12-06-2006, 09:54 PM
Guha's gobar kicked back in his face
A considered rejoinder to puerile purveyors of hate
Last week I was reading an article by Ramachandra Guha on Guruji Golwalkar (1906 - 1973) under the title The Guru of Hate. As a learned historian with a track record no less than that of Herodotus, Thucydides, Edward Gibbon, G M Trevelyan and Arnold Toynbee in the realms of historiography in the Western tradition and Jadunath Sarkar, R C Majumdar and K A Neelakanta Sastri in the Indian context, Ramachandra Guha has declared with magisterial aplomb, suffused with pseudo-secular suavity that Guruji Golwalkar was The Guru of Hate. To quote his exact and inspiring(!?) words which will live in history, famed in song and legend for generations to come: 'Golwalkar's book disparages democracy as alien to the Hindu ethos and extols the code of Manu... THIS column generally deals more -much more - in appreciation than in depreciation. However, it is obligatory on the historian to also (occasionally) notice individuals whose influence on history was MALIGN rather than salutary. One such person was the Hindu ideologue M S Golwalkar, whose birth anniversary his followers are marking this year'. When Nathuram Godse was sentenced to death for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, the learned judge categorically declared that 'neither the RSS nor Guruji Golwalkar had anything to do with that act of unpardonable crime'. Most of our pseudo-secular journalists today, under the economic hegemony of the secular mafia of mass media, would be too willing to do 'investigative' journalism in the name of objective secular history ? to sell their non-existent souls for a mess of pottage ? in order to find out whether Justice G D Khosla who gave the final verdict was saffronized or communal in his family background which influenced him to give a verdict in favour of the RSS and Guruji Golwakar. In this context let us hear the pontifical time-defying secular verdict of Ramachandra Guha: 'On 30 January, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse. Although Godse was not a member of the RSS at the time of the murder, he had been one in the past. And there were reports that in several places RSS members had celebrated his act by distributing sweets. As a precautionary measure, Golwalkar and other RSS workers were put in jail. Secret documents that this writer has recently seen strongly suggest that even if the RSS was not directly implicated in Gandhi's murder, its main leader was not entirely averse to such a happening'. I never knew that journalists can function as unpaid agents of the police force in India which was described by Justice Mullah of the Allahabad High Court in a historic pronouncement as 'there is no more organized lawless criminal force in the country than the Indian Police Force'.
Suitably readapting the words of George Orwell from his brilliant essay 'Politics and the English Language', I would like to say that the political language of Indian journalists of global fame (if not influence!) like Ramachandra Guha is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder justiciable through the sordid mill of one sided journalism in order to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell had many of our bumptious pseudo-secular journalists in view when he wrote with biting sarcasm in the same essay referred to above: 'A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language.
Guruji Golwalkar
(1906 - 1973)
It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is REVERSIBLE'. Aaya Rams and Gaya Rams, Thekha Rams and Sub-jante Rams of the secular mafia mass media are working round the clock to make NEWSPEAK the official language of our degenerate nation today. Our great journalists let the meaning of their concealed prejudice and hatred of things Hindu choose the word and not the other way about. Good prose is like a window-pane. In the sordid world of journalistic prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them with pseudo-secular fervour. In the Indian context it means surrender not only to chosen non-saffronized words but also to chosen tycoons in the menacing mafia of mass media pervading the country.
Five years ago, as a private citizen of no significance, I had the opportunity to scrutinize and verify the available official records in the National Archives in New Delhi. Even if according to our mighty journalists of global stature, Justice GD Khosla was prejudiced in his verdict, they cannot so stupidly ignore or overlook the fact that Sardar Vallabai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in the Government of India had also sent a letter to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister, on 27 February, 1948, less than a month after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination on 30 January, 1948 : 'I have kept myself almost in daily touch with the progress of the investigations regarding Bapu's assassination case. All the main accused have given long and detailed statements of their activities. It also clearly emerges from the statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all'. These words of Patel would be dismissed as 'saffronized' and 'communal' by the sweet suckers of honeyed secularism in all our major English Newspapers with the full benediction of the UPA Government in New Delhi.
Sardar Patel in a letter to Guruji Golwalkar paid this tribute to the RSS: 'There is no doubt that the RSS has served the Hindu society in times of crisis. In riot-torn areas where their help was needed, the youths of the Sangh protected the women and the children and did a lot for them. No one can doubt that the RSS provided succour and safety to Hindus in times of difficulty'.
Field Marshal Cariappa, whose patriotism can be questioned only by the paid below the table mercenaries in the world of pseudo-journalism, paid his soulful tribute to the RSS after watching their heroic work in Jammu and Kashmir when the Muslim marauders (romantic objects of unrequited love in the eyes of pseudo-secular Indian journalists!) invaded the Kashmir Valley in 1947: 'RSS is my heart's work. My dear young men, don't be disturbed by uncharitable comments of interested persons. Look ahead! Go ahead! The country is standing in need of your services'.
I remember reading an article by Kushwant Singh, by no means a saffronized communal Hindu like myself, in the Illustrated Weekly of India on 26 November, 1972 (page 49). Here are his observations as an independent spirited heroic journalist and not as a self-proclaimed historian of global fame: 'There are some people against whom you build up malice without knowing them. Guru Golwalkar had long been on the top of my hate list. What with the RSS doings in communal riots, the assassination of the Mahatma, the talk of changing India from a secular to a Hindu state! However as a journalist I could not resist the chance of meeting him. I expected to run into a cordon of uniformed swayamsevaks. There are none; not even plainclothes CID to take down the number of my car. It is a middle-class apartment with an appearance of puja going on inside-rows of sandals outside, fragrance of agarbatti, bustle of women behind the scenes; tinkle of utensils and crockery. In a small room sit a dozen men in spotless white kurtas and dhotis - all looking newly washed as only Maharashtrian Brahmins manage to do. And Guru Golwalkar: a frail man in mid-sixties: black hair curling to his shoulders; a moustache covering his mouth; a wispy grey bread dangling down his chin. An unerasable smile and dark eyes twinkling through his bifocals. He looks like an Indian Ho Chi Minh. For a man who had only recently undergone surgery for breast cancer he looks remarkably fit and cheerful'.
When the interview started, I told Guruji Golwalkar 'I don't know where to begin. I am told you shun publicity and your organization is secret.'
Guruji said: 'It is true we do not seek publicity but there is nothing secret about us. There is no militarism in our movement. We value discipline - which is a different matter.'
Even a cursory reading of this article by Kushwant Singh will show that he was overwhelmed by the simplicity, decency, decorum, humility and reverence of Guruji Golwalkar. To sum up in Kushwant Singh's own words: 'Was I impressed? I admit I was. He did not try to persuade me to his point of view. He made me feel that he was open to persuasion. I accepted his invitation to visit him in Nagpur and see things for myself. Maybe I can bring him round to making Hindu-Muslim unity the main aim of his RSS Or am I being a simple-minded Sardarji?'
Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Rajaji, Jayaprakash Narayan, Mahatma Gandhi and several great men have paid their tribute to the outstanding qualities of Sri Guruji Golwalkar as a fearless leader of national significance. My rejoinder to Ramachandra Guha in this context will be in the words of another Parsi journalist R K Karanjia: 'Guruji Golwalkar had no axe to grind, and in the pursuit of his ideals, languor was not in his heart, weakness was not in his word, weariness was not on his brow. It would be good if other political leaders emulate his example of dedicated life and win the respect and confidence of his followers'.
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
A considered rejoinder to puerile purveyors of hate
Last week I was reading an article by Ramachandra Guha on Guruji Golwalkar (1906 - 1973) under the title The Guru of Hate. As a learned historian with a track record no less than that of Herodotus, Thucydides, Edward Gibbon, G M Trevelyan and Arnold Toynbee in the realms of historiography in the Western tradition and Jadunath Sarkar, R C Majumdar and K A Neelakanta Sastri in the Indian context, Ramachandra Guha has declared with magisterial aplomb, suffused with pseudo-secular suavity that Guruji Golwalkar was The Guru of Hate. To quote his exact and inspiring(!?) words which will live in history, famed in song and legend for generations to come: 'Golwalkar's book disparages democracy as alien to the Hindu ethos and extols the code of Manu... THIS column generally deals more -much more - in appreciation than in depreciation. However, it is obligatory on the historian to also (occasionally) notice individuals whose influence on history was MALIGN rather than salutary. One such person was the Hindu ideologue M S Golwalkar, whose birth anniversary his followers are marking this year'. When Nathuram Godse was sentenced to death for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, the learned judge categorically declared that 'neither the RSS nor Guruji Golwalkar had anything to do with that act of unpardonable crime'. Most of our pseudo-secular journalists today, under the economic hegemony of the secular mafia of mass media, would be too willing to do 'investigative' journalism in the name of objective secular history ? to sell their non-existent souls for a mess of pottage ? in order to find out whether Justice G D Khosla who gave the final verdict was saffronized or communal in his family background which influenced him to give a verdict in favour of the RSS and Guruji Golwakar. In this context let us hear the pontifical time-defying secular verdict of Ramachandra Guha: 'On 30 January, 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered by Nathuram Godse. Although Godse was not a member of the RSS at the time of the murder, he had been one in the past. And there were reports that in several places RSS members had celebrated his act by distributing sweets. As a precautionary measure, Golwalkar and other RSS workers were put in jail. Secret documents that this writer has recently seen strongly suggest that even if the RSS was not directly implicated in Gandhi's murder, its main leader was not entirely averse to such a happening'. I never knew that journalists can function as unpaid agents of the police force in India which was described by Justice Mullah of the Allahabad High Court in a historic pronouncement as 'there is no more organized lawless criminal force in the country than the Indian Police Force'.
Suitably readapting the words of George Orwell from his brilliant essay 'Politics and the English Language', I would like to say that the political language of Indian journalists of global fame (if not influence!) like Ramachandra Guha is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder justiciable through the sordid mill of one sided journalism in order to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell had many of our bumptious pseudo-secular journalists in view when he wrote with biting sarcasm in the same essay referred to above: 'A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language.
Guruji Golwalkar
(1906 - 1973)
It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is REVERSIBLE'. Aaya Rams and Gaya Rams, Thekha Rams and Sub-jante Rams of the secular mafia mass media are working round the clock to make NEWSPEAK the official language of our degenerate nation today. Our great journalists let the meaning of their concealed prejudice and hatred of things Hindu choose the word and not the other way about. Good prose is like a window-pane. In the sordid world of journalistic prose, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them with pseudo-secular fervour. In the Indian context it means surrender not only to chosen non-saffronized words but also to chosen tycoons in the menacing mafia of mass media pervading the country.
Five years ago, as a private citizen of no significance, I had the opportunity to scrutinize and verify the available official records in the National Archives in New Delhi. Even if according to our mighty journalists of global stature, Justice GD Khosla was prejudiced in his verdict, they cannot so stupidly ignore or overlook the fact that Sardar Vallabai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister in the Government of India had also sent a letter to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister, on 27 February, 1948, less than a month after Mahatma Gandhi's assassination on 30 January, 1948 : 'I have kept myself almost in daily touch with the progress of the investigations regarding Bapu's assassination case. All the main accused have given long and detailed statements of their activities. It also clearly emerges from the statements that the RSS was not involved in it at all'. These words of Patel would be dismissed as 'saffronized' and 'communal' by the sweet suckers of honeyed secularism in all our major English Newspapers with the full benediction of the UPA Government in New Delhi.
Sardar Patel in a letter to Guruji Golwalkar paid this tribute to the RSS: 'There is no doubt that the RSS has served the Hindu society in times of crisis. In riot-torn areas where their help was needed, the youths of the Sangh protected the women and the children and did a lot for them. No one can doubt that the RSS provided succour and safety to Hindus in times of difficulty'.
Field Marshal Cariappa, whose patriotism can be questioned only by the paid below the table mercenaries in the world of pseudo-journalism, paid his soulful tribute to the RSS after watching their heroic work in Jammu and Kashmir when the Muslim marauders (romantic objects of unrequited love in the eyes of pseudo-secular Indian journalists!) invaded the Kashmir Valley in 1947: 'RSS is my heart's work. My dear young men, don't be disturbed by uncharitable comments of interested persons. Look ahead! Go ahead! The country is standing in need of your services'.
I remember reading an article by Kushwant Singh, by no means a saffronized communal Hindu like myself, in the Illustrated Weekly of India on 26 November, 1972 (page 49). Here are his observations as an independent spirited heroic journalist and not as a self-proclaimed historian of global fame: 'There are some people against whom you build up malice without knowing them. Guru Golwalkar had long been on the top of my hate list. What with the RSS doings in communal riots, the assassination of the Mahatma, the talk of changing India from a secular to a Hindu state! However as a journalist I could not resist the chance of meeting him. I expected to run into a cordon of uniformed swayamsevaks. There are none; not even plainclothes CID to take down the number of my car. It is a middle-class apartment with an appearance of puja going on inside-rows of sandals outside, fragrance of agarbatti, bustle of women behind the scenes; tinkle of utensils and crockery. In a small room sit a dozen men in spotless white kurtas and dhotis - all looking newly washed as only Maharashtrian Brahmins manage to do. And Guru Golwalkar: a frail man in mid-sixties: black hair curling to his shoulders; a moustache covering his mouth; a wispy grey bread dangling down his chin. An unerasable smile and dark eyes twinkling through his bifocals. He looks like an Indian Ho Chi Minh. For a man who had only recently undergone surgery for breast cancer he looks remarkably fit and cheerful'.
When the interview started, I told Guruji Golwalkar 'I don't know where to begin. I am told you shun publicity and your organization is secret.'
Guruji said: 'It is true we do not seek publicity but there is nothing secret about us. There is no militarism in our movement. We value discipline - which is a different matter.'
Even a cursory reading of this article by Kushwant Singh will show that he was overwhelmed by the simplicity, decency, decorum, humility and reverence of Guruji Golwalkar. To sum up in Kushwant Singh's own words: 'Was I impressed? I admit I was. He did not try to persuade me to his point of view. He made me feel that he was open to persuasion. I accepted his invitation to visit him in Nagpur and see things for myself. Maybe I can bring him round to making Hindu-Muslim unity the main aim of his RSS Or am I being a simple-minded Sardarji?'
Acharya Vinoba Bhave, Rajaji, Jayaprakash Narayan, Mahatma Gandhi and several great men have paid their tribute to the outstanding qualities of Sri Guruji Golwalkar as a fearless leader of national significance. My rejoinder to Ramachandra Guha in this context will be in the words of another Parsi journalist R K Karanjia: 'Guruji Golwalkar had no axe to grind, and in the pursuit of his ideals, languor was not in his heart, weakness was not in his word, weariness was not on his brow. It would be good if other political leaders emulate his example of dedicated life and win the respect and confidence of his followers'.
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)