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
Showing posts with label observer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label observer. Show all posts
Sunday, May 25, 2008
How Things Change !
Arun Shourie
These days when those guardians of secularism, our newspapers, refer to the Secular Front, they put the label -- "Secular" -- as well as the excuse -- "to combat communal forces" -- within inverted commas! Those who used to preface their remarks about Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee with, "The right man in the wrong party", suddenly emphasize only "The right man" part! "Things are all going right," says a person who has feasted off secular governments for ten years, as I run into him -- I don't immediately get what he thinks is going right, so out of touch have I been with him. "I mean, we are not going to get just a stable government, we are going to get a BJP government," he says enthusiastically. Suddenly multinationals are analyzing my friend Gurumurthy's articles and speeches -- how far will they take "swadeshi"?, they want to know, to what extent does the party share his views?, they search. Who will be the Finance Minister?, they ask.
Sitting alone in my study, poring over law reports of distant Pakistan, I am roused to the change. Friends ring up, distant acquaintances -- they want to help a national cause, they say; they want to reach Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani through "a completely reliable person," "and who could be more reliable than you ?" All because I am "close-to-BJP" by acclamation, courtesy our secularist newspapers. The boons labelers confer... But how deep these impressions are etched : when I tell the callers the truth, as I ask them to contact someone like my friends Gurumurthy and Arun Jaitley, they conclude I am being difficult.
Thus, one of the rules in discourse is, "Even calumny has its recompense" -- were I to do no more than keep silent and not deny the rumour, I could, at least for a few weeks, make a handsome killing! The other rule surely is, "The greater the calumny, the swifter the turn-around." Secularists are the ones who have prepared the ground for the turn-around. In the name of secularism, in the name of "keeping the communal monster at bay", they legitimized the ganging up of all sorts -- with what face can they denounce the BJP today as it does the same thing ? Indeed, their discomfiture is even greater : for some of the persons and groups who are crossing over are the very ones whom the secularists had built up as the great dykes against communalism. Not only are they crossing over, while doing so they are declaring again and again that "secularism" was just a pretense, an excuse for grabbing office. "No party has pursued communal and casteist politics for as long as the Congress," declares the Congressman. "Behind the slogan of social justice, Laloo and Mulayam Singh have only spread casteism," says the progressive. "The Congress has only used the Muslims as a vote-bank," says the Muslim leader. "Kanshi Ram and Mayawati are not interested in the welfare of Dalits at all," certifies the BSP leader, "They are only interested in their dictatorship and corruption." "The Congress has done nothing for the tribals, it has just used and exploited them," says the tribal leader.
But isn't that exactly what communalists like me have been saying all along ?!
And there is always The Times Of India, one of the six great weather-vanes in the world. In the days that preceded Justice Sinha's judgment, it did all it could to denigrate JP and the students' movement. When in the wake of the judgment, it seemed for a moment that Mrs Gandhi could not hold on, the paper pronounced it was time for her to go. She had but to impose the Emergency, and this great oracle was denouncing JP -- he had compelled Mrs. Gandhi to call a halt to anarchy, she had been left with no alternative, she just had to move to save the country from foreign-controlled conspirators. Throughout the Emergency, it kept up a chorus -- paeans to trains running on time. The 1977 election results had but to come in, and its stalwarts declared, "We have been through veritable hell." A hell worse than the others, they said : for the others were doing the easy thing -- opposing the Emergency openly; the paper had been left with the much more onerous and dangerous task -- of opposing it from within while making sure that no one realized it was doing so!
In line with this tradition, the paper has let few excel it during the last few years in fabricating stories about the BJP -- one month the RSS had decided to dump Advani for Vajpayee, the next the RSS had decided to dump Vajpayee... The paper is still fabricating stories -- but now to catch BJP's eye!
On 22 December, it carries a story about Sonia going abroad. While published accounts say she is going to Europe to meet her son, the paper reports, "informed sources close to 10 Janpath claim [why they should advance the claim to The Times of India is naturally a trade secret] that it is not a vacation trip but is connected with serious business relating to her family matters..." "The same sources claim that Mrs. Gandhi will be visiting a South East Asian country, where she is expected to meet with a prominent Italian businessman who left the country several years ago." Mystery, mystery. In the next sentence, Sherlock Holmes himself : "It may be mentioned that Mr Ottavio Quattrochi, who is wanted in connection with the Bofors investigation, is now settled in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia" -- mystery solved. But then, caution -- lest someone accuse them of not giving the victim a fair chance: "Thanks to the secrecy surrounding all the goings-on in 10 Janpath, these claims could not be confirmed from there." But next, sticking bravely to the concoction : "However, sources in 10 Janpath agreed [as if they had earlier disagreed] that Mrs Gandhi would soon depart on a planned trip. [When was the last time you went on an unplanned trip?] They claimed that it was an 'annual sojourn'. However, they refused to comment when asked whether she was going to Europe or the United States or to a South East Asian country as indicated by sources close to her. The same sources claim that Mrs Gandhi will enter active politics provided the discussion in South East Asia proved fruitful."
Safe, all angles covered : if Sonia enters active politics, the discussions in South East Asia would have been successful; if she does not, they would have been unsuccessful. And whether the discussions took place at all, no one will be able to fathom "thanks to the secrecy surrounding all the goings-on in 10 Janpath."
Every ass knows that these days if you need to be in touch with someone, there is need not at all to meet him, that if you have to meet on the sly "a prominent Italian businessman" who is so prominently settled in Kuala Lumpur, the last place you'd go to is Malaysia. He could meet you in Europe without any of the six great papers in the world being any the wiser.
That was a single-column story on 22nd December. By 26 December, the conspiracy-theories had swollen to a five-column spread, "Is checkmated Sonia seeking BJP allies?" By now the sources were informing the sixth greatest fabricator that she was maintaining a "clandestine liaison" not just with "the prominent Italian businessman", but with the BJP! Sonia -- who till the other day was treated with such deference that if she met anyone, it was described as her giving "an audience" -- was now referred to as "the Italian daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi who regarded the world as her oyster so long as the Congress was at her beck and call." The paper said that she had given her "secret blessings" to the pro-BJP utterances of Mamata Banerjee [whose expulsion, the paper had portrayed three days earlier as a sign of Sonia Gandhi's failure], and even the cross-overs of Kumarmangalam and Aslam Sher Khan had been given the go-ahead by "the Sonia camp". Scared as the paper said she is at the prospect of BJP's victory, would she be working to leave herself entirely defenceless by helping kill the Congress completely ?
Even a fool would know the answer, but what took the cake as far as I was concerned was the next nugget. "The group of advisers not averse to Mrs Gandhi having a tacit 'understanding' with the BJP to protect herself and the trusts and bodies named after the Nehru dynasty," the paper had uncovered, included none other than my own cousin-friend-brother-in-law, Suman Dubey! A more improbable advocate for a "clandestine-liaison", for anything "tacit" even the Vatican could not have found! By the next day, Mr Vajpayee had affirmed that there was nothing to the story. And Suman had been elevated : saying that "10 Janpath is becoming increasingly displeased" over stories of this kind, The Asian Age reported, "The report [the one in The Times of India] mentioned the names of Mr Suman Dubey and Ms Sheila Dixit as among her 'group of advisors'. Both the leaders promptly denied and wrote angry rebuttals..."
And between them The Pioneer and The Asian Age solved the mystery once and for all. The Pioneer informed us, "Mrs Sonia Gandhi is celebrating her Christmas vacation this year in Thailand..."-- as the day on which the report appeared was December 28, we could safely conclude that she was already in Thailand. The paper said that "Family troubles" -- which it identified as the desire of her son to marry a Columbian girl -- had made the chances of her "assuming a role in the coming poll", remote. That very day, The Asian Age's lead story was entitled, "Sonia will campaign for Congress finally." The paper assured us that she had finally made up her mind to do so, and that her detailed tour programme was likely to be announced in two-three days. As for her travel plans, the paper quoted her spokesman as saying, "...She had no plans to visit the United States. She is very much here and will be here."
I am not on the accuracy of such fabrications, but on the fact that the paper, The Times of India, which was till the other day in the forefront of fabricating stories to do in the BJP is now fabricating them against Sonia Gandhi! From this I deduce that Sonia is not the only one who is running scared at what the BJP may do about investigations that are in the works.
"But by going in for these alliances, by admitting these persons the BJP is losing its character," the carpers say today. But that complaint lies better with communalists like me, for you, my friends, are the ones who have been denouncing the original character as "Fascism" -- the austerity you saw in some of them, you denounced as "puritanism", the discipline as proof of authoritarianism, that they talked of Hinduism, as proof of "right-wing fanaticism", that they were for a Common Civil Code and against Article 370 as proof of their determination to erase minorities and their "identity", that they would commence their meetings with invocations to the motherland as proof of planning "pogroms of Muslims". So, friends, if the party is shedding that character, why are you again in a tizzy ?
For years now I have been dumbfounded at the sheer irresponsibility of the controllers of discourse here. By singing hosannas to socialism, by painting Rajaji and others in vile colours, by glossing over everything which was being done in the name of socialism -- the inefficiencies of public sector units, the ruinous adventures of Mrs Gandhi : the nationalizations, for instance -- these persons caused the country to lose a generation. They have repeated the same sequence and inflicted as much injury through "secularism". By denouncing AASU as the tool of communalists, by unnerving governments when they tried to repatriate Bangladeshis, these cavilers made the country into a wastepaper basket that must by definition take in the discards of others. By concocting stories against our forces in Punjab and Kashmir, they facilitated the task of terrorists.
In exactly the same way, by making the BJP out to be such a demon, they have sown great trouble for the future. Suppose for a moment that, in spite of them, the BJP does come to power. Would their past propaganda not scare away scarce foreign resources? Which investor in his right mind would want to invest in a country which is soon going to be plunged into "pogroms" and a consequential civil war ? Would the Muslims not be thrown into dread? Would that panic not become self-fulfilling? The assumption having been drilled into them that the BJP will launch "pogroms", some sections will prepare for the denouement.... On the other side, the calumny would certainly have caused a heap of resentment to pile up among many Hindus. They will be bursting to take it out -- exactly what happened in the case of the Babri mosque.
But do our friends care ?
Of course, the BJP would be ill-advised if it set store by the sudden turn-around in the press. Just recall the glowing accounts these papers used to write about Mr. Narasimha Rao as the modern Chanakya. Just recall the cover-stories they were putting out just a few months ago about "King Kesri". And see what they are writing about these very persons today.
As Mr Vajpayee has said, every seat will have to be fought for diligently. Thus far, the main thing that has happened is the disarray in the Congress and in the United Front. On the other side are the two main achievements of the BJP : it has been functioning as a team, its campaign is off and running while the others are bogged down explaining departures; and it has a prime ministerial candidate while others have none. But as the days go by, the difficulties which inhere in the successes of the past two weeks will surface. Some of the persons who have crossed over will prove difficult to digest. The very fact that the party is now seen as the one liable to win will intensify the jostling for its nominations. Through all these pulls and pressures the leadership will have to squeeze in at least a few candidates who are better equipped to man a government. More than all this, the party will soon have to decide how much of a Congress it can afford to be : the AGP in Assam became a Congress all right, and won. But see the ditch in which it is...
And if the party is not able to vault over these dilemmas, or if the lust for office prevails over their personal animosities, those ardent secularists -- Mulayam Singh, Kanshi Ram, Laloo and the rest -- may still "come together" for polling day. The papers will somersault again, and again cry "Victory". "BJP fails to live up to its hype," the very ones who would have created that hype will proclaim...
December 12, 1997
These days when those guardians of secularism, our newspapers, refer to the Secular Front, they put the label -- "Secular" -- as well as the excuse -- "to combat communal forces" -- within inverted commas! Those who used to preface their remarks about Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee with, "The right man in the wrong party", suddenly emphasize only "The right man" part! "Things are all going right," says a person who has feasted off secular governments for ten years, as I run into him -- I don't immediately get what he thinks is going right, so out of touch have I been with him. "I mean, we are not going to get just a stable government, we are going to get a BJP government," he says enthusiastically. Suddenly multinationals are analyzing my friend Gurumurthy's articles and speeches -- how far will they take "swadeshi"?, they want to know, to what extent does the party share his views?, they search. Who will be the Finance Minister?, they ask.
Sitting alone in my study, poring over law reports of distant Pakistan, I am roused to the change. Friends ring up, distant acquaintances -- they want to help a national cause, they say; they want to reach Mr. Vajpayee and Mr. Advani through "a completely reliable person," "and who could be more reliable than you ?" All because I am "close-to-BJP" by acclamation, courtesy our secularist newspapers. The boons labelers confer... But how deep these impressions are etched : when I tell the callers the truth, as I ask them to contact someone like my friends Gurumurthy and Arun Jaitley, they conclude I am being difficult.
Thus, one of the rules in discourse is, "Even calumny has its recompense" -- were I to do no more than keep silent and not deny the rumour, I could, at least for a few weeks, make a handsome killing! The other rule surely is, "The greater the calumny, the swifter the turn-around." Secularists are the ones who have prepared the ground for the turn-around. In the name of secularism, in the name of "keeping the communal monster at bay", they legitimized the ganging up of all sorts -- with what face can they denounce the BJP today as it does the same thing ? Indeed, their discomfiture is even greater : for some of the persons and groups who are crossing over are the very ones whom the secularists had built up as the great dykes against communalism. Not only are they crossing over, while doing so they are declaring again and again that "secularism" was just a pretense, an excuse for grabbing office. "No party has pursued communal and casteist politics for as long as the Congress," declares the Congressman. "Behind the slogan of social justice, Laloo and Mulayam Singh have only spread casteism," says the progressive. "The Congress has only used the Muslims as a vote-bank," says the Muslim leader. "Kanshi Ram and Mayawati are not interested in the welfare of Dalits at all," certifies the BSP leader, "They are only interested in their dictatorship and corruption." "The Congress has done nothing for the tribals, it has just used and exploited them," says the tribal leader.
But isn't that exactly what communalists like me have been saying all along ?!
And there is always The Times Of India, one of the six great weather-vanes in the world. In the days that preceded Justice Sinha's judgment, it did all it could to denigrate JP and the students' movement. When in the wake of the judgment, it seemed for a moment that Mrs Gandhi could not hold on, the paper pronounced it was time for her to go. She had but to impose the Emergency, and this great oracle was denouncing JP -- he had compelled Mrs. Gandhi to call a halt to anarchy, she had been left with no alternative, she just had to move to save the country from foreign-controlled conspirators. Throughout the Emergency, it kept up a chorus -- paeans to trains running on time. The 1977 election results had but to come in, and its stalwarts declared, "We have been through veritable hell." A hell worse than the others, they said : for the others were doing the easy thing -- opposing the Emergency openly; the paper had been left with the much more onerous and dangerous task -- of opposing it from within while making sure that no one realized it was doing so!
In line with this tradition, the paper has let few excel it during the last few years in fabricating stories about the BJP -- one month the RSS had decided to dump Advani for Vajpayee, the next the RSS had decided to dump Vajpayee... The paper is still fabricating stories -- but now to catch BJP's eye!
On 22 December, it carries a story about Sonia going abroad. While published accounts say she is going to Europe to meet her son, the paper reports, "informed sources close to 10 Janpath claim [why they should advance the claim to The Times of India is naturally a trade secret] that it is not a vacation trip but is connected with serious business relating to her family matters..." "The same sources claim that Mrs. Gandhi will be visiting a South East Asian country, where she is expected to meet with a prominent Italian businessman who left the country several years ago." Mystery, mystery. In the next sentence, Sherlock Holmes himself : "It may be mentioned that Mr Ottavio Quattrochi, who is wanted in connection with the Bofors investigation, is now settled in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia" -- mystery solved. But then, caution -- lest someone accuse them of not giving the victim a fair chance: "Thanks to the secrecy surrounding all the goings-on in 10 Janpath, these claims could not be confirmed from there." But next, sticking bravely to the concoction : "However, sources in 10 Janpath agreed [as if they had earlier disagreed] that Mrs Gandhi would soon depart on a planned trip. [When was the last time you went on an unplanned trip?] They claimed that it was an 'annual sojourn'. However, they refused to comment when asked whether she was going to Europe or the United States or to a South East Asian country as indicated by sources close to her. The same sources claim that Mrs Gandhi will enter active politics provided the discussion in South East Asia proved fruitful."
Safe, all angles covered : if Sonia enters active politics, the discussions in South East Asia would have been successful; if she does not, they would have been unsuccessful. And whether the discussions took place at all, no one will be able to fathom "thanks to the secrecy surrounding all the goings-on in 10 Janpath."
Every ass knows that these days if you need to be in touch with someone, there is need not at all to meet him, that if you have to meet on the sly "a prominent Italian businessman" who is so prominently settled in Kuala Lumpur, the last place you'd go to is Malaysia. He could meet you in Europe without any of the six great papers in the world being any the wiser.
That was a single-column story on 22nd December. By 26 December, the conspiracy-theories had swollen to a five-column spread, "Is checkmated Sonia seeking BJP allies?" By now the sources were informing the sixth greatest fabricator that she was maintaining a "clandestine liaison" not just with "the prominent Italian businessman", but with the BJP! Sonia -- who till the other day was treated with such deference that if she met anyone, it was described as her giving "an audience" -- was now referred to as "the Italian daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi who regarded the world as her oyster so long as the Congress was at her beck and call." The paper said that she had given her "secret blessings" to the pro-BJP utterances of Mamata Banerjee [whose expulsion, the paper had portrayed three days earlier as a sign of Sonia Gandhi's failure], and even the cross-overs of Kumarmangalam and Aslam Sher Khan had been given the go-ahead by "the Sonia camp". Scared as the paper said she is at the prospect of BJP's victory, would she be working to leave herself entirely defenceless by helping kill the Congress completely ?
Even a fool would know the answer, but what took the cake as far as I was concerned was the next nugget. "The group of advisers not averse to Mrs Gandhi having a tacit 'understanding' with the BJP to protect herself and the trusts and bodies named after the Nehru dynasty," the paper had uncovered, included none other than my own cousin-friend-brother-in-law, Suman Dubey! A more improbable advocate for a "clandestine-liaison", for anything "tacit" even the Vatican could not have found! By the next day, Mr Vajpayee had affirmed that there was nothing to the story. And Suman had been elevated : saying that "10 Janpath is becoming increasingly displeased" over stories of this kind, The Asian Age reported, "The report [the one in The Times of India] mentioned the names of Mr Suman Dubey and Ms Sheila Dixit as among her 'group of advisors'. Both the leaders promptly denied and wrote angry rebuttals..."
And between them The Pioneer and The Asian Age solved the mystery once and for all. The Pioneer informed us, "Mrs Sonia Gandhi is celebrating her Christmas vacation this year in Thailand..."-- as the day on which the report appeared was December 28, we could safely conclude that she was already in Thailand. The paper said that "Family troubles" -- which it identified as the desire of her son to marry a Columbian girl -- had made the chances of her "assuming a role in the coming poll", remote. That very day, The Asian Age's lead story was entitled, "Sonia will campaign for Congress finally." The paper assured us that she had finally made up her mind to do so, and that her detailed tour programme was likely to be announced in two-three days. As for her travel plans, the paper quoted her spokesman as saying, "...She had no plans to visit the United States. She is very much here and will be here."
I am not on the accuracy of such fabrications, but on the fact that the paper, The Times of India, which was till the other day in the forefront of fabricating stories to do in the BJP is now fabricating them against Sonia Gandhi! From this I deduce that Sonia is not the only one who is running scared at what the BJP may do about investigations that are in the works.
"But by going in for these alliances, by admitting these persons the BJP is losing its character," the carpers say today. But that complaint lies better with communalists like me, for you, my friends, are the ones who have been denouncing the original character as "Fascism" -- the austerity you saw in some of them, you denounced as "puritanism", the discipline as proof of authoritarianism, that they talked of Hinduism, as proof of "right-wing fanaticism", that they were for a Common Civil Code and against Article 370 as proof of their determination to erase minorities and their "identity", that they would commence their meetings with invocations to the motherland as proof of planning "pogroms of Muslims". So, friends, if the party is shedding that character, why are you again in a tizzy ?
For years now I have been dumbfounded at the sheer irresponsibility of the controllers of discourse here. By singing hosannas to socialism, by painting Rajaji and others in vile colours, by glossing over everything which was being done in the name of socialism -- the inefficiencies of public sector units, the ruinous adventures of Mrs Gandhi : the nationalizations, for instance -- these persons caused the country to lose a generation. They have repeated the same sequence and inflicted as much injury through "secularism". By denouncing AASU as the tool of communalists, by unnerving governments when they tried to repatriate Bangladeshis, these cavilers made the country into a wastepaper basket that must by definition take in the discards of others. By concocting stories against our forces in Punjab and Kashmir, they facilitated the task of terrorists.
In exactly the same way, by making the BJP out to be such a demon, they have sown great trouble for the future. Suppose for a moment that, in spite of them, the BJP does come to power. Would their past propaganda not scare away scarce foreign resources? Which investor in his right mind would want to invest in a country which is soon going to be plunged into "pogroms" and a consequential civil war ? Would the Muslims not be thrown into dread? Would that panic not become self-fulfilling? The assumption having been drilled into them that the BJP will launch "pogroms", some sections will prepare for the denouement.... On the other side, the calumny would certainly have caused a heap of resentment to pile up among many Hindus. They will be bursting to take it out -- exactly what happened in the case of the Babri mosque.
But do our friends care ?
Of course, the BJP would be ill-advised if it set store by the sudden turn-around in the press. Just recall the glowing accounts these papers used to write about Mr. Narasimha Rao as the modern Chanakya. Just recall the cover-stories they were putting out just a few months ago about "King Kesri". And see what they are writing about these very persons today.
As Mr Vajpayee has said, every seat will have to be fought for diligently. Thus far, the main thing that has happened is the disarray in the Congress and in the United Front. On the other side are the two main achievements of the BJP : it has been functioning as a team, its campaign is off and running while the others are bogged down explaining departures; and it has a prime ministerial candidate while others have none. But as the days go by, the difficulties which inhere in the successes of the past two weeks will surface. Some of the persons who have crossed over will prove difficult to digest. The very fact that the party is now seen as the one liable to win will intensify the jostling for its nominations. Through all these pulls and pressures the leadership will have to squeeze in at least a few candidates who are better equipped to man a government. More than all this, the party will soon have to decide how much of a Congress it can afford to be : the AGP in Assam became a Congress all right, and won. But see the ditch in which it is...
And if the party is not able to vault over these dilemmas, or if the lust for office prevails over their personal animosities, those ardent secularists -- Mulayam Singh, Kanshi Ram, Laloo and the rest -- may still "come together" for polling day. The papers will somersault again, and again cry "Victory". "BJP fails to live up to its hype," the very ones who would have created that hype will proclaim...
December 12, 1997
'But We Have no Right?'
Arun Shourie
"But have we no rights to proclaim our faith, to preach Gospel? You are the editor of such a large news-paper. You express your views on issues. Do we not have the same right?" It was Bishop George Anathil, of Indore, the Chairman of the Commission for Proclamation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.
It so happens that I am not the editor but the twice-dismissed editor of such a large newspaper! And I would certainly stand for the right of every Bishop to speak his mind, assuming of course that he too would not cavil at being dismissed!!
In any case, no one is suggesting that missionaries should not have the right to proclaim the truth as they see it. I was talking about conversions - about how these did not harmonise with the doctrine the Church has now acknowledged, namely the possibility of salvation in every religion; about the need to heed the great anger which is building up against conversions; and about the need therefore to join in giving the State and the courts the authority to examine whether force or fraud or allurement have been used in any case to secure the conversion.
The analogy which Bishop Anathil drew between the right to free speech and the right to practice and propagate one's religion is actually a good one: the freedom of religion guaranteed by Article 25 and 26 should be subject to the same sort of restrictions as is a secular right like freedom of speech. Article 19(2) lists the grounds on which the right of speech can be regulated. These are much wider than the grounds mentioned in Article 25 and 26.
Furthermore, the courts have, to take one instance, specifically held that the administration of 'minority institutions' under Article 29 and 30 cannot be regulated on the ground that the regulation is required in the national interest.
In a secular country why should the right to practise and propagate religion not be subjected to the same sorts of perimeters as apply to other secular rights? In a country the very survival of which is in such jeopardy, in a country the territorial integrity of which is being assailed by murderous campaigns stoked in the name of religion, why should the right to practice and propagate religion not be subject to the requirements of the security of the State, to the national interest?
It is for these reasons that in A Secular Agenda I have urged that the right to religion must be placed, exactly as Bishop Anathil's analogy suggests, at par with, and no higher than other secular rights.
"I have a comment, more than a question," Bishop Patrick D'Souza of Varanasi observed. "I know that Gandhiji said those things about the motives behind missionary services etc. But schools and hospitals set up by Christian missionaries are everywhere. If there was any truth in this view, all of India would by now have become Christian. This has not happened. Is not the accusation itself motivated?"
My own experience would point to what you say: I studied at a college set by Christian missionaries, no one ever tried to convert me. But against that, and against what you say, we must put what the missionaries who talked to Gandhiji acknowledged. They too were truthful, and they stated in terms that the ultimate motive, or inspiration if you like, which informed such work was to convert people to Christianity. Even more important, there are the basic premises of the Church to which I drew attention earlier: that there is one Truth, that it has been revealed to the one and only Son of God, that it is in one Book etc. A missionary cannot but subscribe to these premises. And one who subscribes to them cannot but have one overriding objective: to save souls by bringing them into the Church.
Today, spurred by the new "Liberation Theology," the Church is spurring the movements among so-called Dalits etc. But many of the leaders you have patronised by way of helping "Dalits" speak with poison in their tongue. They advocate hatred. They have been eulogizing Bhindranwale. Now, when you patronise them, why do you cavil at the charge that you are patronising them? How can you escape the constructive responsibility for the consequences of the hatred they are spreading? In a word: if you feel that you just must work among such groups because as Christian missionaries you have both some special responsibility and some special message for such groups, hold them to the means of Jesus, of Gandhi.
"Your view that religious questions should only be addressed to those who can decide, I found patronising," a participant observed. "There is the presumption behind it that the tribals etc. are not in a position to understand these matters. But in working among them, I find that they get the central point very quickly."
Would you concede the same discerment to "Dalits" who have "relapsed" back to Hinduism -- that they too are able to assess things? Or is it that only those who see the point of Christianity are in a position to assess religious questions, and not the others?
As for presumptions, look at the premise behind the entire work of the Church in tribal areas. The tribals are leading a perfectly normal life with the help of their own religion, are they not? When you go in to convert them, are you not being presumptuous -- are you not presuming that you and the Church know better than them what is good for them?
"You were educated in a Christian College," Archbishop Alphonsus Mathias of Bangalore remarked. "What aspects of Jesus strike you?"
That he was prepared to suffer so much, that he was prepared to suffer to the end for truth. That no bitterness entered his heart even when he had been nailed to the Cross. That, when he saw wrong, he spoke so clearly -- as to the Pharisees in the temple.
"No, I mean: What is your opinion about the Christian claim that Jesus is the incarnate God?"
I have not the capacity to judge such a claim. But as, for the sorts of reasons I mentioned, I am not yet able to believe in God as He has been pictured to us -- All Powerful, All Knowing, All Compassionate -- I am not able to conceive of that God incarnating Himself.
"In one of your recent articles you wrote about nanotechnology and the rest" said a participant. "What role do you think religious organisations have in such an age?"
To remind us about, to educate us to the inner-directed search. That is the pearl of great price which the religious traditions, specially the religious traditions of India have preserved through the millennia. That is what religious organisations should direct their efforts to.
As we dispersed for tea, the exchange continued, as did the banter: "He knows more about Christianity than your students," Archbishop Mathias of Bangal ore told Bishop D'Souza of Pune, teasing him and me. "He knows more about Christianity," said the latter who overseas one of the best seminaries in our country, "than many of our professors!"...
The things I had been saying were hardly the things that the Archbishop, the Bishops and the scholars assembled there agreed with, they were certainly not the things that they would find agreeable. But they heard me out in pin-drop silence, and with unbroken patience. They told me unambiguously that they did not agree with what I had said. Several of their observations left no doubt that they were put out by what I had said. But they pasted no motive. They were courteous and the very models of dignity and decorum throughout.
I left feeling I had been among friends.
If only we could learn at least this one thing from them: If we could only learn how to disagree, how much better off our country would be.
The Observer
March 4, 1994
"But have we no rights to proclaim our faith, to preach Gospel? You are the editor of such a large news-paper. You express your views on issues. Do we not have the same right?" It was Bishop George Anathil, of Indore, the Chairman of the Commission for Proclamation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.
It so happens that I am not the editor but the twice-dismissed editor of such a large newspaper! And I would certainly stand for the right of every Bishop to speak his mind, assuming of course that he too would not cavil at being dismissed!!
In any case, no one is suggesting that missionaries should not have the right to proclaim the truth as they see it. I was talking about conversions - about how these did not harmonise with the doctrine the Church has now acknowledged, namely the possibility of salvation in every religion; about the need to heed the great anger which is building up against conversions; and about the need therefore to join in giving the State and the courts the authority to examine whether force or fraud or allurement have been used in any case to secure the conversion.
The analogy which Bishop Anathil drew between the right to free speech and the right to practice and propagate one's religion is actually a good one: the freedom of religion guaranteed by Article 25 and 26 should be subject to the same sort of restrictions as is a secular right like freedom of speech. Article 19(2) lists the grounds on which the right of speech can be regulated. These are much wider than the grounds mentioned in Article 25 and 26.
Furthermore, the courts have, to take one instance, specifically held that the administration of 'minority institutions' under Article 29 and 30 cannot be regulated on the ground that the regulation is required in the national interest.
In a secular country why should the right to practise and propagate religion not be subjected to the same sorts of perimeters as apply to other secular rights? In a country the very survival of which is in such jeopardy, in a country the territorial integrity of which is being assailed by murderous campaigns stoked in the name of religion, why should the right to practice and propagate religion not be subject to the requirements of the security of the State, to the national interest?
It is for these reasons that in A Secular Agenda I have urged that the right to religion must be placed, exactly as Bishop Anathil's analogy suggests, at par with, and no higher than other secular rights.
"I have a comment, more than a question," Bishop Patrick D'Souza of Varanasi observed. "I know that Gandhiji said those things about the motives behind missionary services etc. But schools and hospitals set up by Christian missionaries are everywhere. If there was any truth in this view, all of India would by now have become Christian. This has not happened. Is not the accusation itself motivated?"
My own experience would point to what you say: I studied at a college set by Christian missionaries, no one ever tried to convert me. But against that, and against what you say, we must put what the missionaries who talked to Gandhiji acknowledged. They too were truthful, and they stated in terms that the ultimate motive, or inspiration if you like, which informed such work was to convert people to Christianity. Even more important, there are the basic premises of the Church to which I drew attention earlier: that there is one Truth, that it has been revealed to the one and only Son of God, that it is in one Book etc. A missionary cannot but subscribe to these premises. And one who subscribes to them cannot but have one overriding objective: to save souls by bringing them into the Church.
Today, spurred by the new "Liberation Theology," the Church is spurring the movements among so-called Dalits etc. But many of the leaders you have patronised by way of helping "Dalits" speak with poison in their tongue. They advocate hatred. They have been eulogizing Bhindranwale. Now, when you patronise them, why do you cavil at the charge that you are patronising them? How can you escape the constructive responsibility for the consequences of the hatred they are spreading? In a word: if you feel that you just must work among such groups because as Christian missionaries you have both some special responsibility and some special message for such groups, hold them to the means of Jesus, of Gandhi.
"Your view that religious questions should only be addressed to those who can decide, I found patronising," a participant observed. "There is the presumption behind it that the tribals etc. are not in a position to understand these matters. But in working among them, I find that they get the central point very quickly."
Would you concede the same discerment to "Dalits" who have "relapsed" back to Hinduism -- that they too are able to assess things? Or is it that only those who see the point of Christianity are in a position to assess religious questions, and not the others?
As for presumptions, look at the premise behind the entire work of the Church in tribal areas. The tribals are leading a perfectly normal life with the help of their own religion, are they not? When you go in to convert them, are you not being presumptuous -- are you not presuming that you and the Church know better than them what is good for them?
"You were educated in a Christian College," Archbishop Alphonsus Mathias of Bangalore remarked. "What aspects of Jesus strike you?"
That he was prepared to suffer so much, that he was prepared to suffer to the end for truth. That no bitterness entered his heart even when he had been nailed to the Cross. That, when he saw wrong, he spoke so clearly -- as to the Pharisees in the temple.
"No, I mean: What is your opinion about the Christian claim that Jesus is the incarnate God?"
I have not the capacity to judge such a claim. But as, for the sorts of reasons I mentioned, I am not yet able to believe in God as He has been pictured to us -- All Powerful, All Knowing, All Compassionate -- I am not able to conceive of that God incarnating Himself.
"In one of your recent articles you wrote about nanotechnology and the rest" said a participant. "What role do you think religious organisations have in such an age?"
To remind us about, to educate us to the inner-directed search. That is the pearl of great price which the religious traditions, specially the religious traditions of India have preserved through the millennia. That is what religious organisations should direct their efforts to.
As we dispersed for tea, the exchange continued, as did the banter: "He knows more about Christianity than your students," Archbishop Mathias of Bangal ore told Bishop D'Souza of Pune, teasing him and me. "He knows more about Christianity," said the latter who overseas one of the best seminaries in our country, "than many of our professors!"...
The things I had been saying were hardly the things that the Archbishop, the Bishops and the scholars assembled there agreed with, they were certainly not the things that they would find agreeable. But they heard me out in pin-drop silence, and with unbroken patience. They told me unambiguously that they did not agree with what I had said. Several of their observations left no doubt that they were put out by what I had said. But they pasted no motive. They were courteous and the very models of dignity and decorum throughout.
I left feeling I had been among friends.
If only we could learn at least this one thing from them: If we could only learn how to disagree, how much better off our country would be.
The Observer
March 4, 1994
'But We Have no Right?'
Arun Shourie
"But have we no rights to proclaim our faith, to preach Gospel? You are the editor of such a large news-paper. You express your views on issues. Do we not have the same right?" It was Bishop George Anathil, of Indore, the Chairman of the Commission for Proclamation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.
It so happens that I am not the editor but the twice-dismissed editor of such a large newspaper! And I would certainly stand for the right of every Bishop to speak his mind, assuming of course that he too would not cavil at being dismissed!!
In any case, no one is suggesting that missionaries should not have the right to proclaim the truth as they see it. I was talking about conversions - about how these did not harmonise with the doctrine the Church has now acknowledged, namely the possibility of salvation in every religion; about the need to heed the great anger which is building up against conversions; and about the need therefore to join in giving the State and the courts the authority to examine whether force or fraud or allurement have been used in any case to secure the conversion.
The analogy which Bishop Anathil drew between the right to free speech and the right to practice and propagate one's religion is actually a good one: the freedom of religion guaranteed by Article 25 and 26 should be subject to the same sort of restrictions as is a secular right like freedom of speech. Article 19(2) lists the grounds on which the right of speech can be regulated. These are much wider than the grounds mentioned in Article 25 and 26.
Furthermore, the courts have, to take one instance, specifically held that the administration of 'minority institutions' under Article 29 and 30 cannot be regulated on the ground that the regulation is required in the national interest.
In a secular country why should the right to practise and propagate religion not be subjected to the same sorts of perimeters as apply to other secular rights? In a country the very survival of which is in such jeopardy, in a country the territorial integrity of which is being assailed by murderous campaigns stoked in the name of religion, why should the right to practice and propagate religion not be subject to the requirements of the security of the State, to the national interest?
It is for these reasons that in A Secular Agenda I have urged that the right to religion must be placed, exactly as Bishop Anathil's analogy suggests, at par with, and no higher than other secular rights.
"I have a comment, more than a question," Bishop Patrick D'Souza of Varanasi observed. "I know that Gandhiji said those things about the motives behind missionary services etc. But schools and hospitals set up by Christian missionaries are everywhere. If there was any truth in this view, all of India would by now have become Christian. This has not happened. Is not the accusation itself motivated?"
My own experience would point to what you say: I studied at a college set by Christian missionaries, no one ever tried to convert me. But against that, and against what you say, we must put what the missionaries who talked to Gandhiji acknowledged. They too were truthful, and they stated in terms that the ultimate motive, or inspiration if you like, which informed such work was to convert people to Christianity. Even more important, there are the basic premises of the Church to which I drew attention earlier: that there is one Truth, that it has been revealed to the one and only Son of God, that it is in one Book etc. A missionary cannot but subscribe to these premises. And one who subscribes to them cannot but have one overriding objective: to save souls by bringing them into the Church.
Today, spurred by the new "Liberation Theology," the Church is spurring the movements among so-called Dalits etc. But many of the leaders you have patronised by way of helping "Dalits" speak with poison in their tongue. They advocate hatred. They have been eulogizing Bhindranwale. Now, when you patronise them, why do you cavil at the charge that you are patronising them? How can you escape the constructive responsibility for the consequences of the hatred they are spreading? In a word: if you feel that you just must work among such groups because as Christian missionaries you have both some special responsibility and some special message for such groups, hold them to the means of Jesus, of Gandhi.
"Your view that religious questions should only be addressed to those who can decide, I found patronising," a participant observed. "There is the presumption behind it that the tribals etc. are not in a position to understand these matters. But in working among them, I find that they get the central point very quickly."
Would you concede the same discerment to "Dalits" who have "relapsed" back to Hinduism -- that they too are able to assess things? Or is it that only those who see the point of Christianity are in a position to assess religious questions, and not the others?
As for presumptions, look at the premise behind the entire work of the Church in tribal areas. The tribals are leading a perfectly normal life with the help of their own religion, are they not? When you go in to convert them, are you not being presumptuous -- are you not presuming that you and the Church know better than them what is good for them?
"You were educated in a Christian College," Archbishop Alphonsus Mathias of Bangalore remarked. "What aspects of Jesus strike you?"
That he was prepared to suffer so much, that he was prepared to suffer to the end for truth. That no bitterness entered his heart even when he had been nailed to the Cross. That, when he saw wrong, he spoke so clearly -- as to the Pharisees in the temple.
"No, I mean: What is your opinion about the Christian claim that Jesus is the incarnate God?"
I have not the capacity to judge such a claim. But as, for the sorts of reasons I mentioned, I am not yet able to believe in God as He has been pictured to us -- All Powerful, All Knowing, All Compassionate -- I am not able to conceive of that God incarnating Himself.
"In one of your recent articles you wrote about nanotechnology and the rest" said a participant. "What role do you think religious organisations have in such an age?"
To remind us about, to educate us to the inner-directed search. That is the pearl of great price which the religious traditions, specially the religious traditions of India have preserved through the millennia. That is what religious organisations should direct their efforts to.
As we dispersed for tea, the exchange continued, as did the banter: "He knows more about Christianity than your students," Archbishop Mathias of Bangal ore told Bishop D'Souza of Pune, teasing him and me. "He knows more about Christianity," said the latter who overseas one of the best seminaries in our country, "than many of our professors!"...
The things I had been saying were hardly the things that the Archbishop, the Bishops and the scholars assembled there agreed with, they were certainly not the things that they would find agreeable. But they heard me out in pin-drop silence, and with unbroken patience. They told me unambiguously that they did not agree with what I had said. Several of their observations left no doubt that they were put out by what I had said. But they pasted no motive. They were courteous and the very models of dignity and decorum throughout.
I left feeling I had been among friends.
If only we could learn at least this one thing from them: If we could only learn how to disagree, how much better off our country would be.
The Observer
March 4, 1994
"But have we no rights to proclaim our faith, to preach Gospel? You are the editor of such a large news-paper. You express your views on issues. Do we not have the same right?" It was Bishop George Anathil, of Indore, the Chairman of the Commission for Proclamation of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India.
It so happens that I am not the editor but the twice-dismissed editor of such a large newspaper! And I would certainly stand for the right of every Bishop to speak his mind, assuming of course that he too would not cavil at being dismissed!!
In any case, no one is suggesting that missionaries should not have the right to proclaim the truth as they see it. I was talking about conversions - about how these did not harmonise with the doctrine the Church has now acknowledged, namely the possibility of salvation in every religion; about the need to heed the great anger which is building up against conversions; and about the need therefore to join in giving the State and the courts the authority to examine whether force or fraud or allurement have been used in any case to secure the conversion.
The analogy which Bishop Anathil drew between the right to free speech and the right to practice and propagate one's religion is actually a good one: the freedom of religion guaranteed by Article 25 and 26 should be subject to the same sort of restrictions as is a secular right like freedom of speech. Article 19(2) lists the grounds on which the right of speech can be regulated. These are much wider than the grounds mentioned in Article 25 and 26.
Furthermore, the courts have, to take one instance, specifically held that the administration of 'minority institutions' under Article 29 and 30 cannot be regulated on the ground that the regulation is required in the national interest.
In a secular country why should the right to practise and propagate religion not be subjected to the same sorts of perimeters as apply to other secular rights? In a country the very survival of which is in such jeopardy, in a country the territorial integrity of which is being assailed by murderous campaigns stoked in the name of religion, why should the right to practice and propagate religion not be subject to the requirements of the security of the State, to the national interest?
It is for these reasons that in A Secular Agenda I have urged that the right to religion must be placed, exactly as Bishop Anathil's analogy suggests, at par with, and no higher than other secular rights.
"I have a comment, more than a question," Bishop Patrick D'Souza of Varanasi observed. "I know that Gandhiji said those things about the motives behind missionary services etc. But schools and hospitals set up by Christian missionaries are everywhere. If there was any truth in this view, all of India would by now have become Christian. This has not happened. Is not the accusation itself motivated?"
My own experience would point to what you say: I studied at a college set by Christian missionaries, no one ever tried to convert me. But against that, and against what you say, we must put what the missionaries who talked to Gandhiji acknowledged. They too were truthful, and they stated in terms that the ultimate motive, or inspiration if you like, which informed such work was to convert people to Christianity. Even more important, there are the basic premises of the Church to which I drew attention earlier: that there is one Truth, that it has been revealed to the one and only Son of God, that it is in one Book etc. A missionary cannot but subscribe to these premises. And one who subscribes to them cannot but have one overriding objective: to save souls by bringing them into the Church.
Today, spurred by the new "Liberation Theology," the Church is spurring the movements among so-called Dalits etc. But many of the leaders you have patronised by way of helping "Dalits" speak with poison in their tongue. They advocate hatred. They have been eulogizing Bhindranwale. Now, when you patronise them, why do you cavil at the charge that you are patronising them? How can you escape the constructive responsibility for the consequences of the hatred they are spreading? In a word: if you feel that you just must work among such groups because as Christian missionaries you have both some special responsibility and some special message for such groups, hold them to the means of Jesus, of Gandhi.
"Your view that religious questions should only be addressed to those who can decide, I found patronising," a participant observed. "There is the presumption behind it that the tribals etc. are not in a position to understand these matters. But in working among them, I find that they get the central point very quickly."
Would you concede the same discerment to "Dalits" who have "relapsed" back to Hinduism -- that they too are able to assess things? Or is it that only those who see the point of Christianity are in a position to assess religious questions, and not the others?
As for presumptions, look at the premise behind the entire work of the Church in tribal areas. The tribals are leading a perfectly normal life with the help of their own religion, are they not? When you go in to convert them, are you not being presumptuous -- are you not presuming that you and the Church know better than them what is good for them?
"You were educated in a Christian College," Archbishop Alphonsus Mathias of Bangalore remarked. "What aspects of Jesus strike you?"
That he was prepared to suffer so much, that he was prepared to suffer to the end for truth. That no bitterness entered his heart even when he had been nailed to the Cross. That, when he saw wrong, he spoke so clearly -- as to the Pharisees in the temple.
"No, I mean: What is your opinion about the Christian claim that Jesus is the incarnate God?"
I have not the capacity to judge such a claim. But as, for the sorts of reasons I mentioned, I am not yet able to believe in God as He has been pictured to us -- All Powerful, All Knowing, All Compassionate -- I am not able to conceive of that God incarnating Himself.
"In one of your recent articles you wrote about nanotechnology and the rest" said a participant. "What role do you think religious organisations have in such an age?"
To remind us about, to educate us to the inner-directed search. That is the pearl of great price which the religious traditions, specially the religious traditions of India have preserved through the millennia. That is what religious organisations should direct their efforts to.
As we dispersed for tea, the exchange continued, as did the banter: "He knows more about Christianity than your students," Archbishop Mathias of Bangal ore told Bishop D'Souza of Pune, teasing him and me. "He knows more about Christianity," said the latter who overseas one of the best seminaries in our country, "than many of our professors!"...
The things I had been saying were hardly the things that the Archbishop, the Bishops and the scholars assembled there agreed with, they were certainly not the things that they would find agreeable. But they heard me out in pin-drop silence, and with unbroken patience. They told me unambiguously that they did not agree with what I had said. Several of their observations left no doubt that they were put out by what I had said. But they pasted no motive. They were courteous and the very models of dignity and decorum throughout.
I left feeling I had been among friends.
If only we could learn at least this one thing from them: If we could only learn how to disagree, how much better off our country would be.
The Observer
March 4, 1994
The Wages of Calumny
The Wages of Calumny
Arun Shourie
The traditions of India were rich as can be. They had attained insights of the first order. A person who has reflected on what the Buddha has to say on the workings of the mind for instance, one who has even a little acquaintance with Buddhist works on psychology will find the writings of, say, Freud to be high-school level reductionism. The traditions informed all of life: The mingling of literature art, music and religion is a ready instance.
And they were inclusive. A person devoted to a tree was not traduced as an "animist", a person devoted to a bull or an elephant, or a lion, or a snake or even the lowly mouse was not laughed away.
The objects of his devotion were received with reverence -- they became parts of a rich pantheon: The bull was honored as the mount of Shiva and one could approach Shiva only after paying obeisance to Nandi, the elephant became the head of Ganesha and the mouse his mount, the lion became the head of Narsimha and the mount of Durga, the swan of Saraswati, the peacock of Kartikeya, the snakes became the necklace and amulets of Shiva, the girdle of Ganesha.
As a confluence of the colors of the people, Rama and Krishna were pictured as having been blue, Venkateshwara at Tirupati, the child Krishna at Nathadwara, Kali in the East were pictured as pitch dark...
Nor was this artifice. The inclusiveness flowed from deep conviction, from what had been experienced at the deepest -- it flowed from experience which yielded premises which were the diametric opposites of the religions originating elsewhere.
There are many levels to reality, the traditions taught. There are many ways to realise it. The ones who have gone before have left books and suggested practices which will help you. But these are just aids, and there are many of them as persons with different tempraments, at different stages of preparation will find one device more helpful than the other.
You must yourself understand yourself, and gauge the stage at which you are. By dividing your nature and your progress you must assess the suitability of the device, of the text. All this was not licence, it was assigning responsibility, it was the call to be "mindful" to look within. It gave an unassailable sphere of autonomy to the individual.
Everything in human affairs ossifies. Many things in this tradition did too. But no one could impede reform by an appeal to the "fundamentals", for these fundamentals made the individual's own, inner experience the ultimate referrant.
That everything should reform and transform, the tradition regarded as natural. Differences were harmonised through discourse -- witness Shankara's journeys and the shastraarthas on the way.
Even Islam was eventually tempered: The Sufis who had been set upon in one Islamic country after another, so much so that secretiveness had become their mark, they did not just find a home here, they found honour, reverence.
But all this, the missionaries traduced. The inclusiveness they condemned as being a sinister stratagem to swallow up other religions. The efflorescence of different speculations they condemned as cacophony. The openness and tentativeness they condemned as intellectual flabbiness. The inner-directed search they condemned as morbid life-denial. The offering of many ways they condemned as unsettled mush.
The many gods and goddesses they condemned as chaos. What had become the norm for Islam was now made the norm for Christianity: Freedom of speech meant the freedom only to laud it, freedom of inquiry meant the freedom to discover only its glories.
The pressures were less subtle than they had been in the case of Islam, but they were no less potent. Asymmetry was the principle: As in the case of Islam, conversion was held to be, and acted upon as something that was an essential principle of Christianity; but when a person like Swami Vivekananda or Swami Shradhanand argued in favor of taking back into the Hindu fold the converts who wanted to return, they were condemned as persons who were inviting a practice for which there was no warrant in Hinduism!
The viciousness of the distortions and misrepresentations of the missionaries, the virulence of their abuse, the length of time over which they kept up the barrage -- we cannot imagine these today. Swami Vivekananda had to face these at every turn, Gandhiji knew them well.
"If all India stands up", Swami Vivekananda told the Christians in America about this propaganda, "and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian ocean and throws it up against the western countries, it will not be doing an infinetesimal part of that which you are doing to us..."
"It is not true that I am against any religion," the Swami told the Madras audience on his return from the USA. "It is equally untrue that I am hostile to the Christian missionaries in India. But I protest against certain of their methods of raising money in America."
"What is meant by those pictures in the school-books for children where Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy, and get more money. What is meant by those pictures which paint a man burning his wife at a stake with his own hands, so that she may become a ghost and torment the husband's enemy?"
"What is meant by the pictures of huge cars crushing over human beings? The other day a book was published for children in this country (America), where one of these gentlemen tells a narrative of his visit to Calcutta. He says he saw a car running over fanatics in the streets of Calcutta."
"I have heard one of these gentlemen preach in Memphis that in every village of India there is a pond full of the bones of little babies."
"What have Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus 'vile', and 'wretches', and the most horrible devils on earth? Part of the Sunday School education for children here consists in teaching them to hate everybody who is not a Christian, and the Hindus especially, so that, from their very childhood they may subscribe their pennies to the mission..."
That is Swami Vivekananda talking about missionary propaganda a 100 years ago. And here is what Ram Swarup reads in a recent pronouncement of the Texas- based Gospel for Asia: "The Indian sub-continent with one billion people, is a living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture... India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people... are literally living a cosmic lie!"
"Could Satan have devised a more perfect system for causing misery?"
The blacker they painted -- and paint -- India, and Hinduism in particular, the better the sincere are inspered to leave their homes and take up the task of saving souls that are in such torment so far away, the easier it is to raise funds, and all means are automatically rationalised.
That is one point: The calumny was based on falsehood through and through. But there is another point too: Was the Christianity of the missionaries different from what they were calumnising?
A Hindu bowing to a statue of Durga was a superstitious idolator. But a Christian beseeching a statue of Virgin Mary was touched by divine devotion?
A Hindu bowing to a stone as Hanuman, and circumambulating it was an ignorant idolator. But a Muslim prostrating to the Black Stone at the Kaaba and circumambulating it was one who had broken through to a higher level of spirituality?
A Hindu bathing in the Ganges and taking its water for rituals and ablutions was a primitive, superstitious nature-worshipper. But the Christian seeking cures from the water at Lourdes, and the Muslim seeking it from the water of the Zam Zam at Kaaba and taking it for ablutions and the rest, they were merely being scientific?
The rich symbolism of the Hindu rituals, of the motifs was dismissed as mumbo-jumbo. And what of the symbolism of the Euchrist -- of eating the "body" of Jesus and drinking his "blood"? Caste and untouchability are the peculiarity of Hinduism, the missionaries insisted. Christianity (and of course Islam on the telling of its advocates) is the religion of equality -- it does not recognize castes.
In fact, castes survive among Christian and Muslims to this day -- as the Supreme Court has narrated in its recent judgement on reservations. And the Church (as well as advocates of Islam), having proclaimed for two centuries that untouchability was a curse peculiar to Hinduism, has been in the forefront in demanding that benefits given to Schedules Castes and Scheduled Tribes must be made available to Christian Scheduled Castes and Christian Scheduled Tribes also!
Not one missionary organisation has protested that by extending caste-based Reservations to Christians (and Muslims), the Supreme Court has put the axe to a basic tenet of Christianity (and Islam)!
Swami Vivekananda, Gandhiji and other reformers often drew the attention of the missionaries to these blind-spots. They made another vital observation. In condemning and calumnising a Hindu practice like idolatory for instance, and the beliefs behind it, the missionaries missed the deep potential which was inherent in it.
As the same human pains and predicaments made their communities -- and them personally -- seek the same sorts of solace in the same sorts of devices, they soon enough became idolators of the most primitive kind. The idol as an aid for gathering one's awareness, as the embodiment of values which by honoring it and reflecting on it one imbibed; the reverence for all animal life, the reverence for the peepul as the entry-point from which to develop reverence for all inanimate nature; each of these as a device to break down the barriers between man and animals and inanimate materials; the harmonious view of life which resulted from these in contrast with the instrumental view of the latter which man-centered traditions (Christianity, Islam more so, and Marxism-Leninism most of all) inculcated; each of these as a device, a stepping-stone in breaking mind and matter -- this great healing potential, this potential for opening horizons of a vast and deep knowledge was foreclosed by the calumny. And the statue of Virgin Mary became a mere wish-fulfilling thing.
How true the warning of the Dhammapada: "A wrong action may not bring its reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once; like a smouldering fire concealed under ashes, it consumes the wrong-doer..."
Missionary scholarship, or scholarship inspired by the missionary impulse, has been even more lethal than the calumny. Its effects have lasted through the century, and they have reached matters far afield. A number of the notions which color our minds to this day can be traced to the seeds that were sown by that scholarship: That the white Aryans massacred and drove away the dark-skinned Dravidians, that India is not a nation but a heap, a zoo of different nationalities...
As has been shown, there was not the slightest evidence for the notions, on the contrary all the evidence pointed the other way: For dating scriptures like the Vedas, for instance, Max Mueller is the foundational authority; he dated the Rig Veda to 1200 BC not because of any evidence, he had none -- neither archaelogical nor any other kind; he put the date of 1200 BC because he firmly believed that the world had been created at 9 am on 23 October 4004 BC, and that because the Bible says so, that given the intervals mentioned in the Bible for events down to the Flood, the Vedas could not have been composed before 1200 BC! Moreover, the ones who put the notions in circulation did so, in many cases, with specific objectives - of undermining the regard of the people for their own culture, of pitting sections of them against other sections. They often explicitly acknowledged these motives in their private correspondence, which, as in the case of Max Mueller, has since been brought to light. Recall, for instance, what Max Mueller wrote to his wife about his translation of the Rig Veda: "...this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years."
(For a telling and succint accounting in the case of one of these seeds, see Dr Navratna S Rajaram's important lectures: Aryan Invasion of India, The myth and the truth, Voice of India, 1993, from which the Max Mueller examples are taken).
So deeply have these notions got imbedded in our discourse, so potent is the divisive politics that swirls around them that today to show these notions up as having been put out without any evidence, as being contrary to all evidence which has come to light in the last century, as having been put out for the specific and conscious purpose of dividing and undermining India -- to do so is denounced as chauvinism and communalism!
That these notions remain so lethal to this day is not, of course, the doing of the missionaries: The principal responsibility for that lies with Indian intellectuals. But while one lense of the spectacles of these intellectuals has been fabricated by the Marxists, the other one, the original one, was certainly fabricated by that missionary-imperialist scholarship.
The Observer
February 18, 1994
Arun Shourie
The traditions of India were rich as can be. They had attained insights of the first order. A person who has reflected on what the Buddha has to say on the workings of the mind for instance, one who has even a little acquaintance with Buddhist works on psychology will find the writings of, say, Freud to be high-school level reductionism. The traditions informed all of life: The mingling of literature art, music and religion is a ready instance.
And they were inclusive. A person devoted to a tree was not traduced as an "animist", a person devoted to a bull or an elephant, or a lion, or a snake or even the lowly mouse was not laughed away.
The objects of his devotion were received with reverence -- they became parts of a rich pantheon: The bull was honored as the mount of Shiva and one could approach Shiva only after paying obeisance to Nandi, the elephant became the head of Ganesha and the mouse his mount, the lion became the head of Narsimha and the mount of Durga, the swan of Saraswati, the peacock of Kartikeya, the snakes became the necklace and amulets of Shiva, the girdle of Ganesha.
As a confluence of the colors of the people, Rama and Krishna were pictured as having been blue, Venkateshwara at Tirupati, the child Krishna at Nathadwara, Kali in the East were pictured as pitch dark...
Nor was this artifice. The inclusiveness flowed from deep conviction, from what had been experienced at the deepest -- it flowed from experience which yielded premises which were the diametric opposites of the religions originating elsewhere.
There are many levels to reality, the traditions taught. There are many ways to realise it. The ones who have gone before have left books and suggested practices which will help you. But these are just aids, and there are many of them as persons with different tempraments, at different stages of preparation will find one device more helpful than the other.
You must yourself understand yourself, and gauge the stage at which you are. By dividing your nature and your progress you must assess the suitability of the device, of the text. All this was not licence, it was assigning responsibility, it was the call to be "mindful" to look within. It gave an unassailable sphere of autonomy to the individual.
Everything in human affairs ossifies. Many things in this tradition did too. But no one could impede reform by an appeal to the "fundamentals", for these fundamentals made the individual's own, inner experience the ultimate referrant.
That everything should reform and transform, the tradition regarded as natural. Differences were harmonised through discourse -- witness Shankara's journeys and the shastraarthas on the way.
Even Islam was eventually tempered: The Sufis who had been set upon in one Islamic country after another, so much so that secretiveness had become their mark, they did not just find a home here, they found honour, reverence.
But all this, the missionaries traduced. The inclusiveness they condemned as being a sinister stratagem to swallow up other religions. The efflorescence of different speculations they condemned as cacophony. The openness and tentativeness they condemned as intellectual flabbiness. The inner-directed search they condemned as morbid life-denial. The offering of many ways they condemned as unsettled mush.
The many gods and goddesses they condemned as chaos. What had become the norm for Islam was now made the norm for Christianity: Freedom of speech meant the freedom only to laud it, freedom of inquiry meant the freedom to discover only its glories.
The pressures were less subtle than they had been in the case of Islam, but they were no less potent. Asymmetry was the principle: As in the case of Islam, conversion was held to be, and acted upon as something that was an essential principle of Christianity; but when a person like Swami Vivekananda or Swami Shradhanand argued in favor of taking back into the Hindu fold the converts who wanted to return, they were condemned as persons who were inviting a practice for which there was no warrant in Hinduism!
The viciousness of the distortions and misrepresentations of the missionaries, the virulence of their abuse, the length of time over which they kept up the barrage -- we cannot imagine these today. Swami Vivekananda had to face these at every turn, Gandhiji knew them well.
"If all India stands up", Swami Vivekananda told the Christians in America about this propaganda, "and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian ocean and throws it up against the western countries, it will not be doing an infinetesimal part of that which you are doing to us..."
"It is not true that I am against any religion," the Swami told the Madras audience on his return from the USA. "It is equally untrue that I am hostile to the Christian missionaries in India. But I protest against certain of their methods of raising money in America."
"What is meant by those pictures in the school-books for children where Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy, and get more money. What is meant by those pictures which paint a man burning his wife at a stake with his own hands, so that she may become a ghost and torment the husband's enemy?"
"What is meant by the pictures of huge cars crushing over human beings? The other day a book was published for children in this country (America), where one of these gentlemen tells a narrative of his visit to Calcutta. He says he saw a car running over fanatics in the streets of Calcutta."
"I have heard one of these gentlemen preach in Memphis that in every village of India there is a pond full of the bones of little babies."
"What have Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus 'vile', and 'wretches', and the most horrible devils on earth? Part of the Sunday School education for children here consists in teaching them to hate everybody who is not a Christian, and the Hindus especially, so that, from their very childhood they may subscribe their pennies to the mission..."
That is Swami Vivekananda talking about missionary propaganda a 100 years ago. And here is what Ram Swarup reads in a recent pronouncement of the Texas- based Gospel for Asia: "The Indian sub-continent with one billion people, is a living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture... India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people... are literally living a cosmic lie!"
"Could Satan have devised a more perfect system for causing misery?"
The blacker they painted -- and paint -- India, and Hinduism in particular, the better the sincere are inspered to leave their homes and take up the task of saving souls that are in such torment so far away, the easier it is to raise funds, and all means are automatically rationalised.
That is one point: The calumny was based on falsehood through and through. But there is another point too: Was the Christianity of the missionaries different from what they were calumnising?
A Hindu bowing to a statue of Durga was a superstitious idolator. But a Christian beseeching a statue of Virgin Mary was touched by divine devotion?
A Hindu bowing to a stone as Hanuman, and circumambulating it was an ignorant idolator. But a Muslim prostrating to the Black Stone at the Kaaba and circumambulating it was one who had broken through to a higher level of spirituality?
A Hindu bathing in the Ganges and taking its water for rituals and ablutions was a primitive, superstitious nature-worshipper. But the Christian seeking cures from the water at Lourdes, and the Muslim seeking it from the water of the Zam Zam at Kaaba and taking it for ablutions and the rest, they were merely being scientific?
The rich symbolism of the Hindu rituals, of the motifs was dismissed as mumbo-jumbo. And what of the symbolism of the Euchrist -- of eating the "body" of Jesus and drinking his "blood"? Caste and untouchability are the peculiarity of Hinduism, the missionaries insisted. Christianity (and of course Islam on the telling of its advocates) is the religion of equality -- it does not recognize castes.
In fact, castes survive among Christian and Muslims to this day -- as the Supreme Court has narrated in its recent judgement on reservations. And the Church (as well as advocates of Islam), having proclaimed for two centuries that untouchability was a curse peculiar to Hinduism, has been in the forefront in demanding that benefits given to Schedules Castes and Scheduled Tribes must be made available to Christian Scheduled Castes and Christian Scheduled Tribes also!
Not one missionary organisation has protested that by extending caste-based Reservations to Christians (and Muslims), the Supreme Court has put the axe to a basic tenet of Christianity (and Islam)!
Swami Vivekananda, Gandhiji and other reformers often drew the attention of the missionaries to these blind-spots. They made another vital observation. In condemning and calumnising a Hindu practice like idolatory for instance, and the beliefs behind it, the missionaries missed the deep potential which was inherent in it.
As the same human pains and predicaments made their communities -- and them personally -- seek the same sorts of solace in the same sorts of devices, they soon enough became idolators of the most primitive kind. The idol as an aid for gathering one's awareness, as the embodiment of values which by honoring it and reflecting on it one imbibed; the reverence for all animal life, the reverence for the peepul as the entry-point from which to develop reverence for all inanimate nature; each of these as a device to break down the barriers between man and animals and inanimate materials; the harmonious view of life which resulted from these in contrast with the instrumental view of the latter which man-centered traditions (Christianity, Islam more so, and Marxism-Leninism most of all) inculcated; each of these as a device, a stepping-stone in breaking mind and matter -- this great healing potential, this potential for opening horizons of a vast and deep knowledge was foreclosed by the calumny. And the statue of Virgin Mary became a mere wish-fulfilling thing.
How true the warning of the Dhammapada: "A wrong action may not bring its reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once; like a smouldering fire concealed under ashes, it consumes the wrong-doer..."
Missionary scholarship, or scholarship inspired by the missionary impulse, has been even more lethal than the calumny. Its effects have lasted through the century, and they have reached matters far afield. A number of the notions which color our minds to this day can be traced to the seeds that were sown by that scholarship: That the white Aryans massacred and drove away the dark-skinned Dravidians, that India is not a nation but a heap, a zoo of different nationalities...
As has been shown, there was not the slightest evidence for the notions, on the contrary all the evidence pointed the other way: For dating scriptures like the Vedas, for instance, Max Mueller is the foundational authority; he dated the Rig Veda to 1200 BC not because of any evidence, he had none -- neither archaelogical nor any other kind; he put the date of 1200 BC because he firmly believed that the world had been created at 9 am on 23 October 4004 BC, and that because the Bible says so, that given the intervals mentioned in the Bible for events down to the Flood, the Vedas could not have been composed before 1200 BC! Moreover, the ones who put the notions in circulation did so, in many cases, with specific objectives - of undermining the regard of the people for their own culture, of pitting sections of them against other sections. They often explicitly acknowledged these motives in their private correspondence, which, as in the case of Max Mueller, has since been brought to light. Recall, for instance, what Max Mueller wrote to his wife about his translation of the Rig Veda: "...this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years."
(For a telling and succint accounting in the case of one of these seeds, see Dr Navratna S Rajaram's important lectures: Aryan Invasion of India, The myth and the truth, Voice of India, 1993, from which the Max Mueller examples are taken).
So deeply have these notions got imbedded in our discourse, so potent is the divisive politics that swirls around them that today to show these notions up as having been put out without any evidence, as being contrary to all evidence which has come to light in the last century, as having been put out for the specific and conscious purpose of dividing and undermining India -- to do so is denounced as chauvinism and communalism!
That these notions remain so lethal to this day is not, of course, the doing of the missionaries: The principal responsibility for that lies with Indian intellectuals. But while one lense of the spectacles of these intellectuals has been fabricated by the Marxists, the other one, the original one, was certainly fabricated by that missionary-imperialist scholarship.
The Observer
February 18, 1994
Hazratbal Mosque Crisis: How and Why it Happened?
Arun Shourie
May I begin with a few passages from my book 'A Secular Agenda'? It was sent to the press in late September and comes out later this week. A chapter, "No time to relent", which concludes the section on Kashmir notes:
"On April 9, intelligence agencies received information that a number of militants had gathered at Hazratbal mosque. The army and the BSF surrounded the place. Eighteen high-level militants were inside. They were as good as in the bag -- it was just a question of waiting them out. But suddenly and insistently the army and the BSF were ordered... to lift the cordon. The militants escaped With great effort and at great risk -- three of them were caught subsequently one of them was the constable whose death became the occasion for the strike by police. Why in hell were they allowed to escape in the first place?
"The revolt by the J & K police showed three things -- the depth to which such nonsense had pushed the situation, the opportunity we still had if only we would let the army etc. work, and also how we were squandering every favorable turn. The policemen were all defiance and bravado. In just 10 minutes they were cowering before soldiers and pleading that the soldiers save the honour of the J & K police by not lowering the police flag! That was yet another moment to begin to re-establish authority. But like every turn it too was allowed to pass.
"The consequences were not long in coming. Since May, civilian and military intelligence had been reporting that mercenaries had begun entering Sopore. Intelligence and others urged decisive and early action. Nothing was done. By September, about 600 of them were reported not only to be there, they were reported to have entrenched themselves in bunkers dug out in some houses at various points in the town. Minimal action in May-June would have seen the end of them. By September, a Bluestar-type operation alone would have sufficed. And intelligence was warning that if that sort of action was not launched immediately, and the snow were allowed to set in, the mercenaries would get another four to five months to fortify their presence. What sort of an operation would be necessary then?
"Indeed with the governor's dithering the paralysis has crept from Sopore to Srinagar itself. Till April, the security forces used to enter and search whichever place they had reason to believe was being used by terrorists as a hide-out or a meeting place. In the following months, they were kept from entering Hazratbal, the medical and engineering colleges and other places. The result has been predictable. The terrorists and their civilian front-men have now a large presence at these sites and they have made arrangements so that, should the armed forces now attempt to storm the places, government must risk substantial civilian casualties..."
Now, this was not foresight. It is what I was being told by intelligence officers. They had been sending reports to this effect to every high quarter. It is because they were receiving absolutely no response at all to their warnings that they had reached out to others.
At the top, the persons agreed with everything, said they saw the gravity of the situation, that they would take requisite action swiftly, and did absolutely nothing.
I cannot pretend to have been shocked. I cannot even pretend that I was taken in by their "agreeing with everything": I have learnt that this is their way of avoiding the bother of going into the matter any further. I cannot even pretend that their deciding nothing, their just sitting-transfixed as possums was any surprise. But I was perturbed: The matters were so urgent, the officers were not getting a hearing. I, therefore, kept going back, and urging others to seize the matter. To no effect.
By late September-early October, communication between Srinagar and the home ministry had broken down completely. Mr Rajesh Pilot, the George Fernandes of the current round, who had wrecked so much by his bullishness, who along with Mr Farooq Abdullah had sponsored Gen (Retired) K V Krishna Rao, was by now blaming Gen Rao for the state of affairs; Gen Rao in turn was letting it be known that he had no time for junior ministers from Delhi. Mr Chavan was still in sulk. Everything, therefore, depended on Mr Rao. He saw how dear the 'personality clashes' were proving for the country. But habits ingrained deep by a life-time of lying low had left him little inclination to intervene. Mr Arjun Singh left him no time.
At about this time intelligence agencies reported that arms were being stored in the police barracks adjoining the Hazratbal mosque. And, that the barracks and the shrine were being used by the terrorists to 'interrogate' and torture those they charged with being informers. Even if the shrine is out of bounds, at least raid and clean up the barracks, the intelligence agencies urged. The proposal was vetoed. If not a raid, at least send senior officials on a surprise inspection. Even that was not done.
On October 14, the terrorists held what was virtually an exhibition of arms and ammunition they had piled up inside the shrine. This too was reported. Nothing was done. Then, it seems, came reports that the militants were going to whisk away otherwise damage the relic or the mosque. Then the army was asked to cordon off the place.
But three things were apparent at once. There was no plan about what was to be done after the cordoning, nothing had been decided about what the final objectives of the siege were going to be: To save the relic? To nab the militants? Yet the honour of the army, indeed of the country had been committed.
Second, Delhi still had no time. Don't ask me, I am completely out of it - that was Mr Pilot's refrain, Mr Chavan had not stepped forth: Mr Rao has left things to Mr Pilot -- that was his premise. Mr Rao in turn was busy - with the re-entry of Mr Asoke Sen, with scotching Mr Arjun Singh, with fobbing off the troubles in Karnataka, with fobbing off the pulling and tugging of rivals in Delhi, with bringing about a truce between Mr ND Tiwari and Mr Jitendra Prasad so that the list for UP could be put out... It was not till the fourth day of the siege that he found time to hear the officers.
The third fact was even worse. Every hour showed that the coterie of officers around Gen Rao was acting at cross purposes with the army. The moment the siege was laid it was decided, and announced, that water and electricity be cut off. In fact, they were not cut off till two-and-a-half days later by the army taking the matter in its own hands. We do not rule out force, said the corps commander. Forces shall not enter the shrine at all, said Gen Rao. On October 23, water supply was restored, and on the 24th, it was announced that food would be sent in -- the army had not been consulted about either decision.
The decisions were being taken, the 'negotiations' were being conducted by persons about whose tenacity, judgement, inclination there were gravest apprehensions among officials in Delhi. In their hands and Gen Rao's. They had many concerns, the country's interest must have been one of these. But their dominant concern was that they, and no one else was, and remained in charge. A scuttling of the decision of no less than the PM's just a few weeks earlier had been symptomatic. Mr Pilot had recommended the appointment of Mr K P S Gill as DGP, J&K. He had sent the file directly to the Prime Minister -- that he had not routed it through the home minister too had been symptomatic. Having been given the impression that his appointment was through, Mr Gill started discussions in Delhi about the state of affairs in the Valley and about what he would be doing. The Prime Minister eventually cleared the file, noting that he agreed with the proposal in principle, but adding that the home minister may also see. The file remained in transit for two days.
An authority in the highest echelons in Delhi (the person's identity seems to have been established conclusively) not only alerted the clique in Srinagar -- You will be nobodies, Mr Gill listens to no one -- he suggested the way out for them. The Governor had the 'constitutional authority' to appoint to the post an officer from within the state, he noted. The appointment of a local-cadre officer was swiftly announced, and the orders about Mr Gill scuttled.
During the tenure of Mr Jagmohan and of Mr G C Saxena, there was an inner group which decided things -- it included key persons from the army, military and civilian intelligence, the paramilitary and civil administration. That group has little authority now; and in a word, has been replaced by those officials. And it is not as if these latter are the fingers of one hand.
Yet decisions of the greatest moment -- the decisions which shall determine the fate of our country -- are in their hands. The sixth day into the siege, the standing committee of the N I C was called to meet. Some counselled 'utmost restraint' -- they did not spell out what it meant, and what else was the government doing in any case but be 'restrained'? Mr Biju Patnaik counselled either of two options impartially! Send the fellows packing to Pakistan, the world would then know, he said, or strorm the place. Mr Chandrashekhar said he was for neither course being determined in Delhi, such things ought to be left to the men on the spot.
It was not evident what precise level of devolution he had in mind. But the Prime Minister seized on what Mr Chandrashekhar had said. And Mr Rao wanted to assure all present that he had himself spoken to the governor that morning, and had assured him that the Governor was in charge. There would be no interference.
Several participants in the meeting were greatly troubled. It is not just that people on the spot working to cross purposes. It is that people on the spot can decide the logistics, the timing etc., of a specified option. How can they decide the option itself? The consequences of storming the structure, and of letting the terrorists go, will be very different -- they will range from effects on the morale of the forces and our surviving as one country to our foreign relations. The corps commnder on the spot, the governor cannot decide among such vastly different options. That was obvious. Yet the way Mr Rao seized upon Mr Chandrashekhar's observations, and 'summed up' the meeting, left participants feeling that once again devolution had dissolved into abdication.
There were a dozen things to convey -- that negotiations ought to be entrusted to officials who have been specifically trained to conduct them; that the Prime Minister must himself hear the assessment of the corps commander, of the officer in charge of state intelligence, of the governor, that he must hear them one-to-one. But no one could effectively convey these to him. "He will agree with everything..." said one. "He will misuse any meeting in private", said the other. "Who can push a string?" exclaimed the third.
Even though the situation has been allowed to deteriorate to this terrible extent, the country had sufficient competence to handle it -- human, technical, material. But whether that competence will at all be allowed to act depends on people whose competence, inclinations, priorities are attuned to anything but the peril our country is in.
The principal leaders taken together are from Mrs Gandhi's court. Taking orders, passing on decisions, obedience, in fact feigning obedience -- these are the skills that their years in those quarters honed, not that of taking decisions themselves. And their overwhelming concern too is not the peril of the country, but the other courtier -- their dread is not that the country might be broken but that this other fellow may trip them; their aspiration is not that our country be strong and vibrant, it is to plant the tale about that rival in the quarters. That is one factor which accounts for the blundering.
And there are the stratagems they picked up from Mrs Gandhi: Never have the sturdy and independent as colleagues; and never disturb them when they are quarreling and plotting to pull each other down. The consequence is before us: Squabbles of Mr Pilot and Mr Chavan, of Mr Pilot and Gen Rao... -- all have been allowed to fester. And suddenly that is the 'team' which must handle Hazratbal.
Notice too the doggedness with which that other stratagem has been applied -- of having only innocuous men in positions of authority: To the point that today we have a President who cannot give much advice, to say nothing of direction; a Vice-President so decent that he can be depended on never to be stern; an external affairs minister who is so totally dependent; a home minister who is a man of integrity but, how shall we put it?, so self-effacing and reticent; a defence minister who isn't there at all... But the end will be the same as it was in Mrs Gandhi's case: Everyone is too weak to hurt the Prime Minister, but no one is strong enough to help him either. Yet this is the 'team' that must suddenly handle Hazaratbal.
And, as if such hands were not unsteady enough, there are our intellectuals. Mr Pilot, himself an intellectual of note, recently set up a think-tank of intellectuals on Kashmir. Just a few days ago they declared, 'New hope in Kashmir.' And they named a group which, in their view, was promising focal point for commencing a dialogue. That group is today in the forefront of calling for processions to break the siege and liberate the shrine -- in the forefront of urging action that will help the terrorists. But, perhaps I judge too hastily -- the intellectuals haven't quite spoken since the terrorists took over the shrine.
For many of our papers too the siege is but a spectator sport. One paper finds the siege of the terrorists symbolic of the siege of the people of Kashmir Another focuses on cruelties of our forces -- not a word about what the jawans have to go through. Suddenly everyone is repeating the phrases of the Jamaat propagandists -- 'the holiest of shrines in Kashmir.' But till just last year the shrine was the special target of the venom of the Jamaat -- partly because worshipping relics is entirely impermissible in orthodox Islam, it being condemned as a species of idolatory; partly because of Shia-Sunni animosities; partly because the shrine had come to be associated so much with Sheikh Abdullah's cult. But 'the holiest' it suddenly is. 'But it isn't just the rulers , and the intellectuals, and the press. We contribute our mite no less: See the people throng to bazars, see them vie for tickets to Michael Jackson's concert -- is this a people concerned that the crown of their country is close to being sawn away?
The nemesis thus -- not just of the politics of our rulers, not just of the discourse and perceptions of our intellectuals and pressmen, the nemesis of our own ways.
If the country comes out of this episode with honor it will be in spite of us, and only because of the very forces our intellectuals and pressmen deride.
The Observer
October 27, 1993
May I begin with a few passages from my book 'A Secular Agenda'? It was sent to the press in late September and comes out later this week. A chapter, "No time to relent", which concludes the section on Kashmir notes:
"On April 9, intelligence agencies received information that a number of militants had gathered at Hazratbal mosque. The army and the BSF surrounded the place. Eighteen high-level militants were inside. They were as good as in the bag -- it was just a question of waiting them out. But suddenly and insistently the army and the BSF were ordered... to lift the cordon. The militants escaped With great effort and at great risk -- three of them were caught subsequently one of them was the constable whose death became the occasion for the strike by police. Why in hell were they allowed to escape in the first place?
"The revolt by the J & K police showed three things -- the depth to which such nonsense had pushed the situation, the opportunity we still had if only we would let the army etc. work, and also how we were squandering every favorable turn. The policemen were all defiance and bravado. In just 10 minutes they were cowering before soldiers and pleading that the soldiers save the honour of the J & K police by not lowering the police flag! That was yet another moment to begin to re-establish authority. But like every turn it too was allowed to pass.
"The consequences were not long in coming. Since May, civilian and military intelligence had been reporting that mercenaries had begun entering Sopore. Intelligence and others urged decisive and early action. Nothing was done. By September, about 600 of them were reported not only to be there, they were reported to have entrenched themselves in bunkers dug out in some houses at various points in the town. Minimal action in May-June would have seen the end of them. By September, a Bluestar-type operation alone would have sufficed. And intelligence was warning that if that sort of action was not launched immediately, and the snow were allowed to set in, the mercenaries would get another four to five months to fortify their presence. What sort of an operation would be necessary then?
"Indeed with the governor's dithering the paralysis has crept from Sopore to Srinagar itself. Till April, the security forces used to enter and search whichever place they had reason to believe was being used by terrorists as a hide-out or a meeting place. In the following months, they were kept from entering Hazratbal, the medical and engineering colleges and other places. The result has been predictable. The terrorists and their civilian front-men have now a large presence at these sites and they have made arrangements so that, should the armed forces now attempt to storm the places, government must risk substantial civilian casualties..."
Now, this was not foresight. It is what I was being told by intelligence officers. They had been sending reports to this effect to every high quarter. It is because they were receiving absolutely no response at all to their warnings that they had reached out to others.
At the top, the persons agreed with everything, said they saw the gravity of the situation, that they would take requisite action swiftly, and did absolutely nothing.
I cannot pretend to have been shocked. I cannot even pretend that I was taken in by their "agreeing with everything": I have learnt that this is their way of avoiding the bother of going into the matter any further. I cannot even pretend that their deciding nothing, their just sitting-transfixed as possums was any surprise. But I was perturbed: The matters were so urgent, the officers were not getting a hearing. I, therefore, kept going back, and urging others to seize the matter. To no effect.
By late September-early October, communication between Srinagar and the home ministry had broken down completely. Mr Rajesh Pilot, the George Fernandes of the current round, who had wrecked so much by his bullishness, who along with Mr Farooq Abdullah had sponsored Gen (Retired) K V Krishna Rao, was by now blaming Gen Rao for the state of affairs; Gen Rao in turn was letting it be known that he had no time for junior ministers from Delhi. Mr Chavan was still in sulk. Everything, therefore, depended on Mr Rao. He saw how dear the 'personality clashes' were proving for the country. But habits ingrained deep by a life-time of lying low had left him little inclination to intervene. Mr Arjun Singh left him no time.
At about this time intelligence agencies reported that arms were being stored in the police barracks adjoining the Hazratbal mosque. And, that the barracks and the shrine were being used by the terrorists to 'interrogate' and torture those they charged with being informers. Even if the shrine is out of bounds, at least raid and clean up the barracks, the intelligence agencies urged. The proposal was vetoed. If not a raid, at least send senior officials on a surprise inspection. Even that was not done.
On October 14, the terrorists held what was virtually an exhibition of arms and ammunition they had piled up inside the shrine. This too was reported. Nothing was done. Then, it seems, came reports that the militants were going to whisk away otherwise damage the relic or the mosque. Then the army was asked to cordon off the place.
But three things were apparent at once. There was no plan about what was to be done after the cordoning, nothing had been decided about what the final objectives of the siege were going to be: To save the relic? To nab the militants? Yet the honour of the army, indeed of the country had been committed.
Second, Delhi still had no time. Don't ask me, I am completely out of it - that was Mr Pilot's refrain, Mr Chavan had not stepped forth: Mr Rao has left things to Mr Pilot -- that was his premise. Mr Rao in turn was busy - with the re-entry of Mr Asoke Sen, with scotching Mr Arjun Singh, with fobbing off the troubles in Karnataka, with fobbing off the pulling and tugging of rivals in Delhi, with bringing about a truce between Mr ND Tiwari and Mr Jitendra Prasad so that the list for UP could be put out... It was not till the fourth day of the siege that he found time to hear the officers.
The third fact was even worse. Every hour showed that the coterie of officers around Gen Rao was acting at cross purposes with the army. The moment the siege was laid it was decided, and announced, that water and electricity be cut off. In fact, they were not cut off till two-and-a-half days later by the army taking the matter in its own hands. We do not rule out force, said the corps commander. Forces shall not enter the shrine at all, said Gen Rao. On October 23, water supply was restored, and on the 24th, it was announced that food would be sent in -- the army had not been consulted about either decision.
The decisions were being taken, the 'negotiations' were being conducted by persons about whose tenacity, judgement, inclination there were gravest apprehensions among officials in Delhi. In their hands and Gen Rao's. They had many concerns, the country's interest must have been one of these. But their dominant concern was that they, and no one else was, and remained in charge. A scuttling of the decision of no less than the PM's just a few weeks earlier had been symptomatic. Mr Pilot had recommended the appointment of Mr K P S Gill as DGP, J&K. He had sent the file directly to the Prime Minister -- that he had not routed it through the home minister too had been symptomatic. Having been given the impression that his appointment was through, Mr Gill started discussions in Delhi about the state of affairs in the Valley and about what he would be doing. The Prime Minister eventually cleared the file, noting that he agreed with the proposal in principle, but adding that the home minister may also see. The file remained in transit for two days.
An authority in the highest echelons in Delhi (the person's identity seems to have been established conclusively) not only alerted the clique in Srinagar -- You will be nobodies, Mr Gill listens to no one -- he suggested the way out for them. The Governor had the 'constitutional authority' to appoint to the post an officer from within the state, he noted. The appointment of a local-cadre officer was swiftly announced, and the orders about Mr Gill scuttled.
During the tenure of Mr Jagmohan and of Mr G C Saxena, there was an inner group which decided things -- it included key persons from the army, military and civilian intelligence, the paramilitary and civil administration. That group has little authority now; and in a word, has been replaced by those officials. And it is not as if these latter are the fingers of one hand.
Yet decisions of the greatest moment -- the decisions which shall determine the fate of our country -- are in their hands. The sixth day into the siege, the standing committee of the N I C was called to meet. Some counselled 'utmost restraint' -- they did not spell out what it meant, and what else was the government doing in any case but be 'restrained'? Mr Biju Patnaik counselled either of two options impartially! Send the fellows packing to Pakistan, the world would then know, he said, or strorm the place. Mr Chandrashekhar said he was for neither course being determined in Delhi, such things ought to be left to the men on the spot.
It was not evident what precise level of devolution he had in mind. But the Prime Minister seized on what Mr Chandrashekhar had said. And Mr Rao wanted to assure all present that he had himself spoken to the governor that morning, and had assured him that the Governor was in charge. There would be no interference.
Several participants in the meeting were greatly troubled. It is not just that people on the spot working to cross purposes. It is that people on the spot can decide the logistics, the timing etc., of a specified option. How can they decide the option itself? The consequences of storming the structure, and of letting the terrorists go, will be very different -- they will range from effects on the morale of the forces and our surviving as one country to our foreign relations. The corps commnder on the spot, the governor cannot decide among such vastly different options. That was obvious. Yet the way Mr Rao seized upon Mr Chandrashekhar's observations, and 'summed up' the meeting, left participants feeling that once again devolution had dissolved into abdication.
There were a dozen things to convey -- that negotiations ought to be entrusted to officials who have been specifically trained to conduct them; that the Prime Minister must himself hear the assessment of the corps commander, of the officer in charge of state intelligence, of the governor, that he must hear them one-to-one. But no one could effectively convey these to him. "He will agree with everything..." said one. "He will misuse any meeting in private", said the other. "Who can push a string?" exclaimed the third.
Even though the situation has been allowed to deteriorate to this terrible extent, the country had sufficient competence to handle it -- human, technical, material. But whether that competence will at all be allowed to act depends on people whose competence, inclinations, priorities are attuned to anything but the peril our country is in.
The principal leaders taken together are from Mrs Gandhi's court. Taking orders, passing on decisions, obedience, in fact feigning obedience -- these are the skills that their years in those quarters honed, not that of taking decisions themselves. And their overwhelming concern too is not the peril of the country, but the other courtier -- their dread is not that the country might be broken but that this other fellow may trip them; their aspiration is not that our country be strong and vibrant, it is to plant the tale about that rival in the quarters. That is one factor which accounts for the blundering.
And there are the stratagems they picked up from Mrs Gandhi: Never have the sturdy and independent as colleagues; and never disturb them when they are quarreling and plotting to pull each other down. The consequence is before us: Squabbles of Mr Pilot and Mr Chavan, of Mr Pilot and Gen Rao... -- all have been allowed to fester. And suddenly that is the 'team' which must handle Hazratbal.
Notice too the doggedness with which that other stratagem has been applied -- of having only innocuous men in positions of authority: To the point that today we have a President who cannot give much advice, to say nothing of direction; a Vice-President so decent that he can be depended on never to be stern; an external affairs minister who is so totally dependent; a home minister who is a man of integrity but, how shall we put it?, so self-effacing and reticent; a defence minister who isn't there at all... But the end will be the same as it was in Mrs Gandhi's case: Everyone is too weak to hurt the Prime Minister, but no one is strong enough to help him either. Yet this is the 'team' that must suddenly handle Hazaratbal.
And, as if such hands were not unsteady enough, there are our intellectuals. Mr Pilot, himself an intellectual of note, recently set up a think-tank of intellectuals on Kashmir. Just a few days ago they declared, 'New hope in Kashmir.' And they named a group which, in their view, was promising focal point for commencing a dialogue. That group is today in the forefront of calling for processions to break the siege and liberate the shrine -- in the forefront of urging action that will help the terrorists. But, perhaps I judge too hastily -- the intellectuals haven't quite spoken since the terrorists took over the shrine.
For many of our papers too the siege is but a spectator sport. One paper finds the siege of the terrorists symbolic of the siege of the people of Kashmir Another focuses on cruelties of our forces -- not a word about what the jawans have to go through. Suddenly everyone is repeating the phrases of the Jamaat propagandists -- 'the holiest of shrines in Kashmir.' But till just last year the shrine was the special target of the venom of the Jamaat -- partly because worshipping relics is entirely impermissible in orthodox Islam, it being condemned as a species of idolatory; partly because of Shia-Sunni animosities; partly because the shrine had come to be associated so much with Sheikh Abdullah's cult. But 'the holiest' it suddenly is. 'But it isn't just the rulers , and the intellectuals, and the press. We contribute our mite no less: See the people throng to bazars, see them vie for tickets to Michael Jackson's concert -- is this a people concerned that the crown of their country is close to being sawn away?
The nemesis thus -- not just of the politics of our rulers, not just of the discourse and perceptions of our intellectuals and pressmen, the nemesis of our own ways.
If the country comes out of this episode with honor it will be in spite of us, and only because of the very forces our intellectuals and pressmen deride.
The Observer
October 27, 1993
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