More hate speech on Indymedia

Having been plagued for months by European supremacist racist postings posing as articles on migration, by anti-semitic rants and by anti-arab zionist propaganda, it seems that Indymedia is now being targetted by the proponents of Hindutva hate speech.

This is the kind of vile sectarianian drivel, dressed up as an article, that provides the intellectual justification for the terrible pograms in Gujerat this year and for numerous other examples of sectarian discrimination and communal violence in India today, manipilated by self serving elites.

In providing a platform for the passionate telling of truth the indymedia collective must not allow this site to be abused by the proponents of hate. Pseudo articles like this ought to removed or hidden fom the newswire or the site risks being swamped by this sort of shite and this will surely discredit Indymedia and discourage the progressive communities Indymedia intends to serve from accessing it.

I read the article and found nothing wrong and infact it is true to the core . May be the you are unaware of Indian politicians who are pets of Arabs. Many COngress Politicians are Corupt and sold off the honor of India to Arabs .

It is shame that this website is controlled by Sabrang Communication and all the Postings are ANTI HINDU .. Shame to say that Hindutva guys are infiltrated. Look at the First Page , Anti-Hindu , Pro Communism and Muslim Appeasing News has been Posted. SHAME ON U . . . .
All Sabrang Idiots are Just Bunch of Anti-Hindu Morona who are at Beck and Call of COngress and Muslim Leaders.

Kick this Idiots from this Place and make more room for Free and Independent Flow of News.

Please be specific to your allegation against muslims or the good that hindutva has brought, or has it?

your opinions to be factually correct is that any justification for killing and plundering and raping? Surely that is not the way to resolve issues in a democratic state?

Having said that I find your allegations to be wholly baseless. Added to that your comment that free and fair debate on this site should be propogated by silencing people with opinions that differ to yours, is fascist to say the least.

Dear Dhananjay !
There used to be riots earlier to fformation of Sangh Parivar I mean to say in Pre Independence . Why Muslims are so Violent ? WHy they have propensity to Group Violence ? If Islam is Peace why they have not integrated into National Mainstream like other Minorities Viz , Parsi, SIkh, Etc . The answer lies in the Hidden agenda they have to divide and rule India . Muslim Elite want to keep their community in ignorance, backward and use them as a tool against majority hindus to further their political ambition. Why muslim league is still existing in india after if partition ? At the same time why they are not supporting Uniform civil code as per Article 44 of Indian COnsyitution , also removal of Article 370 . It is utter shame and disgrace on the part of Congress and Secular forces that they are playing Minority Politics at the cost of Blood Hindus.

If at all there is any common sense , the political parties , Particularly Congress has to support Removal of Article 370 and Uniform Civil Code .

For good measure, I must not let the Hindu riot-mongers go scot-free either. In the typical riot cases where Hindus merely react to attacks by some Muslims, it is certainly possible to keep the quantity of violent revenge at a lower level than is now the case. If the Hindu organizations, when a communal crisis breaks out, immediately apply themselves to limiting the damage, immediately move in to calm people down and to effectively prevent the anti-social elements in their own ranks from attacking Muslims, then the death toll could be far lower. I have so far never heard from a Hindu activist being thrown out of these Hindu organizations for irresponsible and violent behaviour. Yet, such miscreants certainly exist, and if the RSS etc. fail to stop them or to formally punish them, these organizations are co-responsible.
A plea which these Hindu organizations often make, is that goondas with no affiliation to the VHP, RSS or BJP, merely use the riot, after others have started it, to get their share of looting and raping. I cannot judge in what percentage of the cases that this was what happened188, but suppose that it really goes like that. Even then a determined move to restore order and discipline within all sections of the local Hindu community would make a substantial difference. That this is not being done on anything like a sufficient scale, is clear to me from the fact that the apologetic literature189 of the RSS, while making a rather strong case for this organization's non-riot-prone character, does hardly say anything about the constructive role they have or have not played in the process of stopping the violence once it has started, or in the healing process afterwards.
In my opinion, the virginity which the RSS spokesmen claim concerning the start of riots, and their unimpressive record (relative to their numbers and level of discipline and organization) in actively intervening to stop violence against Muslims, are the result of one and the same fact concerning the RSS: it is not a militant organization of vanguard troopers (as they are portrayed by some secularists who like to clamour about Hindu fascism), but an organization of quite ordinary people, shopkeepers and schoolboys, who have no inclination to start real fights or to enter the battlefield once the fight has started, even as peace- makers.
While RSS workers are killed by the dozens by the Khalistani terrorists (and/or by Pakistani provocateurs dressed as Sikhs), we never hear of any violent retaliation. This lack of retaliation is not just because of a policy of not aggravating tension between Sikh Hindus and other Hindus, but simply because the RSS doesn't have the capability to strike. Incidentally, this frustrates the Khalistani and Pakistani calculations : believing the secularist propaganda about the RSS as a fascist militia ready to terrorize the minorities, they had hoped to get another Direct Action Day going, with mutual killing of common Hindus and Sikhs.
Apart from reactive violence against Muslim attacks, the Hindu groups cannot disown some cases of unprovoked aggression on their own part. While the Rathyatra had been peaceful, mr. Advani's arrest was the occasion for a more grim and militant line of action on the part of BJP workers. In Jaipur, the Bharat bandh on October 24 generated a series of riots.
As any communist or trade-unionist can tell you, a strike is seldom a collectively voluntary action. Most often, a motivated minority forces the strike on the majority. In the Bharat bandh also, the BJP workers went around the city to check that all the shopkeepers downed their shutters. According to their own explanation, a shopkeeper refused to comply with their demand that he close his shop, took out a gun and shot at them. And that was the beginning of a week of communal violence. If one analyzes the responsibility, one might say that the demand to close shop was an encroachment on the shopkeeper's constitutional rights : already more of a provocation than the legitimate though insensitive use of free speech to utter provocative slogans. That doesn't justify the use of firearms yet.
The readiness to retaliate against the most defenseless classes among the Muslims, in reaction to well-planned Muslim goonda violence, betrays that trait stereotypically attributed by Muslims to Hindus : cowardice (not that the Islamic behaviour of throwing bombs at processions is all that courageous). But it also betrays two things about which the Hindu organizations can readily do something : despair, and a lack of education. It is out of despair that people attack just whoever they can get, feeling that they can not leave the Muslim attacks without a fitting reply.
This irrational tendency to take revenge on just anyone belonging to the Muslim community, can only be cleared away through education. The short-term necessity in solving the riot problem is a more effective police force and most of all an effective judicial prosecution of the culprits (which implies breaking through the nexus of politicians and criminals). But the long-term necessity for reducing the communal violence is education.
I don't mean education with moralistic campaigns to tell them not to do such ugly things, sadbhavana yatras and human chains for communal amity : those things only convince the already-convinced, and they have no impact once a crisis breaks out. What Hindu leaders should teach their followers (and first of all imprint on their own minds), is that the Muslims are not to blame for communal violence. Even when it is established that a far more than proportionate amount of the communal violence emanates from Muslim quarters, it should still be upheld as dogma that he Muslim people are not to blame.
"The Muslims" are just people like the rest of us, but they happen to be open to the influence of the Quranic ideology propagated by Islamic religious personnel. In fact, the common Muslim is hardly aware of Islamic theology. For him, being a Muslim means being what he himself is. And for his, the Muslim are not so much the followers of Mohammed, but simply the community to which he belongs. And he will intensify his bond with his community whenever it is in confrontation, offensively or defensively, with another community. Not because of a theology of Momins vs. Kafirs, but out of a natural tribal instinct. Unfortunately, there are leaders who take these common people with them, in actions inspired by this theology of which the common people know so little.
The common Hindu has so often heard of or been confronted with Muslim violence, that he has come to associate Muslims with violence. On the other hand, he is taught by his leaders to only see the face value of this violence, not the ideology behind it. An RSS man told me that one day Guru Golwalkar gave a speech, saying that Mohammed was a great prophet, and that Islam is a great religion, but that, inconsequentially, the Muslims are big fools. What nonsense : the one thing that defines Muslims as a group, is their adherence to Islam and the Prophet. How can you make a collective allegation against the Muslims if you first praise that which makes them into one collectivity ?
One should look for the reason for the apparently typical Muslim proneness to riots, in that which defines the Muslim collective identity, the Islamic ideology. It would have been more fair, and historically more accurate, to explain Muslim violence by saying that the Muslims are our brethren, but they or their leaders are mentally in the fangs of "Islam, that religion of jihad" created by "Mohammed, that prophet of icon-breaking". That way, you distinguish between the human and the ideological level, and then you can educate the people and make them see the key formula that will take the sting out of Hindu vengefulness against their Muslim countrymen : the problem is not the Muslims, the problem is Islam.
Of course, once a procession is being attacked, it is too late to say to the crowd :"Hey, don't attack the Muslims, attack Islamic ideology". At that time, they are confronted with a physical enemy, and they will react physically. However, in the longer run, some education in comparative religion is the solution, or at least a central part of the solution.
Today, Hindus have to swallow all kinds of negative image-building concerning Hinduism. Islam, by contrast, is depicted as a liberator from inequality, a religion of peace and brotherhood, and more such fictional terms of praise. But then, after being fed all these nice things about Islam, they find that their procession is being attacked by Muslims. This anomaly they cannot understand. So they are left to the immediacy of the situation, and even afterwards they cannot comprehend what happened, as long as they are not informed about Islamic doctrine.
Well, some secularist Swami may tell them that all prophets are great, that it is only their followers who err. In fact, this sweet little lie is the worst contributor to the communal violence on the Hindu side : it is not true that the Muslims err and "mis-apply the teachings of that great prophet Mohammed". Most of them just follow the lead given by fanatical Imams, and these fanatical Imams can at worst only be blamed for not erring and fully applying the doctrine of the Prophet. So, Hindus should know that these Muslims are only sincerely applying the teachings of the real culprit of most of the communal violence in India : Mohammed.
There is every reason to tell them the truth about Islam. Hinduism should not be painted in rosy colours, but evaluated in a fair and truthful way. The treatment Islam receives, should be the same. Now, a fair and truthful presentation of Islam will include : the absolute inequality of believer and unbeliever, the boundless self-righteousness of the Prophet and the believers who imitate him, the crudely physical nature of the Islamic precepts (the complete lack of a consciousness dimension), the strongly political and anti-secularist objectives of Islam, and the logical absurdity of the very idea of prophethood.
Once this distinction between Muslim human beings and anti-human Islamic doctrine is clear in people's minds, you can demand from them a Gandhian self-restraint in the face of terrible provocation. When your procession gets attacked, you will still not set the Muslims' shops on fire. This distinction between the ideas working through some people, who in turn can set entire crowds and gangs in motion, and on the other hand the people themselves, will make a crucial difference.
Secondarily, the curbing of Hindu retaliation will also have its effect on the propagandistic and political front. At present every riot, regardless what the facts and who the victims, is held up as a proof of the rabid and fascist character of the Hindu communal forces who are stirring the communal cauldron. The secularist agitprops should be starved of every semblance of evidence. In this respect, it is better to get killed than to kill.
Or at least, anything is better than to kill innocents. Against terrorists, using force is the most effective way to stop them, because it is the language they understand. But that job should be left to the legitimate security forces.
This work at the level of thought should also deal with the communal attitudes that have crept into Hinduism during its confrontation with the Muslim onslaught. Islamic thought has deeply influenced the Indian intelligentsia, including champions of Hindutva. Thus, Dayananda Saraswati espoused monotheism, denounced idol- worship, and treated the Veda like a revealed, complete and final Scripture. V.D. Savarkar thought that Hindus have to borrow forms of organization and lifestyle from the Muslims in order to overcome them. He has been accused by the secularists (and with him, the entire Hindutva movement) of reducing Hindu identity to an us vs. them pattern of enmity against the Muslims. The secularists correctly denounce such an attitude, while glossing over the fact that this enmity is intrinsic to Islamic doctrine, and has only, crept into Hinduism reactively, during the long self-defense of Hindu society against Islam. Anyway, they do have a point when they perceive this enmity as a strong factor in the current activist Hindu identity.
So, Hindus should weed out these Islamic attitudes of us against them from their thought. Their Hindu identity should not be centered around their attitude towards another doctrine, but on Hinduism's own genius and effectiveness as a cultural framework for social integration and individual happiness.192 And they should not define people in terms of their communal identity, which is but the Islamic game of judging people on their being Momins or Kafirs, rather than on their merits. Unlike Islam, they should dis-identify and distinguish human being from the religion they profess ; so that, if ever the need arises, they can attack and expose Islamic doctrine without any mental or physical hostilities with the Muslim people.
To sum up, the communal problem in India is largely the Muslim problem, or rather, the Islam problem. Islam is communal through and through, preaching a total abyss between its own community members and the rest of humanity. So, very generally, the cause of communal riots is Islam. The cure is Sanatana Dharma. It teaches that everything is generated by thought. While seemingly a difficult notion, in this context it is very easy to understand : the physical problem of communal riots is but the materialization of communal thinking. This communal thinking should be identified : its most potent and consistent form is the Islamic doctrine of the struggle between Momin and Kafir. Other communalisms like Sikh separatism and the anti-Muslim animus among some Hindu people, are but the indirect effects of this Islamic doctrine. Then, this communal thinking should be removed through dialogue and education. No matter what law and order measures will further be needed before the age of communal riots is over, at any rate it is this work at the level of thought which will ultimately solve the problem.




Riots in Muslim countries
-------------------------
In order to keep an assessment of riot patterns in perspective, we should compare with the situation in Pakistan and Bangla Desh. The general pattern there is :
1. Roughly 100% of Hindu-Muslim riots are started by Muslims.
2. Roughly 100% of the victims in the actual communal confrontation are Hindus.
3. Those few times the police intervenes, it does have the decency to stop the attackers rather than their fleeing victims, so the vast majority of those killed in police firing on the e occasion of riots, are Muslims. But like in India, the police often fails to intervene, which may get interpreted as a form of passive connivance with the majority community.
The secularist theory that there is no ideological (as opposed to socio-economical) explanation for the different degree of riot-proneness between the different religions, and their denial of this very difference, both fall apart when called on to explain the riot pattern in the Islamic republics that used to be parts of India. If Muslims are not more riot-prone than Hindus, then why do you never ever hear of a Hindu attack on mosques in Bangla Desh, but a lot of the reverse ? Or, for that matter, why not Christian attacks on mosques, even while Christians do get their share of attacks and harassments from the Muslims? In these Muslim-majority countries, communal violence is a completely one-directional affair. Even when Muslims destroyed hundreds of Hindu temples on the pretext of protest against the Shilanyas in Ayodhya, there has not been any report of similar retaliation by the Hindus.
We may safely say that in Bangla Desh, the Muslim participation in the starting of riots, is more than their percentage of the population : about 100% as against some 87%. In Pakistan also, even though Muslims form about 97% (including Ahmadiyas) of the population, they still manage to have an even larger share in the starting of riots.
The secularist theory that whatever slight Muslim over- representation in riot-starting they are willing to concede, is attributable to the insecurity to which Muslims are subjected, can also not hold. Firstly, in India there are minorities who simply don't start riots (Jains, Parsis), or only few (Christians), and yet they are fewer in number than the Muslims and consequently more insecure. Secondly, in Pakistan, Bangla Desh and Malaysia they have Islamic republics, and still that doesn't stop them from maltreating the non-Muslims and attacking their places of worship on the slightest pretext. Moreover, within Pakistan there are also a lot of attacks by the majority Sunnis on minority Shias and Ahmadiyas, and that again cannot be attributed to insecurity.
As a general rule, in communal conflicts the world over, you will find majorities attacking minorities, seldom the reverse. Have you ever heard of pre-1940 Jews attacking the German or Polish majorities in Central Europe ? Have you ever heard of the Coptic minority in Egypt attacking the Muslim majority ? They form about 6% of the population, but furnish 0% of the riots and other forms of harassment. And have you ever heard of the Hindu minorities in South Africa, the UK, Singapore, the US, starting riots ?
But in India, you do see one of the minorities on the offensive even where it is clearly outnumbered. Even if their percentage of starting riots was only proportional to their percentage of the population, i.e. about 12% (and no secularist so far has been dishonest enough to suggest this), then that would still be more than what minorities elsewhere, and especially in Islamic countries, would dare to do. It becomes hard to evade the conclusion that there is something in Islamic doctrine that incites people to non-integration and even violent struggle with their neighbours

Hello Dananjay !
Please read this and Comment !

In a speech peppered with frequent attacks on Congress President Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin, firebrand VHP leader Pravin Togadia on Sunday said "political Ghaznis" would like to bring her to the seat of power.

In an apparent reference to the Afghan Sultan Mahmood of Ghazni's invasion of India in 17th century, he said "three types of Ghaznis have done immense damage to the country which include the Jehadi Ghazni, the secularist Ghazni, which protect the Jehadis, and political Ghazni which wants to bring "Italy ki beti to the seat of power."

"If these political Ghaznis want, they won't think twice to bring daughter of Sindh Benazir Bhutto in India," he told a Dharma Sabha organised by VHP here.

Togadia said when Ram Bhakts were roasted alive in Godhra, why Sonia Gandhi did not protest. "Did you bother to take a rally to catch those culprits responsible for the Godhra massacre," he said.

Sonia Gandhi was not interested in Hindus as she was more interested in the minorities, he said and added "why has she not visited Jammu and Kashmir where lakhs of Hindus have been massacred. Why has she not consoled the relatives of 12,000 army personnel killed in the valley."

Stating that Hindu lion has awakened after the results of Gujarat elections, Togadia said the only thing which the Jehadi Ghaznis of India deserve is death by hanging.

"For the secular Ghaznis what I advocate is samuhik bahishkar (public boycott)," he added.

The VHP leader said the government did not think twice when it comes to register case against Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray. "But then why not against Imam Bukhari".

Dhananjay seems to be a Perfect Pseudo Secular . He is more dangerous than a Pakistani ISI agent . Shame that such people who say Hindu as Facist are Blind , Deaf.

All Fake Seculars and Muslim Appeasing Media got a befitting reply in Gujarat . JM Lyngdho acted as a Hindu Hater and Removed many Names from Electoral Rools .Such is the Plight of India where Hindus are looked down and ARE Projecting A Italian as a Next PM . Is India so breft with Talent and Vision ? A Party which claims that it has fought Europeans and brought independence is now bringing back a european ie., italian to rule us . What sort of Congress leaders are these . Seems that Congress is morally bankrupt and is thriving on the vote bank of uneducated rural masses. NEhru Family is unqualified to rule india and for your kind information right from Indira Gandhi to Rahul, Priyanka are NOT GRADUATES . Priyanka is a College Drop out, also rahul gandhi . Rajive Gandhi didn't clear single exam in 3 years of cambridge , Such are the people who want to rule us . whereas whole world is producing leaders from yale and harvard . We indians are looking for a High School Certificate lady from Italy to lead us , who is alien to our culture and hardly know about our history and cannot debate on any issue . Cannot face a Press conference alone without reading from paper .

Now the question is whether you want fake seculars who want to make hay while sun shines ( from nehru family) or nationalists with political will, vision to develop india a and make a super power .

Hi all,

apologies for the slight delay in replying to all of you!

Response to Jayashree Krishnamurthy "Before BJP , RSS or Sangh Parivar !"

There used to be riots earlier to fformation of Sangh Parivar I mean to say in Pre Independence .
- No one is crediting the Sangh Parivar with inventing the riot apparatus. I am sorry if I conveyed that impression!

Why Muslims are so Violent ? WHy they have propensity to Group Violence ?
- You seem to believe that Muslims do not act as individuals but as part of a collective consciousness whose only aim is a supra-national Islamic state. This is exactly what Anti-Semetic Neo-Nazis who attack Jews around the world believe.

The answer lies in the Hidden agenda they have to divide and rule India .
- This is unfounded paranoia. The fear of an unknown, hidden enemy lurking amongst us is the oldest ruse of fundamentalists. and even if it were true, how are we defeating this enemy by killing and raping people who follow Islam but against whom you have no evidence? and even if we do find the people behind this "plot" should they be handled by our criminal justice system or should just a few people gather them in the middle of the road and burn them?

Why muslim league is still existing in india after if partition ?
- The same reason why the Akali Dal and the Bajrang Dal exist. There is a Muslim population and in a democratic state they have a right to be represented.

I am sorry Jayashree, but for all your grievances there is a civilized and democratic manner to deal with it all. I am not convinced that the way to deal with these problems is for people to take the law in their own hands.

Response to Sri Kumar "Riots in Muslim countries"

"In order to keep an assessment of riot patterns in perspective, we should compare with the situation in Pakistan and Bangla Desh. The general pattern there is :
1. Roughly 100% of Hindu-Muslim riots are started by Muslims.
2. Roughly 100% of the victims in the actual communal confrontation are Hindus."

- Without going into the source or the credibility of your "statistics" I presume that your reasoning is that since all this is happening to Hindu's in Pakistan and Bangladesh we should do the same in India. So that makes all these crimes right. Is that what we are saying?

Response to Kamlesh Sharma "Why Sonia didn't Protested" (sic)

"Togadia said when Ram Bhakts were roasted alive in Godhra, why Sonia Gandhi did not protest. "Did you bother to take a rally to catch those culprits responsible for the Godhra massacre," he said. "

- Godhra was a crime. And Gujarat has a state police to apprehend the culprits and a justice system to punish them. What happened next was an act of revenge, supported by the state, and which was committed with utter disregard for the decencies of a democratic state. Were the men, women and children who were murdered and raped, the same people who commited the first crime?

"Stating that Hindu lion has awakened after the results of Gujarat elections, Togadia said the only thing which the Jehadi Ghaznis of India deserve is death by hanging. "

- Tell me if I have this right - The only way to rid India of "Jehadi Ghaznis" who misappropriate Islam to commit crimes against Hindus is to bring to power a group who misappropriate Hinduism to commit crimes against Muslims.

Response to Harmeek Grewal "Dhananjay is a Pseudo Secular"

"Shame that such people who say Hindu as Facist are Blind , Deaf"
I think if you read my comment you will see that your allegation is baseless, I did not say that Hindus are fascist, what i said was - "Added to that your comment that free and fair debate on this site should be propogated by silencing people with opinions that differ to yours, is fascist to say the least."

Do let me know when you are willing to have a rational discussion. I will be happy to entertain you.

Response to Akshay Patel "Gujarat is a Answer to All Pseudo Seculars"

"Such is the Plight of India where Hindus are looked down and ARE Projecting A Italian as a Next PM . Is India so breft with Talent and Vision ?"
If India does not want an Italian PM then you can contribute by not voting for the Congress.

"Nehru Family is unqualified to rule india and for your kind information right from Indira Gandhi to Rahul, Priyanka are NOT GRADUATES"
- I am not a congress supporter. But if you want to discredit the Congress' Nehru Dynasty's eligibility for being the political leaders of this country my suggestion would be to stay away from debating about academic qualifications. Any pro-Congress person can throw that back at any of the other parties in the nation. How many Graduates are there in the Lok Sabha? How many have graduated from high school?

"whereas whole world is producing leaders from yale and harvard ."

- I don't know what gives your that impression (one can also debate the academic standing of yale and harvard in intellectual spheres, but we shall let that pass) but not a lot of world leaders are ivy leaguers. And if you are suggesting that George Bush is a Yale Graduate you should also know that he got admitted there because of his family, he spent his time there partying and throwing away his family's money, barely scraped through the papers and it would be fair to say that he did not graduate, he was "graduated" by Yale. By his own admission he read only one book in his years in Yale.

"We indians are looking for a High School Certificate lady from Italy to lead us , who is alien to our culture and hardly know about our history and cannot debate on any issue . Cannot face a Press conference alone without reading from paper ."

- Are you suggesting that the Congress would be worthy of ruling India if it got an Indian leader for its party who can face a press conference and talk extempore? I personally would need MUCH MUCH more than that to vote congress!!!

btw: pardon my ignorance but what exactly does a "pseudo-secular" mean?

I wish you all a very happy New Year!

thanks,
Dananjay

BOOK BANNING !

Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. This book was banned in India immediately after its publication in England, as part of a deal with the Babri Masjid Action Committee to call off a Muslim march on Ayodhya. The book makes fun of a fictional character, Mahound (and of other people as well). However, the writer's contention that the story was entirely imaginative and fictional, is not sustainable. Mahound was a deformed version of Mohammed's name, used in Christian polemical writings against the pseudo-prophet.194 The women in a brothel described in the book, bear the names of the wives of the historical Mohammed, in order to attract clients. There is just no denying that the writer is making gory fun of the Prophet.
Nevertheless, is that a reason for banning the book? When some Hindus wanted a ban on the TV serial Tipu Sultan, for its glorifying and whitewashing a cruel fanatic who had destroyed temples and forcibly converted people, this was dubbed bigoted. Even the fact that it contained blatant distortion of history (which with some common sense can easily be distinguished from mere dramatization of history), was not counted as a sufficient reason for keeping it off the TV screen (which would still not be a wholesale ban). When some Hindus wanted a ban on Ambedkar's Riddles in Hinduism, for its pathetic allegations against Rama and Krishna, this was termed Hindu chauvinism. Even the protest against the republication of the book with state funds was to no avail, and the book has been ceremoniously presented to foreign visitors in the Ambedkar centenary year including Nelson Mandela. So, Hindu demands for a ban are to be ignored.
But Muslim demands to curb free speech and freedom of artistic expression, should they be conceded? According to secularists, yes. Khushwant Singh defended the ban.195 M.J. Akbar defended the ban. Even Girilal Jain, then editor of the Times of India, defended the ban, arguing that otherwise it would only being a lot of riots and damage to property. The weekly Sunday published excerpts from the book, and was condemned for that by the Press Council, in November 1990. It consequently offered apologies to any readers who might have felt hurt.196
When the death sentence against Rushdie was pronounced by the Ayotollah Khomeini, on February 14, 1989, many secularists advised Rushdie to apologize and to withdraw the book. When people got killed in demonstrations against the book, the secularists blamed Rushdie, not the BMAC, not Khomeini, not their own implicit or explicit support to the anti-Rushdie agitation. And many secularists of the not too intelligent variety have tried to downplay the affair by arguing totally beside the point that the ban didn't matter much, since hardly any Indian can read Rushdie's English.197
The good thing discussion on Islam going. Especially Khomeini's fatwa made people ask: is this really Islamic ? Of course, some liberals, Muslim and non-Muslim, came out to say that the death sentence against Rushdie was un-Islamic. You know, the tolerance which Islam inculcates, doesn't allow this, etc. But their misgivings about the fatwa were put to rest by competent authorities.
Shortly after the debate was sparked, the Islamic Research Foundation published two Urdu books defending the fatwa : "JNU professor Maulana Mohsin Usmani Nadwi's Ahaanat-i Rasool ki Sazaa (Punishment for Criticizing the Prophet), and Maulana Majid Ali Khan's Muqaddas-i Ayat (The Sacred Verses). Their point was very simple : in this case there is absolutely no scope for doubt, Rushdie must be killed. Firstly, he is effectively an apostate. In fact, he himself has said that much. He once described how he decided to break with Islam. He was still a teenager, and he went to a fast-food place and ordered pork pie and a portion of shrimps. Were they tasty! In a statement written months after the fatwa, from his Muslim". For him that doesn't mean he is an apostate, for he was made a Muslim as a child, and that doesn't count. But according to the learned Urdu authors, Rushdie is quite certainly an apostate. And for apostasy there is, on the authority of the Sahih Bukhari Hadis, only one punishment: death.
But Rushdie has done far worse than just leave Islam. He has insulted the Prophet. Not that any of those Imans and Mullahs and Ayotollahs can be really sure of their allegation, they haven't read the book. But, in parenthesis, even secularists puke venom over books they haven't read. Mani Shankar Aiyar totally condemns one of Arun Shourie's books, and then goes on to declare that he has decided not to read it : "Shourie gave the final touches to the manuscript of his book on Islam, a work so vicious and perverted that every English speaking Muslim I know was outraged... I decided then to show my solidarity with secularism by not reading the book."198 As the late Ayatollah used to say: "It is not necessary to jump into the dungheap in order to know that it stinks."
Rushdie has insulted the Prophet. And the Hadis say very clearly what the Prophet's line of action (forever to be emulated by every Muslim) is in such case. There were some poets and poetesses making sarcastic songs about him and criticizing his pretense of being God's messenger. Did the Prophet bring them to a court where they were given a chance to recant (as some legalistic Muslims say is the true Islamic procedure)? No, they were just mortally stabbed in the still of the night, each of them. They were unceremoniously assassinated at the personal orders of the Prophet. Therefore, our Urdu-writing Maulanas correctly conclude that it is perfectly Islamic to kill Rushdie.199
Indians may recall that such death sentences against people who have insulted the Prophet, have been carried out earlier this century: against Arya Samaj propagandists Swami Shraddhananda and Pandit Lekh Ram, and against Rajpal, the writer of the Rangila Rasool (more or less Playboy Mohammed). This was a book on the sex life of the Prophet and his wives, certainly insulting, and as a criticism of Islam rather beside the point, but understandable as a reaction against a similar vilifying Muslim pamphlet about Sita. These murders had the desired effect, for the Arya Samaj became less straightforward in its criticism of the Prophet.
Rushdie, being a mere human being, and with no belief in eternal reward for martyrs, chose at long last to do that which seemed the best way of getting back into normal life: kneeling, renouncing the blasphemous passages in his book, and embracing Islam. On December 24, 1990, he came out with a statement: "I do not agree with any statement in my novel The Satanic Verses, uttered by any of its characters, who insult the Prophet Mohammed or who cast aspersions upon Islam or upon the authenticity of the Holy Quran or who reject the divinity of Allah". Moreover, he promised "to witness that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his last Prophet", to prevent the publication of further translations, not to bring out the paperback version, and "to continue to work for a better understanding of Islam in the world, as I have always attempted to do in the past".
This turn in the Rushdie affair was partly the work of Hesham El-Essawy, described as a Muslim moderate, who is chairman of the Islamic Society for the Promotion of Religious Tolerance. Well, it is a telling illustration of religious tolerance in Islam: arranging for someone's embracing Islam in order to save his life. A perfect illustration of the general rule that Islam has mostly collected its converts by means of threats. However, the less moderate Muslim were not satisfied even when they saw Rushdie crawling in the dust before them. An Iranian paper and some Iranian clerics declared that the Ayatollah's fatwa is irrevocable. The British Muslim leader Kalim Siddiqui called on Iran to come and kidnap Rushdie and take him to trial in an Iranian Islamic court.
In a reaction to Rushdie's conversion, the Delhi Iranian Embassy Press Attache S.H. Davisbara describes how Islam opposes slander and backing, and asks:"How can a religion which is so strict in safeguarding the reputation of ordinary people allow a Salman Rushdie to cast aspersions against its own Prophet? And if anybody does so deliberately, as the ill-fated author did, the punishment according to Islam is nothing but death. It is for the same reason that no Islamic scholar objected when Imam Khomeini ordained that Salman Rushdie should be killed. The fatwa, as it involves an extremely sensitive issue like the personality of the exalted Prophet himself, is by its very nature irrevocable. Recently the successor of Imam Khomeini, Ayatollah Syed Ali Khamenei, also has reiterated that the fatwa cannot be withdrawn. It should also be pointed out that fatwa do not lapse with the passing away of the issuing authority. It is punishment for a crime already committed and a warning to other potential wrongdoers."200
The Muslim Youth Movement of Britain also rejected any plea for pardoning Rushdie, unless some demands were met. Remark, the threat to kill Rushdie is not linked to his horrible guilt (and therefore irrevocable, as for Iran), nor to his apology and conversion (and therefore to be revoked), but merely to the fulfilling of demands. Promising to lift a death threat in return for concessions : this is pure terrorism. The demands were the following :
1. official recognition that Islam is the largest practicing religion in the U.K. (this is correct if Christianity is considered split into its different denominations);
2. withdrawal of all copies of the book from the bookshops; 3) a pledge from Rushdie that his book will not be produced anywhere in any manner ; 4) enactment of a law that will protect Muslim religious sensibilities from future insults and abuse.
Mohammed Siddique, the president of the Movement, declared :"Rushdie is misguided if he believes that his 'goodwill gesture' will appease Muslims. Until Muslim demands are met, there can be no peace."201 Remark that a remark how a Muslim clearly spells out the Muslim attitude towards co-existence : "Until Muslim demands are met, there can be no peace." Do you need more explanation for the communal riots in India ?
One secularist comment deserves mention. The poison is in a very little corner. G.H. Jansen, Times of India correspondent in Nicosia, writes that Rushdie's conversion "must have been very disappointing to the literati-glitterati of New York and London who so enjoyed springing to arms in defense of Rushdie and of 'freedom'."202 What are those quote marks doing there around the word freedom? It seems Mr. Jansen doesn't want the right to skepsis regarding Mohammed to be described as freedom. The bootlickers of Islamic terrorism are treading in the footsteps of the apologists of Communism, who use to dismiss freedom (whenever someone drew attention to its non-existence in Communist countries) as bourgeois-liberalist illusion.

Banning criticism of Islam
Rushdie's book is by far not the only one that has been banned in the secular republic of India, on pretext of its hurting the feelings of a religious community. Let us mention first of all that, to create a semblance of impartiality, Rushdie's book was sent into exile in the company of a film that might have hurt the feelings of the Christian community : Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, a film that attributes normal human sexual desires to Jesus. Not that any Christian had asked for this ban, but that semblance had to be created.203
In recent years, several books criticizing Islam and its role in Indian history have been banned. One of them is Richard Maxwell Eaton's Sufis of Bijapur 1300-1700 (Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India), published in Princeton 1978, which debunks the pious fable that the Sufis were bringers of a tolerant and refined Islam and the pioneers of a synthesis between Islam and Hinduism. Another is Arvind Ghosh's The Koran and the Kafir (all that an infidel needs to know about the Koran but is embarrassed to ask), published in Houston. This book chiefly groups Quranic verses topic-wise, to give a ready reference overview of Mohammed's teachings. Then there is the Australian writer Colin Maine's booklet The Dead Hand of Islam. It consists of little more than literal quotes from Islamic Scripture. Nonetheless, to appease Muslim pressure, the publisher is being prosecuted, and the book has been banned. Incidentally, there was absolutely no trouble concerning his similar book on Christianity, The Bible : What It Says.
Banning a book for containing Quranic verses...Is this a first step towards banning the Quran ? And that, moreover, at the Muslims' own instigation ? Let's face it : the objectionable lines in Colin Maine's book, for which it was banned, also appear in the Quran and the surrounding Islamic canon. Why should Mohammed's big book be more equal that Mr. Maine's booklet ?
A head-on call to judge the Quran by the same standards as other books, was the essence of Chandmal Chopra's famous Quran petition. Mr. Chopra had filed a writ petition in the Calcutta High Court in March 1985, seeking a ban on a book which incites to hatred and struggle against a group of people on the basis of religion. His petition lists several dozens of quotes from the objectionable book, unambiguously pouring contempt on, and inciting war against, a group of religious communities : the non-Muslims. It also quotes the book as pouring contempt on religious figures sacred to other communities, notably Jesus and Mary. The book is, of course, the Quran.
The petition was dismissed by justice B.C. Basak in May 1985. A central point in the verdict was, that Courts cannot interfere with religious beliefs like the sacred and divine character of the Quran (in marked contrast to the secularist line on Ram Janmabhoomi, where Hindus are asked to allow Courts to overrule their religious beliefs). In 1986, a book was published containing the court documents, with a scholarly introduction by Sita Ram Goel.204 The introduction says that of course no ban on the Quran was ever intended (since Scriptures and Classics are kept out of the purview of censorship legislation, there was no chance of obtaining such a ban), but that attention had to be drawn on the fact that, while some allegedly provocative books are being banned, a book is widely circulated and studied intensively in thousands of state-subsidized institutions, which makes far more explicit calls to communal strife than any banned book so far has done. They solution is not to ban the Quran, but on the contrary to honestly read it and judge it for yourself in the light of reason.
For this book, the Calcutta police arrested Mr. Chandmal Chopra on August 31, 1987, accusing him of entering into a criminal conspiracy with Mr. Sita Ram Goel for publishing the book with the deliberate intention of provoking communal strife in Calcutta and West Bengal. His bail application was opposed vehemently by the public prosecutor. He was kept in police custody till September 8, so that the conspiracy could be "investigated without his coming in the way". Mr. Goel, "a co-accused still at large", applied for anticipatory bail. This was first postponed and then rejected. Mr. Goel had to abscond for a while to avoid being dragged to the Calcutta jail.
While the verdict on the Quran petition had overstepped secular limits by declaring the Quran a revealed scripture (which is a claim beyond secular proof), and by taking great pains to prove that Islam is a religion of peace, now the police charge-sheet distorted the facts by calling the book's academic language malicious and provocative. At any rate, Mr. Chopra and Mr. Goel got caught in a long-drawn-out legal battle, though the book itself was not banned.
Perhaps the most revealing story of a book banning concerns Ram Swarup's Understanding Islam through Hadis. This is an annotated topic-wise summary of the Sahih Muslim, one of the two most authoritative traditions concerning the words and deeds of the Prophet. The book was first published in the U.S., a secular and multi- religious country. In India also, the English original circulated for some time without inviting any governmental attention. But when the Hindi translation was nearing publication, something went wrong.
The book was at the binders' workshop, which was situated in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood. A neighbour must have spread the word that a book scrutinizing the Prophet was about to be offered for sale in the bookstores. The one chance for preventing the book from reaching any readers, was now. Suddenly, a crowd of people gathered around the binders' shop. They demanded the entire stock of the objectionable book to be handed over for burning, otherwise they would set the place itself on fire.
The police was called. They made no attempt to disperse the crowd. Instead they summoned and arrested the printer and the publisher, and they made sure that everyone got an eyeful of the arrest show. They also confiscated the stock of the contentious book. Having thus placated the crowd, they released the printer and the publisher after 18 hours, but the copies of the book were not returned. They have not been heard of since, even though the book was not officially banned.
In deference to a plaint by the Muslim neighbour, the Delhi administration has had two meetings in 1988-89, to consider whether the book was objectionable. Twice it was cleared. But the pressure for banning it was kept up.
The Jama'at-i Islami paper Radiance, on the front page of its June 17, 1990 issue, carried a big caption : "Is this book not objectionable ?" Presenting some excerpts from Ram Swarup's book, it warned its readers :"Most parts of the book are concoctions and distortions as well as defamatory and derogatory to the Holy Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him)". What concoctions and distortions ?
The same front page quotes four of these objectionable distortions. Among them :"Mohammed saw Zaynab in half- naked condition and he fell in love with her."205 Well, maybe this is objectionable. But it is not Ram Swarup's concoction or distortion. The source is the Sahih Muslim, one of the two most authoritative Hadis collections. Ram Swarup has here and there added some sober and factual comment, but at no point does he come in the way of the Hadis text speaking for itself. If the Jama'at-i Islami wants to ban such information from being circulated in India, it should seek a ban on the Hadis as well as the Quran. If the Quran and the Hadis are allowed to be read and sold, we should all have the right to read them, shouldn't we ? And since there is no copyright problem, we can even publish scholarly selections from them. The Jama'at-i Islami has, in all the years that the book has been available in bookstores, not sought a ban on Vinoba Bhave's The Essence of the Quran, a syrupy selection of all the nice and harmless verses from the Quran.
But no, the Jama'at as well as other Muslim groups, and personalities close to the Janata Dal (either faction), have sought a ban on Ram Swarup's book. In September 1990, a court ruled that the book was unobjectionable. But the pressure continued. And come December 1990, a third meeting of Delhi administration officials revoked the two earlier decisions, and issued a ban on the book. It forfeited all the copies published or to be published in the future, on the ground that the book deliberately and maliciously outrage "the religious feelings of the Muslims by insulting their religion and their religious beliefs". For the semblance of even-handedness, it also banned a non-descript book on Ramayana and Mahabharata, and took care to put the latter ban first in its official notification. No one is fooled, though.
Arun Shourie has commented : "The forfeiture is exactly the sort of thing which has landed us where we are : where intellectual inquiry is shut out ; where our tradition are not examined and reassessed ; and where as a consequence there is no dialogue."206
An interesting fact about the Muslim reaction against Ram Swarup's book, is that Muslim leaders like the Radiance editor expect to get away with the lie that the embarrassing but faithful quotations from Scripture are really concoctions and distortions. It seems that the common Muslims do not know the Quran and Hadis from A to Z. Many of them readily believe their leaders' contention that Mohammed was above the behaviour ascribed to him by the Hadis and the orthodox biographies. Their reverence is directed towards a mythical Mohammed, who is different in character from the historical Mohammed as he appears through the Islamic Scriptures. And this mythical Mohammed of popular Muslim belief is slandered when the Scriptural testimonies about the historical Mohammed are quoted.
The same discrepancy between the orthodox historical Mohammed, and the mythical Mohammed of popular belief was at the core of an earlier book-banning episode, dating back to the fifties. Muslims had staged a riot against the book Muhammad, by Thomas and Thomas, published by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay. The Nehru government rewarded them for their agitation by banning the book.207 According to the rioters, or their leaders, the book had defamed the Prophet.
The book narrated how Mohammed had become frightened when the angel Gabriel came with the first revelation from Allah. He wanted to know whether he had been visited by an angel or a devil. He told Khadija what had happened, and she asked him to tell her as soon as Gabriel would visit him next. He did so. Khadija bared her right and her left thigh turn by turn, and asked Mohammed to sit on each and see if the visitor stayed. Next Khadija bared her bosom and asked Mohammed to sit in her lap. Finally, she asked him to have sexual intercourse with her. Now the visitor disappeared. Khadija congratulated Mohammed that his visitor was an angel and not a devil.
This story was by no means concoction and distortion. One can read it in the orthodox biographies of Mohammed. Ibn Ishaq, his first biographer, relates :
Ismail b. Ibn Hakim, a freedman of the family of al- Zubayr, told me on Khadija's authority that she said to the apostle of God : O son of my uncle, are you able to tell me about your visitant, when he comes to you? He replied that he could, and she asked him to tell her when he came. So when Gabriel came to him, as he was wont, the apostle said to Khadija : "This is Gabriel who has just come to me". Get up, O son of my uncle, she said, and sit by my left thigh. The apostle did so, and she said :"Then turn around and sit on my right thigh". He did so, and she said :'Can you see him ?' And he replied :No. She said :'O son of my uncle, rejoice, and be of good heart, by God he is an angel and not a satan.'
"I told Abdullah b. Hasan this story and he said :'I heard my mother Fatima, daughter of Husayn, talking about this tradition from Khadija, but as I heard it, she made the apostle of God come inside her shift, and thereupon Gabriel departed, and she said tot he apostle of God :'This is verily an angel and not a satan.'"
These two paragraphs can be read by anyone on p.107 of The Life of Muhammad, published by the prestigious Oxford University Press, Karachi (first time in 1955, reprinted seven times till 1987). The book is an English translation by A. Guillaume of Ibn Ishaq's Sirat Rasul Allah (Biography of Allah's Prophet). The authors of the banned book had not distorted or concocted anything. Moreover, they bore no malice towards Mohammed. On the contrary, they were endorsing, after the orthodox Muslim fashion, that this episode proved the divine source of Mohammed's revelations.
The average Muslim does not know what is written in the Islamic Scriptures. He shares the normal moral notions of his Hindu neighbours, and assumes that the Holy Prophet must have excelled in those virtues which he himself values. The Muslim politicians and theologians exploit his ignorance and mobilize him for street riots by ascribing to enemies of Islam what is in fact contained in their own Scriptures. And all this is being condoned by the secularists, who turn a blind eye to this deception and misguidance of the common Muslim, and to the attacks of Muslim politicians and theologians against out freedom of inquiry.

Double game of Secularists
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What is this Secularism followed in India
When Ram Swarup's book on the Hadis was banned under pressure from Muslim fanatics, there was of course not a word of protest from the secularists. If in secular Europe, the pope speaks out against the Scorsese film on Jesus' temptations, without even trying to pressure governments to ban it, the European secularist press, as if to pre-empt any suggestion of a ban, makes it quite clear that there can be no question of anyhow restricting the public's access to the film.208 If people don't want to see it, let them not go see it. That is their freedom, like it is other people's freedom to go see it, unimpeded by papal or governmental bans.
While secularism is a European import into India, I just don't recognize the secularism practiced in India. It so happens that I have grown up in one of the first countries ever to adopt a fully secular Constitution, Belgium. In my country, we think that secularism implies the freedom to learn, teach and practice a religion, and also the freedom to reject, abandon and criticize a religion. But in India, those who call themselves secular, combine a Stalinist propensity to ban religious education in (non-minority) schools, or to ban religious TV serials, with a bigoted propensity to ban books that take a critical look at religions. In both cases, they arrogate the right to decide for others what they can see and read, and what not.
We think that secularism means : let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred ideas compete. But in India, the favourite slogan of secularists is : Ban it ! Listen here, friends : banning for secularism is like f...ing for virginity.
We think we have a right to know about every aspect of life, including religion ; whether we want to practice it or to reject it, we have a right to full access to information. But in India, secularists are not satisfied with the freedom for themselves to know and find out : they support demands for the freedom to limit others' freedom of access to books and films. And their justification is that these books and films might hurt feelings and thus disturb communal harmony. Indian secularists declare that a critical or blasphemous book should be banned, because it may offend someone's feelings. Genuine secularists oppose bans because a ban offends our intelligence. And offended it is, by these inflated book-banners who claim the right to decide for us what we can read and what not.
In Europe, we have come to protect our constitutional freedoms, and hardly any bigot will even think of either seriously campaigning for a ban or using violence to punish people who show interest in the material to which he objects. All right, there was a bomb attack on a movie theater showing the Temptation film. But the culprit was simply caught and put in jail. Nobody has suggested that we should ban the film in order to avert violence. If at all there is a threat of violence, then there are no two opinions about the duty of the state to uphold the constitutional freedoms, and to prevent terror-mongers from dictating who can see what.209
In India, by contrast, the secularists are systematically on the side of the terror-mongers. They wee the first to support the latter's demand for banning The Satanic Verses. Terror-threatening bigots said :Ban this book, or else... And secularists echoed :"We must ban this book, or else..."
But Indian secularists not only side with armed bigots ; there is also the Stalinist streak in them (incidentally, Stalin was an ex-seminarian). They not only want to ban what is objectionable and hurting to followers of some religions : they also want to ban what is sacred or at least valuable and uplifting to members of another religion.
A great many secularists have blamed the Ramayana and Mahabharata TV serials for the "rise of Hindu communalism" and for the Ram hysteria.210 Of course, Ram was never that far away from the ordinary Hindu's consciousness, that the TV serials could have made much of a difference. Through Tulsidas' Hindi Ramayana, the common people in North India are thoroughly familiar with Ram, Sita and Hanuman, and they don't need TV serials to remind them. For the urban elites, it may have been a reminder of the culture they are in danger of forgetting. But for those secularists who have been completely alienated from their culture, these TV serials were anathema, and so, of course, they wanted them to be banned.
Not that a ban would have been in the interest of peace and communal harmony. While most Hindus had no need of this TV serial in order to keep up their devotion for Ram, once it was there they avidly watched it. And they would have been very angry if its showing had been suspended. It might have led to some outbursts, who knows. At any rate, if you ban books in order to pre- empt Muslim riots, you should take the possibility of Hindus starting riots also into account (or do our secularists subscribe to the received wisdom that Hindus are less riot-prone?). But that consideration for Hindus taking to the streets was not too prominent in the pleas for a ban on the TV serials. And they could have argued, of course, that such a Hindu reaction would have been the lesser evil, as the showing of the serials has been instrumental in the Ram Mandir campaign, which has encountered (triggered) enough violence. But I think it is time the secularists come out and admit that a ban on Hindu TV serials is dear to them not because of the law and order situation, but because of the fact that these serials remind Hindus of Hindu culture.
The basic objection of the secularists against the Ramayana and Mahabharata, both in their written and in their film versions, is that they are religious Scriptures of one community, and therefore their reading or showing should be limited to places and channels of Hindus only ; no state-owned TV station should be open for such communal stories.
Having attended some press conferences in Delhi, and having talked to some press people here, as well as to other classes of intellectuals, I am amazed to see the crudeness in these secularists' understanding of religious and cultural matters. Most of them are nice and well-meaning people, but they are completely illiterate. They just don't have the education, or the power of discrimination, to distinguish between cultural epics like Mahabharata and Ramayana, and religious Scriptures.
If at all you want a point of comparison in other cultures, perhaps Homer's epics Ilias and Odyssea might do : that was a common heritage of the Greek people, but not a revealed Scripture containing dogmas. Or, for a more provocative but quite accurate comparison, a good equivalent of the role of the Ramayana in Hindu culture is the role of the same Ramayana in Indonesian culture. The question has been put to the secularists several times, but they have not come up with any trace of an answer : if Indonesian Muslims can venerate Ram, why can't Indian Muslims, as well as Indian secularists, do the same ? The well-informed Indonesians don't object to Ram as a communal character, as a god of one religion and therefore anathema to others.
Another non-Hindu tribe that has given a warm reception to the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, are the European film and theater audiences. Between 1985 and 1990, these epics have found their way to the public in Europe. They have been top of the bill at the Avignon theater festival. Peter Brooke's Mahabharata, though perhaps not sufficiently true to the original for Indian purists, has been applauded by the viewers, and has been shown on many TV stations also. The BBC has even broadcast the Hindi TV serials. While the comments on certain artistic aspects of these realisations may vary, the reviewers were unanimously impressed by the contents of these epics.
The secularists in India like to portray themselves as the bringers of civilisation from the West to obscurantist India. Well, let them not fool anybody. In Europe, not one single critic has come up with the idea that these epics could somehow be communal. On the contrary, they have all stressed that these stories are about universal human values. Of course, with that quite proper assessment of these epics, any kind of a call for a ban on these film versions of the epics was totally unthinkable.
Incidentally, it is time for me to reply to those indignated readers who might ask : who is this foreigner to comment on our affairs ? Well, since secularism was imported into India from Europe, and is now held up as India's only salvation by an Indian-born colonial elite, I do think I am competent to comment on what these West- oriented civilizers are making of our precious heritage of secularism. They are making a mess of it.
There can be no correct understanding of secularism without a correct understanding of religion. If people are so illiterate as to treat the Ramayana as a religious Scripture (by which they imply dogma, authoritarian claims of infallibility, non-humanism) then their understanding of both religion and secularism cannot but be defective. It is this conceptual confusion that keeps their conscience undisturbed when they shield fanatics in the name of tolerance and defend book-banning in the name of secularism.

Article 30 is far more unjust and harmful than Article 370 which gives a special status to Kashmir. You can better lose that piece of territory than to lose your next generations. It is also a good exercise in separating the genuine secularists from the Hindu-baiters. The demand for equality between all religions in education merely seeks the abrogation of an injustice against the Hindus, so it cannot be construed as directed against the minorities. It wants to stop a blatant case of discrimination on the basis of religion, so everyone who comes out in support of the present form of Article 30, will stand exposed as a supporter of communal discrimination. It is truly a watershed issue.

There does exist a country that has kept its 15 per cent Muslim population totally in line with the rest, believe it or not: In Singapore, there are no demands from Muslims for separate Islamic codes and other such inequities. The Government of Singapore appoints the mufti (the highest Muslim authority in the land); it vets all the Fridays sermons, which are required to be submitted to the authorities in advance; it monitors the sermons to ensure that there is no deviation from the approved text; and it steps in with the secular law of the land if the Muslim authorities do not police themselves.
Point is, all that Singapore's government does is to strictly and uncompromisingly supervise how the Quran is relayed to the people. The operative word is "uncompromisingly".
"We have now Islam to deal with. We do not need to make the point that its political and economic record is miserable, that only one of 18 Muslim states (Turkey) is democratically governed... The Taleban has taken unmarried women detected in pregnancy and buried them to neck level before execution. Where is Islamic condemnation of such practices? For that matter, where is condemnation of Saudis chopping pickpockets' hands off? It is all very well for individual Muslim spokesmen to assert the misjudgment of the terrorist, but the Islamic world is substantially made up of countries that ignore, or countenance, or support terrorist activity" -- William F Buckley, Jr.

"The point is these folks could not have operated for so long in America without a support system -- one provided willingly by Islamicist (sic) supporters right here in the US... How vast is that network today? I hope it is not 5%, but if it is, consider the fact that estimates of the number of Muslims in the US today is as high as 7 million. Do the math. That would translate to a fifth-column army of 350,000" -- Joseph Farah, editor: World Net Daily.


"Islamic fundamentalists have launched a Jihad against the entire non-Muslim world. This Jihad is being fought on three fronts. The first front is the war against secular or nominally Islamic governments. The second front is the war against all nations who are either on the fringe of the Islamic world or who have substantial Muslim minorities. The third front is the war against the predominantly non-Muslim US and other Western countries... The sooner we stop pussyfooting around and recognize the nature of the enemy, the sooner we can start winning... The Qu'ran clearly commands the faithful to engage in war against the infidels" -- Chuck A Morse, nationally syndicated talk show host.

"The point is these folks could not have operated for so long in America without a support system -- one provided willingly by Islam cist (sic) supporters right here in the US... How vast is that network today? I hope it is not 5%, but if it is, consider the fact that estimates of the number of Muslims in the US today is as high as 7 million. Do the math. That would translate to a fifth-column army of 350,000" -- Joseph Farah, editor: World Net Daily.

Khilafat, or caliphate, urges all Muslims to unite into a single nation devoid of geographical boundaries and regional loyalties. Meaning, an Indian Muslim must identify more with an Afghan Muslim than with his own Hindu neighbour. And if he must respect a temporal government, it should be one such as Saudi Arabia's: The Muslim ethos must always supersede the Indian one.

IF ANY SECULAR IDIOT CAN CHALLENGE THIS

India is unique among the nations of the world in that it is rooted in a spiritual civilization. There are forces at work today that want to suppress its spirituality and replace it with a crassly materialistic system. This is how I read the political struggle going on in the country today. As I noted earlier, I normally do not take a public position on politics and political parties. But I am making an exception to this because I see the present political turmoil as the outcome of forces of materialism — mostly destructive in nature — trying to impose an alien materialistic culture camouflaged as ‘secularism’. If they succeed, India will share the fate other ancient nations that were destroyed by the imposition of materialistic ideologies. Greece and Egypt are examples from the ancient world. American Indian civilizations destroyed by the ‘Catholic’ empires of Spain and Portugal are also examples of the same kind. In our own time, China is engaged in destroying the highly spiritual culture of Tibet. All that the destroyers have left in these countries are imitative societies with little to call their own. To be convinced of this, all you have to do is visit an ancient country like Egypt, Greece or Mexico and see the glaring contrast between their wonderful monuments and their current cultural deprivation. This is what a materialistic ideology invariably does to a civilization.

The destruction of any civilization is always done through distorting its history. A version of history is created to turn the victims into villains and the destroyers into heroes. So in defending a civilization, it is extremely important for the leaders to preserve and protect its culture and traditions. Monuments can come and go, but an awareness of history and culture must be preserved. Our ancient sages and medieval heroes largely succeeded in this. That is why our civilization has survived the assault of theocratic and imperialistic forces, while other ancient civilizations failed. As a young French student of the Vedas, Jean Le Mée wrote:


"Precious stones or durable materials — gold, silver, bronze, marble, onyx or granite — have been used by ancient people in an attempt to immortalize themselves. Not so however the ancient Vedic Aryans. They turned to what may seem the most volatile and insubstantial material of all — the spoken word...

"The pyramids have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by earthquakes, and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations, traveling like a great wave through the living substance of mind."


But today, fifty years after independence, a different picture stands before us. Instead of trying to preserve and perpetuate its ancient heritage, and build upon it, the political party that claims to have brought freedom from colonial rule is trying to glorify the destroyers and even restore foreign rule! How do we explain this? It is my contention that in the past fifty years, that is, the period after independence, the leaders have failed to build national institutions rooted in the culture and the history of the land. Instead, they have been trying to import ideas and models from their former colonial masters. This has now reached its absurd limit with the party claiming to have fought for freedom from European rule asking a European to lead them and the country! This is enough to make one wonder if these leaders really understand the meaning of nationalism. I hope to show you that they do not and never did.

How did this sorry state come to pass, and what is the remedy? These are the questions that I’ll try to answer in this lecture, but first some background on how history comes to be written. As I pointed out, distortion of history is the principal weapon used in the destruction of any civilization. This is what I want to highlight next.


Historical mythmaking

To the victor belong the spoils it is said. So does history. In more homely language, President Harry Truman said: "History is always written by the winner." By this he meant that the victorious side invariably seeks to impose a version of history that shows itself and its leaders in the most favorable light. The truth of this is reflected in the way history books were written after India gained independence. They dinned into the heads of impressionable young students like myself, that the Congress party and its leaders fought long and hard to free the country from European domination. In particular, our history books told us of the Herculean struggles of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru without which India would have remained a British colony. And like most individuals of my generation, I accepted it as truth. Being a student of science and technology, I had little reason either to question or critically analyze this cozy view.

The reality is quite different. The Congress party, having inherited the Government from the British, managed to hold on to it for nearly forty years, and remained in a position to decide the fate of governments for another ten. The person responsible for this smooth transfer of power, allowing India to have a functioning government at the time of independence was Sardar Patel, but that is a different story. This side of Patel’s achievement is not widely known.

As a result, its leaders (and followers) had ample time and opportunity to create and spread their own version of history — the ‘winner’s version’ in President Truman’s words. There have always been dissenting voices — from a nationalist like Veer Savarkar to a truly great historian like R.C. Majumdar who wrote a monumental, three volume History of the Freedom Movement in India. But it was easy to ignore them because the Congress controlled all areas of national life from politics to education.

As I just noted, through most of my life I had little reason — or even time — to doubt this version. In the last few years, however, my own studies in history made me seriously question this comforting story — that the Congress and its leaders brought India freedom from European rule. Here is my problem with this view: if the Congress fought so hard for freedom from colonial rule, why is it now working so hard to hand over the country to a European woman of little accomplishment and no record of service to India? Are they so bereft of talent and vision that they cannot find a man or woman among nearly a thousand million inhabitants of the land? I cannot help contrasting it with the scene in the United States. Before every presidential election, dozens of Americans enter the arena to serve the country. After a grueling primary campaign, lasting several months, two candidates representing the two major parties fight it out for the presidency. This indicates that the culture in the United States encourages Americans to take leadership responsibility, while in India, members of the Congress supported ‘elite’ seek only to serve someone who can give them status through reflected glory. Instead of wanting to be leaders, they wish only to be servants and courtiers. This is an important point that I’ll take up later.

In making this point, I refer of course to Smt Sonia Gandhi, the Italian born widow of Rajiv Gandhi. She is not only a foreigner; she has not shown the slightest concern for the welfare of the people of India. This is evident from her conduct in Bihar, where her reversal of stand over President’s Rule led to massacres of innocent people about which she had nothing to say. Today, neither she nor her followers dare set foot in Bihar. I do not know what made her change her stand on Bihar overnight. I don’t know why she and her followers never bothered to visit the victims of the tragedy. My point is, why does the Congress party, which supposedly fought for freedom against colonial rule, want to make a person like her the prime minister of India? So there is a clear mismatch between the claims of the Congress party as a nationalist force that fought against foreign rule and its actual conduct.

The question then is— what made India free? There are two basic reasons: the mismanagement of the war economy by Winston Churchill, and the ‘nationalization’ of the Indian armed forces. Prime Minister Attlee, who made the decision to grant freedom to India, is on record as having said: "The most important were the activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose which weakened the very foundation of the attachment of the Indian land and naval forces to the British Government." It is worth noting that not only India, but also most countries of the British Empire became free after the Second World War. The Indian Army was the prop of the Empire, but Indian soldiers were no longer prepared to fight to save the British Empire. An objective history of the changes that brought about India’s freedom following the Second World War is yet to be written. Mujumdar’s three-volume History of the Freedom Movement in India is the best that I have read.)

This is only the tip of the iceberg. This strange behavior on the part of the Congress shows it in its true colors — not as a nationalistic party, but the inheritor of colonial and imperialistic ideologies — like Marxism and the ‘White Man’s Burden’. I want to take this point and expand on it a little more by looking at the role of Congress in the Freedom Struggle. This will explain why it wants to bring back foreign rule.


Why bring back foreign rule?

So here is my basic point: a supposedly national party is trying desperately to hand over the responsibility of running the country to a European woman of no accomplishments and no record of service to India. Not only that, for all practical purposes, it has nothing else to offer the country. Incidentally, the objection to Smt Sonia Gandhi as prime minister of India cannot be dismissed as just chauvinism. Sovereign nations do not allow naturalized citizens to occupy the highest office for very weighty reasons. In the United States, for example, only native-born citizens can become president, vice president or chief justice of the Supreme Court. When appointed to a responsible position, a naturalized citizen must undergo a very extensive background check by the FBI.

Even this is not proof against anti-national activity. To take an example, only recently, a naturalized American of Chinese origin looted the country of its defense secrets. So all the security precautions and the FBI background checks were of little avail. The truth is there is no way of ensuring that a person who has sworn loyalty to his or her adopted land will not continue to feel the pull of his native land and succumb to it. But there is a more fundamental issue: the very act of naturalization involves a change of loyalty from the land of one’s birth to the adopted land, but the naturalization process has no way of ensuring that such a person does not switch loyalties again. It is a different matter that most of us are not in a position to seriously affect the fate of a country, but a person holding the highest office can. So there are excellent reasons why sovereign nations do not allow foreign-born men and women to hold the highest office. This is not chauvinism, but just prudence exercised in the national interest. A country that cannot produce leaders from among its own is unfit to be a free nation.

This brings us back to the original question: why is the Congress, which prides itself on being the party that brought freedom from British rule, so anxious to hand over the country to a foreigner to rule? She has no significant achievements or record of service to qualify her for the high office that she is seeking. Her role in the recent coup attempt to take control of the Government also showed that she has no scruples, nor any concern for stability or the well being of India or its people.


Always looking outside India

I believe that there is a simple explanation for this strange behavior on the part of the Congress and its leaders. I hold that this feature — of seeking inspiration and help from beyond the borders of India — has been the hallmark of the Congress party ever since its inception. What we are witnessing now, I suggest, is only the latest manifestation of a historic trend in the Congress party. When we examine the history of the Congress over the past century without any preconceptions, we find that for at least the past eighty years or so, the leaders of the Congress have always looked beyond the borders of India for their ideas and inspiration. (This is not to say that it has not produced outstanding nationalists, but only that the ideology of the party is outward looking, with a colonial orientation.) This failure was noted by no less a person than Sri Aurobindo. Writing as far back as 1906, he observed:


"But the Congress started from the beginning with a misconception of the most elementary facts of politics, with its eyes turned towards the British Government and away from the people.

"Ever since the birth of the Congress, those who have been in the leadership of this great National Movement have persistently denied the general public in the country the right of what shall and what shall not be said or done on their behalf and in their name."


This was in 1906! This soon led to a clash within the Congress — and its breakup into the so-called ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’ wings, with Sri Aurobindo and Lokamanya Tilak being part of the extremist wing. We would now call them nationalists. (Sri Aurobindo himself seldom used the word extremist.) Although present day history books give it short shrift, the Swadeshi Movement, following the Partition of Bengal (1905) had all the marks of a national freedom struggle. With Tilak assuming undisputed leadership of the Congress, Swaraj — or independence from foreign rule — became its paramount goal. This was a truly national movement with a national goal. So during the period from the Partition of Bengal to the death of Tilak, there was a truly national party waging a struggle for freedom.

But following Mahatma Gandhi’s return from South Africa in 1916, things began to change. It should be noted that Gandhi began as a ‘moderate’, as a follower of Gopala Krishna Gokhale. He supported the British in the First World War, and even served as a recruiting Sargent, though no longer in uniform. (Gandhi had served in the Boer’s War as a non-combatant.) He was not particularly sympathetic to the cause of the national struggle for freedom. But circumstances allowed him to gain control of the Congress following Tilak’s death in August 1920.

Here was an opportunity for Gandhi to lead Indians towards freedom, especially since the Congress, under Tilak’s leadership, had declared Swaraj as its goal. But Gandhi’s behavior over the next couple of years highlights the point that I just made— that the Congress has always looked beyond the borders of India for inspiration. Instead of leading a national movement, Gandhi started a gigantic non-cooperation movement in support of something called the Khilafat.

Most history books today mention the 1920 Non-Cooperation Movement, but barely note what gave rise to it — the Khilafat. As a result, most Indians believe that the Non-Cooperation Movement was the first great struggle for freedom launched by the Congress under Gandhi’s leadership. It was nothing of the sort. It was a movement in support of the theocratic goals of the Khilafat: in fact, it was called the ‘Khilafat Non-Cooperation Movement’. Its aim was to persuade the British to restore the Sultan of Turkey who had lost his empire following the First World War. This is an important point: the Khilafat Non-Cooperation Movement had no national goals. Its demand was not freedom for India, but the restoration of a discredited theocratic ruler in far away Turkey whom the Turks themselves didn’t want. And strangely, Gandhi and the Congress supported this irrelevant goal to the extent even of suspending Swaraj! If anything, it was anti-national. Here is the little known story.

When the First World War ended in 1918, Ottoman Turkey, which had fought on the same side as Germany, had suffered a massive defeat. The result was the breakup of the Ottoman Empire ruled by the Sultan of Turkey who had also pretensions to the title of the Caliph or the leader of all Muslims. Turkey’s defeat was seen as a major blow to the prestige of Islam, especially by many Muslims and their leaders in India. They formed committees to press the British Government to restore the Sultan in a movement known as the Khilafat.

The Khilafat movement is often described as a demand by Muslims for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey to his rightful office of the Caliph. This is a serious misrepresentation. Muslims outside India did not recognize the Turkish Sultan as Caliph; it was strictly an Indian movement but with a foreign focus. The Turks themselves under Kemal Ataturk eventually drove their Sultan into exile. The last Caliph with a legitimate claim to the title was the Abbasid al-Mustasim. He had been executed by the Mongol Huleku Khan (grandson of Chengiz) following the sack of Baghdad in 1258.

By no stretch of the imagination can the Khilafat be regarded an issue affecting the nation or Swaraj. In return for his support for the Khilafat, Gandhi obtained, or thought he obtained Muslim support for launching his nationwide nonviolent non-cooperation movement. In order to get their support, Gandhi went on to redefine Swaraj to mean support for the Khilafat. In his words:


"To the Musalmans Swaraj means, as it must, India's ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question. ... It is impossible not to sympathise with this attitude. ... I would gladly ask for the postponement of the Swaraj activity if we could advance the interest of the Khilafat."


So Swaraj, which previously meant self-rule, became transformed overnight into support for the Khilafat — to restore the Sultan of Turkey! Let us not forget that the Congress, only a year earlier, had adopted Swaraj (as independence) as its goal. Yet, Gandhi was telling the nation that the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey — whom the Turks themselves eventually kicked out — was more important for him than Indian independence! The result was a ‘jihad’ by Muslim leaders against the British that was later turned against the Hindus. It led to the death of tens of thousands of innocent people all over India. It was particularly virulent in Kerala where it is known as the Moplah Rebellion. And Swaraj as the goal did not return to the Congress until 1929. In other words, Gandhi and the Congress gave up the cause of freedom in support of a faraway theocratic institution called the Caliphate. How can this be called nationalism? And how can its leaders — including Gandhi — be called ‘national’ leaders?

As I just remarked, Swaraj returned to the Congress agenda only in 1929, leading to the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. It was a similar story with the Civil Disobedience Movement also. After the magnificent promise of the Dandi Salt March — organized mainly by Sardar Patel — Gandhi abandoned his followers in midstream in return for the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. Here is what happened though history books today seldom present the true facts.

The Lahore session of the Congress (1929) declared complete independence to be its goal. In fact it went further. Gandhi was put in charge of a national Civil Disobedience movement to force the British to grant independence. The leaders of the Congress claimed that British rule had resulted in four basic disasters for the Indian people. Its manifesto said: (1) "India has been ruined economically. …