Assasination Of Mahatma Gandhi

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Oct 17 2006, 07:11 AM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Oct 17 2006, 07:11 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Together these two guys killed majority population customs and aspiration.
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I am surprised that people here refer to two of the most important figures in world history as 'guys.' <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> Mahatma Gandhi understood the Indian psyche very well, which was why he advocated ahimsa. Not due to his own cowardice, because a coward wouldn't have the guts to face the lathi. But since he perceived most indians to be cowards, the Mahatma felt ahimsa was the only way. There was no other way for a weak, cowardly people to fight back. So Gandhi had to make the most of what he had, namely a clueless, hapless people. Even Aurobindo advocated this sort of passive resistance.

And his support for muslims was a tactical move, in order to defeat the Brits. Gandhi was a brilliant politician and a tactician. His various activities and 'eccentric' ways must be understood in this connection only. He wasn't an ordinary person, so it isn't always easy for ordinary people to understand his motives.

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I am surprised that people here refer to two of the most important figures in world history as 'guys.' <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> Mahatma Gandhi understood the Indian psyche very well, which was why he advocated ahimsa. Not due to his own cowardice, because a coward wouldn't have the guts to face the lathi. But since he perceived most indians to be cowards, the Mahatma felt ahimsa was the only way. There was no other way for a weak, cowardly people to fight back. So Gandhi had to make the most of what he had, namely a clueless, hapless people. Even Aurobindo advocated this sort of passive resistance.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It was the same cowardly Indian's that produced people like Shivaji, Banda, Rana Pratap, Hari Singh Nalwa, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Akali Phoola Singh, Baji Prabhu Deshpande, Peshwa Baji Rao and many others, so stop acting as if Indian's were always cowards, it is more apt to say that Gandhi's ideas turned Hindus into cowards.

Aurbobindo's concept of ahimsa or satyagraha were radically different as he explains in his own words in India's Rebirth, take some time to read it.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->And his support for muslims was a tactical move, in order to defeat the Brits. Gandhi was a brilliant politician and a tactician. His various activities and 'eccentric' ways must be understood in this connection only. He wasn't an ordinary person, so it isn't always easy for ordinary people to understand his motives.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Right for his tactical moves Hindu lives were to be used as cannon fodder, he first supported Muslim fanaticism during the Khilafat movement in the hope that it will bring them into the freedom movement but what it led to was the murder and massacre of Hindus in the Moplah riots which he tried to cover up that there were only 3 cases of forcible conversion.

Then came the Kohat riots in which he adviced Hindus who were the victims the following:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->I can only suggest solutions of questions in terms of swaraj. I would, therefore, sacrifice present individual gain for future national gain. Even if Musssalmans refuse to make approaches and even if the Hindus of Kohat may have to lose their all, I should still say that they are able to live at peace with the latter without the protection of the British bayonet.

http://www.hinduamericanfoundation.org/med...se_anderson.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He also adviced Hindus and Sikhs to collectively get slaughtered during the partition riots and the Jews to do the same.

He should have tried his tactics on willing lab sheeps like his followers before making Hindu and Sikh lives and honor the subjects of his absurd experiments.

[Guest]

1. <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->since he perceived most indians to be cowards, the Mahatma felt ahimsa was the only way. There was no other way for a weak, cowardly people to fight back. So Gandhi had to make the most of what he had, namely a clueless, hapless people.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Your language indicates that like Gandhi, even you yourself are living under the myth created by the British that Indians were a clueless, hapless, weak, coward, servile race. Bharatvarsh has tried to help you with that. Also read 'Magical Seeds' by VS Naipaul. In a different context he has tried to explain, with the example of Tamils, about this myth. Once upon a time British had propogated this theory that Tamils are an "unfit-for-war and surrendered race". See Tamils of today in Sri Lanka. (He is not justifying their activities but just showing that what British had created was a pure lie and a systematic myth)

Come out of that myth as soon as possible. Indians were, have been, and are, as good martial people as anybody else.

2. By the way, Indian Leftists who have been using the name of Gandhi, find it hard to digest the favourite song of his - "Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram".

From one of the minutes of meetings from an Indian lefty rally in USA:

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A major troubling question is the role of a religious idiom in such organizing efforts. The night before the rally, FOILers had made the request that we not sing bhajans such as Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram among our group chants. There were some from other organizations on the day of the rally who disagreed and felt that this position displayed the problem with 'standard secularism': an inability to formulate an idiom which accomodated religion. While this problem may be very real, the particular bhajan in question is symbolic of a wider problem: the easy dominance of Hindu idioms. The bhajan is exclusively Hindu in form, complimenting itself by extending the 'generous' gesture of referring to Islam.

Although those involved in anti-communalism efforts often turn to the appeal of syncretic religious traditions, the question should still be posed, which religious idiom prevails? In the name of 'bringing religion back in,' it is often Hinduism alone which is uncritically assumed to provide an effective framing discourse.
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Idiots don't know. Which other religion will allow such co-references as "Ishwar Allah tero naam"? Certainly not the ones which command "You shalt not worship any other gods but me" or "No other God but Allah".

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-Bodhi+Nov 27 2006, 04:02 AM-->QUOTE(Bodhi @ Nov 27 2006, 04:02 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Idiots don't know.  Which other religion will allow such co-references as "Ishwar Allah tero naam"? Certainly not the ones which command "You shalt not worship any other gods but me" or "No other God but Allah".
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cool example. never paid attention to this before.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-suresh+Nov 26 2006, 11:38 PM-->QUOTE(suresh @ Nov 26 2006, 11:38 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->But since he perceived most indians to be cowards, the Mahatma felt ahimsa was the only way. [right][snapback]61378[/snapback][/right]
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When and where did Gandhi say that he "perceived Indians to be cowards"?

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->When and where did Gandhi say that he "perceived Indians to be cowards"? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't know about Indians but one of Gandhi's statements is something like this "the Muslim as a rule is a bully while the average Hindu is a coward" which is right during his time and today but the only thing he failed to notice is that Hindus became cowards because they took to his ideology and secularism, they were doing fine until then, afterall we were on the verge of recovering our land before the British landed in India and screwed us over.

[Guest]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Bapu's Human Tryst</b>

<i>The Mahatma's attachment to a beautiful Bengali woman threatened his marriage, reveals his grandson.</i>

RAJMOHAN GANDHI

www.outlookindia.com/full...F%29&sid=1

For nearly 90 years, Gandhi's large family—which included, besides his wife, four sons, their wives and children, national leaders, fellow ashramites and freedom fighters and even his biographers—nursed one of the few secrets in his open-book life: a passionate love relationship the Mahatma had with a fiery beauty from Bengal called Saraladevi. She was a dazzling woman, by all accounts—belonging to the cream of Bengal's aristocratic intellectuals, a niece of Tagore's, a writer and musician who was hailed in her time as Bengal's Joan of Arc and goddess Durga come down to earth, and who drew around her a captivated circle of young men willing to fight and die at her instance. That Gandhi was clearly bewitched by her brilliance and beauty was no secret among his own circle of intimates, including C. Rajagopalachari, his sons, especially Devadas, and secretary Mahadev Desai, all of whom were worried enough to bring pressure upon him to end the affair for their sake and his. Even his wife Kasturba, one of the most unpossessive women in history, who took without a batting of an eyelid the series of infatuated women who passed in and out of her husband's crowded life, was badly shaken by Gandhi's evident intoxication with the spirited Saraladevi. Strangely—or perhaps predictably— it was the one relationship in his life that even a compulsive confessor like Gandhi barely spoke about, keeping her deliberately out of his otherwise candid autobiography. Now his grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, breaks the silence and reconstructs in his forthcoming biography, Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire, the moving story of the Mahatma's greatest temptation and how he struggled to overcome it. An extract:<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

From newstodaynet.comnewstoday.net

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Gandhi, the Moulana of Muslim appeasement-I

V SUNDARAM

        It is a well known fact of history that although personally Mahatma Gandhi was a devout Hindu, yet he turned more and more anti-Hindu after 1920 as his public life progressed. The driving passion of his political life was to throw the British out of India. In order to achieve this objective, he was obsessed in his conviction that Hindu - Muslim unity was absolutely necessary and indispensable. There can be two views or more on whether he was right or justified in holding these convictions. However, the irrefutable fact is that again and again he demonstrated his combat readiness to sacrifice or sell out vital Hindu interests, Hindu honour and Hindu blood all the time in deference to the feelings of minorities in general and Muslims in particular. To quote the appropriate words of Prafull Goradia in this context: 'For Mahatma Gandhi, no price was too great for appeasing Muslims, so that they did not oppose Hindus. That he did not understand the Muslims was proved by the conduct of the Muslim League and by the vivisection of the country.'

        After the Mutiny of 1857, the incidence of Hindu-Muslim riots in India had come down sharply. By lending support to the Khilafat Movement of Ali Brothers in 1920, Mahatma Gandhi inaugurated a new era of a fresh wave of Hindu-Muslim riots. Mahatma Gandhi was a confused man. How could his Satyagraha which was to be effective for attaining our Swaraj could be equally effective for saving the Caliph on his Turkish throne. Gandhi did not understand that restoration of the Caliph would only result in making him again a shining symbol of Pan-Islamism or the Supranationalism of Islam as a world religion with its people forming the Ummah. This inherent impending danger was clearly foreseen by Sir.Sankaran Nair, a Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1922. In his book prophetically titled as 'Gandhi and Anarchy' published by Tagore and Company, Madras in 1922 he wrote: 'It is impossible to believe that Gandhi and his adherents are not aware that this claim of the Mahomedans to be judged only by the Law of the Koran, is a claim which is the fons et origo of all Khilafat claims of whatever kind. It is well to be clear about this, for not only does the acceptance of the claim mean the death knell of the British Empire or Indo-British Commonwealth, WHATEVER NAME WE MAY CARE TO GIVE TO THE GREAT FRATERNITY OF NATIONS TO WHICH WE BELONG, BUT SPECIFICALLY AS REGARDS INDIA IT MEANS A REAL DENIAL OF SWARAJ. FOR IT INVOLVES MAHOMEDAN RULE AND HINDU SUBJECTION.' Thus Sir Sankaran Nair clearly saw the danger signal when Mahatma Gandhi was leading the Muslims of India to convert the Hindus into permanent Serfs. Dr Manmohan Singh's recent declaration on Muslim hegemony is only a logical culmination of the process initiated by Mahatma Gandhi and clearly foreseen by Sir Sankaran Nair in 1922.

        During the Moplah rebellion in Kerala in 1921, thousands of Hindu men, women and children were killed by the Muslims. Hundreds of women were raped. And yet Gandhi supported the Moplahs and not the Hindu victims of Moplah violence and oppression. In fact Gandhi had no sympathy for the Hindus. Mahatma Gandhi wrote in his 'Young India', 'it is wrong to say that Islam has employed force. No religion in this world has spread through the use of force. No Musalman, to my knowledge, has ever approved of compulsion.' Does this not show that Gandhi practiced political deception? According to Gandhi, the Moplah Muslims were guilty of no crime.

        But the politically spurious and culturally disastrous view of Mahatma Gandhi on the Moplah rebellion was not shared by Lord Reading, the then Viceroy of India and Sir.Sankaran Nair, a member of his Council. Sir.Sankaran Nair wrote: 'For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember anything in history to match the Malabar rebellion. It broke out on 20 August, 1921. Even by the 6 September, the results were dreadful. There was complete breakdown of Civil Government resulting in widespread disorder, in political chaos, in anarchy and in ruin.' Let us contrast this with Mahatma Gandhi's conclusion: 'The Moplahs are among the bravest in the land. They are god-fearing.' How did Gandhi overlook the brutal fact that Moplah Muslims were men-slaughtering, children-strangling and women-raping? I am asking this question in the light of the speech of Lord Reading, viceroy of India, on 20th of August 1921: 'A few Europeans and many Hindus have been murdered, communications have been obstructed. Hindu temples sacked, houses of Europeans and Hindus burnt. According to reports Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam... The result has been the temporary collapse of the Civil Government and offices and courts have ceased to function and ordinary business has been brought to a standstill. European and Hindu refugees of all classes are concentrated at Calicut and it is satisfactory to note that they are safe there. One trembles to think of the consequences if the forces of order had not prevailed for the protection of Calicut. Those who are responsible for causing this grave outbreak of violence and crime must be brought to justice and made to suffer the punishment of the guilty.'

        Annie Besant wrote a series of articles in her journal 'New India' on 29 November and 6 December 1921 under the caption Malabar's Agony. She challenged the stand taken by Mahatma Gandhi on the peaceful and humanitarian overtures of the Moplah Muslims towards non-Muslims in Malabar. The shock of the Moplah riots was so widespread that a Committee of Distinguished Citizens was appointed to tour the affected areas. The Committee consisted of K P Keshava Menon, Secretary Kerala Provincial Committee, T V Mohammed, Secretary, Ernad Khilafat Committee, K Madhavan Nair, Secretary, Calicut District Congress Committee and K V Gopal Menon. In their fact-finding report they concluded: 'Truth is infinitely of more paramount importance than Hindu Muslim unity or Swaraj and therefore we tell the Maulana Sahib and his co-religionists and India's revered leader Mahatma Gandhi� IF HE TOO IS UNAWARE OF THE EVENTS HERE� that atrocities committed by the Moplahs on the Hindus are unfortunately too true and that there is nothing in the deeds of Moplah rebels which a true non-violent, non-co-operator can congratulate them for.. Their wanton and unprovoked attack on the Hindus, the all but wholesale looting of their houses.. Brutal murder of inoffensive Hindus, men, women and children in cold blood without the slightest reason except that they are Kafirs... Their wholesale conversion through threat of death.'

        Mahatma Gandhi treated the report of the above Committee with Islamic contempt. Mahatma Gandhi and the Working Committee of the Congress shamelessly whitewashed the criminal atrocities committed by the Moplah Muslims against the Hindus of Malabar by passing the following resolution:

        'The Working Committee places on record its sense of deep regret over the deeds of violence done by Moplahs in certain areas of Malabar, these deeds being evidence of the fact that there are still people in India who have not understood the message of the Congress and the Central Khilafat Committee, and calls upon every Congress and Khilafat worker to spread the message of non-violence even under the gravest provocation throughout the length and breadth of India.'

        This was political rascality of the meanest kind. Gandhi's callousness rose to Himalayan heights when he wrote the following in 'Young India' on 29 September : 'We have forgotten the divine out of dying for our faiths without retaliation... 'Be the Moplahs be ever so bad, they deserve to be treated as human beings.'

        Dr Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Arjun Singh, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan, Karunanidhi and many other known Islamists in Indian politics owe the fountain head of their infatuation for the peace loving and compassionate Muslims to the sage like wickedness of Mahatma Gandhi detailed above.
        (To be contd...)
        (The writer is a retired IAS officer)
        e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Part II of the same articlenewstodaynet.com

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Gandhi, the moulana of Muslim appeasement-II

V SUNDARAM

        Dr B R Ambedkar paid his tribute to the Muslim Appeasement Bible of Moulana Mahatma Gandhi in these brilliant words: 'Gandhi has never called the Muslims to account even when they have been guilty of gross crimes against Hindus. It is a notorious fact that many prominent Hindus who had offended the religious susceptibilities of the Muslims either by their writings or by their part in the Shudhi Movement have been murdered by some fanatic Musalmans. The leading Muslims never condemned these criminals. On the contrary, they were hailed as religious martyrs.... This attitude of the Muslims is understandable. What is not understandable is the attitude of Mr Gandhi.'

        Dr Ambedkar was not talking through his hat about the anti-Hindu and pro-Muslim attitude of Mahatma Gandhi. When thousands of women were raped and many of them killed by the Moplah Muslims during the Moplah rebellion in 1921, the brutalised women of Malabar led by the senior Rani of Nilambur gave a heart-rending petition to Lady Reading, the wife of the then Viceroy of India. I am quoting only the first two paragraphs from this historic petition:

        'We, the Hindu women of Malabar of varying ranks and stations in life who have recently been overwhelmed by the tremendous catastrophe known as the Moplah rebellion, take the liberty to supplicate your Ladyship for sympathy and succour.'

        'Your Ladyship is doubtless aware that though our unhappy district has witnessed many Moplah outbreaks in the course of the last 100 years, the present rebellion is unexampled in its magnitude as well as unprecedented in its ferocity. But it is possible that your Ladyship is not fully appraised of all the horrors and atrocities perpetrated by the fiendish rebels -of the many wells and tanks filled up with the mutilated, but often only half dead bodies of our nearest and dearest ones who refused to abandon the faith of our fathers; of pregnant women cut to pieces and left on the roadsides and in the jungles, with the unborn babies protruding from the mangled corpses; of our innocent and helpless children torn from our arms and done to death before our eyes and of our husbands and fathers tortured, flayed and burnt alive; of our helpless sisters forcibly carried away from the midst of kith and kin and subjected to every shame and outrage which the vile and brutal imagination of these inhuman hellhounds could conceive of; of thousands of our homesteads reduced to circular mounds out of sheer savagery in a wanton spirit of destruction; of our places of worship desecrated and destroyed and of the images of the deity shamefully insulted by putting the entrails of slaughtered cows where flower garlands used to lie, or else smashed to pieces; of the wholesale looting of hard earned wealth of generations reducing many who were formerly rich and prosperous to publicly beg for a pie or two in the streets of Calicut, to buy salt or betal leaf -rice being mercifully provided by the various relief agencies of Government. These are not fables. The wells full of rotting skeletons, the ruins which once were our dear homes, the heaps of stones which once were our places of worship - these are still here to attest to the truth. The cries of our murdered children in their death agonies are still ringing in our ears and will continue to haunt our memory till our own death brings us peace.'

        The atrocities committed by the Moplah rebels were widely reported in the English and vernacular newspapers of the day throughout India and the British Empire. Mahatma Gandhi was fully aware of every development in Malabar during this time. But his overweening egoism blinded his eyes to such an extent that he was unable to see the realities on the ground. A Peoples' Conference presided over by the Zamorin, Maharaja of Malabar, was held in 1921. The following resolution was passed at this Conference:

        'This Conference views with indignation and sorrow the attempts made in various quarters by interested parties to ignore or minimise the crimes committed by the Moplah rebels such as:

        a) Brutality dishonouring women

        b) Flaying people alive

        c) Wholesale slaughter of men, women and children

        d) Burning alive entire families

        e) Forcibly converting people in thousands and slaying those who refused to get converted

        f) Throwing half dead people into wells and leaving the victims for hours to struggle for escape till finally released from their suffering by death

        g) Burning a great many and looting practically all Hindu and Christian houses in the disturbed areas in which even Moplah women and children took part and robbing women of even the garments on their bodies, in short, reducing the whole non-Muslim population to abject destitution.

        h) Cruelly insulting the religious sentiments of the Hindus by desecrating and destroying numerous temples in the disturbed areas, killing cows within the temple precincts, putting their entrails on the holy image and hanging the skulls on the walls and roofs.

        Annie Besant was a fearless and impartial woman quite unlike Mahatma Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi was a double-talking, multiple-tongued Moulana -layer upon layer of orchestrated fraud, dissemblance and deceit. Annie Besant had been elected President of the Indian National Congress in 1913 - two years before the final return of Mahatma Gandhi to India from South Africa. She was one of the tallest leaders of India at that time and loved by the masses of India. She created a new public awakening about the intentions of the Moplah marauders. Annie Besant visited the affected areas of Malabar soon after the Moplah rebellion in 1921 and wrote a series of powerful articles about the carnage let loose by the Moplah Muslims which opened the eyes of the government of India and that of Britain. I am quoting below a few words from Annie Besant's article titled Malabar's Agony in New India of 29 November, 1921: 'It would be well if Mr M K Gandhi could be taken into Malabar to see with his own eyes the ghastly horrors which have been created by the preaching of himself and his 'LOVED BROTHERS' Muhommad and Shaukat Ali. The Khilafat Raj is established there; on 1 August, 1921, sharp to the date first announced by Gandhi for the beginning of Swaraj and the vanishing of British Rule, a Police Inspector was surrounded by Moplahs, revolting against that Rule. From that date onwards thousands of the forbidden war knives were secretly made and hidden away and on 20 August, the rebellion broke out. Khilafat flags were hoisted on Police Stations and Government Offices. .... Eyes full of appeal, and agonised despair, of hopeless entreaty of helpless anguish, thousands of them camp after camp which I visited. Mr Gandhi says 'Shameful Inhumanity'. Shameful inhumanity indeed, wrought by the Moplahs, and these are the victims saved from extermination by British and Indian Swords. For be it remembered the Moplahs began the whole horrible business; the Government intervened to save their victims and these thousands have been saved. Mr Gandhi would have hostilities suspended so that the Moplahs may swoop down on the refugee camps and finish their work! - Mahatma Gandhi was least concerned about the Hindu victims of Moplah violence in Malabar at that time.

        Annie Besant exposed the atrocities committed by the Moplah rebels in Malabar as a fearless journalist. Let us hear her describe an act and scene of rape in Malabar: 'Words fail to express my feelings of indignation and abhorrence which I experienced when I came to know of an instance of rape, committed by the rebels under Chembrasseri Thangal. A respectable Nair lady at Melathur was stripped naked by the rebels in the presence of her husband and brothers who were made to stand close by with their hands tied behind. When they shut their eyes in abhorrence, they were compelled at the point of a sword to open their eyes and witness the rape committed by the brute in their presence. I loathe even to write of such a mean action. This instance of rape was communicated to me by one of her brothers confidentially. There are several instances of such mean atrocities which are not revealed by people....'

        Mahatma Gandhi at that time gave a great finding to the effect that every Muslim is a bully and every Hindu a coward. On the one hand he called every Hindu a coward and on the other hand he exhorted all the Hindus to remain calm and non-violent even when they went all out to defend themselves against the attacking Moplah Muslims. The truth is Mahatma Gandhi displayed all his courage only to suppress the Hindus. In so far as the Muslims were concerned, he was a typical Hindu coward. He was mortally scared of them. So was Jawaharlal Nehru. Therefore Gandhi had no moral sanction to talk about the cowardice of the Hindus. And here is the callous, sadistic and barbarous message he gave to the Hindu victims of Moplah rebellion in Young India of 29 September, 1921: 'The ending of the Moplah revolt is a matter not only of urgency, but of simple humanity. The Hindus must have the courage and the faith to feel that they can protect their religion in spite of such fanatical eruptions. ... Be the Moplahs be ever so bad, they deserve to be treated as human beings.' By saying all this, Mahatma Gandhi broke the track record of Babar, Nadir Shah and Aurangazib in the never ending vistas of Islamic compassion and Hindu fundamentalism.

        (To be contd...)

        (The writer is a retired IAS officer)

        e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Part III newstodaynet.com

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Gandhi, the moulana of Muslim appeasement-III

V SUNDARAM

        The historical basis for Dr Manmohan Singh's new fangled infatuation for Muslims with infinite dimensions embracing the whole universe dates back to the days of Khilafat Movement in 1921. The Ali Brothers � Mohammed Ali and Shaukat Ali � who were digging the ground under the feet of Mahatma Gandhi all the time affirmed their loyalty to the doctrine of Pan-Islamism. Mohammed Ali sent a letter to Amanulla, the Amir of Afghanistan, inviting him to invade India. The British government got scent of this and arrested the Ali Brothers. When Mohammed Ali was produced before the Jury in the sessions court, he confirmed his complicity in the act of treason: 'The clear law of Islam requires that no Mussalman should render any assistance to the British government against the Amir of Afghanistan and if the Jehad approaches his region, every Mussalman must join the Mujahidin and assist them to the best of his or her power.'

        Mohammed Ali later gave a written assurance of good conduct confirming that he was no opponent of the British government and thereafter he was released. It is on public record that, again in 1921, when the Khilafat agitation was at its peak, Mohammed Ali sent a wire to Amanulla, Amir of Afghanistan urging him not to enter into any kind of peaceful agreement with Britain. At one of the Congress meetings when Swami Shradhananda criticised Mohammed Ali for his act of sending a telegram to the Amir of Afghanistan, Mohammed Ali took him aside and gave him the handwritten draft of a wire. Swami Shradhananda recorded in his book: 'What was my astonishment when I saw the draft of the self-same telegram in the peculiar handwriting of the Father of the Non-violent, Non-cooperation Movement.' To this charge, however, Gandhi replied that he did not remember to have done so.

        In May 1921, there were again public rumours that the Ali Brothers would be arrested by the British government for conspiring with the Amir of Afghanistan to invade India. Mahatma Gandhi's conscience was quickened by this public rumour and he poured out his compassionate Muslim-loving heart to the even more compassionate Hindu-loving Ali Brothers. At a public meeting in Allahabad on 10 May, 1921, with tears in his eyes, Mahatma Gandhi said: 'I cannot understand why the Ali Brothers are going to be arrested as the rumour goes, and why I am to remain free. They had done nothing which I would not do. 'Writing in Young India in May 1921, Mahatma Gandhi declared with Jehadic piety: 'I would, in a sense certainly assist the Amir of Afghanistan if he waged a war against the British government.' Mohammed Ali was known for his decency and decorum and fidelity. He showed his noble qualities in 1924 when he declared at Aligarh and Ajmer: 'However pure Mr Gandhi's character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of my religion inferior to any Mussalman, even though he be without character... Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mahatma Gandhi.'

        Mahatma Gandhi's public posture and attitude towards the treasonable acts of Ali Brothers were severely criticised by prominent public personalities of the day like V S Srinivasa Sastri, C Y Chintamani, the Editor of Leader, Allahabad and C F Andrews, Gandhi's confidant. All of them including Annie Besant told him in categorical terms that his speeches and writings were unmistakably such as to justify the treasonable act of Mohammed Ali's invitation to the Amir of Afghanistan to launch an invasion against India.

        Apart from the genuinely noble tribute paid by Mohammed Ali with Islamic conviction to Mahatma Gandhi referred to above, what was the reaction of the other Muslim leaders of the time to the generosity of spirit, largeness of heart and greatness of mind shown by Mahatma Gandhi towards his ever peace loving and supremely humane Muslim brothers? A Muslim leader who was considered as a 24-Carat Nationalist by all the Congressites in general and Mahatma Gandhi in particular soared to unimaginable heights when he presided over the Khilafat Conference at Ahmedabad in December 1922. That was Hakim Ajmal Khan. With Mahatma Gandhi and all the other great national leaders� unbelieving Hindu Kafirs� like C R Das, Lala Lajpat Rai, and many others sitting by his side on the dais, Hakim Ajmal Khan declared in a historic speech: 'I envisage a glorious future awaiting our Pan-Islamic Empire. India on the one side and Asia Minor on the other are but two extreme links in a chain of future Islamic Federation, which are gradually but surely joining together all intermediate States in one great system.' When he concluded his speech, Mahatma Gandhi went and embraced him which gladdened the Pan-Islamic hearts of Congressites present on that occasion.

        The frenzy of Jehad generated by the inspiring Khilafat leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, ably guided by the Ali Brothers, soon spread like wild fire in different parts of India. Beginning with the Moplah rebellion in Malabar district in 1921, it spread to a few places in Punjab and Bengal in 1922 and by 1923 it enveloped many other provinces. The main centres of Hindu-Muslim riots were Amritsar, Lahore, Panipat, Multan in the Punjab; Moradabad, Meerat, Allahabad, Saharanpur in UP; at Bhagalpur in Bihar, at Gulbargah at Hyderabad State and at Delhi itself. At most of these places, it was the Muslims joining the Moharrum procession who had sparked off the communal outbreak and given the green signal for widespread uprising against the Hindus.

        Rajendra Prasad, who cannot be dismissed by the Congress vermin of UPA government today as a fervent and doughty champion of communal Hindutva, minced no words in pinpointing the Muslim complicity in these riots: 'Towards the later part of 1922 there occurred serious riots in Multan in which Hindu places of worship were desecrated, many Hindus were killed and many Hindu houses were looted and burnt. This was the first of a large number of communal riots which continued for several years and which occurred in almost all parts of the country.'

        In all these riots sparked of by the Khilafat agitation led by Mahatma Gandhi, numberless Hindus fell victims to the spectre of Muslim barbarism. Countless Hindu women were raped and kidnapped. Practically every Hindu festival� Ram Lila, Durga Puja, Holi, Ganapathi Puja � was a signal for a fierce Muslim assault as an integral aspect of Khilafat agitation. Mahatma Gandhi gave his infantile reactions through Young India in 1924. He wrote: 'The Hindus have written to me complaining that I was responsible for unifying and awakening the Mussalmans and giving prestige to the Moulvis which they never had before. Now that the Khilafat question is over the awakened Mussalmans have proclaimed a kind of Jehad against the Hindus... The tales that are reported from Bengal of outrages upon Hindu women are the most disquieting if they are even half-true. My own experience but confirms the opinion that the Mussalman as a rule is a bully, and the Hindu as a rule is a coward. Need the Hindu blame the Mussalman for his cowardice? Where there are cowards, there will always be bullies... But as a Hindu, I am more ashamed of Hindu cowardice than I am angry at the Mussalman bullying.' The tone of this hypocritical, if not patently mad, writing of Mahatma Gandhi makes it clear that he had total contempt for his perceived cowardice of the Hindus and profound respect and regard, bordering on unstated veneration, for the blackmailing tactics of the Mussalmans.

        Dr.Annie Besant, one of the top leaders of the Congress, fully realised the folly of the perverse Khilafat policy of Mahatma Gandhi: 'Since the Khilafat agitation, things have changed and it has been one of the many injuries inflicted on India by the encouragement of the Khilafat crusade, that the inner Muslim feeling of hatred against unbelievers has sprung up, naked and unashamed, as in years gone by... If India were independent, the Muslim part of the population � for the ignorant masses would follow those who appeal to them in the name of their Prophet � would become an immediate peril to India's freedom. Allying themselves with Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Persia, Iraq, Arabia, Turkey and Egypt and with such of the tribes of Central Asia who are Mussalmans, they would rise to place India under the rule of Islam � Those in 'British India' being helped by the Muslims in Indian States and would establish Mussalman rule.' These fears of Annie Besant are getting confirmed in letter and spirit through the day to day policy pronouncements of the UPA government � whose ghastly if not gory deeds will land all the peace loving Hindus of India in irretrievable gloom for ages to come.

        The same fear as that of Annie Besant was expressed by Lala Lajpat Rai in a letter to C R Das in 1924: 'I am not afraid of seven crores of Muslims of Hindustan. But I think the seven crores of Hindustan plus the armed hosts of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey will be irresistible... I am willing to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Koran and Hadis? The Muslim leaders cannot override them. Are we then doomed? I hope not.'

        Mahatma Gandhi sowed the wind of Khilafat in 1921 and we reaped the whirlwind of Pakistan in 1947. In 2006, we are preparing to create a federation of neo-secular Pakistans within our country by our consciously chosen divisive policies based on religion, caste, colour, creed and community running counter to the known letter and spirit of our Constitution.

        (To be contd...)

        (The writer is a retired IAS officer)

        e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Gandhi, the moulana of Muslim appeasement-IV

V SUNDARAM

        H V Seshadri in his seminal book called: 'The Tragic Story of Partition', published in 1982 rightly summed up the Congress Party's disastrous philosophy and policy of Muslim appeasement in these words: 'Congress had been, from its very inception, caught in an ideological trap laid by the British: that the Congress could lay claim to be a national body only if all the religious communities in this land would come together on its platform; then alone would the British Government consider it as representative of all Indians and look into its demands. However, nowhere in the world was this strange interpretation of the concept of 'NATION' and 'NATIONAL' accepted or practised. 'NATIONALISM' was not something to be equated with arithmetical calculations or juxtapositions of certain groups inhabiting the country. It was, essentially, a sentiment, an attitude of thinking and feeling in terms of 'NATION' as an organic hole. It is a spirit of total commitment to national interests and national values� a commitment overriding all other personal or parochial interests. In the Indian context, it implied the sub-ordination of one's loyalties to one's caste, sect, religious faith, language, etc to the supreme call of the country. It also implied an uncompromising will which would brook no compromise or 'Horse trading' with any group which would strike at this basic loyalty.' Political horse-trading has become the main overriding activity of the UPA Government under Dr Manmohan Singh today.

        After the tremendous national awakening following the partition of Bengal in 1905, a national movement in which thousands of Muslims also participated along with their Hindu brothers, really shook up the British Government of Lord Minto, the then Viceroy of India. He wanted to wean away the Muslims from the national mainstream. Thus he plotted with some communal Muslim leaders of East Bengal and managed to arrange a pre-meditated Muslim deputation under the leadership of His Highness the Aga Khan to wait on Viceroy Lord Minto at Simla on 1 October, 1906. Lord Minto advised them to create a separate and exclusive political organisation for the Muslims of India and thus was born the All-India Muslim League under the leadership of Nawab Salimullah Khan on 30 December, 1906 with H H Aga Khan as its permanent President.

        From that moment Muslims of India started voting communally, thinking communally, listening only to communal election speeches, judging the delegates communally, looking for constitutional and other reforms only in terms of more relative communal power in order to express their grievances communally. This attitude gave a big impetuous to a political movement among Muslims inspired by a separate religious consciousness. It threw up a class of communal Muslim leaders who would vie with one another in inciting and catering to the fanatic religious feelings of their co-religionists. This in other words, was a device for building up a fiercely anti-Hindu and anti-national leadership to counterblast the nationalist Congress leadership. This established trend led to the emergence of Jinnah and his demand for Pakistan. Aga Khan wrote in his memoirs: 'Lord Minto'sacceptance of our demands was the foundation of all future constitutional proposals made for India by successive British Governments and the final, inevitable consequence was the partition of India and the emergence of Pakistan.'

        The original foundation of Congress policy of Muslim appeasement of which Mahatma Gandhi was the Maulana and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru the Mulaazim, was in fact born in1888 itself at the 4th Congress session in Allahabad under the Presidentship of Badruddin Hussain Tyabji when an official resolution was passed to the following effect: 'he Congress shall not discuss any fresh subject or pass any fresh resolution which the Hindu or Mohammedan delegates as a body oppose unanimously or nearly unanimously.' Thus the Congress virtually granted the power of veto to Muslims, however small their number might be in the Congress, to torpedo any policy or programme of the Congress. Having once accepted this slippery, treacherous and quicksand-like position vis-à-vis the Muslims of India, it is no wonder that the Congress started on the downward journey with increased speed as days passed. Mahatma Gandhi went down on bended knees before Ali Brothers in the days of Khilafat movement in 1921, and again went down crawling and creeping at the feet of Jinnah in 1947. After independence, Nehru considered it his bounden duty to treat the Hindus of India as sacrificial goats in order to quench his thirst for Muslim infatuation through his pernicious policy of secularism and Muslim appeasement duly enshrined in Articles 29 and 30 of the Indian constitution. Indira Gandhi amended the Indian constitution to confirm the first class secular special status of the Muslims in India and to relegate all the Hindus of India to the 'communal' degradation of a position of politically condemned second class citizens. As H.V.Seshadri rightly concludes: 'This was how the Congress� in place of educating the Muslims in lessons of the true content of emotional integration, i.e., making them realise the dangers of separatism and persuading them to share the common national aspirations and joys and sorrows of the rest of their countrymen� began pampering their divisive tendencies.'

        Five years before the Khilafat surrender of Mahatma Gandhi to the Ali Brothers in 1921, the Congress party in a suicidal bid to snatch the 'INITIATIVE' from the British hands embarked upon a new adventure in 1916. It decided to enter into a pact directly with the All-India Muslim League on the basis of a mutually agreed upon formula in lieu of the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909. This was how both Congress and Muslim League came to hold their annual sessions simultaneously in 1916 at Lucknow. And here was born the Lucknow Pact blessed by all the leading stalwarts of the Congress at that time. What was the upshot of the Lucknow Pact? It not only put its seal of Congress approval on the principle of separate electorates to the Muslims but also granted them weightage ie, greater representation than what their population warranted. In terms of the actual percentage among the elected Indian representations to the various Provincial Assemblies, the Muslims were granted 50 per cent in Punjab, 30 per cent in UP, 40 per cent in Bengal, 25 per cent in Bihar, 15 per cent in Central Provinces and Berar, 15 per cent in Madras Presidency and 33 per cent in Bombay Presidency. This new Lucknow accord gave Muslims a greater share in the Provincial Assemblies than what was granted in the 1909 Morley-Minto Reforms. To crown it all, in the Imperial Legislative Council, the Muslim representation was enhanced to one-third of the Indian elected members to be elected by separate Muslim electorates in the several provinces. Through the Lucknow Pact, the Congress gave its political sanction to the following major dangerous doctrines:

    *  The right of Muslims to separate communal electorates and communal representation.

    *  The claim of All-India Muslim League to speak for the entire Muslim community in India. That is how Jinnah got his irrevocable right to speak on equal terms with Mahatma Gandhi before the British Government.

        Among the top leaders of the Congress, Madhan Mohan Malavya was the only man who raised his strong voice of protest against the Lucknow Pact. Lucknow Pact was tragically followed by Mahatma Gandhi's Khilafat movement in 1921 which gave birth to two long-range catastrophic results. Firstly, Muslim fanaticism secured a position of political prestige in Indian politics which it enjoyed under Gandhi and later after independence under Nehru, followed by Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao. And today it is enjoying the same privilege under Dr Manmohan Singh. Dr.Manmohan Singh's surrender today to Muslim fanaticism is logical culmination of all this historical development starting from the Lucknow Pact in 1916.

        Mahatma Gandhi gave his political and moral approval to the Islamic character of Moplah outrage in Malabar in 1921. When Khilafat Muslim leaders like Ali Brothers and many others sent telegrams to Moplah criminal rebels extolling them as heroes fighting for the glory of their religion, Mahatma Gandhi outdid them by issuing a statement to the effect: 'The Moplah rebels are a brave, God-fearing people who were fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a manner which they considered religious.'

        Annie Besant was outraged by the attitude of Mahatma Gandhi towards the Moplah rebels. Her sharp and biting comments on the Islamic character of Moplah carnage are worth outing: 'Malabar has taught us what Islamic rule still means, and we do not want to see another specimen of the Khilafat Raj in India. How sympathy with the Moplahs is felt by the Muslims outside Malabar has been proved by the defence raised by them for their fellow believers and by Mr Gandhi himself who has stated that the Moplah rebels had acted as they believed that their religion taught them to act. I feel that this is true; but there is no place in a civilised land for people who drive away out of the country those like Hindus who refuse to apostatize for their time honoured and ancestral faiths.'

        (To be contd...)

        (The writer is a retired IAS officer)

        e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Bapu's Human Tryst
<b>The Mahatma's attachment to a beautiful Bengali woman threatened his marriage, reveals his grandson </b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->She was a dazzling woman, by all accounts—belonging to the cream of Bengal's aristocratic intellectuals, a niece of Tagore's, a writer and musician who was hailed


in her time as Bengal's Joan of Arc and goddess Durga come down to earth, and who drew around her a captivated circle of young men willing to fight and die at her instance. That Gandhi was clearly bewitched by her brilliance and beauty was no secret among his own circle of intimates, including C. Rajagopalachari, his sons, especially Devadas, and secretary Mahadev Desai, all of whom were worried enough to bring pressure upon him to end the affair for their sake and his. Even his wife Kasturba, one of the most unpossessive women in history, who took without a batting of an eyelid the series of infatuated women who passed in and out of her husband's crowded life, was badly shaken by Gandhi's evident intoxication with the spirited Saraladevi. Strangely—or perhaps predictably— it was the one relationship in his life that even a compulsive confessor like Gandhi barely spoke about, keeping her deliberately out of his otherwise candid autobiography. Now his grandson, Rajmohan Gandhi, breaks the silence and reconstructs in his forthcoming biography, Mohandas: A True Story of a Man, His People and an Empire, the moving story of the Mahatma's greatest temptation and how he struggled to overcome it. 
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Hmm.. couple weeks ago when Ramdev questioned the importance giving to other freedom fighters when compared to MKG, Congress I was up in arms.

Wonder if they'll ban book by MKGs own grandson or issue a fatwa on him for such slander.

[Guest]

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Gandhi, the moulana of Muslim appeasement-V

V SUNDARAM

        Mahatma Gandhi's blind surrender to the Ali brothers first resulted in the Moplah rebellion in Malabar district of Kerala in 1921. The same aggressive Khilafat spirit was shown by the Muslims of Kohat, a small town near Rawalpindi in the North West Frontier Province (NWFT) in 1924. In 1924, Kohat's population was estimated at about 15,000. Its people were mostly Muslims. On 10 September, 1924, in one day, 800 Hindus were butchered by the Muslims in a rioting which began the previous day. Why did the Muslims in majority in Kohat attack the defenceless Hindus? This can be answered most effectively through the brilliant words of Dr K D Prithipal, Professor of Comparative Religion, University of Alberta in Canada: 'Muslims will only live as an oppressive majority and a turbulent minority'.

        Mahatma Gandhi went to Rawalpindi along with Maulana Shaukat Ali on the 4 February, 1925 to meet the Hindu refugees and the Mussalmans of Kohat. The Hindus had already given their written statements to which they had nothing more to add. The Muslim Working Committee of Kohat did not come. They sent a wire to Maulana Shaukat Ali saying: 'A reconciliation has already been effected between Hindus and Muslims. In our opinion, this question should not be reopened. The Muslims should therefore be excused for not sending their representatives to Rawalpindi.'

        The Muslim lawlessness in Kohat was again provoked by the release on bail of one Jeevan Das, Secretary of the Sanatan Dharam Sabha of Rawalpindi by the British District Magistrate on 8th March 1925. Jeevan Das's only crime was that he had distributed a booklet or pamphlet containing a poem which happened to offend the sentiments of some Muslims. Any civilized man would ask the question as to how in such an overwhelmingly Muslim Town could any Hindu risk such an annoyance? The Hindus as a whole graciously offered a written apology which was not sufficient for placating the Muslim sentiment.

        Amidst his continuous double-talking and amidst his wholehearted involvement in the Khilafat Movement, Mahatma Gandhi seemed to show some understanding at least on one occasion on 10th February, 1925. In a speech at the Satyagraha Ashram, Sabarmathi, Gandhi said: 'The Hindus in Kohat have woken up and the Muslims could not tolerate the awakening; those Muslims looking for a chance to wreak vengeance found it in the form of Jeevan Das's booklet.'

        Several contemporary Hindu writers who knew the facts have commented that Jeevan Das's pamphlet itself was the logical culmination of a known and established process of Muslim misbehaviour towards the Hindu community in general and Hindu women in particular. The local Muslims were very fond of abducting Hindu women, married as well as unmarried, and converting them to Islam through fear of sword. Jeevan Das's booklet contained strong strictures against such a barbarous practice.

        After showing pretended cosmetic understanding of the helpless plight of the Hindus in Kohat in 1924, Gandhi gave this callous advice in his 'Young India': '....Even if Musalmans refuse to make approaches and even if the Hindus of Kohat may have to lose their all, I should still say that they must not think of returning to Kohat till there is complete reconciliation between them and the Musalmans, and until they feel that they are able to live at peace with the latter without the protection of the British bayonet. This is a counsel of perfection. I can tender no other advice. For me, it is the only practical advice I can give. Hindus in Kohat were not nationalists. They want to return not as nationalists but for the purpose of regaining their possessions.'

        What does this all mean? According to Gandhi, if hundred Hindu women were to return to Kohat and were raped in a brutal manner by the Muslims, they should all be determined to avoid taking any assistance from what Mahatma Gandhi called 'the British bayonet', which only meant the British Government. Gandhi was of the view that Hindus should cheerfully submit themselves to the carnal acts of the marauders. Only then, he would consider them all as true nationalists! Mahatma Gandhi said that he was giving practical advice to the Hindus when in fact he was giving only a heartless and cruel advice. When a householder finds his wife or children, other near ones and dear ones murdered, with his property set on fire, what an extraordinarily heartless advice to offer!! Is it not downright madness to talk of Swaraj and nationalism to a common helpless citizen when he had faced the total destruction of his everything? To return to one's home for the purpose of regaining one's lawful possessions was viewed by Mahatma Gandhi as a selfish act. Mahatma Gandhi was perhaps a

        schizophrenic if not a totally deranged person.

        Let us again turn to the Muslim-loving words of Mahatma Gandhi in 1924: 'Sometimes Muslims kidnap a woman and make her embrace Islam. I do not understand how, in this manner, she can become a Muslim. She does not know the Koran. Alas! She knows very little even of her own religion. I cannot understand how she can become a Muslim. ... Our true wealth is not money, land or gold. They can be pillaged. But our true wealth is religion. When we abandon that we can be said to have pillaged our homes. You Hindus are losing much through love of wealth and life.' All this will show that to Mahatma Gandhi, the Muslims of Kohat were friends while the Hindus, who comprised a minuscule proportion of Kohat's population, were anti-national cowards!

        Mahatma Gandhi's vision seems to be as current today as it was in 1924. Dr. Manmohan and his UPA Government are endeavouring to translate the cosmic dream of Mahatma Gandhi into a concrete reality through the 'New 15 Point Programme for the Welfare of Minorities'. Recently our communalist Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh spoke the rabidly communal words of a mofussil politician fighting in Municipal elections. I am referring to his inaugural speech at Dalit-Minority International Conference organized by Ram Vilas Paswan of Lok Janasakti party in New Delhi on 27 December, 2006. To quote his essentially unfortunate and impolitic words: 'Some minorities in India have done better than others. For example in India, minority communities like the Jains and the Sikhs have fared relatively well from the process of social and economic development. However, other minorities, especially the Muslim community in certain parts of our country, have not had an equal share of the fruits of development.'

        I can see that Honourable Dr Manmohan Singh is a Sikh and considers himself a member of a 'Minority Community'.

        By his own recent speech, he has shown that he has total contempt for the letter and spirit of our Constitution. If this is not correct, then he is guilty of either voluntary ignorance as a third grade politician or involuntary ignorance as a routine Congress Minister, as the case may be. To quote the most brilliant and appropriate words of Dr S Kalyanaraman, an International Civil Servant in this context: 'According to the Constitution, persons professing Sikh, Jaina or Buddha Religions are Hindu, that is the majority in Bharatham, and Sikh, Jaina or Buddha adherents do NOT constitute a minority. This is the established law according to many Supreme Court Judgements. How can Prime Minister make a statement in violation of the Constitutional mandate? Dr Manmohan Singh adumbrates 'Minorityism' as a State policy which is against the spirit, letter and basic structure of the Constitution. How can a Government, whose executive head violates the Constitution in a written speech, after taking an oath to uphold the Constitution, introduce new definitions of minorities (unauthorised by the Constitution), be eligible to continue in power?' Dr Manmohan Singh's approach to minorityism cuts at the root of national unity envisaged by the Constitution.

        Dr Kalyanaraman is mathematically right. Explanation II given under Article 25 of the Constitution of India states: 'In sub-clause (b) of clause (2) the reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jain or Buddhist Religion, and the reference to Hindu Religious Institutions shall be construed accordingly.'

        In short, the definition of 'Hindu' is categorical and unambiguous in the Indian Constitution and includes within its fold those professing Sikh, Jain or Buddhist Religions.

        In a recent Judgement, Supreme Court has declared: 'Differential treatments to linguistic minorities based on language within the State is understandable but if the same concept for minorities on the basis of religion is encouraged, the whole country, which is already under class and social conflicts due to various divisive forces, will further face divisions on the basis of religious diversities. Such claims to minority status based on religion would increase in the fond hope of various sections of people getting special protections, privileges and treatment as part of Constitutional guarantee. Encouragement to such fissiparous tendencies would be a serious jolt to the secular structure of Constitutional democracy. We should guard against making our country akin to a theocratic State based on multi-nationalism. The State will treat all religions and religious groups equally and with equal respect without in any manner interfering with their individual rights of religion, faith and worship'.

        Dr Manmohan Singh's legacy as the disastrous head of an irresponsible Government will be that of pampering and pandering to Minorityism, creating a State based on religions, while the Constitution of India enjoins that the State shall have no religion.

        (Concluded)

        (The writer is a retired IAS officer)

        e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

Since Gorakhpur is in news...

There is a rather lesser known connection between Gandhi assassination trial and Goraksha Math. I had read some where in some book, that like Savarkar was forever badnamed after that trial, Nehru government had made all attempts to implicate the then Mahant of Goraksha Math in the case too. Attempt was made to establish that the revolver that was used in the assassination, belonged to or was arranged by the Math, or some related charge. Did not succeed of course. I googled, but could not find anything related to this though.

[ramana]

From Deccan Chronicle, 3 Feb., 2007. will move to correct thread in a while.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Five-star Gandhi
By Seema Mustafa


Not being a member of the Congress Party, or for that matter, a student of the history taught to Congress members, one had thought that Mahatma Gandhi’s Satyagraha was a form of resistance to bring the toiling masses into the struggle for freedom that began as an elitist movement, to mobilise the people on specific issues related to the Indian determination to get independence, and to underscore non violence as the basic characteristic of the fight against the colonisers. It was, thus, difficult to understand precisely what Satyagraha was being felicitated in five-star comfort and tight security by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and in what manner was she hoping to link this one specific function to the masses who were not allowed to even hover near the vicinity of the international event.

What was the message from the glittering event in Vigyan Bhavan for an India that is still struggling to meet the dreams dreamt for her by Gandhi? Promises not realised by the governments for whom that commitment is now just a “legacy” to be usurped and made political capital of? Nothing. There was no message. Not even the rhetoric of new promises. Just a gathering with the one single intention of felicitating not Satyagraha but Sonia Gandhi who was the “star” of the show. No one else, not even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who made a lukewarm appearance on the second day. It was an event for Ms Sonia Gandhi, put together by a grateful Congress Party that has learnt little from the past except to claim the legacy and market it, in bits and pieces, as and when required.

There was no message for the masses of India who were not in the focus anyway. Stories of 90-year-old Satyagrahis seeking an appointment with the Congress president in vain, remained just that: stories in newspapers. The gathering was select, silk saris and brand colognes, as Ms Sonia Gandhi addressed the world about the concept of Satyagraha with the naïve theory that India had acquired nuclear weapons simply because the world had refused to abolish these. So in that sense Satyagraha, under the Vigyan Bhavan definition, is not to resist, but to follow the norm no matter how evil or destructive it is. Not to lead the world out of the darkness of nuclear weapons, but to join it and after strengthening proliferation, cry about the need for non-proliferation. Ms Sonia Gandhi’s government, like its predecessor, has sent emissaries across the globe seeking attention and recognition as a nuclear weapon state. So how is non-proliferation as a concept enhanced in the process? Perhaps, another international conference organised by the Congress Party for its leader will edify the nation on this point.

A major opportunity to revive Gandhi was lost in the Congress Party’s preoccupation to project its president. There had been no effort to work out an international message either, with the final resolution vague and diffused, and overtaken by strong comments by the participants on issues like Tibet and Jammu and Kashmir. So while two world leaders advocated the independence of Tibet, much to the embarrassment of the Indian government that quickly reiterated its “one China” policy, another spoke of the need to resolve the Kashmir issue by suggesting the division of the state along religious and ethnic lines.

The Congress as a party remained distant from the Satyagraha meet, with only the top leaders visible. And this leads us to the next question. Is Gandhi so small a figure that he can be claimed only by the remnants of a party that was once the Congress? Or is he a national figure, a leader with a vision, an icon to be celebrated by India? Sixty years later, the Congress Party has lost its independence, its credibility and the stature to claim to be the true inheritor of the freedom movement. India is the inheritor, with her diversity and her pluralism. A specific family Dynasty cannot determine national inheritance, and Gandhi cannot be usurped as a symbol of democracy and secularism by a motley group of disparate elements that cannot hold together without a certain Family in power. The Congress Party will strengthen its own claim to the “legacy” that its leaders today insist is theirs, if it broadens the base, if it involves individuals committed to Gandhian principles (and most of them are no longer in the Sonia Gandhi party today) and the people of India who have a bigger stake in Gandhi’s lessons today than ever before. Not through a conference, but practice.

Those who distort history and seek to replace leaders like Gandhi who struggled for a democratic, secular India, have to be fought back. The vitriolic Hindutva brigade that fouls everything it touches has to be resisted and countered. But this cannot be done by the rump of the Congress as it exists today. Secularism as an ideology does not exist for this party, seeking glorification through a legacy it cannot even begin to live up to. Today, a riot in Gorakhpur has the Centre sending paramilitary forces to Uttar Pradesh with the ever zealous minister of state for home affairs Jaiswal insisting on visiting the city. Law and order, it appears, is not a state subject when it comes to settling scores with political adversary, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Not so long ago, the same Congress refused to make an issue of the pogrom of Muslims by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, with its worthies insisting, on the record, that there was little they could do as law and order was a state subject. And that the Union government did not want to dismiss a state government for the terrible crimes it had committed, as this would really not be the judicious thing to do. But today, Jaiswal and the Congress leaders in UP have shown no hesitation in warning the state government of President’s Rule until and unless the chief minister cooperates and allows the minister to visit Gorakhpur. And this when most reports about the incident have placed the blame squarely on the BJP and not on the Samajwadi Party.

The point is not the Congress or the Samajwadi Party. The point is how Gandhi, secularism and democracy can all be rolled into a practical handbook for the votaries of Indian politics to ensure that the values are strengthened, and not subjected to the vagaries of personal and short-sighted gains. Gandhi did not believe in the right of a Dynasty to rule. He was also too broadminded to strike a petty note about the origins of a person seeking now to be Indian. For strong positions about either undermine the spirit of democracy, a spirit that is essential if democracy itself is to be preserved. Political leaders who decry democracy in party functioning cannot respect Democracy.

BSP’s Mayawati, who insists that she sits on the high chair while others sit at her feet, cannot even begin to understand the concept of democracy. The Congress Party that has voluntarily decided to sit at the feet of a Dynasty cannot protect democracy. Ms Sonia Gandhi who holds up a hall full of dignitaries from India and Russia to re-introduce her son especially to Russian President Vladimir Putin (both had met earlier, but without her special introduction), cannot understand the link between Indian democracy and a democratic Congress Party.

Perhaps before another international convention on some aspect of Gandhi is again organised by the Congress seeking acclaim for its president, its leaders will open a basic book on Gandhi to understand the depth of the concepts he preached. “Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth,” he said. “A Satyagrahi cannot go to law for a personal wrong … in the code of the Satyagrahi there is no such thing as surrender to brute force,” he said. “Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and makes itself irresistible,” he said. “Satyagraha does not depend on the outside for help, it derives all its strength from within” he said. Perhaps the Congress and its Dynasty can start by searching for that strength from within.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[acharya]

Who owns the Mahatma?


Nothing in Johannesburg bears the remotest resemblance to what this South African city looked like a hundred years ago. At least, the images captured in records of the time are far removed from what we see today, as are the social and political realities that separate today's South Africa from that which shaped the destiny and politics of an unheard of Gujarati lawyer who is now remembered across the world as Mahatma Gandhi.

As part of its discriminatory policy towards Asians - essentially Indians who had come to South Africa as indentured labour and many of whom were now established as traders - the authorities of Transvaal had decided to introduce the Asiatic Law Amendment Ordinance which required Indians, including children, to be finger-printed, carry passes, and live and work in segregated areas.

The proposed law also banned any fresh migration of Indians and barred those who had left the Transvaal during the South African war of 1899 from returning home.

Understandably, people were up in arms and hugely agitated. On September 11, 1906, a meeting was organised at Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, attended by 3,000 Indians and addressed by a Gujarat lawyer then simply known as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. "The old Empire Theatre was packed from floor to ceiling. I could read in every face the expectation of something strange to be done or happen," Gandhi was to later recall in the book, Satyagraha in South Africa.

While many of the agitated Indians wanted to register their protest by taking recourse to violent means, Gandhi disagreed. He offered an alternative method that was to later take form as satyagraha, a deadly yet deeply ethical weapon of resistance against suppression and discrimination in the Empire and beyond.

It was at Gandhi's prodding that on another 9/11, remarkably different from the one on which Mohammed Atta and his band of jihadis wreaked havoc in the US and unleashed a terrible war that continues to rage, a resolution was adopted to marshal peaceful means of protest: "Indians solemnly determined not to submit to the Ordinance in the event of its becoming law and to suffer all the penalties attaching to such non-submission."

Elaborating on what was then an incipient concept, Gandhi told the gathering, "We might have to endure every hardship that we can imagine, and wisdom lies in pledging ourselves on the understanding that we shall have to suffer all that and worse. If someone asks me when and how the struggle may end, I may say that if the entire community manfully stands the test, the end will be near.

If many of us fall back under storm and stress, the struggle will be prolonged. But I can boldly declare, and with certainty, that so long as there are even a handful of men true to their pledge, there can only be one end to the struggle, and that is victory."

History informs us that a day after the meeting of September 11, 1906, Empire Theatre was gutted in a mysterious fire. "Friends brought me the news... and congratulated the community upon this good omen, which signified to them that the Ordinance would meet the same fate as the theatre," Gandhi recalled in his later years.

There was no victory in that battle as the Ordinance became law and the humiliation heaped on Indians and later Blacks - turned relentless.

Yet, the seed of satyagraha was sown and over the course of the next three decades become the moral underpinning of India's struggle for Independence.


Last week, the Congress celebrated the centenary of satyagraha, timing the event so that it coincided with Martyr's Day, in the company of politicians who have never demonstrated any commitment to Gandhian values or the Mahatma's concept of ethical politics rooted in dharma. Neither the Congress nor the Left, nor for that matter those who graced the occasion, subscribe to the principles of satyagraha. If paying lip service were evidence enough, then the event was no more than a slur on Gandhi's memory.

The only political party to have been left out of the celebrations, which were organised by the Congress but funded by the Government, was the main Opposition party, the BJP. Asked to explain the omission, a Congress worthy retorted, "This is not a town hall meeting." Last week's event may not have been a town hall meeting, but the one at Johannesburg that saw the launch of satyagraha was open to all.

The Congress has once again reiterated it is the true inheritor of Gandhi's legacy and has the exclusive right to all that made him a Mahatma. It forgets that in his lifetime, disappointed and disheartened by the Congress's politics, more so during the run-up to Independence and its immediate aftermath, Gandhi all but dissociated himself from the party and its leaders after appealing in vain that it be disbanded.

It is both a sign of the times and the warped thinking of the present Congress leadership that the luminaries who adorned the dais during last week's celebrations were all foreigners. Indians, all of them adoring fans of Sonia Gandhi, formed the audience, to be lectured by foreigners and non-practitioners of Gandhian values on the relevance of satyagraha. The Mahatma, wherever he is, was surely appalled.

More so because today's Congress should have chosen to ignore the disdain and despise with which Communists treated Gandhi and his politics while the Mahatma was alive, and the ruthlessness with which they disparaged him after his death.

Those who have a passing knowledge of history will cite how the Communists, including those who were members of the Congress, refused to participate in the Quit India Movement, spurning Gandhi's invitation and pouring scorn on the man and the putsch he led against the British colonial Government. But that's only a minor manifestation of our Communists' treachery; the real and more substantive attack on Gandhi was both vicious and bilious.


For the Communists, Gandhi was no more than a "bania" bourgeois, a charlatan who lacked both grit and determination. As Arun Shourie says in The Only Fatherland, his damning indictment of Indian Communists, "All through the first two and a half years of the Second World War the Communists abused Gandhiji for 'inactivity', for 'curbing the masses', for 'compromising with imperialism'. They abused the Socialists - JP and others - for 'compromising with the compromisers', for sinking into 'the mire of Gandhism, the path of the bourgeoisie', for 'utter blindness, utter political bankruptcy'."

After the Congress Working Committee passed the "Quit India" draft resolution at Wardha, the People's War, official organ of the Communists, in a caustic comment, said, "After nine days of labour the Working Committee has brought forth an abortion. The resolution it has produced has bankruptcy writ large upon it. From the rut of inactivity it now seeks to lead the nation into the politics of blind desperation and disaster..." That was only the beginning.

In publication after publication, in pamphlets and handbills, the Communists went into overdrive to rubbish Gandhi and the flowering of satyagraha. A month later, the People's War articulated the Communists' position on satyagraha that merits reproduction: "...Before this can be done, before the actual difference between the saboteur and satyagrahi can be made to yield any substantial results, the objective unity of their plans which is there despite their desires and differences, must be clearly realised. The satyagraha creates the atmosphere without which the saboteur could not function. The saboteur has contempt for the satyagrahi but without the patriotic upsurge created by the Congress satyagraha, the saboteur will not get a second person to help him. The two trends are separate but despite themselves they strengthen each other. Why? Because both are aiming in different ways to achieve the same result, viz whipping up enthusiasm for a sagging movement. Because both are the product of frustration and despair that has overwhelmed most of the Indian patriots today. The satyagrahi is only partially disillusioned with sabotage as a form of struggle but not with satyagraha being struggle. The saboteur and anarchist is the patriot gone blind, the innocent tool of a hidden Fifth Columnist. Both seek their inspiration from the bankrupt policy embodied in the slogan DO OR DIE..."

Yet, the Congress, which falsely claims to be the protector and practitioner of all that Gandhi stood for, especially satyagraha, the embodiment of truth in politics, has no problems pretending the Communists are co-legatees. Hence, the special invitation to the Left parties to attend last week's celebrations.

And what of the Communists who have suddenly discovered that satyagraha is integral to their politics? Truth, you see, has never been the strength of our comrades.

Ravishankar Prasad, BJP

It is sad that the Congress celebrated the centenary of the Satyagraha movement while not bringing all political parties on board. It was a brazen appropriation of one of the country's outstanding legacies by the party to score brownie points. By doing this, the Congress has undermined the importance of Mahatma Gandhi.

The BJP is not in competition with the Congress or any other party in championing in so narrow a manner the values that Mahatma Gandhi stood for. We as a political party have never hesitated in accepting the legacy of Gandhiji, and we did so long before many others did.

It was an act of shamelessness on the part of the Left leaders to join the Satyagraha celebrations, notwithstanding the fact they have always been disrespectful of national heroes. It was the height of hypocrisy. Such hypocrisies should not have been allowed to surround any celebrations to mark the great satyagrah of Mahatama Gandhi.

-- As told to Rajeev Ranjan Roy

D Raja, CPI

The Satyagraha centenary celebrations is a positive political decision, but I doubt if it could go beyond its ritualistic relevance.

While Satyagraha is a Congress affair, the party should not forget that it had been a part of the national freedom struggle in which every political party had participated. However, I do not see much relevance of the BJP in relation with the Satyagraha celebrations. The party has no right to claim that it was ever a part of the freedom movement, so why should it feel bad if it was not invited to participate in these celebrations? If you talk about the CPI, we were part of the process as we participated in the freedom movement. May be our ways were different.

-- As told to Shantanu Banerjee

Devendra Dwivedi, Congress

The Congress party's decision to celebrate the Satyagraha centenary was an act of faith and aimed at renewal of the nations' faith in Gandhian ideals and precepts. Gandhi was the leader of the Congress for 30 years. He shaped the destiny of the Congress party and defined the contours of its ideology. The Congress was the laboratory that enabled him to do his experiments with truth. So when the Congress decided to commemorate the event, it gave quite a bit of thought to who should be invited. Since it was a party function, we decided to invite only those who had intimate connection with the practices of the Gandhian philosophy. It was not a town hall meeting where every one had a right to be and objections raised by the BJP for not being invited are superfluous. Though it was a party event, it was not prompted by narrow considerations or political gain.

-- As told to Yogesh Vajpeyi

[Guest]

<span style='color:red'>Gandhi: Violator of the Kshatriya Dharma</span>

http://agneya.wordpress.com/2007/03/22/gan...hatriya-dharma/

[quote]
When judging the greatness of a civilization, one usually looks at its creations or achievements in a diverse set of fields such as the arts, music, literature, religion, politics, or philosophy, to name a few. When the expression of something deeper or higher is made in these forms, such a civilization is viewed as a leader of culture, an advance in the evolution of Nature. For this to occur, it is necessary that the vessels of culture have appropriate training and purpose; the vessel being of course, man. It is here that we return to the Indian truths of dharma and svadharma. Because in order for the vessel to properly express deeper realities, his inner being must be as free as possible not only from external bondage such as rigid societal or governmental structures, but also from the trappings of ego such as ambition and greed. If such bondage is in place, it will be difficult for man to follow the truth of his inner being, svadharma, whatever that truth may be. The expression of his nature obscured, greatness is not fully revealed through him.

Along with individual dharma is the dharma of the aggregate of individuals or community, necessary in upholding any great civilization. In India, originally society was categorized into four distinct groups (Varnas) of Brahmanas (including those taking to the spiritual life, scholars, etc), Kshatriyas (rulership class and warriors), Vaishyas (traders, wealth-producers) and Shudras (service providers). The Varna classification recognized a gradation of these groups in relation to their importance to society yet emphasized that all four groupings were fundamental to its functioning. To create balance in a civilization, it is necessary that all four groupings contain men born or developed for such life purposes, men following their dharma. It is when people born or having developed the nature of a particular Varna are working from positions within their group, that the purest expression of a national Brahmana dharma or Kshatriya dharma is to be occur. This of course, does not always happen, whether due to groupings becoming based on hereditary, or worse if those entering a particular Varna are not of the right nature for that Varna. The latter problem was addressed by Lord Krishna, who warned that even a perfect imitation of another’s nature was fraught with danger:

Better is one’s own law of works, swadharma, though in itself faulty than an alien law well wrought out; death in one’s own law of being is better, perilous is it to follow an alien law. Bhagavad Gita 3:35

The Gita relates this danger primarily to the individual and his subjective development, but naturally an adverse effect will fall upon the group the individual has erroneously joined. Of the four, perhaps the most dangerous to have the wrong men involved, would be the Kshatriya varna. The Kshatriya dharma is first and foremost to protect the people, to fight against internal and external conflict, to ensure a just and stable society in order that the other varnas are free to create without fear. If the kshatriya does not follow the truest law of the varna, the nation is at risk to all sorts of disaster and misery. If, in order to protect the people, the kshatriya deemed the use of violence necessary, then it was used, whether in response to provocation or not.

It was this right arm of the kshatriya that Gandhi abhorred. Believing that the user of violence invariably met his death by violence, Gandhi proposed a different route. In it, the fighter of injustice, the kshatriya, was to not lay a finger on the proponent of adharma. Instead, the Kshatriya was to willfully allow himself to be attacked by the enemy, and accept death without a fight, while the other party was spared death. This was Gandhi’s famous Satyagraha:

There are two ways of countering injustice. One way is to smash the head of the man who perpetrates injustice and to get your own head smashed in the process. All strong people in the world adopt this course. Everywhere wars are fought and millions are killed. The consequence is not the progress of a nation but its decline. …But through the other method of combating injustice, we alone suffer the consequences of our mistakes, and the other side is wholly spared This other method is satyagraha. One who resorts to it does not have to break another’s head; he may merely have his own head broken. He has to be prepared to die himself suffering all the pain.1

The Satyagrahi was not to use bullets, nor try to evade its path:

The day of independence will be hastened in a manner no one has dreamt of. Let not the reformers in the States therefore be unduly impatient; let them not forget their limitations and above all the conditions of success, viz., strictest observance of truth and non-violence. They must be ready to face bullets without flinching but also without lifting a finger in so-called self-defence. A satyagrahi abjures the right of self-defence.2

Indeed, the only tangible goal of satyagraha, disregarding its claim to fight injustice, was the death of its practitioner: “For a satyagrahi there can be only one goal, viz., to lay down his life performing his duty whatever it may be. It is the highest he can attain. A cause that has such worthy satyagrahi soldiers at its back can never be defeated.”3 Somehow, he failed to realize that if all the “soldiers” were to die, they would likely take their cause with them. Such a mass death of ‘soldiers’ was always a possibility, for Gandhi did not believe the Satyagrahi should ever flee or retreat from battle. His only purpose in battle was to rush right into the arms of death:

Fleeing from battle - palayanam - is cowardice, and unworthy of a warrior. An armed fighter is known to have sought fresh arms as soon as he loses those in his possession of they lose their efficacy. He leaves the battle to get them. A nonviolence warrior knows no leaving the battle. He rushes into the mouth of himsa, never even once harbouring an evil thought. If this ahimsa seems to you to be impossible, let us be honest with ourselves and say so, and give it up.4

Here we can acknowledge a peculiar courage in his words, yet also appreciate the minimal importance such a philosophy places towards life. The Kshatriya, while having no fear of death, was supposed to value life – his own and that of the people he was protecting. For if the Kshatriya put himself submissively in harms way, who would subsequently protect the masses? It was this truth Gandhi ignored, refusing to acknowledge the great responsibility he held. For regardless of the common view of him as the austere Saint, Gandhi belonged to the Kshatriya varna, having spent the majority of his life as either the leader of the Congress Party in India, or involved with the South African Indian Congress. As a kshatriya, it was his dharma to protect the lives of his people, instead of telling them to lay down their lives in a bizarre idea of ‘self-defence”:

Gandhiji first asked them if any of them had taken part in the riots, to which they replied in the negative. Whatever they had done was in self defence; hence it was not part of the riot. This gave Gandhiji an opportunity of speaking on some of the vital problems connected with nonviolence. He said that mankind had all along tried to justify violence and war in terms of unavoidable self defence. It was a simple rule that the violence of the aggressor could only be defeated by superior violence of the defender. …Mankind, he stated, had not yet mastered the true art of self defence.

But great teachers, who had practiced what they preached, had successfully shown that true defence lay along the path of nonretaliation. It might sound paradoxial; but this is what he meant. Violence always thrived on counterviolence. The aggressor had always a purpose behind his attack; he wanted something to be done, some object to be surrendered by the defender. Now, if the defender steeled his heart and was determined not to surrender even one inch, and at the same time to resist the temptation of matching the violence of the aggressor by violence, the latter would be made to realize in a short while that it would not be paying to punish the other party and his will could not be imposed in that way. This would involve suffering. It was this unalloyed selfsuffering which was the truest form of selfdefence which knew no surrender. … This art of true self-defence by means of which man gained his life by losing it, had been mastered and exemplified in the history of individuals. The method had not been perfected for application by large masses of mankind. India’s satyagraha was a very imperfect experiment in that direction.5

The true Kshatriya would not put his hopes in a miraculous retreat of an enemy that knew the Kshatriya did not believe in fighting. In such an instance, the aggressor would achieve his objective due to the foolishness of the ahimsa-following kshatriya. The true kshatriya knew that counter-violence in such a case of direct confrontation was necessary, because without it, a steeled heart and strong determination could have no external result. The kshatriya fought back because it was the Law of his being to protect the nation from suffering, not to expose himself or the nation to it. Indeed, not only would the kshatriya fight back in such circumstances, he would also be inclined to take the war into the enemy’s home, to strike first. A kshatriya did not restrict himself to one tactic such as ahimsa in the face of battle. In fact, ahimsa or mute self-sacrifice in battle has never been anywhere close to a significant war strategy. Meeting the enemy in battle, negotiating with the enemy (yet trying to achieve the best possible terms for the nation), setting up defensive barriers, allying with enemies of the enemy, were among the many war strategies used by the Kshatriya. Ahimsa never crossed the mind of the true kshatriya because ahimsa was never considered part of the kshatriya dharma. It was a virtue of the Brahmin.

The brahmana dharma was not actively involved in the protection of the nation through physical means. It was not their dharma. For this reason, they were free to practice ahimsa, non-violence or more appropriately, non-maliciousness. Their contribution to the defense of the nation was through intellectual activity, education, direct guidance of the kshatriya, or through occult means. Ahimsa, a virtue of a section of Brahmins, the sannyasi, was undertaken to help move the sannyasi from rajasic (action, passion) impulses into a Sattvic (peaceful, harmonious) state of mind, in order to make it easier for the Sannyasi to obtain his individual spiritual aspiration. A strict following of ahimsa, therefore, was not even meant for all brahmins, it was meant for the individual who aspired for liberation. It was also meant for those with the inherent Sattvic nature to practice it. It was not meant to be the mass movement Gandhi desired:

Ahimsa which to me is the chief glory of Hinduism has been sought to be explained away by our people as being meant for sannyasis only. I do not share that view. I have held that it is the way of life and India has to show it to the world.6

Ahimsa was never ‘a way of life’ that all of India followed. It was a means to an end for the spiritual seeker just as brahmacharya was. This abstaining from violence, along with vegetarianism, celibacy, humility, elimination of intake of intoxicants, and many other practices, were used by the sannyasi or the yogi to obtain a Sattvic state. From this evolved mentality, the foundation was set for spiritual realization. These practices were not done simply to become a person of high morals, they were done with the ultimate purpose in mind.

Ahimsa, and its role in Indian society, was not the only exaggeration Gandhi placed on certain aspects of Hindu religion and Hindu history. Gandhi took his view of ahimsa to such an extreme that he claimed Hinduism itself never permitted the use of violence:

Similar is the story of Christianity. And Buddhism too, if we regard it as separate from Hinduism, grew only when some people sacrificed their lives for it. I have not found a single religion which did not in the earlier stages call for sacrifices on the part of its followers. When a religion is well established people in large numbers come forward to follow it. This gives rise to bigotry. Now even the followers of Hinduism have stooped to killing and slaughtering although Hinduism never advocated violence.7

Such a claim flies in the face of the Bhagavad Gita. In it Lord Krishna clearly exhorts Arjuna to fight his cousins in battle, to follow his dharma, knowing the eternal truth that the Soul is neither slayer nor slain (Bhagavad Gita 2:18-19). Arjuna was reminded that his particular war was the greatest one for a Kshatriya to partake in; for it was a war to protect dharma from adharma (Dharmayuddh):

Moreover considering your dharma you should not falter; for the kshatriya there does not exist a more appropriate endeavor than a battle to uphold dharma. Bhagavad Gita 2:31

Gandhi, as he is entitled, held his own opinion as to the Gita’s message. “I find in the Gita the message of nonviolence, while others say that the Gita ordains the killing of atatayi. Can I go and stop them from saying so? I listen to them and do what I feel is correct.”8 Gandhi’s belief in non-violence was so strong that he concluded that if indeed the Gita advocated violence, it should not be held as shastra:

I do not believe that the Gita advocates violence for self-defence. I understand the Gita differently. If the Gita or some other Sanskrit work advocates this I am not prepared to accept it as Shastra. An utterance does not become scriptural merely because it is couched in Sanskrit.9

The Gita, of course, is more than just shastra or some other commentary. It is considered the word of God, the Divine Song; the language is not as relevant!

Among those who disagreed with Gandhi’s interpretation was a European guest, Vincent Sheehan, who argued that “the whole of the Gita was an argument in defense of a righteous war.” In response to this, Gandhi gave one of his two significant interpretations of the Gita and Mahabharata, saying, “he did not agree that the Gita was either in intention or in the sum total an argument in defence of a righteous war. Though the argument of the Gita was presented in a setting of physical warfare, the ‘righteous war’ referred to in it was the eternal duel between right and wrong that is going within us. There was at least one authority that supported his interpretation. The thesis of the Gita was neither violence nor nonviolence but the gospel of selfless action-the duty of performing right action by right means only, in a spirit of detachment, leaving the fruits of action to the care of God.”10

This allegorical interpretation of the events at Kurukshetra is an important and widely held view of the Gita’s message. The view of the world – and especially the inner fields of an individual – as a battle between divine and hostile forces (more so than between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’) is a truth long-held (and experienced) by many including Sannyasis. It is these forces, the Gods on one side, the Asuras and other Demons on the other, that constantly battle to win the heart and mind of man, even if in the end the two sides are still under control of the Absolute. The problem with Gandhi’s interpretation was that he exaggerated this truth. Just like those who viewed the material world as nothing but an illusion, Gandhi could not fathom that Hinduism conceived of war in the physical plane.

But if we take Gandhi’s thesis to be accurate, it only makes it more likely that this battle between Divine and Asuric forces would extend into the material plane. After all, the majority of man’s action stems from something within wanting to make itself known on the surface. Rare is it for a man’s inner fields to be disconnected from some form of action on the material plane, since all fields whether material or inner, Divine or subconscious, are interwoven. Only certain members of the Brahmana varna are free from these external battles, and that is only if in remote isolation.

Besides the entire Mahabharata, the background for Lord Krishna’s revelation to Arjuna, there are certain things mentioned in the Gita that enlighten us to the integrality of the physical plane in Lord Krishna’s message to fight. For instance, not only is Arjuna told to detach his mind from the idea of himself as the slayer, he is told of the worldy consequences for abandoning his dharma:

O Arjuna, happy are the Kshatriyas who achieve a battle of this kind presented in its own accord; such a battle is a wide open path to the heavenly realms. However if you do not engage in this dharmayuddh, then you have abandoned your svadharma and your reputation, and you will incur sinful reaction. All people will speak of your infamy for all time, and for respected persons infamy is worse than death. The mighty chariot warriors will consider that you retired from the battlefield out of fear and for those whom you have been held in great esteem you will fall into disgrace. Your enemies will speak many malicious and insulting words discrediting your prowess. Alas what could be more painful than that? Either being slain you shall reach the heavenly realm, or by gaining victory you will enjoy earth, therefore O Son of Kunti, confident of success rise up and fight! (Bhagavad Gita 2:32-37)

From these clear examples, we can see that the ‘righteous war’ in the Gita clearly involved the physical plane, since Arjuna’s penance for not fighting was of an external kind, primarily involving his reputation. Thus, if Gandhi was lucent enough to absorb the inner meaning of the war (indeed, one can deduce such a meaning from wars such as World War II) and the message of Karmayoga (surrendering of the results of actions to the Lord), we can surmise his refusal to acknowledge the Gita’s material aspect as being due to his fanatical aversion to violence. Because when we examine other comments Gandhi made on the Mahabharata, we come across his second significant interpretation, that victory obtained by violence was meaningless:

It was contended that the Mahabharata advocated the way of retaliation. He did not agree with that interpretation. The lesson of the Mahabharata was that the victory of the sword was no victory. That great book taught that the victory of the Pandavas was an empty nothing.11

The greatest of all wars, the war that Mahavishnu himself incarnated into human form to ensure the outcome, an epic battle full of heroic figures, the war to mark the end of one age and the beginning of another (Kalyug), was one void of any real purpose to Gandhi. The fate of those involved in the war soured Gandhi’s view of the Mahabharata:

What has been said in the Mahabharata is of universal application. It does not apply to Hindus alone. It depicts the story of the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Though they were blood-brothers the Pandavas worshipped Rama, that is, goodness, and the Kauravas followed Ravana, that is, evil. Renouncing ahimsa they took to violence and fought amongst themselves with the result that not only were the kauravas killed, but the Pandavas also were losers in spite of their victory. Very few among them survived to see the end of the war and those who did found their lives so unbearable that they had to retire to the himilayas.12

For the kshatriya, the possibility of individual death in battle would never prevent them from warfare in a dharmayuddh, for as Arjuna declared in the Mahabharata, “What is the use to us of an existence without heroic deeds?” The kshatriya was not fighting for himself, he was fighting for the highest of ideals, the protection of dharma and the foundations that allowed dharma to flourish. Death received when battling to uphold dharma was a passage to the heavenly regions. For a man who wanted his followers to rush into death without a fight, why was Gandhi all of a sudden in anguish that few of the Pandavas saw the end of the war?

While it may be true that the descendants of the heroes of Kurukshetra became involved in the typical rajasic power mongering that had previously characterized the Kauravas, that does not mean we should conclude that violence is inherently wrong. Instead, the lesson learned from the aftermath is the same lesson the Gita teaches; that rajasic human tendencies of ambition, greed, lust for power, arrogance, vanity, and attachment (this particular trait would explain some of the Pandavas leading ‘unbearable’ lives after the war) are the causes of human misery and suffering. And if these qualities (especially the lust for power) are taken to an excessive level, men will be born whose inner law of being demands they fight another dharmayuddh, detached from the idea of themselves as either slayer or slain, equipoised, with steadfast faith in Lord Krishna.

***

[ramana]

Op-Ed in Pioneer, 17 April 2007

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The making of the Mahatma

Second opinion: Ram Gopal

This has reference to the reviews of various books on Gandhi published in The Pioneer on March 25. Over 300 biographies, numerous books and papers have been written on Gandhi. <b>Yet, what or who made a Mahatma out of him remains unanswered.</b>

<b>Gandhi left South Africa for India via England on July 18, 1914, on the advice of then Viceroy Lord Hardinge through a missive by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, according to DG Tendulkar's book, Mahatma, vol I. The book says that Gandhi reached England on August 6, 1914. On August 8, Gandhi's "British and Indian admirers" gave a grand reception to him at Cecil Hotel. There, "letters of regret for their unavoidable absence were received from the Premier, Secretary of State for India, (Lords) Gladstone, Curzon, Lamington, Ampthill."</b>

<b>Why did Gandhi go to London and stay there for four long months when his destination was India?</b> Was it the British who wanted to train him to confront stalwarts like Bal Gangadhar Tilak <b>to change the course of the Congress from a confrontationist path of Swaraj to its original path of conciliation?</b>

Before their departure from England, Gandhi and his wife were entertained at a farewell reception at the Westminster Palace Hotel. Both of them sailed for India on December 19, 1914. Tendulkar writes, <b>"Gandhi landed in Bombay on January 9, 1915. The Indian leaders met him on the steamer upon its arrival, and his landing took place, by permission of the authorities, at the Apollo Bunder - an honour shared with Royalty by Viceroys and India's most distinguished sons... As soon as Gandhi touched Indian soil, he took to Swadeshi dress, a Kathiawadi cloak, turban and dhoti, all made of Indian mill cloth. His arrival was widely publicised."</b> Who made the publicity of Gandhi's arrival? Who told him to put off his English dress and put on a Kathiawadi cloak?

<b>On June 3, 1915, </b>much before Gandhi had done anything either for India's freedom struggle or the Crown, <b>the British Government conferred on him</b> the honorific title, <b>Kaiser-i-Hind.</b> <b>Before joining the Congress in 1919, Gandhi undertook a two-year long tour of the country on the Indian Railways. The Government had issued instructions to all station masters to provide him all facilities he needed.</b>

A true assessment of Gandhi will be incomplete without a probe into the British hand in making him an icon.
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There could be a simple reason for all this but is needed to be made public.

Can someone look up who all got the K-e-H title and for what services?

Gandiji returned the K-e-H medal in 1920. Most likely due to Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

[ramana]

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->SSridhar
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Joined: 05 May 2001
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Posted: 17 Apr 2007    Post subject:     

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Quote:
S Valkan,
Not really.

Jinnah was invited to represent the Congress AND the Muslim League both early in his political career. etc.. .


The following may sound strange in view of the villainous role played by Jinnah in later years, but, <b>in 1905, when Curzon divided Bengal, Jinnah was solidly against it. Jinnah also did not join the Muslim League founded in 1906. Aga Khan, the first President of Muslim League denounced Jinnah as its "doughtiest opponent" for opposing the separate electorates. Jinnah said it was "a poisonous dose to divide the nation against itself". Both the "moderate" Gokhale and the "extremist" Tilak were very fond of Jinnah as he was towards them. Jinnah defended Tilak when he was tried for sedition in 1907. He again defended him successfully in 1916. In early part of the last century, the Congress leaders, irrespective of whether they belonged to the Tilak or the Gokhale group, looked upon Jinnah as a fine ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.</b> There is no denying the fact that, whatever his later ambitions were, Jinnah worked closely with the Congress leaders at the national level until 1920.

The Morley-Minto Reforms (Indian Councils Act) of 1909 were the first attempt at an electoral college and it was introduced at the lowest level, the local councils or panchayats. That's when the British introduced separate electorates for Muslims. Whether the British induced the Simla deputation of Mussalmans to "ask for" separate electorates (in Oct. 1906) or the Muslims asked for it themselves is a moot point. In the Twentyfifth session of the Congress in 1910, Jinnah moved a resolution condemning the separate electorates for Muslims. In 1911, the Muslim League moved from Aligarh to Lucknow and came to be dominated by local heavyweights, referred to as the Lucknow Group. This group widened its net and came into contact with Mohammed Ali Jinnah by 1914. At the All India Muslim League meet in Agra in 1913, Jinnah attempted to persuade the League not to pass a resolution for the extension of separate electorates, though it failed because of fierce opposition from the powerful landowners of UP. <b>In fact, in 1915, when the Congress and the ML held the sessions in Bombay together, the situation became so bad that Jinnah had to lock himself up in the Taj Mahal hotel.</b>Many members of the Muslim League denounced Jinnah as an agent of the Hindus.In spite of this, he passed a resolution authorizing a joint session with the Congress to formulate a joint policy on political and administrative reforms.This was the Lucknow Pact of 1916, in framing of which none other than Tilak had a huge role. The pact had two parts, one dealing with separate electorates for Muslims and the other with political demands for the governance of the country. Of course, separate electorates was part of the Lucknow Pact, but it was not at all opposed by the Congress as by that time it had veered around to accepting that.

<b>It was in the 1920 Congress session that Jinnah defied Gandhi and decided to quit the Congress. By that time, the Gandhi-spearheaded Non-Cooperation Movement and the Khilafat agitation had catapulted Gandhi to a very central stage. </b>Jinnah said "I will have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach to politics. I part company with Gandhi and the Congress.". <b>He particularly deplored the Khilafat agitation. He was amazed, he said, that the Hindu leaders had not realized that this movement would encourage the Pan-Islamic sentiment and dilute the nationalism of Indian Muslim ! He went on to claim that the British were playing a nefarious game by making the Muslims believe that they could get a better deal from them than from the Congress !</b> In the February 1921 ML conference at Calcutta, Jinnah acknowledged the phenomenon of Gandhi and practically withdrew from the scene.

In Mar 1927, at the Muslim League convention in Delhi, Jinnah radically proposed (what later came to be known as Delhi Proposals), that separate electorates be given a go-by and this caused a huge rift within the ML. He also opposed the Simon commission along with the Congress due to the non-inclusion of any Indian in that commission to draft the Indian Constitution.Of course powerful Muslim leaders like Mohammed Shafi and Zafarullah Khan asked the Muslims to cooperate with the British. Even Allama Iqbal opposed Jinnah. A disillusioned Jinnah wanted to withdraw from politics because he felt the Hindus distrusted him and he had no support among Muslims. Of course, Gandhi had already assumed the mantle of the undisputed leader of India.He therefore sailed for London to practise law, away from Indian politics, in May 1928.

<b>When he returned to India, he was a totally changed man. He wanted to separate. That's a different story </b>
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So there is a trip to London that changes people. Wonder what is ther in the fog <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' /><!--endemo-->

I think the GB interests in 1914 and in late 1920s were different and we see the outcome in 1947.

In 1914 they wanted a united India that would cooperate with the British Empire so that they could pursue their strategies peacefully. Gokhale and Tilak were getting too questioning.

By late 1920s they decided to leave India but divided so as to prevent a strong block forming in the sub-continent.


Still I dont blame the leaders for they made bread with the atta that was given to them.