| Chapter 11 |
The Threat From Within |
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Narashima Rao had the misfortune to witness the Ayodhya drama and the internationalisation of the Kashmir problem during his tenure. To be fair to him, he was probably closer to the Hindu point of view on Ayodhya, than say, Inder Gujral, who became India's 12th Prime Minister in April 1997. Yet he was overtaken by the suddenness of events and had to react harshly to bolster up his image as well as India's reputation as a secular country. As for Kashmir, no Prime Minister, from Nehru downwards, dared to tackle the issue headlong, for fear of antagonising the Indian Muslims. Rao was no different. Nevertheless, during Narashima Rao's years, the twin dangers threatening India's disintegration came to the fore and exploded in full view. These dangers facing India today, come first from within, at the hands of Indian Muslims, Indian secularists and the missionary lobby, as well as from without from hostile nations. If India survives these two life-threatening dangers to her inner soul, from within and without, she has a change of preserving her dharma and fulfil her destiny. A) KASHMIR History never stops. It keeps repeating itself under different names, at different times, in different costumes. "In Kashmir, wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1940, the Hindus had all the monopoly. Now if the Muslim demands are acceded to, the Hindus will be wiped out again." (India's Rebirth, p. 220) How prophetic again! But Sri Aurobindo could have added that today nobody cares to remember that Kashmiris were almost entirely Hindus or Buddhists, before they were converted by the invading Muslims six centuries ago. True, today these Muslims in Kashmir have not only accepted as their own a religion which their ancestors had rejected, but they have also often taken-up the strident cry of Islam. Does any one remember too, that at the beginning of the century, there still were 25% Hindus in the Kashmir valley and that today the last 350.000 Kashmiri Pandits are living in miserable conditions in camps near Jammu and Delhi, refugees in their own land, they who originally inhabited the valley, at least 5000 years ago? It's a common refrain today in most newspapers to blame the situation in Kashmir on the Government's policies in the Valley for 45 years. However, those who know the reality of Kashmir, the mentality of Kashmiris and who have been recently to the Valley, have no illusions about the truth in the "Himalayan Switzerland". In fact, there are quite a few illusions which have been nurtured about Kashmir over the years by the Press and the secular politicians. Illusion N°1: India alienated Kashmiris through years of wrong policies. Those who have been in close contact with Kashmir, even in its heydays of tourism, know for a fact that as a general rule, Kashmiris never liked India. There was only one thing that attached them to India, it was the marvellous financial gains and state bounties that they made out of tourism. Even those Kashmiris who are now settled in India make no bones about where their loyalty lies. Talk to them, specially if you are a Westerner, and after some time, they'll open their hearts to you; whether it is the owner of this Kashmir emporium in a five star hotel in Madras, or the proprietor of that famous travel agency in Delhi: suddenly, after all the polite talk, they burst out with their loathing of India and their attachment to an independent Kashmir. Illusion N°2: the Kashmiris are fed up with the militants after years of fighting, militants' abuses and the complete dry-up of tourism revenues. The army might come-up with some disgruntled girl, who has been raped by the militants and whom they parade to the Indian press; or some family, whose father and sons have been killed by the Hizbullah because they're informers, might be willing to mouth their pro-Indian stance; but these are individual cases. Indeed, if you meet the Kashmiris of today, from the lowly unemployed sikara boatman, to the retired High Court judge, you will find that they are all unanimous in their hatred of the Indian army and their support of the militants. Kashmiris will stick together - and their family system ensures that they will support each other in need. Illusion N°3: the democratic process has been restored through elections in 1996 and Farooq Abdullah will bring back peace to the valley. Actually, there is only one election Kashmiris are craving for and that is a plebiscite on whether they want to stay with India or secede...The answer in the Kashmir valley, would be a massive "no" to India (98%?). And as for Farook Abdullah, the situation has not improved much since he came to power. On the contrary, his tenure could be very dangerous, for he wants the Indian Government to give Kashmir the kind of semi-autonomy the more moderate militants are asking for. And take for example his recent proposal of recognising the Line Of Control as the real border between the two Kashmir. And if non-Kashmiris, which means basically Indians, need a permit to enter the Valley, it is as good as giving Kashmir away. Illusion N°4: The presence of Human Rights organisations in Kashmir will help to bolster India's international image. The Indian security forces in Kashmir are accused of all kind of atrocities. But this is war, not a tea party! If India decides to keep Kashmir, it has to do so according to the rules set by the militants: violence, death and treachery are the order of the day. And men are men: after having been ambushed repeatedly, after having seen their comrades die, after weeks and weeks of waiting in fear, one day, they just explode in a burst of outrage and excesses. Amnesty International chooses to highlight "the Indian atrocities" in Kashmir. But Amnesty which does otherwise wonderful work to keep track of political atrocities world-wide, can sometimes become a moralistic, somewhat pompous organisation, which in its comfortable offices in London, judges on governments and people, the majority of whom happen to be belonging to the Third World. Its insistence on being granted unlimited access to Kashmir is a one-sided affair. Did Amnesty bother at all about the support given by the CIA to the most fundamentalists Mujhadins group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, support which led to the bleeding of Afghanistan today and the Pakistani sponsoring of terrorism in India? (Without mentioning the fact that most of the Western countries which today sit in judgement of India, raped and colonised the Third World in the most shameless manner; and after all it happened not so long ago). And this leads to the next question: should then India surrender to international pressure and give-up Kashmir ? Well it all depends on the Indian people's determination. Each nation has, or has had in the past, a separatist problem. Today, the Spanish have the Basques, the French the Corsicans, or the Turkish, the Kurds. Amnesty International will continue to lambaste India in its reports about human rights violations. But has Amnesty the right to decide what is right or wrong for each nation ? Sometimes double standards are adapted by the West. Yesterday it colonised the entire Third World. Today; the United States, under the guise of human rights, is constantly interfering in other's people's affairs, often by force. It uses the United Nations, as it does in Iraq, in Somalia and Yugoslavia and is getting away with it. Can Amnesty International, the United States and the United Nations decide today what is democratic and what they deem anti-democratic and use their military might to enforce their views? But this is the trend today and it is a very dangerous and fascistic trend. Will tomorrow the United Nations send troops to Kashmir to enforce Pakistan's dreams? Furthermore, there is today another very dangerous habit, which is to fragment the world into small bits and parts, thus reverting to a kind of Middle Age status, whereas small nations were always warring each other on ethnic grounds. It is the West and particularly the United States' insistence to dismantle Communism at all costs, thus encouraging covertly and overtly the breaking up of Russia and Eastern Europe, which started this fashion. But this is a dangerous game and tomorrow Europe and indirectly the USA will pay the price for it: wars will bring instability and refugees to Europe and the United States might have to get involved militarily. Can India get herself dragged into this mire? Why should India which took so long to unite herself and saw at the departure of the British one third of its land given away to Pakistan, surrender Kashmir? The evolution of our earth tends towards UNITY, oneness, towards the breaking up of our terrible borders, the abolishing of passports, bureaucracies, no man's lands; not towards the building up of new borders, new customs barriers, new smaller nations. India cannot let herself be broken up in bits and parts just to satisfy the West's moralistic concerns, although it does have to improve upon its Human Rights record,particularly the police atrocities and the misuse of TADA. To preserve her Dharma, India has to remain united, ONE, and even conquer again whether by force or by peaceful means, what once was part of her South Asian body . For this she should not surrender Kashmir, it could be the beginning of the breaking up of India. B) THE INDIAN MUSLIMS Ultimately, what the Muslim invaders did during the centuries of their domination, was that they planted a seed of DIVISION, for at that time, their avowed aim, what was driving their extreme ferocity at converting entire nations at the point of their scimitars, was to turn the whole world into "Dar-ul-Islam", the House of Islam. And today, the seed has matured, whether in Kashmir, in Pakistan, or even in India. Once more, it must be emphasised at the risk of being accused of boring repetition: the point is not to come down on Islam, whose greatness can never be denied, if only because they represent one third of the world's population. The purpose is not to look back at history for a cry of vengeance. What has been done is done; you cannot wish away the Muslims of Bosnia, or of Kashmir, or the 12O millions Indian Muslims. They are part of history, they each belong to their different communities. The purpose is to look at history SO AS TO UNDERSTAND IT TODAY. The exercise is to glimpse back in time SO THAT WE DON'T REPEAT YESTERDAY'S MISTAKES. The Jews have taught us that the collective memory, the remembering of the Holocaust, Shoah, Shindler's list are meant for the world not to forget its monstrous aberrations. And even today, there is no doubt that Islam has never been fully able to give up its inner conviction that its own religion is the only true creed and that all others are "Kafirs", infidels. In India it was true 300 years ago, and it is still true today. Remember the cry of the militants in Kashmir to the Pandits: "convert to Islam or die"! And in the words of Sri Aurobindo: " As for the Hindu-Muslim affair, I saw no reason why the greatness of India's past or her spirituality should be thrown into the waste paper basket, in order to conciliate the Moslems who would not at all be conciliated by such policy... (Sri Aurobindo India's Rebirth, page 161) But when will Indian Muslims understand that they have to be Indians first and then Muslims? Ayodhya is the perfect example of the unwillingness of the Indian Muslims to come to terms with the Indian reality; it is the symbol of a certain kind of insincerity and double standards. C) AYODHYA How many of those who have lambasted so many times the "Hindu fundamentalists" and lamented the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque as the "death of secularism in India", have been to Ayodhya? (not Faizabad, mind you, which is Ayodhya's twin Muslim city). When one arrived in Ayodhya before the destruction of the mosque, one was struck by the fact that it was a Hindu town "par excellence". More than Benares even, it is dotted everywhere with innumerable temples; it has all these old Hindus houses and this lovely river with its ghats which runs through the lower town. And then, forlorn on the top, there was this lone mosque with its two ugly domes, which looked so out of place and unused, that any one with a right sense -and that includes the Muslims- should see that it was not worth making an issue of. The destruction of the Babri Masjid has evoked such fiery reactions, that the importance of Ayodhya has been totally overlooked: Ayodhya is a symbol, through which two India's are facing each other. And the outcome of their confrontation will shape the future of this country for generations to come. The first India wants to be secular and unite together through an egalitarian, democratic spirit all the minorities, ethnic groups, religions and people of the country. But the question is: what would be the binding element of this kind of India? Secularism, says the first side. But secularism has a different meaning for each one, as we saw in the preceding chapters. For the British, it was a convenient way to divide and rule, by treating each Indian community on par, although some were in minority and others in majority, thereby planting the seeds of separatisms. For the Congress Party, it has always meant giving in to the Muslims' demands, because its leaders never could really make out if the allegiance of Indian Muslims first want to India and then to Islam - or vice-versa. And for India's intelligentsia, its writers, journalists, top bureaucrats, the majority of whom are Hindus, it means, apart from spitting on its own religion and brothers, an India which would be a faithful copy of the West: liberal, modern, atheist, industrialised, intellectual and western-oriented. Furthermore, what makes India unique? Certainly not its small elite which apes the West; there are millions of these western clones in the developing world who wear a tie, read the New York Times and swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries from doom. Nor its modern youth, whom you meet in Delhi's swank parties, who are full of the Star TV culture, who wear the latest Klein jeans and Lacoste T Shirts, and who in general are useless, fat, rich parasites, in a country which has so many talented youngsters who live in poverty. Not even its political, bureaucratic and judicial system; it's a copy of the British set up, which is not fully adapted to India's unique character and conditions. What then? The second India which is confronting the other at Ayodhya is of a course the India of the Hindus. When Imam Bhukari states that "we (the Mughals) gave everything to this country, its culture, its manners, its arts (and he adds: "the Hindus by destroying the Babri Masjid show how little gratitude they have"), apart from making a pompous declaration, he proclaims exactly the opposite of the reality. Because the truth is that not only Hinduism is what makes India unique, so different from all the other nations of the world, but it is the single most important influence in Indian history. In the words of Sri Aurobindo: "The inner principle of Hinduism, the most tolerant and receptive of all religious systems, is not sharply exclusive like the religious spirit of Christianity or Islam...it is the fulfilment of the highest tendencies of human civilisation and it will include in its sweep the most vital impulses of modern life.." And indeed, if you look at India today, you find that Hinduism has permeated, influenced, shaped, every part of this country, every religion, every culture. Be it the Christians who are like no other Catholics of the world, or Indian Muslims, who whatever they may say, are utterly different from their brothers in Saudi Arabia. But Hinduism is too narrow a word, it's a corruption of the original word "Indu", for true Hinduism is Dharma, India's infinite and eternal spiritual knowledge, which took shape into so many varied expressions throughout the ages, be it the Vedantas, Buddhism, or the Arya Samaj and which is today still very much alive in India, particularly in its rural masses, which after all constitute 80% of its population. And the words of the great Sage still echo in our ears: "Each nation is a shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conception- and fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence...But we must have a firm faith that India must rise and be great and that everything that happened, every difficulty, every reverse must help and further the end..." What one has to grasp is that Ayodhya only makes sense when the immense harm the Muslims did to India is not negated, as indeed they have been and still are today, whether in Kashmir, where the last Hindus were made to flee in terror, or in Afghanistan, where the entire Hindu community was made to leave by the Mujahedins, without the world batting an eyelid, or in Bangladesh, where the crowds still regularly go on rampage against Hindus and their temples (as told by a Bangladeshi Muslim herself, Talisma Nasreen). It is in this light, that it becomes extraordinary for an impartial observer to see today that when for once, the Hindus wanted to displace, not even to destroy, ONE mosque and rebuild the "temple", which they believe was built in this particular place, for one of their most cherished Gods, the one which is loved universally by all, men, women, children, THEY are treated as rabid fundamentalists. The great Mughals must be laughing all the way down their graves! What a reversal of situation! What a turnabout of history! And when the mosque was destroyed, it evoked such fiery reactions, such pompous, overblown, sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, atrocious, ridiculous, sly and totally undeserved outrage, both within India and in the Western world (who should be the last one to give lessons to India), that the importance of Ayodhya as a symbol has been totally overlooked. The obvious trap is to think that the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya is something to gloat about and that it is the duty of all good Hindus to see that other important mosques at Mathura, Vanarasi, or elsewhere, be also razed to the ground; or that all cities with a Muslim name be renamed with a Hindu one. This is not true Hinduism, which has always shown its tolerance and accepted in its fold other creeds and faiths. Indeed a true "Indu" India will be secular in the correct sense of the term: it will give freedom to each religion, each culture, so that it develops itself in the bosom of a Greater India, of which dharma, true spirituality, will be the cementing factor. Nevertheless, the destruction of the Babri Masjid, however unfortunate, has made its point: the occult Mughal hold over Hindu India has been broken and centuries of Hindu submission erased. Hindus have proved that they too can fight. D) THE INDIAN ELITE Do educated Indians suffer from an inferiority complex vis à vis the West ? Do they think theirs is a lesser democracy, afflicted with all the world's ills ? Does India's elite look down upon its own country ? To a Westerner, it seems very much so. India's upper class, the cream of this nation, the privileged, those very men and women who had the great fortune not to be born in need, appear to enjoy India-bashing. Nothing seems to find grace in their eyes: everything is rotten, the system, the government, the politicians, the bureaucracy. Nothing works, nothing is possible, everything is bleak, worthless, hopeless. But the truth is that those Indians who constantly negate India, are ashamed of their country. Educated Indians always seem to compare their democracy to Western standards. Their parameters appear to be set by what the West thinks about India, by Amnesty International's comments on their nation. They want to apply to India the same norms which are used in the industrialised world. And extraordinarily, many of India's elite ridicule what makes this country unique in the world, what no other nation in the word possesses: Dharma, true Hinduism; the knowledge passed down by thousands of sages, saints, yogis, sadhus of the Eternal Truth, that which gives a meaning to this otherwise senseless life and which the West has totally lost: the Wheel of Life, the endless rebirths and ultimately the evolutionary Ascension of man towards the Ultimate Truth. As we saw earlier, when the British invaded India, they quickly set upon trying to destroy what they perceived as paganism, but which was in reality India's many-sided perception of truth, Hinduism, the Santanam Dharma of the Vedic sages. Fortunately for India, they never succeeded in their task, but they did manage to win over a small portion of India's elite population. These people, whether maharajas, lawyers, or journalists, were made to feel ashamed of their own ways and thus tried to become more British than the Britishers, be it in their dress, in their thinking... or in their Hinduism-bashing. It is they who upon getting independence, denied India its true identity and copied blindly from the West to frame its Constitution, unfit to India's own ways and needs. It is they who today are ready again to split India at the seams, let go of Kashmir, of Punjab, of Assam, of Gorkhaland, Jarkhaland, and tomorrow Tamil land, all in the name of democracy and human rights, of course. Do not Indians realise that by constantly belittling their own country and seeing it the way the West wants them to perceive it, they are handing over India to her enemies, those who wish her ill? Those who would like to see her humbled, broken, fragmented? Do these people want to see India go the way of Yugoslavia? Don't they realise that they are traitors to their own country, to its uniqueness, to is unparalleled greatness? That ultimately their India-bashing is a colonial leftover? An unconscious inferiority complex, which has been planted in the minds of their ancestors more than two centuries ago? Nobody in India is more representative of this Hindu-bashing syndrome than some of the Indian Press. They whipped up the Ayodhya controversy, forcing the Congress and the Muslim leadership to make a stand for the mosque, when actually this disused, ugly structure, in the midst of a wholly Hindu city had no relevance for any one who has some common sense. It is they who labelled Hindus as Nazis fundamentalists, it is they who called Advani a Hitler (do they have any knowledge of European history: Hitler killed in cold blood 6 millions Jews and crores of other people). It is they who in the aftermath of the destruction shouted themselves hoarse over "the end of our secularism" or "the mortal blow to our democracy", forgetting in the heat of their self-righteousness that Ayodhya was a symbol. True, the Indian Press should also be praised for its incredible diversity, for its inexhaustible reserve of talented writers, for its investigative journalism which makes sense when it helps uncover corruption, injustice, or political despotism. But again, it should learn to look at things NOT through the Western prism, but through the Indian looking glass, and apply to India standards that are Her own and of which she has nothing to be ashamed, because they are unique in the world. E) Missionaries post-independence: Exploding the Mother Theresa myth The Christians are a much quieter force than the Muslims. They do not advocate openly the breaking-up of India, and certainly the great majority of Catholics in India are peaceful Indian citizens. Yet the missionary spirit brought in by the British is still alive in India and goes on, as Arun Shourie demonstrated in his book, quietly about its work. And nothing symbolises this spirit better than Mother Theresa. Nobody has forgotten the film produced by Tarik Ali for Britain's Channel 4- which attacked Mother Theresa " for being a friend of the despots and a religious bigot ". It created a scandal and an outrage and even in India, many intellectuals sprang-up to the defence of Mother Theresa. Vir Sanghvi, editor of Sunday Magazine, said: " Gosh he is so outrageous "; Sunita Sen gushed in India Today: " bad faith, bad taste ". The whole episode seemed quite fruitless and has died down. But in retrospective, a question may be asked: has not the film missed more relevant points, which could be summarised thus: 1) what does Mother Theresa really stand for? 2) Why do Indians defend her so ardently ? Foremost one should say in defence of Mother Theresa that she certainly is doing saintly work. After all, there is no denying that it takes a Westerner to pick-up the dying in the streets of Calcutta and raise abandoned orphans, a thankless task if there is one. Indian themselves, and particularly the Hindus, even though their religion has taught them compassion for 4000 years, have become very callous towards their less fortunate brethren; and the recent plague has shown the widening gap between the fortunate and the less than lucky. This said, one can wonder: what does Mother Theresa really stand for? Is caring for the dying and orphaned children her only goal ? Well, if you have observed her carefully over the years, you will notice that she does not say much. She does speak against contraception and abortion, in a country of nearly one billion, where an ever growing population is swallowing whatever little economic progress is made; where the masses make life in India more and more miserable, invading the cities, crowding their streets and polluting their environments; where for 30 years the Indian Government has directed a courageous and democratic birth control programme, (whether in China demographic control has achieved though autocratic means). What else does Mother Theresa say: she speaks of the dying of the streets in Calcutta, of course, of the poor of India left unattended, of the miseries of the cities. Fair enough, but then it must be pointed out to her, that she projects to the whole world an image of India which is entirely negative: of poverty beyond humanity, of a society which abandons its children, of dying without dignity. OK, there is some truth in it. But then it may be asked again: does Mother Theresa ever attempt to counterbalance this negative image of India, of which she is the vector, by a more positive one ? After all, she has lived here so long, that she knows the country as well as any Indian, having even adopted Indian nationality. Surely she can defend her own country? She could for example speak about India infinite spirituality, her exquisite culture, the gentleness of its people, the brilliance of its children... Unfortunately, Mother Theresa says nothing. For the truth is that she stands for the most orthodox Christian conservatism. There is no doubt that ultimately Mother Theresa goal is utterly simple: to convert India to Christianity, the only true religion in her eyes. Did you notice that she has never once said a good word about Hinduism, which after all is the religion of 700 millions people of the country she says she loves and has been their religion for 5000 years. This is because deep inside her, Mother Theresa considers, as all good Christians do, particularly the conservatives ones, that Hinduism is a pagan religion which adores a multitude of heathen gods and should be eliminated. Will someone ever have the courage -or the cunning- to make Mother Theresa come out openly with her opinion on Hinduism and the true reasons about why she is in India? For, make no mistake about it, there has been no changes about Christian or Protestant designs on India since they arrived with the Portuguese and the British, remember what Lords Hastings had to say about the Hindus! Mother Theresa is much more clever than Lord Hastings; she knows that on the eve of the 21st century, it would look very bad if she would openly state her true opinions about Hinduism; so she bides her time. But ultimately is not charitable work, whatever it dedication, a roundabout manner to convert people? For without any doubt, most of the people she saves from the streets will ultimately become Christians. And if you ask those " elite " Indians who know her well, such as the photographer Ragu Rai, a great admirer of her, she always comes out after some years with : " It is now time for you to embrace the true religion ". (Rai politely declined). The second point then is: why does India intelligentsia, the Vir Sanghvis' and Sunita Sen's, all of whom are born Hindus, defend her? These are intelligent, educated people; they must surely have some inkling of Mother Theresa's true purpose. Or do they ? Do Sanghvi and Sen or Naveen Chawla, Mother Theresa's sycophant biographer, understand what Mother Theresa really stands for ? True, she is may be a great personality doing saintly work. But do they realise that she is someone basically hostile to their culture, their religion, their way of life? Doe Sanghvi know that Hindu society has always been the target of Christians since their coming here? Does he comprehend that he and a thousand of his peers who belong to the intellectual elite of India and keep praising Mother Theresa, are doing harm to their country and opening it to its enemies? The Christian influence is very strong in India today: it shapes in a subtle way the minds of its young people, through its schools , which many of the children of the rich attend. It moulds the thinking of the tribes it has converted, particularly in the north-east, where the missionaries have always covertly encouraged separatism (see the remarkable book " Indigenous Indians " by the Dutch scholar Konrad Elst) But ultimately it must be concluded that the Indian intelligentsia who defend Mother Theresa and are constantly attacking Hinduism, as Sanghvi does, are a product of three centuries of English and Christian, colonisation , which successfully created an Indian elite cut off from its roots and hostile to its own culture. Mother Theresa is an incarnation of western post-colonialism and the Nobel prize is the endorsement of her work. As for the Indian government's stand on Mother Theresa, it is like biting one's own tail and it seems quite stupid. Why make Mother Theresa a national figure, when she represents today the worst publicity for India, at time when the country is trying to shed her image of poverty and backwardness! Surely Mother Theresa deserves praise for her work, but there are hundreds of other selfless, courageous individuals in India, who do not hog the limelight, but go on quietly with their service to the nation in true Christian humility. The deeds of Mother Theresa should be reviewed in their proper perspective. Today she has officially been replaced as Mother Superior of the Sisters of Charity by Sister Nirmala, a Hindu converted to catholicism (are u getting the message ?). But in reality, even though she is frail and according to her spiritual adviser for 30 years, Father le Jolly, " she does not have her full head any more ", she continues to symbolize for the world the spirit of the Sisters of Charity. And when she dies, the Indian Government will probably declare seven days of mourning! |
To continue with Chapter 12.... |
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Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 |