Nehru And His Legacy

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->* He was a staunch nationalist. I did not hesitate to invite RSS for 1963 Republic Day parade for their services during China war.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This can be disputed, a staunch nationalist will not go around ridiculing the national (Hindu) culture and religion, he said to the French author Alan Danielou that everything he (Danielou) admired in India they were trying to destroy and a nationalist will put the national interests above his personal interests which he didn't (refused to support Israel to appease Muslims, tried to build up an image of being the great world leader and went to no ends to appease our enemies for this, which finally ended in the 1962 rout at Chinese hands). From Sita Ram Goel's "How I became a Hindu":
[quote]Nightmare Of Nehruism

I am adding this postscript to the third reprint of what may be described as my intellectual autobiography in order to complete my story as a convinced and conscious Hindu. The story relates mainly to my encounter with Nehruism in its various expressions.

Today, I view Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as a bloated Brown Sahib, and Nehruism as the combined embodiment of all the imperialist ideologies Islam, Christianity, White Man's Burden, and Communism that have flooded this country in the wake of foreign invasions. And I do not have the least doubt in my mind that if India is to live, Nehruism must die. Of course, it is already dying under the weight of its sins against the Indian people, their country, their society, their economy, their environment, and their culture. What I plead is that a conscious rejection of Nehruism in all its forms will hasten its demise, and save us from the mischief which it is bound to create further if it is allowed to linger.

I have reached this conclusion after a study of Pandit Nehru's writings, speechs and policies ever since he started looming large on the Indian political scene. But lest my judgment sounds arbitrary, I am making clear the premises from which I proceed. These premises themselves have been worked out by me through prolonged reflection on the society and culture to which I belong.

I have already described how I returned to an abiding faith in Sanatana Dharma under the guidance of Ram Swarup. The next proposition which became increasingly clear to me in discussions with him, was that Hindu society which has been the vehicle of Sanatana Dharma is a great society and deserves all honour and devotion from its sons and daughters. Finally, Bharatavarsa became a holy land for me because it has been and remains the homeland of Hindu society.

There are Hindus who start the other way round, that is, with Bharatavarsa being a holy land (punyabhumi) simply because it happens to be their fatherland (pitribhumi) as well as the field of their activity (karmabhumi). They honour Hindu society because their forefathers belonged to it, and fought the foreign invaders as Hindus. Small wonder that their notion of nationalism is purely territorial, and their notion of Hindu society no more than tribal. For me, however, the starting point is Sanatana Dharma. Without Sanatana Dharma, Bharatavarsa for me is just another piece of land, and Hindu society just another assembly of human beings. So my commitment is to Sanatana Dharma, Hindu society, and Bharatavarsa in that order.

In this perspective, my first premise is that Sanatana Dharma which is known as Hinduism at present, is not only a religion but also a whole civilization which has flourished in this country for ages untold, and which is struggling to come into its own again after a prolonged encounter with several sorts of predatory imperialism. On the other hand, I do not regard Islam and Christianity as religions at all. They are, for me, ideologies of imperialism like Nazism and Communism, legitimizing aggression by one set of people against another in the name of a god which gangsters masquerading as prophets have invented after their own image. I see no place for them in India, now that India has defeated and dispersed Islamic and Christian regimes. I do not concede to Islam and Christianity the right to maintain their missions in this country, or, for that matter, their seminaries which train missionaries for waging war on the Hindus. I have no use for a Secularism which treats Hinduism as just another religion, and puts it on par with Islam and Christianity. For me, this concept of Secularism is a gross perversion of the concept which arose in the modem West as a revolt against Christianity and which should mean, in the Indian context, a revolt against Islam as well. The other concept of Secularism, namely, sarvadharma-sama-bhava was formulated by Mahatma Gandhi in order to cure Islam and Christianity of their aggressive selfrighteousness, and stop them from effecting conversions from the Hindu fold. This second concept was abandoned when the Constitution of India conceded to Islam and Christianity the right to convert as a fundamental right. Those who invoke this concept in order to browbeat the Hindus are either ignorant of the Mahatma's intention, or are deliberately distorting his massage.

My second premise is that Hindus in their ancestral homeland are not a mere community. For me, the Hindus constitute the nation, and are the only people who are interested in the unity, integrity, peace and prosperity of this country. On the other hand, I do not regard the Muslims and the Christians as separate communities. For me, they are our own people who have been alienated by Islamic and Christian imperialism from their ancestral society and culture, and who are being used by imperialist forces abroad as their colonies for creating mischief and strife in the Hindu homeland. I, therefore, do not subscribe to the thesis that Indian nationalism is something apart from and above Hindu nationalism. For me, Hindu nationalism is the same as Indian nationalism. I have no use for the slogans of "composite culture", "composite nationalism" and "composite state". And I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that all those who mouth these slogans as well as the slogan of "Hindu communalism", are, wittingly or unwittingly, being traitors to the cause of Indian nationalism, no matter what ideological attires they put on and what positions they occupy in the present set up.

My third premise is that Bharatavarsa has been and remains the Hindu homeland par excellence. I repudiate the description of Bharatavarsa as the Indian or Indo Pak Subcontinent. I refuse to concede that Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have ceased to be integral parts of the Hindu homeland simply because they have passed under the heel of Islamic imperialism. Hindus have never laid claim to any land outside the natural and welldefined borders of their ancient homeland, either by right of conquest or by invoking a promise made in some scripture. I, therefore, see no reason why Hindus should surrender their claim to what they have legitimately inherited from their forefathers but what has been taken away from them by means of armed force. Moreover, unless the Hindus liberate those parts of their homeland from the stranglehold of Islam, they will continue to face the threat of aggression against the part that remains in their possession at present. These so called Islamic countries have been used in the past, and are being used at present as launching pads for the conquest of India that has survived.

My fourth premise is that the history of Bharatavarsa is the history of Hindu society and culture. It is the history of how the Hindus created a civilization which remained the dominant civilization of the world for several millennia, how they became complacent due to excess of power and prosperity and neglected the defences of their homeland, how they threw back or absorbed in the vast complex of their society and culture a series of early invaders, and how they fought the onslaughts of Islamic, Christian, and British imperialism for several centuries and survived. I do not recognize the Muslim rule in medieval India as an indigenous dispensation. For me, it was as much of a foreign rule as the latterday British rule. The history of foreign invaders forms no part of the history of India, and remains a part of the history of those countries from which the invaders came, or of those cults to which they subscribed. And I do not accept the theory of an Aryan invasion of India in the second millennium BC. This theory was originally proposed by scholars as a tentative hypothesis for explaining the fact that the languages spoken by the Indians, the Iranians, and the Europeans belong to the same family. And a tentative hypothesis it has remained till today so far as the world of scholarship is concerned. It is only the anti national and separatist forces in India which are presenting this hypothesis as a proved fact in order to browbeat the Hindus, and fortify their divisive designs. I have studied the subject in some depth, and find that the linguistic fact can be explained far more satisfactorily if the direction of Aryan migration is reversed.

These are my principal premises for passing judgment on Pandit Nehru and Nehruism. Many minor premises can be deduced from them for a detailed evaluation of India's spiritual traditions, society, culture, history, and contemporary politics.

It may be remembered that Pandit Nehru was by no means a unique character. Nor is Nehruism a unique phenomenon for that matter. Such weak minded persons and such subservient thought processes have been seen in all societies that have suffered the misfortune of being conquered and subjected to alien rule for some time. There are always people in all societies who confuse superiority of armed might with superiority of culture, who start despising themselves as belonging to an inferior breed and end by taking to the ways of the conqueror in order to regain self confidence, who begin finding faults with everything they have inherited from their forefathers, and who finally join hands with every force and factor which is out to subvert their ancestral society. Viewed in this perspective, Pandit Nehru was no more than a self alienated Hindu, and Nehruism is not much more than Hindubaiting born out of and sustained by a deep seated sense of inferiority vis a vis Islam, Christianity, and the modern West.

Muslim rule in medieval India had produced a whole class of such self alienated Hindus. They had interpreted the superiority of Muslim arms as symbolic of the superiority of Muslim culture. Over a period of time, they had come to think and behave like the conquerors and to look down upon their own people. They were most happy when employed in some Muslim establishment so that they might pass as members of the ruling elite. The only thing that could be said in their favour was that, for one reason or the other, they did not convert to Islam and merge themselves completely in Muslim society. But for the same reason, they had become Trojan horses of Islamic imperialism, and worked for pulling down the cultural defences of their own people.

The same class walked over to the British side when British arms became triumphant. They retained most of those and Hindu prejudices which they had borrowed from their Muslim masters, and cultivated some more which were contributed by the British establishment and the Christian missions. That is how the British rule became a divine dispensation for them. The most typical product of this double process was Raja Ram Mohun Roy.

Fortunately for Hindu society, however, the self alienated Hindu had not become a dominant factor during the Muslim rule. His class was confined to the urban centres where alone Muslim influence was present in a significant measure. The number of this b@st@rd breed was few and far between in the countryside where Muslim rule had never struck strong roots. Secondly, the capacity of Islam for manipulating human minds by means of ideological warfare was less than poor. It worked mostly by means of brute force, and aroused strong resistance. Finally, throughout the period of Muslim rule, the education of Hindu children had remained in Hindu hands by and large. So the self alienated Hindu existed and functioned only on the margins of Hindu society, and seldom in the mainstream.

All this changed with the coming of the British conquerors and the Christian missionaries. Their influence was not confined to the urban centres because their outposts had spread to the countryside as well. Secondly, they were equipped with a stock of ideas and the means for communicating them which were far more competent as compared to the corresponding equipment of Islam. And what made the big difference in the long run was that the education of Hindu children was taken over by the imperialist and the missionary establishments. As a cumulative result, the crop of self alienated Hindus multiplied fast and several fold. Add to that the blitzkrieg against authentic Hindus and in favour of the selfalienated Hindus mounted by the Communist apparatus built up by Soviet imperialism. It is no less than a wonder in human history that Hindu society and culture not only survived the storm, but also produced a counter attack under Maharshi Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo and Mahatma Gandhi such as earned for them the esteem of the world at large. Even so, the self alienated Hindus continued to multiply and flourish in a cultural miliu mostly dominated by the modem West. And they came to the top in the post independence period when no stalwart of the Hindu resurgence remained on the scene.

The power and prestige which Pandit Nehru acquired within a few years after the death of Sardar Patel had nothing to do with his own merits, either as a person, or as a political leader, or as a thinker. They were the outcome of a long historical process which had brought to the fore a whole class of self alienated Hindus. Pandit Nehru would have never come to the top if this class had not been there. And this class would not have become dominant or remained so, had it not been sustained by establishments in the West, particularly that in the Soviet Union.

It is not an accident that the Nehruvian regime has behaved like the British Raj in most respects. The Nehruvians have looked at India not as a Hindu country but as a multi racial, multi religious and multi cultural cockpit. They have tried their best, like the British, to suppress the mainstream society and culture with the help of minorities, that is, the colonies crystallized by imperialism. They have also tried to fragment Hindu society, and create more minorities in the process. In fact, it has been their whole time occupation to eliminate every expression of Hindu culture, to subvert every symbol of Hindu pride, and persecute every Hindu organization, in the name of protecting the minorities. Hindus have been presented as monsters who will commit cultural genocide if allowed to come to power.

The partition of the country was brought about by Islamic imperialism. But the Nehruvians blamed it shamelessly on what they stigmatized as Hindu communalism. A war on the newly born republic of India was waged by the Communists in the interests of Soviet imperialism. But the Nehruvians were busy apologizing for these traitors, and running hammer and tongs after the RSS. There are many more parallels between the British Raj on the one hand and the Nehruvian regime on the other. I am not going into details because I am sure that the parallels will become obvious to anyone who applies his mind to the subject. The Nehruvian formula is that Hindus should stand accused in every situation, no matter who is the real culprit.

It was my great good fortune that Pandit Nehru never became my hero. Heroes have a way of inhibiting cold reasoning and calm reflection among those who admire them. My reason and reflection have suffered an eclipse, every now and then. But not for long. And not for a moment under the spell of Pandit Nehru.

During my school days in my village and, later on, in Delhi, the Freedom Movement for me meant Mahatma Gandhi. I did not hear many stories about him except that he lived on goat's milk, plied the charkha, and had tamed the wild Pathans. The only other leader of whom I became increasingly aware was Pandit Nehru. There was quite a folklore afloat about him. He was reputed to be the only son of a fabulously rich man who lived in a palace at Allahabad, who got his clothes stitched in London and laundered in Paris, who had used high denomination currency notes as fuel for preparing tea when the viceroy paid him a visit, and who had blisters all over his tender skin when he put on khadi clothes for the first time. The son was known to have received his school and college education in England, spurned the friendship of the Prince of Wales who was his classmate, turned down with contempt many honours which the British were only too keen to bestow upon him in order to win him over to their ride, and chosen to be the betaj badshah (uncrowned king) of his own people.

I, therefore, felt excited when wall posters went up all over Delhi, announcing that the great man was going to address a public meeting in the Gandhi Grounds adjacent to the Chandni Chowk. I do not remember the exact date. It was most probably in late 1934 or early 1935. I was a student of the seventh standard.

Gandhi Grounds was at a stone's throw from the place where I lived. Even so, I went to the venue of the meeting quite early in order to sit near the rostrum, and see the speaker from close quarters. Ale rostrum was quite high. But the crowd that collected by the time Pandit Nehru arrived was not big by latter day standards.

There was a thunderous applause as Pandit Nehru came up on the rostrum, greeted the people with folded hands, and was formally introduce,d by a local Congress leader. But the next thing I saw made me rub my eyes. The great man had become red in the face, turned to his left, and planted a slap smack on the face of the same leader who was standing near the mike. The mike had failed. Pandit Nehru was gesticulating and shouting at the top of his voice as if something terrible had happened. Meanwhile the mike started functioning again so that he could be heard all over the place. He was saying: "Dilli ki Congress ke karkun kamine hain, razil hain, namaqul hain. Maine kyatti bar inse kaha hai ke intizam nahin kar sakte to mujhe mat bulaya karo, par ye sunte hi nahin (the leaders of the Congress in Delhi are lowbred, mean, and mindless people. I have told them time and again not to invite me if they cannot make proper arrangements. But they pay no heed)." There was pin drop silence for a moment The next moment there was another thunderous applause. The Gandhi capped man sitting next to me offered comment "Panditji is famous for his temper. And people like him all the more that way." I turned towards the rostrum. The face of Congress leader who had been slapped was bathed in smiles as if he had won some coveted prize.

This was a new experience for me. I had attended many public meetings in my village, at my district headquarters, and in Delhi. I had never witnessed such wild behaviour on a public platform. Of course, those other speakers were not so big as this one. Was it the way the big ones behaved? I wondered. I found it difficult to admire a man who had not only shouted at but also slapped someone who was placed lower than him in life, and who was in no position to hit back. And that too for no fault of the victim. Even as a young boy, I had nothing but contempt for bullies.

The speech which followed was far more disappointing. I do not remember the subject. It must have been about the current political scene. I understood no politics at that time beyond the call that the British must go. All I can recall now is the language which Pandit Nehru was speaking. It was neither Hindi, nor Urdu. Most of his sentences were far from being straight in terms of grammar or syntax. Occasionally, he was fumbling for words. I thought he was a very poor speaker. I had heard many others who, though not so well known, were far better and more coherent. I would not have noticed his language if I had not known that he belonged to a province which was famous for both Hindi and Urdu in proper form.

There were several other public meetings in Delhi addressed by Pandit Nehru after this first one which I had attended. But I did not care for them. His next performance I saw was in 1942. Talks with the Cripps Mission had failed a few days earlier. I wanted to know what the Congress intended to do next vis a vis the war which Hitler was waging against the Soviet Union. I was a post graduate student by now, full of sympathy for the cause which my professor of political science had presented as that of human freedom and progress. I was convinced that Hitler was a wild beast who had to be hunted down at any cost.

The venue of the meeting was the same old Gandhi Grounds. But the crowd was much bigger than I had ever seen in a public meeting. I took my stand near the gate which opens towards the Fountain. I did not want to be caught in the melee at the end of the meeting. Little did I know that I was going to witness a scene which would turn me away from Pandit Nehru for all time to come.

The great man was profusely garlanded as soon as he appeared on the rostrum. He repeated his greetings to the people with folded hands. But as he moved towards the mike, there was some commotion at one corner of the gathering. Someone told me that workers in one of the cotton mills in Delhi had gone on strike, and were seeking Pandit Nehru's support for their demands. I thought the workers were being unseemly. They had chosen a wrong time and a wrong place for presenting their case. The nation was in the midst of a crisis . This was no occasion to pester a national leader with petty local problems. I also gathered that the Communists were at the back of the commotion. To hell with the Communists, I said.

But as I turned towards the rostrum again, what I saw was far more unseemly. Pandit Nehru was trying to get free of the grip in which he was being held by several Congress leaders who had thrown their hands round his arms and waist. He was being prevented from jumping down, and running towards the far corner in which the commotion had arisen. He seemed to be unaware of the crowd sitting inbetween. One moment he was moving forward, and the next moment he was being pulled back. And all the time, he was shouting at the top of his voice. The mike reported him as saying, "Dekhna chahta hun in kaminon ko main. Bata dena chahta hun inko ke main kon hun. Inki ye gandi harkaten main qatai bardasht nahin kar sakta (I want to have a look at these lowbred people. I want to tell them who I am. I cannot tolerate this dirty behaviour on their part)." The commotion died down. The Congress leaders released their hold on him. Suddenly, he straightened up as if he was going to get out of his boots. He stretched his right hand, full and upwards, and shouted, "Main ek shandar admi hun (I am a man of some stature)." The crowd was clapping wildly, and continuously.

His speech that day was totally incoherent. It seemed as if he was talking to himself rather than addressing a rally. He kept on withdrawing in the next sentence what he had said in an earlier one. One moment he was denouncing the British as "a stone sitting on our breast". Next moment he was bubbling with sympathy for the cause of freedom and progress being defended by the Soviet Union. He was all for a fight to the finish so far as British imperialism was concerned. But at the same time he warned the people against coming in the way of the war effort. It was difficult to make out as to where he stood. I will not comment on the language he was speaking. I found it as shabby as on the earlier occasion.

Much worse came after the meeting dispersed. He descended from the rostrum and started moving towards the gate where I was standing. Congress volunteers had formed a cordon round him. But as the people rushed forward and tried to touch his feet, he pushed away the volunteers and started looking after himself. He was slapping with both his hands and kicking with both his feet the people who came near him. He was wearing full boots. Some of his fans must have been badly hurt. I thought he had no business to treat his people in this cruel manner. After all, they were only trying to show their devotion to him in the only way they had learnt from their tradition.

A few days earlier, I had been to the Harijan Basti in North Delhi, where Mahatma Gandhi was staying. I had sat at his feet for more than an hour, without anyone trying to drive me out of the small cottage. He had made all of us laugh heartily as he tried to coax some rich men into giving him money for the Harijan cause, in amounts larger then those they had offered initially. Evening came, and he proceeded towards the prayer meeting. Volunteers had thrown a rope cordon round him. But people could not be held back. They rushed from every side, and crawled under the cordon to reach his feet. He stopped walking, and stood looking helpless. His face was beaming with love. He said in a husky voice, "Budha hun, mar jaunga. Jakar beth jaun to pachhi sir se pair tak chhu lena (I am old. I will die. Let me get there and sit down. Then you can touch me from head to foot)."

I compared the behaviour of the two great national leaders when faced with crowds of their people. I could not help concluding that while Mahatma Gandhi was a son of the soil, at home in the midst of his people, Pandit Nehru was a Brown Sahib who loved to see the people crowd his meetings but who despised their culture. He looked like an alien who had strayed into a strange land. Whatever I saw or came to know of Pandit Nehru subsequently confirmed this conclusion. I will mention only one more instance.

I happened to be in Delhi towards the end of 1947 or in early 1948, and went to see my journalist friend from America. As I have mentioned, he had left Calcutta for Delhi soon after India became free. As I sat down with him in the Coffee House, he said, " Sita, who does this man think.he is? Almighty God?" I asked him, " Who? What has happened?" He told me the story of some Sadhus who had sat down on an indefinite fast near Pandit Nehru's residence in New Delhi, and were seeking an assurance from him that cow slaughter would be stopped now that the beef eating British had departed. My friend said, "I had gone there to take some pictures, and gather a report. American readers love such stories from India. But what I saw was a horror for me. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>As I was talking to one of the Sadus who knew some English, this man rushed out of his house accompanied by his sister, Mrs. Pandit. Both of them were shouting something in Hindi. The poor Sadus were taken by surprise, and stood up. This man slapped the Sadu who had moved forward with folded hands. His sister did the same. They were saying something which sounded pretty harsh. Then both of them turned back, and disappeared as fast as they had come. The Sadus did not utter so much as a word in protest, not even after the duo had left. They had taken it all as if it was the normal thing." I observed, "But in the case of Pandit Nehru, it is the normal thing. He has been slapping and kicking people all his life." He concluded, "I do not know the norm in your country. In my country, if the President so much as shouts on a citizen, he will have to go. We take it from no b@st@rd, no matter how big he happens to be." I kept quiet.</span>

Now that I have read Pandit Nehru's writings and speechs extensively, and know of the policies he followed, I can say with full confidence that this incurable bully was an incurable coward as well. One has only to piece together his behaviour pattern in different contexts, and towards different people. One can see quite clearly that at the time that he was crawling and cringing before Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League, he was being high and mighty with the Hindu Mahasabha and its leaders. Later on, he was thundering against the RSS, and at the same time crawling before the Communists in India and abroad who were lambasting him as a running dog of American imperialism. He could never help licking the boot that kicked him, while heaping humiliations on those who were in no position to hit back, or who did not know how to tell him his place.

The story of how we started our anti communist work in 1949 by supporting Pandit Nehru and his Government, and how we discovered in due course that the man was a committed Communist, has been told by me elsewhere. Here I want to narrate the story of how I fared as a committed Hindu in an atmosphere surcharged with Nehruism.

My philosopher friend of college days had come to Calcutta in 1955 in connection with the publication of his Ph.D thesis. He was quite a Nehru fan at that time, and believed that everything was fine with India under Nehru. I added a proviso "so long as you do not say or write something critical on subjects where Nehru has laid down the line." He would not believe me. I asked him to write a critical article on India's model of planning or on India's foreign policy, and get it published in some prestigious paper. He accepted the challenge.

On his return to Delhi, he found that he had became famous among the economists there because of an article he had written on Socialism versus Capitalism. The article had been published in a learned journal in England, and hailed by some scholars of standing in that country as well as in France. A well known professor of economics in the University of Delhi promised to create a special fellowship for him. The editor of a well known weekly on economic affairs, published from Delhi, invited him to write a regular column. He, however, remembered my challenge. After contributing a few conventional articles to the weekly, he wrote a critique of India's planning. The editor published it all right, but told him plainly that no more articles from him were needed. And the professor dropped him like a hot potato as soon as he read his latest article. Next, he wrote a critique of India's foreign policy, and sent it to several dailies and weeklies of standing, one after another. All of them returned it with a typed chit regretting their inability to entertain it. He could confess only in an obscure weekly that he had lost the bet to me.

By the time I returned to Delhi in May 1957, Pandit Nehru was at the zenith of his power and prestige, in India and abroad. The Second Five Year Plan, patterned after the Soviet model, had been launched with great fanfare as the harbinger of a socialist era in India's history. The Americans had plumped for the Chester Bowles line that Nehru's "New India" was a great experiment in "democratic development" in contrast to the totalitarian path chosen by Red China. But these were minor compliments to the "greatest Indian after Asoka and Akbar". What he himself prized above everything else was his image as "the custodian of world peace". A sycophant press in India and a fellow travelling one abroad, had built him up into larger than life size. I found it difficult to believe my ears when I heard it again and again, and from people in long pants, that "but for the presence of Panditji at this critical juncture in human history, the two big powers will blow the earth to bits in an atomic holocaust". There was hardly a speech in public meetings or scholarly seminars which did not begin with the words, "as our beloved Prime Minister, the apostle of world peace, has pointed out..."

This was the heyday of delegations to and from the Communist countries, particularly the Soviet Union and Red China. Not a week passed without some notables returning from this or that Communist country, and making statements about the "wonders we have witnessed with our own eyes". At the same time, the Western democracies, particularly the United States of America, were being painted in the darkest colours. They were the "enemies of peace, progress and prosperity of the people, particularly as regards the people of Asia". If one got branded as pro American for whatever reason, one had to hang one's head in shame. Saying something less than flattering about Communist regimes, or Communist parties, or Communism itself, was the surest way to acquiring a pro American reputation, no matter whether one was really for America or not. Those who counted in the public life of the country were either progressives of the correct brand, or were trying to pass as such. They took good care to frown upon or at least avoid all contact with those who had suffered the misfortune of being branded pro American. Small wonder that as a pronounced and wellknown anti communist I was regarded as a questionable character in respectable circles.

This was also the heyday of what was known as voluntary effort for national development. Voluntary agencies had mushroomed in every field, all over the country. Every other public spirited person you met in those days, was either running a voluntary agency or was in the process of promoting one. Government departments in the Centre as well as in the States were prepared to finance every variety of voluntary effort, provided one could prove its need, which was not difficult for persons who knew the art of proving or the right people in the right places. On top of it all, American funding agencies were more than eager to finance all sorts of voluntary work, provided the promoters were respectable people in the eyes of the establishment. I came to know of an instance where the secretary of an established voluntary organisation was placed privately on the payroll of an American funding agency so that he could persuade his organization to accept American aid, which it was reluctant to do otherwise. My professor of political science whom I met one day, advised me "to float my own racket, and to live lavishly ever after". He had become cynical about voluntary effort because he had seen through the hoax.

What I noticed particularly was that although the public atmosphere was reeking with anti Americanism, privately the Americans were pretty popular even in the most progressive of all progressive circles. Nobody had any objection to America when it came to getting American money for voluntary effort, or going on America sponsored trips abroad, or sending sons and daughters to American universities on American grants and scholarships. I came to know of quite a few blue blooded Communists and fellow travellers who guzzled bottles of American whisky and gorged fancy American foods aplenty in private American homes while in public they poured pure venom against everything American. The Americans on their part felt comfortable only in the company of such characters, and frowned upon those who had got known as pro American. I was told by an American professor, on a short visit to India, that this was a calculated operation for turning enemies into friends. But I failed to see any friendship for America surfacing anywhere in India.

My boss in the organization I had joined as a research consultant, was an old friend. We had been to the same school and college in Delhi. We had come closer when both of us became members of the intellectual circle which had grown round Ram Swarup in 1944. He had done quite commendable work in the field of refugee rehabilitation, and was now promoting Indian handicrafts on some scale. All in all, he had become quite important in the public life of Delhi. I felt grateful to him when he offered me a job as soon as he learnt that I was on the streets due to my anti communist activities. The only condition he laid down was that I would do no politics. I understood, though he did not say it, that the ban included political writings as well. But he had counted without the respectable circles in which he lived and moved. It was not long before he was called upon to defend me from all sorts of attacks, from all sorts of quarters.

The first attack he had to face was mounted by the Americans. The Rural Development Department of his organization was receiving some financial assistance from the Cooperative League of America. I had nothing to do with this Department except that the research set up in which I worked was housed in the same premises. One day I was sitting and chatting with a colleague when the American who headed the Cooperative League dropped in. I could see it immediately that there was hostility in his eyes. The talk turned to the character of American aid as compared with that from the Soviet Union. I observed that while America was taking care of our hearths and homes, the Soviet Union was taking care of our heads. The American blew up. He said, "You must be a very bad man to say all that!" I protested that we had not even been introduced to one another, and that while he was welcome to have his own opinions he was not entitled to call me names. He walked out in a huff.

It so happened that my boss as well as my colleague had been invited for dinner to this American's home on the evening of that very day. As they entered the house, they found that the American was lying in bed, turning sides and saying "ah, oh". His bed was surrounded by several other Americans. My boss made enquiries about his health. All Americans present raised a chorus, "That Communist you have imported from Calcutta has insulted Mr.... this morning. He has been feeling unwell since then." My boss thought at first that I must have given free reign to my sharp tongue, for which I was famous. But my colleague corrected him and narrated the whole incident. My boss told the Americans in firm tones that my reputation was the reverse of that of a Communist, that he would suffer no dictation regarding whom he employed in his organization, and that they were welcome to fold up their aid programme and quit in the next twenty four hours. As he started walking out of the house, the Americans were on their knees with profuse apologies for the misunderstanding. The American in charge of the Cooperative League was no more ill. He stood up hale and hearty, and said that he could not even dream of dictating any terms. The very next morning he tried to be friendly with me. I could not refuse to shake the hand he extended towards me. I did not know what had happened at his house the previous evening. The happening was related to me months after it took place, but not by my boss.

My research work consisted mainly of compiling reports of seminars that had been held, and preparing working papers for seminars to be held. It was an era of endless seminars. There was hardly a day when one seminar or the other was not held in Delhi. Most of the time in these gatherings was taken by people who had nothing to say but who found it difficult to keep their larynx under control. They felt most profound when pontificating on mere nothing. I also discovered some faces that were present in every seminar, whatever the subject. They never spoke a word during the proceedings but were quick to collect travelling, lodging, and conveyance expenses at the end of the session. One day I collared one of them who had collected a fat sum the previous evening for coming from and going to Ahmedabad, and staying in a hotel in Delhi for two days. I wondered how he could travel so fast to and from Ahmedabad as to attend a seminar the very next day. He told me without batting an eye that he had nothing to do with Ahmedabad except that he was born there, that he lived in Delhi with his family, and that collecting fees for attending seminars was his way of making a living. I could not help admiring the wise guy. He was getting something substantial out of the seminars.

My only satisfaction in that set up was that I got plenty of time for renewing my studies. I have already narrated how I studied the classics on Sanatana Dharma, ancient and modern. Here I want to narrate how I straightened my view of India's history. As I became aware of the greatness of Sanatana Dharma, I fell in love with the society which had been its vehicle down the ages. But the history I had read was hardly the history of Hindu society. It was the history of conquerors who had tormented the Hindus. I became curious about how Hindu society had survived so many assaults, for such prolonged periods, particularly from the Islamic invaders and the Christian missionaries. For, I had become aware that Hindu society was the only ancient society which had survived genocidal attacks from Islam and Christianity. All other ancient societies had succumbed to these crusading creeds or their latest variation Communism. Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, and Japan were the only other exceptions. But then, these exceptions too were extensions, in a large measure, of India's ancient culture.

I was now convinced that Hindu society had survived because of some innate strength which had enabled it to fight and overcome all invaders in the long run. And I started studying India's history from the vantage point of this society. It was an eye opener. The conquerors were cut to their proper size when compared to Hindu heroes who had fought them. I started a series in the Organiser Highlights of Hindu History. But I could not complete it due to some trouble with my eyes. I am still aspiring to write a history of India, even if in outline.

So Hindu society deserved all honour and homage. It held the key to deeper recesses of the human spirit. But what I saw ad around me was just the opposite. Far from being honoured, Hindu society was being humiliated every day. And that too in its own ancient homeland. ]be ruling elite had been placed in power by the sweat and toil and endless sacrifices of this society. It was this society which had broken the back of Islamic imperialism. It was this society which had defeated the Christian missions from many countries. It was this society which had freed India from British rule. Yet the Hindu elite was ashamed of being known as a part of this society. It loved to be known as Socialist, Communist, Leftist, and the rest, but never as Hindu. In fact, the very word Hindu had been made a dirty word in post independence India. One had only to identify oneself as a Hindu, and one stood branded as a narrow communalist, an obscurantist, a reactionary, an enemy of national unity, and what not. There was no stigma attached to being a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Buddhist, or a Jain, or a Sikh. But a Hindu who aspired to be respectable in the eyes of the ruling elite had to subscribe to Secularism, the new cult floated by Pandit Nehru and his Communist cohorts. I wanted to know how and why the Hindus had yielded to this humiliation.

Meanwhile, my situation had improved somewhat for the better thanks to Comrade Mao Tse tung. He had driven the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans out of their homeland, and occupied India's own territory in a series of incursions which Pandit Nehru was forced to admit in Parliament towards the end of 1959. Some friends who had avoided me so far started coming to me and discussing the nature of the menace from Red China about which I was known to have written a lot in earlier years. I told them that it was no time to discuss China anymore, and that what we needed now was military preparation. China had bared its face which Pandit Nehru and his kept press had tried to keep under a veil all these years. I could see quite clearly that a showdown with China was not far off, and that the country was prepared neither ideologically nor materially to face the challenge. I felt more and more angry with Pandit Nehru and his henchmen who were in control of India's establishment.

It had happened quite a few times that some Communist professor or writer came to our research department to meet one or the other of my colleagues. Whenever I was introduced to them, they said spontaneously, "Oh, you are that man!" I used to smile and tell them that I was pleased to know that they knew me so well when I had never heard of them. That had served to put them off. But the Communist I was introduced to in late 1959 was a well known man. I had to admit that I knew him by his record in the service of the Soviet Union. He immediately launched a tirade, "Mr. Goel, when you people made all that noise about Hungary, we could understand. What happened in Hungary was a tragedy. It should not have happened. But when you make the same sort of noise about these dirty lamas, that is the limit." I lost my patience and told him that it was no use arguing with a Communist, and that the only thing that could penetrate his head was a bullet. His reference to the Tibetans as "dirty lamas" had made me feel mad. The Tibetans had done nothing that could justify the crimes that the Communist army from China was committing against them. He walked away after calling me a fascist. My heart sank. This man was very close to the Nehru brigade. I could guess which way the country was heading.

Next year, I was loaned by my boss to Shri Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) to work as part time secretary of the All India Panchayat Parishad of which he was the president. I had met him a few times in earlier years. In fact, he was the first to whom Ram Swarup and I had gone in order to seek his blessings for our anti communist work. He had said, "If you are opposed to Stalinism, I am wholly with you. But I see nothing wrong in Communism as such." I had asked him, "What about Leninism?" He had observed, "Leninism is all right." I had repeated a string of quotations from Lenin whom I had read recently. He had closed the discussion with the comment, "I don't know. My knowledge of Communist classics is quite old." So he was aware of my reputation, and had reacted rather negatively when my name was mentioned to him as a man who could help the Parishad stand on its feet. But he did not turn me down after I had a brief talk with him at the Palam Airport where he had stopped on his way from Amritsar to Patna. He had gone to the Punjab to meet Master Tara Singh.

JP started liking me when he saw my work. But I could feel that he had reservations about my ideological inclinations. One day he asked me point blank, "Are you a Socialist?" I said, "I have been." He continued, "Rat depends on one's evolution. What are you now?" I said, "I am a Hindu." He said, "That does not mean anything. I too am a Hindu." I blurted out, "I am not that sort of a Hindu." The next moment I was sorry for that remark. I could see that JP had not liked it. His face showed annoyance. But he was too much of a gentleman to put me in my place.

The showdown came unexpectedly. JP had invited an Englishman to deliver a lecture in the Panchayat Parishad. He was a retired policeman and had acquired the reputation of being a leading criminologist. I found that the man was an insufferable fool as soon as he opened his mouth. I wondered what JP had seen in him. The only explanation was JP's great weakness for the white skin. I had witnessed the weakness again and again. Now he sat enraptured as this arrogant Englishman poured unmitigated contempt on Hindu traditions, some of which he targeted as harbouring criminal tendencies. I stood up at the end of the lecture and asked him if he would answer some questions. He waved me aside, saying that he had no time for such tomfoolery. JP was furious with me soon after the man left. I had known that it was rather difficult for JP to lose his temper. But that day he did. He said to me angrily, "You have insulted my guest. I do not like such manners at all." I kept quiet.

Next day, I gave to JP my Hindi book, Samyak Sambuddha, which I had recently compiled from Buddhist classics. In its introduction I had maintained that Buddhism was only a dimension of Sanatana Dharma which I had then proceeded to define. I requested JP to read just the introduction, if he could spare the time and had the inclination. I wanted him to know what I meant by Hinduism. JP said that he liked Buddhism very much, and that he will read the whole book. I had no hope that he would. But I was pleasantly surprised when I met him after a few days. He said, "I have to seek your forgiveness (khsama chahta hun) for losing my temper that day. I did not know that you were a scholar, and had made such a deep study of Buddhism. And I have simply fallen for the beautiful (madhura) Hindi you write." I was moved to tears, and touched his feet. He continued, "If Sanatana Dharma is what you say it is, I am all for it. You can count me as a Sanatanist from today. You can say to whomsoever you please that JP has become a Sanatanist." I felt very happy. My relations with JP became more or less smooth thereafter. I thought that my Hinduism was no more a matter of suspicion in his eyes. I have told elsewhere the story of how I was able to take JP on his first ever visit to an RSS camp.

By now the Panchayat Parishad was in a functioning form. The constitution which I had drafted for it had been approved by the Ministry of Law, and the Ministry of Community Development had sanctioned a handsome grant for an institute for Training in Panchayati Raj. The search was on for some competent Director to head the Institute when JP surprised everybody in the Governing Body of the Parishad by presenting a young man from Bombay to man the post. He had a doctoral degree in Chemical Engineering from a university in the USA. JP told us nothing more about him. But he looked at me, and said, "Sitaramji, he is a Muslim." I kept quiet. He said again, "Did you hear? He is a Muslim." Perhaps he was expecting that as a Hindu I would raise an objection. I raised none. I have never bothered about Muslims, one way or the other. Hindus who flaunt Muslims in order to prove their Secularism have always left me cold. Moreover, I had never fancied the Panchayat Parishad or any organization of that sort as my final destination. It was only a waiting room for me till such times as the train arrived for taking me where I wanted to go. Meanwhile, I was doing dutifully the work for which I was paid. I wondered why JP had tried to rub it in.

The staff in the Parishad and the Institute tried to involve me in office politics with the new Director. They came to me with all sorts of stories about him. I refused to comment and disappointed them. One day, a man from Maharashtra dropped in. He had become famous for writing a report on "cooperative farming" after a brief visit to Red China. Pandit Nehru was using that report for introducing "joint farming" in this country. Years later, I learnt that his original report on "cooperative farming" in China had a chapter on how that programme had entailed a mass slaughter of peasants, and that he had dropped the chapter because Pandit Nehru thought it was not at all relevant. And this man was known at that time as a leading Gandhian. He sat down in front of me, and whispered, "Goelji, do you know that I am a Maratha?" I said, "Your name says it." He asked me next, "Do you know that we Marathas hate the Muslims?" I replied, "I have read Maratha history. I do not think your statement is true about all Marathas." He said, "In any case, I do not like Dr. ... whom JP has thrust upon us." I kept quiet. This man was in no way connected with the Panchayat Parishad. I could not understand why he was saying all this to me.

I came to know the game a few days later. JP called me and the Director for a meeting. As soon as we sat down, he turned to the Director and said, "You have no end of complaints against Sitaramji. Say in his presence what you have been saying to me, so that matters may be sorted out." The Director was nonplused. He was not at all prepared for such a confrontation. For a few moment, he was struck dumb. His face was flustered. He recovered and said, "He told Shri ... that he hates Muslims." I narrated the conversation I had with the noted Gandhian, word for word. JP smiled and said, "Shri ... has never been known for correct or careful reporting. Forget what he told you. Now, what is your next charge?" The Director fumbled, "He says that my degrees are fake." JP turned to me. I told him, "I would bother about degrees being fake or genuine only if cared for them. Degrees have never meant anything to me. I have some good ones of my own." The Director had nothing more to say, and went away. JP asked me, "What degrees do you have? Can I see your bio data?"

I had to compile it for the first time my degrees, the certificates from my professors, the books I had written, and all that. As soon as JP finished reading it, he said to me, "What are you doing in organizations like the Panchayat Parishad? A man of your qualifications should be in the university. Find out who is the head of history department in Delhi. I will write to him, recommending you for a suitable teaching job." He wrote the letter next day when I gave him the name of the Professor and Head of Department. It talked of me highly. But the Professor and Head was far from being impressed when I presented the letter to him. He looked at me without reading it, and said, "Oh! you are now in Delhi? Weren't you functioning from Calcutta?" The man was a fellowtraveller, as I found out soon after. JP received a reply a few days later. He read it and said to me, "It is a diplomatic letter. He will not let you have a job in the university. It seems he knows you quite well, and has strong reservations about you. I am sorry I cannot do more for you." I was more than thankful for what he had already done.

I had to leave the Panchayat Parishad after a few months. In spite of the confrontation between us in JP's presence, the Director had continued to poison JP's ears with all sorts of complaints against me. JP himself told me several times, "This person is full of venom against you." I kept quiet. I could sense that JP was feeling helpless. He could not drop the Director, though he was no more enamoured of him. JP's secularist image was at stake. At the same time, he was finding it difficult to overcome the feeling that my being a non secularist Hindu had something to do with the trouble. One day he invited my boss and myself for sitting down and sorting it out. He started with what the Director had been saying. Suddenly, my boss stood up and pulled me up as well by taking hold of my hand. He said, "I am taking him away. He has done the job for which I had loaned him. Your Parishad is now functioning. And there is no dearth of work for him." We walked out. JP did not try to stop us. He must have felt relieved.

It was inevitable that as I tended to become more and more of a convinced and conscious Hindu, I felt drawn towards the RSS and to its political platform, the BJS, both of which had the reputation of being "Hindu communalist organizations". I assumed that what was being described as "Hindu communalism" by the Nehruvians must be Indian nationalism. I must confess that I was in for great disillusionment. I discovered before long that except for some differences on the cow question, the character of Muslim invaders, and the status of Hindu heroes who fought those invaders, these organizations shared the Nehruvian consensus on all important issues, domestic and foreign. The BJS was fast moving towards an all out Nehruvian stance under the leadership of a pompous windbag who saw no reason to hide that he enjoyed the company of Communists far more than that of his party colleagues. When I expressed for the first time a desire to meet him, the secretary of the BJS told me, in all seriousness, that if I dropped in the Communist Party office in Windsor Place any afternoon, I would not miss him provided he was not out of Delhi. What was worse, the RSS and the BJS stalwarts spent almost all their time and energy in proving that they were not Hindu communalists but honest secularists.

My first contact with the RSS had developed when I was a second year student in college and a devout Gandhian. One fine morning two of my classmates had descended on me in my room in the hostel. Both of them were science students, and I knew them only by their faces. They mentioned my short story in Hindi which had appeared in the college magazine and won a prize, and harangued me to write on Hindu Rashtra. They told me that they were members of the RSS, and promised to elect me as the next editor of the magazine as they had the majority among the students. I had never heard of the RSS so far, and knew nothing about Hindu Rashtra. The ideal for me was the Rama Rajya as expounded by Mahatma Gandhi.

We met quite often thereafter. I drew a blank when I asked them for some literature which their movement had produced. Instead, they took me to the Vijayadashami show which I have already mentioned. And the contact broke down when I found my new friends telling me, day after day, fantastic stories about Mahatma Gandhi. They were trying to prove that the Mahatma was nothing but a stooge of the Muslim League and an agent of the Amir of Afghanistan. I had never heard or read such stories before.

I am happy to note that, in recent years, the RSS has revised its evaluation of Mahatma Gandhi and his role. I can also see it now that those old stories originated in an agonized consciousness which had witnessed for years Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress refusing to be identified as Hindu but having no qualms about bargaining with the Muslim League on behalf of the Hindus. It had become a habit with the Mahatma and the Congress to take the Hindus for granted. But at that time, and in that state of my total ignorance about national politics, those stories sounded more than repulsive.

My next contact with the RSS developed during the course of my participation in the anti communist work in Calcutta. Our group had waited on leaders of the Congress and the Praja Socialist Party (PSP) for seeking their cooperation in what we thought was a non party national platform. Some of these leaders were impatient with our point of view, and advised us to fight Hindu communalism instead. Others were nice, listened to us, and promised to call upon us in our office for further discussion. But none of them kept the promise. One day, a friend chided me for going to the wrong leaders, and took me to an RSS camp in Howrah. The leader I met there was more than sympathetic, and promised to visit our office as soon as the camp was over. He kept his promise, although our office had shifted to new premises in the meanwhile. He had gone to the old office, and found out our new address.

It was around this time that an Englishman who wrote regularly in the Calcutta weekly, Capital, characterised the RSS as a fascist organization. I knew him personally and as friendly towards our work. But I wrote to the weekly a letter saying that "those who call the RSS a fascist organization are fascists themselves". The letter was published. The Englishman telephoned to me next day. He said that he really did not know anything about the RSS, and that he had only followed the prevalent fashion. He was apologetic. Meanwhile, I had given a cutting of my printed letter to the RSS leader. He asked for a few more copies in print, which also I supplied. I came to know that he had circulated those copies in RSS circles in order to present me as a defender of the RSS against undeserved calumny. I did not know that it was an act of courage at that time to have a good opinion about the RSS. The opinion had come to me spontaneously as I started taking up a nationalist stand.

The help which this RSS leader provided to us in our anti communist work was commendable. Some RSS young men managed our bookstalls in the Puja and other exhibitions, in the face of repeated threats from the Communists that they would allow no such "sacrilege in the heart of Calcutta". We came out with flying colours and sold a large number of our publications. Meanwhile, several RSS and BJS leaders visited our office and commanded our work when they came to or passed through Calcutta in course their personal or party work. I came to know some of them quite well. But my greatest satisfaction was that the Congress and Socialist members of our group had met the "Hindu communalists" as comrades in a common battle, and shed some of their secularist self righteousness.

One of the sequels of my contact with the RSS BJS was that after we had to close down our anti communist work, I was offered a BJS ticket for contesting from the Khajuraho parliamentary constituency in Madhya Pradesh during the Second General Elections in 1956 57. The local RSS worker, who was the manager of my campaign, had secured an assurance for support from the PSP. In the event, however, all arrangements broke down when that worker met an accident, and became bed ridden. Yet I could see the functioning of the RSS BJS organization from close quarters. It had dedicated workers, and powerful speakers. The only thing the organization lacked was material resources. It was difficult for me to believe that a patriotic organization could be so poor. I had not yet met the Hindu Mahasabha people and did not know what poverty could really mean.

There were some revealing episodes during this election. The wall posters which the BJS had got printed in Delhi, announced that one of the main BJS aims was to abolish untouchability. The field workers were against putting up these posters because they thought that the considerable conservative section in the electorate was likely to go against me in that event. But I stuck to my guns, and insisted that the posters be put up. I do not know if they were used. Secondly, I observed that the organizers of my public meetings did not relish my talk about principles involved between the Congress policies on the one hand, and the BJS policies on the other. They asked me, again and again, to go for the Congress men as dishonest Socialists and Secularists while presenting the BJS as an honest adherent of Socialism and Secularism. Thirdly, the Organizers warned me not to plead for a ban on cowslaughter, and not to say anything against Pakistan whenever the meeting happened to be in a Muslim locality. Lastly, they asked to use English words and phrases quite frequently in my speeches lest people concluded that I was uneducated. I did not relish these advices.

That was the background of my contact with the RSS BJS when I returned to Delhi in 1957. The contact deepened in due course. I wrote quite often in the Organiser, and met RSS BJS people more often. MOST Of them were quite friendly. <span style='color:red'>The only unfriendly man I met was the windbag I have mentioned. His face showed a frown whenever he saw me, which was not unoften. The one suggestion which I made to every RSS and BJS leader I met, was that the movement should have