Dhu,
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->as said by Vivekananda, he would applaud even a rajasik murderer who dared to act than the tamasik slumber that was india's condition around 1900 or so.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> I doubt even the visionary Vivekananda could have foreseen the kind of murderers Hitler and his nazis were.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->idealistic fools like nehru<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Fool, oh yes. Idealistic? <i>Very</i> different ideals from my own... that's all the positive I can say about him. He never understood India, and one can see that in his bumbling descendants.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->russian anti-jewish pogroms<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Those were very horrid. But anti-Semitism had been instilled in the Russians by the Orthodox Church, like it had been done in the west by the Catholic Church and later the Protestant ones. To the point that even that break-away Christian heresy of communism in Russia was anti-semetic.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->From the Indian viewpoint, they are all, including communism, extensions of the origianl abrahamic error.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Very true. Although the ones you listed are particularly Christian and Islamic extensions (anti-Semitism is not Judaic, but I suspect it something reactionary: Christianity and Islam trying to delegitimise their parent religion).
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->WW2 was simply Germany's way of catching up to the other colonialists.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Not entirely. Germany had lost its (admittedly fewer) colonies in the aftermath of WWI. They had to sign away large portions of their land (and people) to Eastern-Europe, as well give away their colonies and pay impossibly huge sums of money that brought it to ruination. After all, someone had to foot the tabs for WWI.
Although Germany had come to the rescue of foolish Austria-Hungary when the latter thought it clever to start WWI, Germany was made almost the sole scapegoat when their side lost. WWI and the decisions at the 'negotation' table thereafter left it a ruined and demoralised country. This is why Hitler's bully-approach took root in Germany so easily. They were looking for a strong leader. To their misfortune and lasting shame they jumped at the first idiot that came along. And <i>what </i>an idiot he turned out to be.
It really was WWI and the losses incurred from paying other countries for the costs of war that sped Germany into a WWII scenario. So Germany's reasons for imperialism weren't limited to merely "catching up" with the other colonialists - it had been on a somewhat level playing ground before - but rather an attempt to first come back to an equal footing and then go one up. It was also an indirect form of revenge for having been made to suffer humiliation after WWI (no other European country had been made to pay so much in prior wars - after all WWI Germany was still a monarchy of sorts and there's the indignation that goes with that).
European history of the last 2000 years is ugly from beginning to end. There's a great lesson to be learnt from Germany. They lost the foolish WWI and paid heavily for it. Then, without thinking, they blindly accepted the first leader to get them out of it. They entered a terrible age of inhumanity, and also went into WWII with vengeance in their (subconcious) minds. They lost WWII, paid again by having the country split into East and West Germany and suffering other humiliations. Finally when they learnt their lesson and no longer went down the wrong path, they were able to get back onto the road of humanity and got their country back together.
    We [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] made it plain in a letter which has been made public that <b>we did not consider the war as a fight between nations</b> and governments (still less between good people and bad people) <b>but between two forces, the Divine and the Asuric.</b> <b>What we have to see is <i>on which side </i>men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on<i> the right side</i>, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose</b> in spite of all defects, errors, wrong movements and actions which are common to human nature and all human collectivities. <b>The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity, degrade it horribly and might lead even, at the worst, to its eventual failure as a race, </b>as others in the past evolution failed and perished. <b>That is the whole question and all other considerations are either irrelevant or of a minor importance. </b>The Allies at least have stood for human values, though they may often act against their own best ideals (human beings always do that); Hitler stands for diabolical values or for human values exaggerated in the wrong way until they become diabolical (e.g. the virtues of the Herrenvolk, the master race). That does not make the English or Americans nations of spotless angels nor the Germans a wicked and sinful race, but as an indicator it has a primary importance.
    ...
    <b>Even if I knew that the Allies would misuse their victory or bungle the peace or partially at least spoil the opportunities opened to the human world by that victory, I would still put my force behind them. At any rate things could not be one-hundredth part as bad as they would be under Hitler. The ways of the Lord would still be openâto keep them open is what matters. Let us stick to the real, the central fact, the need to remove the peril of black servitude and revived barbarism threatening India and the world....</b>
    P.S. Ours is a Sadhana which involves not only devotion or union with the Divine or a perception of Him in all things and beings but also action as workers and instruments and a work to be done in the world or a force to be brought in the world under difficult conditions; then one has to see one's way and do what is commanded and support what has to be supported, even if it means war and strife carried on whether through chariots and bows and arrows or tanks and cars and American bombs and planes, in either case ghoram karma [a dreadful work, Gita, 3.1].... As for violence etc. the old command rings out for us once again after many ages: âMayaivaite nihatah purvameva nimittamatram bhava Savyasacinâ [By me and none other already they are slain, become only the occasion, O Arjuna, Gita, 11.33].131<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->September 19, 1940
(A message to the Governor of Madras, accompanied by a contribution. This declaration was Sri Aurobindo's first public intervention since he withdrew in 1910.)
    We feel that not only is this a battle waged in just self-defence and in defence of the nations threatened with the world-domination of Germany and the Nazi system of life, but that it is a defence of civilisation and its highest attained social, cultural and spiritual values and of the whole future of humanity. To this cause our support and sympathy will be unswerving whatever may happen; we look forward to the victory of Britain and, as the eventual result, an era of peace and union among the nations and a better and more secure world-order.129<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-Sushmita+Jan 24 2006, 09:07 AM-->QUOTE(Sushmita @ Jan 24 2006, 09:07 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->I doubt even the visionary Vivekananda could have foreseen the kind of murderers Hitler and his nazis were.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Were they any worse than the muslims that had invaded India in the past. So Vivekananda must certainly have been aware of the depths to which abrahamic type ideologues of any stripe could sink. These same Muslims in later times did some land grants to Hindu temples, lessened jizia, etc, much like the british after the initial brutal colonization period- of course it was done to increase their parasitization dividends off of the people. So I do not see anything uniquely demonic about the Nazis, they were acting out initial stages of the colonization enterprise. of course they may have had some reason to be angered by WW1 indemnities, but they never had any world colonial prizes like indo-china, americas, india, or china that other colonials had. list of german colonies (off the web):
Africa
* German East Africa
o Tanzania (present-day)
o Rwanda (present-day)
o Burundi (present-day)
* German South West Africa
o Namibia (present-day)
* German West Africa - only for two or three years until separated due to distance.
o Cameroons (Kamerun)
o Togoland (until 1918)
o Togo (present-day)
o parts of Togoland were transferred to Ghana
Pacific
* German New Guinea
o German Solomon Islands
o Caroline Islands (Karolinen)
+ Federated States of Micronesia (present-day)
+ Palau (present-day)
o Mariana Islands (Marianen)
o Nauru
o Marshall Islands
* Samoa
China
* Jiaozhou Bay (Kiautschou)
o Tsingtao
As you can see.. there is nothing very dramatic in these token posseions. Germany was only unified in 1860. By this time, Britain had already fought a mutiny in India. America had colonised N america. French, Belgians were busy in Indo-China. Spain had South America. Russia had Siberia. By eve of WW2, it was simply time for the Germans to come to speed (after their first WW1 attempt had failed).
About Hitler: Was Hitler any more psychotic than a Stalin or a Mao. Still theVietnamese were forced to do business with these psychopaths to throw off the French and then the American colonials. (On top of that, the Vietnamese viscerally hated their Chinese helpers) So by comparision, there was nothing "wrong" per se in Bose allying with the enemy's enemy or rather seeking help from foreign powers. In international matters, there is no right or wrong, there is only your personal interest. If we want, we can even view Bose as India's Ho Chi Minh. ( Ho Chi Minh was foremost a vietanamese nationalist- not a Communist- which the dumb Americans could never understand and probably still don't.)
the congress makes it a point to have a NETAJI gate in hyderabad, just to they can garner a few more votes, but forgets about his birthday - cos that doesnt translate to votes !!
what a fantastically grateful nation was Netaji born in !!!
netaji allied with the axis powers so they would equip the indian army with ammunition.
at that time we werent capable of equipping ourselves and the allies wouldnt have helped.
netaji was just trying to make hay while the chance still existed.
sush, you needn't have come up with that useless rant - anyone who clubs netaji as an evil person of the likes of hitler (who's only evil deed was the holocaust, never the ww2) needs psychiatric treatment. besides hitler certainly was no more evil than churchill who wanted to hold on to india till hell froze over, or the turkic murders who killed more hindus than the total number of jews ever walked the earth.
PS : i request the mods to transfer the recent netaji-related posts of this thread to the Netaji thread under "indian history".
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Were they any worse than the muslims that had invaded India in the past.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Good point. But the nazis used the latest technology (gas chambers, etc) and performed cruel scientific experiments on their victims. Not that this is out of reach of The Faithful now, but it didn't happen during the centuries of invasions. So it might still have been outside of Vivekananda's imagination.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->By eve of WW2, it was simply time for the Germans to come to speed (after their first WW1 attempt had failed).<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> WWI failed, but it was not an attempt at land-grabbing or imperialism. It was a foolish attempt to "relive the old glory days of European war" and for coming to the aid of their brother-country Austria-Hungary. They learnt the hard way that there was no glory in 20th century wars, only poison gasses etc.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In international matters, there is no right or wrong<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> There is in human, spiritual matters. This was wrong. The choices we make and the reasons we have for making them matter very greatly. For example, Netaji can't explain away his choice to Krishna in such matters by stating "patriotism" as the reason. Wrong is wrong, it doesn't change from yesterage to this. International matters swing left and right minute by minute and are of no moment. Yesterday the Taliban were America's friend, today they are (officially) on their hitlist (unofficially the relationship's changed but little since the Cold War).
While we are here, we must consciously act and do the right thing. Netaji was either not aware of his choices or consciously made the wrong one. Either way, he was wrong. One can't say "his heart was in the right place" because if it were, he should have had the sense to do a bit more research into what he was getting himself and his blind followers into: why didn't he bother to find out what Hitler's views were on India's Independence? Either Netaji had no sense or he was wrong (neither case deserving of admiration) - and all he had was blind patriotism, if that. But that didn't save the country and never could have.
Unconsidered actions for the cause of patriotism can result in serious consequences. What if Hitler had won? What if he came to India and took over? (Remember, Hitler was known for <i>not</i> keeping his word, eg. the Warsaw Pact). If he suffered any of us to live (I doubt it) we'd be kept under his thumb - far worse off than under the English. How long will Subhas Bose have been considered a hero?
Having successfully displaced the British tyrants with the Hitler demon, I seriously doubt we'll have any gratitude for Bose - I don't think his begging Hitler to spare us would have had much effect either. It certainly wouldn't for India's Jewish population. Hitler would probably have set the Muslims to kill us, like he used them to help the Ustashe kill the Serbs. Thank God that Hitler and nazism failed and nothing came of Bose's very misplaced enthusiasm.
Hitler couldn't stomache Jewish and Slavic people - both Caucasian people - who were "untermenschen" (subhumans) to him. He wanted the former dead and the second cleared away for "lebensraum". Now, I can't imagine how quickly he'd have wiped us - and the rest of the non-white people in the world - off the face of the Earth. And we'll have had Bose to thank for all of that.
My view on this case coincides with Aurobindo's (reposting from post #171):
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->What we have to see is on<b> which side </b>men and nations put themselves; if they put themselves on the right side, they at once make themselves instruments of the Divine purpose ... The victory of one side (the Allies) would keep the path open for the evolutionary forces: the victory of the other side would drag back humanity...<b>That is the whole question and all other considerations are either irrelevant or of a minor importance</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If Netaji's efforts to organize the Indian prisoners of war against the british were fundamentally evil then so was Gandhiji's Quit India movement. Because Quit India movement tried to hurt Britain when it was busy fighting evil Hitler. So would the same adjectives as foolish and stupid be applied to Gandhi also?
Why don't we go back little further in time. Whole of Indian independence movement and Hindu renaissance had been instrumental in weakening the British. The same British who were to fight the evil Hitler during the WWII. So does it mean whole Hindu renaissance and independence movement were evil too?
We need to get off this line.
Subhas Chandra Bose was a great patriot and he did whatever he could to liberate India. Due to his efforts British were weaker than what they would have after their victory in WWII. That added weakness hastened their departure from India. retrospect is always 20/20, but even in retrospect I can't find any fault with what Netaji did.
As far as he saw, the war could have gone either way. He was trying to position Indian interests so that even if the axis won, Indian interests would have some protection. One can always argue that it is foolish to hope for any decent deal from Hitler type of evil. But the deal would have been far worse if Hitler had won and there were no Indian party in his good books.
I am a great admirer of Sri Aurobindo and have read him avidly and received much help. He was a great yogi and had far deeper insights. His contention was that Congress should have gone fully in support mode for British during the war. He thought India would have had a much better deal if Congress hadn't launched Quit-India movement and put British in an awkward position when they were most vulnerable. But for those who are not blessed with the foresight that Sri Aurobindo had, that is still hindsight being 20/20.
Netaji did what he considered best for India with full devotion and lost his life doing it. He deserves Indians' full respect for that. Calling him names while acknowledging that he was doing everything in good faith and while being unaware of Hitler's evil deeds, is uncalled for. Even an earlier post mentioned that when he became suspicious of Hitler's motives he managed to take a submarine ride to Japan to try organizing Indian prisoners of war there. He was all out for India. Hitler and Japan were just incidentals for him. His small victories on India's eastern front had elevated the national mood unprecedentally. His efforts led to weakening of British faith in Indian recruits in the army too. So, all of it helped India gain freedom one way or another.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Were they any worse than the muslims that had invaded India in the past.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> Good point. But the nazis used the latest technology (gas chambers, etc) and performed cruel scientific experiments on their victims. Not that this is out of reach of The Faithful now, but it didn't happen during the centuries of invasions. So it might still have been outside of Vivekananda's imagination.
so murders have grown progressively more attrocious just cos technology got advanced?? early man used to kill with hammer blows and poison darts, turkics with swords and germans with gas chanbers and usa with depleted uranium - and the degree of attrocity is bigger cos the technology used is more?? strangling a person with bare hands is a lesser crime than blowing his hea off with a Uzi???
like i said, psychiatric treatment could come in handy.
There is in human, spiritual matters. This was wrong.
human spritual religious matters are not what is topmost in one's mind when one is fighting for his country, when one is fighting to throw out oppressors. by your token, simon bolivar, charles martel, rana pratap are all scoundrels cos they failed your dharmic acid test. dharma my ass - on the battle field, a army marches on its belly and wins cos of the number of kills it makes. patton was right (if you knoiw which quote i am alluding to). had that not been the case, than the pope could have fought the nazis and dalai lama could have defeated the commie chinese.
your stand is utopian, pseudo-dharmic and whats worse you dont even seem to realise it. btw, in the mahabharata, krishna's advice to arjun was to go and kill them - cos sometimes you got to, especially when your own life is at threat.
The choices we make and the reasons we have for making them matter very greatly. For example, Netaji can't explain away his choice to Krishna in such matters by stating "patriotism" as the reason. Wrong is wrong, it doesn't change from yesterage to this. International matters swing left and right minute by minute and are of no moment. Yesterday the Taliban were America's friend, today they are (officially) on their hitlist (unofficially the relationship's changed but little since the Cold War).
While we are here, we must consciously act and do the right thing. Netaji was either not aware of his choices or consciously made the wrong one. Either way, he was wrong.
he was well aware of hitler's contemp for asians. he was also aware that hitler and co wouldnt win.
he was also aware that if england won the war without being weakened considerably for it, then they would come back to hold on to their colonies with a vengence. so he knew that it was imperative to ensure that the colonised countries did their bit to ensure the oppressor got considerably weakened, and also knew the importance of indians to be prepared for it, should the english return. to both ends he was very successful - the recently declassified documents prove that england knew that their raj army was gone, when the allied soldiers teamed up with the hitler-netaji combine.
somehow i get the feeling that your pseudo-gandhian-dharmic-myopic-marxist stand is the most eveil of them all.
One can't say "his heart was in the right place" because if it were, he should have had the sense to do a bit more research into what he was getting himself and his blind followers into: why didn't he bother to find out what Hitler's views were on India's Independence? Either Netaji had no sense or he was wrong (neither case deserving of admiration) - and all he had was blind patriotism, if that. But that didn't save the country and never could have.
right. gandhi did save india though - by ensuring that thousands of indians died trying to save english lives, and then came nehru - india's reedeemer.
heard of DBP ?? one killer blow by the vietnamese send the french packing.
btw, boith your head and heart seem to be in the wrong places. do you like mother teresa and the love she had for all humanity??
Unconsidered actions for the cause of patriotism can result in serious consequences. What if Hitler had won? What if he came to India and took over? (Remember, Hitler was known for <i>not</i> keeping his word, eg. the Warsaw Pact). If he suffered any of us to live (I doubt it) we'd be kept under his thumb - far worse off than under the English. How long will Subhas Bose have been considered a hero?
forever. unless we become a nation of people like you.
question is how long will beevis and butthead be considered heros - and thats for making india a country of neutered wimps nad having NO hand whatsoever in our independence, except delaying it by a decade or more.
and hitler ould not have won - everyone knew that.
the thing is, had hitler lost, without first punching a hole through the colonial countries , - we would still have the english viceroy in delhi.
Having successfully displaced the British tyrants with the Hitler demon, I seriously doubt we'll have any gratitude for Bose - I don't think his begging Hitler to spare us would have had much effect either.
if you saw the pictures of netaji inspecting the ranks with field marshall Rommel for company, and then saw gandhi in his loincloth smiling ear to ear in front of the poms, you would know who went begging. btw, it was mussolini who started the netaji-axis alliance. mussolini knew that as long as england held on to india, they would be well supplied with natural resources - so a sure way to weaken the poms was to ensure that india (india-pakistan-burma-bangladesh) slipped out of pom hands. in nataji they found the person who could rise to the occation. and in the axis powers netaji found the people who could help him raise an indian army and supply themn with artellery, so that the english could be kicked out in one decisive war. and what better time to have a war than when the english were occupied with the german wiermacht and luftwaffe.
It certainly wouldn't for India's Jewish population.
ahh, so thats what bothers you??? india's jewish population?? non indians hindu population??? you are another romilla thapar in the making.
Hitler would probably have set the Muslims to kill us, like he used them to help the Ustashe kill the Serbs. Thank God that Hitler and nazism failed and nothing came of Bose's very misplaced enthusiasm.
thank god that people like you are a rare species.
i am yet to meet another indian who was so ill-informed about netaji.
Hitler couldn't stomache Jewish and Slavic people - both Caucasian people - who were "untermenschen" (subhumans) to him. He wanted the former dead and the second cleared away for "lebensraum". Now, I can't imagine how quickly he'd have wiped us - and the rest of the non-white people in the world - off the face of the Earth. And we'll have had Bose to thank for all of that.
and you have the jewish media or your lack of acumen to thank for that impeccable analysis of how netaji allied with the axis powers to ensure the indian population would get wiped away with the help of the muslims.
like i said, very rolimma thaparic arguements.
i dont believe that we still have indians, who think that gandhi was some great human being, who think shivaji was a hindu zealot and hate monger, who think ashoka was great cos he took to buddhism and thus rendered india gutless, who think that breaking babri masjid was bad, who think the muslims didnt deserved the godhra riots, while hindus deserved the hampi carnage, and who think netaji of all people, was unpatriotic and a bad strategist. somehow your ZOG-washed (and hog washed) halfwit arguements explain a lot about india's miserable state and why we are a nation of wimps. wimpicity has gone into our blood into our genes. we feel bad for the little crimes (eg- babri) that we commit once in a blue moon but very happily forget and forgive the hampis, the jalionwallah bags, the insults and the apartheid. we team up with the same english to fight the brave japanese - just so that we can free the poms from japanese prison camps in burma - so they can come back and colonise us some more. indians have their heads in their arse, their spine in the indian ocean , their hearts in their brain, and wear their servile attitude on their sleeves. they find hitler evil cos he killed jews, find usa evil cos it naplamed vietnam, find nataji to be a traitor cos he was killed by an anglo-nehru secret pact and could never return, indians find rahim to be ram's bhai after 800 years of wholesale killing, find the chinesee to be bhai-bhai after hammering india black and blue. damn we deserve to be killed. the world could do with a billion less wipms.
<b>Ben Ami,</b>
I haven't ever accused you of being Romila Thaparish (or anything as horrid). I've already told you that I hate her (not in those words, but I said she had no brain... so same thing). I really can't say it any clearer than that.
I may come up in defense of our Jains, Parsees, Tibetan Buddhists and Jews because India is carrying endangered minorities - some indigenous, others were immigrants at some point in time. They look to us for protecting them. If good but vulnerable people depend on us, it is wrong to let them down. Of course Hindus matter greatly to me, I'd be lying if I said they weren't foremost in my mind.
Since you've thrown so many accusations my way, you'll just have to accept one from my end: I guess if India was an all-Christian/Marxist/Islamic nation filled with patriots, you'd still be happy for them being patriots. For myself, I wouldn't care about such an India at all.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->so murders have grown progressively more attrocious just cos technology got advanced?? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>What I said: </b>So it might still have been outside of Vivekananda's imagination.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I was talking about Vivekananda who couldn't have imagined the extent of what a degenerate kind like the nazis were capable of.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->human spritual religious matters are not what is topmost in one's mind when one is fighting for his country, when one is fighting to throw out oppressors.
...
btw, in the mahabharata, krishna's advice to arjun was to go and kill them - cos sometimes you got to, especially when your own life is at threat.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The Gita and Mahabharata say a lot more than that. Bhisma siding with the Kauravas was wrong, in spite of his reasons being right. Krishna wasn't on the side of Duryodhana, he didn't tell him to go and kill the Pandavas. The side does matter and appealing to the Mahabharata to support Bose's choice does not help.
The Gita says that in all actions of man, God, Dharma and one's Atma should be the topmost in one's mind.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->you have the jewish media or your lack of acumen to thank for that impeccable analysis of how netaji allied with the axis powers to ensure the indian population would get wiped away with the help of the muslims.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--> (Don't know any Jewish media*). I meant Hitler wouldn't keep any promises of sparing the Indian (Hindu) population and would probably control or even exterminate us (if we got too vocal in our dissent) with the help of the ever ready Islamic presence. I never accused Bose of masterminding that, he just didn't appear to have foreseen that danger.
*I'm also not under the delusion that Jewish people control the US media, as the KKK and other Christian fundies keep repeating. It's anti-Semetic Christian paranoia that the Jewish people are trying to bring down the White Christian "culture". You've been too long in the US and a little of their constant propaganda on this point has somehow managed to seep through even your well-guarded head.
<b>Ashok Kumar,</b>
You're right that I shouldn't have alluded to Bose's choices as being "idiotic". Thanks for correcting me on some other points as well.
I am rather afraid about the admiration for Netaji for several reasons. Most of which I've so far identified. But there's an additional one, the most obvious one, that concerns our present rather than the past.
Anti-Hindu/anti-Indian interests waste no time in blackening Indians' stance anyway they can. They won't care for the reasons of why Bose did whatever he did. They will not bother to research him, and even if they did do the research they will not admit to any non-nazi motives on his account. Any open support from the present Hindu community to someone like Bose will just make western and general anti-Hindu interests within India produce some media item with the headline: "Hindus commemorate Hindu-nazi ally" with brief photos or letters or whatever of Bose with German nazis to "prove" their point. This is what the world will get to see.
For proof of how the smallest irrelevant thing can get twisted into "collaboration or support for nazis" see http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/article.../golwalkar.html <!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But to give an idea of just how routinely these two quotations [of Golwalkar] are <b>employed to build the Hindutva movement's image</b>, let us first mention their presentation in a <b>BBC documentary on the Bharatiya Janata Party </b>("Indian People's Party"), broadcast on 17 June <b>1993</b>.
Typically, the speaker announcing the documentary, who spent no more than two sentences on its contents, already said that it would "reveal the connections of the organization behind the BJP with Nazi Germany", this organization being the RSS. In the documentary, an actor dressed and made up to look like Golwalkar in his younger days, read out the two paragraphs. However, no actual connection between the RSS and Nazi Germany was revealed. In fact, the entire 45 minutes did not contain any other information about or quotations from the RSS's ideological classics: not from Golwalkar's later publications, nor from any other Hindutva ideologue. Till today, and even in academic publications, it is very common to see the anti-BJP rhetoric built entirely on these few sentences in Golwalkar's pamphlet of more than sixty years ago.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Admiration for Bose won't affect our relations with Tibet, Israel or our Parsee community as they know us better, so they'll actually bother to dig deeper and find out the facts of history. However, western and Indian anti-Hindu interests are <b>looking </b>for any flaws they can find - surface flaws will suffice when they can find nothing worse. Nothing puts the civilians of the west on guard faster than supposed links to nazism. It's hypocrisy, but inescapable. Their governments are looking for reasons and opportunities to send more missionaries and other (worse) troubles our way, and this will definitely help them get their people's willing consent. At least we need to avoid giving them the ammunition. They care nothing for truth, they already regularly identify Hinduism with nazism (perhaps in their desperate attempt to conceal that Christianity is the cause for nazism). Witzel is but the tip of a huge iceberg.
Indians today need to be careful about anything and everything we do, because there are interests (including India's leftists) watching, waiting and hoping for us to trip. And since they know we don't trip that we've never made the blunder of inhumanity, they've got tripwires laid out and wait around for our next fall.
I retain my opinion of Bose's choice in siding with Hitler, although I admit I was very wrong about his patriotism and that his motives were purer than I had understood. I'm glad to think somewhat better of him, but the end still does not justify the means for me.
Sushmita ji most of the time you voice balanced opinions but have to differ with you on this particular one about Bose.The effect of Bose's azad hindu fauj struggle on the psyche of the youngmen in those days is immeasurable.
For the young men of the country who wanted a alternative to gandhi's method's Bose was the only real alternative , it was the outpouring of the anger of thousands of young men who rejoiced at each small victory of bose and wept at their losses.
The naval mutiny of bombay which is a far overlooked chapter in history was one of the critical turning points in british thinking , it went so far to force attlee to make a statement in the british parliament about india being a sinking ship ..... do not remember it exactly
this did not happen due to gandhi's methods but due to one subhash chandra bose.
if your contention with bose's actions is based on the question of intrepretation of principles then let me ask you
1.What would you have wanted Bose to do ? Where would he find the ammunition to launch his armed struggle
2.Why should Bose's patriotism be any less than that of gandhi or nehru(if it exists)
3.The only principle to be followed is the country's interest's shall come first not the methods ....
if your contention is about had hitler won the war and advanced onto india
since the question is hypothetical , would give a hypothetical answer
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> to a race that had not tasted freedom in so many years , dying like warriors on the battlefield would have been much better than living like slaves or the division of our nation and destruction of culture and society.
like mel gibson says in braveheart "You come to fight as free men, and free men you are... They may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!" "
War is a dirty business , Bose did what he thought was the best for mother india in his given circumstances
<!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> if Krishna's karma yoga is to be followed in spirit you cannot judge bose ,plain and simple and it does not make him a lesser patriot than bhagat or shivaji.
not that this would help you see the light sush, but you are talking as if Netaji teamed up with hitler to kill the jews, and not to fight the english.
the azad hind force teamed up with the weirmacht and not the waffen ss. they teamed up with the imperial japanese army which was hammering europeans all over, not with the unit 32 (or something) that was torturing the chinese in manchuria.
and yes, the media as also most of geo pol is controlled by the jews. you wouldnt know - but even as we talk they are doing their bit to ensure russia and belarus (white russia = bela russ-ia) become multicultural countries, they are doing their bit to ensure that the holocaust is considered the greatest crime of all time, ahead of suharto's genocide, and bangladesh, ahead of the nuclear bombings, the killing fields, the gulags, the formation of the new world, et al. henry kissinger never had any problems naplaming cambodia did he now?? but what would you know - you fancy yourself to have it in you to see the danger of teaming up with hitler - while maintaining netaji never had any foresight!!!
he had it more than anyone - he knew full well that 2 nations could not win against so many - but could weaken them all before falling. and thats precisely what happened. DBP would not have fetched vietnam their independence if a full fledged french force was still around. the second world war tok the wind out of all the colonial powers - the countries which struck the iron while it was hot (ie. while the colonisers were still reeling) got independent.
the english didnt leave india for any war we fought - they left cos they realised that should we fight a war - they with their weakened army and we with an ex-raj army that has switched allegiance to the one real hero of our independence movement, then they wouldnt have won.
As far as Indians were concerned we had no enemity with Germany, Japan, Russia or USA, but we did have direct conflict with England. However, civilizationally we had very little overlap with these other countries save Japan. We had also come to have an intitmate civilizational overlap with England despite the negative basis for it. Given this situation it is not surprising that different Indians saw it very differently: some like Savarkar and Aurobindo felt we should stand by England others like Bose and Gandhi felt we could exploit the situation to our advantage. What ever the case it should be kept in mind that Indians ultimately played a major role in the allied victory in World war II despite S. Bose's opposite vector.
It is pretty clear that Indian freedom was a consequence of many contingencies: The world war had devastated England's holding capacity. The naval rebellion, the national support for the arrested INA officers and general strikes sent the message home to the British that their days were numbered.
It should also not be assumed that the Britons might have given us a better deal- As Kaushal and Acharya have been mentioning they already had a program in place to preclude any possibility of a resurgent India. They feared the vast Indian army as a new power base with the normally divided people unified by experience of the freedom struggle. Only sad point was that there was no major political alternative to the Congress. This was also a consequence of the British social engineering.
and as for the topspin you put to the gita, it says dharma/duty comes above everything.
arjuns main duty at that time was to prevent the kuravas from winning. if a few men died - then so be it.
netaji's main duty at that time was to get us freedom. if that meant teaming with a madman, then so be it.
netiji fullfills the crieteria better than any one in know since arjun himself.
and i'd prefer to read the koran in a free india over reading the gita or anything else in a india under poms.
how the hell does gita and other theology factor into a discussion about a war of independence. was bhagat singh a lesser patriot than ramakrishna cos the latter knew hinduism more?? bollocks !!
Before considering the possibility of a hypothetical German genocide of indians, people should not forget the famines of Vangal. They were in no way less than the genocides of Germans or Russians. Even as the Germans were killing their victims, their linguistic cousins the Britons killed about a 3*10^6 in Bengal. This was a deliberate british action despite their own high-ranking official Mountbatten bringing attention to it.
On the whole the through out their reign the british caused deliberate starvations - up to 25 famines- throughout the land like in Tamilnad and Bihar which some people believe resulted in deaths as high as 30-40*10^6 Hindus and ruined agriculture in many parts of the country. Eventhough the Mogols Shah Jahan and Awrangzeb, and before them Alla-ad-din, Mohammad Tuglaq and the Bahmanid sultans followed similar policies the British actually out did them. Hitler's massacres pale in comparison to the whole and Churchill is as much a criminal against humanity. Now it is the duty of Indians to drive home this point of the Indian genocide by the British.
others like Bose and Gandhi felt we could exploit the situation to our advantage.
explain pls. just how was gandhi opposed to england during the ww2?? by agreeing to send a million indians to fight in libya, italy, burma???
What ever the case it should be kept in mind that Indians ultimately played a major role in the allied victory in World war II despite S. Bose's opposite vector.
a better way of putting it would be - indians ultimately played a major role in the allied victory (which the poms have only recently acknowledged, the bastards) in ww2, AND NOT SO MUCH IN OUR OWN BLOODY FREEDOM (ie,. we had no such thing)
DESPITE NETAJI AND SARVARKAR'S EVERY EFFORT, THANKS TO GANDHI'S halfwit pro-pom vector.
It is pretty clear that Indian freedom was a consequence of many contingencies: The world war had devastated England's holding capacity. The naval rebellion, the national support for the arrested INA officers and general strikes sent the message home to the British that their days were numbered.
spot on.
It should also not be assumed that the Britons might have given us a better deal- As Kaushal and Acharya have been mentioning they already had a program in place to preclude any possibility of a resurgent India.
they certainly had no intention of letting india become free. winnie C. even had plans to hold on to india forever. they did cos they had no other choice. the poms are the scum of the world, a 100 times worse than the germans. they killed more indians than germany killed jews and gentile combined, and indirectly caused more deaths to indians (by breeding poverty and bengal genocide) than they killed red indians.
They feared the vast Indian army as a new power base with the normally divided people unified by experience of the freedom struggle. Only sad point was that there was no major political alternative to the Congress. This was also a consequence of the British social engineering.
yes. as is the reverence for beevis and butthead a consequence of their social engineering and hogwash.
S.P mukherjee should have been born 30 years before he did - he, along with sarvarkars and gawlikars could have given us the alternative, nipping anglo-socialist G_N congress in the bud.
<!--QuoteBegin-Hauma Hamiddha+Jan 25 2006, 08:43 AM-->QUOTE(Hauma Hamiddha @ Jan 25 2006, 08:43 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Before considering the possibility of a hypothetical German genocide of indians, people should not forget the famines of Vangal. They were in no way less than the genocides of Germans or Russians. Even as the Germans were killing their victims, their linguistic cousins the Britons killed about a 3*10^6 in Bengal. This was a deliberate british action despite their own high-ranking official Mountbatten bringing attention to it.
On the whole the through out their reign the british caused deliberate starvations - up to 25 famines- throughout the land like in Tamilnad and Bihar which some people believe resulted in deaths as high as 30-40*10^6 Hindus and ruined agriculture in many parts of the country. Eventhough the Mogols Shah Jahan and Awrangzeb, and before them Alla-ad-din, Mohammad Tuglaq and the Bahmanid sultans followed similar policies the British actually out did them. Hitler's massacres pale in comparison to the whole and Churchill is as much a criminal against humanity. Now it is the duty of Indians to drive home this point of the Indian genocide by the British.
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thank you.
but apparently, according to some, one jewish life is worth a 1000 indian lives. so all this dont count. we should hang our heads in shame that we all did not die trying to save god's chosen people, whilst happily continuing to live in captivity.
ben ami
what is your opinion about bose's alleged leftism, or is this just another nehruvian lie? What was the relationship between Savarkar and Bose?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.indialife.com/History/freedom...shbose.htm
One of Subhas' major contributions was setting up of a National Planning Committee, for the development of an economic program running parallel to the national movement. Differences between Gandhiji and Subhas led to a crisis when Gandhiji opposed Subhas' idea that the Bengal Government (a coalition between the Krishak Praja Party & Muslim League) be ousted and the Congress take charge in coalition with the Krishak party. <b>The idea was criticized by Gandhiji and Nehru, which resulted in the strengthening of the Muslim League in Bengal and ultimately partition of India. It is obvious today that had Subhas been able to carry out his plans, Bengal would be a different entity on the atlas.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->On the whole the through out their reign the british caused deliberate starvations - up to 25 famines- throughout the land like in Tamilnad and Bihar which some people believe resulted in deaths as high as 30-40*10^6 Hindus and ruined agriculture in many parts of the country.
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Genocide of Hindus in the British Empire will not get the attention it deserves until one of us writes a book on it, backed up with facts.
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> to a race that had not tasted freedom in so many years , dying like warriors on the battlefield would have been much better than living like slaves or the division of our nation and destruction of culture and society.