Nehru And His Legacy

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->a full blooded Hindu ideology of its own and process all events, movements, parties, and public figures in terms of that ideology, rather than live on borrowed slogans or hand to mouth ideas invoked on the spur of the moment. They heard me patiently, and hardly ever contradicted me. But over a time, I realized that they did not take me seriously. Most of them were convinced that organization was all that mattered, and ideology was of little use. I was sure that they were greatly mistaken. I could see their plight quite clearly as they tried to operate according to ground rules laid down by their opponents. But they thought that my preoccupation with ideology had something to do with my Communist background. I felt helpless. I also felt annoyed when I heard speaker after speaker in RSS gatherings pouring contempt on "intellectuals" who had read the books but who knew nothing about practical problems. One of their pet stories was about a pandit who frowned upon a boatman for not knowing Panini, but whom the boatman pitied for not knowing swimming when the boat was in trouble.

What was most revealing to me about the RSS people was that, by and large, they did not react to expression of any opinion on any subject except that about their organization (sangha) and their leaders (adhikaris). One could say anything one chose about Hinduism, or Hindu culture, or Hindu society, or Hindu history, without drawing any reaction from an average RSS man. He became warm or cold only when something favourable or unfavourable was said about his organization, or his leaders, or both. I wondered what sort of a Hindu organization it was. I expected the RSS to be alive to Hindu causes rather than to the reputation of its organization or its leaders.

One day, a BJS leader asked me to write a book presenting the BJS to the West. I said that I knew very little about the BJS, and that it would be better if the job was undertaken by one of their own scholars. He said that the problem was that they had no scholars in their organization. I agreed to write the book but warned him that it would be pretty critical on the score of their policies. He showed surprise. He told me in a tone full of pity for me that I was a talented man, and could move up high in their organization provided I wrote the book and removed from his people's minds the lingering suspicion about me. I asked him, "What suspicion?" He smiled and said, "You ought to know. Most of our people think that you are..." He did not complete the sentence. I completed it for him, "......an American agent." I had to control myself. I told him that if any of his people needed a certificate for patriotism any day, he could come and get it from me. That was the end of my dalliance with the BJS.

My disillusionment with the RSS took some more time. The country was moving towards a clash with Red China. People had become dissatisfied with Pandit Nehru's foreign policy. But they believed that the Prime Minister had been misled by his Defence Minister and close confidant, Shri V.K. Krishna Menon. Few people were prepared to accept that the real architect of the nation's tragedy was Pandit Nehru himself. Menon was no more than Nehru's minion, with no standing of his own either in the Congress Party or in the country at large. By now I had read almost all published writings and speeches of Pandit Nehru, and come to know him as a committed Communist. He had credited Red China with the work of "socialist construction" at home, and had been going about proclaiming that a "Socialist country can harbour no hostile designs towards its neighbours". My problem was how to share my perception with my people. The press in India was more or less completely under the control of Communists, or fellow travellers, or self seeking sycophants.

I was, therefore, very happy when the RSS leader whom I had met in Calcutta and who had now moved very high in his organization, invited me to document Nehru's ideology in a series of articles in the Organiser. Starting with its issue of June 5, 1961, I wrote 17 articles under the general caption, In Defence of Comrade Krishna Menon. I was writing under a pseudonym, Ekaki. Not many people knew who was the writer. At least my boss was completely unaware that I had violated the pledge I had given to him. The articles were read widely in circles which normally never read the Organiser.

I was, therefore, surprised when I was collared one day by the windbag of the BJS, and rebuked roundly for writing "all that nonsense about the leader of the nation". I talked to the editor, who told me that he could not keep the secret from a man who was the topmost leader of the BJS. He also told me that the man had asked him not to have anything to do with "that notorious man (badnam admi)". I wanted to go to the windbag and ask him what crime I had committed except exposing the character of Communism and its instruments. But I did not care so long as I had the support of the RSS leader, whom I met every week. He was full of praise for my series.

My sixteenth article had just appeared. The RSS leader told me to go on, and not to stop till I reach "Nehru's policy in the present situation". He added that my series "had brought about a revolution in the thought of our people", that they were planning to publish the series in a book form as soon as it was finished, and that they would make it available to the people in lakhs of copies in all Indian languages. I felt satisfied with my work. My seventeenth article was already in the press. And I was preparing to move over to Pandit Nehru's policy visa vis Red China.

But I was fated not to finish the series. When I met the RSS leader next week, I heard something which was just the opposite of what I expected. As I entered his room, he said in a cold and calculated tone, "Sitaramji, apko Nehru ke sivay kya koi kam nahin hai? Akhir Nehru ne aise kya kar diya jo ap hath dhokar uske pichhe pad gaye? (Mr. Sitaram, do you have nothing to occupy you except Nehru? What has Nehru done to make you run after him with hammer and tongs?)" I was taken aback, and did not know what to say. The editor of the Organiser happened to drop in just at that moment. The leader barked at him, "Yeh kya Nehru Nehru laga rakkha hai? Apne paper ka yeh kya bana dala tumne? Band karo yeh Nehru Nehru. Kya aur koi topic nahin bacha? (what is this cant about Nehru? What have you made of your paper? Stop this Nehru business. Is there no other topic left?)" The editor did not say a word. He was under RSS discipline. I fell from the skies. It was very difficult for me to believe that the man sitting in front of me with a grim face and unfriendly eyes was the same man who had praised my series so highly only a week ago. But that was the stark truth.

The country was at war with Red China soon after my seventeenth article appeared. I was being harassed by the Government. As soon as the first shots were fired on the northern border, I discovered that an intelligence man was following me wherever I went. He stood outside my office when I was there, and outside my home fill late in the nights. One day, a friend informed me that I might get arrested very soon. He said that a rabid Nehruite had seen me sitting in the Coffee House, and wondered why an "anti government person like Goel" was going scott free. He was a minor fry at that time but quite close to the establishment. Later on, he became a Minister in Indira Gandhi's Government, and our ambassador in Moscow. Recently, he was an important Minister in the Janata Dal Government of Shri V.P. Singh. I had been told by one of his classmates in Lahore that he was a card carrying Communist in pre Partition days. I could very well understand why he felt annoyed with me. He was one of that mob which had been riding on Mao's bandwagon when I was writing against the monster. I reminded the likes of him of their traitorous ways, and they felt uncomfortable whenever they saw me. But they were still in power, and I was nobody. I thought it wise not to annoy him. I stopped going to the Coffee House. I did not want to be in jail.

Eventually, I was not arrested for a rather strange reason. My name happened to be not only in the list of "arid Government elements" but also in the list of patriots who were expected to wage a guerrilla war against China. It was November, 23, 1962. There was a strong rumour that India was going to be air bombed by China very soon. I received a telephone from a Congress NW. She was a member of the Rajya Sabha. I hardly knew her, having met her briefly in Calcutta where she was staying with a friend Of mine on her return from Red China in 1954. She had seen the wonderland as a member of the parliamentary delegation led by Renu Chakravarty, the Communist MP in the Lok Sabha. She had seen my books on China at my friend's place, and invited me for a talk. She had said, "The horror that you have depicted in your books is nothing compared to what I have seen with my own eyes." My friend had asked her to take the country into confidence as people were being misled by Communist propaganda. She had barked back, "What are your intentions, young man? Do you want me to be a persona non grate with the Prime Minister?" Next morning her name was second in the joint statement saying that everything was wonderful in China. I hod never met her again. Now she asked me to see her immediately.

As soon as I entered her drawing room, she asked me to accompany her to see the Home Minister, Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri. She told me that she had seen my name in the list of those who were likely recruits for the forthcoming guerrilla force, and taken the responsibility of producing me as soon as she could find me. According to her, the Government feared that the Chinese would occupy the whole of Eastern India, and estimated that it would take us years to liberate the land. As I had lived in that area and knew its people as well as its languages, I had been selected as excellent guerrilla material. I told her that on the one hand there was a move to put me behind the bars, and on the other I was being viewed as a soldier in the service of the nation. She laughed and said that most of the time the right hand of the Government did not know what its left hand did, and that I should not mind such pinpricks. But I minded, and walked out, saying that so long as Pandit Nehru was the Prime Minister of the country, I could be only a traitor to it. Years later I learnt that there was actually a move to organize a guerrilla force under the leadership of Shri Biju Patnaik.

Months passed and the vigil on me was withdrawn. I must confess that I was frightened all the while. I had a large family, and I was the only bread earner. My old parents understood no politics. My children were still in school and college. I kept lying low. But the conviction that the truth about Pandit Nehru should be made known was still quite strong. So I thought of publishing my series as a book. It was far from finished. Still the facts it revealed about the Prime Minister went quite far. After a whole year had passed, I approached Vaidya Gurudatta who had read my series and liked it. He got it published in December, 1963.

I was feeling happy once again when Ram Swarup told me that my boss was under some sort of a pressure because of my book. I went to him straight and asked him about the nature of the trouble. He became angry, and said, "There are Communists in our organization, and Socialists, and Jan Sanghis. All of them have freedom to express their opinions. Why should people object when you say what you believe intensely? This is supposed to be democratic country. I am not going to yield, whatever the consequences." I told him that I did not want to jeopardise his position, and that he could provide protection to me again if he stayed in his place. Then I called his stenographer and dictated the draft of a letter terminating my services with immediate effect. My boss objected. "I thought," he said, "you were resigning. I am not sacking you." I said, "I have no honour to save. I am not going to get another job in Delhi. The only gain I care for right now is the three months' salary I will get if I am sacked. What do I get if I resign?" He got the draft typed, and signed it. As he handed the letter to me, I could see him fighting tears in his eyes. It was January 1964. I was on the street once again.

In the year 1964, Pandit Nehru was in no better position. He was alive. But the pep in him was gone. So also the bluster which he had used all his life to beat down his opponents. It was only the progressive brood he had spawned which was keeping his corpse propped up on the throne in the interest of its own survival. The leader was being made to look like a colossus in the very hour of his complete collapse. I remember very vividly what happened in the aftermath of our humiliation at the hands of the Chinese Communists in the winter of 1962.

The house that Pandit Nehru had built lay in shambles all around him. His pretensions as the custodian of world peace had been badly punctured by those very Chinese Communists whom he had promoted no end, and from every platform. In fact, he had become the laughing stock of the world in view of the sermons he had read to it earlier, day in and day out. The Soviet Union which he had served so well through thick and thin, and for years, had come out openly on the side of "our Chinese brethren". His Arab and Afro Asian friends stood strictly aloof, practising the art of non alignment they had learnt from the postmaster. And he was crying desperately for help from quarters he had decried all along as "the camp of capitalism, colonialism, and War".

Nearer home, the Communist Party of India which he had patronized and promoted into a formidable political apparatus, was shying away from him. The majority in it will soon swear allegiance to Chairman Mao. The Muslim minority which had prospered no end under his Secularism, was more than happy at India's defeat and humiliation. it will wait for Pakistan to profit from India's predicament. The Second Five Year Plan which he had hailed in the hope that India would soon emerge as an industrial giant, had brought the country to the verge of a country wide famine. His immediate successor, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, will face the grim situation in 1965 66.

By every canon of normal human reason and political sanity, it was time for stock taking. The people at large were waiting for the discredited leader and his decrepit team to depart from the scene. They were in a mood to stand up and say, "You have been here too long for whatever worth you are. Now, in God's name, go!" But what I saw was the other way round. The leader as well as the team walked out of the turmoil not only unscathed but triumphant and truculent. The stock taking that took place was in the camp of the innocents.

Pandit Nehru had been in the habit of threatening to resign, every now and then. It was his patent method of making the people protest that he was indispensable, and that the country would face ruin without him at the helm. He had succeeded every time in raising a storm in his favour, and discrediting whomsoever he chose to hound out of public life. This time he kept sticking to the throne like a limpet. In the words of Brigadier Dalvi, he did not have the decency even to go through the motions of resigning. All he had to do was to compose some poetry about "getting out of touch with reality in the modern world" and "living in an artificial atmosphere of our creation," and the establishment asked the people to shed tears. The flock of the faithful as well as the sycophants sprang into action as never before. A cry reverberated across the country that Nehru's hands needed strengthening for "beating back the reactionaries who want to put the clock back, and tiding over the national crisis". A mammoth procession led by Comrade S.A. Dange marched to the Parliament house, thundering in support of the "Great Leader and his policies of peace and progress". I saw Pandit Nehru with my own eyes, standing on the parapet and watching the procession as it reached near the northern gate of the Parliament house. But the very next day he denied that he was there.

The climax of this calculated operation was reached in the Kamrai Plan which followed soon after. Congress leaders who had no say in the shaping of national policies, foreign or domestic, were eased out of the positions they held in the Government, both at the Centre as well as in the States. They were "needed for party work among the people". Nobody was deceived. Mahavir Tyagi told Pandit Nehru to his face, "Yaron ke sir kata kar sardar ban gaye (So you have become the headman by getting the heads of your comrades chopped off)!" But nobody dared challenge the cynical exercise. Pandit Nehru and his flock had another field day.

Had Pandit Nehru been only an individual who had risen to the top on the strength of his own merit, or because circumstances had conspired to catapult him into power, his glory would have departed when his leadership suffered a serious set back in 1962. The human norm that nothing succeeds like success and nothing fails like failure, would have applied to him also. Had the ideology he had espoused been his personal choice, it would have gone into oblivion with the tragic end of the era over which he had presided. But what has happened is just the opposite. The graver the faults that have came to notice in Pandit Nehru's character as a man, as a political leader, and as a thinker, the more frantic has been the effort to prop up his image. The greater the failure that policies pursued by him have suffered, the louder has been the clamour to continue them in their pristine purity. It appears that a whole establishment has been hell bent on selling Pandit Nehru as a permanent hero, and Nehruism as a panacea for all ills, at all times.

Small wonder that the "great man's daughter", Mrs. Indira Gandhi, succeeded in riding roughshod over all sorts of "reactionaries" in the Congress Party and the country at large. The progressives flocked to her camp from every corner, and made her loom large like her father. She surrounded herself with Communists and fellow travellers of all hues, recruited directly and openly from the Communist Party of India and its fronts. They helped her to the hilt to push her father's policies farther afield. In the bargain, they monopolized all positions of power and prestige in the Congress Party, in the Government, in the voluntary agencies, in the media and the academia, in short, in the whole establishment. A Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was created for collecting Stalinist professors from all over the country, and financed on a fabulous scale. The arrogance with which the professors started speaking on every subject under the sun, had to be known in order to be believed.

In the next few years, the Nehruvian flock multiplied fast, and several fold. Now it felt strong enough to demand a committed Congress Party cadre, a committed Parliament, a committed press, a committed judiciary, a committed bureaucracy, and a committed armed force. The only commitment which was neither remembered nor mentioned any more was the commitment to democracy that had been sold, particularly by Pandit Nehru's supporters in the USA, as the hall mark of India's "experiment in Socialism". Nehruism had come out in its true colours. The country had been reduced to a private fief of the Nehru dynasty, and pulverized by those who pretended to be its custodians.

The emergency that followed was not at all an ad hoc idea adopted for meeting an abrupt situation. The idea of imposing an authoritarian rule on the country had been maturing in the minds of the Nehruvian flock for years before it materialized in the life of the people. The situation, too, was being shaped in that direction by the self righteousness and consequent high handedness that had accompanied the idea. The seeds sown by Pandit Nehru were flowering, and bearing fruit. Once again, his flock was in the forefront of the "battle being waged for beating back the forces and fascism". And by the time Mrs. Indira Gandhi realized what was happening on the ground, it was already too late. Much mischief had been done in the meanwhile. Key institutions of the country had been subverted. They have never been the same again.

The story of how I survived and stood on my feet once more is no uncommon story. There is no dearth people in the world who suffer setbacks, struggle, and come up again. Sometimes it is help from unexpected quarters. Sometimes it is hard work. Sometimes it is sheer good luck. In my case it was all three. A cousin came to my help, and gave me not only moral support but also the material means I needed. I worked very hard. Above all, I had lots of good luck. In the next four years, I succeeded in building an independent business.

During the years 1964 1977 I took no part in the public life of the country. I just watched the events unfolding and taking the country downhill. A friend taunted every now and then that I was after all a "bloody bania (merchant)" who had reverted to his right profession. Another friend complained that he missed my style of writing, though he had never liked that style. What could I say? I was in no position to convince anyone about anything.

There was a brief interlude in 1967 69 when various opposition parties came together and formed Samyukta Vidhayaka Dal (SVD) Governments in various States all over North India. But most of it was no more than a show of rowdyism which rehabilitated the Congress Party in the eyes of the people. For the rest, it was Mrs. Indira Gandhi's slow till she imposed the Emergency in June, 1975.

My participation in public activity in 1977, on the eve of the historical General Elections, was brief. I was invited to join a group which was entrusted with the job of preparing press releases for the combine which was ranged against Mrs. Indira Gandhi. It was in this group that I met Shri Arun Cheerio for the first time. What I noted about him was that he was extremely polite and soft spoken. I had no notion at that time that in the years to come he was going to emerge as the foremost scholar journalist and to present national problems in a correct prospective.

People's enthusiasm for the combine against Mrs. Indira Gandhi had to be seen in order to be believed. The meetings addressed by leaders of the opposition attracted vast crowds. On the other hand, the meetings of the Congress Party, even those addressed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi, were thinly attended. I saw a meeting in which there was no audience, only the Congress leaders sitting on a large platform. The man who had supplied the carpets and the chairs was worried that his goods were going to be stolen as nobody was sitting on them.

Equally unprecedented were the scenes when the results came out. My journalist friend from America was in Delhi. By now he had become die Chief Editor of the prestigious Forbes Magazine published from New York. He was amazed when he saw the people dancing in the street outside newspaper offices on Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg. He said he had not witnessed such scenes when India became independent in 1947.

I must confess that I was also carried away by the popular enthusiasm, and thought that things were going to change at last. The only one I saw. keeping his cool, was Ram Swarup. He was happy that the Emergency was over. But he did not expect much from the combine which soon became the Janata Party. He said to me several times that people did not change simply because they gave themselves a new party label. He had been saying for some time that in India there was a multiplicity of parties but a unity of slogans. He proved right in a matter of days. The Janata Party turned out to be another bunch of rowdies except for its Jana Sangh component, and reminded one of the SVD days.

I had lost contact with the RSS BJS leaders after my experience with them in 1962. But I had not lost interest in what was regarded as the only Hindu movement still alive. The Arya Samaj and the Hindu Mahasabha had become more or less moribund. The Ramakrishna Mission and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram were busy proving that they were universal rather than Hindu. But the reports I received about developments in the RSS BJS were pretty depressing.

The BJS had been taken over more or less completely by the windbag. He shared not only Pandit Nehru's ideology but also the latter's temper when it came to dealing with party colleagues. He had succeeded in silencing or hounding out those few in the BJS who had the courage to say that they did not subscribe to the Nehruvian consensus on Socialism, Secularism, Non Alignment, and the rest. I wondered whether all this was happening with the active or passive assent of the RSS bosses. Some people said, yes. Others said that the RSS bosses were helpless in the face of the windbag's popularity and pull with the crowds.

I had a chance to go to a public meeting addressed by the windbag in December, 1971. We were at war with Pakistan over the liberation of Bangladesh. The latest reports said that a US fleet had sailed from Bangkok and was heading towards the Bay of Bengal. It was a time for worry. But the windbag thundered, "Amrika ka jo beda Bangal ki khadi ki aur badh raha hai, uske ek jahaz wapas nahin jane paye (not a single ship of the American fleet advancing towards the Bay of Bengal, should be allowed to go back)." The crowd gave him a standing ovation. I wondered whether he knew what the US fleet represented, and I walked away. It was the first public meeting of the windbag which I had ever attended. It proved to be the last

The metamorphosis of the RSS was no less noticeable. The RSS had never cared to understand Islam or its dynamics in India. I had heard with my own cars Guru Golwalkar proclaiming from a public platform that he honoured Islam no less than his own Hindu Dharma, that the Quran was for him as holy as the Veda, and that he regarded Prophet Muhammad as one of the greatest men known to human history. Some RSS leaders, therefore, felt fulfilled when they came in close contact and fraternized with the mullahs of the Jam'at I Islami, while they were together in jail during the Emergency. I myself heard some of them saying, "We were in the dark about Islam till we met these Muslim divines. Now we know what Islam really stands for." I asked one of them, "Have you ever studied the classics of Islam on your own? How could you judge that what the mullahs were selling to you was not misinformation?" He smiled, and dismissed me as incorrigible. I could see that there was a will to believe in what the mullahs had presented as Islam. There was no problem if Islam was that wonderful. It was as simple as that.

So the RSS BJS had fallen fully in fine with the Nehruvians and earned in full measure the treatment they received from the Congress and Socialist components in the Janata Party. In spite of the fact that the RSS BJS had suffered the most and sent the largest number of men to jail during the Emergency, and in spite of the fact their presence in the Parliament was also the largest, their status in the Janata Party was no more than that of cupbearers whom anybody could kick. To start with, there was a whispering campaign that the Party was in danger of being taken over by the communalists. Next, the Socialists launched an open campaign that either the RSS should become boy scouts of the Janata Party or the Jana Sanghis in the Party should sever their relation with the RSS. Finally, the RSS was asked to drop the word Hindu from its constitution and admit Muslims in its ranks.

The windbag who was the leader of the Jana Sangh group in the Janata Party endorsed the demand of the Socialists. He wrote an article in the Indian Express saying that the RSS was after all a political movement, and as such should have no hesitation in parting with its "cultural pretensions". Shri L.K. Advani was the only one in the Jana Sangh group to state publicly that he was proud of his association with the RSS. But he had counted without the RSS bosses. They readily agreed to consider the Socialists' proposal in their next General Body meeting. The situation was saved only by the fall of the Janata Government in 1979.

A friend who was an insider of the Janata Party told me that the Soviet President, Kosygin, who was on a visit India during the Janata Party days, did not feel quite sure how his meeting with the Minister of External Affairs would turn out. He was under the impression that the Minister belonged to a reactionary movement. But when he met the Minister, he was pleasantly surprised to find that "this guy is more progressive than my own Communist comrades in India". There was a move to replace our ambassador in Moscow appointed during the Indira Gandhi regime. The ambassador was known to be Moscow's man rather than India's envoy. The Minister put down his foot "Nothing doing. He is one of my best friends." He also tried to get into the Rajya Sabha a well known columnist who has been a life long Hindubaiter and an ardent advocate of every Islamic cause. Failing that, the Minister pulled away Syed Shahabuddin from the latter's desk in the External Affairs Ministry and sent him up to the Rajya Sabha as "the right type of Muslim leader we have been looking for". The Syed has not failed his sponsor in India's politics.

The crowning glory of the windbag, however, was the formation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and the formulation of its philosophy as Gandhian Socialism. In the new party's flag, the green colour Of Islamic jihad shared honours with the bhagwa (ochre) colour of Hindutva. Nobody in the RSS or the BJP seemed to know or cared to remember what the Islamic colour had stood for in the history of India, and what it signified for India's future. So we had one more platform for shouting Nehruvian slogans. Only it proved to be one too many in the 1984 General Elections. People decided to vote for the original and the genuine Congress Party rather than for its carbon copy.

I resumed my regular meetings with Ram Swarup in 1977, after a long lapse during which I was busy building a business. By now I was more or less free from family responsibilities also. The discussions that developed were very rewarding. The most frequent theme was the character of Islam and Christianity, and what these closed creeds aspired to do to our people and culture.

Meanwhile, Islam had resumed its offensive in India. Petro dollars from oil rich Islamic countries were pouring in for equipping all sorts of Islamic missionaries and militants. A Muslim weekly had put it straight. Allah, it said, was not a fool to have put all that wealth under the floor of Islamic countries. Muslims, it asserted, were meant to be masters of the world. And India, it pointed out, was their unfinished business. Similar articles had appeared elsewhere in the Islamic world.

At the same time, the Christian missionary apparatus had perfected its theologies of Indigenization and Liberation. The theologians had no doubt that India was destined to be the land of Jesus Christ. Leading lights of the national revival such as Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi were being portrayed as devotees of "the only Son of the only True God".

The most depressing aspect of the whole situation, however, was that there was practically no voice of protest against these forces of subversion. The methods and means which these forces were mobilizing had not even been noticed. The only movement which was supposed to be a Hindu movement and expected to come to the defence of Hindu society and culture, was busy proving its secularist credentials. The Janata Party swore more by Mahatma Gandhi than by Pandit Nehru. But it was not the Mahatma Gandhi who had proclaimed that he was a staunch Sanatanist Hindu. Instead, it was a Mahatma Gandhi invented by Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia for window dressing his own variety of Secularism. Small wonder that Imam Bukhari of the Jama Masjid in Delhi was striding the scene like a colossus. Politicians of all hues were paying homage to him. He had never had it so good.

Ram Swarup was feeling disturbed. He had no doubt that Hindu society was in for great trouble. He had been studying the scriptures of Islam and Christianity during the past several years, and had gone deep into their most orthodox sources. He had come up with the conclusion that they were not religions but cruel and intolerant ideologies like Communism and Nazism. The spread of these ideologies in India, he said, was fraught with fearful consequences for whatever had survived of Hindu society and culture in the only Hindu homeland.

Around this time, I had an occasion to read the typescript of a book he had finished writing in 1973, and laid aside. It was a profound study of Monotheism, the central dogma of both Islam and Christianity, as well as a powerful presentation what the monotheists denounce as Hindu Polytheism. I had never read anything like it. It was a revelation to me that Monotheism was not a religious concept but an imperialist idea. I must confess that I myself had been inclined towards Monotheism till this time. I had never thought that a multiplicity of Gods was the natural and spontaneous expression of an evolved spiritual consciousness.

My mind went back to 1949 when I had read Ram Swarup's typescript, Russian Imperialism: How to Stop It. He had followed it up in 1950 with his Communism and Peasantry: Implications of Collective Agriculture for Asia. These books had made me sit up vis a vis the menace which Communism represented. Now I sat up vis a vis the menace represented by Islam and Christianity. I decided to publish Ram Swarup's new magnum opus. It was titled The Word As Revelation: Names of Gods when it was brought out in 1980. Our friend from college days and now the Chief Editor of The Times of India, Girilal Jain, rang me up after reading this book, and said, "Sita, Ram Swarup has written the book of his life, and you have published the book of your life." It was reviewed in The Times of India by the noted Aurobindonian, Dr. Sisir Kumar Ghosh, under the caption, "Return of the Gods". The reviewer had pinpointed the central theme in Ram Swarup's reflections.

As our discussions developed, I found that Rain Swarup was concerned more about the menace from Islam than that from Christianity. He observed that Christianity had its teeth knocked out in the modern West, and that though it was still capable of doing considerable mischief in India, it was bound to collapse as soon as its rationalist review in the West became known to our people. Islam, on the other hand, had so far remained free from even a rationalist review. Hindu saints and scholars had hardly ever questioned its exclusive and superior claims. The only exception was Swami Dayananda. In recent times, the Hindu refrain had been that Islam taught the same truths as Hinduism. The slogan of sarva dharma samabhava was providing grist to the mills of Secularism, the smoke screen behind which Islam and Christianity were stealing a march. Add to it the systematic distortion of India's history which the Stalinist historians of Aligarh and the JNU had undertaken from their power positions in the Nehruvian establishment. They were insisting that Islamic heroes be accepted as national heroes, while they were converting Hindu heroes into villians.

Ram Swarup was not satisfied with a merely rationalist review of Islam and Christianity. He wanted these ideologies to be processed from the point of view of yogic spirituality of Sanatana Dharma. And he had developed the framework for placing these creeds where they belonged in the scale of yogic consciousness.

Our problem, according to Ram Swarup, was not Muslims but Islam. An overwhelming majority of Muslims in India (including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) were our own people. They had been alienated from us by Islam. But Hindu society had remained pre occupied with the Muslim behaviour pattern, while bestowing praises on Islam as a great religion. This was suicidal for Hindu society. The Muslim behaviour pattern had to be traced back to the belief system which sanctioned it. It was the belief system which had to be exposed.

A marked feature of the Muslim behaviour pattern had been the Muslim proneness to take to the streets on the slightest pretext Street riots had been used by Islam as a major weapon for carving out Pakistan. They were being used in the India that remained for enforcing all sorts of Muslim demands. And street riots by Muslims cannot' be stopped unless Islam was cured of its aggressive selfrighteousness. Hindus were doing exactly the reverse of what should be done. They were blaming the Muslims and not Islam which provided the inspiration for street riots.

Ram Swarup was sure that the only effective way to stop street riots was to move the Hindu Muslim dialogue from the streets to the level of human minds. That was possible only if Hindus studied Islam from its own sources, and rejected its claims. So long as Hindus recognized Islam as a religion, it was unlikely to shed its aggressiveness and accept peaceful coexistence. We had the precedents of Christianity and Communism before us. Christianity in the West had to shed its self righteousness and reform itself when it was subjected to a free and frank discussion in modern times. The ideological spread of Communism also had come to a halt in the Western democracies when Western scholars examined its tenets and made them known to the people at large.

One day in late 1981, I put it to Ram Swarup, "I have completed sixty years of my life. I have done whatever I was destined to do for my family. If you feel that I can be of help to the cause of Hinduism, I can retire from business and take to writing again. I should like to devote the rest of my life to informing Hindu society about its own great heritage, as also about the dangers it faces. Only I would have to consult my sons, and find out if they can spare, me for a work dear to my heart" Ram Swarup gave his consent.

I placed the proposal before my sons the very next day. Their response was more than positive. One of them observed, "You can do business as well as this other work. Business is something which we also can manage. But you alone among us can undertake the other work. We are prepared to take over the business whenever you want to be free from it. We can always consult you if we have any problem." I was very happy to hear that from them. The VOICE OF INDIA was born that day, though Ram Swarup suggested that name several days later.

My next problem was how to resume writing on subjects relevant to the new situation. I had lost the habit of writing on serious subjects, having written nothing except business letters and account books over the past fifteen years. It was quite a struggle to rearrange appropriate ideas in my mind, and put them down on paper. For several weeks, all I could create were heaps of torn sheets. But I was keeping the company of Rain Swarup. It was not too long before my pen started writing coherent sentences.

Strangely enough, Shri K.R. Malkani, editor of the Organiser, had never given me up as a writer. He had continued to write letters to me all these year, suggesting subjects on which I could contribute articles to his weekly. I had thought that it was very kind of him, though I had never replied to his letters. Now I went to his office, and asked him if he would consider a few series which I had in my mind. He agreed immediately.

That is how those series started, one after another How I Become A Hindu, Hindu Society Under Siege, An Experiment with Untruth, Defence of Hindu Society, history of Heroic Hindu Resistance to Islamic Invaders. I was now spending several afternoons every week in the office of the Organiser, seeing proofs, meeting other visitors, and talking to Shri Malkani. I was my old self once again. Now I found it difficult to believe that I had been a businessman for more than fifteen years.

I discovered it in due course that my series in the Organiser were being noticed in the secularist circles. A secularist scribe whom I chanced to meet at a friend's place asked me in a resentful tone, "How many series do you plan to write?" I told him, "One hundred, unless I die or become bed ridden in the meanwhile." And I meant it. I had many themes in my mind. I was spending long hours at my desk, scanning source materials and writing articles.

What encouraged me most at this time was the spate of letters I received from the readers. They came to my own address as well as to the editor of the Organiser. They came from all parts of India, and also from abroad, particularly the UK and the USA. All of them were full of praise for my knowledge of facts, and my capacity to put them across in a proper perspective. I felt grateful to the readers. I also felt embarrassed once in a while when I was compared to some stalwart of Hindu awakening in the recent past. One letter was very brief, and was addressed to the editor. It said that "Sita Ram Goel is the most wonderful thing that has happened to the Organiser". I must confess that I felt flattered.

And then it happened again. The blow that came was not as swift and sudden as last time. But it was a blow all the same. The only difference was that this time it did not leave me shattered, as it had done on the previous occasion.

I was reviewing H.V. Seshadri's book, The Tragic Story of India's Partition, in a series captioned Muslim Separatism: Causes and Consequences. As the proofs came one day, I found that some of the significant passages regarding sufis were missing from the composition by the printing press. I picked up the typed copy, and saw that those passages had been crossed out with red pencil. I turned to Shri Malkani, and asked him if he had done it. He would not look me in the eyes, but muttered, "We have to live with them." I observed, "I was also trying to see that they learn to live with us." He did not reply.

Shri Malkani was sacked soon after. I do not know the whole story. All I came to know much later was that his failure to stop me from writing regularly in the Organiser was one of the reasons for the sorry outcome. But at that time I did not suspect it that I had something to do with his departure from a weekly which he had served for three score years, so much so that the Organiser had come to mean Malkani and Malkani the Organiser. Ale ways of party bosses are always inscrutable.

Shri V.P. Bhatia who took over as the next editor turned out to be as fine a gentleman as Shri Malkani. But what could he do in the face of pressure from the politicians? He did not cross out passages from my articles. But he did drop broad hints that my articles were no more wanted. I have a thick skull when it comes to picking up hints. Even so I understood that something had gone wrong somewhere. I told Shri Bhatia that I would stop as soon my current series, Perversion of India's Political Parlance, came to an end. I did. But I wanted to know what had happened.

After a few months, I ran into a big boss of the RSS. I had been told that he had something to do with the ban on my writings. I asked him straight, "Why have you stopped my series in the Organiser?" He said, "kabhi kabhi likhiye (write once in a while)." The cat came out of the bag when I chanced to meet another big boss of the RSS after a few months. He was on his way to attend a Vishva Hindu Parishad rally in the USA. As I put the question to him, he pointed his finger at me, and barked; "You ... you go out and attack Islam. How will then any Muslim come to us?" His tone was sharp. In fact, there was a touch of temper in his voice. I had met him earlier, once or twice, and thought that he was politeness personified. Now I was meeting a different man the big boss of the Hindu movement. Even so, I asked him, "But do you really want the Muslims to come to you?" He started, "As a strategy..." I did not care to hear him any further, and walked out of his room. I had been sick of this word strategy ever since I turned away from Communism. I had seen this word strewn like autumn leaves in Marxist Leninist literature. In any case, there was no room for complaint, now that I knew the party line put forward. The only thing that was not quite clear to me was the RSS BJP clamour that the secularist parties were pampering the Muslims for cornering their votes. To me it looked like another case of the kettle calling the pot black.

I have never bothered about party bosses or moneybags, having seen quite a few of them from close quarters. They are lured by power or lucre or both, most of the time. Nor have I ever been an aspirant to any privileged position. So I went ahead. I knew that Hindu society was much larger than many RSS BJP put together. I decided to go to my people with the truth as I saw it. I was open to correction, but not to craftiness glorified as strategy. The response has been rewarding.

I could function this time because I had my own money. A few friends from Delhi, Calcutta, and Madras gave me some more. All I was looking for now was scholars who could tell the truth straight. Fortunately, I met some of them soon Dr. Harsh Narain, A.K. Chatterjee, Prof. K.S. Lal, Koenraad Elst, Rajendra Singh, Sant R.S. Nirala, and Shrikant Talageri. More scholars are sure to join us as time passes. Meanwhile, Girilal Jain, Arun Shourie, Swapan Dasgupta and some others have been keeping the flag flying on their own. Hats off to them The first problem I faced as a publisher was the Emergency imposed by Islam ever since its advent in India. One has all the freedom to praise Islam, its prophet, its scripture, its heroes, and its "contribution to Indian culture". But one is not free to ask a few questions or present the real facts relating to these very subjects. The Vedas, the Epics, the Puranas, and every other book which Hindus hail as holy can be discussed, even denounced. So also every Hindu God and Goddess, every Hindu hero, every Hindu tradition, and every Hindu social institution. But saying that Muhammad was not the last prophet, that the Quran is not the final revelation, and that Islam is not the only true religion continues to cause trouble. Such statements invited death penalty so long as Islam had a monopoly of military power in this country. After that, they have been inviting clauses of the law code, and street riots if the law happens to be negligent once in a while.

It was not long before I was visited by officers of the Crimes Department, and not only from Delhi. I was accused of causing communal discord, and threatening the peace of the land. I was arrested, and ordered to seek bail. The Station House Officer in Delhi who locked me up for twenty four hours, was mighty pleased with his performance. He boasted loudly that he had prevented a big street riot in Delhi. He invited me to accompany him and see for myself the missiles which the local Muslims had piled up on the roofs of their houses, apart from the firearms inside. When I asked him why he had not got the missiles removed and the firearms flushed out, he snarled, "Address your question to the big bosses of the political parties. I am only a small fry trying to earn my daily bread."

I had been arrested in the classic case of Ram Swarup's documented study, Understanding Islam through Hadis: Religious Faith or Fanaticism? This book had been published in the USA in 1982, thanks to the efforts of Shri Arvind Ghosh of Houston, Texas. VOICE OF INDIA had brought out an Indian reprint in 1983. There had been loud talk in the book market at Delhi that this book was going to be banned. I had waited with bated breath. But nothing had happened for two years. So I had got it translated into Hindi, and sent the printed sheets of two thousand copies to the binder. A Muslim mob had materialized outside the binder's shop, and threatened to burn down the establishment. The Station House Officer, I had mentioned, had appeared on the scene in a matter of minutes, and carried away all the sheets as well as the binder. In the next few hours I had been picked up.

The Delhi Administration which was under Congress rule at that time, appointed two screening committees, one after another, to examine the Hindi translation and find out if it had departed from the English original, or if the English original itself contained any objectionable matter. Both the committees came to the same conclusion there was nothing objectionable, either in the English original or in the Hindi translation; both of them had only summarized faithfully an orthodox Islamic scripture. The Delhi Administration sent the case to the Metropolitan Court, and requested that it should be dismissed. But the Jam`at i Islami weekly, Radiance, raised a hue and cry, accusing the author and the publisher of insulting the Prophet. The court waited for some Muslims to appear and show why the case should not be dismissed. No one appeared. So the court dismissed the case on September 28, 1991. But the Delhi Administration issued a notification in November, 1991, stating that the Hindi translation will stand banned whenever it is published. In March 1992, the same Administration banned the English original also. By then the English original had been in circulation for nearly ten years. Meanwhile, two Indian reprints had been sold out. There is a great demand for this book even now. But I remain helpless.

I will close this chapter with my comments of the Ayodhya movement. Rain Swarup had seen in this movement an opportunity to educate the Hindus about the character of Islam. As early as 1983, he had asked me to put my knowledge of history and archaeology to some use, and compile a directory of Hindu temples destroyed by the Islamic invaders and rulers down the centuries. The Muslim monuments which had come up on the sites and/or built with materials of Hindu temples had to be highlighted. I had got busy with source materials which were voluminous and in several languages. It was going to be a big job.

Muslim leaders and Stalinist historians were raising a howl about Hindu chauvinism when it came to the notice of Arun Shourie, the Chief Editor of the Indian Express at that time, that some significant passages had been omitted from the English translation of an Urdu book written long ago by the father of Ali Mian, the famous Muslim theologian from Lucknow. He wrote an article, Hideaway Communalism, in the Indian Express of February 5, 1989 pointing out how the passages regarding destruction of Hindu temples and building of mosques on their sites at Delhi, Jaunpur, Kanauj, Etawah, Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura had been dropped from the English translation published by Ali Mian himself. This was a new and dramatic departure from the norm observed so far by the prestigious press. Publishing anything which said that Islam was less than sublime had been taboo for a long time. I was pleasantly surprised, and named Arun Shourie as the Gorbachev of India. He had thrown open the windows and let in fresh breez in a house full of the stinking garbage of stale slogans.

I was still more surprised when he invited me to document for his paper what I knew on the subject. I had tried to get into the prestigious press again and again with documented articles on Communism, Islam, and Christianity, but had given up after being rebuffed every time. The big press. I had been told, was meant for respectable writers. I had kept a tally of the respectable tribe. I had discovered that most of them were the Big Liers about the Soviet Union, Red China, India's history, Hindu society and culture, and "the achievements of Islam and Christianity in this country". The most successful among these worthies were the professional Hindu baiters. They pocketed the fattest cheques for heaping filth on everything Hindu, and that too in a press owned by Hindu moneybags.

I promised to Arun Shourie that I would send an article very soon. He asked me to write more than one and cover the subject adequately. So I wrote three articles, fully documented from unimpeachable Islamic sources, and showing that destroying other people's places of worship was a favourite pastime of practically all Muslim rulers in medieval times, and a pious performance in Islam after the precedent had been set by the Prophet himself. The first article was published on February 19, 1989. It was illustrated with fascimiles of six Islamic inscriptions saying that Allah and the Prophet had blessed the pulling down of Hindu temples and the raising of mosques in their places, mostly with their materials.

Arun Shourie had shown great courage. But he had counted without the secularist crowd which had access to the owner of the Indian Express. He told me on the phone that there was some trouble brewing. I have never talked to him about the nature of the trouble, and do not know if my articles had anything to do with his ouster from the Indian Express next year. All I know is that he had to slow down the publication of my next two articles. They were to appear in the weeks following February, 19. Actually they appeared on April 16 and May 21.

Meanwhile, the Ayodhya movement had gathered momentum after the 1989 General Elections in which the BJP achieved spectacular success. It was in December, 1989 that a Belgian young man, Koenraad Elst, dropped in at my office. He had picked up a copy of my book, History of Hindu Christian Encounters, from some bookshop, and had become keen to see me after reading it. We discussed the character of what was being described as Hindu awakening. I gave him some of VOICE OF INDIA publications, and he went away to Ayodhya and Varanasi. When he returned after two weeks he expressed surprise that he had not been able to locate a single book presenting the Hindu case on Ayodhya. I told him that in late 1983 a VHP leader had collared me after a seminar, and asked if I had any proof that a temple existed where the Babri mosque stood at present. I had expected the VHP to produce some literature during the six years that had passed since then. Koenraad Elst was, however, aware that Dr. Harsh Narain and A.K. Chatterjee had came out with positive proofs in the meanwhile. I then took him to Ram Swarup, as I do in the case of everybody who comes to me and shows sympathy for Hindu causes. On the eve of his departure, Koenraad Elst asked me if I would publish a book on Ayodhya which he planned to write on his return to Belgium, I did not take him seriously. I did not know at that time that the thirty one years old Belgian we had met was a prodigy, and that he felt so deeply about Hindus having a good case but presenting it very badly.

The script of his Ram Janmabhoomi Vs. Babri Masjid: A Case Study in Hindu Muslim Conflict, was dropped on my table by the postman exactly after a month. I could not stop after I started reading it. I took it to Ram Swarup the same evening. He read it during the night and rang me up next morning. Koenraad Elst's book, he said, should be published immediately.

I had just published a book, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them, Volume I, A Preliminary Survey. It carried the articles by Arun Shourie, Dr. Harsh Narain, Ram Swarup, and myself, published in the Indian Express. Two articles which Jay Dubashi had written in the Organiser on the significance of the Shilanyasa at Ayodhya simultaneously with the fall of the Berlin Wall were added to it. I also wrote a new chapter, Let the Mute Witnesses Speak, for this book. This chapter carried a list of around two thousand Muslim monuments which, according to literary and/or archaeological evidence stood on the sites of Hindu temples and/or had Hindu sculptures embedded in their masonry. The location of these Muslim monuments was also indicated in the list, place wise, districtwise, and state wise. The list has now become famous, though it touches only the tip of the iceberg.

Soon after Koenraad Elst's book was also ready, Ram Swarup and I went to Shri L.K. Advani for requesting him to release the two books in a public function. He agreed, though he was not quite keen about the compilation on Hindu temples in general. And he used the public function on 13 August 1990 for announcing that he would try to persuade the VHP to drop their claims on the sites of the Vishvanath Temple at Varanasi and the Krishnajanmabhumi at Mathura, provided the Muslims agreed to give up the Ramajanmabhumi site at Ayodhya. At the same time he chided me for using strong language ("Sitaramji to tikhe ho jate hain"). I wondered if he had read my articles in the book on temples. A friend who had known and relished my earlier style had chided me for making my style scholarly. The people present were stunned. Girilal Jain who presided over the function minced no words while pointing out that the much applauded Hindu tolerance was nothing more than Hindu cowardice most of the time. But none of this appeared in the press next morning. It was Advani's offer which became front page news.

Dr. Harsh Narain and Koenraad Elst had documented how Syed Shahabuddin had kept shifting his ground regarding proof about the destruction of the Rama Mandir at Ayodhya. But the VHP BJP combine was more than willing to provide more proofs. In fact, the stronger the proofs the Hindu scholars provided, the greater became the Muslim demand for something more solid. The leaders of the Ayodhya movement had walked into the trap laid by the likes of Shahabuddin in spite of my repeated warnings that Hindus should do the questioning and make the Muslims do the answering. But these leaders were innocents abroad, having no knowledge of Islamic theology or Islamic history. Gross ignorance is quite often the straw to which optimism clings. All this while the Muslim leaders kept looking down upon the Hindu beggars standing before them with folded hands. I was of the opinion that the building of the new Rama Mandir could wait till such time as the BJP got a mandate from the people. The first priority, I thought, should go to educating the people about Islam. But by now the Rama Mandir at Ayodhya had became an end in itself for the VHPBJP combine. They were prepared to try any number of tricks, tell any number of lies, and suffer any amount of humiliation, only if they could get their toy assembled at Ayodhya.

I need not narrate the rest of the story which is wellknown. The leaders of the Ayodhya movement were soon proclaiming from the house tops that Islam did not permit destruction of other people's places of worship! They took no notice of my book, Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them, Volume II, The Islamic Evidence, in which I had quoted from scores of histories, written by pious Muslim historians, to the effect that destroying Hindu temples and replacing them with mosques was a favourite pastime of Muslim rulers down to the fall of the Mughal dynasty. I had also included in this book a chapter, Islamic Theology of Iconoclasm, to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that destroying other people's places of worship was a pious performance in Islam because the Prophet himself had destroyed all pre Islamic pagan temples in Arabia. The leaders of the Ayodhya movement were out to flatter Islam in order to coax the Muslims to part voluntarily with the Ramajanmabhumi site. They got nowhere.

I have beard people from the Sangh parivara saying quite often that the Congress does not know how to treat the Muslims. They go about telling the Muslims that while the Congress views them only as a vote bank, the Sangh parivara honours them as human beings and honest Muslims. They are appealing to the Muslims to rally round the BJP flag. I am reminded of a Chinese story. A landlord was in the habit of strangling his wives. Every time he strangled a wife, another woman came forward to marry him. When people told the new ones the number of women he had already strangled, everyone of them replied, "Oh! They didn't understand the old dear." And every one of them got strangled in her own turn.

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