21. July 2010 by admin.

Gandhi - ‘Mahatma’ or Flawed Genius? National Leader or Manipulative Politician? Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 in a stately and handsome three-storied home in Porbandar, grandson of the chief administrator of the small Princely State in coastal Gujarat. Acknowledging that he was born into a family of politicians, always involved in secret alliances and mutual promotions, in one letter, he wrote: “I knew then, and know better now, that much of my father’s time was taken up in mere intrigue.” In another letter to his nephew, Chaganlal, he acknowledged the notoriety of his political family: “…that is, we are known to belong to a band of robbers”. It is to Gandhi’s credit that he saw his family for what it was, and attempted to transcend it’s narrow Modh Bania outlook; but often, subconsciously learned behavior dies hard. The tendency towards backroom wheeling and dealing did not entirely escape Gandhi himself as he rose to become the Indian National Congress’s most influential political leader. (See Collected Works, vol. 24, p.170, vol. 12, p.381) Although most biographies of Gandhi focus on Gandhi’s political career after he returned from England in early 1915, and begin with his involvement in the Civil Disobedience Movement from the early 1920s, it is important to note that Gandhi arrived on the National Scene rather late, and in the first half of his political life was considerably beholden to the Raj. At a time when literacy in British India was barely 8%, Gandhi enjoyed the rare option of studying in Britain and spent the years 1888-1893 in London before taking employment in South Africa. Although Gandhi became politically active in South Africa, and led ‘Satyagrahas’ against unjust laws, Gandhi was hardly yet an anti-imperialist radical or revolutionary. In fact, in 1914, he was still very much in awe of the British empire, and Martin Green in his biography of Gandhi describes his state of mind as follows: “When Gandhi left South Africa, he still believed in the British empire. though tentatively. “Though Empires have gone and fallen, this empire may perhaps be an exception….it is an empire not founded on material but on spiritual foundations….the British constitution. Tear away those ideals and you tear away my loyalty to the British constitution; keep those ideals and I am ever a bondsman”.” (See Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolutionary, p. 208) It is especially notable that at the age of 45, Gandhi saw in the British empire a “spiritual foundation” - a sentiment many in the Indian Freedom Movement would have found astounding, even nauseating. As early as 1884, the most advanced Indian intellectuals were already quite clear that British rule in India was built on a foundation of economic pillage and plunder - and was devoid of any high social or moral purpose. “Nadir Shah looted the country only once. But the British loot us every day. Every year wealth to the tune of 4.5 million dollar is being drained out, sucking our very blood. Britain should immediately quit India.” So wrote the Sindh Times on May 20, 1884, a year before the Indian National Congress was born and 58 years before the ”Quit India” movement of 1942 was launched. But in 1914 Gandhi was quite far removed from the most radical elements of the Indian Freedom Movement. In 1913, poor emigrant farmers from the Punjab in California launched the Ghadar Party and released their manifesto calling for complete independence from British Rule. Several years earlier, before his internment, Tilak had cogently described the Indian condition under British colonial occupation as being utterly ruinous and degrading. Tilak, Ajit Singh, Chidambaram Pillai and their associates in the National Movement saw few redeeming qualities in the British dispensation, and saw colonial rule as being entirely inimical to India’s progress, asserting that the contradictions between the British oppressors and the Indian people were completely irreconcilable. Although Gandhi was critical of specific aspects of colonial rule, in 1914, his general outlook towards the British was more akin to that of the loyalist Princes than the most advanced of India’s national leaders. Particularly onerous was his support of the British during World War I. Even as the Ghadar Party correctly saw in WWI a great opportunity for India to deepen its opposition to the British, and liberate itself from the colonial yoke, Gandhi instead tried to mobilize Indians on behalf of the British war effort. Although many biographers of Gandhi have studiously omitted making any mention of such dishonorable aspects of Gandhi’s political life, Martin Green makes a brief reference to Gandhi’s attitude towards WWI when he was in England: “To return to London in wartime: Gandhi quickly raised his ambulance corps amongst the Indians in England. As before, he had offered his volunteers for any kind of military duty, but the authorities preferred medical workers”. Martin Green also observes: “Many of his friends did not approve the project. Olive Schreiner, who was in London, wrote him that she was struck to the heart with sorrow to hear that he had offered to serve the English government in this evil war - this wicked cause”.(See Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolutionary, p. 247) Gandhi’s ideas on non-violence did not then extend to the British Imperial War, and upon his return to India in 1915 attempted to recruit Indians for the British War effort. Gandhi’s position echoed that of the Maharajas, many of whom (like the Maharaja of Bikaner) played a pivotal role in supporting the British, both in terms of propaganda and providing troops. Gandhi’s attitude towards the empireemerges quite clearly from this statement of Martin Green:“Gandhi himself had twice volunteered for service in this war, in France and in Mesopotamia, because he had convinced himself that he owed the empire that sacrifice in return for it’s military protection.” (See Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolutionary, p. 267) Gandhi’s role in championing the British War effort did not however go unchallenged. At a time when Gandhi was still addressing “War Recruitment Melas”, Dr. Tuljaram Khilnani of Nawabshah publicly campaigned against War Loan Bonds. When Gandhi sought election to the AICC from Bombay PCC, the delegate from Sindh opposed his election in view of his support to the British war effort. The Ghadar Party was especially acerbic in it’s criticism of Gandhi and other such political leaders in the Congress who had not yet been able to sever their umbilical chord to the British Raj. But even as Gandhi was able to justify in his mind support for the imperial war, his attitude towards the revolt of Chauri Chaura (1921) brought about a very different and very harsh assessment. Labeling it a crime, he wrote thus:“God has been abundantly kind to me. He has warned me the third time that there is not yet in India that truthful and non-violent atmosphere which and which alone can justify mass disobedience….which means gentle, truthful, humble, knowing, never criminal and hateful. He warned me in 1919 when the Rowlatt Act agitation was started. Ahmedabad, Viramgam, and Kheda erred. Amritsar and Kasur erred. I retraced my steps, called it a Himalayan miscalculation, humbled myself before God and man, and stopped not merely mass civil disobedience but even my own which I knew to be civil and non-violent” . (See Collected Works, vol. 22, p.415-21) Gandhi’s Chauri Chaura decision created deep consternation in Congress circles. Subhash Chandra Bose wrote: “To sound the order of retreat just when public enthusiasm was reaching the boiling point was nothing short of a national calamity. The principal lieutenants of the Mahatma, Deshbandhu Das, Pandit Motilal Nehru and Lala Lajpat Rai, who were all in prison, shared the popular resentment. I was with the Deshbandu at the time, and I could see that he was beside himself with anger and sorrow.” (quoted from The Indian Struggle, p.90) To describe Gandhi’s decision as a “national calamity” was indeed right on the mark. To lay such stress on non-violence - that too only three years after he had been encouraging Indians to enroll in the British Army was not only shocking, it showed little sympathy towards the Indian masses who against all odds had become energized against their alien oppressors.For Gandhi to demand of the poor, downtrodden, and bitterly exploited Indian masses to first demonstrate their unmistakable commitment to non-violence before their struggle could receive with Gandhi’s approval (just a few years after he had unapologetically defended an imperial war) was simply unconscionable. Clearly, Gandhi had one standard for the Indian masses, and quite another for the nation’s colonial overlords. But this was not to be the first occasion for Gandhi to engage in such tactical and ideological hypocrisy. Although Gandhi’s defenders may disagree, not only were Gandhi’s ideas on non-violence applied very selectively, they were hardly the most appropriate for India’s situation. At no time was the British military presence in India so overwhelming that it could not have been challenged by widespread resistance from the Indian masses. Had Gandhi not called for a retreat after Chauri Chaura, it is likely that incidents such as Chauri Chaura would have occurred with much greater regularity - even increasing in frequency and intensity. This would have inevitably put tremendous pressure on the British to cut short their stay. As it is, British administrators were constrained to send back British troops as soon as possible, because many clamored to return after serving for a few years in India. Had India become too difficult to control, mutinies and dissension in the royal armies would have occurred more often, and the British would have had to cut and run, probably much sooner than in 1947.Some critics saw in Gandhi’s Chauri Chaura turnaround as indicative of his deep fear and distrust of the Indian masses - that Gandhi feared the spontaneous energy of the poor and the downtrodden more than the injustice of British rule. Certainly, the conservatism of Gandhi’s tactics lends credence to such views. As late as 1928, Gandhi resisted Nehru and Bose, and campaigned for the rejection of a resolution calling for complete independence at the session of the Indian National Congress. And unlike other leaders in the freedom struggle, Gandhi often entertained false hopes about the British. In a 1930 letter, Motilal Nehru chided Gandhi for resting his hopes on the Labor Government and the sincerity of the Viceroy. In much of Motilal Nehru’s correspondence with his son, (and with others in the Congress), there are expressions of frustration with Gandhi’s tendency towards moderation and compromise with the British authorities and his reluctance to broaden and accelerate the civil disobedience movement. There are also references in Motilal Nehru’s letters to how large contributions from the Birlas were enabling certain political cliques (led by Madan Mohan Malviya - a close confidante of Gandhi) to “capture” the Congress. That Gandhi was close to the Birlas is now widely acknowledged, and it is not unlikely that his conservatism was either encouraged by them, or may have been coincidental but was compatible with their desire for restrained and moderate resistance to the British. Motilal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose both complained of Gandhi’s tendency to ignore party resolutions when they went against his wishes, and to work with cliques rather than consult and cooperate with all party members. In a letter dated March 28, 1939, from Manbhum, Bihar - Bose complained bitterly to Nehru of Gandhi’s quiet campaign of non-cooperation with him. Bose had just won the Presidency of the Indian National Congress, defeating Gandhi’s chosen nominee, Dr Pattabhi. At first, Gandhi had tried to talk Bose out of running for the post, and tried to work out a backroom deal for Dr Pattabhi’s ascension (as he had done on many earlier occasions). But Bose was determined to seek the mandate of Congress activists, and won by a handsome margin in an election where the official machinery of the Congress had put all its weight behind Gandhi’s hand-picked nominee. Bose’s historic election signified the mood of the Indian masses, who were becoming increasingly impatient with Gandhi’s tepid nationalism. Bose had always strived to accelerate the freedom struggle, and the mass of Congress Party workers appreciated his sincerity and unswerving commitment to the national cause. In many ways, he was the best person to lead the Congress, with intellect and vision that exceeded Gandhi.But Gandhi, along with Patel and Nehru formed a tactical block against Bose, and prevented him from functioning effectively as leader of India’s preeminent national organization. In vain did Bose make his case with Nehru, who remained unmoved, and eventually, it led to Bose having to quit the Congress, and organize outside it’s tedious confines. One of the most problematical aspects of Gandhi’s philosophical disposition was his emphasis on matters religious over practical. In a 1918 speech concerning India’s future he espoused a position that truly secular Indians ought to find rather troubling: “I feel that India’s mission is different from that of other countries, India is fitted for the religious supremacy of the world….India can conquer all by soul-force”. (See Collected Works, vol. 14, p.53) To this day, Western analysts continue to evaluate India as though its only contribution to world civilization is in matters of religious exotica and spirituality. And many Indians unquestioningly accept such one-sided formulations. But to pigeon-hole India as this exotic land - full of religious devotion and piety does great injustice not only to India’s rich history of secular pursuits, but it also leaves many rational, scientific and technologically-oriented Indians bereft of any philosophical affirmation and intellectual leadership. On more than one occasion, Gandhi would begin with statements such as “God has warned me”, or “…spoken as such…..”. Coming from any ordinary person, such claims would normally be viewed with great suspicion and skepticism because they can only be accepted on faith, never independently verified. In fact, any ordinary person who claimed as often to have a ‘hotline’ to ‘God’ might even be seen as a lunatic, as someone prone to hallucinations. But from Gandhi, such utterances were quietly tolerated or accepted. That Gandhi espoused such religious-centric views is not surprising considering the milieu in which he was raised and educated. Most British-educated Indians were kept completely ignorant of India’s rich history of rational thought and (pre-industrial) scientific endeavour. So it was inevitable that Indians would seek inspiration from religious texts - Hindus from the Gita, Muslims from the Quran, Sikhs from the Granth Sahib. But unlike Tilak who derived from the Gita, a call to action, a call to rise against injustice, Gandhi found in the Gita an appeal to pacifist idealism. In a world that was rife with violence, Gandhi’s insistence on non-violent purity was, in practical terms, an exercise in infantile futility. Not only did it delay the onset of freedom, it led to particularly disastrous consequences during partition, and in Kashmir. Whereas the Muslim League was armed, the Congress was not and entirely dependant on the British police and military apparatus. When the partition riots first began in West Punjab and East Bengal, the Congress had no means to defend the hapless victims. Being unable to prevent the slaughter and rape, or protect the stream of Hindu and Sikh refugees, it lost the moral authority to prevent a communal backlash in India. A similiar situation prevailed in Kashmir. The Muslim League sent in its armed hooligans even as Kashmir’s most popular political party, the National Conference had decided to throw in its lot with secular India. In Baluchistan and the Frontier Province, majority sentiment was in favor of unity with India. Had the Congress been armed, it could have at least held out for for a better deal, and at least some of the horrors of partition may have been averted. There were many other serious incongruities in Gandhi’s world view. As one reads through Gandhi’s letters and sundry writings, time and time again, he uses the term ‘Dharma ‘in the context of how Indians should behave vis-a-vis the British, and the term “right” in the context of what the British could do to their Indian subjects. In Gandhi’s ethical framework, not only did the conquered have very limited rights, they were burdened with all types of duties under the rubric of ‘Dharma ‘. Conquered Indians were repeatedly lectured on how they must be concerned with the highest morality when dealing with their British oppressors - even as the British conquerors were little restricted by any ‘Dharmic’ pressures, and enjoyed the ultimate authority to take away the life of Indians they chose to put on trial for ’sedition’.In all other theories of democratic liberation, ethical and moral codes emanated from one essential principle - which is the fundamental right of enslaved people to be free from alien exploitation. But in Gandhi’s moral framework, the need of the Indian masses to liberate themselves from a brutally unjust colonial occupation did not come first, it was subject to all kinds of one-sided conditionalities. For instance, in the context of Bhagat Singh’s hanging, even as Gandhi condemned the British government, he observed: “The government certainly had the right to hang these men. However, there are some rights which do credit to those who possess them only if they are enjoyed in name only.” (See Collected Works, vol. 45, p.359-61, in Gujarati) Whether Gandhi was confusing the term “right” with the term authority or might, or he actually granted the colonial government the “right” to execute Indian freedom fighters is hard to tell. But in general, it appears that Gandhi had not worked out in his mind the true essence of natural human rights, and desirable human duties in a civilized society. Nor had he come to realize that in any democratic dispensation, governments cannot be assigned any inherent rights, for they are only the proxies of the people who elect them, and they only have duties and obligations to ensure the rights of the people, and to prevent the exercise of those individual rights that might violate, restrict or inveigh on the rights of others. In the context of Bhagat Singh, the British government was under no popular obligation to execute him. On the contrary, his actions had widespread support, and there were fervent appeals for the commutation of his sentence. In such a context, Gandhi could have only spoken of British authority - and that too a stolen and usurped authority to execute Bhagat Singh. Had he been truly moved against Bhagat Singh’s death sentence, he would have spoken of how the British were able to execute him only because of their military might - that their action had no ethical or moral sanction. A true revolutionary - (such as Bhagat Singh) would not have granted the exploitative colonial regime any “rights” whatsoever. In fact, it would have been the right of the Indian revolutionary to resist colonial rule by any means necessary. If Indians obeyed British orders, it was only out of practical necessity, out of an instinct to survive. But if some were prepared to risk their lives in confronting the British military occupation, it was their inalienable right to do so. Indians had duties and obligations towards each other, but none to the British occupiers and exploiters. From a revolutionary, moral, ethical, or national perspective, there was no necessity to grant the British colonial authorities any rights whatsoever, because their very presence was illegal and obtained without the democratic consent of the Indian masses. Indians, therefore, had no moral duty, or ‘Dharma‘, obliging them towards obeying their orders, or respecting the lives of the Britishers who had occupied Indian territory by force. But Gandhi was never completely able to overcome a deeply ingrained tendency towards tolerating or accepting the “rights” he saw intrinsically bound with authority figures. In the feudal order that Gandhi was born in, the masses had no inherent rights, only duties towards the sovereign. And Gandhi was never able to completely reject this iniquitous paradigm. He was never fully able to complete the transition to a democratic order in which citizens enjoyed inalienable rights in addition to bearing duties towards each other. He did not fathom that in a democratic society, the role of the state was to ensure the rights of the people, not to exercise any arbitrary hegemony over them. Moreover, in a democratic state, the masses could not be burdened with unnecessary duties, only those that obliged them to respect the rights of others, and required them to provide services in exchange for what they received from the state, or others in society. While many of the qualities Gandhi sought to elicit from the masses were commendable and desirable qualities to strive for - one could not make such qualities conditions for granting the masses certain fundamental rights - such as freedom from hunger, homelessness and exploitation. And if the poor masses were enjoined to be more noble in character, then such requirements also had to be made mandatory for authority figures. In these (and other such) ways, Gandhi’s formulations were theoretically and practically inadequate.While there will always be admirers of Gandhi, intimate contact with his record reveals him to be a seriously flawed leader, popular more due to the particular conditions and circumstances of colonial (or post-colonial) India (and his unwavering leadership during the Quit India Movement), rather than the visionary or enlightened nature of his general tactics and formulations. The India of the future might well need to look beyond the myth and mystique of “Mahatma Gandhi” if it hopes to build a more just and harmonious order.

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Gandhi, India | Print | No Comments »

29. October 2009 by admin.

Godse (Gandhi’s assassin) is often a misunderstood character. He is referred to as a Hindu fanatic. It is often hard to understand Godse because the Government of India had suppressed information about him. His court statements, letters etc. were all banned from the public until recently.
 
Judging from his writings one thing becomes very clear - He was no fanatic. His court statements are very well read out and indicate a calm and collected mental disposition. He never even once speaks ill about Gandhi as a person, but only attacks Gandhi’s policies which caused ruin and untold misery to Hindus. Another interesting point to note is that Godse had been working with the Hindu refugees fleeing from Pakistan. He had seen the horrible atrocities committed on them. Many women had their hands cut off, nose cut off, even little girls had been raped mercilessly. Despite this Godse did not harm even single Muslim in India which he could easily have.
So it would be a grave mistake to call him a Hindu fanatic.

Let us start by studying the motive behind Godse’s act. By seeing the nature of the assassination in public space and Godse’s act of turning himself over to the Police, we can see that Godse did not do this for personal reasons. He very well knew that he would be hanged and his name would be disgraced as Gandhi was considered a saint. And again Godse could have ran away and escaped punishment. But he did the reverse. He called a police officer and courted arrest. Before we proceed, it would be wise to understand the backdrop of the assassination.

The central government had taken a decision — Pakistan will not be given Rs 55 crores. On January 13 Gandhi started a fast unto death that Pakistan must be given the money. On January 13, the central government changed its earlier decision and announced that Pakistan would be given the amount. On January 13, Nathuram decided to assassinate Gandhi. Nathuram Godse was a learned man, very sharp and intelligent - editor of “Agrani” (one of the most famous newspaper of that time - with Nana Aapte). In his last editorial of “Agrani” which he changed overnight - he said “Gandhi must be stopped - at any cost” and he justified why Gandhiji’s assassination was not only inevitable but also a delayed action, that shud’ve happened LONG AGO. In Nathuram’s words -   “ I don’t refute Gandhi’s theory of non-violence. He may be a saint but he is not a politician. His theory of non-violence denies self-defence and self-interest. The non-violence that defines the fight for survival as violence is a theory not of non-violence but of self-destruction.The division of the nation was an unnecessary decision. What was the percentage of the Muslim population as compared to the population of the nation? There was no need for a separate nation. Had it been a just demand, Maulana Azad would not have stayed back in India. But because Jinnah insisted and because Gandhi took his side, India was divided, in spite of opposition from the nation, the Cabinet. An individual is never greater than a nation. In a democracy you cannot put forward your demands at knife-point. Jinnah did it and Gandhi stabbed the nation with the same knife. He dissected the land and gave a piece to Pakistan. We did picket that time but in vain. The Father of our Nation went to perform his paternal duties for Pakistan! Gandhi blackmailed the cabinet with his fast unto death. His body, his threats to die are causing the destruction — geographical as well as economical — of the nation. Today, Muslims have taken a part of the nation, tomorrow Sikhs may ask for Punjab. The religions are again divided into castes, they will demand sub-divisions of the divisions. What remains of the concept of one nation, national integration? Why did we fight the British in unison for independence? Why not separately? Bhagat Singh did not ask only for an independent Punjab or Subhash Chandra Bose for an independent Bengal? I am going to assassinate him in the open, before the public, because I am going to do it as my duty. If I do it surreptitiously, it becomes a crime in my own eyes. I will not try to escape, I will surrender and naturally I will be hanged. One assassination, one hanging. I don’t want two executions for one assassination and I don’t want your involvement, participation or company. (This was for Nana-Apte and Veer Savarkar as they were against ghandhi’s policies too, Godse wanted to assassinate gandhi all by himself and took promise from Nana Apte that he will continue helping Veer Savarkar in rebuilding India as a strong free nation.) On January 30, I reached Birla Bhavan at 12 pm. Gandhi was sitting outside on a cot enjoying the sunshine. Vallabhbhai Patel’s granddaughter was sitting at his feet. I had the revolver with me. I could have assassinated him easily then, but I was convinced that his assassination was to be a punishment and a sentence against him, and I would execute him. I wanted witnesses for the execution but there were none. I did not want to escape after the execution as there was not an iota of guilt in my mind. I wanted to surrender, but surrender to whom? There was a good crowd to collect for the evening prayers. I decided on the evening of January 30 as the date for Gandhi’s execution. Gandhi climbed the steps and came forward. He had kept his hands on the shoulders of the two girls. I wanted just three seconds more. I moved two steps forward and faced Gandhi. Now I wanted to take out the revolver and salute him for whatever sacrifice and service he had made for the nation. One of the two girls was dangerously close to Gandhi and I was afraid that she might be injured in the course of firing. As a precautionary measure I went one more step ahead, bowed before him and gently pushed the girl away from the firing line. The next moment I fired at Gandhi. Gandhi was very weak, there was a feeble sound like ‘aah’ (There are proof that Gandhi did NOT say “Hey Raam” at that time - it’s just made up stuff ) from him and he fell down. After the firing I raised my hand holding the revolver and shouted, ‘Police, police’. For 30 seconds nobody came forward and I scanned the crowd. I saw a police officer. I signalled to him to come forward and arrest me. He came and caught my wrist, then a second man came and touched the revolver… I let it go…” Forgotten Heros: [Veer Savarkar, Lala lajpatrai, Subhashchandra Bose, Bhagatsingh, Rajguru, Tansirani, Shivaji, Rana Pratap and thousands of other freedom fighters] Dirty politicians will only teach us only about gandhi and one sided ahimsa.

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Gandhi, History, India | Print | No Comments »

28. October 2009 by admin.

Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it Gandhi’s Muslim Appeasement It is now well known that Muslim appeasement was an inseparable part of Gandhi’s quack doctrine of Non-violence. But many do not know why he, while he was in South Africa, adopted, or compelled to adopt this dirty policy in 1908. At that time the South African government imposed an unjust tax of £3 on every Indian living in South Africa and Gandhi initiated talks with South African government on this matter. But the Muslims did not support this move and were displeased with Gandhi. In addition to that Gandhi, in one occasion, made some critical comments on Islam while he was speaking at a gathering. Furthermore, he tried to make a comparative estimate of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, which made the Muslims furious. A few days later, on 10th February 1908, a group of Muslims under the leadership of a Pathan called Mir Alam entered Gandhi?s house and beat him mercilessly. When Gandhi fell on the ground the Muslim attackers kicked him right and left and beat him with sticks. They also threatened to kill him. From this incident onward, Gandhi stopped to make any critical comment on Muslims as well as on Islam. According to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, this incident was a milestone in Gandhi’s life and afterwards Gandhi began to over look even the most heinous crime committed by the Muslims. An example would help the reader to understand the matter. On 23rd December 1926, a Muslim assassin called Abdul Rashid stabbed Swami Shraddhananda to death, when the swami was ill and lying on his bed. The reader may recall that Swami Shraddhananda was a pracharak (whole time worker) of Arya Samaj and he started a Suddhai Yajna to bring the converted Muslims of this country back to Hinduism. But his activity was detested by the Muslims. A couple of months earlier a Muslim woman came to the Swami and expressed her desire to return to Hinduism with her children. However her husband brought an allegation of abduction in the court of law against the Swami. But the court quashed the allegation and set the Swami free. The incident turned the Muslims extremely furious and within a few days Abdul Rashid assassinated him. After a few days of this incident, Gandhi went to Gauhati to deliver his speech at the national conference of Indian National Congress. The atmosphere was depressed and gloomy due to unusual death of Shraddhananda. But Gandhi made everyone dumbfounded and began his speech by addressing the assassin Abdul Rashid as “Bhai Abdul Rashid”. Without caring for the reaction of the listeners, he continued, “Now you will perhaps understand why I have called Abdul Rashid a brother, and I repeat it. I do not even regard him as guilty of Swami’s murder. Guilty indeed are those who excited feeling of hatred against one another.” Thus he indirectly held Swami Shraddhananda responsible for his murder, as he was propagating hatred through his Suddhi Yajna. Moreover, he wrote in the obituary note, “He (the Swami) lived a hero. He died a hero.” In other words, if a Hindu falls victim to the knife of a Muslim’s assassin, Hindus should consider it a heroic death. It should be pointed out here that the said policy of Muslim appeasement originated by Gandhi, under the garb of (pseudo) secularism was responsible for the Partition of the country in 1947. Many of our countrymen, still today, firmly believe that Gandhi was against partition as in the public meetings, he used to say, ?Vivisect me, before you vivisect India?. When he was saying this in public meetings, he was expressing just the opposite view through his writings. The reader may recall that, on March 26, 1940, the leaders of the Muslim League raised the issue of creation of Pakistan as a separate homeland for them. Hardly a couple of weeks later, supporting demand, Gandhi wrote, ?Like other group of people in this country, Muslims also have the right of self determination. We are living here as a joint family and hence any member has the right to get separated.? (Harijan, April 6, 1940). A couple of years later, he also wrote, ?If majority of the Muslims of this country maintain that they are a different nation and there is nothing common with the Hindus and other communities, there is no force on the earth that can alter their view. And if on that basis, they demand partition that must be carried out. If Hindus dislike it, they may oppose it?, (Harijan, April 18, 1942). The reader should also recall that the Congress Working Committee, in its session on June 12, 1947, decided to place the partition issue to be placed before the All India Congress Committee (AICC) for a debate and the AICC approved the issue in its session held on June 14-15, 1947. In the beginning of the debate, veteran Congress leaders like Purusottamdas Tandon, Govindaballav Panth, Chaitram Gidwani and Dr S Kichlu etc. placed their very convincing speeches against the motiom. Then Gandhi, setting aside all other speakers, spoke for 45 minutes supporting partition. The main theme of his deliberation was that, if Congress did not accept partition (1) other group of people or leaders would avail the opportunity and throw the Congress out of power and (2) a chaotic situation would prevail throughout the country. Many believe that, in the name of “chaotic condition”, he tacitly asked the Muslims to begin countrywide communal riot, if the Congress did not accept the partition. Till then, Sardar Patel was on the fence regarding the partition. But Gandhi’s speech turned him into a firm supporter of partition and he influenced other confused members to support the issue. In this way, Congress approved the partition issue (History of Freedom Movement in India, R C Majumdar, Vol-III, p-670). It may appear to many that, up to partition, Gandhi?s policy of nonviolence and Muslim appeasement in the name of secularism indeed harmed the country a lot. But a close look will reveal, it has done severe damage even after partition, or to speak the truth, it is causing serious damage even today. During independence, the Muslim population in undivided India was 23 per cent and this 23 per cent Muslims, got 32 per cent land area as Pakistan. The most appropriate step after partition was to carry out population transfer, or send the entire Muslim population of the divided India to Pakistan and bring all Hindus from Pakistan to India. This population transfer was included in the proposal for Pakistan by the Muslim League and after communal riot in Bihar, M A Jinnah requested the Government of India to carry out population transfer as early as possible. But Gandhi was hell bent not to undertake out the process and said that it was an impractical and fictitious proposal. Mountbatten, the then Governor General of India, was a staunch supporter of the said population exchange and advised Jawaharlal Nehru to do the same without delay. But Nehru submitted to the will of Gandhi and refrained from doing so. It is needless to say that, from the practical point of view, the said population exchange was urgently necessary and had it been carried out at that time, many problems of today would not have arisen. But due to the policy of Muslim appeasement of Gandhi, Muslims happily stayed back in this country, while Hindus had no alternative but to come to India as refugees or penniless beggars. Many of us perhaps do not know that due to strong opposition by Gandhi, “Vande Mataram” could not be accepted as the National Anthem of this country. In his early life, Gandhi had a great affinity for the song and while he was in South Africa, he wrote, “It is nobler in sentiment and sweeter than the songs of other nations. While other anthems contain sentiments that are derogatory to others, Vande Mataram is quite free from such faults. Its only aim is to arouse in us a sense of patriotism. It regards India as the mother and sings her praise.” But later on when he could discover that the Muslims dislike the song, he at once stopped singing or reciting the same at public places. Hence ultimately the “Jana Mana Gana” was selected as the National Anthem. During the debate over the matter in the Constituent Assembly, Nehru argued that Vande Mataram is not suitable to sing along with military band while Jana Gana Mana is free from this difficulty. In the present context, it should also be pointed out that Gandhi was not pleased with Tri Color, the National Flag of today’s India because the Muslims disliked the same. In this regard, Sri Nathuram Godse has narrated an incident in his “Why I Assassinated Gandhi”, which deserves to be noted in this context. During his Noakhali tour in 1946, a Congress worker put a tricolor over the temporary house where Gandhi was staying. One day an ordinary Muslim passer by objected to it and Gandhi immediately ordered his men to bring flag down. So, to please an ordinary Muslim, Gandhi did not hesitate to disgrace and dishonor the flag revered by millions of Congress workers. (pp-75-76). It should also be pointed out here that in his early life, Gandhi was very fond of the Hindi language and used to say that it was the only language having the potentiality to play the role of the national language. But to please the Muslim, he, later on tried his best to make Urdu, under the garb of Hindustani, the National Language of India. (Koenrad Elst, Gandhi and Godse, Voice of India, p89). A few months before the partition, when Hindu and Sikh refugees started to come from West Punjab in droves and crowding the refugee camps of Delhi, one day Gandhi visited a refugee camp and said, “Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo their (Hindus) existence. If they put all of us to the sword, we should court death bravely. We are destined to be born and die, then why need we feel gloomy over it? (speech delivered on April 6, 1947). In a similar occasion he said, “The few gentlemen from Rawalpindi who called upon me, asked me, What about those who still remain in Pakistan?? I asked, why they all came here (Delhi)? Why they did not die there? I still hold on to the belief that we should stick to the place where we happen to live, even if we are cruelly treated, and even killed. Let us die if the people kill us, but we should die bravely with the name of God on our tongue.? He also said, “Even if our men are killed, why should we feel angry with anybody? You should realize that even if they are killed, they have had a good and proper end? (speech delivered on November 23, 1947) In this context, Gandhi also said, “If those killed have died bravely, they have not lost anything but earned something.” They should not be afraid of death. After all, the killers will be none other than our Muslim brothers.” (Shri Nathuram Godse, Why I Assassinated Gandhi, p-92,93; as quoted by Koenrad Elst in Gandhi versus Godse, Voice of India, p-121). In another occasion when he was talking to a group of refugees, said, “If all the Punjabis were to die to the last man without killing (a single Muslim), Punjab will be immortal. Offer yourselves as nonviolent willing sacrifices.” (Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, p-385). There is no doubt that if someone reads all these utterances of Gandhi, he would take him either a fool or a lunatic, but we are worshiping him as a Mahatma or a Great Soul. Gandhi believed that Muslims were brothers of the Hindus and hence they should never take arms or wage a war against the Muslims. He used to say that the foreign policy of independent India should always be respectful to Islam and the Muslims. Moreover, independent India should never invade a Muslim country like Arabia, Turkey etc. Gandhi also said that Rana Pratap, Guru Govinda Singh, Raja Ranjit Singh and Raja Shivaji were misguided patriots because they fought war with the Muslims. In his eyes Goerge Washington, Garibaldi, Kamal Pasha, D Valera, Lenin etc. were misguided patriots as they encouraged violence. Gandhi”s utterances painting respected Hindu heroes as misguided patriots aroused widespread commotion among the Hindus. Most importantly, calling Shivaji a misguided patriots put entire Maharastra on boil. Later on, Nehru could pacify their anger partially by begging apology on behalf of Gandhi. The Muslims whenever attack a Hindu settlement, they, in addition killing innocent people, setting their houses on fire, loot and burglary as their routine work, rape Hindu women. It is evident that, they commit all such oppressions according to the instructions of the Koran, revealed by Allah. During the Muslim rule that lasted for nearly 800 years, raping Hindu women became a common affair. To save their honour and sanctity from the lecherous Muslims, millions of Hindu women used to sacrifice their lives in flames. In the wake of partition most of the Hindu families became victims of Muslim oppression and raping Hindu women was an inseparable part of their attacks. When Hindus were butchered in Noakhali in 1946, thousands of Hindu women were raped by the Muslims. Many Hindus of this country do not know, what Gandhi, the Great Soul and the Apostle of nonviolence, thought about this behavior of the Muslims. In the 6th July, 1926, edition of the Navajivan, Gandhi wrote that ?He would kiss the feet of the (Muslim) violator of the modesty of a sister? (Mahatma Gandhi, D Keer, Popular Prakashan, p-473). Just before the partition, both Hindu and Sikh women were being raped by the Muslims in large numbers. Gandhi advised them that if a Muslim expressed his desire to rape a Hindu or a Sikh lady, she should never refuse him but cooperate with him. She should lie down like a dead with her tongue in between her teeth. Thus the rapist Muslim will be satisfied soon and sooner he leave her. (D Lapierre and L Collins, Freedom at Midnight, Vikas, 1997, p-479). From the above narrations, it becomes evident that Gandhi was never moved by the sufferings and miseries of the Hindus and, on the contrary, he used to shed tears for the Muslims. His idea of Hindu-Muslim amity was also extremely biased and prejudiced. Only Hindus are supposed to make all sacrifices for it and they should endure all the oppressions and heinous crimes of the Muslims without protest. And that was the basis of Gandhian nonviolence and secularism. So a Muslim called Khlifa Haji Mehmud of Lurwani, Sind, once said ?Gandhi was really a Mohammedan? (D Keer, ibid, p-237). It should be mentioned at the very outset that Gandhi never fought for India’s freedom. The reader should recall that Gandhi was brought from South Africa by the British to sabotage India?s freedom movement and hence it was not possible for him to fight the British for freedom. On the contrary, his intention was to prolong British rule in this country and to hoodwink the Hindus, he used to say that he was fighting for Swaraj. But his concept Swaraj was entirely mystical and vague and he used equate Swaraj with Ramrajya (or the rule of Lord Ram). According to him, termination of British rule was not at all necessary to establish Swaraj and Swaraj could function well even under the British rule. So he always opposed any move for demanding complete independence from the British rule and reproached the leaders like Subhash Chandra Bose and others because they were in favour of demanding independence, One of the basic preconditions of his Swaraj was the amity between the Hindus and the Muslims. It has been pointed out earlier that his idea of Hindu-Muslim amity was extremely biased and prejudiced ? Hindus were supposed to make every sacrifice and silently endure all the oppressions and crimes of the Muslims for the sake of this unity. It is well known that, for the sake of this Hindu-Muslim unity, Gandhi supported the KHILAFAT MOVEMENT, and extremely communal agitation launched by the fanatic and orthodox Muslim leaders, the Ali brothers. In his personal capacity, Gandhi once wanted to translate Spirit of Islam by Syed Amir Ali and Muhammad?s biography Life of Mahomet by Sir W Muir, to win the hearts of the Muslims. To appease them, he used to overlook and ignore even heinous crimes committed by the Muslims and considered ?Allahu Akbar? as a national slogan. He held the view that, Hindus should die but never should kill a Muslim. Many used to consider him a more devout Muslim than even Mohammad Ali Jinnah. To many. it would appear unbelievable that Gandhi used to advise the Amir of Afghanistan not to make peace with India and, on the contrary, instigated him to launch jihad against India or invade India. Moreover, he advised the Muslims of this country that, at such a situation, they should join the Afghan army and fight against India. He used to say that “Muslims are bullies and the Hindus are cowards” and advise the Muslims to be more cruel and violent during their attack on the Hindus. On the other hand, he suggested the Hindus to remain non-violent and not to defend their attack. He used to maintain the view that Hindus must not strike a Muslim even to save their lives. In the wake of partition, when the Muslims started slaughtering the innocent Hindus of Punjab, Sardar Vallabbhai Patel asked the Hindus to defend their lives. But that displeased Gandhi and he reproached Patel for his advice. In 1946, Gandhi did not go to Noakhali when the Hindus were being butchered there and he went there when the bloodshed was over. On the contrary, when the Hindus of Bihar started retaliating the Noakhali killings, he at once went to Bihar to save the Muslims.. Due to his extraordinary affection for the Muslims, many used to mention him as Mohammad Gandhi. To many, it would appear unbelievable that Gandhi used to advise the Hindus (for the sake of nonviolence) not to take part in any short of physical exercise and body-building activities as, in that case, it would have been difficult for the Muslims to oppress and massacre the physically strong Hindus. In fact, he closed most of the gymnasiums and other body-building centres in Gujarat. Gandhi strongly believed that Muslim rule was better for India than the British rule and in the wake of independence, he requested the British to transfer the power to the Muslims. At the same time, he started to look for an efficient Muslim emperor to rule this country. But doing so much for the Muslims, he remained a loathsome kafir in the eyes of the Muslims as Koran does not advocate Hindu-Muslim unity. On the contrary, Allah advises the Muslims to kill non-Muslim kafirs whenever and wherever they could be found (Koran ? 9:5). So the Muslim leader Mohammad Ali said, “In my eye, Gandhi is worse than a fallen Mussalman.” It has been pointed out earlier, what kind of vile and treacherous role Gandhi played during independence. After independence, both Gandhi and Nehru started vehemently to erase all the symbols that carry Hindu heritage. They declined to rename divided India as ?Hindustan? and started to mention it as non-Pakistan and ultimately they settled at ?Indian Republic.? But most of the countries in the world are known according to the name of the majority of the population, e.g. France, Germany, England, Ireland, Turkey, Afghanistan and so on. While commenting on Gandhi and his policy of Muslim appeasement, in the name of nonviolence, Sri Aurobinda once said, “India will be free to the extent it succeeds in shaking off the spell of Gandhism.” The present topic will remain incomplete if we do not discuss Gandhi’s deeds during the jihad launched by the Moplahs in Kerala in 1920, against the Hindus. At that time Kerala was a Princely state called Travancore under the Madras Presidency. Malabar was a small district of Travancore having a population of 3 million out of which 1 million were Muslims known as Moplahs, which was a corrupt Mollah. Historians believe that once upon a time Arab traders and their sailors and crews settled in the district, who married local women and grew into a sizable population of Muslims. These Moplahs were mostly illiterate and poor and nearly all of them used to earn their bread as agricultural labourers in the fields of well off Nambudri Brahmins. Like Muslims of other parts of the world, they were extremely cruel and used to declare jihad against the Hindus on flimsy ground and attack Hindus of the locality. From the beginning of the English rule, they launched 35 attacks within 1920 AD. In August, 1921, when Gandhi was touring Assam, Silhet and Silchar, Moplahs organized a severe and unprovoked attack on 20th August on the Hindus. Large scale slaughtering the Hindus, looting their properties, setting their houses on fire, raping Hindu women, desecration of Hindu temples and forceful conversion went on without any respite. The cruelty, brutality and horridness of the attack were far-reaching and incomprehensible. At that time, there were two options before the Hindus ? either conversion to Islam or death. A Muslim called Ali Musaliar was leading the attack. To bring the situation under control, British government declared martial law in the district but the rampage continued up to December. So the British had to prolong the martial law up to February 24, 1922. According to government records, 2300 Hindus were dead and 1650 Hindus were severely wounded, although the actual figures were more than double of the above account. In many occasions, Gandhi, the apostle of nonviolence, decried forceful conversion as a terribly violent act. But regarding the forceful conversion by the Moplahs, he preferred to remain mum. Moreover, he propagated the lie in Young India that the Moplahs, during the said rampage, had converted only a single Hindu to Islam. Most shamefully he described the killing of the innocent Hindus by the Moplahs as a heroic deed and he repeatedly said, ?Muslims are bullies and the Hindus are cowards.? Moreover, he used to say that the Moplahs were not guilty of killing the Hindus and, guilty were the Hindus who infuriated and provoked the Moplahs who had had no other option but to kill the Hindus. In addition to that, he asked the Hindus, for the sake of humanity, not to retaliate. There is no doubt that Gandhi, by safe guarding the Moplahs, instigated the Muslims to launch attacks on the Hindus in Punjab, Bengal and in other places in the wake of partition. More shamefully, Gandhi deplored the British administration for taking stern action to suppress the jihad by the Moplahs. Moreover, he declared Moplahs, who fought with the British army, as freedom fighters and said, ?The Moplahs are among the bravest in the land. They are god-fearing. Their bravery must be transformed into purest gold.??Thus ?He represented the perpetrators of vile deeds as god-fearing people! Was it not a travesty of religion to described men who murder and rape in the name of religion as god-fearing? ? Gandhi thus described the Moplah ferocity as the ignorant fanaticism of the Moplah brothers, and the Hindu mentality as cowardliness.? (Mahatma Gandhi, D Keer, ibid, pp-402). The matter did not end here. Due to perpetual insistence by Gandhi, the Moplah rogues, who died in police encounter, were later on declared martyrs of the freedom struggle and were allowed to receive allowance, like other freedom fighters, from the government exchequer, after independence and the practice is still in vogue. After the carnage by the Moplahs, Gandhi started raising money from common people to help, not the Hindu victims, but for the Muslim perpetrators. Following the tradition set by Gandhi, the so called secular politicians and secular media in Mumbai observe Moplah Day every year and take out procession and hold public meetings. Many believe that it would have been immensely beneficial for the country, had Gandhi been assassinated at that time. So, it is not difficult to understand that, had Gandhi been alive today, he would declare the killing of innocent Hindus in Kashmir, bombing the Hindu temples and killing innocent devotees, killing the Hindu pilgrims at Amarnath etc. as the bravery of the Muslims and cowardliness of Hindu victims. It also becomes evident that why today?s so called secular politicians and their media held the Hindu victims of Godhra responsible for their own death and remained silent about the Muslims criminals, as a policy of Muslim appeasement. And by following the foot-steps of Gandhi, these secular and leftist political leaders raised money for the Muslims of Gujarat, not for the Hindu victims of Godhra. Therefore many believe that Gandhi?s naked Muslim appeasement during the Moplah incident was enough to assassinate him in 1920s and that would have saved this country from many misfortunes, later on brought by Gandhi.

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Gandhi, History, Islam, Hindus & Hinduism, India | Print | No Comments »

17. October 2009 by admin.

How Gandhi and Nehru assassinated the Hindu nation. Both were a creation of the British to do their dirty work for them on the hapless Hindus. I have posted excerpts from  Eclipse of the Hindu Nation: Gandhi and his freedom struggle by Radha Rajan

Excerpts:
 
When Savarkar was exonerated on charges of criminal conspiracy to kill Gandhi, one of the conditions during his release was that he should not be given any public reception nor should there be any public demonstration of rejoicing. This condition was inspired by Gandhi’s exhortation in 1937-38 to the political prisoners of Bengal not to be a party to any celebration, not to hold meetings or make speeches or hold celebratory processions.
The political doctrine, that Hindu nationalists must be neither seen nor heard, was beginning to gain ground. Savarkar was arrested again on 5th April, 1950 in the wake of the extremely foolish Nehru-Liaquat Pact, which like its infamous predecessor, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, gave more than it got in return. According to the Pact, the governments of India and Pakistan agreed that each shall ensure to the minorities throughout its territories, complete equality of citizenship, irrespective of religion; a full sense of security in respect of life, culture, property and personal honour.
It also guaranteed fundamental human rights of the minorities, such as freedom of movement, speech, occupation and worship. The pact also provided for the minorities to participate in the public life of their country, to hold political or other offices and to serve in their country’s civil and armed forces.
Savarkar opposed the Pact vehemently. He prophesized that while the Indian Government would keep its promise, the Pakistani Government would go back on the same; and the life, freedom and dignity of the Hindus in Pakistan would continue to be in jeopardy. Needless to say, Savarkar was proved right about the Muslim psyche not only in Pakistan but also in Jammu and Kashmir.
But Nehru whose determination to incarcerate Savarkar for life had been thwarted in 1948, was determined to either keep him in prison for the rest of life or silence his fiercest political critic forever. Towards this end, when it was driven home to Nehru that Savarkar could not be kept in prison endlessly without reason, his release on 13 July 1950 came with the debilitating condition that he would remain confined to his home and would abjure politics completely. Nehru continued where Gandhi had left off but with greater force because Nehru, like the British government before1947, could back his intent to decimate Hindu nationalists with ruthless use of state power.   Nehru was determined to clear the country’s political arena of Hindu nationalists and he was enabled in his de-Hinduising mission by the Indian Constitution which was drafted and approved by a Constituent Assembly where the Congress was in the majority and Congress members were hand-picked by Gandhi and Nehru. The Indian Constitution, slanting decisively towards religious minorities, owed much to the Motilal Nehru Report. 
The Motilal Nehru report was also the harbinger of the potentially divisive linguistic states as also the western liberal-Christian political tenet that the state shall not have any religion; ominously for the Hindus of the country, not one of these principles, which eventually went on to define the new Indian state after 1947, was challenged successfully in the Constituent Assembly.
The Indian Constitution derived equally from the Government of India Act 1935. Hindus and their interests were thus trampled under the feet of the combined might of a de-Hinduised Constituent Assembly, the Motilal Nehru Report and the GOI Act, 1935. They remain trampled till today. Nehru’s Congress in his lifetime and Nehruvian secular polity after Nehru continued to traverse the path of anti-Hindu politics of minority-ism; its results are there for all to see: Hindus have lost territory to Islam and Christianity in the North, North-East, East and West.
The anti-Hindu polity that prevails today has turned a Nelson’s eye to the rapidly changing religious demography in the country’s border and coastal districts. In stark contrast to how Nehru dealt with Hindu nationalists immediately after independence, the Muslim League, the Jamait-e-ulema-e Hind and its members suffered no persecution. They neither disbanded themselves nor were they banned by Nehru’s government. They lay low until such time that Nehru and Nehruvian secularism had rendered the Hindus completely impotent to reverse vivisection or even its consequences, and have now reared their heads again and this time the Hindus are confronting not just one Khilafat Committee, but innumerable jiahdi outfits with roots across the country and across the country’s borders, and with the same objectives as the Jinnah-led Muslim League before independence. So far, both secular Indian polity and Hindu organizations have proved incapable of handling the threat and they continue their jihad against the Hindus and their bhumi successfully and with little cost to them.  Gandhi and the Indian National Congress did to our revolutionaries and warriors of armed resistance what the British Government did to Aurobindo and Savarkar – laid debilitating conditions for release. Hindus must confront the ugly truth that while the British Government and the Gandhi-Nehru Congress adopted the same methods to disarm and decapitate Hindu nationalists, Hindu nationalists of the 19th and 20 centuries have also lost strength and spirit in the midst of war, leaving the battle-field unchallenged to their tormentors. The kshatriya had indeed been effectively disarmed and banished from public gaze.       Indian polity and the country’s public spaces have been de-Hinduised by state power and Hindus have been politically disempowered also by state power. Hindu interests and minority interests have been made into a zero sum game also by use of state power, as witnessed in the most recent turbulence in Jammu and Kashmir over the issue of land allotment for Hindu pilgrims during the Amarnath Yatra and the unchecked license permitted to Christian missionaries who hide behind the constitutional provision of freedom to practice and propagate one’s religion.
This book is intended to demonstrate to Hindus the origins and path of their disempowerment and to kindle in them a burning desire to capture and put in place self-conscious Hindu state power or Hindu rajya to protect and defend the Hindu rashtra. The Hindu nation must begin by questioning the concepts of freedom of religion, minority-protection and right to self-determination because the Hindu bhumi historically and without an Indian Constitution had made all religions and their adherents welcome to this land. This Hindu trait of not looking upon any faith as being inimical to dharma and the failure by Hindus to take note of the ultimate political objectives of all Abrahamic faiths has cost the Hindus and the Hindu nation very dear.  If the nation has to deal resolutely with forces and ideologies which threaten the territory and people of the rashtra and this includes jihad, the evangelical Church and anti-Hindu communism, then the nation has to assert its nationhood; one aspect of such an assertion will be the nature of the state or rajya which must necessarily be Hindu in ethos. Separatism, demographic imbalance, and increasing attacks against the state by Naxalism and other terrorist outfits owning allegiance to Communism, have to be dealt with not as law and order issues, but only as ideological issues which confront the core question of the basis of nationhood of this bhumi.
Secularism, for obvious reasons has failed to check and neutralize all threats to the nation’s territory and people only because it is in a state of denial, and has therefore failed to put in place structures and laws which will approach the threats rooted in the sense of Hindu nationhood. National security is best ensured only when the sense of nationhood is faultless and the threats to the nation or rashtra are perceived as threats to nation, nationhood and nationalism. Needless to say, the book seeks to demonstrate that there is no other nationalism on this bhumi other than Hindu nationalism.
The superficial convergence of interests between Hindus and Muslims in 1857 interrupted the continuing Hindu civilisational resistance and struggle against Islam, while Gandhi-inspired Nehruvian secularism has rendered all Hindu resistance to both Islam and the Church hors-de-combat. Hindu nationalists understand that the civilisational struggle against Islam and the Church has to be revived in order that it may be resolved decisively.  The destruction that has been wreaked by state power can be corrected without bloodshed only by return of state power to self-conscious Hindus. Only self-conscious Hindu state power can arrange the nation’s affairs to serve dharma and the dharmi. For such a state of affairs we must begin to question political ideas and concepts that originated in the West as a reaction to the predatory Church, to slavery and to colonialism’s invasion and forcible occupation of foreign lands.
Thus the concepts of religious freedom, self-determination, human rights became necessary to protect the disempowered victims of White Christianity – the natives of lands occupied by European colonizers whose numbers have been reduced to negligible numbers, and for victims of slavery. With great foresight European colonialist countries created the United Nations with a charter which, if one were to read the fine print with sound political sense, only serves to deter and punish any idea of revenge or determined correction of the legacy of colonialism in post-colonial independent nations.
However, the truth is that neither the countries forcefully advocating democracy and liberal political values, nor Islam which has never subscribed to contemporary, liberal Christian political ideology, nor the Jewish-majority Israel have been hamstrung by these concepts when they perceived a threat to their national identity and sense of nationhood. Till the present day we still see wars between nations, fought by the full might of state power, which are essentially Jewish Israel versus Islam, Jews versus the evangelical Church, West versus the rest and Islam versus the rest.
It is only in India that a de-Hinduised and virulently anti-Hindu political culture thwarts Hindus from resisting and fighting the predatory intentions of Islam and Christianity because as we pointed out in the Introduction, it is only in India that we have a state which does not derive from the culture and ethos of its majority populace and is therefore not obliged to protect Hindu interests and Hindu sensibilities. This state of affairs must change if the nation has to deal effectively with jihad and with disaffection and separatism arising from the untrammeled license enjoyed by the Church in India.          Concepts of minority-protection, self-determination and religious freedom cannot apply to the adherents of Islam and Christianity on Hindu bhumi under cover of democracy and constitutional rights. These provisions have to be reviewed, given the ultimate goal that these two minority religions have already achieved in Jammu and Kashmir and in the North-east.
That Pakistan and Bangladesh came into being because the Indian National Congress never had a sense of this nation, and because the continuing de-Hinduising trend in Indian polity has resulted in the perverted polity of J&K and growing separatism in the North-east, must goad Hindu nationalists into first reviewing and then correcting the course of anti-Hindu Nehruvian secularism as the guiding spirit of Indian polity. Such a course correction is mandated if there has to be real harmony among communities in this nation and not false peace resting on the artificial and un-natural idea of Nehruvian secularism, which is the Indian derivative of alien political ideas and trends which have little
 
to do with Hindu-civilisational tradition of statecraft and polity. The time has come to set down the coffins of Gandhi and Nehru from the unwilling shoulders of this nation.

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Politics, Partition, Nehru, Gandhi, India | Print | No Comments »

28. September 2009 by admin.

Behind Every Jinnah, there is a Gandhi- III 
Radha Rajan
 
Gandhi’s INC: tap-dancing to nowhere:
The contrast between Jinnah’s Muslim League and Gandhi’s INC could not have been more glaring. In August 1947, Jinnah, the Muslims and the Muslim League were not only free from colonial rule, but had also successfully torn the Indian nation apart; while Gandhi’s INC watched the British leave India at the time and manner of their choosing, a torn and bleeding nation in which the sense of nation and nationhood of Gandhi’s Hindus had been perverted beyond belief by Gandhi’s satyagraha and non-violence, while the pride, dignity and valour of Hindu nationalists lay in ruins.  At the Surat Congress in December 1907, the Indian National Congress split into two distinct ideological groups, the Moderates and Nationalists. The Nationalist group headed by Tilak, Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo set complete political freedom as its objective. The INC split exactly one year after the creation of the Muslim League in December 1906.   - “The ‘Moderate’ Indian politician aspires to be an Imperial citizen. His ambition has at last been screwed up to the point of seeking equality with his ‘colonial brother’. His loyalty draws him towards the Empire and his politics draws him towards self-government and the resultant is self-government within the Empire. Colonies have been granted self-government within the Empire and it logically follows that if the Indians try, try and try again, they too will gain their end because nothing is impossible to perseverance. Thus two birds will be killed with one stone. The ruling people, whose immense power can be turned against us any moment if they happen to be irritated, will be pleased with our desire not to break away from the Empire and, at the same time the spirit of independence which is constantly urging us to demand a greater and greater measure of self-government will have its full play. Such a compromise, such a smooth scheme of accommodating comprehensiveness is being welcomed everywhere as suddenly revealed to a political prophet who is going the round of the country with the inviting message: ‘Come to me, all ye that are heavy-laden, and I shall give rest unto you’.” (Aurobindo, Yet there is Method in It, Bande Mataram, February 25, 1907)  Aurobindo had summed up succinctly the political objectives that Gokhale, Naoroji, Surendranath Bannerjea and the dominant Parsees in India and London had set for the INC – greater participation in government but within the Empire; that is, while the English educated Indians would become ministers in the Viceroy’s Council or the Governor’s Council, the nation would remain enslaved under British colonial rule.   Gandhi returned from South Africa to fill the vacuum in the INC intentionally created by the British by removing Tilak and Aurobindo from public life. It is worth repeating that when Gandhi came back to India his ‘Mahatma’ halo was waiting for him. He climbed to the highest position in the INC with the assurance that the halo gave him, facilitated by the absence of Gokhale who had passed away, Tilak who was weakened by age and colonial persecution, and Aurobindo who had removed himself to Pondicherry for the safe pastures of spiritual practice.    From 1917, the INC was under the effective and despotic control of Gandhi and Gandhi only; all other leaders came a distant second and played at best only second fiddle. Subhash Bose, KM Munshi and Rajaji who had serious differences with Gandhi’s policies and the direction in which he was leading the INC, were summarily thrown out of the party by Gandhi with harsh and insulting words as in the case of Bose, or with sweet reasonableness as with KM Munshi and Rajaji. But the fact remains Gandhi did not tolerate dissent or differences of opinion when the opinion was his. If Jinnah was successful, he owed his success in no mean measure to Gandhi’s leadership of the INC.  British colonial rule of India ended with the vivisection of the Hindu bhumi. Hindu nationalists reject the projection of August 15, 1947 as Independence Day; not the least because it was only self-rule day as the British monarch continued to remain Head of the State until January 1950, but primarily because ending colonial rule was predicated on vivisection. This is the truth that our stalwarts in Nehruvian-secular academe, and the Hindu stalwarts in the Congress and the BJP do not want to see, much less articulate – that the British, tactically using the Cabinet Mission proposals, made their leaving India conditional upon vivisection.  Vivisection of the Hindu bhumi became a certainty because –
- Gandhi and the Hindus in the INC did not understand the political objectives of Islam, or if they did, they had no objections 
- Gandhi did not understand that colonialism (in this case the British government) was only a derivative of the White Church and had the same political objective as Islam with regard to non-Christian nations and peoples 
- Gandhi carried back to India in 1915 the conviction from his years in South Africa that British colonialism civilized the Empire’s enslaved people and lifted them up from sloth, superstition and barbarity 
- Gandhi did not understand in the critical 1940s decade that western nations – America and the nations of Europe, were confronted by anti-Christian and anti-capital Soviet Union and that this intra-Western nations’ conflict and inter-play was impacting the enslaved nations in Africa and Asia in a manner that would determine post-colonial world order 
- In spite of knowing what was happening in Indonesia and Mountbatten’s role in aborting Indonesia’s fledgling independence from colonial rule, Gandhi not only allowed Louis Mountbatten to come to India as the last Viceroy, but had such faith in Mountbatten’s British sense of justice and fair-play that he asked Mountbatten to be the “umpire” (Gandhi’s words) between himself and Jinnah, “not as Viceroy, but as a man” (whatever in God’s name that meant) 
- Gandhi did not choose to correct the gross misconception that Satyagraha - a political instrument, and non-violence - a personal choice, were one and the same 
- Gandhi inflicted upon the INC his personal articles of faith, Satyagraha and non-violence as uncompromising, non-negotiable Congress Creed; and finally, 
- Gandhi had only one tool of engagement with the British – first Satyagraha and then dialogue, and only one strategy to deal with the Muslims – chasing the holy grail of Hindu-Muslim unity   It was Gandhi, Gandhi all the way. Let us start at the beginning – what was the ultimate objective of Gandhi’s INC between 1915 when Gandhi came back from South Africa and 1947 when the Hindu nation was vivisected by Islam? We must first rid our minds of all hagiographic accounts of Gandhi and Gandhi’s life and go back to the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG) for the truth.   The INC from 1910, when all the Nationalist leaders had been either exiled or imprisoned, until 1917 when Gandhi assumed leadership, and even after 1917 and until 1946, did not move decisively or proactively towards freedom. From 1910 the INC was either in limbo for protracted lengths in time or was tap-dancing in the same place. Notwithstanding the frenzied energy with which the dancer shakes his legs while tap-dancing, we know he is not moving from place to place. He is dancing on the same spot. Gandhi’s INC was similarly tap-dancing in the so-called freedom movement even as the Muslims used the Khilafat Committee and then the Muslim League to move decisively towards creating the Islamic state of Pakistan from the body of the Hindu nation.   Was there a freedom struggle?
Gandhi began his political career in India with the much touted Champaran and Kaira (Kheda) Satyagraha which allegedly put the British government on the back-foot and compelled them to concede to Gandhi’s demands. The fact is, Gandhi struck a deal with the Viceroy – grant me my demands with regard to the farmers of Champaran and Kaira and not only will it be seen as a victory for non-violent satyagraha, but I will go back to Kaira and get every able-bodied man to recruit in the army to fight World War 1 for Britain. Gandhi also assured the Viceroy that this concession was being sought only as a “war measure” and that he would ensure such demands would not be made again, and that these concessions would not set a precedent for the future.  - “I would make India offer all her able-bodied sons as a sacrifice to the Empire at its critical moment; and I know that India by this very act would become the most favoured partner in the Empire and racial distinctions would become a thing of the past”.   Unnerving echoes from Aurobindo’s “The ‘Moderate’ Indian politician aspires to be an Imperial citizen! His ambition has at last been screwed up to the point of seeking equality with his ‘colonial brother”. What Aurobindo said in 1907 of Gokhale, Naoroji and other Moderates turned out to be just as true of Gandhi in 1918. It is clear now why the British government had no objections, and in fact may have secretly welcomed it, when Gokhale passed on the mantle of leadership to Gandhi, and not to Tilak or Lajpat Rai.  - “In Champaran, by resisting an age-long tyranny, I have shown the ultimate sovereignty of British justice.
Thus, Champaran and Kaira affairs are my direct, definite and special contribution to the war.
I write this because I love the English nation, and I wish to evoke in every Indian the loyalty of the Englishman”. (Excerpts from Letter to Viceroy, Delhi, April 29, 1918, CWMG, Vol. 17, pp 7-10)
- “It will also enable me to fall back for war purposes upon my co-workers in Kaira and it may enable me to get recruits from the district.
I suggest that action in this matter be taken as war measure. This will obviate the fear of relief being regarded as a precedent”. (Letter to JL Maffey (Secretary to the Viceroy), Nadiad, April 30, 1918, CWMG, Vol. 17, pp 10-12)     It is doubtful if any Indian of the times knew of this deal. This secret deal between Gandhi and the Viceroy (much like the little-known letter that Gandhi wrote to Lord Ampthill in October 1909) which saw the British government responding positively to Gandhi’s demands, achieved two things for Gandhi – it projected his satyagraha and non-violence (falsely as we now know) as the best tool of engagement with the British because (or so the ordinary people thought) it succeeded in getting the government to retreat; it also gave Gandhi’s ‘mahatma’ halo an additional coat of polish and gave him the status of undisputed leader with the ordinary people of India.  The excerpts from Gandhi’s letters to the Viceroy and the Viceroy’s secretary at the time of the Champaran and Kaira satyagrahas have been reproduced for a purpose. This article was necessitated by the dishonest public debate where one side blames Jinnah alone for Partition, while the other side holds Nehru and Patel also, besides Jinnah, guilty for Partition. No one in post-independence India, no one in public life, has asked if partition could have been averted and if yes, how could it have been averted. It suits the nation to hold Jinnah and the Muslim League (not the Muslims; now that is an intellectual tight-rope walk) alone to blame for partition. But the guilt attached to the Muslims, Muslim League and Jinnah is only a very small portion of the whole truth. Jinnah is not all. Which brings us back to the most important question – what was the political objective of the Gandhi-led INC?  This article is not intended to add dead weight to the sterile academic debate about Jinnah, Gandhi and partition, but aims to correct our political discourse by inextricably linking vivisection with independence, and also intends to reassess Gandhi’s role in the freedom movement to better understand why Hindus lost and are continuing to lose territory to the two genocidal and predatory Abrahamic monotheisms even sixty years after ending colonial rule in 1947. The article is an attempt to break the conventional silence about Gandhi’s catastrophic-for-Hindus political activism which led to vivisection.  If there was indeed a freedom struggle movement under Gandhi’s leadership as state-funded history writers have been telling us, then freedom can only be understood as ending colonial rule and achieving total political freedom, accompanied by the British quitting India lock, stock and barrel. But Gandhi in 1918, in sharp contrast to Tilak and Aurobindo, is writing to the Viceroy about how he loves the English nation and how he wishes to invoke in every Indian the same love and loyalty for the Empire as that of an Englishman! Now this is not the language or the sentiment of a man leading a political party towards freedom from colonial rule. This was in 1918.  In 1920, the Gandhi-led INC issued the call for Swaraj. But between 1918 when Gandhi wrote gushingly to the Viceroy about his love for the English nation, offering his services to the Viceroy as recruiting agent for the war, and the 1920 Nagpur Congress where Gandhi called for Swaraj, the British government demonstrated the full might of the power of the state. In spite of Gandhi’s sycophantic recruiting agent act, the British government slapped the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act or the Rowlatt Act on Indians with one hand, while with the other it passed the Government of India Act 1919.

The draconian Rowlatt Act gave the government sweeping powers to imprison without trial any individual who picked up arms against the British government and people or conspired against the colonial state. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer, with the full knowledge of Michael O’Dwyer, Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, also issued the infamous and humiliating ‘crawling order’ against the people of the province; 1919 was also the year of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

The GoI Act 1919 gave Indians some measure of participation in government, a sop for the Rowlatt Act, “crawling order” and the massacre at Jallianwala Bagh. Gandhi’s declaration of love for the English nation must have sent the comforting signal to the British government that under Gandhi’s leadership the INC would not make any demand for complete political freedom. Thus, even as the British government was using the stick of the Rowlatt Act against us and turning the full military might of the state against ordinary people, it also dangled the carrot of self-government before us.   - “The ruling people, whose immense power can be turned against us any moment if they happen to be irritated, will be pleased with our desire not to break away from the Empire and, at the same time the spirit of independence which is constantly urging us to demand a greater and greater measure of self-government will have its full play. Such a compromise, such a smooth scheme of accommodating comprehensiveness is being welcomed everywhere as suddenly revealed to a political prophet who is going the round of the country with the inviting message: ‘Come to me, all ye that are heavy-laden, and I shall give rest unto you’.”   Astonishing how Aurobindo’s discerning analysis of and scathing attack against the leaders of the INC in 1907 was just as true in 1919. Little had changed in the INC’s objectives and even less had changed in the character of its leaders.   We cannot help but think that Gandhi was just such a political prophet who had worked out “a smooth scheme of accommodating comprehensiveness” with the British Indian government.  At the Amritsar Congress, 27 December 1919 – January 1 1920, Tilak and CR Das expressed sharp criticism of the Montague-Chelmsford reforms report which formed the basis for the GoI Act 1919, calling it “inadequate, unsatisfactory and disappointing”. In what would be the precursor to 1946, when Gandhi would once again hastily welcome the Cabinet Mission proposals, Gandhi took exception to Tilak’s criticism of the report and after perfunctorily appealing to Tilak to withdraw his amendment, actually threatened to undertake a tour of the country to explain to the people of India why he disagreed with Tilak and why he wanted to place on record the INC’s gratitude to Montague for the reforms report! Exactly one year after placing on record his gratitude to Montague for enabling the GoI Act 1919, Gandhi issued the cry for Swaraj at the Nagpur Congress. People have the right to know why, if Gandhi thought the Montague-Chelmsford reforms report and the GoI Act 1919 were marvellous things for Indians, did he demand Swaraj in Nagpur and what did his Swaraj mean? Gandhi also declared at Nagpur that he wanted Swaraj within a year. This is 1920.  Ten years later, at the Lahore Congress in 1929, Gandhi demanded Purna Swaraj. Gandhi’s Purna Swaraj was a significant improvement on Tilak’s simple Swaraj, although the nation does not know why Gandhi issued the call for ‘Swaraj within a year’ at Nagpur and then issued a call for Purna Swaraj nine years later. Either there is Swaraj or no Swaraj. Purna Swaraj inter-alia implies something called Apurna Swaraj, which is like half a hole. After Nehru hoisted the flag of complete political independence on the eve of New Year, 1930, Gandhi entered into the infamous Gandhi-Irwin Pact. Gandhi had presented to the nation his version of passive resistance and non-violence as the only instruments for engagement with the British. But with the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, Gandhi also surrendered the right to Satyagraha and even non-violent protest.  From Swaraj to Purna Swaraj, from the Gandhi-Irwin Pact to the second GoI Act – that is, from 1919 to 1929 to 1931 to 1935, Gandhi’s INC was tap-dancing without moving the nation even a fraction forward towards freedom. The British government used the carrot and stick effectively against the Hindus in 1935 just as effectively as it had used it in 1919; and knowing full well from past experience that the INC will suffer the stick in shameless inaction and silence as long as the carrot is visibly shown to the ordinary Indians, the British government proclaimed the GoI Act 1935 by which Indians were allowed to contest elections in the Provinces to constitute provincial governments. The GoI Act 1935 was the carrot being dangled before the INC as a palliative measure for hanging Bhagat Singh.  The British government sensed the anger of ordinary Indians against Gandhi and his INC for failing to save Bhagat Singh from the gallows, and knowing that discrediting Gandhi at this stage may render him ineffective, thus paving the way for triggering the volcano of seething dissatisfaction among the ordinary people, the British government’s propaganda machinery successfully promoted the idea that the GoI Act 1935 was in response to Gandhi’s non-violent Dandi March which allegedly shook the Empire. If the INC had been serious about Swaraj in 1920, then it ought to have followed Tilak when he expressed disquiet over the reforms report; it was expected that if Swaraj meant total political freedom, then the GoI Act 1919 was only clever temptation to divert the INC away from the road to freedom and trap the slaves in the honey-pot of sharing political power with their masters.  The trap was set enticingly again in 1935 and the INC demonstrated its willingness to bite the bait yet again. Sharing power, self-government within the Empire, self-rule – these were the colonial catch-words to keep India firmly enslaved and keep the INC going round and round in circles. Aurobindo’s “political prophet” was conducting the INC’s tap-dance to nowhere with “accommodating comprehensiveness”. The Muslim League and the British government had good reasons to feel delighted. Gandhi’s INC was going nowhere and the freedom movement led by Hindu nationalists for a brief while between 1907-1909 had been effectively aborted.

(To be continued)
The author is editor, www.vigilonline.com

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Nehru, Gandhi, History, Hindus & Hinduism, India | Print | No Comments »

28. September 2009 by admin.

Behind every successful Jinnah, there is a Gandhi-II  

Hindus lack political objectives and strategic intent:

“Partition”, like Surf-ka-daag, “accha hai”, repeated Arun Shourie, quoting a similar view expressed by the late Shri Girilal Jain. The writer can see no reason for Shourie to parrot ‘partition was good’ unless it was meant as a short-sighted and faulty stratagem to exonerate Patel and Nehru of the culpability pinned on them for Partition by Jaswant Singh.  A meticulous study of the sequence of events leading up to Partition from any of the primary sources cannot but lead us to Gandhi; but rather than look honestly in the direction pointed by these sources, or even if he did, Arun Shourie has nevertheless chosen not to cast his eyes above Nehru and Patel. Shourie, uncharacteristic of his reputation for forthright writing, has instead opted to go along with Jaswant Singh that Patel and Nehru were indeed responsible for Partition, but adds they are not to be held guilty of the deed because Partition was good for us. If Partition was indeed a good thing, then not only Patel and Nehru, but Jinnah, too, cannot be held guilty and cannot be held up as history’s villain. Arun Shourie cannot fault us for coming to this ridiculous conclusion.  The unprecedented and completely avoidable vivisection of the Hindu nation in 1947 was effected because –
- Important Hindus have never understood that both Islam and Christianity are predatory political ideologies masquerading as religions
- Muslims demanded vivisection of the Hindu nation bluntly in the name of their religion and it was granted and realized by the Christian-colonial British government which had its own reasons for vivisecting the Hindu nation
- Hindus made no decisive and organized effort at any point in the long drawn-out process to avert vivisection; the Muslim League and the British government merely allowed us, the defeatists, to cut our losses and retrieve whatever we could of our territory
- Gandhi was the sole deciding voice in the INC speaking and acting for the entire non-Muslim League Indian people, of which the Hindus constituted the absolute majority populace; Gandhi and Gandhi alone made all the choices and decisions in the INC, at least until the moment the Cabinet Mission returned home at the end of June 1946, admitting failure to get the INC and Muslim League to come together for transfer of power
- Nehru went along with Gandhi between 1942 and 1947, even after Gandhi’s closest colleagues and friends had distanced themselves from him, because as Gandhi’s political heir, anointed by Gandhi himself, Nehru wanted to inherit this Hindu civilization as a de-Hinduised personal fiefdom, without the violent Muslim elements which he knew he could not handle
- Sardar Patel, Rajaji, Rajendra Prasad and all other Hindu leaders in the INC, like Aurobindo, Tilak and Lajpat Rai before them, did not have the capacity or the vision to make the INC a Hindu vehicle; they also did not dare or did not have the capacity to depose Gandhi; this is the nature and the extent of their culpability for vivisection
- Gandhi, even in 1946, still holding on to the belief that the British Empire was essentially a just power, welcomed the Cabinet Mission proposals with alacrity within the first two days after the Cabinet Mission and the Viceroy made the document public, and endorsed it as being the best formula that the British government could have produced under the circumstances; the nation was thus stuck with the Cabinet Mission proposals as the only means to get the British out of the country
- Gandhi chose to make the Imperial Government’s dangerous and loaded Cabinet Mission proposals the instrument by which the British would effect transfer of power, instead of using his authority and power to place the well-drafted Sapru Committee proposals as the alternative Indian instrument
- Gandhi’s insistence on doing politics for which he did not have the sagacity or understanding, made it possible for Mountbatten to present Gandhi in April 1947 with Hobson’s choice – accept the Cabinet Mission proposals or accept vivisection
- The Muslim League under Jinnah’s leadership had demonstrated that they would not stop until they achieved Pakistan, through the Cabinet Mission route, through British-aided and abetted vivisection, or through violence
- The Muslim League was led by a man who ensured Pakistan through all routes, while the Congress was led by a man who led the Hindu nation to humiliating defeat and vivisection through any route   The readiness with which we are willing to retain Jinnah as the sole villain of our freedom movement, and our unwillingness to look beyond Patel and Nehru in the Congress to apportion blame for vivisection, tells us something about ourselves – as a people we lack the courage to ask the right questions because we are afraid that the answers may reveal something about ourselves or bring down our little gods from their pedestals.  Vivisection of the Hindu nation could have been averted only –
- If Gandhi and the other tall Hindu leaders in the INC had understood the political objectives of Islam and Christianity
- If Gokhale, Gandhi and the others had understood the diabolic intent behind the first Partition of Bengal
- If the INC had understood in 1906 the purpose behind the creation of the Muslim League in December 1906 as being the natural progress of the trend that began with the creation of the INC in 1885 and the Partition of Bengal
- If the Hindus in the INC had understood that Islam is always ready to attain its political objectives through sustained and determined violence
- If the Hindus in the INC had rejected at least in 1942 the paralyzing Gandhian non-violence and rejected Gandhi’s leadership and at least then sat down to discuss how the Muslim League could be stopped from attaining its stated objective of creating Pakistan
- If the Hindus of the nation had demonstrated to the Muslims from the time of the Moplah massacre that they would defend the territory of the Hindu nation by all and every means
- If at least in 1940 when the Muslim League declared in Lahore that they would now work for realizing Pakistan, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha had joined hands to stir the Hindus of the nation to a sense of the impending danger to their nation’s territory and provided the Hindus with a determined Hindu leadership  A self-respecting and determined nation and its people would take stock of a given situation, consult the necessities and proceed to the invention, as Aurobindo remarked; which means a nation devises, invents appropriate tools as demanded by the situation. After reading the corpus of the brilliant and inspirational political writings by Aurobindo from 1893 to 1910, and after reading the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, it emerges that the British government and the Muslim League had always acted with a sound understanding of politics and the determination to achieve their respective political objectives. Had the Hindus in the INC, the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha understood this then, they would have realized that the Muslims and the British both threatened the territory of the Hindu nation. That they did not consult the necessities is evident because they did not proceed to the invention. The Hindu leadership of the times did not, could not stop vivisection of the Hindu nation.  And yet, the INC and/or the RSS-Hindu Mahasabha could have averted vivisection of the Hindu bhumi; the INC because it was the largest and most potent political instrument with a preponderance of Hindus as members and cadre, while the RSS-Hindu Mahasabha though not as large as the INC was however wholly Hindu with the potential to evolve into a powerful, forceful and aggressive Hindu combine and an effective political instrument. Whatever the reasons, while one refused to be a Hindu vehicle, the other failed to become a political instrument.    There is no doubt that the British manufactured the INC first to wean away important sections of the Hindus from ideas of armed resistance for freedom from colonial rule, and then manufactured the Muslim League as a thorn in the flesh of the INC. From 1885, when the INC was created and until 1947 when the British government and the Muslim League had both attained their respective objectives, the INC, especially the INC under Gandhi, remained faithful to British intent. It abjured ideas of nationalism, abjured armed resistance, abjured the Tilak-Aurobindo demand for total and non-negotiable political freedom, flirted with Hindu-Muslim unity on the one hand and coquetted with the British government on the other.   Gandhi’s INC vacillated between political freedom struggle and his social mission, thus blunting the political edge and losing focus; this was in sharp contrast to the Muslim League which saw the possibilities that the first partition of Bengal threw up for Muslims and from then on worked to return Muslim rule over India. The Muslim League and the Muslim leadership was determined to either bring the Hindu nation under Islamic rule yet again, or tear the Hindu nation apart to create a Muslim state. The growth and increasing stridency of the Muslim League was in direct proportion to the lack of focus and the confused drifting of the INC under Gandhi, between a diluted political mission and a challenging social and economic mission. Gorbachev made the same mistake that Gandhi made decades ago and with the same catastrophic results.  From December 1906, when the Muslim League was created, the leaders of the INC ought to have designed their battle-gear to confront both the Muslim League and the British government in the three-cornered war which was nothing less than conquest and control of the Hindu nation. Gandhi led the INC into the battleground with only one instrument – his brand of non-violence, while the British government stood with the full might of state power, and the Muslim League was armed with jihad in its armoury. All other non-Congress Hindus stood on the sidelines and watched Gandhi leading the war decisively towards vivisection.  The Hindu nation must begin the process of asking the right questions with the first set of related questions –
- What was the ultimate objective of the Gandhi-led freedom struggle?
- Was it only to end colonial rule or also to prepare the nation for the consequences of an ascendant Islam?
- Had Gandhi tested his brand of non-violence against organized violence enough to come to the conclusion that his non-violence always succeeded as he claimed in Hind Swaraj?
- Why, if Gandhi’s political leadership was failing under their very noses, did other important Hindus in the INC and other Hindu organizations not lift up their voices against Gandhi’s methods and leadership of the INC? www.vigilonline.com

(To be continued)

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Partition, Gandhi, History, Hindus & Hinduism, India | Print | No Comments »

28. September 2009 by admin.

Behind every successful Jinnah there is a Gandhi – 1   

History’s can of worms
Post-independence official history of the ending of colonial rule in India is a hagiographic narration of Gandhi’s life and times. Hagiography is the reverential documentation of the life of a saint by his acolytes. Thus the history of India’s freedom struggle is a narration of the making of the Mahatma in South Africa, culminating in the motivated ensconcing of the Mahatma as the nation’s civilisational emblem.
 
The inevitable fallout of such a construct of official history was that all significant personages of the time, and all events, were positioned around and in relationship to Gandhi, as heroes, lesser heroes or villains. Such personages (and events) who did not lend themselves to this motivated hagiography were either kept out of the official historical narrative or relegated to the margins of history.

Thus Aurobindo and Tilak of the pre-1910 years, Ambedkar’s serious differences with Gandhi, the fact that from around 1942, all top leaders of the INC except Nehru, including Gandhi’s close associates and colleagues in his social mission, and even his son Devadas, had all distanced themselves from him, are kept out of the historical narrative of the freedom struggle.
Post-independent history writers have refused to even consider the adverse impact that Gandhi’s estrangement with the Congress Working Committee had on the extremely critical tripartite negotiations which the INC was then engaged in with the British government and the Muslim League.
 
The other heroes of our times, Bhagat Singh, Subhash Bose, Ambedkar and Savarkar, and all those ordinary Indians who suffered tortuous incarceration or died for Gandhi, and the broad contours and details of events leading up to the bloody vivisection of 1947, have not merited even a whole paragraph in our history books. Few outside of academe would have heard of Madanlal Dhingra, the Chapekar brothers, MR Jayakar, Tej Bahadur Sapru or the Sapru Committee Report. Fewer still would know that Gandhi machinated the expulsion of Bose from the INC, or that Gandhi had insisted on the resignations of Rajaji and KM Munshi too from the Congress party, because these details did not mesh seamlessly into the hagiography
 
This dishonest rendering of history of the most important years of this enslaved nation’s existence has made out the freedom struggle to be the achievement of one man whose moral authority resting on non-violence was so overwhelming that the British government shriveled in awe before its force and slinked away in shame. To sustain the incredible fiction of this “non-violent freedom-struggle”, Nehruvian polity’s history writers have chosen to sweep away from sight the violent reprisal of the colonial government against ordinary Indians who followed Gandhi to the streets. A despotic public opinion machinery dubbed Gandhi the Father of the Nation; if that is a given, then equally true is the fact that Gandhi was also the father of the vivisected Hindu nation.   
 
Popular history has intentionally thrown a veil over why the Cabinet Mission failed in June 1946, leading to Direct Action, except to lay the failure dishonestly at Jinnah’s door. Needless to say, for Nehruvian secular politics of minority-ism, while Jinnah remains history’s villain, his vehicle, the Muslim League, is now wearing the false mustache of secularism.
 
Year after year after year, the nation celebrates its independence from colonial rule; the de-Hinduised secular nation celebrated Nehru’s fiftieth anniversary of his tryst with destiny with a romantic midnight session of Parliament. The nation and its Father and Nehru may have woken up to independence at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, but Hindus woke up to a nation severed of her limbs, torn and bleeding. Nehru’s India and her historians have ensured that while August 15 would always be celebrated, it would never be observed as a day of mourning, of grief and of determination to reverse and avenge the consequences of Direct Action and vivisection. Nehru’s secular India did not allow Hindus to nurse a sense of victim-hood or nationhood.
 
The infamous Jinnah debate, triggered first by Advani and now Jaswant Singh, if anything has only emphasized that –
- Jinnah will continue to remain the sole villain of recent history 
- Nehruvian secular polity, which has successfully de-linked the Muslim League from Jinnah, will not scrutinize the Muslim League and other Muslim parties and organizations for similar intent 
- There is none so stupid or so sick with “purblind sentimentalism” as the Hindu social, intellectual and political leadership; the writer is not at all sure that the cupidity is not a mask for calculated villainy to maintain the status-quo in political discourse 
- Hindus today in the main have abdicated their responsibility to their religion and nation; Hindus are broadly either cowards unprepared to die for their religion and nation, or are so consumed by self-interest that not only will they not live for their religion and nation but are prepared to betray them for small personal gains 
 
Typical of this purblind sentimentalism of the Hindu intellectual is a column by the renowned Magsaysay awardee, investigative journalist, and author, Shri Arun Shourie, who was so eager to fault both Jinnah and Jaswant that he took refuge in another editor, the late Shri Girilal Jain, who is supposed to have remarked that the vivisection of 1947 was good for India and the Hindus. Shourie recollects, “I have come to realise that Girilal Jain was the one who was right. You are dead wrong, he told me, after reading what I had written about Jinnah. The best thing that has happened for us is the Partition. It has given us breathing time, a little time to resurrect and save our pluralist culture and religions. Had it not happened we would have been bullied and thrashed and swamped by Islamic fundamentalists”.  
 
It is doubtful if Girilal Jain would have used the phrase ‘pluralist culture,’ which is a 1990s decade ‘liberal’ Christian political subterfuge for seeking accommodation for religious conversion in non-Christian nations; it is certain he would not have talked of ‘religions’ in plural. If Girilal Jain, who died in July 1993, six months after the historic demolition of the Babri Masjid, and wrote and spoke in an era of rising Hindu Consciousness embodied in the Sri Ram Janmabhoomi movement, made this remark, it is obvious he did not envisage the subsequent capitulation of the political elite across the spectrum to Islam in succeeding years, which has climaxed in the disgraceful Sachar Committee Report and demands for reservations on religious lines – for minorities!
Shourie ought to have understood in 2009 – regardless of who said what 20 years ago – that as long as even one Muslim remained in the vivisected Gandhi-Nehru secular nation, then he, his wife and children belonged to the transnational Muslim ummah with the inevitability of separatism leading to secession always hanging over our heads. For there are innumerable instances of unresolved issues caused by Muslim intransigence continuing to keep Indian society in a state of unrest, with jihad raging not only in J&K but in different parts of this ‘partition is good’ nation. Anyway, if a writer quotes another person without refuting the quote, it has to be assumed that the writer is in broad agreement with the quote. To better understand the tortured routes that self-justifying sentimentalism takes, let us look at what lies beneath Shourie’s Girilal Jain fig-leaf.
 
Jaswant Singh, in the same breath that he lauded Jinnah, also held Sardar Patel and Nehru responsible for Partition. As pointed out earlier, there is none as cowardly or villainous as the Hindu who will not serve the Hindu cause. It is unclear in Shourie’s column where Girilal Jain ends and Shourie begins, but Shourie concludes his amazing partition-was-good declamation with panegyric ode to Gandhi, Nehru and Patel. “So, my lament is the opposite of Jaswant Singh’s today. And it also so happens that I am an adorer of Sardar Patel as of the Lokmanya, and a worshipper of Gandhiji.” 
 
Politically correct of course, but it could almost have been a school-girl speaking of Rajesh Khanna or Sachin Tendulkar. But do facts of history support Shourie’s ode to Gandhi and Nehru? Maulana Azad poses a severe problem for writers of popular history. Is he black or is he white? The Congress, in the wake of the Jaswant’s Jinnah book, has declared its intention of employing historians to look into the history of the times in the minutest detail, but simultaneously has declared its intention to hold nation-wide meetings in praise of Nehru, Patel and Azad.  
 
The most reliable sources of history are the primary sources, and one of the most important sources is the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG), which is a treasure house of the tiniest detail about Gandhi’s life; and this extraordinary compendium includes original British government documents declassified under ‘Transfer of Power’. The writer’s book, “Eclipse of the Hindu Nation: Gandhi and his Freedom Struggle” has relied exclusively on CWMG as one of the four primary sources for critically examining the nation’s freedom struggle between the critical years 1890 to 1947; the other three being Sri Aurobindo’s writings prior to and up to 1910, volume 8 of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s writings published by the Maharashtra state government, and RP Kangle’s three-volume magnum opus on the Kautiliyan Arthasastra.
 
The writer’s conclusions about the last phase of the freedom struggle between 1942 and 1947 is contrary to official history, and rejects Shourie’s motivated ode to Gandhi and Nehru. The writer holds Gandhi and Gandhi alone responsible, not only for the failure of the Cabinet Mission in June 1946, but also for the vivisection of the Hindu nation. Sardar Patel and Rajaji, KM Munshi and Madan Mohan Malaviya, were in the same position that Pranab Mukherjee finds himself in today, while Nehru may be placed in the same category as Shashi Tharoor, and Maulana Azad may be considered the role model for the BJP’s Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
Advani and Jaswant Singh have done Hindus a favour by opening a can of worms. It is the responsibility of Hindu nationalists to undertake a study of the history of the times and nail all lies big and small, one by one.
 
(To be continued…)
The author Raja Rajan is Editor. www.vigilonline.com  

Posted via email from Jay’s Blogs

Posted in Nehru, Gandhi, India | Print | No Comments »

23. September 2009 by admin.

The arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose in Germany in 1941 and his anti-British activities in that country in co-operation with the German government, culminated in the formation of an Indian legion. This marks perhaps the most significant event in the annals of India’s fight for independence. This event not only can be regarded as a historical link-up with what Bose himself chose to describe as “The Great Revolution of 1857,” and which (in his words) “has been incorrectly called by English historians ‘the Sepoy Mutiny,’ but which is regarded by the Indian people as the First War of Independence.”1 It also represents the historical fact that, by that time persuasive methods conducted through a non-violent struggle under the leadership of Gandhi, had failed. An armed assault on the citadel of the British Empire in India was the only alternative left to deliver the country from bondage. While other leaders of the Indian National Congress fell short of realizing this fact and thus betrayed a lack of pragmatic approach to the turn of world events that provided India with a golden opportunity to strike at the British by a force of arms, Bose rose to the needs of the hour and was quick to seize that opportunity. While Bose’s compatriots in India remained totally wedded to an ideological creed (non-violence), which at that time could only serve the British and postpone the advent of independence, and while their ideological interpretations of the new revolutionary regimes in Europe — again largely influenced by British propaganda — prevented them from even harboring any thought of seeking their alliance and co-operation in the struggle against a common enemy, Subhas Chandra Bose alone had the courage to take the great plunge, thus risking his own life and reputation, solely in the interest and cause of his country. In January 1941, while under both house arrest, and strict British surveillance, he escaped. After an arduous trek through the rugged terrains of several countries, with an Italian passport under the assumed name of Orlando Mazzota — in which he was aided by underground revolutionaries and foreign diplomatic agents — Bose appeared in Berlin, via Moscow, on 28 March 1941.

Bose was welcome in Germany, although the news of his arrival there was kept a secret for some time for political reasons. The German Foreign Office, which was assigned the primary responsibility of dealing with Bose and taking care of him, had been well informed of the background and political status of the Indian leader through its pre-war Consulate-General at Calcutta and also by its representative in Kabul. Bose himself, naturally somewhat impatient for getting into action soon after his arrival in Berlin, submitted a memorandum to the German government on 9 April 1941 which outlined a plan for co-operation between the Axis powers and India. Among other things, it called for the setting up of a “Free India Government” in Europe, preferably in Berlin; establishment of a Free India broadcasting station calling upon the Indian people to assert their independence and rise up in revolt against the British authorities; underground work in Afghanistan (Kabul) involving independent tribal territories lying between Afghanistan and India and within India itself for fostering and aiding the revolution; provision of finances by Germany in the form of a loan to the Free India government-in-exile; and deployment of German military contingents to smash the British army in India. In a supplementary memorandum bearing the same date, Bose requested that an early pronouncement be made regarding the freedom of India and the Arab countries.2 It is significant to note that the memorandum did not mention the need for formation of an Indian legion. Evidently the idea of recruiting the Indian prisoners of war for the purpose of establishing a nucleus of an Indian national army did not occur to him during his early days in Berlin.

At that time the German government was in the process of formulating its own plan for dealing with Subhas Chandra Bose in the best possible manner. The Foreign Office felt itself inadequate to discharge this awesome responsibility without referring the whole matter to Hitler. While this issue was being considered at the highest level of the government, Bose’s own requests as set forth in the submitted memorandum, made it far too complicated and involved to be resolved at an early date. There was a long wait for Bose, during which period he often tended to become frustrated. Nevertheless, through several sympathetic officers of the Foreign Office, he continued to press his requests and put forth new ideas.

Finally, after months of waiting and many moments of disappointment often bordering on despair for Bose, Germany agreed to give him unconditional and all-out help. The two immediate results of this decision were the establishment of a Free India Center and inauguration of a Free India Radio, both beginning their operations in November 1941. These two organizations played vital and significant roles in projecting Bose’s increasing activities in Germany, but a detailed account of their operation lies outside the purview of this paper. It should suffice to say that the German government put at Bose’s disposal adequate funds to run these two organizations, and he was allowed complete freedom to run them the way he liked at his own discretion.

In its first official meeting on 2 November 1941, the Free India Center adopted four historical resolutions that would serve as guidelines for the entire movement in subsequent months and years in Europe and Asia. First, Jai Hind or Victory to India, would be the official form of salutation; secondly, Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore’s famous patriotic song “Jana Gana Mona” was to be the national anthem for the free India Bose was fighting for; thirdly, in a multilingual state like India, the most widely-spoken language, Hindustani, was to be the national language; and fourthly, Subhas Chandra Bose would hereafter be known and addressed as Netaji, the Indian equivalent of the “leader” or the “Führer.” In November 1941, Azad Hind Radio (or the Free India Radio) opened its program with an announcing speech by Netaji himself, which, in fact, was a disclosure of his identity that had been kept officially secret for so long. The radio programs were broadcast in several Indian languages on a regular basis.

During this long period of “hibernation,” the period between Netaji’s arrival in Berlin and the beginning of operations of the two organizations, it can be reasonably assumed that the idea of forming an Indian legion that could be developed into an Indian Army of Liberation in the West, crossed Bose’s mind. He might even have discussed this matter with his colleagues — the Indian compatriots in Germany who had joined him — as to how best to implement the idea. However, as mentioned earlier, his first memorandum submitted to the German Government did not include any such plan. According to N.G. Ganpuley, who was his associate in Berlin,
“Netaji himself, when he left India, could not have, by any stretch of imagination, thought of forming a national army unit outside the country, and therefore he had no definite plans chalked out for its realization. Even while in Berlin, he could not think of it during the first few months of his stay there.”

When and how, therefore, did he come to conceive such a plan? Mr. Ganpuley relates an interesting episode in this regard. To quote again from his book:
It was all due to a brain wave of Netaji which started working by a simple incident. He read one day about some half a dozen Indian prisoners-of-war who were brought to Berlin by the Radio Department to listen to the BBC and other stations which sent out their programmes in Hindustani. He saw them there going about, not as free Indians, but as prisoners-of-war. They were brought to the Radio Office every day to listen to and translate the Hindustani programmes, and were sent back to their quarters escorted by a sentry … After he had a talk with them about war, about their captivity and their present life, his active mind started working … He pondered over it for some time and decided to form a small national military unit … No sooner was this decision taken by him … [than] he started negotiating with that section of the German Foreign Office with which he was in constant touch. He put before them his plans for training Indian youths from the prisoners’ camps for a national militia.

Although somewhat skeptical and hesitant at the beginning, the German response to the plans was encouraging. It was a time psychologically well-chosen by Netaji. The allied forces had been defeated on the Continent, and the Wehrmacht was marching ahead successfully in the Soviet Union. It was also a historical coincidence that a large number of British Indian prisoners-of war, captured during Rommel’s blitzkrieg in North Africa, lay in German hands. Netaji’s first idea was to form small parachute parties to spread propaganda in, and transmit intelligence from, the North-West Frontier in India. The reaction of some selected prisoners who were brought to Berlin from the camp of Lamsdorf in Germany and Cyrenaica was so encouraging that he asked for all Indian prisoners held in North Africa to be brought over to Germany at once. The Germans complied with this request, and the prisoners began to be concentrated at Annaburg camp near Dresden. The recruitment efforts, however, at the onset met with some opposition from the prisoners, who evidently had misgivings about Netaji’s intentions and motivations. In this regard Hugh Toye writes:
When Bose himself visited the camp in December there was still marked hostility. His speech was interrupted, and much of what he had to say went unheard. But private interviews were more encouraging; the men’s questions showed interest — what rank would they receive? What credit would be given for Indian Army seniority? How would the Legionary stand in relation to the German soldier? Bose refused to bargain, and some who might have been influential recruits were turned away. On the other hand, many of the men paid him homage as a distinguished Indian, several professed themselves ready to join the Legion unconditionally.

Netaji sought and got agreement from the Germans that the Wehrmacht would train the Indians in the strictest military discipline, and they were to be trained in all branches of infantry in using weapons and motorized units the same way a German formation is trained; the Indian legionaries were not to be mixed up with any of the German formations; that they were not to be sent to any front other than in India for fighting against the British, but would be allowed to fight in self-defense at any other place if surprised by any enemy formation; that in all other respects the Legion members would enjoy the same facilities and amenities regarding pay, clothing, food, leave, etc., as a German unit. By December 1941 all arrangements were complete and the next important task was to persuade men to come forward and form the nucleus. It appeared that the POWs needed to be convinced that there were civilian Indian youth as well, studying, well placed in life and responsible to their families at home, who were ready to give up everything to join the Legion. Ten of the forty young Indians then residing in Berlin came forward. They were quickly joined by five POWs who were already in Berlin in connection with the German radio propaganda, and the first group of fifteen people was thus formed.On 25 December 1941 a meeting of Indian residents in Berlin was called in the office of the Free India Center, to give a send-off to the first fifteen who were to leave the following day for Frankenburg, the first training camp and headquarters for the Legion. The brief ceremony was simple and solemn. Netaji blessed the Legion, the first of its kind in the history of the struggle for Indian independence. He christened it Azad Hind Fauj (Indian National Army). The Indian Army of Liberation in the West thus had a humble and modest birth.

The strength of the Legion grew steadily, as the task of recruitment continued unabated. Once trained to a certain level and discipline, the members of the first batch were assigned the additional responsibility of visiting the Annaberg camp and aiding in the recruitment process. While the Legion was sent to Frankenburg in Saxony, another group was taken to Meseritz in Brandenburg to be trained in tactical warfare. Abid Hasan and N.G. Swamy, the two original recruiters whom Netaji had sent to the Annaberg camp in 1941, had become de-facto founder-members of the Legion at Frankenburg and the irregular Company at Meseritz respectively. At Meseritz, the Indians were placed under the command of Hauptmarm Harbig, whose first object was to make them forget that they had been prisoners.

There were Tajiks, Uzbeks and Persians as well under training for operational roles similar to that envisaged for the Indians. In due course the trainees went on to tactical operational training, such as wireless operating, demolitions and riding, and also undertook special mountain and parachute courses. According to Toye, “Morale, discipline and Indo-German relations were excellent, the German officers first-rate.”

Netaji visited the camps from time to time and watched progress of the trainees. Since he himself was inclined toward military training and discipline, he followed the German training methods with great interest. It is understood that while in Germany Netaji himself underwent the rigors of such training, although authoritative documents on this subject are yet to be located by this writer. While in India, he was a member of the University Training Corps at school and commanded the volunteers at an annual session of the Indian National Congress, but he never had a formal military education prior to his arrival in Germany in 1941. As Joyce Lebra writes: “Though Bose was without any previous military experience, he got his training and discipline German-style, along with the soldiers of the Indian Legion.” To him, formation of a legion was more positive, more nationalistic and more gratifying than mere radio propaganda. Unlike his ex-compatriots in the Indian National Congress, including Gandhi, Nehru and Patel, he would rather seek confrontation with the British — with an army — than to work out a compromise with them on a conference table, on the issue of India’s freedom. A firm believer in discipline and organization, nothing perhaps could be more satisfying to him than to see his men being trained by the German Command, with officers of the highest calibre. In four months, the number of trainees rose to three hundred. In another six months a further three hundred were added. By December 1942, exactly a year after the recruitment of the Legion was inaugurated, it attained the strength of four battalions. At the beginning of 1943 the Legion would be 2000 strong, well on its way up to the culminating point of 3500 men. But let us step back to early 1942, almost a year after Netaji’s arrival in Berlin.

After the inauguration of the Free India Center, Free India Radio, and the sending of the first fifteen legionaries to the Frankenburg training camp, Netaji’s activities in Germany began in full swing. His presence in Germany was not yet officially admitted — he was still being referred to as Signor Orlando Mazzota or His Excellency Mazzota — but he began to be known to more and more people in Berlin. Josef Goebbels wrote in his diary on 1 March:

We have succeeded in prevailing upon the Indian nationalist leader, Bose, to issue an imposing declaration of war against England. It will be published most prominently in the German press and commented upon. In that way we shall now begin our official fight on behalf of India, even though we don’t as yet admit it openly.

On 14 March, he remarked of Bose, “He is an excellent worker.”9 The fall of Singapore was a signal for Netaji to broadcast his first official speech over the Free India Radio, repeating his vow to fight British imperialism until the end. This he followed with a declaration of war against England, although at that stage such a pronouncement could only be symbolic. Netaji had not yet obtained an Axis declaration in support of the freedom of India that he pressed for in the supplement of his first memorandum to the German government. That government was of the opinion that the time was not ripe yet for such a declaration and unless a pronouncement of this nature could be supported by military action, it would not be of much value.Meanwhile, Japan proposed a tripartite declaration on India. Encouraged by this, Bose met Mussolini in Rome on 5 May, and persuaded him to obtain such a declaration in favor of Indian independence. Mussolini telegraphed the Germans, proposing proceeding at once with the declaration. To back his new proposal Mussolini told the Germans that he had urged Bose to set up a “counter-government” and to appear more conspicuously. The German reaction, which still remained guarded, is recorded by Dr. Goebbels in his diary on 11 May:

We don’t like this idea very much, since we do not think the time has yet come for such a political manoeuvre. It does appear though that the Japanese are very eager for some such step. However, émigré governments must not live too long in a vacuum. Unless they have some actuality to support them, they only exist in the realm of theory.

Netaji apparently was of the opinion that a tripartite declaration on Indian independence, followed up by a government-in-exile, would give some credibility to his declaration of war on England, push over the brink the imminent revolution in India, and legitimize the Indian legion. However, Hitler held a different view. During an interview at the Führer’s field headquarters on 29 May, he told Netaji that a well-equipped army of a few thousand could control millions of unarmed revolutionaries, and there could be no political change in India until an external power knocked at her door. Germany could not yet do this. To convince Netaji, he took him to a wall map, pointed to the German positions in Russia and to India. The immense distances were yet to be bridged before such a declaration could be made. The world would consider it premature, even coming from him, at this stage. Hitler was perhaps being realistic, but nevertheless it must have come as some sort of disappointment for Netaji. [Image: Hitler, whom Bose called “an old revolutionary” during their meeting in May 1942.]

In July 1942, the Germans suggested that a contingent of the Irregular Company be sent for front-line propaganda against Indian troops at El Alamein; but Rommel, who did not like battlefields turned into proving grounds for Foreign Office ideas, opposed the move. However, at the Lehrregiment manoeuvers in September, and on field exercises in October, the Indian performance won high praise. By January 1943, it was realized that maintenance of the irregulars as a separate entity was not of much practical use, and the ninety Indian men (excepting four under N.G. Swamy who were being trained for work within India) were absorbed into the Legion. Since the supply of recruits from the Annaburg camp was fast being depleted, it was decided to hasten the shipment of prisoners of war from Italy.

According to an agreement between Italy and Germany, all Indian POWs were to be sent directly to Germany without being held in Italian camps. But, in the meanwhile, an unforseen impediment stood in the way. A long-time Indian resident in Rome, Iqbal Shedai, formed an Indian unit under the Italians, and began broadcasting from Rome with the aid of a few Indian prisoners. It is understood that he had conferred with Netaji a few times, but obviously had no intention of co-operating with him. From radio broadcasting, he advanced into forming an Indian military unit, although it was in clear violation of the Italo-German agreement. The unit was named the Centro Militare India, but existed only from April to November 1942. During its brief period of existence, however, Shedai succeeded in diverting several hundred volunteers to Italian camps, who would normally have gone to Germany. In November the unit was three hundred and fifty strong, having been trained by Italian officers. On 9 November, after the Allied landing in North Africa, it was learnt that the men were being sent to fight in Libya, contrary to Shedai’s promises. When they refused to go and mutinied, Shedai refused to intervene. Consequently, the Centro Militare India was disbanded. It was never revived, and thus a barrier that stood in Netaji’s way toward recruitment was removed.

In August 1942, the Legion was moved to Koenigsbrueck, a large military training center in Saxony. This had been a regular training ground for the German infantry and motorized units for decades. Here the first contingents paraded before Netaji’s eyes in October, and the growth was rapid. However, the rapid expansion of the Legion also posed the problem of finances. Hitherto, payment to soldiers was being made from the monthly grants to the Free India Center and its office. As the number of Legionaries grew, that source became insufficient. For this problem there could be but one solution: direct payment to the Legion by the Germans. This would mean hereafter that the Legionaries would receive promotions and precedence as soldiers of national socialist Germany, and would become, in fact, a regiment of the German army, while retaining its separate name and distinction. This was agreed upon between Netaji and the German government, necessitating the taking of a formal oath of loyalty to Adolph Hitler on the part of the Legionaries. Describing the ceremony, Hugh Toye writes:

Five hundred Legionaries were assembled. Their German commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Krappe, addressed them, and the oath was administered by German officers to six men at a time. All was done with solemnity, the soldiers touching their officer’s sword as they spoke the German words: “I swear by God this holy oath, that I will obey the leader of the German State and people, Adolph Hitler, as commander of the German Armed Forces, in the fight for freedom of India, in which fight the leader is Subhas Chandra Bose, and that as a brave soldier, I am willing to lay down my life for this oath.” Bose presented to the Legion its standard, a tricolor in the green, white and saffron of the Indian National Congress, superimposed with the figure of a springing tiger in place of the Congress spinning wheel. “Our names,” he said, “will be written in gold letters in the history of free India; every martyr in this holy war will have a monument there.” It was a brave, colorful show, and for Bose, a moment of pride and emotion. “I shall lead the army,” he said, “when we march to India together.” The Legionaries looked well in their new uniforms, the silken banner gleaming in their midst; their drill did them credit.

What was Netaji’s plan for leading this army to India? When the Germans launched out beyond Stalingrad into Central Asia, the Indian irregulars, trained at Messeritz, would accompany their Tajik and Uzbek counterparts along with the German Troops. After Uzbekistan and Afghanistan were reached the Indian Company would leap ahead of the German advance to disrupt the British-Indian defenses in northwestern India. Netaji spoke of dropping parachute brigades, calling on the Indian peasantry to assist them. Through radio he issued warnings to British Indian soldiers and police to the effect that unless they assisted the liberation forces they would one day have to answer to the free Indian government for their criminal support of the British. The effect of the Indian army of liberation marching into India along with the German forces would be such that the entire British Indian Army morale would collapse, coinciding with a revolutionary uprising against the British. The Legion would then be the nucleus of an expanding army of free India. Netaji’s plan, largely dependent on German Military successes in the Soviet Union, undoubtedly had a setback when the Wehrmacht was halted at Stalingrad. After the German retreat from that city, the plan for marching into India from the West had to be abandoned. The tide of war was turning swiftly, calling for devising new strategies on the part of Netaji.

While the German army’s second thrust into Russia encountered an unexpected counter-offensive at Stalingrad and thus was forced to turn back, in another part of the world the forces of another Axis partner were forging ahead, nearer and nearer to India. Japan was achieving spectacular successes in the Far East and was ready to welcome Netaji as the leader of millions of Indians who lived in the countries of East and Southeast Asia. The Japanese attitude was extremely encouraging. Tojo, the Prime Minister, had issued statements in the Diet (the Japanese Parliament) about Indian freedom early in 1942, and by March there was a Japanese proposal for a tripartite declaration on India. A small band of Indian National Army legionaires had already been in existence in the Southeast under Japanese patronage, although a few of its leaders, including Mohan Singh, had fallen out with the Japanese. Netaji would have no difficulty in reorganizing and expanding this organization. He would get the active support of millions of overseas Indians, and the many thousands of British Indian prisoners-of-war would provide him a greater opportunity for recruitment, and for thus organizing a formidable army of liberation that could immediately be deployed in forward positions as the Imperial Japanese Army kept on advancing through the steaming jungles of the Malayan peninsula and Burma. During his meeting with Hitler on 29 May, the Führer had also suggested that in view of the prevalent world situation, Netaji should shift the center of his activities from Germany to the Far East.

Netaji could look back at his two years work in Germany with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Broadcasting, publications and propaganda were all extended. Azad Hind Radio had extended programs in several languages, and reports indicated that they were being listened to with interest in target areas; Azad Hind, a bilingual journal, was being published regularly. There were other papers for the Legion besides; the Free India Center had attained an acknowledged status in Germany. It was treated as a foreign mission, entitling its members to a higher scale of rations, and exemption from some of the Aliens’ regulations. Netaji himself was given a good villa, a car and special rations for entertainment purposes. His personal allowance amounted to about eight hundred pounds a month. The monthly grant for the Free India Center rose from 1,200 pounds in 1941 to 3,200 pounds in 1944. All these Netaji stipulated as a loan from the German government, to be returned after India gained independence with the Axis assistance. However, the turn of events now demanded his presence in a different theater-of-war.

What would happen to the Legion in Netaji’s absence? It was now 3,500 strong, well trained and equipped, ready for action. Netaji consulted with his aides in Berlin. A.C.N. Nambiar, an Indian journalist who had been in Europe for some eighteen years prior to Netaji’s arrival in Germany, was his right-hand man. While preparing for his journey to the Asian theater-of-war, Netaji passed on to Nambiar his policy and instructions. As Hugh Toye writes:

There were plans for new branches of the Free India Center, for broadcasting, for Indians to study German police methods, and for the training of Indian seamen and airmen. As for the legion, it must be used actively as soon as possible, the German officers and NCOs must be quickly replaced by Indians, there must be no communalism. Legionaries were to be trained on all the most modern German equipment, including heavy artillery and tanks; Bose would send further instructions as opportunity offered.

A few words must be added regarding the Indo-German cooperation and comradeship during the critical days of World War II when the Legion was formed. None could describe it better than Adalbert Seifriz, who was a German Officer in the training camp of the Legionaries. He writes,

Agreeing to the proposal of Bose was a magnificient concession and consideration shown to the great personality of Bose by the German Government in those critical times when all German efforts were concentrated on the war … The mutual understanding and respect between Indians and Germans and the increasing contact between them in the interest of the common task made it possible for the Indian Legion to sustain and keep up discipline right up to the German capitulation in 1945. During the period of training and even afterwards the comradeship between Indians and Germans could not be destroyed … A meeting with Subhas Bose was a special event for the German training staff. We spent many evenings with him, discussing the future of India. He lives in the minds of the training staff members as an idealistic and fighting personality, never sparing himself in the service of his people and his country … The most rewarding fact was the real comradeship which grew between Indians and Germans, which proved true in dangerous hours, and exists still today in numerous cases. The Indian Legion was a precious instrument in strengthening and consolidating Indo-German friendship.

A report of Hitler’s visit to the Indian Legion headquarters in Dresden was given by Shantaram Vishnu Samanta (one of the Legionaries) during a press interview in India, after his release from an internment camp. According to his statement, Hitler addressed the soldiers of the Legion after Netaji had left for East Asia. He spoke in German and his speech was translated into Hindustani by an interpreter. He said:

You are fortunate having been born in a country of glorious cultural traditions and a colossal manpower. I am impressed by the burning passion with which you and your Netaji seek to liberate your country from foreign domination. Your Netaji’s status is even greater than mine. While I am the leader of eighty million Germans, he is the leader of 400 million Indians. In all respects he is a greater leader and a greater general than myself. I salute him, and Germany salutes him. It is the duty of all Indians to accept him as their führer and obey him implicitly. I have no doubt that if you do this, his guidance will lead India very soon to freedom.

A statement by another soldier of the Indian Legion, who remains anonymous, has a somewhat different version. It stated that both Netaji and Hitler took a joint salute of the Indian Legion and a German infantry. In addition to comments cited earlier, Hitler was reported to have made these remarks as well:

German civilians, soldiers and free Indians! I take this opportunity to welcome your acting Führer, Herr Subhas Chandra Bose. He has come here to guide all those free Indians who love their country and are determined to free it from foreign yoke. It is too much for me to dare to give you any instructions or advice because you are sons of a free country, and you would naturally like to obey implicitly the accredited leader of your own land.

However, reports of Hitler’s visit and address to the Indian Legionaries are not confirmed from any other source.Netaji would be leaving Germany on 8 February 1943. On 26 January, “Independence Day for India,” there was a great party in Berlin where hundreds of guests drank his health. On 28 January, which was set aside for observance as the “Legion Day” in honor of the Indian Legion, he addressed the Legion for the last time. It is believed that his departure was kept secret from his army. So, there were no visible emotions among the men; no gesture of a farewell. The impression Netaji was leaving at the Free India Center was that he was going on a prolonged tour. So there were no signs of any anxiety. Except for a few top-ranking German officers and his closest aides, hardly anybody was aware that within a week-and-a-half he would be embarking on a perilous journey: a submarine voyage through mine-infested waters to the other side of the world. In his absence, Nambiar settled down in his job as his successor and soon gained respect of the Legionaries.

Two months after Netaji’s departure, as a result of discussion between the German Army Command and the Free India Center, it was decided to transfer the Legion from Koenigsbrueck to a coastal region in Holland, to involve it in a practical coastal defense training. It was also in accordance with Netaji’s wishes. He had often expressed a desire to give his troops, whenever possible, some training in coastal defense. After the first battalion was given a hearty send-off, an untoward incident happened within the legion; two companies of the second battalion refused to move. It was soon found out that there were three main reasons for staging this minor rebellion. Some Legionaries were unhappy that they were not promoted, but their names had to be put on the waiting list; some simply did not want to leave Koenigsbrueck; some were influenced by a rumor that Netaji had abandoned them and had gone off leaving them entirely in German hands, who were now going to use them in the Western Front, instead of sending them to the East to fight for India’s liberation. However, the rebellion was soon quelled after a team of NCOs visited the officials of the Free India Center in Berlin and obtained clarification regarding the rebel Legionaries’ grievances. The team went back to the camp and assured the men that they were not being sent to fight a war but were there purely for practical training purposes according to Netaji’s wishes; that the promotions were not being passed up, they would follow in due course; and that Netaji had not abandoned them, and they would be informed about his whereabouts and plans as soon as possible. In pursuance of military discipline, the ringleaders of this act of insubordination were sent to prison camps for a specified period.

The Legion was stationed in the coastal areas of Holland for five months. Afterwards, there was a decision to move it to the coastal area of Bordeaux in France from the mouth of the Girond, opposite the fortification of Foyan to the Bay of Arcachon. The Legion was taking charge here. The stay in France was utilized to give the Legionaries a thorough training in the weaponry required for the defense of the Atlantic Wall. In the spring of 1944, the first batch of twelve Indians were promoted to officers. Field Marshal Rommel, who took charge of the Atlantic Wall, once visited the area where the Indian contingent was located. Ganpulay writes:

… after having seen the work carried out by the Indians, he exclaimed: “I am pleasantly surprised to find that in spite of very little training in coastal defense, the work done here is fairly satisfactory.” While departing, he said to the Indian soldiers: “I am glad to see you have done good work; I wish you and your leader all the good luck!”

In the spring of 1944, one company of the Legion was sent to North Italy at the request of some officers who were seeking an opportunity to confront the British forces. After the Normandy invasion by the Allied forces in June 1944, the military situation in Europe began to deteriorate. It eventually became so critical that the German High Command decided to order the Indian Legion to return to Germany. So after about ten months of stay in the coastal region of Lacanau in France, the Indian Legion started its road back. It is to be understood at this point that with the landing of the Allied troops in France and their gradual advance through the French countryside, the French Maquis (underground) guerillas had become very active, and along with the German troops they made the Legionaries as well the target of their attacks. After travelling a certain distance, the first battalion of the Legion was temporarily located in the area of Mansle near Poitiers, while the second and the third battalion were stationed in Angouleme and Poitiers respectively. After a rest for ten days in this region, during which period they had to ward off sporadic attacks by the French underground, the Legionaries took to the road once again. In this long march back to Germany, the Legion demonstrated exemplary courage and fortitude, and underwent rigors and hardships of battlefield with equanimity. At this time, British propaganda was directed to these men which was full of empty promises; some material was dropped from the air, while agents infiltrated into the ranks to persuade the men to desert. The propaganda promised the would-be deserters reinstatement in the British Indian army with full retroactive pay and pension, but the British hypocrisy was once again manifest in the fact that a few of the soldiers who had fallen victim to this bait were shot later by the French publicly in a market place in Poitiers without any trial, along with some German prisoners-of-war.In following the saga of the Indian Army of Liberation in the West, one has to remember that its fate was indissolubly linked with that of the Axis powers in Europe, especially Germany. The overpowering of the new revolutionary regimes of Europe by forces representing an alliance of capitalism and Marxism was an international tragedy which engulfed the Indian Legion in Europe as well. During its retreat into Germany, it encountered the enemy forces on several occasions and fought rearguard action with British and French forces, displaying exemplary bravery. The German military training had converted the regiment not only into a highly disciplined body, but a hard-core fighting unit as well. It is indeed a historical irony that this superb force could not be utilized for the purpose and way its creator and leader, Sublias Chandra Bose, had dreamt of. Nevertheless, the 950th Indian Regiment, as the Legion was officially designated, left its footprints in the battlefields of France and Germany, as their many other gallant comrades of the German Army.

In the fall of 1944 until Christmas, the Indian Legion spent its time in the quiet villages of southern Germany. Between Christmas and the New Year 1945, the unit was ordered to move into the military camp at the garrison town of Heuberg. In the spring of 1945 the Allied forces crossed the Rhine. The Russians entered the East German provinces murdering and plundering cities, townships and villages. Heavy bomber formations began destroying German cities. Transport systems became completely disorganized and paralyzed. The end was near, and there was no point in remaining in the barracks. The Legion, therefore, left its winter quarters at Heuberg in March 1945, and headed for the Alpine passes. By that time all communications with the Free India Center in Berlin had been cut off. The Legion commanders took decisions independently. The Legion had already reached the Alpine regions east of Bodensee. However, with the surrender of the German forces on 7 May, all hopes also ended for the Free India Army. While attempting to cross over to Switzerland, the legionaries were overwhelmed by American and French units and were made prisoners. Those who fell into the hands of the French had to suffer very cruel treatment. Several were shot, while others died in prison camps in miserable conditions. The rest were eventually handed over to the British.

Although thus swept into the maelstrom of the Axis disintegration in Europe, Netaji’s army of liberation in the west had carved for itself a niche in history; for, indeed, it was a nucleus which would eventually precipitate a much larger fighting force elsewhere. Inspired by its leader, that force would march into India to set in motion a process that would eventually deliver the country from an alien bondage. One, therefore, must not regard the saga of the Indian National Army in Europe as an isolated event that ended tragically. While its dream of crossing the Caucasus along with its allies, the German Armed Forces, and entering India from the Northwest, did not materialize in reality, its extension and successor, India’s army of liberation in the east, did enter the country from the opposite direction, thus fulfilling the cherished dream of Netaji and his soldiers. Not only that, as we shall see subsequently, but that army made the mightiest contribution toward finally ending an imperialist rule in India.

During his interview with Netaji, Hitler had suggested to him that since it would take at least another one or two years before Germany could gain direct influence in India, and while Japan’s influence, in view of its spectacular successes in Southeast Asia, could come in a few months, Bose should negotiate with the Japanese. The Führer warned Bose against an air journey which could compel him to a forced landing in British territory. He thought Bose was too important a personality to let his life be endangered by such an experiment. Hitler suggested that he could place a German submarine at his disposal which would take him to Bangkok on a journey around the Cape of Good Hope.16 However, despite Hitler’s suggestions, it is believed that the German Foreign Office showed some reluctance in the matter of Netaji’s leaving Germany and going to Japan. Col. Yamamoto Bin, Japanese military attache in Berlin (and a good personal friend of Netaji) along with the Japanese ambassador Lieutenant-General Oshima Hiroshi, had met Netaji as early as October 1941 when the latter expressed hopes for enlisting Japanese aid in his plan for wresting Indian independence. This was the beginning of a series of such meetings.

After the entry of Japan in World War II in December, Netaji was more eager to go as soon as possible to East Asia and fight beside Japan for India’s liberation. He reportedly urged Oshima to use his good offices to secure his passage to Asia. It was about at this point that both Oshima and Yamamoto encountered a feeling of reluctance in the matter on the part of the German Foreign Office. They had the feeling that Germany was not to willing to let Japan lead India to independence. Bose was already a useful ally as an Indian patriot, and his propaganda broadcasts were effective in both India and Britain. The Indian Legion was already having a psychological impact in India and worrying the Allies. For these reasons, “they were guarding Bose like a tiger cub.”

In the meantime, Ambassador Oshima had also met with Hitler and explained Bose’s plan to him. According to Japanese records,

The Führer readily agreed with Oshima that it was better for Bose to shift his activities to Southeast Asia now that his country’s (Japan’s) armies had overrun the area. The second problem was whether Bose would get enough support in Tokyo for his activities. On this, Oshima had contacted Tokyo many times but had not received any firm answer. Finally, Tokyo replied to Oshima that in principle it had no objection to Bose’s visit to Japan. The third problem was to provide Bose with a safe means of transport to Japan. Communication between Germany and Japan was impossible during those days. Passage by boat was ruled out; and it was decided to use a plane belonging to the Lufthansa Company to airlift Bose from Germany to Japan via the Soviet Union. Tojo (Japanese Prime Minister) objected to this on the grounds that this would amount to a breach of trust with the Soviet Union. An attempt was made by both Yamamoto and Bose to get an Italian plane, but this also did not work. Finally the choice fell on a submarine. Germany agreed to carry Bose up to a certain unknown point in the east and asked that a Japanese submarine be pressed into service thence forward. After a series of exchanges with his government, Oshima finally obtained Tokyo’s approval of the plan and communicated it to Bose.

Alexander Werth writes:

An interesting anecdote related to this historic journey may perhaps be mentioned here. Shortly before Bose’s departure the Japanese Naval Command raised objections because of an internal Japanese regulation not permitting civilians to travel on a warship in wartime. When Adam von Trott (of the German Foreign Office) received this message by cable from the German Ambassador in Tokyo, he sent the following reply: “Subhas Chandra Bose is by no means a private person, but Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Liberation Army.” Thus the bureaucratic interference was overcome.

On 8 February 1943, accompanied by Keppler, Nambiar and Werth, Netaji arrived at the port of Kiel where a German submarine under the command of Werner Musenberg was waiting for him. His would-be sole companion on this perilous voyage, Abid Hasan, had travelled separately to Kiel in a special compartment without knowing his destination. Only after commencement of the journey was he to be informed of the itinerary. Netaji was leaving behind his chosen 3,500 soldiers of the Indian Legion, the 950th regiment of the German Army, specially trained and equipped for the task of liberating an India held in bondage by the British. We have already followed the history and fate of the Legion. Now let us turn to the East.

Posted in Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Gandhi, History, India | Print | No Comments »

23. September 2009 by admin.

Perceptions of India in the West are distorted and deformed by the myth attached to Gandhi, the reputed “father of Indian independence” who has become a saintly figure beyond criticism. British colonialists often cultivated an admiration for Gandhi because he was their least dangerous adversary; today Westerners are enthralled by Gandhi because they see him as a global prophet of non-violence and anti-racism.

More than fifty years after Indian independence and Gandhi’s death, it is time to reassess our judgments of Gandhi and his influence on the history of India. Maintaining the current mythical image of Gandhi is not only an obstacle to an accurate vision of Indian history; it is also dangerous. It is dangerous, because it encourages to take pleasure in our pacifism and in our fantasies of “global brotherhood,” at a time when we are being submerged by prolific foreign races, threatened by creeping ethnocide and by the progressive destruction of our racial and cultural identity. And the peaceful invaders (for the moment) of Europe, along with their collaborators within European governments, use precisely the emotional blackmail of “tolerance” and “global brotherhood” to sow guilt among Europeans, inhibiting us from defending our identity, our territory, and even our right to exist.

Mohandas Gandhi was not the only Indian leader who struggled for independence. Several other leaders, unjustly ignored, played equally significant roles, if not greater. These were, notably, Aurobindo Ghose, who later distanced himself from politics and became “Sri Aurobindo”; Bal Ganghadar Tilak, the Brahmin scholar, author of important studies on the Vedas; and above all Subhas Chandra Bose, the “Lion of Bengal,” who did not hesitate to join the Axis camp to achieve his patriotic objectives.

We should also ask whether Gandhi truly represented the real tradition of his people, the Hindu tradition, and the answer is certainly closer to “no” than “yes.” This harsh judgment is shared by several of the greatest contemporary specialists on India (in particular Alain Daniélou, whose books are an inexhaustible source for all those who wish to discover Hindu civilization and tradition), and it should be more widely known, if only to counterbalance persistent ultra-pacifist propaganda, the purpose of which is to spiritually numb and disarm all forms of majoritarian nationalism, even in India itself.

Our idealized image of Gandhi is a reflection of our own naivety. By any objective standard Gandhi’s legacy, on the issues that concerned him most, was a series of failures with disastrous results: He fought hard for ecumenical Indian unity within the secularist Congress party, but his concessions to Islam, in the name of multi-faith inclusion, only facilitated greater Muslim communal solidarity, each ecumenical concession generating more particularist (and eventually separatist) demands; he believed that Muslims and Hindus could live together in fraternal concord, and his celebrated fasts were designed to achieve that end, yet he presided over the partition of India, sanctioning (though reluctantly) the creation of a theocratic Muslim Pakistan, at the cost of at least a million lives and the forcible transfer of an estimated fourteen million people; he urged non-violence (ahimsa) to his fellow Hindus, even in the face of appalling atrocities, and received only more Islamist atrocities in return, often bloodcurdling in their ferocity. Passivity and brotherly love in response to violence and hatred are simply foolish; Gandhi’s claim that they represent distinctive Hindu moral principles would (if true) say nothing positive about the tradition he professed to uphold.

Gandhi’s Pacifism
“We should with a cool mind reflect when we are being swept away. Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo even their existence. If they put all of us to the sword, we should court death bravely; may they even rule the world, we shall inhabit the world. At least we should never fear death. We are destined to be born and die; then why need we feel gloomy over it? If all of us die with a smile on our lips, we shall enter a new life. We shall originate a new Hindustan” (6th April 1947).

“Not one of those [Hindus] who have died in Punjab is going to return. In the end we too have to go there. It is true that they were murdered but then some others die of cholera or due to other causes. He who is born must die. If those killed have died bravely, they have not lost anything but earned something … After all, the killers will be none other than our Muslim brothers” (23rd September 1947).

(Both quoted by Nathuram Godse, Gandhi’s assassin, in his court defense.)

Gandhi can thus stand as the perfect embodiment of the anti-racist, multicultural hero: His rhetorical flights of pacifist fancy and his sentimental talk of human brotherhood were regularly contradicted by intractable social realities, as are the bromides of multiculturalism wherever they are dispensed. Peoples belonging to radically different cultural or racial groups cannot, in fact, live amicably within the same nation, and Gandhi’s belief that they could turned out, during his own life, to be manifestly false.

Hindu ethno-nationalists were political losers in the debates and infighting during the decade leading up to Indian independence, but subsequent history has demonstrated that their analysis was correct:
“German race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the semitic races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifest here. Germany has shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.”
The preceding sentences, written in 1939 by Madhav Golwalkar, the leader of the nationalist RSS, are frequently quoted today to discredit Hindu nationalism, but their substance happens to be true. Nationalism and multiculturalism are indeed antonyms. It is, as a matter of fact, “well-nigh impossible … for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole.” Gandhi believed otherwise, and history proved his error.

Muslim leaders were under no such illusions. Also in 1939, Raja Sahib Mahmudabad, chief lieutenant of the Muslim League’s leader, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, wrote to a fellow Muslim:
“When we speak of democracy in Islam it is not democracy in the government but in the cultural and social aspects of life. Islam is totalitarian — there is no denying about it. It is the Koran that we should turn to. It is the dictatorship of the Koranic laws that we want — and that we will have — but not through non-violence and Gandhian truth.”
Unintentionally Mahmudabad was re-stating, from his own Islamic perspective, Golwalkar’s warning: the near impossibility that a cohesive ethno-cultural group, with a firm sense of common purpose, will voluntarily accept any nationalism other than its own.

Gandhi once pleaded with Jinnah, “you can cut me in two if you wish, but don’t cut India in two.” Yet in the end Muslim intransigence and militancy received their reward in the form of Pakistan, a separate homeland for Indian Muslims, replete with a constitution that irrevocably enshrines Muslim dominance; Indian Hindus, still suffering today from a restive Muslim minority, received their reward in a secularist (”multicultural”) India, which denies the Hindu majority any institutional expression of their ethno-cultural character. Hindu leaders may have profited from secularism, but the Hindu masses they nominally represented did not.

The lesson of Gandhi’s failure is clear: In interracial relations a group that defines itself by its tolerance will lose against a group that doggedly pursues its own self-interest. Shrewd ethnocentrism is more politically powerful than compromising tolerance. We could call that a sociological law, if it were not so obvious.
“India,” as Godse complained at his trial, “was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us…. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship.”

Some Critical Views of Gandhi
Alain Daniélou, Histoire de l’Inde, Fayard, 1971:
The Congress party … was a nonreligious political movement, comprised principally of Indians of Anglo-Saxon education and ideology. To obtain the approval of the Indian masses required the cover of a religious exterior…. Mohandas Gandhi gradually altered his character and appearance. The young anglicized revolutionary lawyer, from South Africa, transformed himself into a half-naked Indian monk. This figure inspired confidence in the Indian popular masses and impressed the Westerners. His companions gave him the title Mahatma (”Great Soul”). However, he never convinced the elites of the traditional Hindu world, who regarded him as an impostor and a dangerous politician….
Since the press of the Congress was for the most part in the English language, whereas the traditionalist parties always used Indian languages, it was easy for the Congress to present, on the international level, the Hindu parties as retrograde, fanatic and ridiculous, and to ensure, at the time of independence, that power be transferred to them, although they represented only a feeble anglicized minority. As the price of this capture of power, Gandhi accepted the partition of India, which was as needless as it was harmful and which all moderate Hindus and Muslims opposed….

On January 30, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated…. The principal reason for his assassination, by a young Brahmin belonging to the orthodox party, was the anxiety caused by Gandhi’s hostility toward traditional Hindu institutions, considered much more pernicious than English indifference. The defense that the murderer pronounced to explain his deed is under interdiction in India. The death of Gandhi was celebrated by ceremonies of thanksgiving in many Hindu cities.
Another reason for the assassination was the Gandhi’s overly conciliatory attitude toward the Muslims, in spite of the terrible massacres that preceded and followed the partition of India. Gandhi advised gaining their cooperation by love and disinterestedness, whereas everywhere the Muslims of India and Pakistan chanted, “we got Pakistan for a song, Delhi will cost us a battle.” It is difficult to say what would have happened to India if Gandhi had lived. His prestige was great, and he was totally opposed to the industrialization of the country. All his disciples were to spin and weave their own clothing. His absolute egalitarianism, in a country with such diverse races and cultures, was impracticable.

Ranjan Borra, “Subhas Chandra Bose, the Indian National Army, and the War of India’s Liberation,” Journal of Historical Review, no. 3, 4 (Winter 1982):
Apart from revisionist historians, it was none other than Lord Clement Atlee himself, the British Prime Minister responsible for conceding independence to India, who gave a shattering blow to the myth sought to be perpetuated by court historians, that Gandhi and his movement had led the country to freedom. Chief Justice P.B. Chakrabarty of Calcutta High Court, who had also served as the acting Governor of West Bengal in India, disclosed the following in a letter addressed to the publisher of Dr. R.C. Majumdar’s book A History of Bengal. The Chief Justice wrote:
‘You have fulfilled a noble task by persuading Dr. Majumdar to write this history of Bengal and publishing it … In the preface of the book Dr. Majumdar has written that he could not accept the thesis that Indian independence was brought about solely, or predominantly, by the non-violent civil disobedience movement of Gandhi. When I was the acting Governor, Lord Atlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing the British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor’s palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India. My direct question to him was that since Gandhi’s “Quit India” movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave? In his reply Atlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji [Bose]. Toward the end of our discussion I asked Atlee what was the extent of Gandhi’s influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Atlee’s lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, “m-i-n-i-m-a-l!”

Alain Daniélou, Les Quatre Sens de la vie, Editions du Rocher, 1992:
The use made by Mahatma Gandhi of the theory of non-violence as a political weapon has nothing to do with Hindu tradition. Non-violence is a strictly individual technique of personal improvement. It cannot serve political ends and cannot play a role in the governing of states. All of the Bhagavad Gita is in fact a lesson given to Arjuna, who wanted to renounce violence and thus to shirk his duty as a prince and soldier. Gandhi was in fact, thanks to his theories on non-violence, the instrument of massacres on a scale almost without historical precedent, which preceded and followed the partition of India, which he had accepted.

François Gautier, Un autre regard sur l’Inde, Editions du Tricorne, 2000:
It should be said, whatever Gandhi’s holiness, that his moral rigidity… and his asceticism caused enormous evils in India, in particular his approach to the question of the Untouchables and the Muslims. He always felt compelled to yield before the demands of the latter, and he obstinately refused to see that the Muslims were always the source of the riots, the Hindus doing nothing but respond. He professed an indulgence without limit toward Jinnah [”supreme leader” of Indian Muslims, later first governor-general of Pakistan], even offering him the premiership of India, although the Muslims constituted only 11% of the population…. You speak of non-violence? But Gandhi exerted the greatest violence with his body in fasting throughout his life to subject others to his will. There was in this not only a very Christian element of self-mortification, but also a blackmail which no one dared resist. “It is beyond doubt,” Alexandra David-Neel writes, “that the attitude advocated by Jesus morally dominates, from above, the affected and theatrical character of the Mahatma’s fasts.”

Savitri Devi, The Lightning and the Sun, 1958:
The late Mahatma Gandhi’s much admired “nonviolence” was moral violence; not: “Do this, or else I kill you!” but: “Do this, or else I kill myself! … knowing that you hold my life as indispensable.” It may look “nobler.” In fact, it is just the same — apart from the difference in the technique of pressure. It is, rather, less noble because, precisely on account of that subtler technique, it leads people to believe that it is not violence, and therefore contains an element of deceit, an inherent falsehood, from which ordinary violence is free.

Excerpts from Nathuram Godse’s formerly prohibited defense plea are now online, along with a recent interview with his brother and co-conspirator. The assassination of Gandhi was, we should keep in mind, both wrong and pointless, since Godse’s real enemy was a mistaken idea, not its most visible spokesman. Godse was an intelligent and articulate man, and he should have employed his talents productively

Posted in Gandhi, India | Print | No Comments »