Arun Shourie
"Dear Arun", writes Mr. Som Benegal, the sharpest of pins to many a baloon, "Why do you always equate the Urdu press with Muslims? I write a 600 word editorial every single day in TEJ which is in Urdu -- and which is neither Muslim, nor communal in any way. (I hope I am not pseudo-secular!) There are other Urdu papers which are not Muslim; indeed some are very, very anti-Muslim. May be sometimes you should also read some voices of 'sanity' (or pseudo- sanity!)".
A telling point. Even in ordinary times we tend to generalize. When tensions rise, when controversies sharpen, we tend to do so all the more - even though that is precisely the time when we should be keeping every possible exception, every distinction in mind.
"There must be an end to appeasing Muslims," we hear that said. In point of fact the Muslims are not the ones whom governments and politicians have been appeasing. They have been appeasing brokers of Muslims -- politicians and priests who set themselves up as the leaders of Muslims. The telling point about that appeasement has been that it has done nothing for the average Muslim. In fact, it has brought great harm upon him: his real problems remained unattended; a massive Hindu reaction was stoked; he was led by that appeasement to believe that these brokers were the ones who were powerful, that they would be his deliverers -- he was thereby, disabled even further for the future.
Of course, the politicians would not have pandered to these brokers if the community had been deaf to the latter. And so there is a sense in which by bending to Bukhari or Shahabuddin governments and politicians were not just bending to the brokers but to the community -- that is, it is not just that these brokers out of the blue took up issues like Satanic Verses or Shah Bano which had little to do with the real problems of the community, the latter itself looked upon these issues as the real ones. That is true. But only up to a point: the community fell in line behind these brokers all the more blindly as the attention that leaders like Rajiv and VP Singh and a succession of governments paid them signalled to the community that these brokers were indeed the ones who were influential.
By not making the distinction between having appeased Muslims and having appeased brokers of Muslims we therefore wrongly imagine that Muslims have been hogging too much of the chapati. Worse, we blame the wrong entity and thereby plummet for the wrong remedy. The cause is not the ordinary Muslim -- it is the broker, and the leader who props up that broker, and the latter happens to be a Hindu more often than a Muslim.
Consider the infiltrators from Bangladesh. Who has been smuggling them on to the electoral rolls? Who has been legitimising their residence by pressurising local administrations to issue them ration cards? True, some of the ones who did this most systematically in Assam were Muslims -- Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, Moinul Haq Choudhury, Anwara Taimur. But the ones who have been master-minding this in Delhi for instance are Congress leaders, and these happen to be Hindus.
The fact that new voices are being heard since 6 Decemeber warrants an even finer distinction. Hindus should distinguish, that is, not just between ordinary Muslims and Muslim leaders but, among the latter, between the familiar leaders -- who the Muslims themselves today see have brought such cost on their heads -- and the ones they may turn to in the future. Ayodhya has demolished, for the time being at least, the brokers who became important after 1977 -- Bukhari, Shahabuddin, Owaisi, Suleiman Sait etc. Which political leader today would be seen sending his emissary to Bukhari for points to be included in his party's manifesto? It is true of course that a few hall meetings of intellectuals, a few articles in newspapers by them do not mean that a new leadership is in place. But it is equally true that if we continue to lump the familiar old leaders and the possible new leaders together, even more so if we continue to focus only on the old leaders, we may nip a possible -- and very consequential -- change in the bud.
The Media
The media has a vital role to play in this matter. "Who created these leaders in the first place?", a leading Muslim intellectual remonstrated with me in Bombay in the wake of 6 Dec. "Don't just blame the politicians who dealt with them. You fellows in the press are the ones who made these fellows synonymous with the very word 'Muslim'. They had little following among the Muslims. It is the importance you gave them which convinced the ordinary Muslim to fall in line behind them. And now the poor, ordinary Muslim is being punished for what these leaders have been saying and doing."
"And you continue to give such persons the same sort of importance even today," he added. He gave the example of another "Imam" in Bombay whom he named. The man had been patronised and built up by a politician very powerful in Maharashtra then - a Hindu, whom he also named. The politician had patronised the "Imam" by bestowing land upon him. The "Imam" had built flats on it, and sold each flat to several Muslims. The defrauded purchases had taken him to court. In fact so intense was the hostility to the man that the "Imam" had to flee Bombay. He had been living in Goa all these years. The cases were still going on. But come the riots, the man had come back, and his statements and posturings -- all intransigent -- were suddenly again being given banner headlines by the newspapers. The politician-patron being important once again, the man had been given jeeps with whirling red lights to escort him. This sort of attention by the State, said the liberal, will without doubt lead the ordinary, frightened Muslims to believe that this was the man who could secure protection for them. The much was the result of what the politician was doing. But the result was left in no doubt by the newspapers giving so much importance to the statements of the man -- a man who had been so decisively turfed out by the community so recently.
As a result on the one hand ordinary Muslims are misled, and on the other the wrong stereotype of them is formed in the Hindu mind. Over the last few years, the stereotype among Hindus of the average Muslim has been the visage of Bukhari, the intransigence of Shahabuddin and Suleiman Sait, the bargains of Owaisi. The media has contributed to reinforcing this stereotype. When stories have had to be done and obtaining "the Muslim point of view" has been thought necessary, the reflex in newspaper offices has been to contact Shahabuddin or Bukhari and report their view as the views of Muslims in general.
Imagine if the stereotype of the Muslim in the Hindu mind today were not Bukhari, imagine if the role model in the mind of the Muslim himself were not Shahabuddin, but Mr. Abdul Kalam. He is a Muslim too, and few have done for our rocket and space programmes, and therefore for the defence of our country, what he has. The Hindu would not react the way he does to Muslims as a category. The Muslim would not conclude that the options for him are to follow Bukhari or nothing. Of course, the real remedy is to have many, many more Abdul Kalams -- for a stereotype cannot be conjured on exceptions. And that reminds us of the need for Muslims and the rest to do everything possible for improving the educational and technical standards of Muslims. But simultaneously the media can help that very upgradation by putting every Abdul Kalam at the center of the stage.
Further Distinctions
The example of Mr. Abdul Kalam points to an even more vital matter: even worse than confounding these brokers with ordinary Muslims is the tendency at such moments of tension to brand an entire group -- Muslims in this case -- as disloyal to the country. Bal Thackeray's rhetoric is an extreme example of such branding.
Many of our rulers joined up with the French, the Portugese, the English to do in their immediate rivals. There were many Hindus among them. That pattern continues to this day. To take a current example, persons who have been secreting away money in Swiss banks have been, among other things, undermining our economy; they have been making our country vulnerable by leaving it all the more dependent on foreign aid etc. Are these primarily Hindu or Muslim? The ones who engineered the bank scam -- they undermined a vital institution and much else, and thereby made our country more vulnerable. How many Hindus, how many Muslims?
It is true of course that supra-nationalism is one of the hallmarks of Islam. And there IS a sense in which Muslims here identify with what they come to see as an Islamic issue or Islamic State elsewhere. But the way out of that is not Thackeray's. The way is to inform them about the real condition of the people in these Islamic countries, to give them facts about the nature of these Islamic regimes -- about the corruption and venality, about how the enormous earnings from oil have been squandered by profligacy and mismanagement, about the woeful condition of women and minorities, about the fratricide among these regimes all supposedly belonging to a common identity. Assume for a moment that the oft-repeated charge is true -- that some persons in Muslim localities celebrate the victories of Pakistan's teams over Indian cricket teams. That a few burst crackers cannot be taken as proof of the sentiment of an entire community. But assume for a moment that Muslims in general have their heart in Pakistan and those crackers are but a symptom. Surely, the way to deal with that is not Bal Thackeray's -- of clobbering the entire community each time some one bursts crackers. The way that will work is to inform the community about the condition of mohajirs in Karachi, about that of the Ahmediyas and of women all over Pakistan, about the murderous jostling among Punjabis and Sindhis. And to have an invincible cricket team!
Things to do
Simple distinctions, and yet the more strained the times the more important it is that we keep them in mind. And there is another thing. As tensions intensify, as diferences sharpen we tend more and more to exchange views only with persons who share our views. But that is just the time when we must reach out beyond our circle.
So, lots and lots of meetings at which Muslims and Hindus speak what is in their mind and heart. And there are three keys:
*
Muslims and Hindus - whether they be intellectuals or priest -- should talk to each other directly, and not through politicians, nor through secularists who set themselves up as referees;
*
They must speak out everything that is in their hearts;
*
And the two must in a sense ask themselves diametrically opposed questions.
Hindus for instance must ask themselves what exactly the benefits are which the Muslims have wrested disproportionately from the State. The Muslims on the other hand must ask themselves whether the "victories" their leaders won in their names brought them anything, whether these "victories" are not the precise thing that convinced the Hindus that Muslims were wresting undue advantages from the State. Muslims must see that if they make a fetish of separateness -- of some chimerical "separate identity" -- they will be consigning themselves not just to separateness but to discrimination. The Hindus on the other hand must be always watchful that the well-reasoned arguments of Mr Advani do not become the occasion, that they do not come to be used as license by some local bully to wreak vengeance. Muslims must remember that irrespective of what Hindu scriptures may have said, the Hindus too will become a bit "Islamic" if Muslim leaders make intransigence the badge of commitment to the Faith. The Hindus on the other hand must keep the opposite in mind: the "victories" of Shahabuddin etc. stoked such a mighty reaction among Hindus; will the rhetoric of Bal Thackeray or Ritambhara not legitimise a reaction too?
From 'A Secular Agenda'
Showing posts with label hindu nationalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hindu nationalism. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Sunday, May 25, 2008
After Selling Himself in the Flesh Market
Arun Shourie
Arun Shourie is not a historian. He is a mythologist of Hindu communalism. He is a political pornographer," declared one of these eminent historians, K N Panikkar, in Kerala the other day. He had been asked for an answer to the facts I had set out in Eminent Historians. And he was giving reasons why it was beneath his dignity to give one.
He had been a little less lofty just a few weeks ago! And had deigned to write an entire article trying to explain the facts I had set out about the goings on in the Indian Council of Historical Research. "This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," he had written in The Asian Age. I had shown that the story they had planted -- about 'rational' having been made into 'national,' had been a complete forgery.
I had also drawn attention to the way large sums had been consumed in projects of the ICHR - such as the Towards Freedom Project - and how little had come of them. He wrote that The Times of India too had put out a front-page story about the Towards Freedom Project the previous year. And the historians had clarified the facts through a public statement... They had not received a penny. They had worked in a purely honorary capacity...
We have seen more of the facts since. But what he said - "This is an old charge..."- is something to bear in mind -- there is never a right time to ask a question about them. If events are still fresh, their response always is: "But where are the facts?" If you happen to have enumerated and substantiated the twenty facts about which evidence is in, their response is: "But he has not taken into account item 21; this selective focus on just a handful of facts shows that he is working to a purpose." When sufficient time has elapsed, and you have garnered and presented evidence about all the facts, their response is: "but this is an old charge. That he is raking it up now shows how the forces of reaction are panic-stricken at the growing consolidation of forces of secularism and democracy."
And each time they set forth a spate of angry words! "If he believes, as he apparently does, that the fame of historians like S Gopal, R S Sharma, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib who are held in high academic esteem, both nationally and internationally, are (sic) based on cheap manipulation," wrote Panikkar, "there must be something congenitally wrong with his mind. Otherwise it is possible that he is reflecting his own personal experience as to how a 'fellow' like him who writes communal mythology has come to be regarded a distinguished journalist."
"Finally, about hymen and virginity about which Shourie, as a good Hindu, is rightly concerned," Panikkar continued. "In the public eye his hymen has not remained intact, not because where he writes or to whom he gives interviews and articles, only because what he writes. Needless to say that the RSS publications carry his interview and articles only because they are rabidly communal. He cannot hope to remain a virgin after selling himself in the flesh market. Being a BJP member of Parliament and an ideologue of Hindu communalism, Shourie should get his hymen tested, if he is still under misconception about his virginity."
That is scholarly response. Indeed, in their circles it passes for 'devastating refutation'! But one must go the extra mile: Proclaim your belief in double-standards -- yes, I do what he does, but I do so because I believe in The Cause!
"As for me, unlike him, I do not hunt with the hound and run with the hare," Panikkar continued, though it wasn't clear what the colloquism was in aid of. "I contribute signed articles to the publications of the Communist Party, because I believe in the ideals it stands for -- democracy, secularism and socialism. By doing so, if my hymen is broken, I do not lament it, as Shourie does."
All this as an answer to the facts about the working of the ICHR to which I had drawn attention!
Since, then, an additional mountain of facts has been published. About pilferage, about doctored textbooks, about the intellectual dishonesty in the way these eminents treat facts and sources. Their response now is twofold. First, an entire theory! "There is not such thing as 'objectivity' in history," Panikkar told the audience in Kerala. So, when you find them concocting 'facts', you cannot but applaud them: Having liberated themselves from bourgeois scruples, they are propagating what will serve The Great Cause! And the evidence you adduce which establishes that what they are saying is a concoction, that evidence is of no consequence -- because in any case in history there is no such thing as objectivity! they plotted the assassination of CP Ramaswamy Aiyer, the Diwan -- these provide ready examples. The craven accolades our Communists showered on the Emergency when it was in force, and how, the moment it had ended, they coloured themselves up as heroes who had fought it -- these will do as well.
"The criticism that Communists decide their policy not in the Interests of their own country but in the interests of the Soviet Union is neither new nor original," thundered the Communist Party of India at Gandhiji and the Congress when it was confronted with evidence of having betrayed the National Movement during the Quit India struggle, and teamed up with the British. "It has been an old, very old gibe of the reactionary parties and their scribes the world over. It was the main theme the British Prosecutor played up against us In the Meerut Conspiracy Case. If 17 years later you make the same suggestion against us, we cannot but ask you -- Is this worthy of you?" (Communist Reply to the Congress Working Party Charges, by the General Secretary of the Party, PC Joshi, Communist Party of India, Calcutta, 1946, abridged version, pp 3-4.)
And always there is perhaps, I should now say, "there used to be" the decisive proof: Of having been vindicated by History! "All our brother parties had to live down this slander through their work among their own people," the Communist Party continued. "And If in the world of today there is any single political force which is growing, it is the Communist movement. If any banner has lost ground in every country, it is the bankrupt banner of blind anti-communalism."
Towards the end of 1983, VM Tarkunde Invited me to deliver the MN Roy Memorial Lecture for 1984. The lecture was held in Bombay on the same day in 1984 as It is every year - the birth anniversary of M N Roy. I documented the treacherous role the Communists had played during the 1942 Movement. Pritish Nandy, then Editor of The Illustrated Weekly, carried the text in a series. The text contained secret Masons of the Communist functionaries with British rulers, the request they made and the concessions they were given, the accounts they submitted to Richard Maxwell, the Home Member, and Richard Tottenham, the Additional Secretary who the brutal suppression of that campaign, reports in which the Communist Party set out the good work its members had done to help the government...
E M S Namboodiripad rushed to Bombay. Shourie is speaking for the forces of reaction, he thundered at a specially-convened press conference. These forces have panicked at the growing unity of secular and democratic forces.... They are unnerved that they will get a sound drubbing at the elections which are round the corner....
No elections were round any corner. Tarkunde had given his invitation five months earlier. The Communists' role In the Quit India Movement had not been the topic I had thought of in the first instance. I had thought that I would speak on 'Ideology as Blinkers,' and that I would Illustrate my argument with four examples. by the time of the lecture only one example was ready - that relating to the Communists during the 1942 Movement. And that is how I got to speak on the topic when I did. Nonetheless, 'conspiracy, 'unnerved', "elections round the corner" it was!
That was in 1984. Soon, E M S took a giant step towards owning up to what could no longer be hidden! Of course, he did so in the way characteristic of those who have appropriated The Great Cause! Yes, we entered into a liaison with the British. But we did so to master the arts of war: The dumbos in the Congress could not grasp the international situation, we alone could -- for we had The Theory, and we saw that the principal task was to save the country from the Japanese, that for this what was needed was a mastery of the arts of war, and that the only way to gain access to these arts at the time was to establish a working relationship with the British!
The rationalisation is typical of his A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, the 900-page book he published in 1986, just two years after that fusillade about my lecture.
Congress policy was wrong and suicidal, Namboodiripad wrote. Gandhi had not thought the matter through, he wrote, and had left no instructions on how the struggle should be carried on in the event of the principal leaders being arrested. The Congress had not prepared for guerrilla war against the advancing Japanese, he wrote. It had devised no way to Provide medical assistance to victims of bombing, nor had it thought of mobilising the masses against hoarders and profiteers, he wrote. It was the Communist Party which took up these tasks, Namboodiripad wrote. "It did not hesitate to establish contact with the government and accept the assistance and for carrying out this programme."
Thus, it was just a 'contact'! That 'contact' was established to train the cadres for guerrilla war against the invading Japanese. And what the comrades did was not to assist the British, they only "did not hesitate... to accept the assistance" which the British proffered! And the poor Communists had to take on this repugnant task because the Congress and Gandhi had not thought the matter through!
In any case, there were disagreements within the Congress too, Namboodiripad wrote. In fact, having themselves carted off to prison enabled the Congress leaders to escape responsibility for what had to be done. At the back of the Congress leaders' decision to launch the Quit India Movement was the object of furthering their bourgeois class interests by eventually negotiating and compromising with the British rulers, Namboodiripad wrote. It is the Communist Party, and not the Congress which acted in accordance with the resolutions of the Congress, he claimed. Moreover, though the Communist Party opposed the Quit India struggle, it simultaneously organised campaigns against the general policies of the government, he claimed.
The familiar blend of indignation, apologia, explanation, evasion. By the end of Namboodiripad's account, this of half-truths, smears, pasting motives on others, non-sequiters, contradictions becomes laughable.
"This does not, however, mean that the Communist Party did not commit any error in translating its general approach towards the Quit India struggle into Practical activities," the General of the Party allowed. "Failing to properly appreciating (sic) the popular feeling behind the struggle, the Party had often displayed a tendency to denounce those participating in the struggle as fascist agents. It had also made certain errors in organising mass struggles during this period. All such errors were subjected later to severe self-criticism, particularly in the Second Party Congress held in Calcutta in 1948." That last bit has an immediate practical consequence: If before their self- criticism you criticised their doings, you were clearly a fascist agent; if you do so after that, you are even more conclusively a fascist agent -- the Party having already acknowledged its 'error', that you are still raking up the 'old canard' is proof positive that you are doing so at the behest of the forces of reaction!
But, clearly, to admit that the Party made a fundamental error would cut at the claim to infallibility. Hence, there is the SOP -- the Standard Operating Procedure. If sticking by the Line is too costly, the Party and its intellectuals acknowledge the 'error', but immediately add that the 'error' was just a tactical one! True to the SOP, Namboodiripad concluded, "Despite the omissions and commissions, the Party adopted a policy which was by and large correct during the Quit India struggle."
That is because the Hitler-Stalin Pact was correct, it was a clever counter-move: The capitalist-imperialists conspired to set Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union, Namboodiripad maintained; by entering into a Pact with Hitler, Stalin foiled their conspiracy. The consequence was as decisive as it was immediate: "Hitler could now turn westwards," the General Secretary noted with satisfaction... That is why the Indian Communist Party characterised the War as an Imperialist War in this phase, and insisted that the Congress take advantage of the difficulties of Britain to push it in India -- for Britain was arrayed against Hitler who was the ally of the Soviet Union. Of course, Hitler turned perfidious: In spite of the Pact, he invaded The Only Fatherland. The War immediately turned into a Peoples War, the General Secretary explains. And that is why the Communist Party insisted that Gandhi and the Congress desist from doing anything which will inconvenience the British -- for they were now allied with the Soviet Union. "The characterisation of the war by Communists as 'imperialist' in the first phase and as 'peoples war' in the second phase was based on one and the same principle," Namboodiripad wrote. "It is certainly a crucial issue what attitude the ruling classes take towards the Soviet Union which is destined to decide the future of human society." This in 1986! "The Communist Party had never hidden its stand on this issue," he declared. Not just the Communists, "Everyone who is interested in man's onward march to socialism would take the same stand," Namboodiripad declared.
All this in a book published in 1986! In any event, there had been an advance. In 1984, Namboodiripad had denounced mention of their doings. In 1986 he acknowledged the 'error'. Three years did not pass and he was talking more about the 'mistake', and less about the explanations for it! So, when they come down on us, we just have to wait a while.
But Namboodiripad's press conference, it turned out, was just the opening salvo, as we shall see.
The Observer
January 15, 1999
Arun Shourie is not a historian. He is a mythologist of Hindu communalism. He is a political pornographer," declared one of these eminent historians, K N Panikkar, in Kerala the other day. He had been asked for an answer to the facts I had set out in Eminent Historians. And he was giving reasons why it was beneath his dignity to give one.
He had been a little less lofty just a few weeks ago! And had deigned to write an entire article trying to explain the facts I had set out about the goings on in the Indian Council of Historical Research. "This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," he had written in The Asian Age. I had shown that the story they had planted -- about 'rational' having been made into 'national,' had been a complete forgery.
I had also drawn attention to the way large sums had been consumed in projects of the ICHR - such as the Towards Freedom Project - and how little had come of them. He wrote that The Times of India too had put out a front-page story about the Towards Freedom Project the previous year. And the historians had clarified the facts through a public statement... They had not received a penny. They had worked in a purely honorary capacity...
We have seen more of the facts since. But what he said - "This is an old charge..."- is something to bear in mind -- there is never a right time to ask a question about them. If events are still fresh, their response always is: "But where are the facts?" If you happen to have enumerated and substantiated the twenty facts about which evidence is in, their response is: "But he has not taken into account item 21; this selective focus on just a handful of facts shows that he is working to a purpose." When sufficient time has elapsed, and you have garnered and presented evidence about all the facts, their response is: "but this is an old charge. That he is raking it up now shows how the forces of reaction are panic-stricken at the growing consolidation of forces of secularism and democracy."
And each time they set forth a spate of angry words! "If he believes, as he apparently does, that the fame of historians like S Gopal, R S Sharma, Romila Thapar and Irfan Habib who are held in high academic esteem, both nationally and internationally, are (sic) based on cheap manipulation," wrote Panikkar, "there must be something congenitally wrong with his mind. Otherwise it is possible that he is reflecting his own personal experience as to how a 'fellow' like him who writes communal mythology has come to be regarded a distinguished journalist."
"Finally, about hymen and virginity about which Shourie, as a good Hindu, is rightly concerned," Panikkar continued. "In the public eye his hymen has not remained intact, not because where he writes or to whom he gives interviews and articles, only because what he writes. Needless to say that the RSS publications carry his interview and articles only because they are rabidly communal. He cannot hope to remain a virgin after selling himself in the flesh market. Being a BJP member of Parliament and an ideologue of Hindu communalism, Shourie should get his hymen tested, if he is still under misconception about his virginity."
That is scholarly response. Indeed, in their circles it passes for 'devastating refutation'! But one must go the extra mile: Proclaim your belief in double-standards -- yes, I do what he does, but I do so because I believe in The Cause!
"As for me, unlike him, I do not hunt with the hound and run with the hare," Panikkar continued, though it wasn't clear what the colloquism was in aid of. "I contribute signed articles to the publications of the Communist Party, because I believe in the ideals it stands for -- democracy, secularism and socialism. By doing so, if my hymen is broken, I do not lament it, as Shourie does."
All this as an answer to the facts about the working of the ICHR to which I had drawn attention!
Since, then, an additional mountain of facts has been published. About pilferage, about doctored textbooks, about the intellectual dishonesty in the way these eminents treat facts and sources. Their response now is twofold. First, an entire theory! "There is not such thing as 'objectivity' in history," Panikkar told the audience in Kerala. So, when you find them concocting 'facts', you cannot but applaud them: Having liberated themselves from bourgeois scruples, they are propagating what will serve The Great Cause! And the evidence you adduce which establishes that what they are saying is a concoction, that evidence is of no consequence -- because in any case in history there is no such thing as objectivity! they plotted the assassination of CP Ramaswamy Aiyer, the Diwan -- these provide ready examples. The craven accolades our Communists showered on the Emergency when it was in force, and how, the moment it had ended, they coloured themselves up as heroes who had fought it -- these will do as well.
"The criticism that Communists decide their policy not in the Interests of their own country but in the interests of the Soviet Union is neither new nor original," thundered the Communist Party of India at Gandhiji and the Congress when it was confronted with evidence of having betrayed the National Movement during the Quit India struggle, and teamed up with the British. "It has been an old, very old gibe of the reactionary parties and their scribes the world over. It was the main theme the British Prosecutor played up against us In the Meerut Conspiracy Case. If 17 years later you make the same suggestion against us, we cannot but ask you -- Is this worthy of you?" (Communist Reply to the Congress Working Party Charges, by the General Secretary of the Party, PC Joshi, Communist Party of India, Calcutta, 1946, abridged version, pp 3-4.)
And always there is perhaps, I should now say, "there used to be" the decisive proof: Of having been vindicated by History! "All our brother parties had to live down this slander through their work among their own people," the Communist Party continued. "And If in the world of today there is any single political force which is growing, it is the Communist movement. If any banner has lost ground in every country, it is the bankrupt banner of blind anti-communalism."
Towards the end of 1983, VM Tarkunde Invited me to deliver the MN Roy Memorial Lecture for 1984. The lecture was held in Bombay on the same day in 1984 as It is every year - the birth anniversary of M N Roy. I documented the treacherous role the Communists had played during the 1942 Movement. Pritish Nandy, then Editor of The Illustrated Weekly, carried the text in a series. The text contained secret Masons of the Communist functionaries with British rulers, the request they made and the concessions they were given, the accounts they submitted to Richard Maxwell, the Home Member, and Richard Tottenham, the Additional Secretary who the brutal suppression of that campaign, reports in which the Communist Party set out the good work its members had done to help the government...
E M S Namboodiripad rushed to Bombay. Shourie is speaking for the forces of reaction, he thundered at a specially-convened press conference. These forces have panicked at the growing unity of secular and democratic forces.... They are unnerved that they will get a sound drubbing at the elections which are round the corner....
No elections were round any corner. Tarkunde had given his invitation five months earlier. The Communists' role In the Quit India Movement had not been the topic I had thought of in the first instance. I had thought that I would speak on 'Ideology as Blinkers,' and that I would Illustrate my argument with four examples. by the time of the lecture only one example was ready - that relating to the Communists during the 1942 Movement. And that is how I got to speak on the topic when I did. Nonetheless, 'conspiracy, 'unnerved', "elections round the corner" it was!
That was in 1984. Soon, E M S took a giant step towards owning up to what could no longer be hidden! Of course, he did so in the way characteristic of those who have appropriated The Great Cause! Yes, we entered into a liaison with the British. But we did so to master the arts of war: The dumbos in the Congress could not grasp the international situation, we alone could -- for we had The Theory, and we saw that the principal task was to save the country from the Japanese, that for this what was needed was a mastery of the arts of war, and that the only way to gain access to these arts at the time was to establish a working relationship with the British!
The rationalisation is typical of his A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, the 900-page book he published in 1986, just two years after that fusillade about my lecture.
Congress policy was wrong and suicidal, Namboodiripad wrote. Gandhi had not thought the matter through, he wrote, and had left no instructions on how the struggle should be carried on in the event of the principal leaders being arrested. The Congress had not prepared for guerrilla war against the advancing Japanese, he wrote. It had devised no way to Provide medical assistance to victims of bombing, nor had it thought of mobilising the masses against hoarders and profiteers, he wrote. It was the Communist Party which took up these tasks, Namboodiripad wrote. "It did not hesitate to establish contact with the government and accept the assistance and for carrying out this programme."
Thus, it was just a 'contact'! That 'contact' was established to train the cadres for guerrilla war against the invading Japanese. And what the comrades did was not to assist the British, they only "did not hesitate... to accept the assistance" which the British proffered! And the poor Communists had to take on this repugnant task because the Congress and Gandhi had not thought the matter through!
In any case, there were disagreements within the Congress too, Namboodiripad wrote. In fact, having themselves carted off to prison enabled the Congress leaders to escape responsibility for what had to be done. At the back of the Congress leaders' decision to launch the Quit India Movement was the object of furthering their bourgeois class interests by eventually negotiating and compromising with the British rulers, Namboodiripad wrote. It is the Communist Party, and not the Congress which acted in accordance with the resolutions of the Congress, he claimed. Moreover, though the Communist Party opposed the Quit India struggle, it simultaneously organised campaigns against the general policies of the government, he claimed.
The familiar blend of indignation, apologia, explanation, evasion. By the end of Namboodiripad's account, this of half-truths, smears, pasting motives on others, non-sequiters, contradictions becomes laughable.
"This does not, however, mean that the Communist Party did not commit any error in translating its general approach towards the Quit India struggle into Practical activities," the General of the Party allowed. "Failing to properly appreciating (sic) the popular feeling behind the struggle, the Party had often displayed a tendency to denounce those participating in the struggle as fascist agents. It had also made certain errors in organising mass struggles during this period. All such errors were subjected later to severe self-criticism, particularly in the Second Party Congress held in Calcutta in 1948." That last bit has an immediate practical consequence: If before their self- criticism you criticised their doings, you were clearly a fascist agent; if you do so after that, you are even more conclusively a fascist agent -- the Party having already acknowledged its 'error', that you are still raking up the 'old canard' is proof positive that you are doing so at the behest of the forces of reaction!
But, clearly, to admit that the Party made a fundamental error would cut at the claim to infallibility. Hence, there is the SOP -- the Standard Operating Procedure. If sticking by the Line is too costly, the Party and its intellectuals acknowledge the 'error', but immediately add that the 'error' was just a tactical one! True to the SOP, Namboodiripad concluded, "Despite the omissions and commissions, the Party adopted a policy which was by and large correct during the Quit India struggle."
That is because the Hitler-Stalin Pact was correct, it was a clever counter-move: The capitalist-imperialists conspired to set Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union, Namboodiripad maintained; by entering into a Pact with Hitler, Stalin foiled their conspiracy. The consequence was as decisive as it was immediate: "Hitler could now turn westwards," the General Secretary noted with satisfaction... That is why the Indian Communist Party characterised the War as an Imperialist War in this phase, and insisted that the Congress take advantage of the difficulties of Britain to push it in India -- for Britain was arrayed against Hitler who was the ally of the Soviet Union. Of course, Hitler turned perfidious: In spite of the Pact, he invaded The Only Fatherland. The War immediately turned into a Peoples War, the General Secretary explains. And that is why the Communist Party insisted that Gandhi and the Congress desist from doing anything which will inconvenience the British -- for they were now allied with the Soviet Union. "The characterisation of the war by Communists as 'imperialist' in the first phase and as 'peoples war' in the second phase was based on one and the same principle," Namboodiripad wrote. "It is certainly a crucial issue what attitude the ruling classes take towards the Soviet Union which is destined to decide the future of human society." This in 1986! "The Communist Party had never hidden its stand on this issue," he declared. Not just the Communists, "Everyone who is interested in man's onward march to socialism would take the same stand," Namboodiripad declared.
All this in a book published in 1986! In any event, there had been an advance. In 1984, Namboodiripad had denounced mention of their doings. In 1986 he acknowledged the 'error'. Three years did not pass and he was talking more about the 'mistake', and less about the explanations for it! So, when they come down on us, we just have to wait a while.
But Namboodiripad's press conference, it turned out, was just the opening salvo, as we shall see.
The Observer
January 15, 1999
The Tantrums Which Will Follow Explosions
Arun Shourie
We are so dazzled by reports of the strides China has made in enlarging its economy that we do not notice that one of the principal uses to which it is putting its new wealth is to multiply its military strength. Pick up any book or analysis about security developments in the Pacific region or in Asia, and the facts it sets out about China are bound to startle.
Here are some from one that you will rind in your nearest book shop: Asia's Deadly Triangle by Kent Calder, for long the Director of the programme on US-Japan Relations at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and later Senior Advisor for East Asian and Pacific Affairs to the U S State Department.
1974: While the two Vietnams are battling over Saigon, China in a swift operation grabs the Paracels. By now China has constructed a major air base at Woody Island there.
1974, 1978 and yet again in 1988: Not once, but thrice Vietnam has been invaded by China, and has to fight to stave it off.
1992: China's National People's Congress unilaterally decrees a "Law on the Territorial Waters and their Contiguous Areas." By the generosity of this new self-proclaimed "Law" China lays claim to 80 per cent of the South China Sea. The areas, it claims, ranges as far down as Malaysia and Indonesia!
1995: "The shadow of China looms large in these strategic southern waters... A major oil strike has already been made off the nearby Filipino island of Palawan, which prompted a Chinese land grab only 170 kilometers away in early 1995. A massive natural gas find -- the Natuna field off Indonesia -- has also recently been made and has likewise rapidly found itself within Chinese waters on Chinese maps..."
December 1995: Chinese drilling ships entered Japanese-claimed waters to prospect for offshore oil...
In the past decade border trade between Burma and Yunan has increased thirty-fold -- to nearly $1 billion a year. Chinese are now the main prop of the Myanmar regime, they are the ones who are building and controlling the road and transportation network in the northern and north-eastern parts of that hapless State.
And not for nothing. Calder reports:
"China has used its leverage strategically. In late 1992, Western spy satellites, for example, detected a new 150-foot antenna used for signals intelligence at a naval base on Coco Island, a Burmese possession on Indian Ocean sea routes... Western analysts believe Myanmar is allowing Chinese technicians to operate this as a listening post. More recently, China has been pressing Myanmar to allow access to Victoria Point, a long, rugged Burmese island within three hundred Kilometers of the Strait of Malacca, the vital seaway through which much of Northeast Asia's trade must pass. China is also upgrading the Burmese Navy, together with the roads and railroads that lead from its Yunan province southward towards this Indian Ocean..."
Calder details the extensive way in which China is developing a blue-water navy. And even more so, its Air Force. And, from a source which will surprise Indians! Calder recalls the yard-sale of Soviet equipment and how China was flush with hard currency, and writes,
"They (the Chinese) began by buying dozens of Su-27 fighters and made plans to produce their own version of Russia's top-of-the-line MiG-31 strategic interceptor, using a small Army of fifteen hundred Russian engineers and technicians.
Hundreds more were put on retainer, creating an elaborate E-mail network between Russian and Chinese defence research institutes that has since accelerated the development of Chinese aerospace and nuclear programs... China's air force modernization program is by no means defensive. Apart from the MiG-3 that is to be coproduced, China also reportedly acquired air-to-air refueling technology from Iran, which had gotten it , in turn, from the United States during the reign of the Shah. It also purchased Tu-22 long range bombers, IL-76 military transports, S-300 ground-based antiballistic missiles, and A-50 airborne warning and control planes from the Russians..."
True, matching China militarily does not ward off the threat it may pose if in the meanwhile our economy flounders. But to conclude from this that doing well economically will be enough, would be sheer idiocy. Similarly, acquiring a modest nuclear arsenal does not mean one is fully prepared to meet such threat as China may pose. But to conclude from that truism that one can do without the arsenal is just foolish.
Today our commentators are all denunciation. Land of Buddha and Gandhi, they say: but surely this is also the land of Krishna and Arjuna, of the "Dhanushdhari" Ram, of Shivaji and Maharana Pratap, and Lokmanya Tilak!
Not just that, the moment persons like me have in the past talked of the pivotal role of Gandhiji, these were the very persons who have shouted, "But you are ignoring the difference that Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad made." Overnight the BJP has made a peace-loving India into a warmongering country, they declaim, having expended reams denigrating us for being cunning, conspiring, congenital murderers!
Contrast what these pundits are suddenly writing with what the "Strategic Affairs Editor" of the very peace-loving, secular paper. "The Hindu", wrote in August last year.
The news which we noticed earlier had just broken out -- that the Clinton administration was about to certify that China was no longer exporting nuclear and missile technologies.
Under the paper's headline, "India in a nuclear limbo," the website carries the following from this very paper:
"As the Clinton administration gets ready to sell nuclear power reactors to China, India is confronted with a crucial paradox. About Five decades after China and India embarked on modernization, the great powers of the international system are falling over each other to offer strategic technologies to China. India, on the other hand, has "become a near-untouchable in the international trade in sensitive technologies... The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) does not explicitly ban cooperation in the nuclear weapons field among the nuclear weapon powers. In short, China has the best of both worlds; and India, the worst. As a declared nuclear weapon power, China has access to both civilian aid military nuclear technologies. in contrast, India, after serenading itself as a player on the global nuclear stage for five decades, has neither a credible nuclear weapons programme nor a robust civilian atomic power industry. India has no one to blame but itself for the unenviable situation...
"Many in the United States have raised questions about the continuing Chinese support to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme and the wisdom of beefing up the nuclear industrial base of a nation that is seen by many Americans as a potential adversary. But the logic of the current policy of engaging China could well push Washington into civilian nuclear cooperation with Beijing. Where does that leave India? In a nuclear limbo...
"Any serious review of the Indian nuclear policy would result in two basic propositions. One is the need to end the nuclear ambiguity and exercise the weapons option in a manner that is credible but non-provocative. And, the other: Having come out of the nuclear closet, Indian readiness to engage the global nuclear order for a modus vivendi. If India is ready to play the game, it indeed has beverages -- a large nuclear power market, an ability to disrupt the global non-proliferation regime through diplomacy and future nuclear exports and its potential role in the Asian balance of power."
The condescension: "after serenading itself as a player..." The fundamental and unvarying theme: "India has no one to blame but itself for the unenviable situation..." The snootiness which makes them look upon all this as a "game". The generalized pentification: when the attitude of countries -- from China to the US -- is what we have seen it to be, pray, how is one to "end the nuclear-ambiguity and exercise the weapons option in a manner that is credible but non-provocative"? The rule Orwell had lanced -- when you don't know what to say, use a foreign expression! Hence, "modus vivendi", what this "arrangement or compromise" is to be, to use the dictionary meaning, "by which we may get along with those who do not agree with us," is left as an exercise for the reader!
Each of these write-ups deserve attention as it manifests a mindset. But I am on the other point: the operational advice. The Editor's advice in that analysis, as we see, is to "come out of the nuclear closet," it is to "exercise the weapons option." That advice has but to be acted upon, and the analysts break out in a pink rash! "Arms race initiated by India under the stewardship of the Vajpayee administration," the same paper fumes.
"Jingoistic chauvinism," it declares. "Public opinion within Pakistan inflamed by provocative and chauvinist attitudes displayed here," it pronounces.
Hence, the four principles of secularist-liberal-nostalgically, Maoist-nostalgically Lahorite discourse:
1. India is, it has always been, it will always be One hundred per cent wrong, with no one to blame but itself;
2. India led by BJP is, it has always been, it will always be Two hundred per cent wrong, with no one to blame but the BJP;
3. Pakistan is, it has always been, it will always be One hundred per cent right, with no one to blame but India;
4. Pakistan backed by China is, it has always been, it will always be Two hundred per cent right, with, not one, but two to blame - India and BJP!
But they are a dwindling race, and the more they adhere to these principles, the shorter we will have to wait.
The point is about Pakistan. There is no doubt that while the Government's decision to go in for the explosions was necessary, that while many aspects of the matter were handled with skill, the spate of statements which followed the blasts harmed the case enormously. Fortunately they have ceased. But the same temptations can arise tomorrow, and so the Prime Minister must enforce firm rules on his colleagues and party.
This is particularly so because of what is certain to be Pakistan's strategy in the coming months. Anyone who has been reading Pakistani papers must know that for eight months there have been two running themes in them.
One, that the country is close to bankruptcy -- that by July or August it will be close to defaulting on its repayment obligations. To get bailouts from the IMF and the World Bank, Nawaz Sharief had decreed privatisation and down-sizing of an array of governmental enterprises. But strikes in banks, troubles in WAPDA, stay orders by courts arrested the measures.
Second, every commentator, paper after paper has been warning that, in spite of his overwhelming majority in the Pakistan Assembly, Nawaz Sharief will never rest till he has acquired absolute, dictatorial power. They forecast this from what they know of his nature, and from the moves he has been making. First, he curtailed the freedom of the members of the Assembly. Then he struck at the judiciary. Then the President was forced out.
The emergency he has imposed is the result and culmination of these two factors. It is the exact thing which commentators have been forecasting all these months. But now that he has complete power, he has no excuses left -- except India. And no way left except to heighten tensions with India. For anyone in India to respond in kind will only be to help him out of a deep ditch.
There is the other aspect too. Pakistan has failed in regard to Kashmir. Its strategy now will be to throw a tantrum a day: "Unless the issue of Kashmir is solved, there will be nuclear war" -- the equivalent of Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN. And, so as to lend urgency and verisimilitude to the tantrum, to stage major incidents in Kashmir. Persons like the UK Foreign Secretary will be only too eager to pounce on these worked-up tantrums to initiate what they have in any case been panting to do -- that is, get a foothold for a third-party intervention.
To be provoked into angry, retaliatory words would be to help Pakistan along. For once let us be truly Buddha-like! To a taunt, to a tantrum he would respond with silence, with a smile!
That plus, to continue the work: defeat every attempt to send terrorists across, crush every attempt to stoke violence again in the Valley; and buck up the local administration in Kashmir.
In a word, it is done. it was done well, now get down to the next steps.
The Pioneer
June 5, 1998
We are so dazzled by reports of the strides China has made in enlarging its economy that we do not notice that one of the principal uses to which it is putting its new wealth is to multiply its military strength. Pick up any book or analysis about security developments in the Pacific region or in Asia, and the facts it sets out about China are bound to startle.
Here are some from one that you will rind in your nearest book shop: Asia's Deadly Triangle by Kent Calder, for long the Director of the programme on US-Japan Relations at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and later Senior Advisor for East Asian and Pacific Affairs to the U S State Department.
1974: While the two Vietnams are battling over Saigon, China in a swift operation grabs the Paracels. By now China has constructed a major air base at Woody Island there.
1974, 1978 and yet again in 1988: Not once, but thrice Vietnam has been invaded by China, and has to fight to stave it off.
1992: China's National People's Congress unilaterally decrees a "Law on the Territorial Waters and their Contiguous Areas." By the generosity of this new self-proclaimed "Law" China lays claim to 80 per cent of the South China Sea. The areas, it claims, ranges as far down as Malaysia and Indonesia!
1995: "The shadow of China looms large in these strategic southern waters... A major oil strike has already been made off the nearby Filipino island of Palawan, which prompted a Chinese land grab only 170 kilometers away in early 1995. A massive natural gas find -- the Natuna field off Indonesia -- has also recently been made and has likewise rapidly found itself within Chinese waters on Chinese maps..."
December 1995: Chinese drilling ships entered Japanese-claimed waters to prospect for offshore oil...
In the past decade border trade between Burma and Yunan has increased thirty-fold -- to nearly $1 billion a year. Chinese are now the main prop of the Myanmar regime, they are the ones who are building and controlling the road and transportation network in the northern and north-eastern parts of that hapless State.
And not for nothing. Calder reports:
"China has used its leverage strategically. In late 1992, Western spy satellites, for example, detected a new 150-foot antenna used for signals intelligence at a naval base on Coco Island, a Burmese possession on Indian Ocean sea routes... Western analysts believe Myanmar is allowing Chinese technicians to operate this as a listening post. More recently, China has been pressing Myanmar to allow access to Victoria Point, a long, rugged Burmese island within three hundred Kilometers of the Strait of Malacca, the vital seaway through which much of Northeast Asia's trade must pass. China is also upgrading the Burmese Navy, together with the roads and railroads that lead from its Yunan province southward towards this Indian Ocean..."
Calder details the extensive way in which China is developing a blue-water navy. And even more so, its Air Force. And, from a source which will surprise Indians! Calder recalls the yard-sale of Soviet equipment and how China was flush with hard currency, and writes,
"They (the Chinese) began by buying dozens of Su-27 fighters and made plans to produce their own version of Russia's top-of-the-line MiG-31 strategic interceptor, using a small Army of fifteen hundred Russian engineers and technicians.
Hundreds more were put on retainer, creating an elaborate E-mail network between Russian and Chinese defence research institutes that has since accelerated the development of Chinese aerospace and nuclear programs... China's air force modernization program is by no means defensive. Apart from the MiG-3 that is to be coproduced, China also reportedly acquired air-to-air refueling technology from Iran, which had gotten it , in turn, from the United States during the reign of the Shah. It also purchased Tu-22 long range bombers, IL-76 military transports, S-300 ground-based antiballistic missiles, and A-50 airborne warning and control planes from the Russians..."
True, matching China militarily does not ward off the threat it may pose if in the meanwhile our economy flounders. But to conclude from this that doing well economically will be enough, would be sheer idiocy. Similarly, acquiring a modest nuclear arsenal does not mean one is fully prepared to meet such threat as China may pose. But to conclude from that truism that one can do without the arsenal is just foolish.
Today our commentators are all denunciation. Land of Buddha and Gandhi, they say: but surely this is also the land of Krishna and Arjuna, of the "Dhanushdhari" Ram, of Shivaji and Maharana Pratap, and Lokmanya Tilak!
Not just that, the moment persons like me have in the past talked of the pivotal role of Gandhiji, these were the very persons who have shouted, "But you are ignoring the difference that Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad made." Overnight the BJP has made a peace-loving India into a warmongering country, they declaim, having expended reams denigrating us for being cunning, conspiring, congenital murderers!
Contrast what these pundits are suddenly writing with what the "Strategic Affairs Editor" of the very peace-loving, secular paper. "The Hindu", wrote in August last year.
The news which we noticed earlier had just broken out -- that the Clinton administration was about to certify that China was no longer exporting nuclear and missile technologies.
Under the paper's headline, "India in a nuclear limbo," the website carries the following from this very paper:
"As the Clinton administration gets ready to sell nuclear power reactors to China, India is confronted with a crucial paradox. About Five decades after China and India embarked on modernization, the great powers of the international system are falling over each other to offer strategic technologies to China. India, on the other hand, has "become a near-untouchable in the international trade in sensitive technologies... The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) does not explicitly ban cooperation in the nuclear weapons field among the nuclear weapon powers. In short, China has the best of both worlds; and India, the worst. As a declared nuclear weapon power, China has access to both civilian aid military nuclear technologies. in contrast, India, after serenading itself as a player on the global nuclear stage for five decades, has neither a credible nuclear weapons programme nor a robust civilian atomic power industry. India has no one to blame but itself for the unenviable situation...
"Many in the United States have raised questions about the continuing Chinese support to Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme and the wisdom of beefing up the nuclear industrial base of a nation that is seen by many Americans as a potential adversary. But the logic of the current policy of engaging China could well push Washington into civilian nuclear cooperation with Beijing. Where does that leave India? In a nuclear limbo...
"Any serious review of the Indian nuclear policy would result in two basic propositions. One is the need to end the nuclear ambiguity and exercise the weapons option in a manner that is credible but non-provocative. And, the other: Having come out of the nuclear closet, Indian readiness to engage the global nuclear order for a modus vivendi. If India is ready to play the game, it indeed has beverages -- a large nuclear power market, an ability to disrupt the global non-proliferation regime through diplomacy and future nuclear exports and its potential role in the Asian balance of power."
The condescension: "after serenading itself as a player..." The fundamental and unvarying theme: "India has no one to blame but itself for the unenviable situation..." The snootiness which makes them look upon all this as a "game". The generalized pentification: when the attitude of countries -- from China to the US -- is what we have seen it to be, pray, how is one to "end the nuclear-ambiguity and exercise the weapons option in a manner that is credible but non-provocative"? The rule Orwell had lanced -- when you don't know what to say, use a foreign expression! Hence, "modus vivendi", what this "arrangement or compromise" is to be, to use the dictionary meaning, "by which we may get along with those who do not agree with us," is left as an exercise for the reader!
Each of these write-ups deserve attention as it manifests a mindset. But I am on the other point: the operational advice. The Editor's advice in that analysis, as we see, is to "come out of the nuclear closet," it is to "exercise the weapons option." That advice has but to be acted upon, and the analysts break out in a pink rash! "Arms race initiated by India under the stewardship of the Vajpayee administration," the same paper fumes.
"Jingoistic chauvinism," it declares. "Public opinion within Pakistan inflamed by provocative and chauvinist attitudes displayed here," it pronounces.
Hence, the four principles of secularist-liberal-nostalgically, Maoist-nostalgically Lahorite discourse:
1. India is, it has always been, it will always be One hundred per cent wrong, with no one to blame but itself;
2. India led by BJP is, it has always been, it will always be Two hundred per cent wrong, with no one to blame but the BJP;
3. Pakistan is, it has always been, it will always be One hundred per cent right, with no one to blame but India;
4. Pakistan backed by China is, it has always been, it will always be Two hundred per cent right, with, not one, but two to blame - India and BJP!
But they are a dwindling race, and the more they adhere to these principles, the shorter we will have to wait.
The point is about Pakistan. There is no doubt that while the Government's decision to go in for the explosions was necessary, that while many aspects of the matter were handled with skill, the spate of statements which followed the blasts harmed the case enormously. Fortunately they have ceased. But the same temptations can arise tomorrow, and so the Prime Minister must enforce firm rules on his colleagues and party.
This is particularly so because of what is certain to be Pakistan's strategy in the coming months. Anyone who has been reading Pakistani papers must know that for eight months there have been two running themes in them.
One, that the country is close to bankruptcy -- that by July or August it will be close to defaulting on its repayment obligations. To get bailouts from the IMF and the World Bank, Nawaz Sharief had decreed privatisation and down-sizing of an array of governmental enterprises. But strikes in banks, troubles in WAPDA, stay orders by courts arrested the measures.
Second, every commentator, paper after paper has been warning that, in spite of his overwhelming majority in the Pakistan Assembly, Nawaz Sharief will never rest till he has acquired absolute, dictatorial power. They forecast this from what they know of his nature, and from the moves he has been making. First, he curtailed the freedom of the members of the Assembly. Then he struck at the judiciary. Then the President was forced out.
The emergency he has imposed is the result and culmination of these two factors. It is the exact thing which commentators have been forecasting all these months. But now that he has complete power, he has no excuses left -- except India. And no way left except to heighten tensions with India. For anyone in India to respond in kind will only be to help him out of a deep ditch.
There is the other aspect too. Pakistan has failed in regard to Kashmir. Its strategy now will be to throw a tantrum a day: "Unless the issue of Kashmir is solved, there will be nuclear war" -- the equivalent of Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN. And, so as to lend urgency and verisimilitude to the tantrum, to stage major incidents in Kashmir. Persons like the UK Foreign Secretary will be only too eager to pounce on these worked-up tantrums to initiate what they have in any case been panting to do -- that is, get a foothold for a third-party intervention.
To be provoked into angry, retaliatory words would be to help Pakistan along. For once let us be truly Buddha-like! To a taunt, to a tantrum he would respond with silence, with a smile!
That plus, to continue the work: defeat every attempt to send terrorists across, crush every attempt to stoke violence again in the Valley; and buck up the local administration in Kashmir.
In a word, it is done. it was done well, now get down to the next steps.
The Pioneer
June 5, 1998
Observers and Their Unalloyed Drivel
Arun Shourie
"And what about the pogroms that go on from time to time ?," the caller asked. Late at night, an editorial writer with one of the world's best-known papers was calling from the USA. It was becoming evident that the BJP would form the Government, he was gathering background information.
"What did you say?," I asked. Even though I had heard the word clearly enough, I wanted to see. if he would repeat it.
"Pogroms," he repeated.
"What do you mean, 'pogroms'?"
"it is an East-European term", he began.
Now, even a brown Asiatic like me knows the meaning of the word. The person had lived in India for some time, as the India correspondent of this important paper enough years to know that even we know that it is a term which is used to describe the massacre of millions of white Europeans by white Europeans.
"Which specific incidents did you have in mind ?", I asked.
"Oh, like the riots in Bombay after the demolition of the mosque..."
"Have you looked into the origin of the riots, or the course they took ? Have you investigated any other riot?
No, he hadn. Can you recall any account of any riot or killings which was based on an actual investigation? No, he couldn't. But "pogroms" it was.
On the day Mr. Vajpayee is sworn in as Prime Minister, a journalist friend in London sends me a message over email. He refers to an article in The Guardian by the papers Delhi correspondent. "The Bharatiya Janata Party, whose coalition is to be sworn in as New Delhi's next Government tomorrow," the article opens, "has temporarily forsaken its crusade against India's minorities and turned its sights on a new enemy : foreign investment."
Its "crusades"? You mean, the things European Christians launched against Muslims in the course of which they butchered hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Muslims? "Against minorities"? Till yesterday the BJP's "crusades" were supposed to be against the Muslims only. Now that the party is forming the Government, are the paper and its correspondent proffering a promotion -- from being a party that was engaged in "crusades" against Muslims alone to being one in the business of "crusades" against all minorities? And that forecast -- "The Bharatiya Janata Party... has temporarily forsaken its crusade.
And that characterisation about the party's attitude to foreign direct investment: "its new enemy". Europeans nations protect their own producers with piles of subsidies, with tariff barriers, with quantitative restrictions. The Americans most certainly, and most blatantly do. And anyone who has read statements of the American government, and analyses in American papers would know that the Japanese do so as well. Do foreign correspondents reporting from those countries characterise what those countries do as their putting down an "enemy"? And, especially after what has been happening to the "miracle economies" of East Asia, which fool would assert that a country should not take steps to protect its interests?
"Vajpayee leads the Bharatiya Janata Party," says Newsweek in its news report, "with its Muslim-bashing thugs..." "The BJP is a Hindu-nationalist party, unashamedly hostile to the country's 120 million Muslims and other minorities... The BJP is undeniably ugly, yet less so than it was pontificates The Economist.
I am not, however, on the point about such reportage, such "analysis" being authentic drivel -- that it manifestly is. I am on the fact that such drivel flows so naturally in regard to a group which these persons and their counterparts here have decided is "Hindu fundamentalist", that drivel has become a habit with them. As a consequence they see everything the group does as confirming this perception of the group : if the BJP advocates a Common Civil Code, it is seen as conspiring to whip the minorities out of their identities -- of course, when members of the same minorities go to the USA, and have to live by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ethic underlying the laws there, none of these commentators sees that as a conspiracy to erase the identities of minorities; if the BJP agrees not to press its view on the Code, they shout, "But it is giving up its character", but why, pray, are you so distraught at its "giving up its character'? After all, by your own reckoning that character has been "Fascist", "Fundamentalist".
Moreover, so accustomed have these commentators become to their drivel being swallowed unchallenged, that, should someone question them, they shout "Fundamentalist", "Fascist", and the rest. Not one of them, when working in an Islamic country, dares to refer to those societies in the pejoratives he slips into his "news reporting" of India. None of their scholars working on the old Soviet Union or China dared use such pejoratives about those societies. If one of them slips and does so inadvertently, not only do those societies deal with him, a score of his own countrymen pounce and pronounce him guilty of "Orientalism", and thereby quarantine the damage. But here in India, it is open season for all of them.
The friend in London sends another sentence from The Guardian report's little "crusade". "Although the next Government appears an odd assortment of old style socialists, Sikh separatists, Hindu supremacists, and regional barons, the blueprint reveals their shared suspicion of market reforms introduced seven years ago...
More drivel, of course. But assume for a moment that what she says is true that "Sikh separatists" and "Hindu supremacists" are today together in Government. It seems "odd" to her. It is joy to me. And completely in character.
Throughout the years in which terrorists were killing in Punjab and Kashmir, no one was as energetic in reading a "freedom struggle" into their cruelties than some of these foreign news agencies : the BBC's broadcasts of the period really ought to form compulsory viewing in media courses. And no one seems to have been as disappointed as them at the fact that those "freedom struggles" against "Hindu hegemony" evaporated.
But that very fact -- of the kinds of persons who were joining hands in the new Government, as their counterparts had done in the last one is the one that delighted me at the swearing-in ceremony. The DMK and the AIADMK, for instance, are offshoots of a movement that not long ago used to advocate breaking away from India. That same DMK was in power at the Centre in the last Government -- its members held very important portfolios, they acquitted themselves as well as anyone in these assignments. No one but no one, can point to a single decision they took as having been inspired by any anti-national design. Today, the AIADMK delegates are members of the new Government. The two parties oppose each other but neither tries to outdo the other by raising anti-India or even anti-North sentiments.
Similarly, both parties are the offspring of the movement whose original inspiration and commander used to break idols of Hindu deities in public squares. To this day, just yards from the Kanchi mutt stands his statue. It bears his famous dictum:
"There is no God. There is no God. There is no God at all. The inventor of God is a fool. The propagator of God is a scoundrel. The worshipper of God is a barbarian."
His followers today troop to the Sabrimalai shrine in the same black shirts that the movement had made so dreaded an attire. They take oaths of office in the name of God! A man of passion and fervour, he roused millions on the heady decoction of secession. Today his progeny swear to protect the sovereignty and integrity of India, they swear to live by the Constitution!
For these observers all this is something "odd", a let-down, if I may say so. For us it is an outcome fore-seen, it is a thing to celebrate.
The caste system is justifiably condemned -- for the rigidities which came to characterize it, for the exclusions, and much else. But it has also been well said that it was the Indian, specifically Hindu alternative to the Westerner's genocide. What did the white man do Bible in hand -when he came across a people who were different? The Native Americans in North America? The native peoples of South America? He did not decimate them -- for the word means killing off every tenth man. He killed them off completely.
By contrast when our society encountered a people who were in some sense not on the same scale as yet, it put them on the escalator of social, intellectual and occupational progress. I have had occasion earlier to recall examples from the work of even a scholar whose views in so many respects provide grist to the Marxist mill, Professor Suniti Kumar Chatterji. Even a single paper by him -- his Presidential Address to the All India Oriental Congress, 1953, for instance contains scores of examples of this progressive harmonization, of embracing and advancing.
The assimilation of ruling houses of different races and tribes through the deliberate extension of Kshatriyahood upon them by the Brahmins : hence the formation of the Surya and Chandra Vansh lineages, the formation later of the Agni-Kula by the conferment of Kshatriyahood on to ome powerful Hinduised aristocracies of Turki and Iranian origin", and of the lndra-Vansh by the adoption within the Brahminical fold of the Ahoms in the North-East "a Thai or Sino Siamese people," says Professor Chatterji. He recounts, similarly, the recognition of the Bodo royal household of Dimapur and Kachar as being the descendants of Bhima, of the Meithi kings and upper classes of Manipur and Tripura as Chandra-Vansha Kshatriyas... The inter-penetration of languages...
The mingling of rituals : of the fire-centered rituals of the Vedas in which fire is the messenger to carry prayers to the deities with the flower offerings of rituals in the south where the powers of the deities are brought down to inhere in the idol or symbol which is then venerated; the substitution of sandal and paste for the blood of animals which had figured in the Austric rituals...
And the deities themselves. Here is the decree the white-Western races followed: You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations you shall dispossess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under every green tree; you shall tear down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their [deity] with fire; you shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy their name of that place....
Not from some Islamic book though those books enjoined such dicta by the score but from the ever-so tolerant Bible ! By contrast, in Hinduism the gods and idols of the peoples of different parts are woven together in legends, they are given different colours. Animals worshipped by tribes are not suppressed or slandered away as "animism" and "paganism" they are given places of honour. Often they become objects of intense devotion themselves : Hanuman. Often they are joined together with anthropomorphic deities the elephant's head in Ganesha. Often they become the vahanas of other gods and goddesses Nandi of Shiva, the lion of Durga, the swan of Saraswati, the tiny mouse of Ganesha, the peacock of Kartikeya.... Trees, plants, mountains, the sea each of them revered by someone are all blended into a deep reverence for nature as a living, pulsating, vibrant whole.
But this too was condemned by the forbears of our analysts and "reporters". Recall what these fellows say : if the "Hindu fundamentalist" BJP advocates a Common Civil Code, they shout, "Fascists trying to wipe out the minorities"; if it does not press the point, they shout, "Giving up its character." Similarly, the missionaries : if Hindus excluded some from their pale, they shouted, "Inhuman, intolerant, Exclusivist"; if they embraced them as in the examples above, they shouted, "The Hindu boa-constrictor."
A continuity in their prejudices, therefore. But a continuity in our practice too. And the result while they keep spewing the same bile, here "Sikh separatists" and "Hindu supremacists" together take oaths to safeguard and serve our country, to abide by our Constitution
"Odd" for the observers, exasperating if truth be told. All in a day's work for us.
The Observer
March 27,1998
"And what about the pogroms that go on from time to time ?," the caller asked. Late at night, an editorial writer with one of the world's best-known papers was calling from the USA. It was becoming evident that the BJP would form the Government, he was gathering background information.
"What did you say?," I asked. Even though I had heard the word clearly enough, I wanted to see. if he would repeat it.
"Pogroms," he repeated.
"What do you mean, 'pogroms'?"
"it is an East-European term", he began.
Now, even a brown Asiatic like me knows the meaning of the word. The person had lived in India for some time, as the India correspondent of this important paper enough years to know that even we know that it is a term which is used to describe the massacre of millions of white Europeans by white Europeans.
"Which specific incidents did you have in mind ?", I asked.
"Oh, like the riots in Bombay after the demolition of the mosque..."
"Have you looked into the origin of the riots, or the course they took ? Have you investigated any other riot?
No, he hadn. Can you recall any account of any riot or killings which was based on an actual investigation? No, he couldn't. But "pogroms" it was.
On the day Mr. Vajpayee is sworn in as Prime Minister, a journalist friend in London sends me a message over email. He refers to an article in The Guardian by the papers Delhi correspondent. "The Bharatiya Janata Party, whose coalition is to be sworn in as New Delhi's next Government tomorrow," the article opens, "has temporarily forsaken its crusade against India's minorities and turned its sights on a new enemy : foreign investment."
Its "crusades"? You mean, the things European Christians launched against Muslims in the course of which they butchered hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Muslims? "Against minorities"? Till yesterday the BJP's "crusades" were supposed to be against the Muslims only. Now that the party is forming the Government, are the paper and its correspondent proffering a promotion -- from being a party that was engaged in "crusades" against Muslims alone to being one in the business of "crusades" against all minorities? And that forecast -- "The Bharatiya Janata Party... has temporarily forsaken its crusade.
And that characterisation about the party's attitude to foreign direct investment: "its new enemy". Europeans nations protect their own producers with piles of subsidies, with tariff barriers, with quantitative restrictions. The Americans most certainly, and most blatantly do. And anyone who has read statements of the American government, and analyses in American papers would know that the Japanese do so as well. Do foreign correspondents reporting from those countries characterise what those countries do as their putting down an "enemy"? And, especially after what has been happening to the "miracle economies" of East Asia, which fool would assert that a country should not take steps to protect its interests?
"Vajpayee leads the Bharatiya Janata Party," says Newsweek in its news report, "with its Muslim-bashing thugs..." "The BJP is a Hindu-nationalist party, unashamedly hostile to the country's 120 million Muslims and other minorities... The BJP is undeniably ugly, yet less so than it was pontificates The Economist.
I am not, however, on the point about such reportage, such "analysis" being authentic drivel -- that it manifestly is. I am on the fact that such drivel flows so naturally in regard to a group which these persons and their counterparts here have decided is "Hindu fundamentalist", that drivel has become a habit with them. As a consequence they see everything the group does as confirming this perception of the group : if the BJP advocates a Common Civil Code, it is seen as conspiring to whip the minorities out of their identities -- of course, when members of the same minorities go to the USA, and have to live by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ethic underlying the laws there, none of these commentators sees that as a conspiracy to erase the identities of minorities; if the BJP agrees not to press its view on the Code, they shout, "But it is giving up its character", but why, pray, are you so distraught at its "giving up its character'? After all, by your own reckoning that character has been "Fascist", "Fundamentalist".
Moreover, so accustomed have these commentators become to their drivel being swallowed unchallenged, that, should someone question them, they shout "Fundamentalist", "Fascist", and the rest. Not one of them, when working in an Islamic country, dares to refer to those societies in the pejoratives he slips into his "news reporting" of India. None of their scholars working on the old Soviet Union or China dared use such pejoratives about those societies. If one of them slips and does so inadvertently, not only do those societies deal with him, a score of his own countrymen pounce and pronounce him guilty of "Orientalism", and thereby quarantine the damage. But here in India, it is open season for all of them.
The friend in London sends another sentence from The Guardian report's little "crusade". "Although the next Government appears an odd assortment of old style socialists, Sikh separatists, Hindu supremacists, and regional barons, the blueprint reveals their shared suspicion of market reforms introduced seven years ago...
More drivel, of course. But assume for a moment that what she says is true that "Sikh separatists" and "Hindu supremacists" are today together in Government. It seems "odd" to her. It is joy to me. And completely in character.
Throughout the years in which terrorists were killing in Punjab and Kashmir, no one was as energetic in reading a "freedom struggle" into their cruelties than some of these foreign news agencies : the BBC's broadcasts of the period really ought to form compulsory viewing in media courses. And no one seems to have been as disappointed as them at the fact that those "freedom struggles" against "Hindu hegemony" evaporated.
But that very fact -- of the kinds of persons who were joining hands in the new Government, as their counterparts had done in the last one is the one that delighted me at the swearing-in ceremony. The DMK and the AIADMK, for instance, are offshoots of a movement that not long ago used to advocate breaking away from India. That same DMK was in power at the Centre in the last Government -- its members held very important portfolios, they acquitted themselves as well as anyone in these assignments. No one but no one, can point to a single decision they took as having been inspired by any anti-national design. Today, the AIADMK delegates are members of the new Government. The two parties oppose each other but neither tries to outdo the other by raising anti-India or even anti-North sentiments.
Similarly, both parties are the offspring of the movement whose original inspiration and commander used to break idols of Hindu deities in public squares. To this day, just yards from the Kanchi mutt stands his statue. It bears his famous dictum:
"There is no God. There is no God. There is no God at all. The inventor of God is a fool. The propagator of God is a scoundrel. The worshipper of God is a barbarian."
His followers today troop to the Sabrimalai shrine in the same black shirts that the movement had made so dreaded an attire. They take oaths of office in the name of God! A man of passion and fervour, he roused millions on the heady decoction of secession. Today his progeny swear to protect the sovereignty and integrity of India, they swear to live by the Constitution!
For these observers all this is something "odd", a let-down, if I may say so. For us it is an outcome fore-seen, it is a thing to celebrate.
The caste system is justifiably condemned -- for the rigidities which came to characterize it, for the exclusions, and much else. But it has also been well said that it was the Indian, specifically Hindu alternative to the Westerner's genocide. What did the white man do Bible in hand -when he came across a people who were different? The Native Americans in North America? The native peoples of South America? He did not decimate them -- for the word means killing off every tenth man. He killed them off completely.
By contrast when our society encountered a people who were in some sense not on the same scale as yet, it put them on the escalator of social, intellectual and occupational progress. I have had occasion earlier to recall examples from the work of even a scholar whose views in so many respects provide grist to the Marxist mill, Professor Suniti Kumar Chatterji. Even a single paper by him -- his Presidential Address to the All India Oriental Congress, 1953, for instance contains scores of examples of this progressive harmonization, of embracing and advancing.
The assimilation of ruling houses of different races and tribes through the deliberate extension of Kshatriyahood upon them by the Brahmins : hence the formation of the Surya and Chandra Vansh lineages, the formation later of the Agni-Kula by the conferment of Kshatriyahood on to ome powerful Hinduised aristocracies of Turki and Iranian origin", and of the lndra-Vansh by the adoption within the Brahminical fold of the Ahoms in the North-East "a Thai or Sino Siamese people," says Professor Chatterji. He recounts, similarly, the recognition of the Bodo royal household of Dimapur and Kachar as being the descendants of Bhima, of the Meithi kings and upper classes of Manipur and Tripura as Chandra-Vansha Kshatriyas... The inter-penetration of languages...
The mingling of rituals : of the fire-centered rituals of the Vedas in which fire is the messenger to carry prayers to the deities with the flower offerings of rituals in the south where the powers of the deities are brought down to inhere in the idol or symbol which is then venerated; the substitution of sandal and paste for the blood of animals which had figured in the Austric rituals...
And the deities themselves. Here is the decree the white-Western races followed: You shall surely destroy all the places where the nations you shall dispossess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills and under every green tree; you shall tear down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their [deity] with fire; you shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy their name of that place....
Not from some Islamic book though those books enjoined such dicta by the score but from the ever-so tolerant Bible ! By contrast, in Hinduism the gods and idols of the peoples of different parts are woven together in legends, they are given different colours. Animals worshipped by tribes are not suppressed or slandered away as "animism" and "paganism" they are given places of honour. Often they become objects of intense devotion themselves : Hanuman. Often they are joined together with anthropomorphic deities the elephant's head in Ganesha. Often they become the vahanas of other gods and goddesses Nandi of Shiva, the lion of Durga, the swan of Saraswati, the tiny mouse of Ganesha, the peacock of Kartikeya.... Trees, plants, mountains, the sea each of them revered by someone are all blended into a deep reverence for nature as a living, pulsating, vibrant whole.
But this too was condemned by the forbears of our analysts and "reporters". Recall what these fellows say : if the "Hindu fundamentalist" BJP advocates a Common Civil Code, they shout, "Fascists trying to wipe out the minorities"; if it does not press the point, they shout, "Giving up its character." Similarly, the missionaries : if Hindus excluded some from their pale, they shouted, "Inhuman, intolerant, Exclusivist"; if they embraced them as in the examples above, they shouted, "The Hindu boa-constrictor."
A continuity in their prejudices, therefore. But a continuity in our practice too. And the result while they keep spewing the same bile, here "Sikh separatists" and "Hindu supremacists" together take oaths to safeguard and serve our country, to abide by our Constitution
"Odd" for the observers, exasperating if truth be told. All in a day's work for us.
The Observer
March 27,1998
With Friends Like These, Having Enemies is Better
Arun Shourie
Some months ago an official of the United States state department met me through a common scholar friend. The official had been following Indian affairs for many years, in particular the Indian press. He knew more about the press, specially about trends in our Indian language papers than a casual reader like me is ever likely to know. He was also concerned about the frequency with which our countries get into scraps with each other. Last week the same scholar friend sent me an account which that officer had written and circulated about the way India, in particular Hindus, are again being portrayed in the USA. The note deserves to be read in full, so what follows is the verbatim text of his note.
Politically aware Indians have made much recently of the increasing strain between the US administration and India over positions and statements on Kashmir. Those expressing this concern, however, may be unaware of a growing phenomenon currently taking place which has more profound and far-reaching implications: legitimisation of Hindu-bashing in US institutions.
Influenced and supported by noisy self-appointed Indian "secularists," many western scholars and government officials are now taking a position on Hindu revivalism. With very few exceptions, this position is exceedingly negative. Though this phenomenon is now limited to those conversant with South Asia and has not yet influenced the general public's opinions, in time it will. Though there are many forums for Hindu-bashing currently being opened, I will reserve my comments here to two recent conferences, one sponsored by the US state department and one by the University of Wisconsin.
On July 16 of this year the state department held a conference entitled, Hindu Revivalism in India: Position, Prospects and Implications for the US. Many highly placed individuals were present including ambassador elect deputy assistant secretary for Regional Analysis Phyllis Oakley and a wide range of US government officials. Scholars were invited to make presentations on Hindu revivalism. On the whole, the atmosphere was one of ridicule. There was a lot of finger pointing at Hindu revivalism as the source of India's current problems and of potential conflict with the US.
On November 5-7, at the annual conference on South Asia at Madison, Wisconsin, two panels and many individual presentations were devoted to Hindu nationalism. Every single presentation was negative towards Hindu nationalism with remarkable statements being made that I never thought I would hear in an academic institution.
I will detail the presentation of Lisa McKean of the University of Sydney because she was a featured speaker at both the University of Wisconsin and at the state department conference. I will give a sampling of the statements made by other scholars. Though I have documented their statements as well, I will avoid reference to their names in this note.
Lisa McKean claims to have spent a lot of time with Vishwa Hindu Parishad, enough to make scholarly presentations, anyway! The basic thrust of her argument is that Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America is a fascist organisation which remits funds to its illegal sister organisation in India. Not mentioned of course is that the corrupt, opportunistic Congress banned the VHP for its own political gain. Lisa describes VHP sponsored groups in America as "Front Organisations" for a larger fascist cause. She refers to VHP activities, including Diwali celebrations and Swami Chinmayananda's spiritual camps as "covert operations" and to active members as "militant activists." Lisa called the late Shri Chinmayananda a "master manipulator" and alleged that he initiated unwanted physical contact with women, including herself. Not content with merely bashing VHP, however, Lisa referred to the colorful monthly magazine, Hinduism Today as a front paper supporting militant activities. Global Vision 2000 was targeted as a fascist assembly. She described Hindus moving into professional positions as "infiltrators" working for the cause of Hindu fundamentalism. Hindu Digest, Samskar and the Hindu Students Council did not escape her censure.
Perhaps most appalling was the warm hand given to her at the end of her presentation in both conferences. Praised as a "bright, young progressive scholar," most of the audience accepted her statements as fact, particularly those progressive Indian "secularists." One even suggested that universities should perhaps ban Hindu Students Council of America -- imagine the outcry if someone suggested banning an Islamic or Christian Students' Council. Lisa was certainly not alone and played to an appreciative audience in both locations.
Scholars making presentations at the state department conference were less concerned with facts than with making points. Many erroneous statements were made such as "The Sangh Parivar planned the execution of Mahatma Gandhi and will stop at nothing. "The misquoted statement of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray about Indian Muslims being like the Jews of Europe was used in making the authoritative statement that "Sangh Parivar under- prinnings are just like those of Nazis." An example of how criticism of Sangh Parivar activities is extended to Hindus in general is the statement of a Johns Hopkins scholar that "Hindus in the US are very sympathetic and supportive of fundamentalism." One scholar even justified discrimination against Hindus in India itself with the remarkable statement, "Equal rights to the Hindus is equal to abolition of minority rights." The scholar made this statement after echoing the hollow line started by Indian "secularist" Romila Thapar that "There is in reality no such thing as Hinduism."
The University of Wisconsin panels were truly pitiful and I will give only a few quotes from various presentations. One Indian "secularist" suggested that India was an artificial entity which "Requires fascism to maintain its existence." A scholar from Berkeley referred to the "dirty communal imprint" that Hindus leave on Indian society. Hindu Sangram Parishad's effort in India to spread Sanskrit learning among all castes and classes was seen as "militant activity" rather than a remarkable democratisation. Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was referred to as a "Celluloid Divinity" and Swami Vivekananda was refered to as "reactionary at home though seemingly progressive abroad." The popular Ramayana and Mahabharata serials were referred to as "communalist, oppressive and inspirational to fascists."
The University of Wisconsin's willing (witting or unwitting) participation in Hindu-bashing is proven by their giving a booth to the so-called "Overseas Friends of India" from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. This organisation has apparently taken the lead in spreading malicious and misleading propaganda. Calling Hinduism "unrivaled in sheer bigotry and intolerances, these overseas "friends" claim that Hindus plan pogroms of minorities and are guilty of having "banished Buddhism," and having "Forced Jainism into a sect of Hinduism." Rape is claimed as the normal response of a Hindu male to a "minority" woman. Harijans are claimed to he non-Hindu. Sympathy is claimed for the "persecuted Harijans who are not allowed to convert to Christianity or Islam." The "lack of availability of beef" is claimed a "denial of protein to a poor population." Finally these "friends" of India urge overseas Indians to write to their ambassador to urge India to stop this communalist behavior (assist efforts to delegitimise and malign Hinduism). With "friends" like these, having enemies would be an improvement.
There is no doubt that "secular progressive" scholars bash other religions, and traditions as well. The consensus viewpoint of western scholarship for quite some time has basically been one of aggressively promoting atheistic values which denigrate traditional culture and religion. Yet despite the "normalcy" of this denigration, I cannot therefore dismiss these scholars' work as harmless and limited to ivory towers. Though their arrogant pronouncements are irrelevant to, and cannot impact upon divine truth, I fear Hindus in the West may be persecuted due to the willful spread of false and misleading propaganda on the part of these scholars. It particularly pains me to see Indians, Hindu by birth, participate in the denigration of their own civilisation. What would they replace it with, a "progressive India" with a 50 per cent divorce rate, high illegitimate birth rates, McDonalds on every corner, discos replacing temples and MTV as the most watched TV show?
Incredible as the assertions of these misguided "intellectuals" are, there is a danger of an appearance of legitimisation of these ideas through repetition. These unprincipled "scholars" would leave no stone unturned to denigrate Hindu culture. The "secular" Indians are at the forefront of this campaign which is willingly supported by proselytising Muslims and Christians who have the same goal: the denigration and delegitimisation of the traditional Hindu culture and world view. The rhetoric of the "Overseas Friends of India" is similar to that of an extreme group of Protestant evangelicals who have portrayed Rajneesh as mainstream Hinduism and maliciousness and ignorance as prerequisites to being Hindu. How this will affect an unknowing American public, when repeated over time remains an open question. Some possibilities:
Tenure of an university professor of Indian ethnicity being contingent upon his or her allegiance to Hindu-bashing rhetoric when dealing with Indian subject matter (a very real possibility in light of the suppression of the truth already being justified in some universities due to political correctness ideology).
Professional advancement among Hindus in non-university settings requiring their disassociation from "backward" delegitimised practices and beliefs (based on the assumption that the only good Indian is a dead Indian or at least a secular atheist who is "dead" to his own culture and civilisation and therefore "progressive" and "liberal."
Increasing embarrassment and alienation on the part of Hindu youth growing up in this country from identifying with Hindu beliefs and practices due to their delegitimisation.
Hindus having to repeatedly justify their religious practices such as Puja to Ganapati as, not being "one of those weird cult practices."
Hindus having to work much harder to dispel mistaken impressions and to ward off a witch hunt mentality which could be precipitated by incessant Hindu bashing. There is much historical precedent for this in Western culture (Jew-hunts, etc).
The complexity of Indian civilisation simply overwhelms most western scholars (and apparently, Indian "secular" scholars as well). They do not, for the most part, understand that the rhythms of Hinduism beat in the heart of most "oppressed untouchables" and in the hearts of much of "the minorities" as well, including most Indian Muslims before 20th century politicisation. One scholar, facing the complexity of increasing Harijan, Christian and Muslim sympathy for Hindutva, echoed the true feelings that most western scholars have always exhibited towards India. Asked how he could analyse such a complex civilisation, he replied, "When Hinduism dies, we'll do a better job."
The note speaks for itself. Notice the kinds of things that pass for scholarship at meetings of scholars on South Asia. This kind of "scholarship" will certainly harm America itself, as it has done in the past: the then prevalent notions of "political correctness" kept European and American intellectuals from speaking the truth about Communism for decades, and thereby led the governments to misjudge the nature of the beast that confronted them.
Next, notice how several of your friends will react to a note like this one. Sentences in the note speak to the regard this particular official has for India, for Hinduism in particular. In the eyes of so many, this fact alone will be sufficient to destroy the veracity of his narrative, to reduce the importance of what he has pointed out. Now look at the question the other way: how many of the same persons ever discount what a person says about India and Hinduism when it is evident that he hates Hinduism and India? When someone who is obviously attached to Islam says something about Islam -- even in the face of all of its history and all the canonical texts -- do these scholars and friends dismiss it? Do they not on the contrary insist that what he is saying must take precedence over the evidence of mere texts and history'? And now? Because sentences suggest that the official thinks well of India and Hinduism what he says must be discounted! Almost the only thing which might keep such persons from throwing out the note altogether and at the outset itself is the fact it has been written by an American and not an Indian! But what if the officer, though American, actually is one who has converted to Hinduism?! That would be the final, conclusive "proof' surely -- the content itself being the primary "proof!" -- that nothing in the note should be believed at all! "That explains it all," these friends will proclaim in triumph!
"But surely," even the non-secularists among us will exclaim, "it would have been so much better if a person less obviously appreciative of India and Hinduism had written the note." And what is the proof of the person being less than fit to narrate the facts? That he has not indulged in Hindu-bashing! That he has not conformed to the prevailing intellectual fashion, that instead he has shown it up! And what if the "objective", "neutral" scholars are too intimidated by the intellectual fashion to testify to the truth? My friend puts it well. A man tried to stand up to the gangsters in town. In retaliation they set upon his sister, and raped her in view of a large crowd. Everyone was terrified. The brother ran from one eye-witness to the other beseeching them to help him lodge a complaint with the police. None dared. At last he went himself and lodged the FIR. "But wouldn't it have been better if someone other than you had come to register the case'." exclaimed the policeman. "After all, she is your sister. Everyone will say you are an interested party."
That is the secularist position. But notice that this is their position vis-a-vis India and Hindus alone: if the country in question is Palestine and the narrator is a Muslim, say, then they insist that what he says has conclusive evidentiary status. And then there is the other point: if even the brother will shy away from filing the case when his own sister has been raped, why would others?
In a word, what answers to the preceding questions explain is the depth to which our self-esteem has been pushed. what they document is the extent to which secularists have internalised double standards and calumny, and the extent to which they have been able to brow-beat others into adhering to these skewed standards.
Notice the persistence of calumny; the falsehoods which are being hurled at us are exactly the ones which the missionaries fabricated and smeared us with a 100 years ago -- and yet when, at the invitation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, I had occasion to refer to them two years ago in my book, Missionaries in India, the cry went up, "But why are you digging up these old things? Who talks about India and Hinduism to those terms today?"
Notice the congruence of themes: what is being put of at these conference in the US is exactly what our secularists and others put out in the newspapers here; the themes and premises are the very same -- that there really is no such thing as Hinduism -- the very words are the same. The primary responsibility for this is not of the foreign scholar as of the secularist Indians: just as the spectacles of the foreign correspondent working in Delhi get coloured by what he reads and hears from Indian journalists writing in the English newspapers in this one city, the perception of the foreign scholar -- a "specialist on South Asia" though he be -- gets coloured by what he hears from and reads of the output of Indian scholars.
Notice also the convergence of interests: of the interests of Christian missionaries and Islamic groups, of the official US establishment, of our secularists. Notice the subservience of US academies to the current fashion of "political correctness." Notice the total perversion, indeed the complete inversion: the groups whose foundational belief is theocracy, whose ideology is exclusiveness distilled 10 times over are the very ones who are accusing Hindus of ahem -- theocratic! The very groups the Leftists -- whose forbears collaborated with the Nazis, whose ideology is Nazism by a different name are the ones who are accusing Hindus of being Nazis.
But falsehood is a potent weapon. Neither American Presidents and Congressmen nor the American people at large have any time to ascertain facts about India. Policy is therefore formed by just a handful of middle- level officers -- the Robin Raphaels whose predilections have been on display in such vivid colours these five years. Presidents and Americans in general go along with what this handful concocts -- they are conditioned to do so by the stereotype which they have been fed over the years. It is this stereotype which this kind of falsehood manufactures.
When what the note of this official reveals is the perception Americans are let to form of India, the policy which they will countenance will be one of unadulterated hostility. That will harm not just Indo-US relations, it will harm India no end.
But who cares?
Asian Age
August 30, 1996
Some months ago an official of the United States state department met me through a common scholar friend. The official had been following Indian affairs for many years, in particular the Indian press. He knew more about the press, specially about trends in our Indian language papers than a casual reader like me is ever likely to know. He was also concerned about the frequency with which our countries get into scraps with each other. Last week the same scholar friend sent me an account which that officer had written and circulated about the way India, in particular Hindus, are again being portrayed in the USA. The note deserves to be read in full, so what follows is the verbatim text of his note.
Politically aware Indians have made much recently of the increasing strain between the US administration and India over positions and statements on Kashmir. Those expressing this concern, however, may be unaware of a growing phenomenon currently taking place which has more profound and far-reaching implications: legitimisation of Hindu-bashing in US institutions.
Influenced and supported by noisy self-appointed Indian "secularists," many western scholars and government officials are now taking a position on Hindu revivalism. With very few exceptions, this position is exceedingly negative. Though this phenomenon is now limited to those conversant with South Asia and has not yet influenced the general public's opinions, in time it will. Though there are many forums for Hindu-bashing currently being opened, I will reserve my comments here to two recent conferences, one sponsored by the US state department and one by the University of Wisconsin.
On July 16 of this year the state department held a conference entitled, Hindu Revivalism in India: Position, Prospects and Implications for the US. Many highly placed individuals were present including ambassador elect deputy assistant secretary for Regional Analysis Phyllis Oakley and a wide range of US government officials. Scholars were invited to make presentations on Hindu revivalism. On the whole, the atmosphere was one of ridicule. There was a lot of finger pointing at Hindu revivalism as the source of India's current problems and of potential conflict with the US.
On November 5-7, at the annual conference on South Asia at Madison, Wisconsin, two panels and many individual presentations were devoted to Hindu nationalism. Every single presentation was negative towards Hindu nationalism with remarkable statements being made that I never thought I would hear in an academic institution.
I will detail the presentation of Lisa McKean of the University of Sydney because she was a featured speaker at both the University of Wisconsin and at the state department conference. I will give a sampling of the statements made by other scholars. Though I have documented their statements as well, I will avoid reference to their names in this note.
Lisa McKean claims to have spent a lot of time with Vishwa Hindu Parishad, enough to make scholarly presentations, anyway! The basic thrust of her argument is that Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America is a fascist organisation which remits funds to its illegal sister organisation in India. Not mentioned of course is that the corrupt, opportunistic Congress banned the VHP for its own political gain. Lisa describes VHP sponsored groups in America as "Front Organisations" for a larger fascist cause. She refers to VHP activities, including Diwali celebrations and Swami Chinmayananda's spiritual camps as "covert operations" and to active members as "militant activists." Lisa called the late Shri Chinmayananda a "master manipulator" and alleged that he initiated unwanted physical contact with women, including herself. Not content with merely bashing VHP, however, Lisa referred to the colorful monthly magazine, Hinduism Today as a front paper supporting militant activities. Global Vision 2000 was targeted as a fascist assembly. She described Hindus moving into professional positions as "infiltrators" working for the cause of Hindu fundamentalism. Hindu Digest, Samskar and the Hindu Students Council did not escape her censure.
Perhaps most appalling was the warm hand given to her at the end of her presentation in both conferences. Praised as a "bright, young progressive scholar," most of the audience accepted her statements as fact, particularly those progressive Indian "secularists." One even suggested that universities should perhaps ban Hindu Students Council of America -- imagine the outcry if someone suggested banning an Islamic or Christian Students' Council. Lisa was certainly not alone and played to an appreciative audience in both locations.
Scholars making presentations at the state department conference were less concerned with facts than with making points. Many erroneous statements were made such as "The Sangh Parivar planned the execution of Mahatma Gandhi and will stop at nothing. "The misquoted statement of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray about Indian Muslims being like the Jews of Europe was used in making the authoritative statement that "Sangh Parivar under- prinnings are just like those of Nazis." An example of how criticism of Sangh Parivar activities is extended to Hindus in general is the statement of a Johns Hopkins scholar that "Hindus in the US are very sympathetic and supportive of fundamentalism." One scholar even justified discrimination against Hindus in India itself with the remarkable statement, "Equal rights to the Hindus is equal to abolition of minority rights." The scholar made this statement after echoing the hollow line started by Indian "secularist" Romila Thapar that "There is in reality no such thing as Hinduism."
The University of Wisconsin panels were truly pitiful and I will give only a few quotes from various presentations. One Indian "secularist" suggested that India was an artificial entity which "Requires fascism to maintain its existence." A scholar from Berkeley referred to the "dirty communal imprint" that Hindus leave on Indian society. Hindu Sangram Parishad's effort in India to spread Sanskrit learning among all castes and classes was seen as "militant activity" rather than a remarkable democratisation. Shri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa was referred to as a "Celluloid Divinity" and Swami Vivekananda was refered to as "reactionary at home though seemingly progressive abroad." The popular Ramayana and Mahabharata serials were referred to as "communalist, oppressive and inspirational to fascists."
The University of Wisconsin's willing (witting or unwitting) participation in Hindu-bashing is proven by their giving a booth to the so-called "Overseas Friends of India" from Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. This organisation has apparently taken the lead in spreading malicious and misleading propaganda. Calling Hinduism "unrivaled in sheer bigotry and intolerances, these overseas "friends" claim that Hindus plan pogroms of minorities and are guilty of having "banished Buddhism," and having "Forced Jainism into a sect of Hinduism." Rape is claimed as the normal response of a Hindu male to a "minority" woman. Harijans are claimed to he non-Hindu. Sympathy is claimed for the "persecuted Harijans who are not allowed to convert to Christianity or Islam." The "lack of availability of beef" is claimed a "denial of protein to a poor population." Finally these "friends" of India urge overseas Indians to write to their ambassador to urge India to stop this communalist behavior (assist efforts to delegitimise and malign Hinduism). With "friends" like these, having enemies would be an improvement.
There is no doubt that "secular progressive" scholars bash other religions, and traditions as well. The consensus viewpoint of western scholarship for quite some time has basically been one of aggressively promoting atheistic values which denigrate traditional culture and religion. Yet despite the "normalcy" of this denigration, I cannot therefore dismiss these scholars' work as harmless and limited to ivory towers. Though their arrogant pronouncements are irrelevant to, and cannot impact upon divine truth, I fear Hindus in the West may be persecuted due to the willful spread of false and misleading propaganda on the part of these scholars. It particularly pains me to see Indians, Hindu by birth, participate in the denigration of their own civilisation. What would they replace it with, a "progressive India" with a 50 per cent divorce rate, high illegitimate birth rates, McDonalds on every corner, discos replacing temples and MTV as the most watched TV show?
Incredible as the assertions of these misguided "intellectuals" are, there is a danger of an appearance of legitimisation of these ideas through repetition. These unprincipled "scholars" would leave no stone unturned to denigrate Hindu culture. The "secular" Indians are at the forefront of this campaign which is willingly supported by proselytising Muslims and Christians who have the same goal: the denigration and delegitimisation of the traditional Hindu culture and world view. The rhetoric of the "Overseas Friends of India" is similar to that of an extreme group of Protestant evangelicals who have portrayed Rajneesh as mainstream Hinduism and maliciousness and ignorance as prerequisites to being Hindu. How this will affect an unknowing American public, when repeated over time remains an open question. Some possibilities:
Tenure of an university professor of Indian ethnicity being contingent upon his or her allegiance to Hindu-bashing rhetoric when dealing with Indian subject matter (a very real possibility in light of the suppression of the truth already being justified in some universities due to political correctness ideology).
Professional advancement among Hindus in non-university settings requiring their disassociation from "backward" delegitimised practices and beliefs (based on the assumption that the only good Indian is a dead Indian or at least a secular atheist who is "dead" to his own culture and civilisation and therefore "progressive" and "liberal."
Increasing embarrassment and alienation on the part of Hindu youth growing up in this country from identifying with Hindu beliefs and practices due to their delegitimisation.
Hindus having to repeatedly justify their religious practices such as Puja to Ganapati as, not being "one of those weird cult practices."
Hindus having to work much harder to dispel mistaken impressions and to ward off a witch hunt mentality which could be precipitated by incessant Hindu bashing. There is much historical precedent for this in Western culture (Jew-hunts, etc).
The complexity of Indian civilisation simply overwhelms most western scholars (and apparently, Indian "secular" scholars as well). They do not, for the most part, understand that the rhythms of Hinduism beat in the heart of most "oppressed untouchables" and in the hearts of much of "the minorities" as well, including most Indian Muslims before 20th century politicisation. One scholar, facing the complexity of increasing Harijan, Christian and Muslim sympathy for Hindutva, echoed the true feelings that most western scholars have always exhibited towards India. Asked how he could analyse such a complex civilisation, he replied, "When Hinduism dies, we'll do a better job."
The note speaks for itself. Notice the kinds of things that pass for scholarship at meetings of scholars on South Asia. This kind of "scholarship" will certainly harm America itself, as it has done in the past: the then prevalent notions of "political correctness" kept European and American intellectuals from speaking the truth about Communism for decades, and thereby led the governments to misjudge the nature of the beast that confronted them.
Next, notice how several of your friends will react to a note like this one. Sentences in the note speak to the regard this particular official has for India, for Hinduism in particular. In the eyes of so many, this fact alone will be sufficient to destroy the veracity of his narrative, to reduce the importance of what he has pointed out. Now look at the question the other way: how many of the same persons ever discount what a person says about India and Hinduism when it is evident that he hates Hinduism and India? When someone who is obviously attached to Islam says something about Islam -- even in the face of all of its history and all the canonical texts -- do these scholars and friends dismiss it? Do they not on the contrary insist that what he is saying must take precedence over the evidence of mere texts and history'? And now? Because sentences suggest that the official thinks well of India and Hinduism what he says must be discounted! Almost the only thing which might keep such persons from throwing out the note altogether and at the outset itself is the fact it has been written by an American and not an Indian! But what if the officer, though American, actually is one who has converted to Hinduism?! That would be the final, conclusive "proof' surely -- the content itself being the primary "proof!" -- that nothing in the note should be believed at all! "That explains it all," these friends will proclaim in triumph!
"But surely," even the non-secularists among us will exclaim, "it would have been so much better if a person less obviously appreciative of India and Hinduism had written the note." And what is the proof of the person being less than fit to narrate the facts? That he has not indulged in Hindu-bashing! That he has not conformed to the prevailing intellectual fashion, that instead he has shown it up! And what if the "objective", "neutral" scholars are too intimidated by the intellectual fashion to testify to the truth? My friend puts it well. A man tried to stand up to the gangsters in town. In retaliation they set upon his sister, and raped her in view of a large crowd. Everyone was terrified. The brother ran from one eye-witness to the other beseeching them to help him lodge a complaint with the police. None dared. At last he went himself and lodged the FIR. "But wouldn't it have been better if someone other than you had come to register the case'." exclaimed the policeman. "After all, she is your sister. Everyone will say you are an interested party."
That is the secularist position. But notice that this is their position vis-a-vis India and Hindus alone: if the country in question is Palestine and the narrator is a Muslim, say, then they insist that what he says has conclusive evidentiary status. And then there is the other point: if even the brother will shy away from filing the case when his own sister has been raped, why would others?
In a word, what answers to the preceding questions explain is the depth to which our self-esteem has been pushed. what they document is the extent to which secularists have internalised double standards and calumny, and the extent to which they have been able to brow-beat others into adhering to these skewed standards.
Notice the persistence of calumny; the falsehoods which are being hurled at us are exactly the ones which the missionaries fabricated and smeared us with a 100 years ago -- and yet when, at the invitation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, I had occasion to refer to them two years ago in my book, Missionaries in India, the cry went up, "But why are you digging up these old things? Who talks about India and Hinduism to those terms today?"
Notice the congruence of themes: what is being put of at these conference in the US is exactly what our secularists and others put out in the newspapers here; the themes and premises are the very same -- that there really is no such thing as Hinduism -- the very words are the same. The primary responsibility for this is not of the foreign scholar as of the secularist Indians: just as the spectacles of the foreign correspondent working in Delhi get coloured by what he reads and hears from Indian journalists writing in the English newspapers in this one city, the perception of the foreign scholar -- a "specialist on South Asia" though he be -- gets coloured by what he hears from and reads of the output of Indian scholars.
Notice also the convergence of interests: of the interests of Christian missionaries and Islamic groups, of the official US establishment, of our secularists. Notice the subservience of US academies to the current fashion of "political correctness." Notice the total perversion, indeed the complete inversion: the groups whose foundational belief is theocracy, whose ideology is exclusiveness distilled 10 times over are the very ones who are accusing Hindus of ahem -- theocratic! The very groups the Leftists -- whose forbears collaborated with the Nazis, whose ideology is Nazism by a different name are the ones who are accusing Hindus of being Nazis.
But falsehood is a potent weapon. Neither American Presidents and Congressmen nor the American people at large have any time to ascertain facts about India. Policy is therefore formed by just a handful of middle- level officers -- the Robin Raphaels whose predilections have been on display in such vivid colours these five years. Presidents and Americans in general go along with what this handful concocts -- they are conditioned to do so by the stereotype which they have been fed over the years. It is this stereotype which this kind of falsehood manufactures.
When what the note of this official reveals is the perception Americans are let to form of India, the policy which they will countenance will be one of unadulterated hostility. That will harm not just Indo-US relations, it will harm India no end.
But who cares?
Asian Age
August 30, 1996
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)