Hindutva

Husky · (This post was last modified: 05-03-2009, 08:39 PM by Husky.)

Sorry to keep harping on this earlier article:

QUOTE(acharya @ Apr 28 2009, 09:44 AM)TOP ARTICLE | Interpretation Of Dreams
28 Apr 2009, 0000 hrs IST, JEAN DREZE[right][snapback]96736[/snapback][/right]

1. QUOTE(acharya @ Apr 28 2009, 09:44 AM)Joshi describes pre-colonial India as a "land of abundance", with an "economy as flourishing as its agriculture".[right][snapback]96736[/snapback][/right]Why is the catholic parrot (Jean Dreze) not hitting out at the following French historian who described the pre-christoBrit-infested India as the "land of plenty, where milk and honey flowed"?

http://www.hinduwisdom.info/European_Imperialism.htm
QUOTEMany historians, such asÂ Frenchman Guy Deleury,Â have documented the economic rape of India by the British :

"Industrially the British suffocated India, gradually strangling Indian industries whose finished products, textiles in particular, were of a quality unique in the world which has made them famous over the centuries. Instead they oriented Indian industries towards jute, cotton, tea, oil seeds, which they needed as raw materials for their home industries. They employed cheap labor for the enterprises while traditional artisans were perishing. India, which used to be a land of plenty, where milk and honey flowed started drying"

(source: Le Modele Indou, by Guy Deleury. Hachette, le Temps & les hommes. 1978).This Guy Deleury sounds more enthusiastic in his description of pre-christoBrit India than the Indian Joshi. Ooh I know, Deleury must be Fundootva! Why do the christocommunitwits not attack him? After all, as Deleury wrote it in 1978, he may still be alive.

The following is some background on the alien ecocomic (parasiting on Hindu soil) Jean Dreze:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Dr%C3%A8ze
QUOTEJean DrÃ¨ze is a Indian development Economist of Belgian origin. His co-authors include Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen, with whom he has written on famine, and Nicholas Stern, with whom he has written on policy reform when market prices are distorted.
(Of course he has cowritten with Amartya Sen.)

Jean's father, Jacques, founded CORE, the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, at the UniversitÃ© catholique de Louvain. His brother Xavier DrÃ¨ze is a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
(*Of course* his dad would have been an important entity in an important catholic uni of Belgium.)

Jean is currently an honorary Professor at the Delhi School of Economics. He is a former member of the National Advisory Council of India.
An alien who was a former member of the National Advisory Council and is now lying about Indian history and famines (i.e. doing the typical holocaust denial that the Vatican is also famous for), making references to Indian communist hysterians like Romila for 'authority'.

ADDED: Turns out he studied number-crunching ecocomics at the Uni of East Saxony:
QUOTEJean DrÃ¨ze, born in Belgium in 1959, has lived in India since 1979 and became an Indian citizen in 2002. He studied Mathematical Economics at the University of Essex and did his PhD (Economics) at the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi.

I thought that the catholic uni of Louvain that Dreze's dad was in =Leuven, which would then make it the same catholic uni that Elst attended? (I could be wrong...) But if so, well then, I will drag in an Elst quote since it seems somehow appropriate:
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/European_Imperialism.htm
QUOTEHindusthan was always a proverbially rich country. Now, mother Theresa has made it something of a synonym with poverty. But this poverty cannot be blamed on Hindu culture. After the Muslims had blindly plundered large parts of the country and destroyed so much, the British made an even more systematic and profound attack on India's natural prosperity. They reorganized its economy to suit their own ends, integrating it in their colonial trade system, again to the country's detriment. When the British arrived, India was one of the most industrialized countries in the world, and one of its top exporters. The British economical policies, coupled with the world-wide impact of modern industry on the pre-modern economies, destroyed much of India's prosperity and economical; self-reliance.

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst).

2. The only thing that is actually unsubstantiable in those statements of Joshi brought up by Dreze is the dubious Macaulay quote. And it is consequently the sole thing the christocommunist parrot has to launch its rabid attack on its target:
QUOTEThe most insidious part of the BJP manifesto's preamble is a fake quote attributed to Thomas Babington Macaulay. According to Joshi: "India's prosperity, its talents and the state of its high moral society can be best understood by what Thomas Babington Macaulay stated in his speech of February 2, 1835, in the British Parliament. 'I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief, such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such high calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage..."

This "quote" (abridged here) is a wonderful prop for Joshi's arguments. But there is a catch Macaulay never said this. The quote is a well-known fabrication, which has been the subject of many comments and articles. This does not prevent it from being publicised on numerous Hindutva websites. On a dissenting note, one of these websites advises against using this quote, as it "has a bad reputation amongst scholars of Indology who generally ridicule it". Joshi is evidently not among these "scholars of Indology", despite his emphasis on the need for the nation to "understand itself". Incidentally, Macaulay was in India on February 2, 1835, making it rather unlikely that he would have addressed the British Parliament that day.And that is the only real error I can detect in the statements of Joshi discussed by Dreze. But Dreze wastes no time in concluding - apparently using this error to insinuate that Joshi is "therefore" equally wrong in everything else:
QUOTEHopefully, these examples suffice to show that the BJP manifesto's preamble is an exercise in obfuscation.
If the (presumably Hindu) Joshi ought to be totally stomped on for referring to the above unlikely "Macaulay says" before the 28th of April (going by the time Dreze's response appeared here), where is Dreze when a faithful islamic from the neighbouring Jihadi Republic of Pakistan invokes the same "macaulay quotation" in the Paki paper "The Nation" on 3 May 2009 - which is still Today in different parts of the world. I mean, if Dreze concludes that "the most insidious part of the BJP manifesto's preamble is a fake quote attributed to Thomas Babington Macaulay" then I eagerly await his enlightening/ecocomical words concerning the islamaniac below referring to the same (and the islamic paper that published it without correcting him). Not very Hindootva nor even BJP, is it:
www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/
Columns/03-May-2009/Barbarians-at-barbarians-doorstep/1
QUOTEBarbarians at barbarians' doorstep
By Humayun Gauhar | Published: May 3, 2009 
[...]
To make you better understand what I am saying, let me draw your attention to an extract from an address Lord Macaulay gave to the British Parliament on February 2, 1835. "I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."
How did they do that? Macaulay showed the way in his minutes of February 1835: "It is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population." Note the phrase "interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern."
These then were the intermediaries between the English coloniser and the natives who helped just a few thousand Englishmen rule such a vast subcontinent for so long. We belong to this engineered class for we are the progeny of these "interpreters" and intermediaries. And we still are interpreters and intermediaries between America and our people for we are still "English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."
Get it? Quite a guy, this Macaulay!
The writer is a senior political analyst.
E-mail: humayun.gauhar@gmail.comThe Pakistani islamic "Senior political analyst" has kindly given his email. Perhaps Dreze will use it (instead of going all traditionally catholic on us by remaining the hypocrite) and now write on "Spurious quotations employed by Jihadistan and Jihadis to argue for islamism".
Sounds about right.

Or am I to conclude that Dreze is only hired by the Katholic Kongress Kangaroo Party in India to sit on any 'nationalist Hindu party' competition?

3. Meanwhile, what is The Atlantic doing in propagating that Jabez T. Sunderland, the author of "The New Nationalist Movement", is now suddenly called Sutherland instead (in spite of everyone earlier having correctly referred to Sunderland as Sunderland, including the likes of Will Durant in The Case For India).
I mean, compare
- the less widely-posted version of The Atlantic's The New Nationalist Movement at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/08oct/nationmo.htm
with
- the more frequently seen version, also at The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/190810/nationalist-india
Curious, n'est-ce pas?

An "embarrassing error". Slip of the keyboard? Or conscious history-rewrite? That is, should we suspect The Atlantic of being deliberate liars? Which would make them into apologists for the christobrit empire. (I might have thought it an OCR error if it had been spelled consistently wrong. But then why does the first Atlantic link above correctly spell it Sunderland while the second says Sutherland? Also, why have they still not corrected it?) I mean, is it as 'innocent' as the number games that the christowestern media plays with the death toll from the Godhra riots - with Reuters recently declaring an all-new high?
Hmmm. One does wonder how frequently history gets rewritten in subtle ways in our time.

Husky · 05-04-2009, 08:28 PM

About this:
QUOTE(Husky @ Apr 28 2009, 06:03 PM)Repeating start of post 38 in letters thread

http://india_resource.tripod.com/colonial.html "The Colonial Legacy - Myths and Popular Beliefs" states that:
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTEIn Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis points out that here were 31(thirty one) serious famines in 120 years of British rule compared to 17(seventeen) in the 2000 years before British rule.(Note there were famines induced by the islamic rulers that terrorised the nation before christianism arrived, these probably account for a significant number of the pre-British famines.)

Francois Gautier moreover gives us the record after the christian terror rule at http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifac...enial.html, which shows that it was indeed christianism that was squarely to blame:
QUOTESince Independence, there has been no such famines, a record of which India should be proud.[right][snapback]96743[/snapback][/right]
</div>

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ May 3 2009, 10:10 PM)(The) quote about 17 famines in 2000 years before the Brits, i think most of those took place under the Muslims. There was a severe famine in the Deccan just before Shivaji's birth, and several European travellers like Bernier mention about the impoverished condition of the peasents under the Mughals.

Christoislamic famines.
No differentiating between islamism and christianism.

**acharya** · 05-06-2009, 02:04 AM

X post - Rudradev

QUOTEThe amount of semantic confusion that threatens to cripple discussions like this one is intense.

When we Macaulayputra think of "secularism", "democracy", "egalitarianism", "liberty" etc. etc. we are invoking ideas that are basically Western solutions to Western problems... or more appropriately, Western-designed ameliorants to the sins of Western civilization. The very notional biases that shape our concepts of "equal", "just" and "fair", are exactly the ones induced in us by our erstwhile Western masters (who designed our educational curricula) in order to make us feel inferior.

See, it's this simple. Western nations never had democracy and egalitarianism... they had slavery and wars and massacres. Then in 1648 they came up with this great cure of "secularism" to stop what was essentially a Western disease derived from Judeo-Christian revealed religion; and with the Glorious Revolution forty years later the British came up with "parliamentary democracy" so that a small oligarchy of white slave-owning landowners could wield more authority than the king over the destiny of their nation.

At the same time they expanded and subjugated nations like ours via colonialism. An honest appraisal of our Dharm and its values was, of course, anathema to them. So they forcibly superimposed their Western context over our Indian reality, by creating a class of Macaulayputra who assumed the supremacy of Western context as an axiom. Thus we could be browbeaten and intimidated intellectually, by the idea that Hindu Dharm was superstitious (therefore inferior to Western rationalism), casteist (therefore inferior to Western egalitarianism) etc.

Finally when leaving India to the Indians in 1947 they browbeat us once more, with the idea that Hindu majoritarianism would inevitably punish the Muslims and Christians (and was therefore inferior to Western secularism). It was their Last "You Farted" Laugh... and the defensiveness it engendered among us, is still being used to mock us with the travesty of "Conversions" as noted in the title of this thread.

Here we are debating the fairness or equity or this or that rule of the game... but it's a useless exercise unless we first alter the playing field itself.

In this respect, it is possible that the Chinese may even be ahead of us. Maoism in China came at a great apparent cost to native cultural and normative institutions... but the fact remains that these institutions had been pervaded to a large (if not quite as large as India) extent by Western influences upto and including the advent of the KMT government. Maoism's Cultural Revolution was like a very, very severe detergent... it inundated the prevailing situation with brute force, scouring away all that had gone before.

However, it may yet turn out that native civilizational norms (being deeply ingrained in China over the millenia) have survived Maoism in one form or the other, and may constitute the nucleus of a new Chinese nationalism to replace Communist ideology. Meanwhile, the Western influences that existed only in the few centuries since the Portuguese arrived at Macau, and have been well and truly flushed away.

New Western influences coming from the exposure to American capitalism are not as much of a threat to China as to India, exactly because any trace of Macaulayism and Western contextual supremacism that could have served as ideological beachheads for the new Western cultural invasion were wiped out during the Cultural Revolution.

For all the panic here about avoiding conflict and finding peaceful solutions at any cost, it may be time to realize that the things we want may never materialize without our paying a significant price in blood, "liberty" and more. Whether the price is worth it, is another matter.

Bharatvarsh · 05-06-2009, 06:50 PM

QUOTEOutrage in South AsiaÂ Â Â Â
Koenraad Elst
23 Feb 2009

On 25 and 26 September 2008, the Paris-based South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (SAMAJ) held a conference about âoutraged communities: investigating the politicisation of emotions in South Asiaâ. The texts of the contributed presentations have now been published in the December 2008 issue of SAMAJ (integrally on-line at http://samaj.revues.org).

Let me say first of all that the meeting was great fun, it was well-organized, intense, at a higher pace than outsiders tend to expect from the easy-living French. It offered me the opportunity to meet Djallal (AndrÃ©) HeuzÃ©, whose critical but well-informed book on Hindu nationalism I once reviewed. I didnât even realize until afterwards that the spice of sharp debate had been missing. All vocal participants seemed to be in agreement on the essentials, especially the secularist consensus that religious conflicts and âoutrageâ are mere masks for some socio-economic interests or for generally human motivators such as emotions.

Theological motives for such phenomena as jihad are ruled out beforehand by these social âscientists,â possibly the consequence of their inability to deal with profound ideological issues. This approach prevents them from ever understanding religious âfanatics,â for whom these ideological concerns are all-important. Thus, all those numerous analysts and commentators who have explained Islamism as a reaction to poverty or neo-colonialism have never been able to account for the involvement of wealthy Western-educated persons like Osama bin Laden, who sacrificed a life of luxury because he got serious about his religious commitment. Much less have their sociological models ever been able to explain the purely Islamic motivations expounded in the final writings of terrorists like Mohammed Atta of Twin Towers fame and Mohammed Bouyeri, murderer of Islam-critic Theo van Gogh.

The presentation, âConstructing Outraged Communities and State Responses: The Taslima Nasreen Saga in 1994 and 2007â by Ali Riaz, surprised me by actually mentioning the reason why Bangladeshi medic and novelist Taslima Nasreen has a death sentence on her head, viz. because she denounced the persecution of the Hindu minority in her novel Lajja (Shame, 1993). When she toured Europe in 1994, where trendy intellectuals tried to bask in her reflected glory of brave dissent, all the supposed quality papers (Le Monde, Der Spiegel etc.) pretended that it was her long-standing feminist positions that had brought the death sentence upon her.

In reality, while her feminism greatly displeased the Islamic clerics, it was only when she took up the cause of the hated Kafirs that they cared to sentence her to the ultimate punishment. But of course, no public figure concerned about his respectability wanted to be seen drawing attention to a case of Muslims as oppressors and Hindus as victims. It seems we have now come to a point where an India-watcher with presumably serious professional ambitions can afford to deviate from this secularist party-line. Then again, while a Muslim can afford to, for a non-Muslim it would still be harmful to his career prospects.

My undivided praise goes to Nicolas Jaoul for his talk on âthe post-Khairlanji protest in Vidarbhaâ by SC Mahars against the murder of four fellow caste members by members of the locally dominant Kunbi OBC. In this case the protest movement was successful, leading to effective judicial punishment for the culprits as well as provoking a rise in reporting and police registering of similar complaints on caste atrocities. The campaigners demanded a full and effective death sentence for the main culprits, a demand deemed inhuman by secularists when voiced against convicted terrorists like Afzal Guru.

I understand that Hindus are tired of the outsidersâ reduction of Hinduism to caste, only caste and nothing but caste. However, the eagerness of all enemy forces, and equally of sincerely curious impartial observers, to investigate caste conflict simply reflects a really existing problem. Contrary to what you could expect in the general media in such cases, Jaoul did not conveniently blame âHindu fundamentalismâ or some such ogre. But neither did he report any constructive intervention by the organized Hindu movement. When I asked him about the role of the political parties in the Khairlanji events, he said the BJP has tried to instrumentalize the issue by blaming the ruling Rashtriya Congress Party, but that there were also personal links between some culprits and the BJP. The self-described vanguard of Hindu society had better live up to its progressive boasts and deal with this injustice on a priority basis, not opportunistically, but as a matter of principle.

Sikhism too has its instance of âoutrage,â viz. against all forms of Sikhism that diverge from the line laid down by the anti-Hindu religious separatists. Here, a paper discussed the indignation in organized Sikhism over the performance by Baba Gurmeet Ram-Rahim Singh, leader of the Dera Sacha Sauda sect, impersonating Guru Govind Singh. Unlike the SC Maharsâ outrage in Khairlanji, but just like Muslim outrage over Taslima Nasreenâs work, this is an instance of a ruling group incensed by the impertinence of a dissidentâs presumption of equality, not of an oppressed group revolted by the ruling classâs brutal atrocities.

One of the paperâs presenters said off-hand that the Khalistani struggle had been started in reaction to the Delhi pogrom of 1984, which killed about three thousand Sikhs. When I pointed out that that pogrom by Congress activists took place more than five years into the Khalistani struggle, her co-presenter corrected her, restating the well-known fact that it had started in the clash with the Nirankari Sikhs on Vaisakhi (13 April) 1979. Thatâs when the separatists attacked a Nirankari procession in Amritsar, killing some âhereticsâ (who acknowledge Sikhismâs Hindu roots, in contrast with the dominant separatistsâ fabrication of an anti-Hindu inspiration as underlying Guru Nanakâs mission) and losing some of their own men too.

The courts released the Nirankaris arrested for killing these âSikh martyrsâ on grounds of legitimate self-defence, a verdict which the Khalistani aggressors considered a great injustice. That had been yet another instance of the dominant group in Sikhism getting âoutragedâ at the insolence of a non-dominant group and the indignity of getting treated as mere equals in law with their heretical opponents. So, some outrage is the underclassâ or the subalternsâ indignation at being oppressed, but some outrage is indignation at the underlingsâ defiance against the prevalent power equation.Â

Also very interesting was the paper by Aminah Mohammed on the agitation in Lahore against the Danish cartoons. Apparently the movement openly took inspiration from the agitation in 1927 against the book Rangila Rasool, culminating in the murder of its publisher Mahashay Rajpal. The then murderer was now celebrated as a hero and role model. The demonstration was organized by Barelvi clerics, who are usually the moderates, relatively speaking, in an Islamist scene dominated by the Deoband school. Often they are the target of attacks by more militant groups, and in this case too. But their leadership role in the anti-cartoon agitation shows once more that the desire to outlaw and thwart any irreverent utterance about the Prophet is not the monopoly of âfundamentalistsâ but a common platform uniting the Muslim mainstream.

Christophe Jaffrelot contributed a paper on the Hindutva effort to create outrage on the Rama Setu issue. He emphasized first of all that the current initiative to make a passage in the Indo-Lankan rock formation known as Rama Setu originated with the NDA (BJP) government. Only when the whole enterprise was adopted by the new Congress-dominated government did Hindutva groups start protesting; and we too know the hollowness of much Hindutva campaigning.

Predictably he strictly ignored the one genuine cause of Hindu indignation in this context, viz. the fact that the government came out with statements denying the historicity of Rama, whereas it always takes care to pay respect to all non-Hindu myths in sight (e.g. the myth of Apostle Thomas founding the Kerala Christian community, to which secularist politicians and polemicists routinely pay lip service, even though Western scholars including Pope Benedict XVI have debunked it).

Jaffrelot gleefully described how Hindu nationalists frantically tried to create some outrage among the Hindu masses, how they had to move their planned demonstration from Tamil Nadu to Delhi for lack of a groundswell of indignation among Tamil Hindus, and how their argumentation made up for lack of religious cogency with an array of modernist (economic, ecological) considerations and purportedly scientific (NASA-produced) âevidenceâ. In the end it sounded more like a cabaret than a scholarly paper; he was constantly mocking the Hindutva activists whose arguments he was discussing.

Indeed, heâd be in serious trouble if he had given any other community this treatment. But with that, he was not ruffling any feathers; it was simply the mainstream view in this specialist congregation. Nobody in the panel even took the trouble of attacking Hindutva, for the demonization of Hindutva is a well-established position and needs no extra arguments. Any other evil in the South-Asian communal scene is now measured by its alleged degree of likeness to Hindutva, the acknowledged standard of evil.

At the same time, the indignation routinely implied in any mention of Hindutva is now no longer to be read as a warning of imminent danger. The bogey of âthe threat of rising Hindu fanaticismâ is still bandied about in the general media and in Christian missionary information channels, but insiders of the Indian Studies professions are confident that Hindu nationalism is well past its prime. They actually rejoice in seeing how the evil of Hindutva is now clearly superseded and rendered ineffective by the self-defeating incompetence or downright stupidity of Hindutva. They are confident that the combined anti-Hindu forces, such as Dalitism, the Christian Mission, Jihad, foreign-owned media and consumerism, are driving nail after nail into the coffin of Hindu resistance.

Thatâs not me saying so; it is only my attempt at accurately conveying an impression current among the India-watching establishment. Mentally, they are already dancing on Hindutvaâs dead body.

http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplay...cle.aspx?id=400

05-07-2009, 07:23 AM

Folks,

I recently decided to visit the Ekal Vidyalay site to find out with dismay that Google has detected malicious code added by a 3rd party on the site.

Google search results

Whats interesting is if you click on the link above, and look at the the second hit....its from a blog that keeps track of the 'far right' in India. I see a connection between the Ekal site being attacked and what is obviously its increasing profile.

05-08-2009, 12:45 AM

QUOTE(thayilv @ May 7 2009, 07:23 AM)Folks,

I recently decided to visit the Ekal Vidyalay site to find out with dismay that Google has detected malicious code added by a 3rd party on the site.

Google search results

Whats interesting is if you click on the link above, and look at the the second hit....its from a blog that keeps track of the 'far right' in India. I see a connection between the Ekal site being attacked and what is obviously its increasing profile.
[right][snapback]97052[/snapback][/right]


Crooks in Google have purposefully flagged it as such, do that lay user do not think of opening the site.

05-08-2009, 04:16 AM

QUOTE(sroy @ May 8 2009, 12:45 AM)<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(thayilv @ May 7 2009, 07:23 AM)Folks,

I recently decided to visit the Ekal Vidyalay site to find out with dismay that Google has detected malicious code added by a 3rd party on the site.

Google search results

Whats interesting is if you click on the link above, and look at the the second hit....its from a blog that keeps track of the 'far right' in India. I see a connection between the Ekal site being attacked and what is obviously its increasing profile.
[right][snapback]97052[/snapback][/right]


Crooks in Google have purposefully flagged it as such, do that lay user do not think of opening the site.
[right][snapback]97067[/snapback][/right]
</div>

sroy, why would google do that? A much more plausible explanation is the site is the victim of a 3rd party hacker. I've tried to inform the webmaster, so far have received no response....

**acharya** · 05-12-2009, 06:45 AM

THE HOUR OF THE SAINTS
Election 2009 will be remembered as the first serious attempt by the BJP to create a Hindu vote bank, writes Meera Nanda
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090512/jsp/...ry_10947801.jsp

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi of the BJP seeks a sadhuâs blessings in Rampur

The Bharatiya Janata Party has worked hard to create the impression that it is not pursuing an aggressive Hindutva agenda in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. It has made good governance, development and security its election plank, and has promised to give us a âmajboot neta, nirnayak sarkarâ. Old Hindutva favourites like the Ram temple, Ram Setu and the much- beloved âcow and its progenyâ do make an appearance in the partyâs manifesto, but they are clubbed together under the unobjectionable idea of âpreserving our cultural heritageâ and tacked at the very end.

But like a leopard that cannot change its spots, the saffron party cannot turn saffron, green and white without losing its very reason for being. The truth is that in this election, the BJP has pursued a Hindu agenda which, in the long run, may prove to be far more radical than the hot-button issues that we are all familiar with. The new agenda can at best be described as the hindukaran of voters, that is, making voters vote as Hindus First.

The work of hindukaran is more subtle than the in-your-face Ram temple agitation of the 1990s. It is taking place through yagnas, kathas and yogashivirs held in temples, ashrams and through public meetings that are often presided over by popular and supposedly apolitical gurus and âsaintsâ whose spiritual discourses could well be lifted out of the writings of the sangh parivar. In many of these meetings, people are urged to take an oath to vote for the party that takes care of âHindu interestsâ. This is not very different from what happened in the United States of America in 2000 and in 2004 when evangelical preachers used their pulpits to urge their congregations to vote for the party of âtraditional values,â whose representative was none other than George W. Bush.

No one can predict just yet if this so-called Hindu vote bank will come through for the BJP. But whatever the outcome, Election 2009 will be remembered as the first time when a serious coordinated attempt was made to create a Hindu vote bank. It is important, therefore, to create a public record of this phenomenon.

A good place to start would be the letter L.K. Advani wrote to a thousand sadhu-sants within days of the release of the BJPâs election manifesto. While the manifesto is lukewarm towards Hindutva, Advaniâs letter lays out the red carpet for the saints to come marching straight into the government. His letter promises to establish a permanent institutional mechanism to enable holy men and women âguide politics, governance and other national affairs by the lofty ideals as enshrined in the concept of Ram Rajyaâ. In addition, Advani reaffirmed the promises made in the manifesto, namely, cleaning the Ganga, protecting the Ram Setu and the cows, promoting spiritual tourism, and giving tax-exemption to dharmic activities. So while the party promised good governance to the yuppie âFriends of the BJP,â it offered faith-based governance to its more traditional constituency.

Who are these raj gurus-in-waiting whom the BJP is so eagerly courting? What role are they being asked to play in electoral politics? This is where the plot begins to thicken.

The sadhu-sants who received Advaniâs pledge of allegiance were chosen from a hand-picked list put together by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. While the complete list remains a secret, there is speculation that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Swami Ramdev have received the letter, as did many other members of the Dharma Raksha Manch, a VHP-managed forum, which held its inaugural meeting in January 2009 in Mumbai.

The Dharma Raksha Manch is the culmination of the VHPâs dream of converting the vast majority of religious-minded Hindus into a Hindu vote bank. The idea was first put forward by Swami Chinmayananda in the 1980s. Later, it was taken up enthusiastically by Praveen Togadia, the current general secretary of the VHP.

The creation of a Hindu vote bank required a two-step action plan, which was hammered out in the various dharam sansads held over the last five years or so. The first step was to put forth a Hindu Charter of demands and get a political party to formally accept it. The second step called for organizing grassroot campaigns in which at least 50,000 voters in each Lok Sabha constituency were to take an oath to vote for only that party that accepts the Hindu Charter. The action plan also called for unleashing the power of popular gurus and kathakars, who have a mass following among the moderate middle classes, who may be turned off by communal issues but may still be mobilized to vote for âHindu interestsâ.

The sangh parivar has executed this plan to the very last dot in this election. In late January, the VHP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh organized the Dharma Raksha Manch in Mumbai which gave the pride of place to a number of popular gurus. In March, the Dharma Raksha Manch came out with an 11-point Hindu Charter. Within days, the BJP announced that it had included all the 11 demands in its manifesto. This was followed by Advaniâs fawning letter to the sadhu-sants.

All this set the stage for the Step Two. The VHPâs Ashok Singhal declared that since the BJP is the only party that has accepted the demands of the saints, the saints will henceforth âeducate the voters by touring even the remote villages to vote for the BJPâ. And that is precisely what the saints have been doing, especially in the communally sensitive areas of Karnataka and Orissa. In mid-March, Mangalore, the home-turf of the Sri Ram Sena, witnessed a huge samajotsva (social festival) organized by the Dharma Raksha Vedike with full support from the state where participants were asked to take an oath to only vote for pro-Hindu candidates/party. As the elections approached and public rallies became difficult to organize, oath-taking moved inside temples: at least 100 yagnas were organized by temples all across the state where the presiding priests administered the oath to vote as Hindus. Yagnas were also the ritual of choice for Ashok Sahu in Orissa, the BJPâs candidate for Kandhamal, the site of anti-Christian riots last year.For their part, the supposedly apolitical gurus have been on the same page as the Dharma Raksha Manch. These gurus with mass appeal have been a major conduit for mainstreaming the Hindutva agenda.

How effective has been this strategy of hindukaran? We will know the answer shortly when the elections results are out.
Meera Nandaâs book, God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu, will be published later this year

**acharya** · 05-24-2009, 10:35 AM

RSS - The "Sangh"

What is it, and what is it not?

by Partha Banerjee

Is RSS really fascist?

Why is the RSS labeled as fascist by some circles and how much
justification is there? Why call anybody a fascist? Before RSS or BJP
is called fascist, we need to describe their ideas. Let's explain what
fascism is, and compare these ideas with what the "Sangh Parivar"
practices. 26

The word "fascism" describes a set of overlapping and sometimes
contradictory beliefs that first became fashionable in continental
Europe in the 1920s. According to Dr. Mark Trisch of Johannes
Gutenberg Universitaet, Germany 27, the following set of ideas (in
varying combinations) fostered by a party or organization would brand
it fascist:

(1) Calling for a return to the "ancient traditions of the race"

(2) A hierarchical, militaristic, corporate social organization

(3) A cult of leadership

(4) Calls for national self-reliance

(5) Calling for "full employment"

(6) Aggressively nationalistic foreign policy.

According to Dr. Trisch, although it is the combination of all these
that makes for trouble, the first three seem to be the most important.

Do the RSS, and its sister organizations such as the BJP or VHP foster
these ideas? Unfortunately, they do. A return to the ancient so-called
"glorified Bharatiya traditions" of the Hindu race is their number one
creed. Every single day, RSS, in its militaristic shakhas or
gatherings, preaches to its workers and sympathizers that the "oldest
nation of Bharatvarsha" was the "greatest" on earth and that its
inhabitants were "happy, prosperous, and religious". The Sangh leaders
never forget to mention that all the ills of India began when, due to
the "disunity of the Hindu race", Muslim and then British aggressors
invaded and took over this "holy land". The long term goal of the
Sangh Parivar is of course to bring back that "past era of glory" by
creating an "Akhand Bharat" (i.e., an Undivided India ranging from
"Himalaya to Kanyakumari" and "Gandhar to Brahmadesh" (i.e., from
Tibet in the north to the southern tip of India, and from Afghanistan
in the west to South East Asia including Burma, Laos, Thailand, and
Cambodia)-culturally and politically. This dream of "unity" is to be
reached by organizing Hindus from all around the globe.

The RSS is indeed a hierarchical, militaristic organization that
actively practices regimentation. 28 RSS has a "Sarsanghchalak"
(Supreme Leader) who is never elected (for that matter, no other
leaders are elected-there is no system of internal elections in the
organization)-the supreme leader's commands are obeyed without
question. Further, Dr. Keshavrao Baliramrao Hedgewar, the founder of
the Sangh and Madhavrao Sadasivrao Golwalkar, the second and most
well-known supreme leader of RSS, are remembered in Sangh circles with
a sense of divinity and admiration that reaches the level of
God-worshipping. Indeed, these two men are officially given the status
of Avatars (reincarnation of God) by the RSS. Pictures of these two
Sarsanghchalaks are distributed and sold by RSS offices and bookstores
and decorate walls of workers' homes. Stories, often exaggerated,
about their lives are discussed at RSS camps and gatherings on a
regular basis, essays are written on their lives and works and the
best ones are awarded prizes. 29 Portraits of the present
Sarsanghchalak Rajendra Singh ("Rajju Bhaiya") is now promptly posted
on RSS' Internet homepage by active workers in the USA. 30 Similarly,
Shiv Sena's new official homepage, on its title page, now has the
picture of its supremo, Balasaheb Thackeray.

This is what the Shiv Sena homepage declares about its leader: "People
from all parts of Hindustan have only one hope. "Hon'ble
Shivsenapramukh Shri Balasaheb Thackeray is our only hope. He is our
national Leader" they say."

National self-reliance is preached by the RSS: the Sangh has now
actively taken up the issue of self-reliance and put forth a program
called the "Swadeshi Jagaran Manch"-a platform to champion the idea of
total economic self-reliance. They decry the US investments in India
and pro-US fiscal treaties such as the GATT and NAFTA-RSS' opposition
to American investment might well have been a headache for the US
government (and the) CIA in deciding between the faltering Congress or
rising BJP to be covertly pushed as the next ruling party of India. 31

But the international investors can now breathe a sigh of relief as
this call for national self-reliance has proved to be just a
politically expedient move without any real will behind it as evident
by what the BJP in fact did vis-Ã -vis the multinational Enron power
project.

Full employment for labor (but without any real power or control over
the workplace) has been a centerpiece of RSS and BJP actions
implemented through the activities of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh or BMS,
one of the largest labor organizations in India. BJP's ultra-right
ally Shiv Sena has come up with plans to support the Hindu labor force
in the state of Maharashtra. The irony here is that the Shiv Sena was
originally floated by national and international vested-interest
groups to crush the once-powerful trade unions of Bombay back in the
1980's and has operated a protection racket ever since. In recent
months, American pop-singer Michael Jackson and eminent Indian film
playback singer Lata Mangeshkar and actor Dilip Kumar participated in
huge Shiv Udyog Sena 32 -sponsored concerts purportedly to raise funds
for the Hindu laborers of Bombay.

An aggressively nationalistic foreign policy has always been at the
forefront of RSS propaganda. Much toned-down by the BJP now, during
the Jana Sangh days, it was much more overt. America was never
well-liked by Sangh members-the United States has always been
portrayed as the very image of immorality and profanity on earth.
However, a previous Jana Sangh president and one of its most famous
orators Balraj Madhok was an ardent pro-American who had a small but
powerful following in his days. But he could not make RSS, and
consequently Jana Sangh, openly pro-American. This was largely due to
the opposition of the all-powerful Golwalkar and leaders like Vajpayee
the latter being a supporter of non-alignment with a less vociferous
objection against the then USSR (this was however a strategy for them
to internationally undermine and isolate China-the Sangh's one main
enemy). RSS' and Jana Sangh's (and now BJP's) foreign policy stands on
the dictum of anti-Pakistan and anti-China hatred-and for that matter,
hatred against any Islamic or socialist countries or alliances. George
Fernandez, an important minister in the current BJP government, has
proclaimed China to be India's number one enemy (May 1998). Israel now
has become a hot favorite of the Sangh Parivar-Vajpayee, Advani, and
other BJP leaders have frequented the country to show their support
for the ferociously anti-Arab nation. Attempts have often been made,
allegedly, to iron out the Sangh's previously bitter relationships
with USA via the mediation of Israel. Note the irony here-a
Hitler-admiring organization is having a mutual love-fest with the one
nation that has the most reason on earth to despise anything that even
remotely seeks of Hitler and the Nazi party.

What now?

Congress' fortune has plummeted. The party that many arguably say won
Indian independence from the British and later degenerated into a
party of corruption, inefficiency and anarchy, is now much weaker than
before. Sitaram Kesari, the previous Congress president, withdrew
support in late 1997 to the left-leaning United Front government
paving way for a mid-term election and the new BJP-led coalition
government at the center. RSS' Vajpayee is now the prime minister of
India 33. Congress is breaking up again and its more conservative
section is leaning towards BJP. Some well-known Congress leaders such
as Buta Singh, Maneka Gandhi, Sukh Ram, K.C.Pant are now supporting
the BJP government.

Clearly, BJP now seems to be the party of choice of the upper caste
conservative Hindus-the traditional kingmakers of India-and the
political equilibrium seems to have shifted in their direction. How
much effort BJP makes to implement the Hindu supremacist ideas of RSS
and to what extent, if any, it resists them, remains to be seen. To
the poor and ever-oppressed of India, one dark chapter of rule is now
being replaced by another one.

To these Indians, who have been trampled upon by the Brahmins and
other upper castes and social patriarchs for ages, the only hope is
the true consolidation of a third force-a force of the untouchables,
religious minorities, women, poor laborers and marginal peasants. The
recent developments show that such a possibility, before it really
crystallized, was destabilized mostly by outside forces through
inevitable Congress sabotaging and due to internal squabbling. BJP has
suddenly become the hot favorite of the big industrialists of
India-the big businessmen put out huge newspaper advertisements in
1998 in favor of the party culminating in its victory.

Who is going to reap the harvest of all this? Other than the national
and international power-brokers and anti-India agents, it will no
doubt be the saffron supremacists of the "Sangh Parivar".

1 Sita Ram Goel. 1994. Jesus Christ An Artifice of Aggression. Voice
of India, New Delhi.

2 See appendices for more details.

3 New York Times, May 1996. Also, see Appendix VI.

4 During the seventies, I remember the socialist leader Jaya Prakash
Narayan calling all Brahmans to give up their "holy threads" a symbol
of their so-called superiority. However, the then Sarsanghchalak
Balasaheb Deoras opposed this call -- Deoras said that all
non-Brahmans should wear holy threads instead. Obviously, he knew that
the Hindu Brahman would never accept that measure.

5 See Chapter 5 on the Ekatmata Stotra.

6 What is the truth about Godse's RSS connection? ... Godse himself
had stated before the Court: "I have worked for several years in RSS
and subsequently joined the Hindu Mahasabha..." (Godse, Gopal: "May it
Please Your Honour: Statement of Nathuram Godse"). The most
significant is the revelation by his brother about the last moments of
his life: "On reaching the platform they recited a verse of devotion
to the Motherland: "Namaste sada vatsale matribhume..." [This is the
RSS prayer sung even today - author]. The above is quoted from D. R.
Goyal: Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh . Radha Krishna Prakashan. New
Delhi. 1979.

7 To know more about ABVP, BMS, and other Hindutva organizations, see
Chapter 3.

8 M. S. Golwalkar. 1938. We or Our Nationhood Defined. Bharat
Prakashan, Nagpur.

9 This rhetoric reminds us of the anti-immigrant decree of Pat
Robertson, the leader of the Christian Coalition of USA a personality
much despised by the RSS and VHP people of America. The Republican
governor of California, Pete Wilson, won the recent elections in the
state upon this anti-alien, anti-immigrant plank known as Proposition
209-a measure that denies all human rights to illegal immigrants and
their children and some benefits even to legal immigrants.

10 Savarkar's presidential address to RSS members in Nagpur on 28
December 1938. Indian Annual Register, 1938 (1939), Vol. II, Calcutta.

11 This section has been paraphrased after Des Raj Goyal, Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh, Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979.

12 Swatantra Bharat. December 24, 1965. Lucknow. Cited in D. R. Goyal.
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi, 1979.

13 The Organiser (RSS English weekly). February 2, 1962. New Delhi.
The Sangh Parivar is fervently pro-Hindi.

14 Sheikh Abdullah was the Kashmir chief minister for a long time
since its inclusion in India. He was also close to Jawaharlal Nehru,
the first Indian prime minister.

15 Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay was one of the most intelligent,
scholarly, and ethical leaders RSS has ever produced. My father knew
him well. I remember how shocked he was when Upadhyay was brutally
murdered on a train he was traveling by himself. Among others who paid
tribute after Upadhyay's death, the eloquent Communist Party leader
Hiren Mukherjee called him "ajatashatru" the one with no enemies.

16 Nana Deshmukh, popularly known as Nanaji, is another Sangh leader
much respected for his organizational skills and little personal
ambitions. Nanaji knew me through my father. I even ran into him
during my 1997 trip to New Delhi. Once he asked me to write a paper on
Rabindranath Tagore's social views (The Nobel-laureate poet Tagore was
a skilled and benevolent zamindar or land owner. He also established
two great universities named Shanti Niketan and Sri Niketan the latter
being a vocational school). Nanaji paid me for the essay. My father
translated it from Bengali to Hindi.

17 See Appendix IV for a description of RSS work overseas.

18 The political activities are often masked by religious activities
at Hindu temples, teaching of Sanskrit to youngsters, private
gatherings, etc.

19 This section is paraphrased after Amrita Basu's article "Women and
religious nationalism in India: an introduction", Bulletin of
Concerned Asian Scholars, December 1993.

Also see Dr. Gopal Singh's report, Minorities Commission, 1983
(Source: Emergency Assessments, Vijay Prashad, Social Scientist,
September-October 1996, p. 61).

20 Koenraad Elst. 1991. Ayodhya and After Issues before the Hindu
Society. Voice of India, New Delhi.

21 The Statesman Miscellany. September 12, 1993, Calcutta.

22 Granta, Spring 1997. New York and London.

23 Vajpayee has some history of defying orders from RSS. In the
sixties, he defied RSS' Golwalkar's insistence that an unknown
Bachhraj Vyas be selected as the Jana Sangh chief instead of the
popular leader Deendayal Upadhyay.

24 Vijay Prashad and Biju Mathew, from a letter written to India
Abroad and other Indian newspapers in USA.

25 CIA's Robert Gates "confirmed" that India and Pakistan headed
toward a nuclear confrontation in April/May, 1990. Gates visited India
and Pakistan to dissuade the governments from such confrontations.
Intelligence Newsletter 4/1/93.

26 Also read, Achin Vanaik, Communalism Contested, Vistaar
Publications, New Delhi, 1997. Vanaik prefers to call the Sangh
Parivar a "pre- or potentially fascist" group. p. 279.

27 Per Indology mailing list discussions on the Internet, December
1995.

28 See Chapter 2 on the activities of a Sangh shakha.

Moreover, RSS and BJP have also been linked with Ranabir Sena, a
private army for big landowners that has most recently been
responsible for the killing of sixty-one poor people in
Lakshmanpur-Bathe village of Bihar's Jehanabad district on Dec. 1, 97.
The angry people in the village recently did not allow Vajpayee to
visit the killing fields.

29 I too was once awarded a first-prize for an essay I wrote about the
founder of the Sangh. The prize was another biography of Dr. Hedgewar!

30 A meeting of prominent RSS workers was held on November 9 and 10,
1929. It decided against the 'cumbersome clap-trap of internal
democracy' and opted for a centralized authority-based structure...
The principle was called "Ek Chalak Anuvartitva" (following one
leader) and was explained to the swayamsevaks by V. V. Kelkar who told
them that it was on the lines of the traditional Hindu joint family
system and was most appropriate for an organization wedded to reviving
and rejuvenating the Hindu way of life. It is rather difficult to
distinguish this arrangement from what has been called the "Fuehrer
Principle" followed by the Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany in
the decade leading up to WWII. Quoted from D. R. Goyal: Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh . Radha Krishna Prakashan, New Delhi. 1979.

Recently, in an interview carried in the Panchjanya, a magazine with
close RSS connections, Ms Uma Bharati, the BJP MP from Khajuraho and
president of the party's Yuva Morcha, has quoted the RSS chief,
Professor Rajendra Singh, to say that despite the number of police
stations in the country, and thousands of policemen, Muslims cannot be
safe if they have enmity with the Hindus. Source: The Hindu, January
18, 1998.

31 To know more about RSS' fiscal policies, see Chapter 3.

32 Shiv Udyog Sena is the commerce front of the Shiv Sena.

33 Vajpayee became the Indian prime minister in 1996 for 13 days his
minority government resigned rather than face a vote of confidence on
the floor of the parliament. The only legislation the BJP government
managed in those days were some silly but nonetheless chilling
restrictions on the broadcast media. The current BJP govt. is now
extending the task by manipulating with the Prasar Bharati.

Capt M Kumar · 07-06-2009, 05:46 AM

<!--emo&

--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /> He, however, did not elaborate on the conversions and re-conversions issue. "Suspicion among the scheduled tribe and scheduled caste inhabitants of Kandhamal is the main cause of riots with the tribals suspecting that 'Pano' dalits were capturing their land through fraudulent means," Justice Mohapatra said.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/conversi...l-riots/484547/

~~Pandyan~~ · 08-12-2009, 11:18 AM

Savarkar -

QUOTEWe Indians have some crazy ideas about military training. We feel that it is a very complicated, dangerous and difficult task. Many feel that it takes ages to train a soldier. But that is a fallacy. It is very easy to train a soldier to defend the country. Any one can be trained to be a soldier and it needs neither high intelligence nor time. Even a dumb uneducated Englishman can be trained as soldier. In the words of The Spectator, â Soldiers can be thoroughly trained in six months and made to enjoy their training instead of dragging through* it as they do it at present.â

âMilitary training involves three main aspects. Horse riding, shooting and drill. Out of this, drill is no longer vital, tenacity is required. All the three qualities can be taught and developed easily at young age. Generally it is much easier to teach boys than young men how to shoot or ride a horse. Once this is done at the age of 14 or 15 they develop a taste for soldierâs life. They then spend more time on physical exercises and horse riding than playing cricket. And they would develop the capacity to fight for freedom of the motherland.â

The Daily Mirror says, â Thus we can form a nation of soldiers. What can be matter of more satisfaction than the fact that every youngster will be fit to sacrifice his life for defending his motherland?â The paper has suggested the formation of a Boys Army for Britain and has asked for volunteers among its readers. Soon after, the paper published an article â A striking and patriotic response to our proposal. It read,

â A patriot has offered to teach a batch of youth of 14/15 years, shooting, horse riding, drill and use of swords.â

Thus it is no doubt that a Youth Army will be formed. And for what reason? âIn case a foreign enemy invaded our shores every Englishman should to be in a position to assist in expelling the invader.â

It is a divine inspiration that everyone should join in a battle for defending the countryâs freedom. Vitality of a Nation is its political independence. Once this is achieved, the nation is prepared to progress. It all depends on necessary physical and mental training of its youngsters. But many short-sighted leaders ignore this training. The weak will not survive in this world. Every nation needs to raise such âNational Youth Armies.â It is very easy to do. And what are we doing in India? Playing cricket!!

Hindus being just as lethargic 100 years ago as they are now.

http://www.satyashodh.com/Savarkar%20New...1A.htm#two

**acharya** · 09-01-2009, 12:27 AM

WHEN the British took over Sindh in 1843, it was little more than sandy expanses on both sides of the river, interspersed with patches of green. Karachi was a small trading town and even Hyderabad, the capital, had housing that was little more than miserable hovels. There were no great monuments. And even the Mirs' ``palaces'' had nothing palatial about them. Life was poor and short, even if it was not nasty and brutish.

The Sindh of 1947 was a very different affair. It was something that old-timers --- Hindus, Muslims and English alike --- remember with nostalgia. It was ``beautiful as a bride'', says Pir Husamuddin Rashdi. This was not the doing of only great individuals. It was the cumulative result of the winds of change that blew in from all directions.

Unfortunately the Sindhi Muslims did not get --- or did not take --- any favourable wind. The Muslim-majority separate province of Sindh became a division of the Bombay Presidency, -with its Hindu majority. Bombay officialdom treated Sindh as the Shikargah (hunting ground) during their winter visits.

The Wahabi movement with its extreme emphasis on Islamic fundamentalism did not have many takers in eclectic Sindh, which delighted in its Pirs and graves and amulets. Wahabi leader Syed Ahmed Barelvi did come to Sindh; and he did help reorganise the Hurs as a fraternity madly devoted to their Pir in the cause of ``Deen''. But the Mirs of Sindh saw that the British were using the Syed to harass the Sikhs in their rear, in what is the North-West Frontier Province today. However, the Wahabi wars with the Sikhs did keep Ranjit Singh too pre-occupied to go and capture Shikarpur in Sindh, which had been ceded by Afghanistan to the Sikhs.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, British rule was very popular in India and Lord Ripon, the Viceroy, was particularly popular. In Banaras his carriage was pulled by the Kashi Pandits. All over the country thousands of welcome addresses were being signed by leading citizens to be presented to him. The Sindh Sabha also called a meeting in Karachi in 1881 to send him a memorandum signed by the leaders, appreciating his services. In this meeting Khan Bahadur Hassan Ali Effendi opposed the move and said a simple letter should do. Dayaram flared up and said that it would be a shame (lainat) if Sindh failed to honour Ripon like the rest of the country. An enraged Effendi walked out as he muttered ``lainat! lainat!'' in resentment. The Sindh Sabha duly sent a delegation --- including Dayaram, Hiranand, Futeh Ali, etc. --- which joined other delegations in honouring Ripon at a public reception in Bombay But Effendi did not join it; instead, he set up Sindh Madrassa for Muslim students the very next year in l885. Although the Madrassa was born in resentment against servility to the British, it grew up as an ordinary school with no particular impact on the political or literary life of the province. Much of the time it had English headmasters. The Muslim zamindars refused to help Muslim education; they feared that if their underlings, children went to school, they would cease to be their obedient servants!

Interestingly enough, even Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) did not have much of an impact on Sindh. The only AMU graduate who became a Sindh MLA was Mohammed Amin Khoso, who joined the Congress.

The Khilafat movement did affect Sindh much. Sheikh Abdul Majid Lilaram, Sheikh Abdul Rahim (Kripalani) and Obaidullah Sindhi (born Sikh) even got involved in the Silk Kerchief Case, inviting the Afghan King to ``liberate'' India. But the whole thing only earned them long terms in jail or exile. Thousands of Sindhi Muslims staged a hijrat to Afghanistan; but they too came to grief. The talk of Khalifa and Turkey did initiate them into West Asian affairs. But the Arab-Turkish animosity bewildered them. The emergence of Kamal Pasha as the saviour of Turkey thrilled them. But his war on mullahs, Arabic language and Fez cap left them cold. The anti-climax was complete when the leaders in Iran, Arabia and Turkey ridiculed the Khilafat movement and expressed themselves in favour of the freedom movement in India.

While the Muslims elsewhere in India gloried in Urdu and Iqbal, the better type of Sindhi Muslims ridiculed and rejected ``Urdu'' as ``Phurdu''. They marvelled at how Iqbal had praised Amanullah, King of Afghanistan, as also Nadir Khan, the British stooge who succeeded him. They viewed the whole thing as the limit of opportunism.

At one time conversions had provided an emotional boost to the Sindhi Muslims. But with the coming of the Hindu renaissance and the growth of the Freedom Movement, that too had stopped.

For years the Sindhi Muslims concentrated on the separation of Sindh from Bombay, to the neglect of everything else. It had been separate barely two years when World War II broke out, bringing in its wake political storms such as ``Quit India'' of the Congress and ``Direct Action'' of the Muslim League. The Sindhis just did not get time enough to settle down and think out their future. The Muslim peasants declared themselves ``Lengi'' and duly voted for the Muslim League. But their heart was not in it. Basically, they remained glued to their Pir --- and attached to their Wadera. They protected the Bania as the hen that laid the golden credit eggs for them --- and they respected the Amil Diwan for his accomplishments. The Sindhi Muslim was sound at heart, but the winds of change had left him almost unchanged. However, these winds had changed the Hindu beyond recognition.

When the British took over Sindh, Hindus were in a pretty parlous state. They held important offices as Dewans, and they made money as Seths. But even the highest Dewan and the richest Seth could be ruined by the lust of a Mir or the fatwa of a Pir. Hinduism had survived very much as Sanatan Dharma. The peregrinations of the Yogis and the pilgrimages of the laity had kept the ancient torch burning, even if not very bright. The stories of Raja Gopichand and Guru Gorakhnath gripped the people. Even Shah Abdul Latif had sung of ``Vindura ja vana'' (the trees of Vrindavan) and seen great virtues in ``Ganjo Takar'' the Bald Hillock (Ganjay mein guna ghana), which housed an ancient Kali temple. Mutts and marhis, amulets and bhabhooti, even myths and miracles, held the popular mind firm. Rohri alone was supposed to have produced ``sawa lakh sant'' (one and a quarter lakh of saints). And then there were any number of local saints such as Bhai Kalachand, Bhai Dalpat, Bhai Vasan, Bhai Moolchand, Paroo Shah, Lila Shah and the great Swami Bankhandi Saheb who set up Sadhbela Mandir in Sukkur in 1823. Others such as Kaka Bhagavandas (1842--1922), father of Acharya J.B. Kripalani, were beholden to Shri Nath Dwara of Udaipur. (On one occasion when a young Kripalani Cousin Jivat commennted on the hard texture of the Shri Nath Dwara Ladoo Prasad, Kaka chased him with a lathi for daring to comment on the sacred Prasad.) But, with all this, the fact is that when the British took over, Hindus could neither keep an idol nor ring a bell in what passed for their ``temples''. The rise of Sikh power in the Punjab did come as a moral boost to the Sindhi Hindus, who had promptly put up a few gurdwaras. But that was all.

The coming of the British opened vast new vistas. The merger with Bombay linked Sindh to Hindu India officially and intimately. Gujerati traders and Marathi and Parsi administrators came to Sindh in large numbers. The biggest school in Karachi, N.J. Government High School, was named after Narayan Jagannath, a Maharashtrian educationist. And the best school in Karachi was Sharda Mandir, a private Gujerati enterprise.

However, the old challenges to the Hindus of Sindh remained; and new ones came up. Islam had always been a challenge; and now Christianity also emerged as a challenge. My mother recalled that at the turn of the century, missionaries started visiting Amil homes to teach English to the little girls. The visiting missionaries were very nice. But the elders decided that their real objective was to convert them to Christianity. And so the girls started to hide under their string cots, to avoid their dubious benefactors.

A leading Sindhi, Parmanand Mewaram, editor of Jyot and author of English-Sindhi and Sindhi-English dictionaries, actually changed his faith.

Even more serious, however, was the challenge of modernity. Contact with Bombay, Calcutta and London had shown what a stagnant pool was Sindh. Those were the days when Sindhi women lived in purdah; you could see 12-year-old mothers. Young men roamed about the streets without any education. Holi-time was taken up with drinking; Janmashtami- time, with gambling; and filthy abuses filled the air the whole year round.

Sikhism, which had been the solace of Sindhi Hindus in the last days of the Muslim rule, did not meet these new challenges. It continued to be very popular. Thousands kept night-long vigil for Guru Nanak birthday --- something they did not do even for Janmashtami. They would go vegetarian on Gur-Parbh (Parva) days, when the Sikhs themselves take meat to ``celebrate'' the occasion. However, Sikhism was not the answer to the new challenges. But an answer had to be found, if society was to survive and grow.

Nobody faced up to these challenges as boldly as Navalrai (1843-93), the son of Showkiram Nandiram Advani, Mukhi of Hyderabad. By sheer dint of ability, integrity and devotion, he rose from a clerk to be deputy collector, the highest office an Indian could hold in those days, Navalrai founded the Sikh Sabha, consisting of leading Hindus, who all had faith in Guru Nanak. At the age of 26, he paid an unannounced visit to Calcutta and met Keshub Chandra Sen. What he saw in Calcutta, heard from Keshub, and experienced in the Bharat Asham, a community centre of the Brahmo families, answered all his questions about the reconstruction of Sindh. Navalrai returned home, the prophet of a New Sindh. The result, in the words of Rishi Dayaram, was ``the miracle of modern Sindh''.

Navalrai and his friends now renamed the Sikh Sabha as the Sindh Sabha. He plunged himself heart and soul into the task of educating boys and girls. He was so thrilled with the life and teachings of the Brahmos that he built a first-class Brahmo Mandir with his own money in Hyderabad. He sent his younger brother Hiranand (1863-93) to Calcutta, where he lived much of the time with Keshub Chandra, as a member of his family.

In Calcutta, Hiranand was doubly blessed by the holy company of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, who once said of him and of Vivekananda: ``Narendra belongs to a very high level. Hiranand too. How childlike his nature is! What a sweet: disposition he has! I want to see him too.'' On another occasion he said: ``If married people develop love of God, they will not be attached to the world. Hiranand is married. What if he is? He will not be much attached to the world.''

Hiranand had completed his education in Calcutta in 1883 and gone back to Sindh. But in April 1886, when Sri Ramakrishna fell seriously ill --- he died on 15 August, 1886 --- Hiranand specially visited Calcutta to see the Master. Ramakrishna was delighted to see him. He called in Narendra and said: ``I want to hear you two talk.'' At the end of their spiritual discussion Narendra sang for Hiranand the song: ``Blest indeed is the wearer of the loin-cloth.''

One day during that last visit, Hiranand was massaging the Master's feet and the latter said: ``Suppose you don't go to Sindh. Suppose you give up the job. Why don't you live here?'' Hiranand explained: ``But there is nobody else to do my work.'' Hiranand invited Ramakrishna to visit Sindh. Ramakrishna was pleased but he said that he was too ill --- and Sindh too far --- for that. However, Ramakrishna reminded Hiranand to send him some Sindhi pajamas for easy wear, since his dhoti tended to slip away.

The two brothers, Navalrai and Hiranand, put new life into Sindh. They started the Union Academy in Hyderabad, which later became famous after its founders' names as N.H. Academy. They started the first girls' school and got two Ghose sisters from Lucknow to teach there. Hiranand took his two daughters to Bankipore in Bihar for education under Shrimati Aghor Kamini Prakash Roy, mother of Dr. B.C. Roy, who rose to be Chief Minister of West Bengal. Special attention was paid to the teaching of Sanskrit. One of their Sanskrit students was Roopchand Bilaram who rose to be the only Indian Judicial Commissioner of Sindh.

They started a Leper Home in Karachi and an orphanage in Shikarpur.

Their campaign against child marriage even got them in a scrape. One Hundomal, a student of N. H. Academy, told his uncle, who was an official, that he would respectfully refuse to marry at that age even if his father asked him. On the basis of this, a complaint was filed with the Director of Public Instruction of Bombay that Hiranand was fostering disrespect for parents! And the DPI duly asked Hiranand for his expla- nation. Hiranand had to rush to Bombay. And only a word from the Sindh officials saved him from censure!

Their campaign against drinking, gambling, and abusive language also made its mark on the Sindhi society. Unfortunately the two brothers died very young --- within months of each other, in 1893. But they had infused new hope in society --- and provided it with models to multiply. When Keshub Chandra Sen was requested to visit Sindh, he said that Sindh, which had a Navalrai, did not need anybody else. Colonel Trevor, the Collector of Hyderabad, wished that Navalrai had been the Collector, and himself his clerk! And Mirza Kalich Beg, a Muslim savant of Sindh, said of Sadhu Hiranand: ``He was more an angel than a human being.''

Even after the demise of the Sadhu Brothers, Brahmo Pribhdas put up the Nav Vidyalaya High School and Brahmo Kundanmal put up what came to be known as the great Kundanmal Girls High School, both in Hyderabad. But the Brahmo Samaj movement was not an unqualified success in Sindh even in the days of Navalrai and Hiranand. When the Government wanted to transfer its own high school in Hyderabad to the Academy management, the people objected --- on the ground that the Brahmos were half-Christian. This impression was unfortunately reinforced when Bhawani Charan Bannerji, a Sanskrit teacher at the Academy, became a Christian in 1892.

Earlier, Sadhu Navalrai's multi-religious musical procession on the inauguration of the Brahmo Mandir in !875, singing, among other things, ``Allah-o-Akbar'' and ``Ya Allah il Allah'', had elicited the sneer that it all sounded like Moharrum.

Divisions in the Brahmo Samaj --- Prarthana Samaj, Sadharan Samaj, etc. --- also took away the Brahmo steam. But more than these, it was its failure to combat conversions to Islam and project the power and glory of Hindu Dharma, that made the Brahmo Samaj a back-number well before Independence came.

These dual inadequacies of the Brahmo Samaj were found remedied in the Arya Samaj. When, therefore, Moorajmal, Deoomal, Tharoomal and several other Amils became Muslim, and many more seemed to be on the verge of conversion, Sindhi Hindu leaders, under the guidance of Dayaram, sent urgent requests to Swami Shraddhanand in Lahore in 1893 for help.

The Punjab Arya Samaj promptly sent Pandit Lekhram Arya Musafir and Pandit Poornanand to Sindh. The two preachers did not stop at defending Hinduism; they started to ask any number, and all kind, of inconvenient questions about Islam and Christianity. The maulvis were unused to the new situation, complete with ``Shastrarth'' inter-religious debates. In sheer rage they got Lekhram murdered. Many other murders followed. But the message of the Arya Samaj had caught on too well to be drowned in blood. A regular tug-of-conversion-war ensued. Many Hindus, earlier converted to Islam-- including the entire community of Sanjogis --- were brought back to the ancestral faith. In the process, many Muslim girls also converted and married Hindus.

In this new atmosphere the old abuse of homosexuality was also challenged and resisted. In Jacobabad, Abul Hassan, a revered local Pir, went mad after Suggu, a handsome young Hindu, who used to act female parts in local dramas. The Pir fell off a window crying ``Suggu! Suggu!'', while seeing a Suggu rehearsal. The death of the Pir in these circumstances so enraged some local Muslims that they engaged an assassin who shot down ten Hindus with a 12-bore gun one May evening in 1929. Nothing like that had happened in Sindh before. Even Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya arrived on the scene to see things for himself. For days the market was closed. Sukhiya, a Parsi intelligence officer, was specially deputed to inquire. (Whenever a serious Hindu-Muslim situation arose in Sindh, an Englishman or a Parsi was sent in, to handle the issue impartially.) Sukhia did unearth the conspiracy of big landlords and maulvis. But they were not touched. In their place some fake accused were prosecuted and then duly acquitted. The actual killer was never nabbed.

In Upper Sindh, many Muslims visited Harijan women, advanced loans to their families, and later converted them. The local Arya Samajists hit upon an idea: they presented pigs to those Harijan families. The sight of pigs kept the Muslims away; and the income from pigs made Harijans independent of money-lenders.

To the extent that a tit called for a tat, the Arya Samaj played a useful role in Sindh. The Arya Samajists did not put up any colleges, or many schools; but they did organize many gyamnasia and Kanya Sanskrit Pathshalas. They gave the Hindus a new pride. Somehow, the Arya Samaj did not attract the classes in Sindh --- as it did in the Punjab. Its leading lights were Tarachand Gajra and Swami Krishnanand. It was not chic to be in the conversion business; but Arya Samaj did influence Sindhi Hindu masses. It was a good service well performed.

Meanwhile another movement arrived on the scene to take care of the Sindhi elite in the wake of the eclipse cf the Brahmo Samaj. This was the Theosophical Society. It revived the basic Hindu thought in international idiom. This was doubly welcome to the educated Sindhi, who valued his Hinduism and who did not underrate internationalism. Stalwarts such as Jethmal Parasram and Jamshed Mehta became the pillars of Theosophy in Sindh. The Theosophical Lodges became non-denominational centres of intellectual and cultural activity. The Theosophical Society of Karachi was found to be the most active branch in the whole world. Dayaram Gidumal's son Kewalram became an active theosophist. He helped set up D.G. National College in Hyderabad, and Sarnagati, a research library in Karachi.

The universal appeal of Theosophy attracted not only Parsi leaders such as Jamshed and Kotwal but also Muslim intellectuals such as G.M. Syed, Hyderbux Jatoi and A K. Brohi. who have all been major characters on the Pakistani scene.

The theosophists also joined hands with the Hindus to checkmate Christianity. Dewan Dayaram delivered fifteen scholarly lectures on the inadequacy of Christianity. And Dr. Annie Besant appealed to the Sindhis not to change faith. The convert Parmanand's mother asked her an obviously inspired ques- tion: ``You advise the Hindus not to be Christian; how is it that you have renounced Christianity and become a Hindu?'' Pat came Besant's reply: ``I have done so because in my previous birth I was a Brahmin.''

After that nobody heard of any conversions .

A very significant movement of spiritual revival was led by Sadhu T.L. Vaswani (1879--1966). A great scholar, he taught at D.J. Sind College in Karachi and Vidyasagar College in Calcutta. Later he was Principal of Dyal Singh College in Lahore, Victoria College in Cooch-Behar, and Mahendra College in Patiala. But more than a scholar, he was a saint. He represented India at the World Congress of Religions in Berlin in 1910. On his return journey he threw all the flattering press cuttings in the sea; he regarded them all a vanity.

His mother could not bear the thought of his renouncing the world; the farthest she could go was, not to force him to marry. However,the day she died in 1918, he gave up his silk suits, draped himself in white khadi, and resigned his princely job in Patiala. He now began to live on ten rupees a month, and lecture on religion to distinguished audiences. For years the world knew only three Indian names --- Gandhi, Tagore and Vaswani.

Vaswani set up Shakti Ashram in Rajpur near Dehra Dun, Shakti School for boys and Mira School for girls, both in Hyderabad. His poetical compositions compiled in the Nuri Granth make inspiring reading.

As Partition approached, he visited the durgah of Shah Abdul Latif. ``No spot in Sindh'', he said, ``can be more sacred than this Bhit (sand-dune) in the desert.''

After Partition, some Muslims also came to respect him as Dada Darvish. But some others could not stand a Hindu religious centre in Pakistan. When Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah died, Sadhu Vaswani offered prayers, at the end of which, as usual, ``Kanah Prasad'' was distributed. But the fanatics said that he had ``celebrated'' the death of the Quaid-e-Azam. The sympathetic Muslim Collector of Hyderabad said that his life was too precious to be left to a fanatic's whim. On 10 November 1948 he left Sindh. Soon after, he established Mira School and College in Pune, where he was heartily welcomed by Maharshi Karve himself.

Sadhu Vaswani specially appealed to women, whom he initiated into simplicity and spirituality. Today his work is being ably carried on by his nephew, Dada Jashan Vaswani.

An unusual movement in Sindh that hit the headlines in India --- and even in Japan --- in the late nineteen-thirties was Om Mandali, now well known as the ``Brahma Kumaris'' organization. It was a socio-religious organization started by Dada Lekhraj Kripalani (1876--1969), who had been a jeweller in Calcutta.

The Om Mandali attracted mostly women --- and that too only those belonging to the Bhaibund business community of Hyderabad. The unmarried among them refused to marry; and the married ones gave it in writing to their husbands that the latter were free to re-marry. Meanwhile many stories --- ranging from mesmerism to merriment --- spread about the Om Mandali. Public organisations such as the Congress and the Arya Samaj denounced the Om Mandali as disturber of family peace. And Dada Lekhraj in turn denounced the Congress as ``Kansa''. Under pressure of Hindu public opinion, the Sindh government reluctantly banned the Om Mandali, which went to court and had the ban order quashed.

Time has proved the Om Mandali as a genuine socio-religious movement. Obviously the Bhaibund ladies were particularly drawn to it because of their greater religiousity. Another factor in the situation was the fact that their menfolk spent six months in Hyderabad and the following three years abroad, anywhere from Hong Kong round the world to Honolulu. The Om Mandali filled a vacuum in their lives.

Sindh now was a regular garden with many singing birds. The Brahmos sang their melodies in their sylvan Mandirs. The theosophists discoursed on the ``Masters in Tibet''. The Arya Samajists rekindled the Yagna fires after centuries of blood and ashes. Sadhu Vaswani led the Mira movement, initiating once fashionable girls into Khadi, vegetarianism and Bhakti-bhava. Sant Kanwar Ram danced as he sang ``O nallay Alakh Jay bero taar munhijo'' (``Oh Lord, keep my boat afloat'') Vishnu Digambar enchanted the people with ``Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram'' during his yearly visits. Nimano Faqir spread Sachal's message of love and benediction: ``Rakhien munhja Dholana aiba no pholana; nangra nimaniya ja, jeeven teeven palna'' (``Oh my Lord, you are my protector, you will uphold me, whatever my faults''). And Ram Punjwani enchanted his audiences on the ``Matka'' from college halls to Sufi Durgahs.

However, the movement that took Sindh literally by storm was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. It was introduced in Sindh by Rajpal Puri (1917-77) of Sialkot, who came to be lovingly called ``Shriji''. Before RSS, the words ``Sangh'', ``Sangathan'', and ``Sanskriti'' were almost unknown in Sindh. Some at first even spelt ``Sangh'' as ``Sung''. But by 1942, RSS had spread to every nook and corner of the province.

Dr. Hedgewar, founder of RSS, had laid down a target of three per cent of adult male population to be recruited to RSS in the urban centres --- the target for rural areas being one per cent. And Sindh had the unique distinction of achieving this target.

Shri Guruji's annual (1943--1947) visits to Sindh were major events in the public life of the province. Every time he visited both, Hyderabad and Karachi. He also visited Sukkur, Shikarpur and Mirpur Khas once each. During these visits he met leaders in different fields --- including Sadhu Vaswani and Ranganathananda, religious leaders; Dr. Choithram, Prof. Ghanshyam and Prof. Malkani, Congress leaders; Lalji Mehrotra, Shivrattan Mohatta, Bhai Pratap, public-spirited businessmen; Nihchaldas Vazirani, Dr. Hemandas Wadhvani and Mukhi Gobindram, ministers; and of course leading lawyers and educationists.

During his first visit, when the train was crossing the Indus at Kotri Bridge, Shri Guruji pointed out to his private secretary, Dr. Aba Thatte, in Marathi: ``Aba, Paha Sindhu''! (Aba, see the Sindhu!) Here were simple words, but they were suffused with a divine emotion, as for a long-lost mother.

Shri Gurmukh Singh was a Sikh Swayamsevak of Jacobabad. He used to wear a very big turban. In a question-answer session in Shikarpur, 1945, Gurmukh Singh said: ``Guruji, you are carrying a very heavy burden on your head.'' Pat came Shri Guruji's happy response: ``You are carrying an even heavier burden on your head.'' Gurmukh Singh and all others burst in- to laughter.

Shri Guruji's last visit to Karachi took place just nine days before Partition, that is on August 5. In a meeting with leading citizens, Shri K. Punniah, editor, `Sind Observer,' said: ``Where is the harm if we gladly accept Partition? What is the harm, if a diseased limb is cut off? The man still lives!'' Quick came the retort: ``Where is the harm, if the nose is cut off? The man still lives!''

On one occasion when we went to see Shri Guruji off at the Hyderabad railway station we found a Sindh Muslim minister in the same compartment. The two were introduced to each other. Said the minister: ``Sher, sher ko hi milna chahta hai'' (``The lion likes to keep the company of only lions''). Thereupon Guruji laughed and said: ``I am not a lion!''

RSS overcame all the earlier distinctions between the Amils and the Bhaibunds, the Hyderabadis and the non-Hyderabadis, the urbanites, the suburbanites and the ruralites, the Sanatanis and the Samajists --- whether of the Arya or the Brahmo variety. Boys of both Congress and Mahasabha families, could be seen playing together and saluting the same Bhagwa Dhwaja. RSS further Hinduized the Sindhi Hindus. Formerly 90 per cent of students used to opt for Persian; after RSS came in, 95 per cent began to opt for Sanskrit Many even took up Hindi in place of Sindhi since, they said, they already knew Sindhi well enough. RSS politicized and radicalized the Sindhi Hindu youth. J.T. Wadhwani, president of Bharatiya Sindhu Sabha, and Hashu Advani, founder of Vivekananda Education Society of Bombay. were inducted into public life by RSS. Manhar Mehta, president of Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, is a product of Sindh RSS. And a gem like Lal K. Advani is the gift of Sindh RSS to Indian public life. It was not for nothing that Janardan Thakur wrote of him in 1977 in his All the Janata Men.

``The man who has really helped gain a greater respectability for the Jana Sangh constituent of the Janata Party without ever projecting himself, is Lal Krishna Advani, by far the cleanest and straightest leader in Indian politics today. Clean, sophisti- cated, business-like, mild-looking, but firm when needed, the Minister for Information & Broadcasting is almost a freak in today's political world. Though never in the forefront, he stands bright as a candle of hope in an other vise dark prospect.''

It was all these movements from the Brahmo Samaj down to RSS that transformed Sindh from a slimy backwater into a small but significant province. And it was these movements that provided the steam for the freedom movement.

http://www.freesindh.org/sindhstory/From_B...maj_to_RSS.html

**acharya** · 09-19-2009, 05:45 AM

Everyone in India is a Hindu, says RSS chief

Paras K Jha / DNAFriday, September 18, 2009 8:21 IST
Protests against Muslims and Christians are not part of Hindutva, which is non-violent, said Mohan Bhagwat, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) while delivering the concluding lecture of a two-day seminar on 'Hindutva in the present context' organised by the Bharatiya Vichar Manch at the Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration, on Thursday.

"There is no need to define Hindutva as it can be described in different ways. The exact definition may lead to confusion. In the same way, the word 'Hindu' can have many workable definitions. While it is a way of life, it is also a religion. Indians have not coined the word 'Hindu'. There are no references to it in the scriptures. People identified us as 'Hindus' and now the word has become our identity," Bhagwat said.

The RSS chief said that the word 'Hindu' referred to anyone born in India. "So, whether Muslim or Christian, we are all Hindus. Their ancestors were Hindu, their blood is Hindu. They are all our brothers and we are calling them to join us," he said.

Regarding the definition of Hindutva, Bhagwat said, "Hindutva cannot be classified as Swami Vivekananda's Hindutva, RSS's Hindutva, VHP's Hindutva. It is one and it is not anybody's brand or monopoly. The continuous discovery of the truth is known as Hindutva."

He also emphasized the need for Hindus to become strong and powerful. "The world respects the powerful and for that, Hindus will have to become strong and powerful," he said. "Many people have a problem with the word 'Hindu' and they often asked us to give up it. The word 'Hindu' is attacked. But we cannot give up this word as it describes all that which cannot be described by any other word," Bhagwat said.

Bhagwat further said that spoke about the role of women in India. "We worship women as goddesses in temples and in our scriptures. But, in our families, the condition of women is not impressive. Keeping politics aside, we need to correct our social structure, as politics is only a part of society. We should focus on the family, which is a unit of society.

Hindu families have values, traditions and ethics that are still intact. When we make a family strong with values, society will automatically become strong," he said.

Bharatvarsh · 09-19-2009, 06:24 AM

Typical RSS verbal diarrhea.

**acharya** · 09-23-2009, 09:27 AM

Join us, RSS tells Muslims, Christians

Kiran Tare / DNAMonday, September 21, 2009 12:45 IST 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Sunday appealed to all sections of society, including Muslims and Christians, to join his organisation. "Come, test us, and decide whether you want to continue," he said. "I am sure you will continue because our intention is clear and our behaviour is good."

Bhagwat was speaking at the Dussehra rally of the RSS at the Somaiya grounds near Sion. It was his first public rally after assuming charge as sarsanghachalak in March. "All Muslims in India were Hindus in the past," Bhagwat said.

"They have only changed their way of worship. If they accept this, there will be no clashes. No community in the country is a minority. They have to live and die here. They should accept that we all had the same ancestors and our culture, too, was the same."

The RSS chief attacked Christians for 'forceful' conversions and claimed the problem was growing. "No one can meet god by changing his religion," he said. "Why, then, do they want to convert people?"

Bhagwat said the RSS will use its influence only for the country's benefit. "We will not use our influence for any political party or person," he said. "We are not with any party, but we are with the policies of nationalism."



QUOTE

Readers' comments:
Very true. The fact that Islam is a religion of hardliners is something everybody, including Muslims, knows. But this dirty vote-bank politics makes our so-called secular media and political parties bootlickers...
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 0:52 ISTvicky, Mumbai
Well said, but on what evidence? If everbody was a Hindu then why in the world do Hindus exist only in india and not found elsewhere in the world?He needs to read more literature. Christianity, Islam and Judaism have a common history, with some getting diverted at some points while some did not.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 19:50 ISTfrhumankind, Delhi
Mr Bhagwat and his organisation need to change first and accept people of different religions, the way they are. His organisation should stop spreading hatred among people of this great country. But that won't happen because his organisation's foundation is based on hatred.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 19:38 ISTnikosh, Mumbai
Muslims don't just worship differently, but the Islamic concept of God is very much different than Hinduism. Hindus believe in pantheism, which Muslims don't believe in. Common Hindus believe in polytheism, which is repugnant to Islam. Further, all Muslims were not Hindus in the past. There are quite a few Muslims who converted to Islam from other religions like Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Christianity, atheism, etc. Further, there are some Muslims whose ancestors settled in India from other countries and whose ancestors were not Muslims. If we go by Mr Bhagwat's logic, all hindus were Muslims before. Because Muslims believe that the first man on earth, Adam, was also a Muslim and was in fact the first Prophet of God. Mr Bhagwat, you have just exposed your ignorance about Islamic beliefs and practices and also about history. You have invited Muslims and Christians to join your organisation. I take this platform to invite you to accept Islam and gain success.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 19:36 ISTSajid, Mumbai
Truth is hard to digest and so-called political parties don't want the truth to be exposed. The vote bank runs on minorities. How can a shop run without the goods in vast demand? So when politicians stop speaking, automatically, equality will start speaking.

**acharya** · 09-23-2009, 09:29 AM

Yes, I agree with Mohan Bhagawat's call to Muslims and Christians to join RSS. We have no shame or we won't feel bad in joining any organisation as far as it is just and favours humanity and does not sow hatred among Indians. It is right that most ancestors of Indians were Hindus and converted to Islam due to good features found in Islam. Mr Bhagwat says that Muslims should go back to their old religion. I have one question for Mr Bhagawat - as per Darwin, we came from monkeys. Does this mean that Mr Bhagawat and his followers will go back to the forest and live with monkeys? If he is a man of his word and does as he says, Muslims and Christians have no objection in joining the RSS. In this case, the RSS should change its policies. They should respect the Indian Constutuion first and respect all Indians. As per the Indian Constitution, every citizen of India has the right to select his religion and nobody should be forced to follow one particular religion. Since the RSS is clapping its back on its own saying this is the best Indian organisation, then why are they betraying the constitution? They should not force their own ideology on anyone. If they respect all Indians and religions and work for the betterness of humanity, I don't think anyone will have any objection to joining the RSS or any other organisation. They should clean themselves and be good Indians before they invite others to join them. They should not force anyone for anything. They should not forget sacrifices made by Muslims and Christians to get liberation from British rule. For your information, no RSS or Sangh Parivar member was there in the struggle for freedom. They were supporting the British for their own benefit. They were the back-biters and betrayers and deshdrohis. How come they are calling themselves pure Indians? I request all Indians to be aware of the history of the RSS and the Sangh Parivar.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009 16:42 ISTSHAJI, saudi arabia

11-02-2009, 05:39 AM

Sivakasi & White House

Dear Mr President,Let me first express my warm but belated congratulations to you for getting the Nobel Peace Prize. While many think that you do not deserve it, I think that you deserve it more than several others who got it earlier. I also thank you for celebrating the Indian festival Diwali in the White House as it boosts the morale of many Indian-Hindus living in the United States and other Euro-American countries.

However, I would have liked it if you had sought the presence of a Dalit Shaivite priest along with a Brahmin Vaishnavaite priest (who was present with three Vaishnava namams on his forehead, a clean shaven head and pattu vastram) to promote race and caste equality.

But I will discuss that issue elsewhere. Here I want to share other serious concerns about our environment, about which you and your government too are worried.

Diwali is celebrated in south India as a festival of lamps because a so-called rakshasa, Narakasura, was killed by Krishnaâs wife Satyabhama on that day. The Hindus believe that Narakasura represents darkness (even the blacks of America and Dalit-Bahujans of India were believed to have represented darkness historically), his death gets celebrated by lighting lamps.

We have no problem with lighting of lamps though too many of them can lead to wastage of electricity which we need for our agriculture. And traditional lamps take up too much oil. However, that in itself is not a major environmental hazard.

The real problem in Diwali is the lighting of firecrackers and that too on a very large scale. The amount of firecrackers burnt on that day and the subsequent week is mind-boggling.

I live in Hyderabad, the fifth biggest city in the country, and the media says that this city alone burnt firecrackers worth Rs 100 crores on Diwali night.

The lighting of firecrackers continued on the second day, and two subsequent days, though the numbers were slightly less than what was burnt on Diwali day. In Hyderabad alone people must have burnt crackers worth Rs 200 crores. It can be safely said that firecrackers worth Rs 4,000 crores may have been lit in the whole of India during Diwali.

I do not know whether you have ever inhaled air polluted by the burning of firecrackers. I am not sure if anyone burnt firecrackers when you won the presidential poll, as is done in India after poll victories. If you had allowed a few NRIs to burn few firecrackers during the celebration of Diwali in the White House, you would have known what I am talking about.

And if a handful of American environmentalists were present while Indian firecrackers were being burnt, they would have asked for banning of Diwali celebrations in the US forever.

However, Indian environmentalists, many of whom acquired their scientific degrees from the best universities of your country, do not want to study the consequences of Diwali celebrations and firecracker on the health, environment and infrastructure of the nation. They all seem to think that all these firecrackers are meant to destroy Narakasura who, incidentally, happens to be dark-skinned, like you and me.

Even the best of our environmental and health protection activists, such as Dr Sunitha Narayan, do not seem bothered about it because not much foreign investment is involved in Indian firecracker industry. But the fact remains that thousands of children who are employed in Indiaâs firecracker units are facing health hazards of various kinds.

If you ever visit Sivakasi, a small town in Tamil Nadu where many firecracker units are run, you will understand what it actually does to people in the town and those who work there, particularly the children. One does not know whether they too are considered to be the children of Narakasura, but they are forced to do such hard labour in an environment that is full of unhealthy gases and toxic dust. Many of them die young.

Historically, there has been a karma theory in India which is supposed to determine how long one lives. As the first Black President of America, I am sure you do not believe in the karma theory. As global citizens of the modern world governed by the United Nations Charter of Human Rights, these children must have the right to health, education and the "hope" that you constantly keep talking about.

Just one English-medium school started by the Dalit Education Centre, funded, of course, by philanthropic civilians of your own country, has shown that these children are capable of learning.

This academic year the first batch of students passed out of their 10th class (19 of them) and all of them not only got first division but the best among them got 96 per cent marks. These students, fed and clothed by the school management, were liberated from the firecracker industry work. They are healthier than the average children of Sivakasi and hope to become doctors, engineers, scientists.

Do the NRIs who celebrate Diwali with gusto in the US contribute even a mite to help the children working in these factories?

Mr President, I suggest that you get a team of environmentalists and health scientists to study the impact of Diwali crackers on environment and health before you celebrate it next year.

I donât want to abolish Diwali or prevent its internationalisation. But I would like to see the light of lamps glow in the lives of Sivakasi children too.
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I don't know what to do with this idiotic moron. If I'am the PM of India, I would have sent this author Kanchi Iliah to Saudi Arabia.

Bharatvarsh · 11-02-2009, 06:39 AM

[edited]

11-02-2009, 07:06 AM

edited

Capt M Kumar · 11-02-2009, 07:31 AM

<img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/india.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='india.gif' /> I think rather than being reactive, there is need to be proactive viz.
all the author needs to be told of fireworks on 4th of July.

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