Hindutva

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Great article - deserves to be posted in full..

Imprisoned by Left intellectual terrorism

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> It hurts. When you write a positive article on a decent person and get into a diary item or a sarcastic news item, just because of the so-called colour you wear. Apparently, someone like me can only be accepted as a venom spewing hate-monger, incapable of civil dialogue.

I was recently in London to attend the world Hindi conference as a Hindi author and mediaperson. The BBC invited me for an interview, with some others. The first question the BBC correspondent asked was about the Babri demolition! I was perplexed. I said, ‘‘but this was supposed to be on Hindi conference?’’ He replied, ‘‘Yes, but you come from a RSS background.’’ This implies that I can’t be anything else but a rioter. This hate from the Leftists kills and imprisons. It affects our family, our writings and us.

Such hatred has never been a part of my life. I had Muslim friends in my school days, we played in the local masjid, no one in the RSS ever opposed such friendships. In Lucknow, our immediate neighbour, famous Congress leader Ali Zaheer’s bungalow on Shahnajaf Road was almost my second home, where I played with his sons Salim and Rehman.

As a young journalist in the early ’80s, I once went to see Russi Karanjia in his Fort office in Mumbai. I had no reference, but after just fifteen minutes he called me in and gave me an important assignment in tribal areas. People may have different ideas about him, but I have always held him in the highest esteem.

So was the doyen of Indian journalism, Chalapathi Rau. I was a regular visitor in his Shah Jahan Road apartment. He knew I worked for Panchjanya, yet his love and affection knew no ideological colours. He was a reservoir of wisdom.

In Silvassa, where I worked, a great deal of patronage came from Dr Gopal Singh, the then Lt Governor of Goa, who nominated me on the Union Home Minister’s Advisory Council during Indira Gandhi’s Prime Ministership. I was the youngest ever member on it and he knew my views.

Things changed when I arrived in Delhi. The city is so politicised, so full of the prickly, rather snobbish, hatred from so-called ‘liberals’ that you feel you are living in a cactus farm. If you are a saffronite, you must be the devil himself. A dowry-seeker, or perhaps a wife-beater, someone who is anti-woman, anti-minorities, anti-Pakistan, anti-civil dialogue, an obscurantist who does not think of the next century but revels in the mythical past. All we ever read are rabid texts written by Godse or Adolf Hitler or at the most we try some V S Naipaul.

So it becomes the bounden duty of every pro-free dialogue, pro-peace, pro-women freedom and supporter of everything that defines an objective civilised progressive society to make sure we are pushed to their perceptional Gulags and Siberias forever and not allowed to enter the domains they have so painstakingly preserved for nice people like themselves. Their so-called ideological battle is simply a fierce desire to preserve their monopolies on civil society forums or perhaps their seminaring careers in the West. They need us to be their ‘‘enemy’’ so they can write their passionate tracts for the benefit of appreciative audiences overseas.

Thus, news about us is either put in the dustbin or twisted to provide the sinister hidden ‘‘message’’. If we say a nice person is a nice person, there must me some realpolitik behind it, so an ‘‘expose’’ appears in place of a report. It is simply impossible for me to praise a CPM leader such as Somnath Chatterji in our editorial or publish Mani Shankar, D Raja or A B Bardhan’s views with due respect. There are always digs at my ‘‘real’’ agenda. If invited on a TV show, many times questions are framed in a manner to elicit the ‘‘desired’’ response, which can be used to embarrass us. As a response to this terrifying diatribe combined with utter social exclusiveness, we too try to hit back, calling the opposite side ‘‘Pakistanis’’, anti-Hindu, anti-India. Where do we go from here?

Disappointing? Sometimes yes, but pushed to the wall, it has also helped to reinforce our belief in what we believe. Because hate can never drive people so long, can never become an inspiration for a just cause. Care to see what do we do and where from we get our workers?

Shri Ram Joshi is a distinguished engineer, an M.Tech. from BHU. He has three sons, all post-graduates and all became RSS pracharaks. Why? How would a mother be ready to send all the three sons for work, which would never earn them a Padma award or wealth?

Dr Vishwamitra from Delhi completed his residentship and instead of opening a nursing home in Rajouri Garden, went to Meghalaya, married a Khasi girl and started a free village dispensary. Why? Another girl, an MBBS, chose to work in a remote Naga village, running a free clinic supported by her doctor friends and family. Are these examples of hate? Can hate ever drive a young person to do something positive?

There are hundreds of others. If we say, we are against dowry and the maximum numbers of inter-caste and dowry-less marriages are held in RSS inspired families, or we strongly oppose female foeticide, that we ridicule Hindus who worship Durga during Puja but ‘‘kill’’ her when she arrives in the womb, or feel equally happy to visit a nearby church during Christmas, there is simply no possibility of a patient audience. Unless there is a protest against Valentine’s Day. This gets wide media coverage, surely because at that moment we saffronites fit snugly in our perceptional cage.

Yet we have grown by leaps and bounds. We have found new friends and listeners in forbidden fortresses. Let there be a hundred ways towards truth, let a million flowers bloom, each with a different colour and smell. A good person, whether in the Congress or CPM or any other stream of faith, must be saluted, revered and recognised, until he proves us wrong. That is the spirit of pluralism we have imbibed.

The writer is the editor of Panchjanya<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->