to exert themselves to defend themselves and their religion by their own possible means and rersources. It is the foremost duty of every Hindu towards his/her Dharma. It is because protection of one's own Dharma and motherland is much bigger than accumulating wealth alone which they may not be able to protect the same, if they failed to protect their Dharma and the motherland.

Revive Brahma�Kshatra Co-ordinative Vedic tradition

The Hindu Scriptures have also clearly laid out the 'action plan to face such a crisis and it is the pious duty of each and every Hindu to execute it. The action plan and policy is to create a well coordinated spiritual and political power by the people themselves at individual, social and political level.

In this context Yajur Veda (20 : 25) says, ''The people of a nation who acquire Brahmbal i.e. spiritual and worldly knowledge and Kshatrabal, i.e. physical, military and political power in a well coordinated manner, become prosperous, powerful and benevolent in all respect.''

So long as the Hindus followed this basic Vedic doctrine, they remained supreme, powerful, prosperous as well as spiritual leaders of the whole world and the humanity. And as soon as they neglected this principle of self-defense^ mechanism, they were overpowered, humiliated, destroyed and ruined. Therefore, the Hindus should re-adopt the same forgotten principle and acquire moral and spiritual knowledge from the Shastras and also gain all modern scientific and technological knowledge and also business management techniques; and be prosperous on one hand, and also acquire latest knowledge of military science, sophisticated war equipments and materials and practical training; and simultaneously gain control of political power of the state.

Further, these spiritual and political powers should be of high order and be well coordinated, because even excellence in one field of activity alone and negligence of the other, will not be able to serve the purpose of the people and the state. It will be like a stout blind man and a learned lame person.

Hence, the foremost need of the hour is first to understand and realise the gravity of the situation confronting before the Hindus. And then each and every Hindu should take a pledge to face the challenges and make all preparations to sacrifice everything and even one's own life, what to say of wealth and property. Let us take a vow not only to defend our Dharma, but also be powerful and make ourselves able to preach, propagate and promote our Dharma all around and protect ourselves through capturing political power which is supreme Mahabharat.

Moreover, the Hindus should reform their evil social practices, religious dogmas and complex rituals. Further, though our political parties and the Constitution, are dividing the Hindus on regional, religious, linguistic, caste and sub-caste, tribal-urban and reservation basis, but the Hindus should take advantage of the inspiring ancient cultural heritage which unites us, and make all possible efforts to unify the Hindus forgetting their religious sects, social and ethical groups etc. Strictly speaking, the Hindu Dharma does not discriminate its adherents on the basis of caste, colour, creed and sex; andthere are no traces of caste discrimination and untouchability in our Holy Scriptures.

So it is our moral and religious duty to discard casteism and untouchability as social evils developed as a part of degeneration of Hindu Dharma through thousand years of socio-political ups and downs. Hence, the first and foremost priority of the Hindus is to organise their own religious education, for all age groups, and in all different regional languages.

Moreover, for facing the challenges of Christianity and Islam, it is essential to equip ourselves with the knowledge of our religion as well as that of these Semitic religions on comparative basis.

I wish to warn each and every Hindu that they should not depend on various political parties which are committed for appeasing the minorities at the cost of the Hindus, and are working even against the national interest.

Further, in the democratic set up, the legal and administrative decisions of the government entirely depend upon the nature and composition of the governing group, and if it is pseudo-secular, it will act for the minorities, and against the Hindu cause as it has been for the last 55 years. Hence, the Hindus will have to device their own socio-religious-political setup so that they can save the Hindus and Hindu Dharma in the existing scenerio of multi-religious system.

Adopt 15 point Programme of Hindu awakening

In view of the serious challenges before the Hindus, we have already outlined an exhaustive 'action plae' for the Hindus in one of our publications viz. What Hindus Stoufct d* with; detailed therein. In this tS^point program, some are tor immediate action, while others are of tong range nature. In brief these are :�

(1) Be proud to be a Hindu.

(2) Unite yourself and be fearless.

(3) Regain ancient glory.

(4) Discard religious superstitions and; sociaJ evils, and adopt social reforms.

(5) Oppose pseudo-secularism.

(6) Discard family planning.

(7) Hinduise the politics.

(8) Consolidate Hindu vote bank.

(9) Capture Complete political power.

(10) Amend anti-Hindu Constitution.

(11) Expell foreign Bangladeshi Muslim infiltrators.

(12) Check conversion of the Hindus.

(13) Bringback the Hindu converts.

(14) Organise the religious education, yourself.

(15) Control press and electronic media.

In view of the urgency of the situation, the short term projects like, creation of Hindu vote bank; control of press and electronic media, and capturing of political power should be taken on top most priority. However, projects like religious education and socio-religious reforms etc. could be continued on long term basis.

Though several Hindu social, religious and political organisations are working whole heartedly and independently at regional as well as national level with their plans and objectives for Hindu cause. But the urgent need of the hour is to consolidate and coordinate all that gigantic work by establishing an ''All India Federation of Hindu Organisations of the Hindus, for the Hindus and by the Hindus, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, region and religious sectisand political affiliations. This organisation should be stongly united for capturing political power in all the states, and each Hindu should participate in the elections and cast his or her precious vote for the welfare of the Hindus. They should elect their own political leaders of staunch Hindu faith at all levels of Municipal, State and Central government level elections.

The driving force behind this supreme goal should be the Vedas who exhort us for the amalgamation of spiritualism with vibrating spirit of nationalism, patriotrism, valourism and chivalerism. The sacrifice of millions of our brave ancestors and martyres should be the foundational inspiration in the life of each and every Hindu Each should take a solemn Vedic oath ''I am the son of my motherland'' and I will sacrifice myself for her and I will fight with all my resources and even sacrifice my life for the preservation and protecion of Hindu Dharma.''This selfless devotion and dedication, vibrating enthusiasm and assertive mass movement will automatically lay the foundation of a new Hindu Dharma and will generate a new wave of self confidence for gaining political power and supremacy, The top most priority of each Hindu youth at present is to protect, preserve and promote, Hindu Dharma by all possible means otherwise the names of the Hindus, Holy Hindu culture and Dharma will Vanish in oblivion.

The situation of DO or DIE has emerged before the Hindus, and there is no way left out, but to face the challenges of Islam and Christianity, as this is most important for your very survival with hounour, dignity and prosperity.

Options Against Pakistan...

2006-08-02T23:02:00.000-07:00

Options Against Pakistan...

Is hot pursuit an option? Targeted killings of jihadi terrorist leaders? Air strikes on training camps in Pakistan? US and Israel models? Why does US not act on evidence against Pakistan? And many more questions - is cover action the only practical option left?
B. RAMAN
- Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India

This paper seeks to answer a number of questions which I have received from the readers after the Mumbai blasts of 11/7 .

Is hot pursuit an option against Pakistan for continuing to sponsor jihadi terrorism against India?

No. It is not. The doctrine of hot pursuit acquired some prominence during the Vietnam war against the Americans. Taking advantage of the lack of government control over the border areas of Laos and Cambodia, the Vietcong set up its sanctuaries there. Vietcong groups used to cross into South Vietnam, attack American troops and withdraw into their sanctuaries in Laos or Cambodia. The Americans said they would exercise their right of hot pursuit, chase the Vietcong into Laotian or Cambodian territory and put an end to the sanctuaries and kill those who attacked the Americans.

A similar situation does not prevail with regard to Pakistan-sponsored jihadi terrorism. There is no part of Pakistani territory over which the Pakistani Army does not have effective control. The jihadi terrorists do not have de facto territorial control in the border areas. The Vietcong would start from a point, enter South Vietnam, attack American troops and go back to the point from where they started. Jihadi terrorists do not operate that way. They do not indulge in hit and run raids. They come into India from different points through different routes and disperse in different directions after their terrorist strikes. They rarely escape directly into Pakistan. Moreover, many jihadi terrorist strikes are acts of suicide terrorism.

To talk of hot pursuit of suicide terrorists would be absurd.

How about targeted killings of jihadi terrorist leaders based in Pakistani territory?

A policy of targeted killings of terrorist leaders may work in the case of a terrorist organisation such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and organised crime groups such as that of Dawood Ibrahim, but is unlikely to work in the case of jihadi terrorist organisations. Jihadi terrorists are taught that it is glorious to kill a non-Muslim and it is even more glorious to die while trying to kill a non-Muslim. They are dying to die. They believe in the glories of martyrdom while waging a jihad. Targeted killings would add to their martyrs' gallery. The killed leaders would be easily replaced.

Why don't we make an air strike on their training camps in Pakistani territory since we know where they are located?

These training camps are improvised structures. Mostly tents. The jihadi terrorists are like gypsies. They keep moving their training camps from place to place. Air strikes may temporarily put a training infrastructure out of action, but not permanently. The American Cruise missile attacks of October 1998, and their post 9/11 air strikes have not destroyed the training infrastructure of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The terrorists did suffer some casualties, which they were able to absorb and move to other places.

How do the US and Israel act against state-sponsors of terrorism threatening the lives of their nationals and their national interests?

They follow a mix of the doctrines of passive and active defence. Passive defence is you tighten your physical security and keep your counter-terrorism operations confined to your territory. Active defence is you take your counter-terrorism operations outside your territory, if it becomes necessary. Active defence can be used against the terrorists operating against you from a foreign territory or against the state using terrorism against you or both. Active defence can be open through the conventional armed forces or covert through special forces.

Examples of open active defence: the US bombing of an alleged terrorist base in Libya in 1986, the Cruise missile attacks on Al Qaeda camps in Afghan territory in October 1998, the post-9/11 military action in Afghanistan and the current operations of the Israeli army in the Lebanon.

Examples of covert active defence: Israeli attacks on Palestinian leaders when the Palestine Liberation Organisation was based in Tunisian territory in the 1980s, their counter-terrorism operations in other places such as Malta, and France's alleged kidnapping of Carlos in Auguast 1994, from Khartoum.

Have the policies of the US and Israel succeeded?

Not so far.

Why have they not succeeded?

Because they have been targeting their action against the terrorists operating from foreign territory and not against the states sponsoring and using the terrorists. The US-led coalition is unlikely to succeed in Afghanistan so long as they do not end the Pakistani sponsorship of the Taliban and its complicity with Al Qaeda. Israel is unlikely to succeed against the Hezbollah and the Hamas so long as it does not end their sponsorship by Iran and Syria. The collapse of the ideological terrorist groups of West Europe after the collapse of the Communist states of East Europe shows how state-sponsored terrorist organisations find it difficult to survive when deprived of support from their state-sponsors. The international community will continue to face difficulty in prevailing over global jihadi terrorism unless and until it acts unitedly against the triumvirate of state-sponsors -- Pakistan, Iran and Syria.

Why are the US and Israel not acting against Pakistan, Iran and Syria?

In its war against terrorism spawned and nurtured in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, the US has four objectives:

to pre-empt the possibility of another 9/11 in US territory;
to prevent the jihadi terrorists from getting hold of Pakistan's nuclear assets;
to prevent a Talibanisation of Pakistan; and
to create normalcy and political stability in Afghanistan.
For achieving the first three objectives, it thinks it needs the support of the Pakistan army. But continued support for the Pakistan Army and the present military-controlled regime headed by Gen.Pervez Musharraf would come in the way of achieving the fourth objective. It has to choose between Musharraf and stability in Afghanistan. It has presently chosen Musharraf, but things could change if Al Qaeda carries out another 9/11 in the US homeland, which is proved to have been planned and executed from Pakistani territory.

Israel does not attack Iran and Syria because of fears that it could lead to a wider war in West Asia. It would need the political, moral, economic, diplomatic and military support of the US if it has to face the risk of such a wider war. Israel is, therefore, unlikely to attack Iran and Syria without a green signal from the US. But Israel may not hesitate to act unilaterally to wipe out Iran's military nuclear capability, even without approval from the US, if and when it decides that the international community is unlikely to act against Iran. Nuclear weapons in the hands of a state-sponsor of terrorism like Iran, which wants to destroy Israel, will not be tolerated by Israel.

What are the chances of the international community acting unitedly against Pakistan, Iran and Syria?

Very remote, at present. Things could change if there is an act of mass casualty terrorism involving the use of weapons of mass destruction material and Pakistan is found to have been the source of this material.

Why is the US repeatedly rejecting India's evidence regarding the Pakistani State sponsorship of jihadi terrorism directed against India despite the growing strategic relations between India and the US?
The reasons are partly strategic, partly tactical and partly historic. The strategic reason is that the US looks upon Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Indonesia as the moderate core of the Islamic Ummah. It wants to preserve and strengthen this core and expand its influence over the rest of the Ummah. The tactical reason is that, in the US perception, the co-operation of Pakistan is essential for preventing another 9/11 in US territory. Preventing another 9/11 is more important for the US than preventing any number of 11/7s in Indian territory. Pakistani co-operation helps save American lives. Indian co-operation does not. Only if and when it is proved that the Pakistani co-operation no longer helps save American lives, is the US likely to re-consider its policy towards Pakistan. If the US has to make a strategic choice between India and Pakistan, it would choose India. If it has to make a tactical choice between the two, it would choose Pakistan. The historic reason is the help extended by Pakistan to the US during the cold war in its efforts to defeat international communism.
Why then are we repeatedly going to the US with our evidence against Pakistan when we know the US is going to reject it?
Public diplomacy against Pakistan on its sponsorship of terrorism has to be an important component of our counter-terrorism policy. This public diplomacy has three sides:
first, to show to the international community that our repeated efforts to make Pakistan give up its sponsorship of terrorism have failed;
second, to tell the international community, particularly the US, that its repeated refusal to accept and act on our evidence against Pakistan has left us with no other option except to use other ways to deal with Pakistan's state-sponsorship of terrorism against India;
third, to repeatedly remind public opinion in other countries that their governments' short-sighted policy of refusing to act against Pakistan is going to boomerang on them in the form of more 9/11s, originating from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region.
The doctrine of the right of active defence against a state-sponsor was first enunciated by Mr George Shultz, who was Secretary of State in the Ronald Reagan administration, in a statement made by him after the death of nearly 200 US Marines in a car bomb attack in Beirut in the 1980s. This was further reinforced by Mr George Bush, the father of the present President, when he was the Vice-President under Reagan and chaired a Special Task Force on Counter-terrorism. Under this doctrine, the US would first try all conventional options against State-sponsors--political, economic, diplomatic etc-- but if these failed to produce results, it would not hesitate to resort to unconventional options to make it clear to the guilty states that their sponsorship of terrorism would not pay. This counter-terrorism road map is now generally accepted all over the world. Public diplomacy is an important stage in this road map.
We have to make it clear to Pakistan and the international community--particularly the US, which is the most important sponsor of this state-sponsor of terrorism--that we tried all reasonable and conventional means of putting an end to Pakistan's state-sponsorship. Since these have not produced results and the international community has failed to stand by India, we have no other option but to take to unconventional means.

What has been the state of our public diplomacy against Pakistan on the question of its sponsorship of terrorism against India?

It started under Rajiv Gandhi and continued under Shri V.P.Singh, Shri Chandrasekhar and P.V.Narasimha Rao. It was neglected under Shri Dev Gowda and Shri Inder Gujral. It was kept up in fits and starts under Shri A.B.Vajpayee and totally neglected since Dr.Manmohan Singh took over as the Prime Minister. Since September 2004, there has not been a categorical and direct criticism by him of Pakistan's continued state sponsorship. Even in his remarks after his visit to the scene of the Mumbai blasts of 11/7, he made only a soft, indirect allusion to Pakistan without clearly naming it. They appeared to be meant more to respond to domestic public opinion in India than to convey an unambiguous message to Pakistan.
If our own Prime Minister fights shy of calling a spade a spade, how can we expect the international community to do so? At some international seminars attended by me since September 2004, when I raised the issue of continued Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism, many in the audience remarked: "Your own Prime Minister is no longer talking of it. Why do you keep harping on it?" The policy of "See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil", which the Prime Minister seems to be following in respect of Pakistan and the US could prove counter-productive.

Why do we keep asking the US to declare Pakistan a state-sponsor of terrorism? Why can't we do it ourselves?

To my knowledge, the US is the only country in the world in which the concept of state-sponsorship of terrorism figures in the statute book. When the US declares a state as a state-sponsor of Terrorism, certain punitive consequences follow such as stoppage of military supplies, economic sanctions etc. Pakistan could be hurt by a US declaration. We had seen how the invoking of the Pressler Amendment on the nuclear issue against Pakistan in 1990 by the US halted the progress of the Pakistani economy, created difficulties for its Air Force and almost brought its economy to the verge of collapse in the 1990s when Mr Nawaz Sharif and Mrs Benazir Bhutto were Prime Ministers. An Indian declaration of Pakistan as a state-sponsor of terrorism will not have any impact on Pakistan.

Is military action against Pakistan an option?

It is no longer an option after 9/11. Pakistan is now declared as a major non-NATO ally of the US. There is a growing American presence in Pakistan. US intelligence agencies, particularly the National Security Agency (NSA) which is responsible for the collection of technical intelligence, have a strong presence in Pakistan to collect intelligence about Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The USA's and the NATO's top priority is their operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pakistan Army has deployed a large number of its troops in the Waziristan area to help the Americans operating in Afghanistan. As a quid pro quo, it would expect the US to ensure that India does not take advantage of this for counter-terrorism related military strikes in Pakistan. The US would try to prevent any military strikes by us . Even if we take the US by surprise and launch a military strike, the US and the other NATO countries would try to bring the strike to a premature conclusion before we had achieved our counter-terrorism objectives. In our planning, we have to take into consideration Pakistan's nuclear capability too.

Then how to make Pakistan pay a price for its state-sponsorship of terrorism against India?

Through covert action, which is deniable para-political and para-military action meant to make Pakistan's sponsorship prohibitively costly to it.

Such a covert action would be directed against the Pakistan state and society and not against the terrorists. Covert actions do not produce quick results. They are gradual in their impact. They have to be well-prepared, well-executed and kept sustained. The liberation of Bangladesh in 1971 was preceded by nearly a decade of covert action in the then East Pakistan at the political, para-political, cultural and other levels in order to create large pockets of alienation against the central government and generate feelings of separateness between the people of West and East Pakistan. If we had not prepared the ground carefully for 10 years, the success would not have come so decisively in 1971.

Why are we not doing it now?

Before 1971, our political leadership was determined that it was not in the national interests of India to let the two wings of Pakistan remain united. Once a political direction came that we should not allow the two wings to remain united, the intelligence agencies and the security forces took the follow-up action and facilitated the achievement of this objective by our armed forces in 1971. In 1981, Pakistan started its sponsorship of Khalistani terrorism in Punjab. Between 1981 and 1987, our political leadership tried to deal with it conventionally. When the conventional options had no impact on Pakistan, a decision was taken by the political leadership that Pakistan must be covertly made to pay a price for its meddling in Punjab.

The intelligence agencies implemented this directive effectively and the message went home to Pakistan. It started cutting down its support to the Khalistani terrorists, which tapered off by 1995. But, in 1997, the political leadership decided, despite the increase in the involvement of Pakistan in the sponsorship of jihadi terrorism, to stop the use of the covert action option. We are paying a heavy price for it since then.

The subsequent governments have been thoroughly confused in their mind about the advisability of resuming covert action. Moreover, before 1997, the American influence on our political leadership and policy-makers was very small. Our leaders and policy-makers rarely bothered about what the Americans would think of our actions. Since 2003 the American influence on us has increased so much that it has come in the way of an aggressive policy approach towards Pakistan.

One has the impression that so far as our policy towards Pakistan is concerned, the US is doing the back-seat driving. We have to rid ourselves of our inhibitions generated by our over-anxiety to keep on the right side of the US, decide what needs to be done to Pakistan and do it. We should decide now lucidly what kind of Pakistan will be in our national interest in the next 10 or 15 years and resolutely work towards it. Our intelligence agencies are capable of doing it provided they have behind them a resolute political leadership which would guide and back them without wavering all the time depending on the signals from Washington.

Mahatma and celibacy

2006-07-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

Bookmark

Mahatma and celibacy
Brahmacharya; Gandhi & His Women
Associates: Girja Kumar; Vitasta Publishing; pp 411; Rs
695.00
By M.V. Kamath

Name some of the great figures in world
history and one can remember a Tolstoy, a Romain
Rolland, a Ramakrishna Paramahansa and, yes, a Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi. One can think of many others like
Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo and Rabindranath Tagore
but for many reasons Gandhi stands out in any company.
He was no poet or philosopher; certainly he would be no
match to, say, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Yet, more than
anyone else, the Mahatma remains an Indian icon and
figures prominently on our currency notes. For all that
he remains, for the oddest of reasons, the most
controversial leader of our times.

The world
knows him as the champion of non-violence in India’s
struggle for freedom. It was that, more than anything
else, that raised him to Mahatma-hood in the eyes of his
beholders. But that was only one side of him. There was
the other side, namely, his struggle with himself that
he was to carry on almost till death took him away. This
struggle concerned brahmacharya (celibacy).

As
was common in his times—and we are speaking of the
fourth quarter of the nineteenth century—Mohandas Gandhi
married early; his wife was Kasturbai Kapadia and both
were married when they were 14 years old. Kasturba (as
she came to be known) was illiterate—par for her times.
The story is that her husband was making love to her
when Mohandas’ father was dying. Gandhi could possibly
have not known that his father was dying. Apparently
that left a deep mark on his psyche.

Time passed,
the Mahatma beget four sons. But some time in 1906, when
he was hardly 37 years old and at the peak of his
manhood, he took a vow to practice celibacy. What
exactly drove him to take this unusual vow remains a
mystery. Perhaps he felt he could not relate to his
illiterate wife any longer. After all he had become a
barrister-at-law and had a roaring practice in South
Africa. He was almost in daily contact with a lot of
sophisticated women and probably found their
intellectual company more rewarding. He could not
possibly give up his devoted—and strong-willed—wife. Nor
could he resist the intellectual comfort other women
gave him. Perhaps his decision to practice celibacy
arose out of this dilemma.

Mohandas Gandhi surely
is not the first or only human being who has had to
confront such a dilemma. Hundreds have faced it in the
past; some have taken mistresses, with or without the
consent of their wives. Many have taken it in their
stride, realising their limitations and concentrated
more on their jobs. Such a dilemma is not uncommon. And
Mohandas Gandhi was only human.

Sex is part of
human nature and is nothing to be ashamed of. Different
people handle it in different ways. Shri Aurobindo had
the Mother as his companion and no doubt he had
sublimated sex. There was not a whiff or scandal about
Ramana Maharshi who wore the minimal of dress. But
Mohandas Gandhi was in public life and was attracting
people by the dozens. His ashram at Sabarmati was, as
someone plaintively said, more like a dharamshala with
people living with him. Gandhi would have been wiser not
to accept single women to live in the ashram; indeed he
would have probably been of greater service to the
country if he had stayed alone with his wife and a
stenographer to attend to his vast
correspondence.

He was a compulsive letter-writer
who would write ten to fifteen letters or more a day.
Only God knows what he would have done if he had a
mobile. But Mohandas Gandhi loved the company of women
and he thought that he could treat them as “daughter,
sisters and mothers” which was deluding oneself. In the
circumstances he had more than a dozen women he became
close to in various degrees of familiarity. Five of them
were of foreign origin and one of them a Non Resident
Indian. Three of them, Millie Graham Polak, Nilla Cram
Cook and Mirabehn were an intellectual match for any
women of their times. Then there was Saraladevi
Chowdhurani whose mother Swarnakumari Devi was an elder
sister of Rabindranath Tagore. Of Gandhi’s association
with her, the author says: “Saraladevi Chowdhurani came
very close to Mohandas Karmachand Gandhi. Their
whirlwind romance lasted for barely two years but it
upset the balance of the Gandhian establishment and
shook its very roots. She is now a part of history and a
footnote in contemporary Gandhian literature. She,
however, left scars in the minds of Gandhiji for the
rest of his life.”

There was no need for Gandhi
to “experiment” with brahmacharya. As Vinobha Bhave, a
true brahmachari put it correctly, “In case Gandhi was
perfect brahmachari, he did not require his brahmacharya
to be tested; and if he was an imperfect brahmachari, he
should have avoided the experiments on
principle.”

Gandhiji would not listen to wise
advice. He brought misery to every around one, including
his wife Kasturba, his secretaries Mahadev Desai and
Pyarelal, his medical attendant and secretary Sushila
Nayar. He insisted that those living with him must also
practice celibacy and that led to at one least one,
Prabhavati Devi (wife of Jayaprakash Narayan) often
getting hysterical.

Of her the author writes:
“Prabhavati became so obssessed with Gandhi that she
would not tolerate separation from him even for a
day...Her hysteria was highest manifestation of her
desperation. She would remain unconscious for hours
together...” In his own way, without, obviously meaning
it, the Mahatma ruined many lives. It was only when he
was jailed at the Agha Khan Palace that he came to be
reconciled with Kasturba. And it was only after Gandhi
died that Prabhavati came to live a normal life with her
husband, until she died a premature death. Many detested
Gandhi’s so-called ‘experiments’ with
celibacy.

Mirabehn spread gossip about his
‘special relation’ with Sushila Nayar. Sardar Vallabbhai
Patel was furious and called Gandhi’s practices as
‘adharma’. His own son Devadas wrote a strong letter of
protest to his father. Gandhi was boycotted by
Kishorelal Mashruwala who, along with Narahari Parekh,
Swami Anand and Kedarnath Kulkarni, all his closest
associates and disciples. It is a pathetic
story.

Girja Kumar took eight years to work on
this book which is thoroughly researched. The author
does not take sides and deals respectfully with the
subject of his study, and that is to his credit. It is
now almost six decades since Gandhiji passed away. He
will always remain a Mahatma. But he will make an
excellent case for a psychiatric study. Many Gandhians
may object to this work. Some of the passages are
revolting indeed. The truth, however, must be faced. As
Gandhiji once said: “Truth is God”.

(Vitasta
Publishing Pvt. Ltd., 2/15, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj, New
Delhi-110 002.)

Detoxify the youth of India

2006-07-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

Issue

Detoxify the youth of India
By Bulbul Roy
Mishra

Our secular
education system simply weighs the learning and does not
teach its value. Students are told that degrees are
required to get a job and higher degrees will fetch
higher income. The thought of service to the poor, the
nation or the humanity is summarily dismissed as
Platonic and nonsensical.

“The ass carrying the load of
sandalwood” so says an ancient Sanskrit proverb, “knows
only the weight and not the value of the sandalwood.”
Its animalistic instinct nevertheless helps it find out
the equation—heavier the weight larger the meal. I am
tempted to draw a parallel of the above to our current
education system, which teaches students to bear the
load of studies with the refrain—better the performances
higher the return. Like in the case of the ass, our
secular education system simply weighs the learning and
does not teach its value. Students are told that degrees
are required to get a job, and higher degrees will fetch
higher income. The thought of service to the poor, the
nation or the humanity is summarily dismissed as
Platonic and nonsensical.

I am, therefore, not
surprised that our education system has produced errant
and arrogant kids like Manu Sharma, Jagat Singh, Vikas
Yadav, Amit Jogi, Sanjeev Nanda, Fardeen Khan and many
others, all of whom got the best of education—thanks to
their parental affluence and influence—but were not
taught humility and dedication, which were fundamental
to our traditional education system. It is not that only
the scions of celebrities and the affluent freak out and
the rest are okay. As a matter of fact, the alma mater
that discriminates the poor from the rich, the powerful
from the commoner, sows the seeds of arrogance, hatred
and complexes in impressionable minds, thereby causing
distortion in the society.

It is no body’s case
that the aim of a sound education system is to create
perfect equality among students or to raise their merit
to even height. As a matter of fact, the Vedantic
philosophy that envisions the ultimate unity in Tat tvam
asi (Thou art that) does not also envisage perfect
equality in a phenomenal world. According to it, when
the three gunas (sattva, raja and tama) get into the
position of perfect equilibrium, involution results and
creativity comes to an end. The universe evolves as a
result of disturbance in this balance when any of the
three gunas becomes predominant. The above philosophy
applies to human life as well, as the key to liberation
is stated to be perfect equanimity.

Both Swami
Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi stressed on spiritual
education simultaneously with secular education. In the
words of Vivekananda, “Our life blood is spirituality.”
If it flows clear, no disease germ can possess it. The
spirituality does not mean worship of a particular god,
but selfless concern for welfare of all beings. Totally
rejecting the colonial education system, Gandhiji echoed
Vivekananda when he wrote in True Education: “We assess
the value of education in the same manner as we assess
the value of land or of shares in the stock exchange
market. We want to provide only such education as would
enable the student to earn more… As long as such ideas
persist there is no hope of our ever knowing the true
value of education.” Gandhiji was totally against state
interference in educational sphere.

A
materialistic thinker may snigger at the idea of
injecting spirituality in secular education, as he is
unable to segregate spirituality from religion. Once
convinced that spirituality has nothing to do with any
particular religion, I am sure, even the staunchest
materialist will see merits in the proposition that
students must be taught to think more for the suffering
multitude, the nation and the humanity, than for
self-promotion.

The reason why Indian
civilisation survived despite the fall of the empires
and kingdoms in the face of foreign invasions was its
impregnable education system. Its foundation was laid by
gurukuls in numerous hermitages as mentioned in the
Mahabharata, where pupils from distant parts gathered
for instruction. It is pertinent to mention that the Rig
Veda named 23 women sages for their contribution and a
hermitage near Kurukshetra produced two noted women
hermits, thus establishing that women were considered
eligible for studying the Vedas and also running
gurukuls.

By the 9th century BC, university
education almost on modern lines was founded in
Takshasila (Taxila), the capital of Gandhara, followed
by Ujjain, Nalanda, Benares, Ballavi, Ajanta, Madura and
Vikramsila. Panini, the famous grammarian of the 7th
century BC, Jibaka, the noted physician of the 6th
century BC and Kautilya, the author of Arthasastra of
the 4th century BC were students of Takshasila. We find
mention of women’s hostel called chhatrisala in some of
those universities.

Even though the University of
Takshasila was destroyed by the barbaric Huns in the 5th
century AD and that of Nalanda by the Khilji invaders in
the 12th century AD, the Indian education system
survived owing to resilience of the scholars who took it
as their mission to impart what they learnt to the
posterity. It is no wonder that Sir Monier Williams
found Indian education system unparalleled in history.
In his words: “Invader after invader ravaged the country
with fire and sword but the simple self-contained
township had preserved its constitution intact, its
customs, precedents and peculiar institutions unchanged
and unchangeable amid all other changes.” (Brahmanism
and Hinduism). India survived because Indian
educationists never treated material progress as the end
in itself but as a means to the end that was spiritual
growth.

The overdose of self-centric materialism
sans spirituality, borrowed from colonial and alien
thoughts, commenced the process of transformation from
man-making into money-making education. The blame, in
the first place, goes to successive governments which,
contrary to Gandhiji’s prescription, relentlessly
interferred with the governance of universities and
academic institutions. The blame also goes to the
political parties, which strived to impose their
political thoughts or ideology on students. The
socio-religious organisations also share the blame for
doing precious little to arrest the rot.

I am,
however, incurably optimistic, being a firm believer in
what Swami Vivekananda said over a century back: “A
mighty tree produces a beautiful ripe fruit. The fruit
falls on the ground, it decays and rots, and out of that
decay springs the root and the future tree, perhaps
mightier than the first one.” (Refer: The Complete
Works, vol. 3, pp. 286).

history of islam

2006-07-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

This article describes about the history of Islam right from its origin.

http://muhammadandtheriseofislam.blogspot.com/2005/08/from-mecca-to-911.html

As their tactics backfire, they backtrack

2006-06-30T09:56:00.001-07:00

As their tactics backfire, they backtrack

By Meenakshi Jain

The continued attempt to put a secular gloss on the iconoclastic fervour of Mahmud Ghaznavi is of a piece of the Marxist endeavour to sanitize medieval Indian history.

Mahmud’s reputation in the Muslim world rested on two inter-related accomplishments— breaking the idols of Al-Hind and dehoarding the temples of their treasures.

The destruction of Somnath was hailed as “the crowning glory of Islam over idolatry, and elevated Mahmud to the status of a hero”.

Though the relentless pressure of several aggrieved groups has forced left historians to backtrack on some of their more contentious assertions on Indian history, this seems a tactical retreat rather than a sincere rectification of position. The cosmetic changes made by Professor Satish Chandra in his Medieval India, textbook for Class XI, as well as the response of the Committee of Historians to the objections raised by Shri Dinanath Batra and others in the Delhi High Court, smack of a forced withdrawal. But whether forced or voluntary, the petitioners have undoubtedly secured some acceptance of their viewpoint, by no means a small achievement.

Lord Mahavira

Nonetheless, objections even to the revised left interpretation of Indian history remain, some of which bear recording. Despite the newly donned mask of neutrality, the antipathy to indigenous culture and traditions remains strong. This manifests itself, for instance, in the continued reference to the so-called Hindu take-over of Buddhist and Jain sacred sites. Two specific instances have been cited—that of the Jagannath temple at Puri (said to have originally been a Buddhist site) and the temple at Qutub (stated to have initially been a Jain shrine). However, no evidence to substantiate the claim has been presented.

The persistent reference to temple desecration by Hindu kings is obviously intended to underplay Islamic iconoclasm in the subcontinent. In this connection it is relevant to recall that Professor Andre Wink (Al-Hind, vol. II) found the evidence of Hindu destruction of Buddhist and Jain places of worship “too vague to be convincing,” and equally pertinently, not backed by shastric injunction.

Hindu rulers who appropriated idols of rival kings in times of warfare, honoured the images thus acquired, even building stately temples for them. The Chandella ruler, Yasovarman, for instance, built the Lakshmana temple at Khajuraho to house a gold image he had acquired from the Pratihara ruler. The Vijayanagar ruler, Krishnadeva Raya, likewise constructed the Krishnaswami temple for an image of Balkrishna procured during a campaign against the Gajapatis of Orissa, and the Vitthalswami temple for a Vitthala image brought from an expedition to Pandharpur. Such acts can hardly be viewed as at par with Islamic iconoclasm.

The continued attempt to put a secular gloss on the iconoclastic fervour of Mahmud Ghaznavi is of a piece of the Marxist endeavour to sanitize medieval Indian history. Mahmud’s reputation in the Muslim world rested on two inter-related accomplishments— breaking the idols of Al-Hind and dehoarding the temples of their treasures. The destruction of Somnath was hailed as “the crowning glory of Islam over idolatry, and elevated Mahmud to the status of a hero”. Mahmud’s iconoclasm, moreover, was always directed against non-Islamic objects. When he attacked the Ismailis (regarded as heretics by the Sunnis) in Multan, he did not destroy their mosque, but left it to decay.

The Committee of Historians has brushed the objection of the petitioners on the inadequate treatment of Hindu dynasties between the eighth and thirteenth centuries. That the objection is not without substance can be judged from the fact that among the ruling houses summarily dismissed or not mentioned at all are the Chandellas of Bundelkhand; the Paramaras of Malwa; the renowned Jayasimha Siddharaja of Gujarat: and the builders of the Lingaraja, Jagannath and Sun temples in Orissa. Surely exclusions of such magnitude reduce the authenticity of the text.

A few more examples of faulty presentation may be mentioned. Shankara has been dated to “probably” the ninth century, without clarifying that the tradition places him considerably earlier. An honest rendition demanded that the earlier dates associated with him also be given. Finally, it is remarkable that even now, while reconstructing the troubled history of the last two Sikh Gurus, recourse is taken to eighteenth century Persian works, and the Bichitr Natak, the near contemporary account written by Guru Tegh Bahadur’s son, Guru Gobind Singh, is not taken note of. But then selective use of sources has long been a Marxist preserve.

(The author is a noted columnist.)

2006-06-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

As their tactics backfire, they backtrack

By Meenakshi Jain

Lord Mahavira

Are Brahmins the Dalits of today?

2006-06-16T05:53:00.000-07:00

Are Brahmins the Dalits of today?

May 23, 2006

At a time when the Congress government wants to raise the quota for Other Backward Classes to 49.5 per cent in private and public sectors, nobody talks about the plight of the upper castes. The public image of the Brahmins, for instance, is that of an affluent, pampered class. But is it so today?

Doctors in arms

There are 50 Sulabh Shauchalayas (public toilets) in Delhi; all of them are cleaned and looked after by Brahmins (this very welcome public institution was started by a Brahmin). A far cry from the elitist image that Brahmins have!

There are five to six Brahmins manning each Shauchalaya. They came to Delhi eight to ten years back looking for a source of income, as they were a minority in most of their villages, where Dalits are in majority (60 per cent to 65 per cent). In most villages in UP and Bihar, Dalits have a union which helps them secure jobs in villages.

At Ground Zero of the quota protests

Did you know that you also stumble upon a number of Brahmins working as coolies at Delhi's railway stations? One of them, Kripa Shankar Sharma, says while his daughter is doing her Bachelors in Science he is not sure if she will secure a job.

"Dalits often have five to six kids, but they are confident of placing them easily and well," he says. As a result, the Dalit population is increasing in villages. He adds: "Dalits are provided with housing, even their pigs have spaces; whereas there is no provision for gaushalas (cowsheds) for the cows of the Brahmins."

The middle class deserves what it is getting

You also find Brahmin rickshaw pullers in Delhi. 50 per cent of Patel Nagar's rickshaw pullers are Brahmins who like their brethren have moved to the city looking for jobs for lack of employment opportunities and poor education in their villages.

Even after toiling the whole day, Vijay Pratap and Sidharth Tiwari, two Brahmin rickshaw pullers, say they are hardly able to make ends meet. These men make about Rs 100 to Rs 150 on an average every day from which they pay a daily rent of Rs 25 for their rickshaws and Rs 500 to Rs 600 towards the rent of their rooms which is shared by 3 to 4 people or their families.

Did you also know that most rickshaw pullers in Banaras are Brahmins?

Do our institutes connect with the real India?

This reverse discrimination is also found in bureaucracy and politics. Most of the intellectual Brahmin Tamil class has emigrated outside Tamil Nadu. Only 5 seats out of 600 in the combined UP and Bihar assembly are held by Brahmins -- the rest are in the hands of the Yadavs.

400,000 Brahmins of the Kashmir valley, the once respected Kashmiri Pandits, now live as refugees in their own country, sometimes in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi in appalling conditions. But who gives a damn about them? Their vote bank is negligible.

And this is not limited to the North alone. 75 per cent of domestic help and cooks in Andhra Pradesh are Brahmins. A study of the Brahmin community in a district in Andhra Pradesh (Brahmins of India by J Radhakrishna, published by Chugh Publications) reveals that today all purohits live below the poverty line.

Eighty per cent of those surveyed stated that their poverty and traditional style of dress and hair (tuft) had made them the butt of ridicule. Financial constraints coupled with the existing system of reservations for the 'backward classes' prevented them from providing secular education to their children.

Who are the real Dalits of India?

In fact, according to this study there has been an overall decline in the number of Brahmin students. With the average income of Brahmins being less than that of non-Brahmins, a high percentage of Brahmin students drop out at the intermediate level. In the 5 to 18 year age group, 44 per cent Brahmin students stopped education at the primary level and 36 per cent at the pre-matriculation level.

The study also found that 55 per cent of all Brahmins lived below the poverty line -- below a per capita income of Rs 650 a month. Since 45 per cent of the total population of India is officially stated to be below the poverty line it follows that the percentage of destitute Brahmins is 10 per cent higher than the all-India figure.

There is no reason to believe that the condition of Brahmins in other parts of the country is different. In this connection it would be revealing to quote the per capita income of various communities as stated by the Karnataka finance minister in the state assembly: Christians Rs 1,562, Vokkaligas Rs 914, Muslims Rs 794, Scheduled castes Rs 680, Scheduled Tribes Rs 577 and Brahmins Rs 537.

Appalling poverty compels many Brahmins to migrate to towns leading to spatial dispersal and consequent decline in their local influence and institutions. Brahmins initially turned to government jobs and modern occupations such as law and medicine. But preferential policies for the non-Brahmins have forced Brahmins to retreat in these spheres as well.

Caste shouldn't overwrite merit

According to the Andhra Pradesh study, the largest percentage of Brahmins today are employed as domestic servants. The unemployment rate among them is as high as 75 per cent. Seventy percent of Brahmins are still relying on their hereditary vocation. There are hundreds of families that are surviving on just Rs 500 per month as priests in various temples (Department of Endowments statistics).

Priests are under tremendous difficulty today, sometimes even forced to beg for alms for survival. There are innumerable instances in which Brahmin priests who spent a lifetime studying Vedas are being ridiculed and disrespected.

At Tamil Nadu's Ranganathaswamy Temple, a priest's monthly salary is Rs 300 (Census Department studies) and a daily allowance of one measure of rice. The government staff at the same temple receive Rs 2,500 plus per month. But these facts have not modified the priests' reputation as 'haves' and as 'exploiters.' The destitution of Hindu priests has moved none, not even the parties known for Hindu sympathy.

The tragedy of modern India is that the combined votes of Dalits/OBC and Muslims are enough for any government to be elected. The Congress quickly cashed in on it after Independence, but probably no other government than Sonia Gandhi's has gone so far in shamelessly dividing Indian society for garnering votes.

From the Indian Express: 'These measures will not achieve social justice'

The Indian government gives Rs 1,000 crores (Rs 10 billion) for salaries of imams in mosques and Rs 200 crores (Rs 2 billion) as Haj subsidies. But no such help is available to Brahmins and upper castes. As a result, not only the Brahmins, but also some of the other upper castes in the lower middle class are suffering in silence today, seeing the minorities slowly taking control of their majority.

How reservations fracture Hindu society

Anti-Brahminism originated in, and still prospers in anti-Hindu circles. It is particularly welcome among Marxists, missionaries, Muslims, separatists and Christian-backed Dalit movements of different hues. When they attack Brahmins, their target is unmistakably Hinduism.

So the question has to be asked: are the Brahmins (and other upper castes) of yesterday becoming the Dalits of today?

Francois Gautier

Anti-Brahmanism should stop!

2006-06-16T05:50:00.000-07:00

Anti-Brahmanism should stop!

June 15, 2006

The first article published by rediff on Brahmins as an underprivileged community, brought a flurry of reactions, mostly of surprise: "What, Brahmins as toilet cleaners, coolies, rickshaw pullers, priests earning less than Rs 150 a month... How is it possible, we always thought that Brahmins were a rich, fat, arrogant community?"

Many Brahmins and other upper castes expressed online their relief that someone was speaking about their plight, that for once they were not attacked, made fun of, ridiculed. Of course there were also a few hostile e-mails, accusing the author of upper casteism, of anti-Dalits bias.

One would have thought however, that at a time when reservation was the hottest journalistic topic, the media would have seized this story and made it its own. After all, isn't impartial journalism to show both sides of the story?

Don't you think, for instance, that the discovery that all 50 Sulabh Shauchalayas (public toilets) in Delhi are cleaned and looked after by Brahmins -- traditionally the task of the lowest of the lowest caste -- and that this noble institution was started by a Brahmin, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, makes a wonderful story, both for the print and electronic media?

That is what I believed, at any rate. So when I discovered that the Art of Living Foundation was conducting workshops for all coolies, irrespective of their religion and caste of the Delhi railway station -- and that quite a few of them were Brahmins -- I thought I could share this story and the Sulabh Shauchalayas scoop, with a few journalistic acquaintances, who would jump on it with glee. Unfortunately I was very wrong.

Initially, some young journalists were enthusiastic and joined us in our investigation. We expected the story to hit the headlines soon and be taken up by the entire press, hungry for something different than the strike of the medicos, or Arjun Singh's adamant attitude. But nothing happened.

We called them day after day, proposed some more data, but still no story came out. Then one of the young journalists, working for one of the largest media outfits in India told us off the record that the sub-editor, backed by the editor, had killed the story in true journalistic freedom.

The second scenario we encountered was stone silence: the star anchors, bureau chiefs, editors of national English newspapers whom I personally contacted, either did not return my calls or were evasive.

Third scenario: Downright hostility: "You're a right winger, a pro-BJP-RSS journalist" etc. What does truth and investigative journalism have to do with the BJP (who by the way did no more than the Congress for the Kashmiri Brahmins, for instance, when it was in power)? I don't know.

Some journalists, initially willing to do a story, backed out after some time under the pretext that the data was not solid enough. Not solid enough? Does flimsy and unchecked data ever stop the Indian media to publish slanderous stories in the recent past?

Then, I came to the conclusion that more than fifty years later, the Nehruvian culture which directly brainwashed two generations of Indians in certain thinking patterns, has survived today. Actually, you have to go farther back than Nehru. For Jawaharlal was a true end product of Macaulay's policy of creating Indians who would be Indians by the colour of their skins, but British in their thinking. Thus, the English outlook on India survives today in India's intellectual class, particularly the journalists, who often cast a Westernised, anti-spiritual, pro-minority, anti-majority, un-Indian, anti-Brahmins and other upper castes -- look on their own country.

It is true that Nehru started from a positive volition: How to solve India's huge class and caste disparity? How to appease a Muslim minority which ruled India ruthlessly for ten centuries and was not ready to be ruled by those who were for a long time Islam's pliant subjects?

But Nehru went overboard. He made the paupers of yesteryear the saints of modern India, allowing some states to literally hound out Brahmins and other upper castes. He twisted history and thanks to docile historians, made of cruel Muslim invaders and rulers, the benefactors of medieval India.

He went to the extent of excusing the razing and sacking of thousands of exquisite temples all over India, by saying that Muslim invaders such as Babar did it because these temples were full of hidden gold and jewels, damning again indirectly the poor hapless Brahmins, who were beheaded by Muslim invaders, crucified in Goa by the Portuguese Inquisition, vilified by British missionaries, and morally crucified today by their own brothers and sisters.

It is true that Brahmins may be paying today for the excesses of yesterday. In ancient times, as Sri Aurobindo wrote: 'A Brahmin was a Brahmin only if he cultivated the spiritual temperament and acquired the spiritual training which alone would qualify him for the task.'

But once Brahmanism became hereditary, arrogance, complacency and casteism became rampant, ultimately bringing the downfall of Brahmins, a downfall which the Dalai Lama defines (for his own people) as Black Karma.

Thus, thanks to the lingering influence of Nehruvianism, 'Brahmins' remain today a dirty word, even in the face of reality: that Dalits have considerably come up since 1947 in Indian society, that no nation in the world has done so much for its underprivileged (India had a Dalit President -- did the US ever have a Black President?). But the intellectual elite of India, which never mentions these facts, continues to hide its face in the sand like an ostrich, refusing to see the reality.

And rampant anti-Brahmanism and upper castes, first used by the Muslim invaders, then by the British colonialists and missionaries, is still in vogue at the hands of Nehruvians, Marxists, Indian Christians and politicians in search of the votes of Dalits and Muslims, which combined together make and unmake prime ministers.

Yet, Brahmins and other upper castes have played an invaluable role in Indian history, as Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of the Sulabh Shauchalaya Movement remarks: 'Society sustained the Brahmins and other upper castes earlier, who upheld the Hindu scriptures and Hindu culture. Today Hinduism is on the decline day-by-day. There is a lack of ancient knowledge. No political party has objected to reservation thanks to vote-bank politics. People have a very short memory. They have forgotten the contribution made by Brahmins to our society.'

And who says that Brahmins and other upper castes are anti-Dalits. Some of India's top avatars, saints and gurus were of low caste and are still worshipped today by all upper castes. Valmiki, the composer of the Ramayana, was a fisherman; Ved Vyasa, the epic poet of the Mahabharata, which also contains the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible of Future Humanity, was the son of a fisherwoman; Krishna was from the shepherd's caste. And are not today's Amritanandamayi or Satya Sai Baba of low caste birth? Don't they have millions of Indians, many of them from upper castes, bowing down to them?

Anti-Brahmanism has to be stopped!

This inter-caste war, triggered by the politicians' greed for votes, has to be defused.

FACT, my Foundation, which conducts exhibitions on persecuted minorities, whether the Kashmiri Pandits, the Christians, Buddhist Chakmas and Hindus suffering in Bangladesh at the hands of fundamentalists in Bangladesh, or the Tibetans facing a cultural and spiritual genocide in Tibet, decided to take things in hand.

We started, with the help of a few dedicated friends, a film on Brahmins and other upper castes as an underprivileged community. This film will lead to a photoexhibition and hopefully to a book. All testimonies and documents are welcome.

The future of this country lies in a unified India, where all castes will find their just place, where all will feel Indians first and belonging to this caste or that one, after.

Francois Gautier

A Hindu Movement Born

2006-06-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

A Hindu Movement Born
By: Moorthy Muthuswamy PhD
February 28, 2005

Feedback

(The views expressed here are author’s own. The writer is a nuclear physicist based in America. He is also a director of Indian American Intellectuals Forum, a New York-based non-profit organization. His contact address: MoorthyM@comcast.net)

Introduction

There has been an increasing awareness of genocidal acts of Islam and Muslims in South Asia – directed toward exterminating non-Muslim cultures in this part of the world and extend Islam’s fascist frontiers. This is particularly so among Indians settled in the United States. Such awareness didn’t exist when I started focusing on this topic about seven years ago. Since then a series of publications by me and others have built up this awareness that is now showing signs of becoming a movement.

Lacking an institutionalized backing Hindus in America are frustrated by their inability come together as a community to defend their interests. As I have pointed out, past has shown that “You are only as strong or as weak as your community”.

While many may not realize it, a Hindu movement has been underway to tackle militant Indian Islam right here in America. This paper discusses how an organized and focused movement can be built and take the war to the enemy.

What is at Stake?

Let me first point out what is at stake for Non-Resident Indians (NRI) and their families who don’t even live in India. If India fails and gets destroyed they will be seen as an extension of a failed civilization. This will lead to future generation Indian children disassociating themselves from Indian religion, language and culture. A much weakened or destroyed India could result in the repetition of Fijian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi experiences for Hindus around the world. On the other hand a thriving India will offer opportunities – from religious, cultural, economic to social. It will be a good “brand” to be associated with. A strong India will come to the aid of Hindus everywhere. Finally, we all look impotent in allowing Islam to destroy India. Time has come to permanently crush Islamic fascism!

Upper middle class and rich in India appear to benefit from freedom enshrined under Indian democracy. However, the escalating costs of battling militant Islam within India, subsidies and reservation extracted unfairly by Indian Muslims is taking away land, wealth and opportunities from deserving Hindus. Also, due to these costs India is unable to invest significantly in education, improve infrastructure etc to achieve strong economic growth rates and create more opportunities. Unlike the Hindus in cities, the Hindu poor in villages have not seen their lives improve. Frustrated, increasingly they are embracing naxal ideologies. Hence in the long-run, without a decisive leadership to deal with both fast-growing and extremized Muslims and naxals, India is all set to crumble from within. Upper middle class and even the rich will then loose everything, not just wealth -- like in Muslim majority regions of Pakistan, Bangladesh or Kashmir valley from where Hindus were driven out to India.

At the moment the majority Hindu population is too fragmented due to anti-majority, pro-jihadi left-oriented Indian media’s one-sided view. Hence this confused majority hardly understands the extent of the ongoing jihad directed at them and how to fight back. This Hindu fragmentation in combination with united Muslim pressure on elected regimes has led to extreme marginalizing of majority interests, and promotion of various forms of jihad Indian Muslims have readily embraced. Short-term freedom under the current dysfunctional Indian democracy certainly means eventual long-term annihilation (How can India Defeat Militant Islam?)!

Hindu Movement Building is on!

In a recent exchange between Indian express columnist Tavleen Singh and a jihadi-front represented by Teesta and Javed, most reader comments came from Hindu NRI based in America. This is activism at the very best. Also, the recent mobilizing in America against Association for India’s Development (AID), an organization with links to pro-jihadi communists in India is notable. Nowadays with the advent of Internet, Hindu NRI’s comments are often seen in most Indian newspapers and magazines. What is notable is NRI’s ability to articulate in a knowledgeable fashion and their promotion of Hindu majority’s interests.

Internet has made accessible vital alternate views of mine and many others, making Hindu fight back feasible. It has also created a new opportunity to bring together or “institutionalize” Hindu community in America. Internet has brought Hindus together, in ways, religious and social institutions could not! The movement we are now seeing with American Hindus is almost exclusively internet-based. This movement is inherently de-centralized (a good thing!) and multi-faceted.

India has been ravaged by Islam in the last sixty years or more because of this reason: Inability of Hindus in India to work together to promote their interests. The weakly institutionalized nature of Hinduism too has not helped. The root cause of this lies in a civilization that was under slavery for a thousand years (Slaves, Servants & Rulers). Left alone, current trends indicate that India is certain to be doomed under the onslaught of Islam.

I would put NRI in America as a community that is gaining the attributes of a ruling class. I am proposing here that Hindus based abroad, and particularly in the United States, help Hindus back home build a movement culminating in eradicating genocidal Islamic fascism. As we will see with the advent of Internet this is a doable project, and importantly, it will be an intellectually challenging and an immensely satisfying one. In addition, as I pointed out before, this is actually an investment in the future of NRI children.

At the moment, aided by Indian Muslims and strategized by Pakistanis, Saudi Arabia and many other West Asian Islamic nations are pumping huge amounts of wealth in order to destroy India and extend Islam’s frontiers. This can be only defeated by able NRI community’s efforts and with their wealth acting as a counter weight to help the beleaguered Hindu children of India.

De-legitimize Indian Islam and Indian Muslims

In my earlier analysis titled How were Srilankan Hindus United? I had mentioned “The appropriate way to define Indian Muslims is to describe them as modern-day cannibals living among the civilized who continue to devour the civilized.”

For the sake of completeness I will point out how Indian Muslims have massively marginalized non-Muslims and largely exterminated them and their culture in EVERY area of South Asia where they have power through majority status. They have now reserved almost 25% jobs and other opportunities for themselves at the expense of non-Muslims (Muslim Reservation = Jihad). Conclusively, this points to most Indian Muslims being corrupt, evil, inferior, and genocidal cannibals.

If one person can carry out various forms of jihad, so can a large number of people, with most in the population base supporting this jihad. This scenario has developed among Indian Muslims thanks to corrupt, fraudulent and fascist versions of Islam practiced in India.

Does education or living in America change this Indian Muslim cannibalism? The most prominent Indian Muslim association in America, Indian Muslim council USA (http://www.imc-usa.org) is conducting various forms of jihad on the Indian state and even on the Hindu community in America. The modus operandi of these cannibals is simple: portray Indian Muslims as innocent victims but downplay their acts of violence and jihadism, while unfairly maligning Hindu organizations. This again goes to prove how corrupt, inferior, genocidal Islam practiced in India is.

South Asian Muslims genuinely believe, as followers of Islam, they are superior in everyway – when the reality is exactly the opposite, as borne by various indicators of progress. India’s recent resurgence is almost exclusively due to Hindu community which has openly embraced modernism, while the evidence only indicates Indian Muslims’ deep embrace of medievalism (Dynamics of Proselytizing). In fact, indiscriminate killings of Hindu children, women and men by South Asian Muslims in the last sixty years or more tell us that they do not even think that Hindus deserve to live. This calls for a strategy whereby South Asian Muslims and South Asian Islam must be demeaned and discredited in every way possible to create confusion among the flock and to finally set the stage for using massive force to permanently neutralize their threat.

Indian community in America shouldn’t give any form of representation to Muslims of Indian origin affiliated with jihad sponsoring associations. The onus must be put on Indian Muslims to prove that they want to be part of civilization.

It is legitimate to investigate the origins of Muslim “holy book” given that its tenets are used to impose war on non-Muslims. As agreed even by most Islamic scholars, the Koran was put together in the current format at least one hundred years after the death of Prophet Mohammed. It is said that when the Prophet made “revelations”, notes were taken in leaves and other material. Given the level of the ignorance exhibited by the Arabic tribes at that time it is highly unlikely that they could really appreciate any “revelations” or distinguish “real” ones. Even then, here is an open question: How complete, accurate or well-preserved were these “notes” for over one hundred years? This observation points out that calling this “holy book” as the “word of god” may be the biggest fraud imposed on humanity. This may also imply that the Muslim “law” -- Sharia may have little basis or credibility.

It is also quite appropriate to categorize Indian Muslims as slaves of non-performing and fascist Arab Muslim imperialism. The bottom line is that this proven inferior Arab-originated ideology couldn’t bring progress to most South Asian Muslim children and has perpetuated a never-ending war using them as a tool.

Even an America that is pluralistic and tolerant has seen the hollowness of its Muslim residents. Recently over 40% polled wanted American Muslim rights be restricted. In the long run this spells a bleak future for Islam in America, and once again discredits Islam and Muslims.

Taking on Journalists and Pseudo-seculars

It is no exaggeration to say that left-dominated Indian English language dailies are the gatekeepers of pseudo-secularism – a view that puts the blame on the beleaguered majority even as it is taken advantage of and victimized by a violent and exclusive minority.

It is a must to win over this Hindu pseudo-secular crowd if India is to successfully confront Islam. What is the reason behind their outlook? Among the reasons: the left dominated – pseudo-secular -- humanities faculty in Indian universities under whom the journalists studied. This, in combination with lack of objective analysis in media has led to sustaining utterly false ideas about what Indian Islam and Muslims stand for. Also, humanities, journalism in particular, get at best mediocre students, with the elite preferring to acquire professional degrees. These journalists have little idea of how problems are solved or wealth is created – in short, they have little idea of how a functional democracy works. Their sense of inferiority complex vis-à-vis elite of the society has been taken advantage of by Islamists who falsely portray their community as victims (Journalists: Unwitting Friends of Jihadis?).

In the long-run well-articulated submissions from NRI in the form of opinions or letters to editor should help change the mindset of the editorial boards in India-based newspapers. Even many Indian journalists are seeing these points of views for the first time. Also, the status of NRI as able and intelligent people can only help. Even these pseudo-secular Hindus are afraid of Islam. When they are made to see that Indian Islam and Indian Muslims are endangering the future of their children they will begin to see the light. Another area to work on is to contact the ownership of the newspapers and make them see how national interests and the very future of their children are being undermined by their editorial boards.

Entrenched and adamant pseudo-secular journalists or others need to be discredited by pointing out their “weak” humanities (if that is the case) background, and their possible mediocre high school track record. Almost the entire pro-jihadi gang of Indian pseudo-seculars in the United States – Angana Chatterjee, Vijay Prashad, to name a few – consists of individuals with such a background.

Action Items Going Forward

It is important for the movement to have a vision at hand. This vision should drive the action and strategies at the ground level. For instance, for most South Asian Muslims the vision is an Islamic conquest of South Asia. These communities have proven that they would use every level of barbarism to achieve this vision. This clear and evil vision has made South Asian Muslim communities very effective in advancing their cause.

The underlying vision for Hindus or even non-Muslim Indians is eradication of genocidal Islamic ideology within India’s boundaries. I am fairly confident that this is an achievable goal. I would like to further divide this vision into two stages.

Stage I

Since this movement has to eventually yield results in India, at this stage the goal should be to help Hindu majority in India identify Indian Muslims as the root cause of poverty and wealth-loss, insecurity, naxal insurgency, loss of jobs and opportunities (How were Srilankan Hindus United?). In other words, help most Hindus understand the big picture of Islamization of South Asia, including India at their expense and how to defeat it. To achieve these goals, I suggest the following action areas:

Any project that weakens Indian Muslims and discredits Indian Islam or strengthens Hindus vis-à-vis Muslims is a good project
Letter writing in India-based news media and in Indian-American news media -- make sure to list your educational credentials and professional standing
Put the blame for naxal insurgency on Indian Muslims
Befriend Indian editors visiting America, conveying the extent cannibalism practiced by Indian Muslims and put the fear of Islam in their minds. Also, use wealth to induce fear of Islam in the minds non-Muslim Indian dignitaries of all hue and suggest to them how India can finally overcome this centuries of bullying by Muslims
Leverage subscriptions in weekly newspapers such as India Abroad to take an anti-jihadi and pro-Hindu stance
Swamp pseudo-secular/jihadi arranged meetings on Kashmir, Gujarat etc with nationalistic fellows and simply impose our own agenda on them
Cajole nationalist relief organizations such as India Development and Relief Fund (IDRF) to focus on rehabilitation of Hindus – the forgotten and oppressed people of South Asia
Websites such as USA: www.Indiacause.com, Canada: www.hccanada.com, can act as information centers for mobilizing activities -- countering the meetings organized by jihadis and their pseudo-secular friends. Nationalists NRI may find attending these meetings and voicing their views a good way of venting their inbuilt anger and be part of a movement
Islamic fascism’s power flows from wealth. In order to neutralize it, non-Muslim Indians need to be nudged toward NOT giving employment or business to Indian Muslims – on the grounds that Indian Muslims are proven bloodthirsty, selfish and ruthless cannibals out to exterminate Hindus and other non-Muslims
There should be an effort for a more unified front involving non-Muslim Indians given their aversion to Islam and given the reality that only a strong and united Hindu majority can ensure a secure, secular and prosperous India at the border of Islamic fascism

Stage II

Extensive campaigning by NRI as noted in Stage I should lead to flowering of a movement within India itself. This should materialize in regimes and leadership with a broad-based support that can act decisively against cannibalism Islam represents in India. An effective regime would undertake the following steps (Islam’s Weakness):

Declaration of emergency or martial law
Full-fledged military strikes on power centers of genocidal and cannibalistic Islam and liquidation of its hierarchy and core supporters. It has been shown that militant Islam is a one trick pony. Once these power centers are taken out, it has no way of striking back (The Art of War on Terror)
Liquidate naxal leadership by calling them as friends of jihadis. Hindus across the society are simply fearful of Islam
Ban the practitioners of cannibalism from jobs and holding property
Drive out cannibal populations in the border areas and Muslim Bangladeshis to Pakistan or Bangladesh – the natural South Asian homes of cannibals
Deploy religious freedom force (New Ideas for a New War) to liberate Indian Muslims from inferior, fascist and useless cannibalism to Hinduism
With cannibalism gone, time to focus on wealth creation (A New Paradigm: Civilization through Wealth Creation)
Only an Islamic fascism-free India can ensure a stable, secure nation that can focus on wealth creation. Large scale wealth creation will lead to uplifting of everyone, including the poor and a capable Hindu population. Such a capable population will automatically reflect a reformed Hinduism, including dissolved caste and other hierarchies

Moorthy Muthuswamy PhD

Is USA no. 1

2006-06-11T22:37:00.000-07:00

No concept lies more firmly embedded in our national character than the notion that the USA is "No. 1," "the greatest." Our broadcast media are, in essence, continuous advertisements for the brand name "America Is No. 1." Any office seeker saying otherwise would be committing political suicide. In fact, anyone saying otherwise will be labeled "un-American." We're an "empire," ain't we? Sure we are. An empire without a manufacturing base. An empire that must borrow $2 billion a day from its competitors in order to function. Yet the delusion is ineradicable. We're No. 1. Well...this is the country you really live in:
The United States is 49th in the world in literacy (the New York Times, Dec. 12, 2004).
The United States ranked 28th out of 40 countries in mathematical literacy (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).
"The International Adult Literacy Survey...found that Americans with less than nine years of education 'score worse than virtually all of the other countries'" (Jeremy Rifkin's superbly documented book The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream, p.78).
Our workers are so ignorant and lack so many basic skills that American businesses spend $30 billion a year on remedial training (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004). No wonder they relocate elsewhere!
"The European Union leads the U.S. in...the number of science and engineering graduates; public research and development (R&D) expenditures; and new capital raised" (The European Dream, p.70).
"Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature" (The European Dream, p.70).
Nevertheless, Congress cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004).
Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels fell for the first time in three decades, but increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent (NYT, Dec. 21, 2004). We're not the place to be anymore.
The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
"The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
"U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
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The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
"Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
"Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).
"Fourteen of the 20 largest commercial banks in the world today are European.... In the chemical industry, the European company BASF is the world's leader, and three of the top six players are European. In engineering and construction, three of the top five companies are European.... The two others are Japanese. Not a single American engineering and construction company is included among the world's top nine competitors. In food and consumer products, Nestlé and Unilever, two European giants, rank first and second, respectively, in the world. In the food and drugstore retail trade, two European companies...are first and second, and European companies make up five of the top ten. Only four U.S. companies are on the list" (The European Dream, p.68).
The United States has lost 1.3 million jobs to China in the last decade (CNN, Jan. 12, 2005).
U.S. employers eliminated 1 million jobs in 2004 (The Week, Jan. 14, 2005).
Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months (NYT, Jan. 9, 2005).
Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt. (That's why we talk nice to them.) "By helping keep mortgage rates from rising, China has come to play an enormous and little-noticed role in sustaining the American housing boom" (NYT, Dec. 4, 2004). Read that twice. We owe our housing boom to China, because they want us to keep buying all that stuff they manufacture.
Sometime in the next 10 years Brazil will probably pass the U.S. as the world's largest agricultural producer. Brazil is now the world's largest exporter of chickens, orange juice, sugar, coffee, and tobacco. Last year, Brazil passed the U.S. as the world's largest beef producer. (Hear that, you poor deluded cowboys?) As a result, while we bear record trade deficits, Brazil boasts a $30 billion trade surplus (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
As of last June, the U.S. imported more food than it exported (NYT, Dec. 12, 2004).
Bush: 62,027,582 votes. Kerry: 59,026,003 votes. Number of eligible voters who didn't show up: 79,279,000 (NYT, Dec. 26, 2004). That's more than a third. Way more. If more than a third of Iraqis don't show for their election, no country in the world will think that election legitimate.
One-third of all U.S. children are born out of wedlock. One-half of all U.S. children will live in a one-parent house (CNN, Dec. 10, 2004).
"Americans are now spending more money on gambling than on movies, videos, DVDs, music, and books combined" (The European Dream, p.28).
"Nearly one out of four Americans [believe] that using violence to get what they want is acceptable" (The European Dream, p.32).
Forty-three percent of Americans think torture is sometimes justified, according to a PEW Poll (Associated Press, Aug. 19, 2004).
"Nearly 900,000 children were abused or neglected in 2002, the last year for which such data are available" (USA Today, Dec. 21, 2004).
"The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever" (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).
No. 1? In most important categories we're not even in the Top 10 anymore. Not even close.
The USA is "No. 1" in nothing but weaponry, consumer spending, debt, and delusion.

Facts About Balochistan

2006-06-08T08:29:00.000-07:00

Facts About Balochistan
by
Baloch Society of North America (BSO-NA)

Prior to losing its sovereignty, Balochistan was never a part of Iran or Pakistan in recent history. In 1947 when the British Indian government was dissolved, all its treaties with Balochistan, an independent and sovereign state, also ended. But, both Iran and Pakistan have illegally and forcibly occupied Balochistan in breach of all international laws. This illegal occupation of Balochistan must end.
Ever since the occupation of Balochistan, the Baloch (indigenous people of Balochistan) have resisted foreign rule, and are still fighting against Iran and Pakistan to liberate their country.
In 1948, the first major Baloch insurgency was organized under the leadership of Prince Karim, younger brother of the ruler of Balochistan. The Pakistani military forces arrested him and incarcerated him along with his comrades as common criminals, not as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention.
Nawab Nowruz Khan Zehri, a 90-year-old Baloch leader, organized the second Baloch insurgency in 1958. A year later, the Pakistani military authorities arrested him along with his sons and nephews. His relatives were hanged and he was spared hanging to die a natural death in jail.
The first Baloch War of Independence started in 1970, and it lasted for 5 years. During this War, the Pakistani armed forces used sophisticated weapons and were supported by Iranian gunship helicopters (piloted by Iranians) to crush the Baloch uprising. Over 50,000 Baloch and 15,000 Pakistani soldiers died in this war.
The second Baloch War of Independence began in March 2005 when the Pakistani military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, refused to persecute a military officer (relative of a serving general) for raping an ethnic Sindhi physician in the Dera Bugti area of Balochistan. To further stroke the sensitivities of the Baloch, he provoked the Baloch nation by making derogatory statements. When the Baloch voiced their concerns, he sent the Pakistani armed forces to bomb the civilian population of Dera Bugti killing 60 and injuring more than 200 non-combatant Baloch nationals.
In an attempt to assassinate the 79 years old Baloch veteran nationalist leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, the military forces bombed his personal residence. Fortunately, he escaped the carnage, and now he is up in arms along with his Baloch freedom fighters defending Balochistan.
Since the occupation of Balochistan, the Islamic republics of Iran and Pakistan have systematically launched an “ethnic cleansing” operation against the Baloch people. For your information, the Baloch are secular and liberal, and their belief system clashes with the extremist Muslims of Iran and Pakistan. Although the colonizers are forcing the Baloch people to lose their national identity and aspirations of liberating Balochistan, the Baloch are resisting such efforts vehemently.
Being the inhabitants of the resource-rich Balochistan, the Baloch people live in extreme poverty due to exploitation of their resources, like oil, gas and other minerals, by the occupying forces of Iran and Pakistan. Economic deprivation and lack of infrastructure development during the last 58 years of occupation has turned Balochistan into one of the most under-developed regions in the world.
There are barely any educational facilities of any repute that dispenses specialized skills to the Baloch youth. But, with Pakistani and Saudi Arabian funding, the Pakistani intelligence agencies have established numerous Madrassas (religious seminaries) throughout Balochistan to transform the secular belief system of the Balochi culture.
In Iran and Pakistan, it is considered an act of treason and labeled an anti-state activity to teach Balochi language and history in schools.
Iranian and Pakistani government departments and its armed forces discourage employing any ethnic Baloch. All the senior bureaucrats serving in Balochistan are from outside Balochistan. The employment situation is worse in those departments that are responsible for maintaining law and order in Balochistan, as they are totally composed of non-Baloch people.
In both Iran and Pakistan, the Baloch are considered anti-state elements. The state sponsored media labels them as “miscreants”, “bandits” and “terrorists”.
President Muharraf calls the Baloch War of Independence as a mere pinprick by three tribal chieftains. He and his propaganda machine have misled and confused the global community about the seriousness of the freedom struggle by the Baloch people.
There are over 6,000 Baloch activists arrested or missing in Pakistan. It is believed that the intelligence agencies have sent them to Gitmo-style prisons where they are either tortured or murdered.
The Pakistan government has stationed more than 65,000 fully armed troops in Balochistan supported by airpower to solidify its occupation of Balochistan and protect its access and exploitation of the Baloch natural resources. They are also building three military bases within Balochistan to contain the Baloch freedom struggle.
There are more than 600 Gestapo-style military check-posts erected throughout Balochistan to control the free movement of the Baloch people. The conditions are so bad that the Baloch people are now like prisoners in their own land.
With Chinese assistance, the Pakistanis are building the Gwadar Port on the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz so that the Chinese can install their listening post to monitor all shipping movements in the region. This development is marginalizing the political demographics of the Baloch by populating the area with non-Baloch, primarily people from Punjab.
Many prominent Baloch leaders in Pakistan, who want to seek asylum in foreign countries due to deteriorating conditions in Balochistan, have been put on the Exit Control List (ECL) and cannot leave the country. This act is against all human decency and it certainly violates their right as a human.
Amnesty International, Asian Human Rights, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan have repeatedly exposed the gross human rights violations committed by the Government of Pakistan in Balochistan.
Pakistan and possibly Iran are using Balochistan as their site for nuclear testing and dumping nuclear waste. The local population has strongly objected to such use of their land by the occupation forces, but to no avail.
The Baloch people are an oppressed nation, and they want the global community to get involved to assist in reinstating the sovereignty of Balochistan.
In his recent State of the Union speech, President Bush stated that those nations that live under tyranny, the United States would support their freedom struggle.
The Baloch nation pleads to the United Nations, the United States, and the community of nations to end the illegal occupation of Balochistan and stop the massacre of the Baloch people by governments of Iran and Pakistan.

Mir Azaad Khan Baloch
General Secretary
The Government of Balochistan in Exile
http://governmentofbalochistan.blogspot.com/

Monday, May 29, 2006

Merger or Annexation of Balochistan

We will begin to discuss the merger of Balochistan into Pakistan and the treatment that the Khan and the people of Balochistan received at the hands of the new, inexperienced, incompetent, but already representing their class interests, politicians who held the reigns of power. It must be made clear here that the Quaid-e-Azam immediately after independence became too ill to be able to oversee the daily running of government and left this to his trusted lieutenants. At the same time negotiations for the merger of Balochistan with Pakistan also devolved onto the shoulders of these very people. The subsequent problems in the merger and the maltreatment of Balochistan by the federal government began from this time onwards, leading to civil unrest in Balochistan for decades and culminating in the bloody civil war of 1973 to 1977.

Even after the armed resistance of 1948, 1958, 1960 to 1968, and the civil war of 1973-77, the attitude of all federal governments, civilian or military, has not changed in the least towards Balochistan. Herein lies the genesis of the so-called ‘Balochistan Problem’.

Following the preliminary talks between the nominees of the Kalat Government and the Government of Pakistan, the Quaid-e-Azam invited the Khan of Kalat to Karachi for discussions on the future status of Kalat. These discussions took place in October 1947. The Quaid-e-Azam advised the Khan to expedite the merger in view of the developing dangers from the neighbouring countries like Afghanistan and potential threat from the Soviet Union to the newborn State of Pakistan. He said, “I would sincerely advise you to merge your State with Pakistan. Both the States will benefit by this measure and as far as the demands and other problems of Kalat are concerned, these will be finally decided in a spirit of mutual friendship.” The Khan replied, “I have great respect for your advice and it is my considered opinion that Kalat’s merger is necessary in order to make Pakistan stronger. In this connection, I would suggest Balochistan, being a land of numerous tribes, the people there must be duly consulted in the matter prior to any decision I take, for, according to the prevalent tribal convention, no decision can be binding upon them unless they are taken into confidence beforehand by their Khan.”

With this provisional agreement the Khan returned to Kalat and promptly summoned the Kalat State Houses of Parliament, the Dar-ul-Awam and Dar-ul-Umra, and proposed to the House to accord him a mandate on the matter of Kalat’s merger with Pakistan. Both the Houses, however, contended unanimously that the proposal of Kalat’s merger militated against the spirit of the earlier agreement arrived at between the Kalat Government and the spokesmen of Pakistan on August 4, 1947, as also against the Independence Act of 1947. In view of this contention, the members proposed further talks with the Government of Pakistan on the basis of the agreements referred to. This decision of Kalat’s Parliament was forwarded to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Pakistan, for necessary processing.

Shortly afterwards, the Quaid-e-Azam visited Sibi and during his stay there insisted upon the Khan to sign the merger documents in his personal capacity. Trivializing his own Houses of Parliament, the Khan affirmed to the Quaid that on his individual persuasion, the members of both Houses of Kalat’s State Parliament had signified their consent for merger, subject to such inconsequential conditions:

No laws will be enacted without the prior consent of the Baloch tribes as might affect their traditional customs and traditions.

The presence of all tribal Sardars is necessary at the ceremony of Kalat’s merger, if and when it takes place, and the Khan of Kalat and the Quaid-e-Azam should sign the merger documents before them.

The Quaid and Government of Pakistan should issue a statement eulogizing the role of the Baloch people in the cause of the historic culmination in the establishment of the sovereign Muslim State of Pakistan.

Lastly, the Quaid-e-Azam should personally address the traditional gathering of tribal Sardars, appreciating and acknowledging their sincere services in the cause of Islam and Pakistan.

The Khan by putting these conditions forward was trying to use the Quaid’s personal influence and persuasiveness to get the members of his Parliament to agree to merge Balochistan with Pakistan without preconditions. He further suggested that the Quaid should instruct the Agent to the Governor General (who was an Englishman at the time) to guide the Baloch tribal leaders into accepting the merger of their State without any hesitation. These manipulative measures undertaken by the Khan make it abundantly clear that the Baloch leaders were not in favour of the merger without first thrashing out crucial issues like constitutional status, provincial autonomy, judicial system, resource allocations, taxation, socio-economic development programmes, and all other governance subjects of vital importance in the life of a nation.

The Khan agreed to merge Kalat State with Pakistan in his subsequent discussions with S. B. Shah who confirmed the same in a letter to the Khan with these points:

“That you (the Khan) have at last acquiesced to merge Kalat State with Pakistan for the benefit of the people of Kalat.”

“That you have summoned the Dar-ul-Awam and Dar-ul-Umra on the 21st of this month, and that you would let us know the decision arrived at by them.”

Accordingly the Quaid handed over the matter to his newly formed cabinet. The members of the cabinet were new entrants to such high office and lacked the requisite experience of handling sensitive matters like the ethnological, historical, cultural and traditional background of the Baloch and the peculiar status of Kalat State vis-à-vis the agreements made between Kalat, the British, and subsequently Pakistan. The Quaid himself was by now very sick and weak in health and therefore unable to take part in governance or negotiations in any meaningful manner. His deputies were not of the same calibre and therefore it is no surprise that the affairs of Balochistan were mishandled from the very beginning. The Cabinet approached the merger of Balochistan with Pakistan in an atmosphere of apprehension and animosity.

The Khan still went ahead with his plans for the merger and informed the Government of Pakistan that:

My Government will get the merger of Kalat State finalized within three months.

In pursuance of Baloch traditions, the Khan of Kalat will proceed to Karachi along with his advisors to sign the merger documents as soon as these are finally drafted.

The federal cabinet, in the meantime, basing their policy formulations on absurd assumptions, was working on a scheme to break up the 500-year old State. The nature of their scheme, as it turned out subsequently, was tantamount to a political castration of the Baloch people. The cabinet decided to cut off Kharan and Lasbela by giving them an equal status to Kalat and obtaining their ‘mergers’ with Pakistan directly. Makran, which had been a part of the Kalat State for the last 300 years, was made independent of Kalat on March 17, 1948, and one of the three Sardars made its ruler. Thus Makran too was made a part of Pakistan. These hasty, illogical, irrational and politically illegal and oppressive steps naturally disillusioned the Baloch people. They rightly felt that all their erstwhile services and sacrifices in the cause of Pakistan were now forgotten. So deep was their despair and frustration that several of them wanted to revolt, and some did take to the hills making no secret of their intentions.

The neighbouring countries were quick to take notice of this vulnerable situation in Pakistan just a year after its birth. Reaction to this situation was particularly sharp in Afghanistan, India and Kashmir, resulting in:

The government and the people of Afghanistan becoming increasingly suspicious and adopting a hostile attitude towards Pakistan over the Durand Line.

Finding Pakistan in trouble, India annexed Hyderabad State on September 9, 1948, and militarily subdued it by September 17.

Capitalising on the situation, the Maharaja of Kashmir also merged his State with India.

Sheikh Asad Rahman
Freelance Columnist

Roots of terrorism - Hindus suffered maximum brunt

2006-06-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

A Report

Roots of terrorism
Hindus suffered maximum brunt

From Narain Kataria

Symposium on roots of terrorism in Washington, D.C.

A Symposium on “Roots of terrorism” was organised by America’s Truth Forum in Washington, D.C. last month. It was attended by prominent and highly-placed scholars and experts on Islamic Studies. Most of them were celebrities and frequent guests on national TV and Radio Stations. Dr. Babu Suseelan, a Psychologist and Director of Addiction Research Institute, PA and Board Member of Indian American Intellectuals Forum (IAIF) presented his viewpoint in a forceful manner.

The symposium was well attended by about 400 intellectuals and US opinion makers; majority of whom were Jewish and Christian Americans. IAIF members too were present in a sizable number. This was a rare occasion for IAIF members to interact with American mainstream personalities and exchange the Indian viewpoint openly on the menace of terrorism. It was, probably, for the first time that the presence and scholarship of Hindu Americans was recognised and appreciated by renowned global experts on counter-terrorism. Surprisingly, many of these well recognised experts on counter-terrorism did not know enough about the terrible atrocities perpetrated on peaceful Hindus by the Islamic invaders and rulers.

Dr. Babu Suseelan explained that it was absolutely essential for the world to understand the deadly ideology that successfully transforms the simple human beings into deadly suicide bombers and terrorists.

He said that we cannot deal with the problem of terrorism until and unless we completely comprehend the ideology which extols the virtues of killing and preaches hate, incites violence and enjoins on its followers to instill terror in the hearts of those who do not believe.

Many of the Islamic injunctions make the co-existence of Muslims with any other people almost impossible. That is the reason why Muslims have been in a state of perpetual war wherever they live, be it Afghanistan or Iraq, Chechnya or Sudan, Kashmir or Thailand, Indonesia or Bangladesh, Philippine or Spain, USA, UK, or India.

It is vital to understand that Islamic menace exists because of liberal’s habitual tolerance of intolerance. Their tolerance of intolerance is not tolerance. This type of pathological tolerance, sobering sympathy for Jihadists and stony indifference to victims is immoral and barbaric.

Tracing the history of India, Dr. Suseelan pointed out that the Afghanistan was once Hindu and a part of the original India of that time. In 1947, Pakistan too was forcibly carved out of the Indian Territory by Islamists. Now, feverish efforts are on by all Islamic nations to wrest the Indian Kashmir from the Hindu India. Threats of violence, loot, murder and rape of Hindus—all familiar tools of terrorism—have become a routine thing in Kashmir today.

Some of us mistakenly believe that terrorism in the world began from 9/11/2001. This assumption is based on ignorance, lack of historical background and devoid of factual data. For example, India has been experiencing terrorism for hundreds of years. Even the so-called Moghul King ‘Akbar-the-Great’ had killed 30,000 to 40,000 innocent Hindus in one day.

It is common knowledge in India that 14,000 young Hindu girls had to burn themselves in fire in a city named Chittor in a western sate of Rajasthan in India when Hindu soldiers were not able to defend the honor of their womenfolk against the barbarian Islamic forces. Timur-the-Terrible ordered his soldiers to kill 100,000 Hindu prisoners in one day. Tuzk-i-Timuri, the book written by his historian records ‘In a short span of time all the people in the fort were put to sword, and in the course of one hour the heads of 10,000 infidels were cut off. The sword of Islam was washed in the blood of the infidels.’

Almost entire world knows that six million Jewish people were murdered by Nazis. It is also known that 1.2 million Armenians were butchered by Turkish Muslims.

Will Durant, the celebrated author of ‘The Story of Civilization’ has said that “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history.” Anwar Shaikh, a Pakistani Muslim scholar of repute settled in UK, in his book ‘This is Jihad’ says that “The Muslims must fight non-Muslims. Mr. Koenraad Elst, the Belgian scholar and Indologist says that there is a place in Afghanistan called The Hindu Kush, which means the slaughter of Hindu.

At present, Hindus are under siege in India. Muslim population there is rising with leaps and bounds. There are 162 million Muslims living in Pakistan. There are approximately 150 to 160 million Muslims in India; Bangladesh has another 147 million Muslims. Roughly one-third of the world’s Muslim population lives in the Indian sub-continent. This is a very frightening scenario for India.

Enlightened audience in the high-profile Symposium was horrified and shocked at the information provided and profusely applauded Dr. Suseelan time and again. Later, many groups invited him to speak on television, radio, and in their meetings.

These were some of the luminaries who participated in the Symposium: R. James Woolsey, former Director of CIA, Dr. Paul Williams, former Consultant to FBI, Dr. Bruce Tefft, a founding member of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center, Dr. Andrew Bostom, Editor of “The Legacy of Jihad”, Joe Kaufman, Investigative Journalist for Frontpage Magazine, Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch, David Horowitz, President of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Walid Shobat, a former PLO functionary, Brigitte Gabriel, a former anchor for world news in the Middle East and a prominent Arab-American journalist, Dr. Harvey Kushner, a noted author, lecturer, professor and internationally recognized authority on terrorism, Kenneth Timmerman, a nominee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

(The writer is President, Indian American Intellectuals Forum, New York.)

Paradoxes of the oriental mind

2006-06-08T07:32:00.000-07:00

Think It Over

Paradoxes of the oriental mind

By M.S.N. Menon

Inscrutable—that is what the West says of the Eastern mind. More so of the Japanese and Chinese mind.

Buddhism turned the Indian into a man of peace; but it turned the Samurai (Japanese) into a man of war. Paradox? Yes. There is something in Japan that we are yet to understand.

In 1543, a Portuguese ship came up blazing its guns. The Japanese copied it, adapted it and improved it. The Portuguese never again took to their adventures in Japanese waters.

In 1549 the Jesuit priest Francis Xavier came to save the Japanese from their alleged pagan spirits. The Japanese asked him: Where was your Christian God all these years? Didn’t He know of our existence? In 1636 Japan banned Christianity. Today 40 per cent of the Japanese population are Christians! And Japan is an associate member of the Whiteman’s club!

It is said that Japan has been a closed country for centuries. America forced it open in early 19th century. In a hundred years or so, Japan learned all that there was to learn from the West. What was more, Japan defeated Russia in 1904, annexed Korea, set up a Directorate over Manchukuo (China), carried out a massacre in Peking, attacked Pearl Harbour and, finally, occupied much of Asia during the Second World War. Asia was terrified. Europe and America were stunned.

The atomic devastation was unprecedented.

Did this great tragedy compel Japan to a new way of life? Not entirely.

Here was an island nation, which was living in constant dread of instant death and devastation from volcanoes and earthquakes, with little resource of its own. It should have become a nation of peaceful philosophers. But it became a militaristic nation. It drew out of Zen Buddhism (of all things) the cult of the Samurai—a military way of life!

They call Japan “God’s country” in all seriousness, worship the Emperor as divine and have a religion (Shintoism).

How can one know this country and its people? We can have no ready answers. And we have not yet given much thought to this, either. But we must. Japan is important for us as long as China’s intentions remain an enigma.

America tried to convert Japan into a Western style democracy. The success is superficial. The mind of Japan was and is beyond the reach of America.

The world was fascinated by the Japanese work culture. But, remember, it was this same work culture that produced the suicide bombers during the Second World War and the men who were ready to do harakiri.

Foreign journalists and academics are still kept at a distance. They are never allowed to have a free run of the country as in America. It is not easy to break this cultural barrier.

Japan may not have a censorship system. But it has a way of filtering the news for local and foreign consumption. And it has a strict screening system for foreign teachers. The idea is to prevent the foreign teachers from having long-term intimacy with the Japanese people and the subjects they are supposed to teach.

Few students go to Japan today to do research for the same reason. So, Japan gets its research done abroad through endowments. Thus, the MIT had 14 Japanese endowments at one time. Few countries “pick the brains” of the world as assiduously as the Japanese.

The Japanese are secretive by nature. Thus, they do not talk of their atrocities during the Second World War, nor do they allow these to be part of their text books. Frank discussion is, therefore, almost difficult to have.

It is said that Japan is sympathetic to India’s nuclear programme in view of the common threat from China. What are the facts? Japan has done everything to block India’s nuclear programme, but it remains mute about China’s programme. Inscrutable? Worse.

But worst of all is the paradox that while Japan used to live larger-than-life (to wit, its Kabuki dance form and the Samurai cult), today the emphasis is on the miniaturisation of life. Where will it take Japan? It is difficult to say.

Indian Muslims’ dilemma

2006-06-08T07:25:00.000-07:00

Comment

Indian Muslims’ dilemma

India can profit by honestly confronting historic truth
The secular and the Muslim

By Radha Rajan

Starting with acute intolerance of important Hindu festivals like Holi, Ramnavami and Ganesh Chaturthi, the size of the Muslim population in these pockets has determined the nature and dimensions of Muslim hostility towards Hindus, which is from intolerance for Hindu festivals to ethnic cleansing, genocide, separatism and finally secession.

Secularism was White Christian civilization’s tool for “sharing sovereignty”—Chris Patten’s favourite phrase, a tool cleverly crafted to carry forward and intensify White Christianity’s homogenizing mission.

The downturn in US-Saudi foreign relations and the new turn (up or down remains to be seen) in Indo-Saudi relations had its direct fallout when two Indian Muslim religious leaders demanded of Italian Sonia Gandhi and the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ‘resolve’ the Kashmir issue. The world’s worst-kept secret is finally out—Kashmir was never a test case for Indian brand of ‘secularism’ as some Indian Muslims made it out to be. The call given by these two Muslim religious leaders has finally exposed the truth that Kashmir has always been a pan-Islamic issue and that is why it has been unfailingly raised and discussed in the OIC and the reason why Osama bin Laden has finally turned his beady eye towards India.

The OIC for its part has not minced words with the Indian government—last month it declared that India’s observer status in the OIC is “conditional upon the just settlement of the Kashmir issue”. India did not notice the disproportionate nature of what was being demanded by the OIC and what was being offered in turn—Hindu India’s territory for jehadi Islam (yet again) in turn for observer status in OIC! Our strategic and counter-terrorism ‘experts’ too have not cared to raise the question about what constitutes a ‘just settlement’ or the question why bin Laden has finally turned his attention to Kashmir and how did these Indian Muslim religious leaders presage bin Laden’s intentions and issue the call a few days in advance of bin Laden himself and also why, all of a sudden, Kashmir has openly become the single-point focus of the Islamic world.

Significantly, within days of the religious leaders’ demand to Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister to ‘resolve’ the Kashmir issue, the Saudi King is reported to have offered to mediate between India and Pakistan “to the mutual benefit of both”. And within days of the Saudi monarch’s offer to mediate, jehadi Muslims allegedly belonging to LeT massacred 32 Hindus in Jammu—19 from Doda and 13 from Udhampur. Also we should not forget that jehadi Muslims set off bombs in the temple city of Varanasi—in the railway station and in the Sankatmochan temple, which killed 12 Hindus, within days of the Saudi monarch’s official visit to India as state guest on Republic Day. Something is happening between Islamic states and jehadi Islam. And in India, Hindus are being made the cannon fodder in this intra-Islam jostling for primacy.

‘Lemma’ is a proposition or a premise. ‘Dilemma’ is literally two propositions or premises, connotatively mutually exclusive and forcing to choose between them. Indian Muslims have to decide if their twin identities—Indian and Muslim—pose a dilemma literally—forcing them to choose between being Indians or Muslims. The community must examine if Muslim religious leaders have already made the choice for them and if the choice is both sensible and sustainable. The Muslim community must also introspect on the effect their unwise choice will have upon the Hindus who constitute 85 per cent of the population.

The dilemma is acute because there is no influential Muslim leadership other than the religious leadership and successful Muslim activists—Teesta Setalvad, Shabnam Hashmi, Aamir Khan, Shabana Azmi and Dr. Syeda Hameed are known more for their anti-Hindu posturing than for any real influence within their own community as was seen during the Shah Bano, Imrana, and Gudiya tragic episodes. Jehadi terrorism, jehadi terrorism’s Hindu victims and jehadi Islam’s threat to this nation’s territory have never been this group’s concerns because for one, befitting their self-proclaimed appellation of being ‘progressive Muslims’ they make no mention of their personal allegiance to the ummah.

Mau, Marad, Aligarh, Godhra, Kottaimedu and Triplicane are micro examples of how Muslims conduct themselves wherever they are concentrated in large pockets. Starting with acute intolerance of important Hindu festivals like Holi, Ramnavami and Ganesh Chaturthi, the size of the Muslim population in these pockets has determined the nature and dimensions of Muslim hostility towards Hindus, which is from intolerance for Hindu festivals to ethnic cleansing, genocide, separatism and finally secession. The macro examples of this congenital intolerance are the vivisection and bloodbath of 1947 and the tragedy of the Hindus of Jammu and Kashmir. Indian Muslims have always been sitting on the horns of this dilemma and every time history has forced them to make a choice, they have always chosen to be Muslims first and last.

Which brings us back to the core questions—Why has bin Laden turned his attention now to Kashmir; why have the OIC and the Saudi monarch begun to speak openly and publicly about Kashmir and how did Indian Muslim religious leaders pick up the cue in advance of bin Laden’s public call on Kashmir?

Islam and Christianity are less religion and more politics—they are an admixture of both in which the political component is the more potent. The White Christian world separated religion and state in an astute move intended to demarcate the jurisdiction of power and authority between the King and the Pope over people and territory. Secularism was White Christian civilization’s tool for “sharing sovereignty”—Chris Patten’s favourite phrase, a tool cleverly crafted to carry forward and intensify White Christianity’s homogenizing mission—a mission in which first the Church alone as in the 14th and 15th centuries, then trade and the Church as in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and now the Church, globalisation and democracy in the 20th and 21st centuries, conquer the world together, bound to each other by the common objective of rendering the whole world unto Christ.

This timely and astute separation of powers and demarcation of authority between Christian religion and Christian polity staved off the threat of the Christian Church turning violently upon the Christian state and civil society, and vice versa. The Christian state and the Christian Church now jointly turn against the rest of the world. Secularism in the West did not render the state irreligious or religion-blind, as is being fondly peddled by the anti-Hindu Indian peddlers of secularism, but merely divided the empire between two equally murderous power centres, which have however an undeclared understanding and partnership to pave the way for the second coming.

Secular India is secular Hindu India, let us be very clear. Muslims of the world and Muslim states never bought the Christian concept of secularism while secular Christian states were never secular-irreligious but secular-sharing sovereignty; only Hindus bought the secular argument. And that is why Hindus were helpless witnesses to the creation of Pakistan and that is why we still have problems in the Christian-majority north-east and the Muslim-majority J&K.

Islam unlike White Christianity, however failed to demarcate the jurisdiction of power and authority between religion and state, between the sultan and the maulvi with the cumulative effect that today Islam is vertically, sharply and mutually confrontationally divided between the Islamic states and the jehadis. This division and mutual confrontation within the Muslim world began after the former USSR withdrew from Afghanistan and sharpened after 9/11 because jehadi Islam, which until 9/11 was the most effective weapon of the Islamic states, concluded that the same Islamic states were distancing themselves from Islam’s core tenet—to make a Dar-ul-Islam of all world. Jehadi Islam, post-9/11, therefore, made the significant transition from being a weapon in the arsenal of Islamic states to becoming a power by itself, which believes that it now has to fulfill Islam’s core objective without the backing of Islamic states.

The origins of this mutual confrontation between Islamic states and jehadi Islam lie in the cosmic war between ‘Christian’ capitalists and anti-Church, irreligious communists, which was narrowed down to a battle inside Muslim Afghanistan where the Christians had to co-opt the radical Muslims to defeat the communist Soviet Union. This was the second public coming together of the ‘believing’ crusaders and the jehadis against a common, irreligious enemy—the first was the tacit understanding among the White Christian nations in 1947 to support the newly-formed jehadi state of Pakistan against the Hindu India on the issue of Muslim-majority J&K.

The West could manipulate jehadis, Islamic states and ordinary Muslims to serve its political and strategic interests in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, in Pakistan, in the Balkans and subsequently in Indonesia and Iraq. In Indonesia, the fall of Suharto heralded the Christian state of East Timor. In Afghanistan, the war against the Soviet forces and then the Taliban and subsequently the continuing hunt for Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and other Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists have facilitated the American and NATO presence in that country and in Pakistan, besides giving these countries partial access to and control of Afghanistan’s clandestine opium trade. Expat Iraqis in the US colluded with the US regime to bring down Saddam Hussein, and are solely guilty of virtually delivering the entire region and all of Iraq’s oil into America’s hands. The Islamic world was rudely shaken awake to this realisation and Bush and Blair no longer pretend otherwise. Blair as recently as a few days ago declared that the war against Iraq was only about implanting Western (read Christian) values in the region, which in effect only means Christianising the Muslim world through democracy and its attendant ‘freedoms’. This realisation is only now dawning upon the Muslim world.

Jehadi Islam therefore feels not merely humiliated by White Christianity but also betrayed by the Islamic states because until the ignominy of post-9/11 infamy heaped on its head, jehad was an integral part of Islamic polity and foreign policy, where, historically Islamic states and Muslim rulers including Pakistan’s Musharraf have used it to achieve Islam’s political and strategic objectives. Jehad was Islam’s religious weapon to achieve political objectives, but jehad ended up becoming a tool in the hands of White Christianity and ultimately its pawn. White Christianity has not given up on its fundamental objective to render the world unto Christ—only it has cleverly crafted weapons other than the crusading poisoned spear in its arsenal to achieve its goal. Because of Islam’s stubborn refusal to separate religion from state and its refusal to devise modern weapons of war to usher in Dar-ul-Islam, White Christianity has used 9/11 to pin the terrorist cap on Islam’s head. White Christianity has also manipulated Islamic states to turn against jehadi Islam in the guise of war against terror. For White Christianity it is a win-win situation all the way.

(To be concluded)

The Coming Clash of Religions-II

2006-06-08T07:19:00.000-07:00

The Coming Clash of Religions-II
A new front of allies to win

By Subramanian Swamy

The confusion today is caused by the conflict between the innate Hindu belief that all religions lead to God, hence equal in that sense, and yet that other religions obstruct the Hindu’s peaceful worship by propaganda, subversion, conversion and plain terrorism.

Hindus may have been passive in the past but they have resisted atrocities with infinite patience, and perhaps patience to a fault. But even that passive resistance is why a thousand years of brutality and impoverishment thrust on Hindus, first from the Muslim invaders and later Christian imperialists, could not make more than 25 per cent Hindus convert to their religions.

In my last column I wrote that the Clash of Civilisations as envisaged by Professor Samuel Huntington would take place, with US, Israel and India on one side of the divide, and militant Islamic countries on the other side. India will be forced to side with the US because the fundamentalist terrorist Muslims will mindlessly leave Hindus with no other choice. They will radicalise the Hindu mind by ceaseless atrocities, and that will pave the way for a new Hindu mindset and aggressiveness. In that context, the US and Israel will be India’s natural allies.

Hindus may have been passive in the past but they have resisted atrocities with infinite patience, and perhaps patience to a fault. But even that passive resistance is why a thousand years of brutality and impoverishment thrust on Hindus, first from the Muslim invaders and later Christian imperialists, could not make more than 25 per cent Hindus convert to their religions. In other parts of the world it took just a few years of such savagery to convert one hundred per cent of the nations—from borders of France to the shores of Indonesia.

The 21st century Hindu is, however, not passive, but is confused on what to do, much as Arjuna was in Kurukshetra. Once the confusion goes, the Hindu will be ready to actively take on the world once again. We can, paradoxically and ironically, rely on Muslim and Christian fanatics to awaken the Hindu consciousness and purushartha to remove this confusion. But that would be by reaction. We need instead or in addition to clear the confusion by pro-active measures.

The confusion today is caused by the conflict between the innate Hindu belief that all religions lead to God, hence equal in that sense, and yet that other religions obstruct the Hindu’s peaceful worship by propaganda, subversion, conversion and plain terrorism. The Hindu has no history of, or theological basis for engaging in a religious war, that is anything like a jehad or a crusade, and yet he is being challenged to do just that. But just as Arjuna was, the Hindu is confused on how he can fight a war with other religions which he respects as equally capable of leading to God. Moreover, a Hindu still thinks it is enough that he is personally true to his religion, i.e., if he is pious, observes religious festivals, and goes to temples. That is, the Hindu is an individualist, and lacks today a collective mindset that rises above caste and language. This mentality has to change, which the VHP had successfully attempted in the nineteen eightees and the nineties, but which collective mindset has been dissipated since for reasons known to all concerned.

This confusion will, however, inevitably go because of a skewing of the demography of India in favour of the educated youth and the proliferation of mass media. This synergy has to harvested pro-actively. Both the RSS and VHP have a national network of this educated youth, that can at short notice mobilise people even in the most adverse circumstance. I still vividly remember how the RSS in the Emergency functioned efficiently under the most trying and dangerous of situations. The brilliant co-ordination of the underground in the cause of democracy, led by the late Madhavrao Muley the then Karyavaha of the RSS, needs to be properly chronicled and become part of the textbooks of schools and college for future generations to know how democracy was restored in India—when the whole world and most of the Indian elite had given up hope.

What the Hindus lack today to remove the confusion is, therefore, not an instrument. The Sangh and its associated organisations and the Dharma Sansad is there to fill that role. There is also enough literature available to know the mindset we need inculcate today. What we need today, however, is a “cutting edge” formation of national and international allies. Just as in the Emergency we were able to persuade at the national level Jayaprakash Narayan and Morarji Desai to cross the bogus semantic rekha of secular Congress and communal Opposition and form a Lok Sangharsh Samiti, and involved the NRIs abroad through the Friends of India Society International (which I founded in London in 1976 with the help of Sangh swayamsevaks), patriots today need to form a new front of allies to win the coming Clash of Religions.

Who can be these allies today? Within the country it can be any Hindu who is not involved in criminal activities and such those of the minorities who acknowledge that their ancestors are Hindus. This front can adopt a Hindustan Agenda for mental clarity, mobilisation of the people, and for implementation.

Internationally, it has to be of those who see the threat of Christianity and have affinity for the Hindu family of religions. Jews can be only passive allies with us for obvious reasons. Muslims of the world would have, however, not recovered from the lost Clash of Civilisations to be effective allies.

Hindus will, therefore, have only Buddhists to depend on the world over to combat the onward march of the Christian missionary. But where are the Buddhists ? They are all over Asia but followers of Hinayana Buddhism for historical reasons not very well disposed to Hinduism. Thus, Buddhists of Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam may not be in the forefront in the coming Clash of Religions.

However, what is significant for us today is the revival of Mahayana Buddhism in China. China today faces an onslaught from the Church, but at the same time does not want any demonstrative collective adherence to any religion. Thus, the Chinese government is averse to organises dissent in any form, religious or otherwise. For example, China bans the Falun Gong. But two trends within China make that country and it’s people our potential ally in the future in the coming Clash of Religions. The first is the Chinese government’s propensity to challenge the Vatican— the fountain head of international proselytising activities with it’s storm troopers, the Opus Dei. Recently, the Chinese had ordained Bishops in China without the customary mandatory nominations from the Vatican, thereby causing a world wide furore in the Vatican and amongst the Catholics.

The second trend is the increasing revival of Mahayana Buddhism endorsed by the Chinese government in the name of creating a ‘harmonious society’ in China. Alarmed by the social tension created by the widening income disparities, the Chinese leaders want Buddhism to douse the fire of jealousy thus caused.

Recently, China’s official media, Xinhua news agency has reported an official, Ye Xiaowen, as saying that “Buddhism has a unique role in China in promoting a harmonious society”. He added that “religion is one of the important social forces from which China draws strength”. Since then the World Buddhist Forum met in Hangzhou, and the Buddhist temples began to be renovated. In Shanghai alone, in the last five years, more than 25 Buddhist temples have been revived. Training of monks is also permitted.

The Chinese Communist leadership realises that the rich-poor and Coast-hinterland economic divide accentuated by economic reforms can cause a major class struggle and upheaval. Hence, officials feel the mental equanimity that Buddhism teaches is a way to contain unhappiness of the people when some get rich too fast.

The undercurrent of Mahayana Buddhism in China has always been strong. In 1936, the famous Chinese poet and President of Beijing University, Dr. Hu Shih was invited by Harvard University to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the founding of Harvard. Dr. Hu delivered a speech titled “The Indianisation of China” in which he complained how deeply the Chinese had imbibed Hindu concepts of purvajanma karma, re-incarnation, nishkam karma and others through Mahayana Buddhism. Dr. Hu, a Christian, then argued that unless the Chinese purged themselves of these Hindu concepts, China would not progress.

The Communist leaders of China have eschewed religion, in fact, tried to suppress it. But in private they express genuine admiration for Buddhism. Now that respect has become open with the acceptance of the goal to create a ‘harmonious society’. In 1981, when I met China’s supreme Deng Xiaoping in Beijing and urged him to re-open the Kailash Manasarovar pilgrim route, he readily agreed but said I must walk there first to get God’s blessings. When I looked at him a bit surprised, Deng added that Kailash was a Buddhist mountain too and Chinese respect that. Chairman Mao had in 1949 reportedly told the Indian Ambassador when he first met him after Communist take-over of China, that his mother (a Buddhist) had told him that if he did “good work in this life”, he would be re-born in Xitian Jongguo (an earlier name for Yindu(India)-meaning western heaven and middle kingdom).

The India-China religious compact that I advocate here to combat crusading Christianity is not urgent. It cannot happen before the Clash of Civilisation is over, i.e., after Jehadi Islam is de-fanged. Thus, the succeeding Clash of Religions may be two decades away. But then we must set into motion now the facilitating arrangements for the compact to click in place when the time comes. Henceforth, Sino-Indian cooperation must include religious issues delicately and carefully framed, but with increasing width and depth. Delegations of spiritually empowered persons must be exchanged. Past links such as Bodhidharma going from Kanchipuram to teach Dhyana (Zen) and Wu Shih martial arts in Shaolin should be publicised. The ground must be prepared for a Brihad Hindu unity between India and China.

The coming Clash of Religions, principally between Hinduism and Christianity will be largely intellectual and political, and not like the hot conflict in the Clash of Civilisations. Hence, we need to formulate concepts that challenge Christianity.

One of those concepts is to literally dissect Christian theology as between what Christ preached and what Saint Paul allegedly interpolated, embellished, fabricated and superimposed on Christianity. In fact, Christ was not a Christian but a Mahayana Buddhist, which religion he imbibed in Kashmir. He also studied in Puri in Orissa. After suffering brutality in Israel, he is believed to have returned to Kashmir, where after living for several years, he was on his death buried near Srinagar.

Is there any shred of evidence for all this ? This will be adduced in my next column. But those who have read Da Vinci Code of Dan Brown should not find what I have said above surprising.

Benediction for Bangladesh, indictment for India!

2006-06-08T07:07:00.000-07:00

Benediction for Bangladesh, indictment for India!

By Balbir K. Punj

Last November Pope had praised Bangladesh for its ‘religious harmony’. According to a UNB syndicated news published in The Independent (November 24, 2005) of Dhaka, Pope gulped Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan’s story.

The Catholic Church in India and its bishops have never distanced themselves from the breast-beating, Bible-thumping “born-again” fanatic fringe of Christians.

In the inter-religious consultations held at Lariano (Italy) between May 12 and 16, 2006 Pope Benedict XVI adopted a doubled standard. He openly condemned the Danish cartoons on Prophet Mohammed and stressed upon the principle of reciprocity with Islamic world. It meant that Christians, native or professional immigrants, in Islamic lands were accorded same kind of tolerance as Muslims are being offered in Europe. In case of India, however, he condemned ‘the Hindu nationalists’ (meaning the BJP and the Sangh Parivar) for legislating anti-conversion laws. He also distinctly told India’s new emissary to the Vatican Amitava Tripathi-‘ The disturbing signs of religious intolerance which have troubled some regions of the nation, including the reprehensible attempt to legislate clearly discriminatory restrictions on the fundamental right of religious freedom, must be firmly rejected”. In case of Islam, Pope’s while soliciting tolerance, meant allowing Christians to build new Churches and uphold their religious traditions in peace. It never meant revoking Islam’s capital punishment of apostasy to facilitate willing Muslims to convert Christianity. Last March, an Afghan, Abdul Rehman, had to flee to Italy after Muslims clerics bayed for his blood for alleged conversion to Christianity. You must be thinking that Pope Benedict XVI criticized the practice of capital punishment for an apostate, in-built in Islam, like he criticized India’s anti-conversion laws. He did nothing of that sort. He appealed to the Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai and the United Nations to find a country to grant him asylum. Last November Pope had praised Bangladesh for its ‘religious harmony’. According to a UNB syndicated news published The Independent (November 24, 2005) of Dhaka, Pope gulped Bangladesh’s foreign Minister M. Morshed Khan’s story hook, line and sinker that Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists live in harmony along side Muslim majority in Dhaka. Perhaps Pope should have enlightened himself more by consulting Bangladesh’s Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council about the type of ‘harmony’ exists in Bangladesh. It is a common knowledge that Bangladesh is slated to become the next Afghanistan where no non-Muslim is safe. Father Joseph Gomez, when he came to New Delhi in January, 2005, was a despondent figure. ‘What can Christians do’ he told, ‘when day and night you have nothing but Allah and Allah’. One has to see to believe it the kind of seamless unity that exists between Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist-Christian Unity Council. It is because everyone knows how oppressive Islam is, and there is no evangelization involved. Should it not surprise Pope, that in Bangladesh that gets his praise, no minority group can float separate organization. They have to represent themselves through one umbrella organization. But in India Christians, who officially form a little more than two percent, have floated hundreds of organizations. There is no seamless unity between Christians and Muslims. But on the other hand Hindus and Christians are on good terms, and cases of Hindu-Christian riots are virtually unknown. So why is Bangladesh ‘in prayers of Pope’ and India in his bad-book. Christians, like any other religious community, have complete religious freedom. But they are not content with it. They want right to harvest soul, and they expect ‘heathen’ Hindus to willfully convert. It’s anybody’s guess that Pope is being guided by the evangelization lobby. Bangalore based P.N. Benjamin is a Syrian Christian who established the Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue in 2001 to bring forth a dialogue between Hindus and Christians. He has done well to remind the Pope that anti-conversion laws have nothing to do with ‘Hindu nationalist’ governments. They were legislated long ago by ‘secular’ Congress in Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Arunachal Pradesh. The Rajasthan government has done nothing out of place. Disturbed, he asks, “Christian evangelists who denigrate Hindu gods and abuse Hindu rituals as barbaric are the root cause of tension between Christian and Hindu communities. But, the Catholic Church in India and its bishops have never distanced themselves from the breast-beating, Bible-thumping “born-again” fanatic fringe of Christians, spewing venom against Hindus and their gods in their campaigns and crusades to “harvest the Hindu souls”. Why? (Change of Faith without Push or Pull Factor- Vijaya Times, Bangalore, May 23, 2006) What is the situation of Christians in Christ-nativity town of Bethlehem that is now Muslim majority? Justice Reid Wiener, a resident scholar at Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, authored recently a book Human Rights of Christians in Palestinian Society, opines that in within fifteen more years, Bethlehem, would be a Christian theme-park with Christian legacy but no real Christian. But in India nothing has ever threatened the mortal safety or religious freedom of Christians. India has had a Christian presence since 52 CE, far older than in Europe, let alone two Americas. To instruct Hindus on ‘religious freedom’ is like carrying coal to New Castle. The government of India has communicated its displeasure to the Vatican. I don’t think there is a need to lose sleep over Pope Benedict XVI’s comments. We have war at hand with Maoists, Hindus converting to godless philosophy of Marxism and waging war upon other Hindus. We also have to tackle the Jihad, which will become more acute with burgeoning Muslim demography and their increasing religious assertion. The anti-Bush and anti-Cartoon protests by Muslims in India were more ferocious than in many Muslim countries. Doctor Praveen Togadiya, at India Today conclave, has spoken of a Civilizational Alliance between Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and Jewish community to meet the monster of Jihad. VHP’s Ashok Singhal, who spends more than fair share of time to combat Church’s evangelization agenda, has sanely advised that Hindu and Christian world jointly fight Jihad. All these nuisance of evangelization is bound to happen because it is not a Hindu state. Its state policies are not directed by the native ethos of this land. Is it not surprising that evangelization has increased, instead of decreasing, since after independence? Late Pope John Paul II in November, 1999, from New Delhi, had openly called for evangelization of Asia in third millennium like Europe in the first and two Americans in the second. I wish Pope Benedict XVI, who is not cast in mould of the last Pope, concentrate more on re-evangelization of Europe. Christianity’s biggest battle will be in Europe, demographically threatened by Islam, rather than in India where Christians had always been a part of the mosaic.

British rule was a learning experience

2006-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

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British rule was a learning experience

By Priyadarsi Dutta

Shri Ashok Chowgule, in his intervention ‘British did not benefit Hindus’ (May 14, 2006) flatly rejects Shri MSN Menon’s thesis that British rule substantially benefitted the Hindus (Think It Over: Another view of the British, May 5, 2006, Organiser). This contention arises because while it might be academically correct that British rule benefitted us substantially, as Shri MSN Menon demonstrates, it is politically incorrect to acknowledge it, as Ashok Chowgule’s reply reveals. I agree with Shri Chowgule that Hindus, led by Maratha confederacy, had already marginalised the “Later Mughals”, by the time the British took over. Was the recovery of Hindudom from Islam a distant mirage if the Maratha Empire was not finished in the Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1818), and Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s Sikh kingdom was first restrained by British from expanding east of Sutlej by friendship treaty (1809) and later conquered through two Anglo-Sikh wars after his death?

British did not wrest most of India from the Muslims, but despite a popular misconception, from the Hindus, both through war and shrewd diplomacy. Ashok Chowgule, as a proud Maratha, might still suffer from the historic pain of losing two Anglo-Maratha wars despite having trounced the British in the first one through battle of Wadgaon (1779). I, as a Bengali, am beholden to British, for recovering Bengal from clutches of Muslim rule at Battle of Plassey (1757), and making the Bengal Renaissance possible, despite idolising since childhood the revolutionaries of Bengal, who comprised 90 per cent of political inmates in Andaman’s Cellular Jail.

But it’s high time, Hindus got over seeing British only as invaders, like Turks and Afghans in the medieval times. With the advent of Turks, Mughal and Afghans the Hindus shrank spatially, psychologically and intellectually. In British times, Hindus recorded expansion in these fields. Very few Hindus today remember (refer to Veer Savarkar’s Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History section 495 to 503) that Hindus had ceased faring the seas in the medieval ages. This happened at a time when Islam was unfurling itself in the Indian Ocean from Mombassa to Malacca. Hindus imposed this prohibition upon themselves to prevent them being killed, converted or sold in slavery by the Muslims. Islam dominated the Indian Ocean for seven hundred years, making it out of Hindu bounds, until the Portuguese ousted them in 1509/1510.

The British exhumed the Nalanda, Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Amaravati; deciphered Kharosti and Pali leading to rediscovery of lost Buddhist heritage. It seems miraculous that the British rewritten Indian history, printing press, railways, electricity, archeology, seafaring, geological survey, modern astronomy.

The advent of British into India was a logical corollary of the rise of the sea-borne empires in Europe viz. Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch and French that was reshaping the world-order previously dominated by Islam from Morocco to Malaya. In British era, Hindus began to fare the seas again, to places where their forefathers had never gone. Be it as indentured labourers, religious preachers, students, lawyers, political activists, revolutionaries Hindus were seeing and knowing a whole, wide world as never before. In 1843, the British took over Sindh, from medieval forces of Fateh Ali, where Hindus stood oppressed and marginalised for seven hundred years. In 1870, a Sindhi Hindu was having a firm in Cairo, after Suez Canal opened in 1869.

Soon ‘Sindhiworkies’ spread all over the British empire. They dominate 90 per cent of retail trade in Gibraltar, and many of them are proud of Hindus. A lot of people from Gujarat went to East Africa (Kenya, Uganda) to work in railways, which came to be nicknamed ‘Patel Railways’. Today when a Hindu proudly says his daughter studies in Princeton University or son stays in Sydney ; or a Hindu Yogi who got preach Hinduism in London and Paris, let them acknowledge the British contribution.

Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith in 1450 invented the printing press. In 1476, William Caxton established the first printing press of England in London. In 1790s, British evangelist William Carrey sent up the first printing press (English, Hindi, Bengali, and Sanskrit) of India in Seerampore, of Calcutta. Thus, it had taken more than 300 years for printing press to come to India. By contrast it took less than 30 years for India’s first train to run between Bombay and Thane (1853), after world’s first locomotive rolled between Stockton to Darlington in England in 1825. In the first case, there was no British empire in India, in the second case there was an Empire.

Whether it was the maritime exploration of the world, or invention printing press, there is nothing accidental about these things being done by Europeans, and not Indians. These were backed up by a sustained intellectual development in Europe since renaissance. No such movement, for whatever reason, was possible in India. Does it strike you that all through medieval ages, we produced little secular literature, scientific treatise, unlike in ancient India? Drama is the highest form of art (because it involves acting, singing, dancing, make-up) that was present in ancient India like ancient Greece. King Harsha Vardhana perhaps wrote the last known Sanskrit dramas. Why, after a hiatus during the medieval ages, dramas began to write in British period?

Another discipline that Europeans had invented was archeology. The British exhumed the Nalanda, Bodhgaya, Sarnath and Amaravati; deciphered Kharosti and Pali leading to rediscovery of lost Buddhist heritage. It seems miraculous that the British had rewritten Indian history, printing press, railways, electricity, archeology, seafaring, geological survey, modern astronomy, could these things have come from Marathas, Sikhs, Rajputs or any Hindus? No doubt, British enslaved Hindus, but they enslaved their enemy viz. Muslims as well. The concept of civil society was possible only in British times. Thus RSS-founder Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in 1925 could start uniting the Hindu society with symbolic weapon of a lathi. In Mughal times, Guru Govind Singh could raise Khalsa, and protect the honour of Bhagwa Dhwaj, only under the shade of the sword.

The Vadodara riots and the media mischief

2006-05-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

The Vadodara riots and the media mischief

By K.G. Acharya

All the so called secular (read anti-Hindu writers and media) have not considered news of the following type: Malaysian authorities have demolished a century-old Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur on April 21. While bulldozing the temple, devotees, numbering about 300, begged authorities to stop the demolition, until, at least, they finished their prayers. The prayers went unheeded. Authorities said: The demolition is sought to make way for a building project

In the interest of development, we hope that the stay granted by the Supreme Court to further demolition of illegal structures in Vadodara and other parts of Gujarat will be revoked at an early date. The Supreme Court had acceded to the Central Government’s urgent plea for the stay in the wake of the violence in Vadodara, as a sequel to the demolition of an illegal mosque. The Central government’s argument in the Supreme Court based on the report submitted by the Minister of State S P Jaiswal, that the State Government had not duly discussed the sensitivities involved, is not correct.

In fact, at 9.30 a.m. on Monday, the May 1, 2006, a delegation of Muslims was invited to a meeting with the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) to evolve a consensus to remove the dargah. The VMC had also shown its readiness to offer an alternative place to build the dargah, there, but the Muslims were very obstinate. The VMC had earlier tried to serve a notice to Muslims in the dargah about the demolition, but they refused to take the notice. As a result the notice was pasted on the walls of the dargah on April 26. Muslim leaders had resisted this move with official petitions on April 29, 2006. In the meeting on 1 May, 2006, mayor Sunil Solanki, city BJP president Shabadsharan Brahmabhatt and municipal commissioner Rohit Pathak tried to convince the Muslim leaders about removing the structure. The dargah, which finds mention in the Baroda State’s city survey of 1911, was not a protected monument and neither did it have ownership papers.

As a result, the dargah was considered by the VMC as an unauthorised structure and demolished. Along with the dargah, at least half a dozen temples were also demolished, but Hindus did not resist. Muslims attacked not only the police, but also attacked vehicles and men in the courts of the district Magistrate and the Sessions, since they did not give stay for the demolition of the dargah. They burnt many vehicles in the premises of the courts. It must be noted that the VMC had to remove unauthorised structures to comply with the order of the Gujarat High Court. The Supreme Court should have asked for these facts before giving the stay as all this information was not given to it by the Central government which wanted the stay at any cost to serve its vote bank politics.

Minister of State for Home Affairs, S.P. Jaiswal visited Vadodara immediately after the demolition and instead of persuading the Muslims to refrain from violence, played politics and blamed the administration. He said in his report to the Home Ministry: Vadodara administration should have avoided the demolition of the dargah in view of the people’s sentiments associated with the old shrine.

Home Ministry issued a notice to the Gujarat government asking for a report on the burning of a Muslim in a car. He did not bother about the stabbing and killing of two Hindus by Muslim goons. The Indian Express, dated May 3 has reported the relevant story in detail. Two Hindus were waylaid and stabbed by a Muslim mob. One was Subedar Ramchandra Meena (35), belonging to the Patiala unit of the EME Corps, and another named Biren Shah (23). The partisan media, however, gave wide publicity only to the burning of the Muslim and this infuriated the Muslims further, who transformed the secular act of demolition into communal riots, which was most unfortunate.

A large section of the anti-Hindu media used the opportunity to blame Hindus, the BJP and the Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The Hindustan Times wrote in its editorial, “Climate of distrust” (May 3, 2006): The violence and distrust are an indictment of Shri Narendra Modi and the BJP”. The HT, in its issue dated May 8, 2006, has given a photo of a car in flames with the footnote, “File picture of the vehicle which was burnt down on May 2, killing Rafiq Vora”. HT has not given the photo of Hindus stabbed earlier in the riots. In fact, reminding the riots of 2002 again and again by anti-Hindu forces creates distrust among Muslims for Hindus. In The Indian Express, Ayesha Khan has blamed the demolition of illegal mosques in her article, “Sacred space uncommon ground” (May 3, 2006) and indirectly encouraged Muslim goons to transform a secular act into communal riots. She has written: “The municipal authorities stick to the latest mantra - of development of the larger good - which is a convenient mask.” Sitaram Yechury wrote in his column “Returning to Gujarat 2002” in The Hindustan Times (May 4, 2006) and tried to divide the nation further on religious ground. Otherwise, there was no reason, why he should remind the past unhappy history of communal riots in the state. He has mentioned only the burning of a Muslim in Vadodara, where Hindus were also stabbed to death. The NDTV tried its best to highlight the incident of burning of the Muslim in a car to infuriate Muslims while suppressing the incidents of stabbing to death of the two waylaid Hindus. It is possible that the burning of a Muslim was in retaliation of the stabbing of Hindus. On May 3, NDTV asked a question on its channel about the burning of a person (read Muslim) and gave three alternative answers. One of them was whether it was a victory of religion (read Hinduism). Clearly the message was an attempt by the channel to malign Hindus. It must also be noted that there were many communal riots between the time of the Gujarat riots of 2002 and the recent few incidents in Vadodara. For example: riots in Marad, Kerala; Mahu and Aligarh in UP: Bhiwandi, Kalyan and many other parts of Maharashtra. But the media did not cover them at all or as they did in the case of Gujarat. This was right. But why should they have another approach only for Gujarat? Javed Anand (Ansari), co-editor of Communalism Combat and husband of Teesta Setalvad has written the article, “There is a Taliban in Gujarat”. The motive is to dilute the threat of Talibans to humanity and condemn Gujarat, Shri Modi and the BJP. Javed says: The conduct of the state administration in Vadodara was far from even handed. So why is everyone only talking about Taliban? It must be noted that all the so called secular (read anti-Hindu writers and media) have not considered news of the following type: 1) Malaysian authorities have demolished a century-old Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur on April 21. While bulldozing the temple, devotees, numbering about 300, begged authorities to stop the demolition, until, at least, they finished their prayers. The prayers went unheeded. Authorities said: The demolition is sought to make way for a building project 2) In Pakistan and many Muslim countries also old mosques are demolished in the development process. For example, the mosque of Bilal, the direct disciple of Paigambar was removed in Saudi Arabia for extension of the palace. Clearly the motive of the anti-Hindu brigade consisting of the Communists and the Sonia Congress is to infuriate Muslims, encourage fundamentalist Muslims, destroy liberal Muslims and strengthen the Muslim vote bank.

The coming clash of religions

2006-05-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

The coming clash of religions

By Subramanian Swamy

Most of our temples and holy spots have already been targeted by these terrorists just because these are sacred to Hindus. What harm did Hindus do to Islam that they should be targeted like this? In the answer to this question lies the concept of the divide or ‘fault lines’ as Huntington calls it.

Harvard’s Samuel Hunting-ton is famous for his thesis on the ‘Clash of Civilisations’. In a simplified formulation it is this: The Cold War of economic and political ideology is no more relevant because of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. And hence, according to Huntington, it will be replaced by a new conflict caused by a civilisational divide induced by religious fundamentalism. Christians, Jews and Hindus will have to band together on one side of the divide, to confront terrorist Islamic ideology. China faces the same problems with Islam, but it has been kept under wraps and away from media glare. China will be for now a passive partner in this divide.

Confrontation, as in the Cold War, will be inevitable. If indeed Christians, Jews and Hindus do forge an active alliance, Islamic terror will be no match in the ensuing context and confrontation. Such an alliance is being facilitated ironically by Osama Bin laden and his ilk against whom it will be directed!! Osama, Zarqawi, Moussauvi, and others Islamic terrorists are already propagating that Christians, Jews and Hindus are enemies of Islam. Hindus are already targeted in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and within our nation, such as in Kashmir and Mau just because they are Hindus. Recently, in Doda, Hindus were first segregated from Muslim residents, and then shot dead mercilessly by Pakistan based Islamic terrorists. Most of our temples and holy spots have already been targeted by these terrorists just because these are sacred to Hindus. What harm did Hindus do to Islam that they should be targeted like this? In the answer to this question lies the concept of the divide or ‘fault lines’ as Huntington calls it.

Close cooperation between India, Israel and US is already covertly and overtly beginning to happen partly in response to Osama’s threats and Islamic terrorism.

Cold War hangover and vote bank politics in India however is delaying the fructification of a formal alliance. But if the Hindus consolidate into a vote bank, instead of being divided in castes, regions and languages— thus rendering each Hindu segment a smaller vote bank than Muslims— then US-India-Israel alliance against terrorism would be easy to effect and make into a natural compact. India shall not then be inhibited by any fear of voters’ religious backlash.

Hindus once sufficiently consolidated should insist that Muslims in India must acknowledge that their ancestors are Hindus and that they are proud of the lineage. Those Muslims who claim that they are descended from Babar, Ghazni or Ghori have no right to be in India or at least a voter. A separate country of Pakistan was created 1947 for those Muslims who do not consider Hindus as part of their family tree. An India that is perceived as a land of Hindus and those whose ancestors are Hindus is Hindustan. The Indian identity is thus established, and Hindus , Muslims and Christians become equal legatees to the glorious continuing Hindu civilization.

The US, Israel, and India can confront and easily pacify militant Islam and it’s murderous terrorists arm by a combination of zero tolerance for terrorism, selective regime change where there is a brutal pro-terrorist dictatorship, and by commercializing new energy sources such as hydrogen fuel cells and thorium refining that will undermine the oil-financing capacity for terrorists. This three pronged approach will decimate and castrate Islamic terrorist movement. The problem is thus tractable and can be solved within a decade.

However, a new problem will arise thereafter that will confront the Hindus, namely that arising from proselytising crusading Christian missionaries under the guidance of the Opus Dei and the Vatican, and concomitantly from US-based evangelist organisations. These outfits are alarmed at the decline in Christian population and adherence to the religion in Europe. Hence, it had been decided in a conclave in Dallas in USA held in September 2005 that in one decade hence, a billion people would be converted to Christianity.

Obviously, Hindus would be a target for this conversion goal-in fact for India the goal set in the conclave by Reverend Pat Robertson is to convert a 100 million Hindus to Christianity. The Pope of Vatican who came to India in November 1999, surprisingly on the invitation of the NDA government, declared in New Delhi that Christian missionaries would work to make the 21st century a Christian one for Asia. It is significant that when the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalitha got a legislation enacted to bar forcible or money-induced conversion, the US Consul General in Chennai visited her to protest and warn her of US Congressional resolutions in this matter. Ms. Jayalalitha chickened out and withdrew the Act. Christian agenda is thus explicit and clear, and reserved for vigorous implementation once the ‘civilisational conflict’ is ended.

There is another factor which makes for the United States to be concerned about Hindustan once the Islamic terrorists threat has been met. It is the 200 million Indian youth just out of college and interested in research&development work. These bright youngsters might just out-innovate the Americans thus overtaking the US in it’s main USP.

Americans have stayed ahead of all others during the twentieth century by just being pioneers in technological and managerial innovation. India threatens that need not only because our youngsters are very bright and fast on the uptake, but unlike in China, function in a democratic system. The climate to innovate is much better in free societies where a questioning mind is a great asset for research and innovation. This attribute of India, which we owe to the Hindu tradition of argumentativeness and shashtratha, will put India in competition with the US. Given the hullabaloo over BPO from US to India which actually benefits US in net cost, we can imagine the howl that will be heard if India out-innovates the US. Of course we Indians have much to gain from technological cooperation with the US, and hence we must try to soften the coming blow to US lead in innovation. Nevertheless, as in the Indo-US nuclear agreement, the US goal will always be clear: how to restrain India from getting ahead in innovation. How we resolve this contradiction between being friendly with the US and at the same time resisting their booby traps in our path to innovative independence, will test our cognitive, emotional and moral intelligence to the maximum.

Once the Huntington clash of civilization is over, the clash of religions will begin—i.e., the clash between Hinduism and Christianity. It will not be a hot clash as with Islam, but a clash rooted in subversion: i.e., subvert or be subverted. To stave off being subverted by Christian foreign forces, Hindus will need a new mindset and a clear concept of identity. What these are I have written about earlier in these columns [or see my forthcoming book Hindus Under Siege—The Way out]. Hindus will also have to seek allies in this subversion game. Who can be these allies? I will write about that in my next column.

Marad memories haunt Hindus in Kerala

2006-05-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

Statescan

BJP files PIL
Marad memories haunt Hindus in Kerala
Congress, Left united in suppressing facts, shielding guilty

By S. Chandrasekhar

The Justice has called for a detailed probe by a Special Investigation Team into the role of several fundamental and extremist organisations like Muslim League and NDF. The report has opined that Muslim League Leader and close confidant of IUML strong man Kunjalikutty, Mayin Haji had prior knowledge of the conspiracy that led to the murder.

The report was handed over to him two months back, but Chandy says that he has had no time to go through the report and that it should be tabled in the assembly before making it public. Chandy’s remarks are a challenge to the Hindus of Kerala.

May 2, 2003 is a day that no self-respecting and devout Hindu can ever erase from his mind. The day when eight Hindu fishermen were brutally murdered, women and children assaulted and humiliated and houses, boats and property worth lakhs destroyed in the fishing hamlet of MARAD near Kozhikode by jehadi extremists.

Massive agitation were organised throughout Kerala by RSS demanding CBI probe into the massacre and adequate compensation for the nears of the victims. After several rounds of discussions between the then Chief Minister A.K. Antony and RSS/BJP leaders a compromise formula was arrived. The Government announced a judicial probe by Thomas P. Joseph to go into all aspects of the massacre and also to probe the role of fundamentalists and extremist organisations. Also compensation of Rs.10 lakhs for dependents of the murdered, jobs for widowed women, repair of houses, replacement of boats, setting up of police station at MARAD etc. were also announced and later implemented.

Based on media reports, the Justice Thomas P. Joseph Commission has come down heavily on the UDF Government for not ordering a CBI probe into the massacre. The Justice has called for a detailed probe by a Special Investigation Team into the role of several fundamental and extremist organisations like Muslim League and NDF. The report has opined that Muslim League leader and close confidant of IUML strong man Kunjalikutty, Mayin Haji had prior knowledge of the conspiracy that led to the murder. The probe panel says that the role of the Crime Branch was eliminating key persons and organisations from the gambit of the probe and save them. Moreover, the act of the then District Collector T.O. Sooraj, a Muslim, in allowing Muslim League leader and now MoS in Union Cabinet, E. Ahmed, to offer namaz at the Marad mosque (which was sealed due to discovery of massive quantity of arms and weapons) at the period of an explosive situation has come in for criticism in the report. Finally the Commission says that the adamant role of the government not to go in for CBI probe is mysterious and its grounds flimsy.

Although the report was handed over to him two months back, but Chandy says that he has had no time to go through the report and that it should be tabled in the assembly before making it public. Chandy’s remarks are a challenge to the Hindus of Kerala, since hardly a month back; a special session of the Kerala Assembly was convened to pass an unanimous resolution by both LDF and UDF members calling upon Tamilnadu Government to release Madhani who is lodged in Coimbatore Jail. For Madhani assembly can be convened, for Marad. No. What double face, Chandy?

Both the A.K. Antony Government and the Oommen Government want to protect the Muslim League, a major partner in the ruling UDF and its new ally jehadi NDF.

Oommen Chandy wants to scuttle and derail any investigation into ‘MARAD’ massacre at any cost since his brief is to protect Muslim League, NDF, Mayin Haji and ultimately Kunjalikutty at any cost, since without Muslim support he cannot rule.

The state BJP president, P.S. Sreedharan Pillai, has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Kerala High Court seeking directions to the state Government to release to the public the panel report and order CBI probe into the massacre and its conspiracy.

The Sabarimala Temple of Lord Ayyappa, to which crores of people from all the globe come, is a thorn in the eye of the Christian Community. They cannot tolerate a casteless consolidation of Hindus in the name of Lord Ayyappa since their aim is maximum conversion of the backward Hindus. In the mid eighties they planted a cross in Nilakkel, which is the base camp of Sabarimala pilgrims. Later due to massive agitations by RSS and other Hindu organisations it was removed. Harassment of pilgrims from other states by Christians is going on unabated.

The government at the instance of the Christian Church, Christian Land lobby, Christian encroachers and Ganja cultivators has revoked its earlier order of allotting 313 acres of revenue land to the forest department at Kambakkallu in lieu of forest department land given to Sabarimala temple for its development. Thus by revoking its earlier order the Oommen Chandy Government has succumbed to Christian pressure groups who want to torpedo Sabarimala development at any cost. It was this same Oommen Chandy who tried to prevent Mata Amritanandamayi from building homes for Tsunami affected, at the instance of church.

The BJP has demanded a Judicial Investigation into the moves to thwart Sabarimala development. The Hindu Aikya Vedi and VHP state Organising Secretary Kummanam Rajasekharan have also announced massive agitations if the 313 acres of land at Kambakkallu is not handed over to the forest department.

Bangladeshi infiltration--Borduwa, Shankar Dev’s seat of Vaishnavism in Assam, under siege

2006-05-18T08:33:00.000-07:00

Bangladeshi infiltration
Borduwa, Shankar Dev’s seat of Vaishnavism in Assam, under siege

By Jyoti Lal Chowdhury

Silchar: Debate and oratory over the infiltration of Bangladeshis in Assam and their ever swelling number bares out the stark reality of how even Borduwa, the seat of Shankar Dev’s Vaishnavism, is under siege. During the recent polls, no political party except BJP brought into sharp focus the threat to the famous holy shrine and its near extinction due to systematic and designed encroachment by Bangladeshis.

Borduwa, has come to be synonymous with Assamese religious and cultural philosophy, an epitome of Hinduism. There is no authentic record about the date of birth of the great saint and sage. All that can be said about this Great Soul is that he died in 1568 and lived a longer life. Contemporary historical events suggest 1486 as his probable date of birth. He was born in a village called Ali Pukhuri in the district of Nagaon.

After the death of his parents, Shankar Dev was brought up by his grand parents and well-educated in Sanskrit school and in the process developed Vedic mind and deep aesthetic sensibility. At the age of 19, he shifted with his family to Borduwa which became the seat of his holy teachings and preachings.

In order to propound and propagate his religious movement, Shankar Dev moved to Darrang district, then in North Lakhimpur, Barpeta and lastly to Majuli. Rupak Bordoloi, a resident of Borduwa, like many others of the area, is a witness to Bangladeshis encroaching upon a vast tract of the holy shrine. He said, “Quite pathetic, though Borduwa as heritage site is on tourist destination of Assam, it is plunged into darkness after evening.

Purnachandra Dev Goswami, chief of the Narua Satra (Vaishnavite monastery), said besides Narua Satra, Rampur and Kubaikota satras have also been occupied by the illegal migrants. These satras are located in close proximity to Borduwa. Octogenerian Nav Kanta Thakuria bemeans to look at these monasteries founded by Shankar Dev himself. He recalls how Kubaikota satra was occupied by the Bangladeshis in 1983 when anti-foreigners’ movement was at its peak. He asks “Against whom did AASU then launch the movement?”

The State of Assam instead of evicting these encroachers of holy shrine and monasteries have issued land pattas to them. Dev Goswami is entrusted with the responsibility of collecting revenues from them to make their settlements legal and permanent. Even 182 bighas of land given to Borduwa—than (managing committee) by the state for afforestation are gradually slipping into the hands of Bangladeshis. A member of the managing committee admitted 80 bighas have gone under illegal occupation. Still tragic, all that remains of Narua monastery is a small room used as place of worship. And of once thriving Kubaikota monastery, only nam-ghar (prayer hall) now stands there.

If Borduwa is lost, it will mean a great blow to the rich cultural and religious heritage of Assam. It was Shankar Dev who ushered in neo-Vaishnava renaissance which freed the Assamese society in the middle ages. His religious movement swept some of the tribes too.

Shankar Dev’s cherished idea basically was to build up a harmonious society without caste, creed and cultural barriers. Many non-Aryans in Brahmaputra Valley gradually came into Vaishnav circle of their own. Shankar Dev’s message went deep inside tribals from the hills under threat from the Christian missionaries. This brought out Narottam Ata, a Naga, Govinda Ata, a Garo, and Bolai Ata, a Mikir, among others, who took up cudgels against proselytisation and to protect their own faith and culture.

Shankar Dev was an ardent devotee of Lord Krishna whom he named as Madan Gopala and installed him in his prayer hall called nam-ghar. His keen interest in Bhagavat Gita, Markandeya Purana and Garuda Purana enriched his philosophy. His religion is known as Eka Sarania Dharma (religion of refuge in one God), quite akin to Buddhism. He went on pilgrimage to Gaya, Kashi, Puri, Vrindaban, Mathura, Kurukhetra, Pushkar, Dwarka, Rameshwar and other holy shrines to spread Vaishnavism. Through religious discourses and kirtans. Nothing can be more painful than to remain mute spectator to the sinking of Borduwa and the monasteries around into oblivion. Will the indigenous people of Assam rising above all means and petty considerations give little thought to save the holy shrine of Shankar Dev?

Ethics: A gift of India to the west

2006-05-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

Think it over

Ethics: A gift of India to the west

By M.S.N. Menon

We are told that the world is copying western values. What are the facts? The facts are otherwise.

Universal violence—this was how the history of man began. It was India, which set out to contain this violence in man.

True, Aryan India too was full of violence. But Aryans got together to establish peace. In the process, they created the Dharma Shastras, the first ethical codes.

But the rest of the world seethed in violence for centuries. “Why are you living in this dangerous forest?” Confucius (6th c BC) asked an old woman. She replied: “Because these wild animals are less dangerous than men!” Such was the state of the world.

Ethics was almost unknown to the Greeks, the most illustrious people of the west. They made their gods in their own image. Rome, as we have seen, was already a brutal society. The Romans made a gory display of their cruelty. The Assyrians were perhaps more brutal. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”—this was the law of these lands. The only exception was the small Jewish community with their Ten Commandments.

It was at this that the ethical thoughts of India began to take shape. The Vedas and the Upanishads were the first to provide a new life. Then came Buddha and Mahavira, the true pathfinders. The Ramayana propagated the ideal man, the ideal wife, the ideal brother and the ideal servant. It was all about establishing ideal human relations. Rama was the very image of Dharma! The Mahabharata was treasure of moral maxims. It deals with state, society and men. These found their way to the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

Thanks to Ashoka, the message of the Buddha was carried to the far corners of the world. According to Manu Samhita, neither birth nor age nor wealth, is the true measure of greatness. Then, what is the true measure of greatness? Knowledge and wisdom, it said.

It was at this time that the Greeks produced their greatest moral teacher—Scorates. But, by then, India was already at the highest level of its moral perception and practice.

Perhaps the invasion of India by Alexander, the Great (3rd c BC) was the beginning of a long relationship between India and Greece. Alexander stayed in India and made contact with Taxila and the sages of India. Pythagoras was in India for years.

But more significant and lasting than all these was the growth of India’s didactic literature (fables) of an ethical nature. They spread to Persia, Middle East, Egypt and the Mediterranean countries.

Panchatantra was the most popular story of all. It taught ethics. It also entertained. It has been translated into almost all languages of the world, and is next only to the Bible in circulation. It held the world in a spell with its 200 versions. The Arabic version came out in 750 AD. Vishnu Sharman, its author, prescribed it as a Niti Shastra (The Way).

The Mirror of Princess—an English version of Panchatantra—was designed to instruct the royalty. It influenced Machiavelli, the Italian author of the Prince—a political treatise.

Through the centuries, the Panchatantra fables were modified, moralised and Christianised. Its attraction continued.

Sindbad was another great story designed to promote an ethical life. It took a psychological look at men and women. The Arabs turned it into an adventure story. Its original name was Siddhapathi. The Romans called it The Seven Sages of Rome and gave it back its ethical direction. Sindbad was so popular that 40 different versions of it, including an English version called The Seven Wise Masters, appeared in a short time.

Until the 16th century these tales remained more or less associated with India. Even when these were Christianised, the scenes of these stories remained largely Indian. In a way, these Indian fables were a continuation of the romance literature based on Alexander, the Great.

There are many other books of fables, perhaps less famous with an ethical content. For example, Hitopadesa, Buddhist Jhataka, Dhammapada, Dasakumara, Brihatkatha, Katha Sarit Sagara, Suka Saptahi, Brihatkatha Manjari, Vikramaditya tales and others.

On Katha Sarit Sagara, its English translator says of its author: “His knowledge of human nature, the elegance of his style, the beauty and force of his descriptions and the wit and wisdom of his aphorisms are masterly.”

When Europe came into contact with India and it realised that India was no Christian country, the orthodox European Christians were reluctant to spread the “heathen tales” of India among European Christians. But these stories were so popular that they had been adapted and absorbed into Christian sermons from an early age. The “oriental” tales were used as parables for religious instruction.

Public preachings in those days were confined to Bishops. Two preaching orders—the Dominicans and the Franciscans—were created in the 13th century for this purpose. They made sermons very popular with illustrations from Indian fables. Later, the Bishops themselves invented such stories. But as these stories came to be more entertainment, they were banned in 1528. But their popularity continued. Thy remained part of European literature.

List of major killings in kashmir - Manmohan Talks Peace Over River Of Hindu Blood

2006-05-12T08:15:00.001-07:00

May 14, 2006

Page: 12/28

Home > 2006 Issues > May 14, 2006

Special Report

Plans to gift Siachin to Pakistan
Manmohan Talks Peace Over River Of Hindu Blood

From Prakriiti Gupta in Jammu

Jammu: Thirty-eight-year old Gilo Devi is fighting a battle for survival at Jammu hospital ignorant of the fact that she is a widow and also lost her daughter. Her three-month old son cries bitterly looking for mother piercing the deadly silence of ICU unit of hospital. She is one of the victims who fell to the bullets of Islamic terrorists who perpetuated a naked dance of death killing at least 38 Hindus at two separate places in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan supported Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terrorists brutally killed 22 Hindus in Panjoli and Thava hamlets of Kulhund village in Doda, about 200 km from Jammu. Eight others were seriously wounded.

A day prior to this carnage, gun trotters had abducted 18 cattle grazers in Lolan Galla in Basnatgarh area of neighbouring Udhampur district. Since two of them being Muslims were freed, bodies of 13 Hindus were found in nearby forests, three are still missing.

The slaughter of Hindus by Pakistan supported Islamic militants in Jammu and Kashmir is not recent phenomenon. They have killed over 350 of them in separate incidents. And more importantly, the recent killings happen when Congress led government both at Centre and state are claiming normalcy and change of hearts of Pakistan and Islamic separatists in Jammu and Kashmir.

Recalling the harrowing incident, Gian Chand, another victim at hospital said that the entire village was asleep when at around 11.30 pm, a group of armed men in guise of Indian security personnel donning olive uniforms knocked at doors asking them to assemble at local sarpanch house for a matter of immediate concern. The Sarpanch Gopi Chand, however, has died in the shooting. “As we started assembling there, they lined us up and began shooting for over five minutes. Many fell on ground with blood oozing out of chest, screams filled the surroundings,” said Gian Chand.

The last biggest massacre of Hindus in the state was executed in Shopian in Pulwama district in 2003 when 24 Kashmiri Pandits were massacred in dark of night.

Ironically, the gruesome act has happened in home district of Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad who was voted to state Assembly through record voting percentage of 76 only few days back through support of Hindus who comprise nearly fifty per centage population of Doda district.

Azad appealed to the state’s Muslim clerics to issue a “fatwa” against militants but six days after the attack, none has done so. Meanwhile, Intelligence sources have stated that wireless intercepts of militants in the past few weeks were already indicating that militants could execute some major carnage since they were getting such orders from their mentors across the border. Both military intelligence and internal security agencies say infiltration this April has been higher than that in the same month last year. Military sources say that at least 1200-1400 are present in Pir Panjal heights of Jammu and Kashmir despite the fact that Indian government officially claim that infiltration levels on borders is almost zero. Even on carnage night, security forces had foiled infiltration bid near Line of Control in Sawjian area of Poonch district killing one militant.

The infiltration is expected to rise further since this is the time the snow melts in high mountain passes. The survivors of the Doda massacre have threatened to migrate from this hilly hamlet if they are not provided with weapons to defend themselves from terrorists. There are 512 families in the Kulhund and Tharva hamlets of Doda district. There are already hundreds of Hindus who are living in shelter camps in Udhampur district following massive killings of Hindus in 1996-2000 in Doda district. Many of them have sold off or mortgage their children to support families.

Hindus have rebuffed militant attacks on several occasions in past as part of local Village Defence Committee (VDC) members acting as first line of security and spying for Indian security agencies in remote mountainous Doda region. Doda was the first district in Jammu and Kashmir where the concept of VDC was introduced. People of remote villages were armed with weapons, mostly .303 rifles, to defend themselves. Deputy Commissioner G.A. Qureshi, however, said “no migration has taken place from anywhere in the area. People have come here to put forth their demand before the district administration.” Massive operations are on to track down the militants responsible for the act, Doda SSP P R Manhas said. Several Hindus protested at Ramlila ground Doda shouting slogans against Home Minister Shivraj Patil for not visiting them. Rakesh Kumar, who lost his brother in the May 7 terrorist attack, says: “We do not want to live here with a permanent scare and a feeling of insecurity. A police post would not suffice and we need weapons to defend ourselves.”

Meanwhile, state RSS chief Prof K.L. Bhatia and BJP chief Nirmal Singh strongly condemning the killings of Hindus said that it indicates towards total collapse of the coalition-led government’s administration in the state. BJP president Raj Nath Singh who was during his tour of Jammu and Kashmir when carnage occurred has sought governor rule in the state due to failure of ruling government to provide security to innocent civilians. He also asked the Central Government to tell Hurriyat in clear terms that no talks would be held with them until they stop demanding inclusion of Pakistan in talks. The killings also raise questions over the peace process that is being currently followed in Jammu and Kashmir underlining the fact that militants rule roost in state. It must be mentioned that Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is likely to visit Srinagar later this month to attend second roundtable conference of Kashmir.

A calander of major killings of Hindus in Jammu and Kashmri

(excluding attacks at Raghunath Temple, Kaluchak carnage and Qasim Nagar carnage in 2002 in Jammu killing over 70 Hindus)

1. August, 1993,	17 Hindus killed in Sarthal in Bhaderwah area of Doda when Hindus were segregated from bus.
2. January 5, 1996	16 Hindus killed in Barshala in Kishtwar, Doda
3. January 12, 1996	Seven Hindus killed in Bhaderwah, Doda
4. 6 May, 1996	17 Hindus killed in Sumbar Ramban tehsil of Doda
5. June 7-8, 1996	Nine Hindus killed in Kamladi village of Doda
6. April 7, 1997	Seven Kashmiri Pandits killed in Sangrampur, Kashmir Valley.
7. September 24, 1997	Seven Hindus killed in Sawari village of Rajouri.
8. January 26, 1998	23 Kashmiri pandits killed in Wandhama in Valley.
9. April 17, 1998	29 Hindus killed in Prankot and Dhakikot villages of Udhampur
10. May 5, 1998	Five Hindus killed in Surankot Poonch
11. May 6, 1998	11 Hindu Village Defence Committee members killed.
12. June 19, 1998	29 Hindu baratis including three grooms were killed in Chapnarai, Doda.
13. July 27, 1998	20 Hindus killed in Kishtwar, Doda
14. February 13, 1999	Five Hindus killed in Udhampur
15. February 19, 1999	19 Hindus killed in Rajouri, 4 in Udhampur
16. June 29, 1999	12 Hindu labourers from Bihar killed in Santhu village of Annatnag
17. July 1, 1999	Nine Hindus killed in Mendhar Poonch.
18. July 15, 1999	15 Hindus of Thathri village of Doda killed
19. Februrary 28, 2000	Five Hindus in Mendhar killed
20. Feb 29, 2000	Five Sikh drivers killed in Qazikund, Kashmir Valley.
21. March 20, 2000	36 Sikhs killed in Chattisinghpora Kashmir.
22. August 1, 2000	28 Aamarnath pilgrims killed.
23. August 2, 2000	12 Hindus killed in Banihal area of Doda.
24. August 2, 2000	8 Hindu VDC members killed in Marwah, Doda
25. November 24, 2000	Five Hindus killed in Kishtwar, Doda
26. February 3, 2001	8 Sikhs killed in Majhoor Nagar, Srinagar
27. May 10, 2001	8 Hindus killed in Paddar Kishtwar, Doda
28. July 21, 2001	13 Hindus killed in Amarnath attack
29. July 21, 2001	20 Hindus killed in Kishtwar, Doda
30. August 4, 2001	15 Hindu killed in Kishtwar area, Doda
31. January 1, 2002	Six Hindus in Magnar village of Poonch.
32. February 17, 2002	Eight Hindus killed in Rajouri
33. March 23, 2003	24 Kashmiri pandits killed in Shopian, Pulwama.

It’s shocking,

Sarsanghachalak K.S. Sudarshan

“The news of brutal killing of 19 Hindus in Doda and 15 at Vasantpur area of Udhampur district in Jammu and Kashmir has completely shaken the Hindu society. Is it the fate of the Hindus to be continuously killed by the bullets of terrorists? The army and the central security forces were withdrawn from these areas in the name of peace dialogue and by dissolving the special task force the state government left the people of the region at the mercy of Pakistani terrorists. Instead of decreasing, such incidents have increased since the Congress-PDP led coalition government came to power in the state. This government has no right to remain in the office. The Central Government should impose President’s rule in the state by dismissing the state government, deploy security forces immediately and repeal the Article 370, which has strengthened the separatist mentality.”

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Muslims, Respect Hindu Sentiments

2006-05-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States was still a largely unexplored territory and a columnist of that period, J.B.L. Soule, now long-forgotten, gave a bit of sound advice to young Americans. The advice was brief, but to the point. He wrote: “Go west, young man”. Thousands went west, settled down in unknown territory and made America what it is today.

If today, one were to give any direction to one’s fellow Muslim countrymen it would be: Look Inward, Friend. For there is much to discover. This thought has been provoked by a very thoughtful article in Economic and Political Weekly (April 8) on Indian Muslims, Past, Present and Future, by J.S. Bandukwala.

Shri Bandukwala’s advice to his fellow Muslims, unstated but obvious is that they should look inward and chalk a new path for themselves and come out of their shells and “plunge into science and technology”. As he put it: “To close our eyes to the future and live in a fantasy of a glorious past is an ideal concoction for social disaster.”

The trouble seems to be that Muslims in India today are still trying to re-live the thousand years when their co-religionists ruled most parts of India.

According to Shri Bandukwala “religious association with the rulers gave the vast poor multitude a sense of empowerment. But the collapse of Muslim rule also brought with it a deep insecurity, for both the nobility and the poor Muslims. The response was to turn towards religion and equally a rejection of all symbols of the new rulers, including English, Science an Modernity.” Are Hindus to be blamed for this? It has become customary for Muslims—and their secularist misguides—to lay the blame for everything that has gone wrong with Muslims to Hindus. Even Bandukwala himself succumbs to this approach by saying that “the Babri demolition and more important the Gujarat killings, have altered the world views of Muslims”. Let this be pointed out, though.

In a two-volume study of ancient Hindu temples, Messrs Ram Swarup, Arun Shourie et al gave a list of 2,000 mosques that were built on Hindu temples and the list, may it be added, was based not on hearsay but on books written by Muslim historians themselves and the inscriptions in mosques. No Muslim ruler had any business destroying temples whether in any part of India and least in Ayodhya, Banaras and Mathura.

Shri Bandukwala says that while in the first phase when Muslims from Arabia came to India their rigourous moral code won them many admirers. But when the second phase started around 1050 all those who came were “raiders from Central Asia who loved the loot”. “It is this phase” writes Shri Bandukwala, “that arouses the passions of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh”. But why shouldn’t it? Whatever benefits, if any, were bestowed on India during Islamic rule, it is, as Shapespeare put it, “the evil that men do that lives after them”. Had Muslim leaders realised the hurt that Islamic rule had done to the Hindu psyche, they would have graciously agreed to the dismantling of the Babri masjid to be re-built elsewhere to let a temple of Shri Ram built on the vacated space. Their insistence on living in a world of fantasy would not permit them to be gracious and accommodating to hurt Hindu sentiments. Ayodhya led to Godhra and Godhra to riots. Muslims have yet to come to terms with reality. Instead of living in the present, Muslims everywhere continue to live in the past with disastrous consequences to themselves. Islamic self-assertion takes strange and often violent forms. Consider some of these reports: The children’s website Al Fateh, property of the Palestinian terrorist group “Hamas”, demands the return of the Spanish city of Seville to Islamic rule because it was once part of Muslim Spain! Just over two years ago, al-Qaeda linked bombers killed 191 passengers and injured almost 1,000 in devastating train bombings in the Spanish capital and it was reported that the bombers had planned to carry out further attacks in Spain! It sounds ridiculous but just a few days after the Madrid explosions, the Spanish police found 12 kilograms of explosives near Toledo.

What is it that the Spaniards have done to Islam to get this treatment? In the second week of March this year, a Hindu temple was blasted in Indonesia. On April 5 Press Trust India reported that six Harkat-ul-Jehad al Islami (HUJI) terrorists, including the mastermind behind the Varanasi blasts, had hatched a conspiracy to blow up the two Hanuman temples in the city on Rama Navami. In Nalgonda in Karnataka, the district police have identified seven ISI activists, three Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), nine Deendar Anjuman and two activists of Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) involved in terrorist activities.

On March 11, the Goa police arrested a terrorist reportedly hailing from Jammu and Kashmir who was in the possession of two kgs of RDX and hand grenades. Bhatkal, in coastal Karnataka which has a large Muslim population has been a centre of communal trouble since 1993 when an attack on a rath yatra was deliberately made leading to more than six months of communal violence.

According to the findings of justice K.Jagannath Shetty Commission of Inquiry the attack was pre-planned but despite instructions by the government, the district administration and the local police have failed in arresting “suspected communal goondas”.

There were more disturbances in March/April this year. The standard approach of our secularists is that the VHP or the RSS is behind all this. There is no RSS in Spain or Indonesia or in Pakistan where two churches, a school and other public property were ransacked and torched by Muslim goondas. Islam is equated with mindless violence. The world will be a more peaceful place if Muslims forget that there ever existed an Ottoman or Mughal Empire and come to terms with reality. Writes Shri Bandukwala: “Muslims must reach out to Hindus. Our words and deeds must never be such that they alienate Hindus. Their goodwill is essential as we struggle to give our community a place in the Indian sun.” But who will listen to the Bandukwalas? Bandukwala is against reservations. He wants Muslims to stand on their own feet. He says he is “convinced most Hindus are good and secular at heart”.

Respect Hindu sentiments and then theirs will be the world to share with their Hindu compatriots. But this calls for statesmanship. But can we expect that from the mullahs and jehadists? The way to progress is not through madrasas but through Science and Technology. There hasn’t been a single Muslim Nobel Prize winner. And that says a lot.

The myth and truth of Godhra

2006-05-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

The myth and truth of Godhra
By Arvind Lavakare

Since no ‘secularist’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘objective’ person ever challenged the above sets of figures, some questions arise: Who killed 200-odd Hindus so early in those riots? Was it the police or the Hindus themselves? And what made those 40,000 Hindus rush to relief camps? Was it fear of Hindu mob violence, rape, arson and murder?

Two recent ‘news briefs’ in print are critical evidence of a reality that’s been totally ignored by our ‘liberals’ who have, for four years running, gone on and on and on about the ‘genocide’ of Muslims in Gujarat after the sudden inferno in the S-6 compartment of Sabarmati Express had consumed 58 Hindus, including 26 women and 12 children, returning home after performing kar seva at Ayodhya.

In its edition of March 19, 2006, The Sunday Express carried the following report from Ahmedabad:

“Post-Godhra riot case: 7 get lifer
The city sessions court on Friday convicted seven people in a post-Godhra riot case and sentenced them to life term for the murder of 35-year-old Mukesh Panchal, a resident of Lambha. He was attacked by the accused and went missing on November 7, 2003 from Shah-e-Alam Darwaza. His mutilated body was found near Chandoka Lake on November 11. One of the seven accused—Javed Shaukat Ali—meanwhile managed to give the cops a slip and fled from the court.”

In its edition of Wednesday, March 29, 2006 The Indian Express carried the following report, also datelined Ahmedabad:

“Nine get jail in post-Godhra riot case
The city sessions court on Tuesday convicted nine accused in a post-Godhra riot case. Additional Sessions Judge Sonia Gokani sentenced Mushtaq alias Kanio Ahmed Sheikh to 10 years in jail for murder and attempt to murder. Eight others were sentenced to 18 months in prison for unlawful assembly, possessing weapons and rioting.”

Out of the five convictions so far in l’affaire Godhra, the above two rip the blindfold on Godhra that the country was subjected to since March 2002. Those two convictions conclusively prove that even as some Hindus in Vadodra, Ahmedabad and a few other parts of Gujarat were provoked into insane killing, arson and loot by the S-6 carnage, the Muslims in that state were hardly the cattle hiding from the slaughter house that they have been made out by the “secularists” in and outside our national English media. Do you, for instance, recall reading about the mutilation of Mukesh Panchal’s cadaver in any of the English print media? Did you hear a sound byte about it on our TV?

Yes, despite all the media and the consequent political, propaganda about the ‘genocide’ of Gujarat’s Muslims, the reality is that some of that community were also engaged in murder, rioting and unlawful assembly with arms in hand.

This trend was discernible to the objective person four years ago itself. Thus, in its issue of April 28, 2002, The Times of India reporter, Sanjay Pandey, told us that of the 726 people who had been killed by then in the post-Godhra riots, 168 were Hindus. In its issue of June 24, 2002, India Today carried an article saying that the official figure of all people killed in Gujarat in the three months following the S-6 massacre was 800, of which a quarter were Hindus. The Union Home Ministry’s Annual Report 2002-03 said that about a third of the total dead in the Godhra riots were Hindus. It also said that, at one stage, 40,000 Hindus were in riot relief camps.

Since no ‘secularist’ or ‘liberal’ or ‘objective’ person ever challenged the above sets of figures, some questions arise: Who killed 200-odd Hindus so early in those riots? Was it the police or the Hindus themselves? And what made those 40,000 Hindus rush to relief camps? Was it fear of Hindu mob violence, rape, arson and murder?

More proof of the blindfold on Godhra came in 2005, when the UPA coalition (comprising the ‘secular’ friends of Muslims) made a statement in Parliament that 254 Hindus and 790 Muslims were killed in those riots.

But our national media simply refused to remove the blindfold on Godhra. Hence it was that the elites of our society continued to rant about the Gujarat ‘pogrom of genocide’; some cussed Indians even conspired to deny a US visa to the Chief Minister of one of the country’s fastest developing states.

Aiding and abetting that conspiracy were reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International et al. The National Human Rights Commission joined in; written lies by the likes of Arundhati Roy and fake e-mails added fuel to the fire. All of them went to town about the Gujarat ‘genocide’ with blinkers on, a blindfold underneath. None wanted to touch upon the minority community’s role in that tragedy.

But the latest criminal conviction of 16 Muslims evokes the recall of the Justice Tewatia Report on the Godhra issue published on April 26, 2002 under the aegis of the Council For International Affairs And Human Rights, based in New Delhi.

It was a report based on a six-day field study of a team headed by Justice D.S. Tewatia, former Chief Justice, Calcutta High Court and Punjab and Haryana High Court. Its other members were Dr J.C. Batra, senior advocate, Supreme Court, Dr Krishan Singh, academician, Jawahar Lal Kaul, veteran journalist, and Prof. B. K. Kuthiala, Dean, Faculty of Media Studies, G.J. University, Hisar.

The five-man team visited three affected areas and relief camps in Ahmedabad, interacting freely with the public and members of both communities, and without government interference. In Godhra, five delegations from both communities and also of mixed composition presented their views and facts to the team. Similarly, free discussions with the public and affected communities were held in Vadodra at seven affected areas and five relief camps. It collected information from the staff at the Godhra Railway Station, district administration, including the Collector and Police Commissioner, passengers traveling in Sabarmati Express on 27.02.02 in S-6 compartment as well as in other compartments, staff of the Fire Brigade, Godhra, reports in 22 newspapers and nine magazines (local, regional and Delhi) and views on media coverage articulated by some 500 persons including intellectuals like lawyers, doctors and businessmen. The site where the train was initially stopped and stoned was also visited. A high point was that 13 delegations consisting of 121 citizens met Justice Tewatia’s team and presented their viewpoints and information. The delegations ranged from the Association of Hoteliers to a group of Vanvasis and affected Muslim as well as Hindu women.

Based on the considerable oral, audio and visual evidence obtained from the above interactions, the Justice Tewatia team’s conclusions most relevant to the blindfold on Godhra were as follows:

1.

Burning of 58 Hindu pilgrims on February 27, 2002 was an act carried out at the behest of then government of Pakistan which had planned to burn the entire Sabarmati Express carrying some 2000 passengers. The primary objective was to create Hindu-Muslim communal conflagration in India. The actual perpetrators were jehadi elements in the predominantly Muslim town of Godhra where
1.

a very high traffic of telephone calls was recorded between Godhra and Pakistan, especially Karachi, before the date of the carnage
2.

an abnormally large number of passports were issued,
3.

there was a large number of persons without ration cards
4.

a large number of unemployed Muslims had mobile phones,
5.

though there is no tradition of being a Muslim pilgrim center and the local Muslims are not affluent, three istema (religious gatherings) have been held and attended by large numbers of foreigners, and
6.

an Assistant Collector (a young Muslim from eastern UP) went on leave two days before the gory incident and did not return till the middle of March though the district of his posting was aflame with communal riots much earlier.
2.

The vacuum pipe between the Coaches No. S-6 and S-7 was cut thereby preventing any further movement of the train. Miscreants threw bricks and stones at the train as soon as it left Godhra railway station. The stoning intensified after it finally stopped about 700 metres from the station. The passengers of the train, particularly Coaches S-5, S-6 and S-7, were the main targets. Burning missiles and acid bulbs were thrown on and in the coaches. One such acid missile landed in Coach S-7 and a fire started which the passengers were able to extinguish. But the attack continued and more burning missiles were thrown into the Coach S-6.
3.

In an effort to control the subsequent riots, the Gujarat government
4.

Publicly announced its decision to employ the Army on the evening of the day riots began on February 28 (Within less than 24 hours at least one brigade of Indian Army had air-landed at Ahmedabad),
5.

Made preventive arrests of over 33,000 people,
6.

Fired over 12,000 rounds of bullets,
7.

Fired over 15,000 rounds of tear gas shells,
8.

The involvement of Vanvasis in the post-Godhra riots added a new dimension to the communal violence. In rural areas the Vanvasis attacked the Muslim moneylenders, shopkeepers and the forest contractors. They used their traditional bow and arrows as also their implements used to cut trees and grass while attacking Muslims. They moved in groups and used coded signals for communication. Apparently, the accumulated anger of years of exploitation by Muslim moneylenders (interest of 50 per cent per annum), shopkeepers and forest contractors had become explosive after moneylenders sexually exploited their womenfolk.
9.

The media selected, distorted and added fiction to prove their respective points of view. The code of ethics prescribed by the Press Council of India was violated by the media with impunity. It so enraged the citizens that several concerned citizens in the disturbed areas suggested that peace could return to the state only if some of the TV channels were closed for some weeks. Even the Vanvasis complained that the media had no time to hear their agony and was spreading canards against the Hindus. Newspapers published in English from Delhi invariably editorialised the news. Direct and indirect comments in the news writing were so telling that the personal likes and dislikes of the news reporters were too obvious to be missed. They appeared to have assumed the role of crusaders against the State Government from day one. It coloured the entire operation of newsgathering, feature writing and editorials.

Conclusions 1 to 4 above are indicators as to why our national media, ever afraid to criticise the Muslim and ever ready to indulge in BJP/Hindu bashing, bypassed the Justice Tewatia Report, despite its high credentials and the fact that it was publicly released at a press conference in New Delhi. After all, our ‘secular’ national media simply could not have tolerated giving even a line to report’s conclusion 5 above. Hence, they simply buried the whole report itself, put a blindfold on the country vision of it. After all, they had found their Hindu-bashing agenda in the post-Godhra riots and they were hell-bent in pushing it full steam, right up to the Supreme Court and beyond to the United Nations.

Will the criminal conviction of 16 by two separate sessions judges in Ahmedabad remove the blindfold on Godhra that the ‘monster media’ put on the people of this country?

(The writer can be contacted at 202, Dosti Erica, Antop Hill, Wadala (E), Mumbai 400 037.)

Buddhism in china

2006-05-05T00:15:00.000-07:00

To live and unlearn
- Satiricus

Reading that defining dogma of communism—Religion is an opiate of the masses. Well, not any more—not for the Chinese communist masses. For not only are growing numbers of Chinese returning to the Buddhist religion, but the first ever officially sponsored religions conference in Communist China, called the World Buddhist Forum, has also been held the other day. An official statement from Beijing described the Forum as “a high-level platform for Buddhists from around the world”.

One lives and unlearns. Especially when one tries to learn communism in general and Chinese communism in particular. When, for instance, Satiricus read not long back about Chinese communism spawning billionaires looking for brides, he learnt that Karl Marx’s Capital and its latest Chinese edition are two entirely different things, and while Marx taught how to be a good communist, the present-day Chinese communist is now learning how to be a good capitalist.

Apparently, original communism may be about money matters, but money matters for modern, Chinese communism. Then there is this matter about religion. Satiricus recalls reading that defining dogma of communism—Religion is an opiate of the masses. Well, not any more—not for the Chinese communist masses. For not only are growing numbers of Chinese returning to the Buddhist religion, but the first ever officially sponsored religions conference in Communist China, called the World Buddhist Forum, has also been held the other day. An official statement from Beijing described the Forum as “a high-level platform for Buddhists from around the world to have dialogue, exchanges and cooperation and a stage for Chinese Buddhists to exercise their wisdom.” Good God! Does that mean Chinese Communists now need the wisdom of Chinese Buddhists? Does that mean the slaughter of students in Tien-an-Men Square was not exactly wise by Shakya Muni’s standards? Nowhere the mass killings of the ‘Cultural’ Revolution? Going even beyond that, in the year 1940, nine years before the Communist Party seized power, Mao Tse-tung had set out his plans for a “New China”, which would take certain steps... to confiscate land from rural landlords under the principle of “land to the tiller”.

And what did these “necessary steps” involve? They involved widespread slaughter. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of land-owning rural residents and their families were executed or beaten to death by fellow villagers. Would the Buddha have smiled? Satiricus thinks not. But then, that was then, this is now, and Chairman Mao’s culture has been so radically revolutionised by Chairman/President Hu Jintao that the culture made by Mao and the culture hyped by Hu are as different as chalk is from cheese.

Hu says China is currently in the throes of a profound crisis because of unprecedented economic inequality, growing political unrest, and a moral vacuum. This is profoundly puzzling for Satiricus, as he is neither a communist nor a Chinaman. Was not communism all about eliminating economic inequality? Then how could there exist economic inequality—let alone in unprecedented measure—in China after half a century of communism in power? Next, how could political unrest exist in China, let alone grow? Is it not a time-honoured tradition in communist rule to eliminate political unrest by the simple process of eliminating those who cause it? And finally this moral vacuum business is surpassingly strange.

Since when did materialist communism have anything to do with morality? Accordingly to old reports the pornography business has prospered in China. So Satiricus supposed that being a prosperous pornographer was the same as being a good communist. And according to new reports, it is becoming increasingly fashionable among young Chinese newly-weds to get themselves photographed in the nude.

Satiricus was admittedly rather taken aback, but perhaps the young comrades were only highlighting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the naked truth about Chinese communism. In such a situation where do moral values come in? Still Hu holds that there is a moral vacuum in the Chinese communist society, and the way to fill it up is—believe it or not—the revival of the ancient Chinese culture, including Confucianism. Aha!

Confucius preached the virtues of the ‘superior man’, and Hu hopes they will contribute to the making of the superior communist. Not content with invoking Confucius and Buddha, the President of Communist China has actually issued a set of eight commandments to improve the moral standards of the Chinese people: 1. Love the motherland. 2. Serve the people, don’t dissever them. 3. Uphold science, don’t be ignorant. 4. Work hard, don’t be lazy. 5. Help each other, don’t exploit others. 6. Be honest, don’t profit at the cost of your values. 7. Be law-abiding instead of lawless. 8. Know plain living, do not wallow in luxuries.

Satiricus is stunned. To his hopelessly Hindu mind all this sounds suspiciously like Manu Smriti. Actually he had read not long ago that an ancient manuscript of Manu Smriti was indeed found during an archeological excavation somewhere in China, but he had no idea the Communist President would plagiarise from it. Otherwise the edicts are anti-communist from beginning to end—at least in the beginning and at the end. For the first commandment asks the Chinese to love their motherland, but does not ask the Tibetans to love their annexed motherland. And the last edict asks them not to wallow in luxury. But how can a Chinaman be a billionaire communist and not wallow in luxury? It seems a Chinese puzzle, if you ask Satiricus.

But there are China-watchers who are not as innocent (read ignorant) as Satiricus. They say this whole morality-mongering is for stemming the growing corruption in the Party and state organs all over the country, which threatens to become all-pervasive.

Does that mean Chinese communism is a triple failure—in Economics, Politics and Morality? Satiricus does not know, as he is neither a communist nor a Chinaman. All he can say is that no communist dogma remains undiscarded by Chinese communists. Poor Karl Marx. He may be turning in his neglected grave in London, capital of the original capitalist country.

Caste as oppression in India

2006-05-05T00:09:00.000-07:00

Caste as oppression in India
By M.S.N. Menon

Was oppression of weaker section so terrible? Yes, it was. But not half as terrible as the oppression meted out by Rome and Greece to their peoples, or by Christianity and Islam to humanity.

But it was by no means without parallel in world history as is being made out now by some politicians. But do these worthies know anything of world history? They do not. Let me recount. But on this later.

The ancient world was violent. It was being tamed by ethics. Buddha was the first to do so in India, Socrates in Greece, Zoroaster in Persia, Confucius in China and Jesus Christ in the Middle East. Till then it was violence that ruled the world. Might prevailed.

The question is not whether these societies were brutal, but who was more brutal? Who was more humane?

A.L. Basham, author of “The Wonder That Was India,” did try to answer this question. He writes: “...the lot of the humble (in India) was generally hard. Yet our overall impression is that in no other part of the ancient world were the relations of man and man and of man and the state, so fair and humane. In no other early civilisations were slaves so few in number, and in no other ancient law book are their rights so well protected as in Arthashastra. No other ancient law-giver proclaimed such noble ideals of fair-play in battle as did Manu...To us, the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilisation is its humanity.” It is this humanity that gave birth to tolerance—a unique feature of the Hindu civilisation.

More need not be added to this judgement. It says all. And yet let us have a look at the history of other peoples, of other civilisations.

Do you know that the Semitic faiths divided men into two hostile camps—that of children of God and children of the Devil? The concept of a human family, of a human brotherhood, is foreign to all Semitic faiths.

According to Seignobos, author of History of Ancient and Modern Civilisations, Europeans did not have the intellectual preparation for the assimilation of such a highly ethical religion as Christianity. Which Christianity? The Christianity of Jesus, not of the church.

He goes on: “They may baptise their children, they may take the sacrament, they may flock to the church. All this they may do, and yet be as far removed from the spirit of Christianity as when they bent their knee before their idols.” The point is: Roman Christianity carried the congenital weakness of the Roman civilisation, namely its tradition of violence.

Only against this background can we explain the association of Christianity with the most terrible episodes of history. For example, its support to the African slave trade, the genocide of the Red Indians, the burning of apostates, atrocities in colonies and the holocaust. The entire Christian world is a legatee of this tradition of violence, more so the West.

Roman cruelty is thus without parallel. The Romans razed Carthage, the richest city in the world, to the ground, massacred the entire population, threw salt on the ruins and ploughed back the country to the desert it was. Why? All because Carthage had emerged as a commercial rival of Rome!

Seneca, the orator, writes that even for very small mistakes on the part of servants, “we often strike too hard and shatter a limb or break a tooth.” Domestic servants were thrown into fish ponds as “food for the lampreys”. Others were thrown into dungeons where they rotted away. Slaves were tied to the galleys by iron chains and whipped till they died.

The brutal instincts of the Romans were displayed in their utmost hideousness in the bloody games of the amphitheatre, where the gladiators fought fierce animals and other gladiators.

Greeks were racists like the Romans. Alexander expected his subjects to prostrate before him. The social status of a person in Greece was judged by wealth. Before Socrates, the Greeks were more often sanguinary, violent, deceitful, jealous, vindictive and dissolute.

Draper admits in Intellectual Development of Europe, “Upon the whole, then, we must admit that Greek mythologies indicate a barbarous social condition.” The idea of law was foreign to Homer, the epic writer. And where there was no law, there was no justice.

Millions have perished during invasions and conversions. Whole cities were razed to the ground and their population massacred. Such was the case with Vijayanagar, the most illustrious city in the world.

The invaders used to carry tens of thousands of captives to be sold in Central Asia. Timur ordered the massacre of a hundred thousand captives he was carrying from India when he ran short of food!

Islam reduced man to a plaything. He was no more free. The Quran says: “It is not for any believer, man or woman, to have any choice in the affair when God and his messenger have decreed in the matter.” Yes, man has no choice in Islam. But the person belonging to the weaker section of the Hindu society was a free man even in the caste system. And he was living in a society less prone to brutality. It was more humane.

BBC admits Aryan Invasion was a myth

2006-05-04T23:56:00.000-07:00

BBC admits Aryan Invasion was a myth
By Arabinda Ghose

Ever since the German philosopher Max Muller had propounded the theory that the Aryans were not indigenous Indians and had actually come from outside, probably Central Asia, the whole world believed in it. Even eminent Indian historians had religiously given credence to this theory and Muller’s assertion that the Vedas were composed sometime during 1500 BCE or later.

The following paragraphs, downloaded from the internet by the quarterly magazine Asian Agri History edited by Dr. Y.L. Nene and others,Vol.10.No.2 (April-June,2006) unambiguously accepts that Max Muller was entirely wrong. We give the website details at the end of this article.

Here is the full text of the paragraphs published by magazine: “One of the most controversial ideas of Hindu History is the Aryan Invasion theory, originally devised by F. Max Muller in 1848,traces the history of Hinduism to the invasion of India’s indigenous people by lighter skinned Aryans around 1500 BCE. The theory was reinforced by other research over the next 120 years, and became the accepted history of Hinduism, not only in the West but in India. There is now ample evidence to show that Muller, and those who followed him, were wrong.

Why is the Theory no longer accepted?
“The Aryan invasion theory was based on archaeological, linguistic and ethnological evidence. Later research has either discredited this evidence or provided new evidence that combined with the earlier evidence and makes other explanations more likely. Modern historians of the area no longer believe that such invasions had such great influence on Indian history. It is now generally accepted that Indian history shows a continuity of progress from the earliest times to today. The changes brought to India by other cultures are not denied by modern historians, but they are no longer thought to be a major ingredient in the development of Hinduism.

“Danger of the Theory
The Aryan Invasion Theory denies the Indian origin of India’s predominant culture, but gives credit for Indian culture to invaders from elsewhere. It even teaches that some of the most revered books of Hindu scripture are not actually India, and it devalues India’s culture by portraying it as less ancient that it actually is. The theory was not just wrong, it included unacceptably racist ideas:

1.

It suggested that Indian culture was a culture in its own right and a synthesis of elements from other cultures;
2.

It implied that Hinduism was not an authentically Indian religion but the result of cultural imperialism
3.

It suggested that Indian culture was static, and only changed under outside influences;
4.

It suggested that the dark-skinned Dravidian people of the South of India had got their faith from light-skinned Aryan invaders;
5.

It implied that indigenous people were incapable of creatively developing their faith;
6.

It suggested that indigenous people could not acquire new religious and cultural ideas from other races, by invasion or other processes;
7.

It accepted that race was a biologically based concept (rather than, at least in part, a social construct)that provided a sensible way of a ranking people in a hierarchy, which provided a partial basis for the caste system;
8.

It provided a basis for racism in the Imperial context by suggesting that the peoples of Northern India were descendants from invaders from Europe and so racially closer to the British Raj
9.

It gave a historical precedent to justify the role and status of the British Raj, who could argue that they were transforming India for the better in the same way that the Aryans had done thousands of years earlier;
10.

It downgraded the intellectual status of India and its people by giving a falsely late date to elements of Indian science and culture”.

The website is :http://www.bbc.co.UK/religion/religions/hinduism/history/history5.shtml

Organiser has carried in the past scholarly articles by, among others, N.S. Rajaram. However, the admission by the British Broadcasting Corporation that Max Muller had deliberately given a “falsely late date to elements of Indian science and culture, should now open the eyes of those scholars who still swear by the Aryan Invasion Theory.

One may add here that in the articles of the date of Lord Rama’s date of birth published in the Organiser of February 5 and 26, 2006,this writer had quoted a researcher Pushkar Bhatnagar of Delhi as claiming that the date was January 10, 5114 BCE. This showed that the Ramayana written by sage Valmiki places Indian civilisation at least seven thousand years from present. One has to add that it must have taken Indians of those days to develop the society in which Lord Rama was born at least two to three thousand years from primitive state. This puts Indian civilisation to at least ten thousand years from the present. Since the Rigveda is older than the Ramayana, the date of its composition should be at least the seventh millennium before Christ. Shri Bhatnagar’s claim that the remnants of the bridge built by Lord Rama’s army for the invasion of Lanka also proved its antiquity to seven thousand years before present.(This remnant is not the one said to have been photographed by NASA, the American Space Agency, which had denied that the photograph taken by it pertained to the old “Setu” built by Nala and other engineers accompanying Lord Rama).

Supreme Court to the rescue of hapless Muslim women

2006-05-04T23:55:00.000-07:00

Supreme Court to the rescue of hapless Muslim women
Mullahs again confront apex court
By Bharata

Najma Bibi and Sheikh Sher Mohammad of Orissa’s Bhadrak district are the latest victims of the obnoxious and obsolete laws. The couple incurred the wrath of fundamentalist Islamic clerics after the husband pronounced triple talaq in a drunken state in 2003. However, on realising his ‘terrible mistake’ the very next morning, he decided to live with his wife and three children.

However, the mullahs in Bhadrak thought otherwise. They issued the much-misused fatwa (religious edict) declaring that the couple were divorced and hence cannot live together. Najma along with her children were forcibly sent to her father’s house.

The Muslim clerics said if Najma wanted to live with her husband, she must perform halala, which meant she must marry another man and the marriage must be consummated, after which she can get a divorce and then re-marry the first husband. The couple were also ostracised by the Muslim community in Bhadrak.

However, Najma refused to do so and instead knocked at the doors of the High Court against the fatwa and sought police protection from her community men who were harassing the couple.

The incident created a nation-wide controversy with various women’s organisations and civil society groups taking cudgels on behalf of the couple.

In a landmark judgment on April 21, the Supreme Court directed the Orissa government to provide police protection to the Muslim couple.

“No one can force them to live separately. This is a secular country. All communities— Hindus or Muslims—should behave in a civilized manner”, a bench of Justice Ruma Pal, Justice C.K. Thakker and Justice Markandey Katju observed.

The response of Muslim groups to the apex court’s verdict was on expected lines. Taking strong exception to the ruling, the Orissa unit of Jamiat-ul-Ulema threatened to further ostracise the couple if they went by the court decision.

“The Supreme Court has no power to intervene in religious matters. The apex court should have confined itself to other litigations. It should have consulted religious institutions and clerics before taking such a decision”, roared Aamir-e-Shariat (President) of the Jamiat, S.S. Sajideen Quasmi.

“We will certainly drive the couple out of Muslim society if they stay together defying the decisions of the clerics and abide by the Supreme Court verdict”, he said.

Jamiat, the highest religious body of the Sunni sect in the state, also announced plans to write to the President, the Prime Minister, the Chief Minister and Law Ministers of both the state and central governments to look into the matter. It demanded that the whole issue should be discussed in Parliament “which should take a firm decision on religious freedom”.

Residents in Najma’s native village also opposed the reunion saying: “We will not let anybody defying the fatwa stay among us”.

Najma’s case is not an isolated one. From the historic case of Shah Bano, which changed the political contours of the country, to the saga of Saddiqunissa and the soul-stirring tale of Gudiya, Muslim women have been at the receiving end of the obscurantist mullahs, who have not even spared tennis sensation Sania Mirza and suggested an Islamic dress code for her.

And slowly but steadily, the Muslim women are rising up against the blatant discrimination and inequality being perpetrated upon them.

“The lives of Muslim women cannot be governed by archaic practices like triple talaq. Muslim women should be governed by laws that treat them as equal citizens of democratic India”, says Supreme Court advocate Sona Khan.

After a survey of Muslim women in Bihar’s Darbhanga district some years ago, Sabina Hussein of the Delhi-based Centre for Women’s Development found that eight among a random sample size of 100 were divorced. Only three among the eight had received their mehr and that too in paltry irregular instalments.

It is not for the first time that the courts have come to the rescue of the hapless Muslim women. In a landmark judgment in 2002, the Bombay High Court had ruled that divorce between Muslim couples will have to be “convincingly proved in a court of law under the civil procedure code and Indian Evidence Act”. A mere statement, written or oral, by a man divorcing his wife won’t be enough proof of his having obtained a divorce.

Delivered by a full bench of the court, the ruling is now binding for Maharashtra. The 88-page judgment came after hearing in a case filed by Latur resident Dagdhu Pathan challenging the maintenance claims by his wife Rahimbi. The judgment categorically states that for divorces to be deemed legal, husbands must prove in court all requirements of divorce under Muslim laws, like reconciliation, arbitration and payment of mehr.

In the matter of Saddiquinissa too, the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court pointed out that talaq could not be given by the husband in one instance and only comes to force after a certain time which is meant for reconciliation and arbitration by friends and relatives. It also ruled that talaq has to be confirmed by a court, which has to hold that the marriage was dissolved on valid grounds. Only then would talaq become final.

Over two decades back, another Muslim woman, Shah Bano, asked a court to ensure support from her husband who had divorced her after 43 years of marriage and thrown her out on the street. The Supreme Court had at that time ruled it could not accept her husband’s plea that he was only bound by Islamic laws. A husband must assist his wife financially after a divorce if she has no other means, it ruled.

However, such was the fury of fundamentalist Muslims against the ruling that the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986 diluted it through a legislation in Parliament. The result was that in several states, divorced Muslim women cannot claim maintenance beyond the ‘iddat’ (three menstrual cycle) period.

It remains to be seen whether the apex court’s latest verdict too would face a similar fate, given the Congress-led UPA government’s past approach towards its rulings including that on IMDT.

The powers that be would do well to remember that even in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, a husband has to notify an arbitration council/Shariat court about the Talaq immediately after its pronouncement. The effect of the notice is to freeze the talaq for 90 days during which the council tries to bring about a reconciliation. After the expiry of 90 days, the talaq takes effect unless there is a patch-up. Moreover, the man has to apply to the council to marry a second time giving exact reasons why he wants to do so.

Demanding an amendment of the maintenance legislation passed by Parliament in 2001 to include Muslim women, Advocate Sona Khan says, “Destitution, vagrancy, trafficking of neglected women do not vary with region, religion, caste and creed. The response to the basic right to life based on religion, with which the issue of maintenance of woman is linked, is unconstitutional and unethical.”

Are the mullahs and vote-catchers of the Congress listening?

US-funded NGOs spreading disaffection

2006-05-04T23:53:00.000-07:00

US-funded NGOs spreading disaffection
By Sandhya Jain

The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data on the number of major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste Hindus.

Under the guise of human rights and freedom of religion, America has for some time been promoting certain activists from weaker sections, who regularly report to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, about India’s internal affairs. Now, American academics are synergizing their work with the political concerns of their government, seeking to aggravate and exploit differences in Hindu society.

The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data of a number of major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste Hindus, then it would know very well that it is the OBCs who oppose the entry of SCs/STs in temples. This kind of study by an outside agency is dangerously divisive, and a combative Hindu intellectual has countered that Indian intellectuals should in turn ask how many American churches attended by White people have Black priests.

In any case, since the Hindu tradition is not centralized in the manner that denominational churches are, it is unlikely that any such statistics would be available in Hindu society, and the concerned academics would certainly know this. They would also be aware that there are several gurus and paramparas in India today that are training SCs/STs as priests, should they desire to be priests. What is interesting to note, however, is that SC/ST desire to have temples with Brahmin priests, because they feel confident that they know the proper way to conduct pujas!

Another question is how many formerly lower caste Hindu leaders have a significant following among the other castes. Politically, Smt Mayawati is way ahead of all leaders in Uttar Pradesh, and in Bihar, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan has a certain following. In the spiritual tradition, one of the most important leaders is Ma Amritanandamayi, a woman from the fisherman caste, whose most loyal devotees belong to the upper castes. Thus, the tradition of overlooking the caste of a realized saint is very much alive in India. But I can’t think of a single significant Black politician in the United States who would be cultivated by White people; not even the late Martin Luther King, or a Hispanic or Native American spiritual leader with a White Anglo Saxon following.

Becoming more overtly political, the American scholars want to know how many SCs/STs figure on the VHP’s governing board. Here I think the more pertinent question would be how many such persons figure in the Congress Working Committee, especially as that party flourished for decades on SCs/STs support, and is today headed by a White European Catholic, whose Government is committed to such token affirmative action. Even more pertinently, since the Church has long evangelized most of the African continent, how many Black cardinals are there in the Vatican, and how many bishops in the Baptist, Adventist, Methodist and other churches?

The American scholars wonder why former weaker sections form separate sects of their own rather than with other castes; and whether they prefer to call themselves Dalits or Harijans in order to gain the respect of caste Hindus. It is obvious that the questions are more political than academic, and such studies are intended to promote the agendas of successive American administrations in interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.

Hindu society does not have sects; by definition, sects are splinter groups within monotheistic religions. I do not know if American Blacks are a separate sect or not, but it is a fact that covert discrimination even today compels them to have separate churches, and this apparently applies to other ethnic minorities in that country. Moreover, those minorities do not get respect by calling themselves Christian, but they get a political value by calling themselves Black, Hispanic, Korean, Chinese and seeking safety in numbers. Hindu society is a concentric circle of jatis, which are cohesive social groups claiming descent from a common ancestor, or some other common affinity. Thus, SCs/STs that adopted the Sikh faith constituted themselves into the Ramgarhia community, to distinguish themselves from their former Hindu brethren. Proliferation and distinction go hand in hand in India, and do not lead to disintegration or division.

In this context, it is worth mentioning that just as the dominant White Christians have failed to assimilate other groups on an equal basis in their own societies, despite converting them to their faith, so also in India the church has failed to uplift the weaker sections despite luring them away from Hindu society on the pretext of granting them social equality and economic mobility. The church has inflicted grievous injuries upon its constituents from weaker sections, forcing them to build separate churches or to sit in segregated areas of the church, take their dead to separate cemeteries, take holy water and communion separately.

Christian activists of weaker sections estimate that church institutions and Christian NGOs together receive approximately Rs. 2,500 crore of foreign aid annually, but there is no intra-community transparency regarding the utilization of these funds. Christian bodies earn huge incomes from elite schools, colleges and hospitals managed by them, as also from massive commercial properties they own in major cities. Yet weaker sections which comprise the bulk of the community get no share of its enormous wealth.

It is a travesty of justice that the church is now shifting the burden of its responsibility to the Indian Government and demanding reservation benefits for the weaker section Christians. The latter were misled away from the Hindu fold and then betrayed by denying them a just share in the church’s colossal resources.

According to Census 2001, there are 24.20 million Christians in India, more than half of whom belong to the weaker section of South India. Yet power in the Indian church is jealously guarded by priests belonging to upper castes. The 200-member Catholic Bishops Conference of India will never disclose the number of bishops or cardinals from weaker sections, possibly because there are none. The UPA government has done the rich Christian educational institutions a favour by exempting minority institutions from the burden of reservation quotas that have been (and are being) extended elsewhere, so they are literally without accountability to their poorer brethren.

'Secular State has to protect every religion including Hinduism'

2006-04-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

'Secular State has to protect every religion including Hinduism'
Aug 6, 2004
http://newstodaynet.com/06aug/ss2.htm

Swami Dayananda Saraswati is in many ways like the Hindu religion
itself of manifold purpose and use. An articulate spokesperson of all
things religion. A profound thinker on issues of human importance. A
sage of wealthy wisdom. A catalyst for social welfare. A global
messenger of peace and prosperity. He is all these plus some more.

It is always edifying and educating to hear him speak on
matters that the nation is faced with. Editor T R Jawahar certainly
found him at his eloquent and acute best during his conversation with
the seasoned seer a few days ago.

Excerpts from the interview

Q: You have initiated and started this Hindu Dharma Acharya
Sabha with high expectations and lofty goals. What has been its track
record and how successful has it been in bringing together the
various disparate sections of the Hindu society?
Ans: Whatever were the objectives of the Hindu Dharma Acharya
Sabha, they have been accomplished. One of the objectives was to
bring all of them (the various leaders of the Hindu society) together
and we brought them together. It has been done. And we wanted to
evolve a common programme for which we will all work together. We
discussed and made certain resolutions. Some of them are long-
reaching resolutions. They are not immediately subject to
fulfillment. The resolutions like getting the Hindu Religious
Endowment Board relieved from the hold of the State Government is a
commitment the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha has and we are working
towards that very vigorously and we will achieve that. Another
resolution is we will stem the erosion of values. That is also a
continuous one. We also resolved to work against conversions and that
too is a long process. And so we are working and the Acharyas are
aware of this. We are going to meet again. We are constantly in
touch. So it is successful.

Q: The Tamilnadu Government has announced the repeal of the
Anti-forcible Conversion Act. But the opposition to the repeal has
been very muted from the Hindu society, particularly from the
Acharyas' side. There have not been many big voices of indignation
against that.
Ans: The repeal of Conversion Act has done more damage than
any good; you know the damage is much more than the damage that was
there before the introduction of the Act. Therefore what I say is
this: Repeal of the Act was a mistake. There may be some reasons but
it has done damage to us. It is a tremendous damage. And I have
written a letter on behalf of the Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha to the
Chief Minister asking her to take a courageous stand to stem this
aggression of conversion. And I consider, as I said before,
conversion is violence and this violence has to be stopped. And we
have got on even without this Act. Laws were there. Even human rights
act is there. Therefore we don't need a new act. But introducion of
the Act and then repealing it is not good. It was done to stop mass
conversions etc. Fine. But the Act was never acted upon. Lot of cases
were reported but no action was taken. And then, the repeal reads as
though there is a new sanction for everything. This is not true.
Therefore something has to be done by the government to neutralise
that kind of a feeling.

Q: But do you really think, Swamiji, conversions could be
stopped by laws or with the help of the State? Is it not the duty of
the Hindu society at large and the Acharyas to address the problem?
Ans: That is one thing. Hindu religion basically is not a
converting religion. It does not perpetrate aggression towards any
culture, any religion. In fact it has got a certain intrinsic
accommodation for other religions to pursue their own forms of
prayer, worship etc. and it is not aggressive. It is its own genius,
its own culture. It is not aggressive, it won't be aggressive.

Q: So there is no question of getting into any kind
of 'competitive religiosity' to counter this violence you are talking
about?
Ans: No, Hindu Dharma does not allow that that. Therefore,
there is you on one side, with a non-fighting, non-aggressive, non-
violent religious tradition. Then there are two aggressive religious
traditions and they are trying to get this non-fighting religious
people- they are trying to get their share.

Q: Is it an unequal battle...
Ans: In a way, yes. So they are eating into our tradition. We
are only defensive. And what you talk about the Hindu fundamentalism
and all that is not true. There are no Hindu fundamentalists, there
are some Hindus who realize this and therefore they are only
asking 'Hey, come on, leave us alone'. Are they fundamentalist? They
want themselves to be left alone. That is not fundamentalism. You
have got a right to protect yourself. The State is supposed to
protect, being secular, all religions. I want the State to be totally
secular. And if it has got to be secular it needs to protect all
religions, which includes unfortunately Hindu religion also. And the
State doesn't have any right, being secular, to manage the properties
of Hindu temples and spend crores of rupees in administration of the
temple. Therefore, we want everything to be left alone. Be secular.
Totally secular means, protect Islam, protect Christianity, Protect
Hinduism. PROTECT. All the way, protect all the main traditions-
protect them.

Q: Okay, but is not a fact that many practices in Hinduism lend
themselves as alibis for these kinds of activities, for poaching and
generally criticising Hinduism? As Hindu Dharma Acharya Sabha how do
you propose to regulate and reform these?
Ans: See, a converting person can make use of anything. And,
in fact, a responsible religious person should pursue his or her
religion and leave other persons alone. If they have problems and if
you think you can help them, then help them solve. Or else, just
allow them to solve it by themselves. The Acharyas, of course have
looked into some of them. Then among the Acharyas there are very
orthodox ones, there are people who are not orthodox but they are
ready to come out of these orthodoxical big walls and try to do
something. So it is a long way. There is a long way to go. But that
is our internal problem and we are trying to solve it. We will solve
it.

Q: Another bane of the Hindu society, Swamiji, particularly
relevent to Acharayas and Gurus is that we see so many charlatans and
all kinds of dubious characters going around in the garb of sadhus
and vitiating the religious atmosphere. Does not the Acharya sabha
have some kind of a role in keeping the people on their guard, from
being exploited by such fakes ...
Ans: There are people who have difficulties in conforming to
dharma. Rather, they are given to adharma. In the pursuit of adharma
they can use anything. They can use religion; they can use religious
robes. That doesn't mean that religious people are committing crime.
There are people committing crimes and when they commit crimes they
use religion also. So it is going on. So, a seemingly religious
person need not be totally ethical and an ethical person need not be
religious. Again, you can see such persons in all religions, not just
among Hindus.

Q: But is there something in the Hindu psyche that makes people
susceptible to these kind of characters? Is it because of a basic
lack of understanding about religion itself Swamiji? Have benefit-
oriented rituals and blind faith clouded a proper understanding?
Ans: There are lot of real things. Suppose there are certain
rituals that are meant for neutralising certain problems. There is a
discipline called astrology that also can help us in some ways. So we
have a lot of things. We are a very rich and vast culture. And
therefore there will be areas where people are ignorant. In all areas
there are people who are ignorant and therefore in all areas there
can be exploiters of gullibility.

Q: Swamiji, a Christian is not ignorant of the bible, a Muslim
is not ignorant of his Quaran but when you take an average Hindu his
ignorance of his religion and scriptures is very very high . How do
you account for that Swamiji?
Ans: You don't know if every Christian is knowledgeable of
his bible or if every Muslim is knowledgeable of his Quaran but then
they all hear something about them because it is a congregational
religion. So where there is a congregational discipline naturally
there can be somebody who can explain and that advantage we don't
have. But we have some advantage also, because a Hindu imbibes from
his parents in terms of religion and culture and if he wants to know
something more he has to go to a teacher. Again the flow is vertical.
There is no lateral control. Naturally a temple is unlike a place of
assembly, like a church or a mosque where people assemble for prayer.
But here a temple is a place of worship; it is an altar of worship.
An altar of worship is entirely different from an assembly hall.
It is amazing. And being an altar of worship, anybody can
come anytime and offer his or her worship and go away. And certain
other temples may have priests and certain other temples may not have
priests. You will find in many temples in the North there are no
priests. We ourselves are priests; the devotees themselves are
priests. That is because of our concept of Isvara. It is complete, we
say every form is Isvara's form. And the world is a manifestation of
Isvara. Therefore we can invoke Isvara in any form and therefore we
have a ritual of worship. They don't have that advantage because the
world for them is created by God for your consumption and world is
not a manifestation of Isvara. World, for them, is created by God
sitting in heaven and he dropped these planets as doughnuts.
Therefore this concept being defective, they are the losers. And
therefore we should never compare Hindu religious forms to any other
form.

Q: The last two decades, politically and socially,has been
dominated by debates on Hindutva, communalism, secularism, pseudo
secularism and all these kind of jargons. Now, has this debate
reached the dead end with the fall of the BJP government at the
Centre or do you see it taking a different tone?
Ans: They were not really (the BJP) doing the propaganda of
Hindutva perhaps properly. Hindutvam also is not understood by the
one who propagates or by the one who listens to the propaganda. The
emphasis has to be recast and redone properly. There is a national
culture and it is from this land. It is our bharatiya culture and
people need to respect it. And the one who respects this culture is
the one who is a bharatiya. Therefore, we need to really talk about
our bharatiya culture, bharatiya religion and Bharat as a nation. Not
this partial secularism of not protecting the Hindu religion. We need
to protect Hindu religion, we need to protect Islam, we need to
protect Christianity and for which we should practice real
secularism. And therefore the Bharatiya Janata Party should address
itself to that secularism.
Every media, every means of propaganda, we need to make use
of to tell exactly what is secularism. And every Indian should know
this. They need to protect all religions. That means no erosion of
Hindu religion. Hindus have to be preserved, Hinduism has to be
preserved, and Hindu culture is to be preserved. It will protect him.
So allow it to thrive.

Q: All political parties eye what is called the minority vote
bank. Is the consolidation of the Hindu vote bank, the dream of many
people, is it a pipe dream or a possibility?
Ans: Why should we consolidate any one's bank? They are
consolidating their own banks. We need not consolidate but we NEED TO
KNOW that others are consolidating their votes. And the votes
consolidated are used against the people who love their religion,
their tradition, their native culture. Therefore, this is the
problem.

Q: But BJP during the last two decades rose to political power
only because of the so called Hindu consolidation on the Ayodhya
issue and various other issues and then...
Ans: Not at all. There was no Hindu consolidation at all.
They had given us certain hopes. And those hopes we want to realise.
It is a Bharatiya party. It has Nationalism. Bharatiya means it has a
certain nationalistic heart, which is having a deep reverence,
respect for our native culture, which does not mean it is against any
other religion. Love for my religion does not amount to hatred for
others. Love for your children does not mean you have hatred for
other children. But here it is interpreted like that. Love for my
religion means hatred for other religion and that is how it is
interpreted. Therefore, we need to emphasise. The Bharatiya Janata
party gave us a hope that it may represent the cause of native
cutlure, native religious protection over promotion.

Q: There have been, when the BJP was in power and even now,
so much talk about the word saffronisation of education... of
everything. Now as a person wearing saffron clothes what do you think
about the way the word is being used or misused or bandied about?
Ans: I wish they saffronise everything. They didn't
saffronise anything.(laughs) This is just a slogan, a JNU slogan and
they always make slogans, thrive on slogans and they live on slogans.
What do you mean by saffronisation? If I chant or people chant their
prayers in Sanskrit, is it safronised? Are non-saffronised people not
chanting? WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? This is all usual humbug.

Q: And finally, Swamiji, on the Kumbakonam tragedy. There are
lot of negligence theories and there are lot of conspiracy theories
too doing the rounds, but as a spiritual person how do you explain
this monumental agony from a religious perspective? Do not such
happenings make people lose faith in life itself?
Ans: See, this is a tragedy due to neglect ....

Q: That is on one side but from a spiritual and religious
angle, there is talk of karma and all those things, but that is no
comfort ...
Ans: No I don't accept karma in this thing. This is abuse of
one's free will. Karma is there because of free will. If you have no
free will there is no karma and when you abuse your free will you
can't quote karma. Only when you have used all your free will and in
spite of that if you find something happening then you say karma.
That is why it is abuse of free will and any human being can abuse
his free will, it can be negligence, it can be over confidence. It is
negligence of a lot of people, not one person. All are responsible,
there is no escaping that.

What If India Had Won The 1962 War Against China?

2006-04-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

What If India Had Won The 1962 War Against China?

Tibet would have been liberated; the loss of face would have made
China retreat into its shell instead of becoming an aggressive
imperialist....and of course India's Marxists would have been
defanged.

RAJEEV SRINIVASAN

Indians have been conditioned to believe that we had not a ghost of a
chance against China in 1962; but that's simply not true. If the
Indian government had not been so blasÃ©; if the military leadership
had not been so ineffectual; if the Indian Air Force had not been
grounded, ill-advisedly; well, all historic ifs, but the outcome would
have been very different. China's army is a lot less than invincible,
as the battle-hardened Vietnamese proved by thrashing it in 1979.

Even the timing was propitious for India, yet we fumbled. In 1962,
China had just experienced four years of decreasing foodgrain
production and a major famine.
Chinese supply lines to the Indo-Tibet border were stretched thin, and
could have been disrupted from the air. If only the Indian political
and military leadership had not been criminally negligentâwhich is why
the Henderson-Brooks Report on the war has been suppressed, for it
would implicate too many in high placesâIndia could have won.

The end results would have been dramatic: Tibet would have been
liberated; Indians would not have been starry-eyed about China; the
loss of face would have made China retreat into its shell instead of
becoming an aggressive imperialist.

Tibet was an avoidable catastrophe. First is the decimation of a
vibrant Indic culture, that of the Tibetan Buddhists. They have been
doubly unfortunate. For, Tibetan Buddhism owes its traditions to the
few monks who escaped being beheaded by Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1197 when
he sacked Nalanda. And now, in a repeat, they are being exterminated
once again, this time by fascist Han Chinese.

In 1962, China was quite weak militarily. If India had created a
coalition with Western powers, who worried about the Soviet-China
axis, the Han Chinese could have been ejected, and Tibet saved from
genocide. The Americans would have cooperated; in those Domino Theory
days, they even trained a group of Tibetans for a guerrilla resistance
movement back home. India, instead, chose to be gullible "useful
idiots", in Chou En-Lai's dismissive phrase.

However, in addition to altruistic concern for a sister culture, India
would have gained concrete things from Tibetan freedom. The plateau is
the source of many of the rivers in Asia, and benign Tibetan control
over them would have given much of Asia water security: the Indus, the
Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Irrawaddy all originate there.

Instead, China plans to divert the Brahmaputra northwards from Tibet.
If so, the Ganga-Brahmaputra doab would dry up, and civilisation as we
know it would end in North India. This is a national security issue of
the highest order, and Indians ignore it at their peril.

Chinese dams across the Mekong are already causing drought in
downstream riparian states like Laos and Cambodia. The Chinese
deliberately created floods on the Brahmaputra in Arunachal not too
long ago. There is every reason to believe China will proceed with
diverting water, ignoring India's objections.

This water war India could absolutely have avoided by routing China in
1962. Similarly, Chinese nuclear missiles in Tibet's high plains, as
well as the dumping of nuclear waste therein, both have serious
security and environmental implications for India.

On a more subtle level, the 'loss of face' to China would have had
incalculable value in geopolitics. At that time, China was viewed with
disdain. They got into the UN Security Council only because Nehru, in
his infinite wisdom, gave them the seat offered to India! Bizarre
experiments with fundamentalist Leninism/Stalinism, including the
Great Leap Forward, caused most observers to view China as a freak
show.

Another side-effectâand in a way, this might have been the greatest
benefit to Indiaâwould have been the defanging of India's Marxists.
These evangelists for the Church of Marx would have been laughed out
of court if they plugged the sayings of Chairman Mao immediately after
China had been defeated by India. This would have prevented Marxist
infiltration into academia, institutions and the media, which urgently
need to be de-toxified from their baleful influence. Furthermore, both
West Bengal and Kerala would have been spared decades of
under-development and degeneration.

Thus, winning the 1962 war would have made an enormous difference to
India. But there is no mistaking the civilisational conflict between
India and China. In this millennia-old Grand Narrative, 1962 is a mere
skirmish. India colonised Asia softly: with a few exceptions, without
military conquest or migration. China colonised by demographic
warfare.

Indic ideas went everywhereâWest Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia,
Tibet; even China and through it, Korea and Japan. The ideas were
enormously influential, and they included religion and philosophy,
martial arts, mathematics, language, architecture and mythology.
China, on the other hand, depended on demographic thrusts: periodic
emigration of Han Chinese took their culture and their industrial arts
with them. They were looking for survival, for lebensraum: for China
has poor land, and either too little or too much water. This process
has continued to the present, with the large Chinese diaspora.

The last word in this monumental competition has not been
written.China may be leading right now, but India is surely no
pushover any more.