Blinding Reality, 2000

"The PM refuses to face daily asaults on India's tradition of tolerance by members of his own parivar. What about us?"

Blinding Reality

The PM refuses to face daily asaults on India's tradition of tolerance by members of his own parivar. What about us? 

For Indians who truly  value tolerance, every  passing day sounds a  death knell. The ground  is slipping swiftly; we are  sinking fast into the  quicksand of brazen manipulation. Such outlets for articulating grievances that still exist are severely proscribed by the rapidity of events and happenings. Institutions for the affirmation of inalienable basic rights are limited by an apathy that is compounded by a piece–meal response to events. 

Courts, the police, the legislature and the executive are all crippled. Either because of a self–inflicted tunnel vision that refuses to recognise the calculated plan or pattern behind the systematic build up of the climate of hate in which violence appears ‘legitimate’, or because of calculated indifference, driven by bias. 

We are all witness to the wilful flouting of the rule of law, daily. As it has been happening since the mid–eighties before their formal grip on political power, and more so since 1998, after the BJP’s rise to power, the fundamental freedom of faith and the identity of Indians who are not Hindu has been a constant target. 

Constant intimidation through verbal barrage and frequent acts of violence against a section of Indians — Muslims and Christians — have come to be accepted as facts of life. Vicious utterances, that go unrestrained and unchallenged by the guardians of law, have accorded them a sinister legitimacy. The statements by the leaders of the BJP/RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal/SS, inciting hatred and violence and acts of violence themselves, are being highlighted by the mainline media every other day. 

As the cumulative outcome of the carefully cultivated climate of coercion, other basic freedoms — right to life and liberty, of personal security of and the right of association — of thousands of Indians stand severely curtailed. Churches are attacked; copies of the Bible desecrated and burnt. A Christian priest is forced to worship inside a temple; adivasis are ‘re–converted’ amidst much fanfare but told to worship in separate shrines thereafter.

Physical attacks and intimidation of minorities have re–surfaced with a vengeance. Incidents in the past three months alone — between April and June 2000 — have crossed the three dozen mark. Christian religious persons running educational institutions or health centres have been singled out for murder or other forms of mistreatment. In every instance, mob rule and intimidation has overpowered the rule of law, with the local police reduced to wilful impotency. 

Every attack has been preceded by systematic distribution of hate spewing pamphlets (see box 2). Since 1996, media reports have drawn repeated attention to such hate campaigns. But all the vitriol has suspiciously escaped police action under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Gujarat, and now Uttar Pradesh, are living examples of life for Indians under ‘Hindu rashtra’.

Senior officials in the police, like the DGP of Gujarat, CP Singh, have stated on record that “organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal are clearly behind the violence” (see CC, October 1998). Concrete evidence in specific cases points clearly to the moral and ideological backing that the sangh parivar renders to the assailants. But our watchdogs and institutions fail to make the connection or see the pattern.

Four months ago, the newly appointed RSS Sarsanghchalak, KS Sudarshan, declared that an ‘epic war’ was in progress in India between Hindus and ‘anti–Hindu forces’; in Mumbai, Bal Thackeray’s Saamna is once again spitting venom with a vengeance against ‘anti–national’ Muslims (See page 25). And yet, we resist drawing the links. 

What is responsible for this selective amnesia? How is it possible for us to react to rights’ violations in individual cases but turn a blind eye to the bloody and devious design that underlies them?

One fine day, a Bajrang Dal leader, Dharmendra Sharma, sah-sahayojak for the Braj region, makes front page news declaring that Christians are now “bigger enemies” than Muslims. (The Times of India, June 23, 2000). Clarification, if any were needed, that Muslims remain the Bajrang Dal’s and the VHP’s enemies! “Maar peet to kya, hum sab kuch karne ke liye taiyar hain” (“We are prepared to use violence. There is no limit”), said Sharma, leaving no room for any confusion. 

The remark prompted an expression of outrage from India’s attorney general, Soli Sorabjee. He opined that such elements should be put behind bars. The National Human Rights Commission demanded details of attacks on Christians from the central and state governments. But only weeks earlier, the remark of the all–India Bajrang Dal convenor, Dr. Surendra Jain, calling for “a second Quit India movement” to drive away Christian missionaries had passed unnoticed and unchallenged. (The Afternoon Despatch and Courier, May 27, 2000).

Life in Gujarat for a Muslim or a Christian today is a suffocating reminder that he or she no longer enjoys the precious privilege of being regarded as an equal Indian. Muslims residing in ‘cosmopolitan’ localities in Gujarat are forcibly evicted; Muslim children have to compulsory attend school and even give examinations on Id day. Discrimination and bias has insidiously crept into the marketplace of ideas, avenues of livelihood, educational institutions, the administration, the police, the judiciary. All in all, the quality that we used to proudly describe as Indian values is fast eroding. 

What more will it take to force us to recognise the extent of corrosion? Mumbai’s classrooms, at the university level, reflect this public sanction to brazen bias in their own style. A professor advising students on how to write an essay for the All India Open School examination elaborates: “Write about how the British exploited this country. And how before that the Muslim rulers, thanks to their love of the good life, robbed this great wealthy land of all its wealth. Muslims have always loved the good life and it is this greed that has looted our country that used to be a sone ki chidiya (a golden bird). 

There is a clever and calculated plan behind every campaign launched, sustained and developed by the RSS and its faithful followers. In the eighties, the campaign for a glorious temple in the name of Lord Ram at Ayodhya fired 18,000 villages to participate in the shilanyas in 1990, and over 5,00,000 kar sevaks to be witness and participants in the demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya two years later. Clever double entendre accompanied the campaign for a temple at Lord Ram’s legendary birthplace. The justification in the nation–wide effort was through the demonising of Mughal emperor Babar. Muslims in India today, ‘Babar ki aulad’, were crudely told again and again, that they had trampled on all that is decent Indian, read Hindu.

With the campaign for the construction of a Ram mandir at Ayodhya now in the process of being actively revived, the anti–Muslim underpinnings of the campaign are also re–surfacing in subtle and not–so–subtle forms. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), nudged by an encouraging human resources development ministry under none less than Murli Manohar Joshi, is busy excavating 46 Indian historical sites, including UNESCO–protected World Heritage sites like Fatehpur Sikri. Objective? To establish that Hindu or Jain temples exist below Mughal (read Muslim), monuments.

There is a brazenness that underlines the physical assaults and intimidation whereby the assailants present themselves as victims acting in self–defence. Of late, the Bajrang Dal has publicly started arms training for its cadre in order to prepare them for ‘defending’ Hindus and Hinduism from the demons being resurrected — Muslims and Christians. The daily violators of law and those who condone verbal assaults, physical intimidation and murder are the first to point to Pakistan’s ISI as the real culprit! Union home minister, Advani also concurs, seeing a foreign hand behind the attacks on Christians. The result: the nitty–gritty facts behind those responsible for the assaults and violence in each of the cases, where culprits inspired by or belonging to the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the VHP have been identified, are glossed over and the police just do not act. The guilty not only escape the arm of the law but enjoy government protection every time. 

Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and his strongman, Union home minister LK Advani, have once more declared that there is “no communal twist to the recent incidents”. The liberal mukhota of the sangh parivar is useful for the saffron bandwagon at ticklish moments like this. 

Vajpayee’s admirers, who simply refuse to believe him capable of legitimising hatred and selective murder, saw his recent bowing before the Pope at the Vatican as a “master stroke”. That the pontiff raised the issue of increasing attacks on Christians at his meeting with the PM and yet again, three days later, is seen as simply a passing hitch in international relations. 

Graham Staines’ murderer, Dara Singh is today a man lionised by the literature emanating from the saffron camp. He proposes to fight the next election. For the moment, the Hindu Jagran Sammukhya, backed by the RSS, is busy distributing thousands of copies of a 16–page booklet Mu Dara Singh Kahuchi (I am Dara Singh speaking) in Manoharpur, Orissa. The booklet focuses on the activities of the Staines’ family and proclaiming that since “Staines was the killer of our culture, so his killing was necessary”. 

The officially–appointed Wadhwa Commission implicated Dara Singh in the triple murder case but despite the evidence of police officers and counsel before the Commission, it exonerated the like BJP, RSS, VHP and BD. An example, yet again, of a resistance to examine the ideological backup that allows a Dara Singh to flourish and grow in popularity.
Vajpayee has been of consistent use to the hate–driven parivar. Eighteen months ago, on New Year’s Day 1999, after visiting the southern district of The Dangs in Gujarat, that had suffered systematic violence against its minuscule resident Christian community (ruining traditional Christmas celebrations), Vajpayee spoke to the national media. Without a single word on the violence and intimidation suffered by Dang Christians, he called for a national debate on conversions! 

Union home minister, LK Advani, used to be the BJP’s most eloquent leader on every issue pertaining to minority–majority relations in the country in the eighties and nineties — before he took an oath swearing allegiance to the secular and democratic tenets of the Indian Constitution. Today, he has mastered the art of keeping a conspicuous silence. He does surface on appropriate occasions only to issue clean character certificates to the Bajrang Dal and the VHP every time their name gets associated with criminal incidents. 

Following the triple murder by burning of Graham Staines and his young sons, Advani was quick to absolve the VHP and Bajrang Dal of any involvement in the crime. He knew these organisations well, he said, adding that they were incapable of criminal acts! It is a well–programmed symphony in operation, being played out by the different organs of the sangh parivar every day. That the Vajpayee–Advani duo is right on top of the political pyramid, ever ready with alibis, helps a great deal. 

That the BJP and its supporters within and outside the sangh parivar rely heavily on Vajpayee’s liberal mask is more than understandable. What is not, however, is the wilful blindness of the secular components of the NDA, leaders such as the TDP’s technocrat, Chandrababu Naidu, the Trinamool Congress’ firebrand, Mamata Banerjee, and the ever–reasonable socialists, George Fernandes and Jaya Jaitly. 

Equally difficult to appreciate is the failure of individuals within other secular political formations to categorically affirm that the basic rights and freedoms of every Indian, regardless of religion, caste, creed or gender is inalienable. (Remember a state minister from the ‘secular’ Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra, personally welcoming criminals allegedly associated with the Bajrang Dal on their release from the Nasik jail. They were charged with the vandalising a girl’s hostel in April. The deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, Chhagan Bhujbal, later justified the minister’s behaviour).

Most opinion polls conducted to gauge public opinion indicate that only about a quarter of the Indian population backs the BJP and not all the support is for communal reasons. The rest of India, which naturally includes minorities, Dalits and other Hindus within it, remains opposed to Hindutva’s antics.

The hitch lies, however, in the lack of translation of this opposition into organised protest and outrage. The ignominies of rights abuses and oppression of minorities, women and Dalits notwithstanding, there is an innate reluctance to accept, acknowledge and rise in unison against these horrors. One of the reasons is our refusal to abandon the prevalent myth of Indian civilisation as the most ancient, the most non-violent, and the mSost tolerant in the world.

Only the creative explosion of that myth will help rid us of our false cocoon of comfort and galvanise us into articulation of outrage that is long overdue.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


Attacks on Christians in 2000

The All–India Christian Council claims there have been over 300 attacks targeting Christians and their institutions in different parts of the country in the last two years. Given below is a list of attacks since the dawn of the new millennium.

 

  • January 1: Father Vikas attacked at St. Mary’s School, Panipat, Haryana.
  • February 18: Attack on a hospital and desecration of Mother Mary’s  statue, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu.
  •  March 7: Copies of Bible snatched, devotees slapped during a prayer meeting, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
  •  March 9: Ish Mata Catholic Church looted, a portion of the rear wall destroyed, Samalkha, Haryana.
  • March 12: A computer centre run by the Christians looted; inmates locked, Ghaziabad, UP.
  • March 31: Two priests attached to the Archbishop’s House taken to police station on fake charges and detained, Agra, UP.
  • April 6: St. Dominic’s School attacked and the principal abused for refusing admission to a few children, Mathura, UP.
  • April 10: Sacred Heart School attacked by parents for not promoting  students who had failed in the examinations, Mathura, UP.
  • April 11: Murderous attack on the principal and nuns of St. Teresa  School, Koshi Kalan, UP.
  • April 21: Christian group from Hyderabad attacked, literature  they were carrying set on fire by Bajrang Dal activists, Haryana.
  • April 25: Two nuns hit by a scooterist, Rewari, Haryana.
  • May 2: Masked men assault nuns at a convent, Jhansi, UP.
  • May 3: Christian group beaten up The Dangs, Gujarat.
  • May 3: Break-in at a church, Sagarpur, Delhi.
  • May 4: Mob attack on a catholic School, Patna, Bihar.
  • May 6: Bajrang Dal men beat up Christians, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
  • May 6: 13 Christians arrested for holding prayer meetings and street plays without prior permission, The Dangs, Gujarat.
  • May 9: The VHP, Bajrang Dal men barge into a girls’ hostel and assault those watching a film on Jesus Christ, Nasik, Maharashtra.
  • May 11: A Jesuit stabbed, Basavanpura village near Bangalore, Karnataka.
  • May 13: 3 churches attacked in Indore 
  • May 16: A priest attacked, Bhind, MP.
  • May 21: 30 people injured in a bomb blast at a prayer meeting, Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
  • May 21: Prayer homes torched, Kandhmal district, Orissa.
  • May 29: IED’s found in churches, Medak, Vikarabad, AP. 
  • June 7: A priest murdered at Paulus Memorial School, Mathura,UP.
  • June 8: Bomb explosion in churches, Karnataka, AP and Goa.
  • June 11: A priest is killed, Jalandhar, Punjab.
  • June 14: Priest beaten, paraded, in a village in Jagdalpur, MP.
  • June 18: Eyewitness of priest’s murder dies in police custody, Mathura, UP.
  • June 24: Graves dug up near church, AP.
  • June 27: Miscreants ransack a church, Pusad, 
  • July 5: Missionary school guard beaten up, Jhansi, UP.
  • July 5: Bajrang Dal force closure of Christian school, Ahmedabad.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

nciteful pamphlets distributed and incendiary speeches made at the VHP–sponsored ‘dharam sabhas’ have been ingenuously used by the BJP–RSS–VHP–Bajrang Dal combine to intensely communalise neighbourhoods and communities before an attack is launched against the minorities. Reproduced here is the English translation of a pamphlet in Gujarati, which was widely circulated in Sanjeli town and its neighbourhood a fill month before the attack on the Muslims on August 12 and 15, 1998. (First published in CC, October 1998).

 

Onwards to Sanjeli!

Let’s unite — to stop young, tribal women from being lured and kid napped. Let us unite to put an end to these unholy incidents of Hindu women being sold in Muslim countries  — Let’s respond to bricks with stones.

Onwards to Sanjeli!      Public meeting         Onwards to Sanjeli!
Date: July 7, 1998, Sunday afternoon, 3 p.m.
At Rein Bassera, Sanjeli
Leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and 
Bajrang Dal to address the meeting

A young, 18–year–old woman, Kanta, of Randhikpur, and another married adivasi woman  were seduced and kidnapped to some unknown destination by Muslim youths. We have no trace of them. This is not the first incident in our area. Whether it is Vandana from Bandibaar, or Ami and Surekha from Jhalod, or Varsha from Godhra. There have been innumerable such incidents of kidnappings and disappearances. For months and years, our sisters and daughters cannot be traced. Apart from that, tragic incidents like the suicides of several elders like Magabhai Ninama keep happening in our society.

Hindu young women are kidnapped and 
Hindu elders commit suicide
Hindu population on the decline
Produce more children by kidnapping young women
Add to Muslim population
A widespread conspiracy to add to the numbers of anti–Hindu,       anti–national  elements is at work throughout the country

For the establishment of Ram Rajya, it was the people alone who came forward to help Bhagwan Ram. Now too, adivasi  brethren will have to come forward and unite to destroy this conspiracy.

When there is a weekly village market what do these Muslim loafers do? How do these Muslim loafers behave with Adivasi women going to the river for river sand? Pretending to help, do you know how these loafers tempt and lure young adivasi women and their elders?
Without expecting anything from the police, the government, or any of the politicians who are only interested in securing our votes — come — let us save our sisters and daughters from the clutches of these yavanas (demons)  who sell them to the Arabs.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad — Bajrang Dal — Sanjeli

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story
 


Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

VHP peppers tribal regions with hate pamphlets

 

Ranchi, June 25: By the year 2050, the Hindus would come to a minority in the ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Greater India), comprising India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, if the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its allied organisations are to be believed.

In a massive propaganda, the VHP is distributing pamphlets and booklets in the tribal hinterland exhorting the tribals and “fellow Hindus” to unify in the face of the “looming threat” and “teach a lesson” to the minorities. 

The booklets and the pamphlets have over emphasised the threat perception on Hinduism with hate propaganda against the minorities, particularly the Christian missionaries. The booklet says that in the year 1891, there were 80 per cent Hindus in the ‘Akhand Bharat’ which came down to 67.9 per cent in 1991 and it will come down to 48 per cent in 2050. 

Doling out another figure, the book published by the Sanskriti Raksha Manch says there is something called “Operation Mobilisation” by which the Christian missionaries intend to make religious literature and Bible available to 10 crore Indians by the end of the year.
The VHP and its allied organisations have planned to take their propaganda drive to every village. It has also planned several functions in the tribal hinterland to “make the people aware of their cultural and religious supremacy”.

Another booklet published by one Bharat Loktantrik Morcha, has lampooned the Christian priests and made them into actors. It claims that the Christian priests wear bhagwa (saffron) clothes and conduct artis of Jesus Christ in the church, fooling the illiterate Hindus villagers in the rural areas. “These Hindus start believing that Christ too was one of their gods and thus become Christians by default,” the booklet points out.

Taking another dramatic angle, the booklet mentions that “Christian girls entice Hindu boys” for marrying them and then converting them to Christianity. Several thousand copies of the pamphlets carrying intense hate propaganda have been lined up for distribution in the area. All of them have lampooned Christianity in particular and made the followers as some kind of “modern day monsters”. 

As a result of the large–scale circulation of the pamphlets and the booklets, it is being increasingly felt here that if its proliferation is not checked, the situation may become volatile in the near future.n 

(From a news report in The Hindustan Times, June 26).

 Distribution of anti-Christian pamphlets alarms MPs

NEW DELHI: The recent spate of attacks on minorities and the “free distribution of hate material,” attacking missionaries have caused grave concern among Christian MPs who have felt the need to form a forum in order to focus attention on this issue and take it up with the Central government.

Former minister Eduardo Faleiro of the Congress, also a member of this forum, said he was written to the home minister enclosing copies of pamphlets circulating in UP and demanded that such provocative material be confiscated. These pamphlets, purportedly published by the Hindu Jagran Manch, Kashi and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Gujarat, attack Christian missionaries for going in for conversions in the guise of helping the poor.  

(From a news report in The Times of India, May 9)

Sangh leaders gloat over Bible-bashing book

NEW DELHI, May 20: Sangh Parivar leaders have their noses buried in a new book now, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible — A Comparative Study, an attempt by a  Sangh loyalist to ridicule the Bible.

The contents is self–explanatory. It lists: Obscene episodes in Bible, Moral code of conduct in Vedas, Bible preaches atrocious intolerance, Vedas preach fraternity, Human sacrifice in Bible, non–violence in Vedas and Biblical god is jealous and vindictive, Vedic god is benevolent.

Whether it’s the RSS hedquarters in Jhandewalan, the BJP’s central office on Ashoka  Road or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad media centre, everyone is talking about how forcefully the book has “exposed” the vices in The Holy Bible and the missionaries’ design to Christianise India.

 The author is a known face in Sangh circles. Mr Kanayalal M Talreja, a migrant from Sindh, adheres to RSS ideology though Sangh leaders claim he was never a part of the organisation. The book was released recently by VHP working president Mr Ashok Singhal.
Mr Talreja has dedicated the book to Dayanand Saraswati, Veer Savarkar and RSS founder, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. 

The book questions Jesus Christ’s birth and quotes elaborately from the New Testament to prove that Mary was not a virgin and had other children. At one  place the author asks missionaries “why Christ did not accept his holy mother and his beloved brothers.”
Among the “obscene” episodes mentioned are “Reuben’s sexual intercourse with his father’s concubine, Judah’s sexual intercourse with his widoweddaughter-in-law and castration recommended by Jesus Christ.”

The leaders, however, shy from making comments in public about the book, for fear of controversy. The BJP has decided not to patronise the book. The party  headquarters’ bookstall does not have it. “It is merely the work of an individual,” a  senior BJP leader said guardedly.

However, VHP senior vice-president Mr Giriraj Kishore, did not have any qualms  talking about the book. For, he felt, the truth must come out. In fact, the book contains much less than what’s mentioned in the original version of the Bible, he  said.

(From a news report in The Statesman, May 21).
 

‘Revenge is necessary’

  •  “The police ran away, the magistrate and his staff hid under the table to save themselves. The Muslim boy and the Hindu girl were beaten to death by the people and their dead bodies were left in the court room…. since thousands were involved, no one was convicted. The incident of Halvad is etched in golden letters in the proud history  of Hindu samaj. Revenge of this type is necessary against such abduction of our girls.”
  •   “In the complaints we file to take revenge, we should implicate the top authorities of the mission and if possible, foreign missionaries also… They may not be convicted in the court in the end, but they should be made to go up and down the court for months on end… harassment is also a type of punishment.” 
(From a secret document in wide circulation in Gujarat. See Communalism Combat, April 2000 for details)
 

‘Missionaries have no right to live in India’
“For years, Christian padres have always abused (gaaliyan dekar) Hindu gods and goddessess and spread hatred against Hinduism. Christian and Muslim countries are sending thousands of crores of rupees to India in order to enslave the country through conversions. Hindus will soon become a minority and they will suffer in the same way as in Fiji, Kashmir, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Things are moving fast and soon you will be powerless to do anything about it.” 

(From, Isai missionariyon ka bharat par aakramand [Christian missionaries launch an assault on India], by A. Shankar, Bharat Loktantrik Morcha).
Another edition of the same pamphlet published by the VHP contains the chilling sentence: “Because missionaries are utilising the mercenary press to spread dozens of lies against Hindus, they have no right to live in India.” 

Christians compared to Hitler

One pamphlet compares Christian priests to Hitler (an inappropriate comparison, one would have thought, given that the founders of the RSS had a benign view of the Nazi dictator): “With the same obsession of superiority with which Hitler murdered the Jews in gas chambers, missionaries are trying to make Hindus accept that Christianity is the most superior religion. Christians are coming in the way of the work of Hindu orgainsations and are engaging in violence and murders.”

(From, Seva ki aadh mein church ka shadyantra [The church’s evil designs under cover of social service], Hindu Jagran Manch, Meerut, 1999)

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


Can India survive Hindutva’s assaults?

Were the saffron project to succeed the resultant freak will be an affront to humanity, an assault on the senses

 

History constructs the  ethos of a nation over time,  vicissitudes notwithstand ing. Overarching the peri  odical transitions and contingencies emerges the distinctive identity of a nation and stamps itself on its psyche and its being. The aeons–long experiential alchemy of India has fostered an ethos that has sustained it as a society and distinguished it as a unique nation. The various cultural encounters that India witnessed throughout its chequered and multi–layered history did not force it into an isolationist sulk. It creatively accommodated not only diverse peoples but also manifold thought currents. Both these — the people and the variegated streams of thought — contributed to the enrichment of Indian civilisation. And, like a person with multiple preferences and potentials, India subsumed layer upon layer of ideational variety and creative adventure in fields as far apart as philosophy and entertainment.

The thought processes and societal schemes of India, by and large, did not admit of elimination and exclusion in its cross cultural experiences (as its response). Its assimilative imagination overreached itself in even creating new gods and goddesses out of an amalgam that history had deposited at its doors. Its art forms reflected its refreshingly original blend of influences from far and near. All this from the free play of the inventive spirit, from the uninhibited exercise of the creative imagination, from the daring flights of experimental abandon. 

India rejoiced in multiplicity, it celebrated its multiples of hybridity and bewildering array of heterogeneity by imaginatively transforming them into a “pure” novelty and imprinting it with characteristics all its own. India revelled in the multiverse. Pluralism became its destiny, its distinction, its divertissement. It was this overwhelming glory of an abundance that was designated as Mahajati by Tagore. An approximate, but in no way adequate, English rendition of the idea enshrined in this felicitous coinage of the poet may be the Great Race. Some of the people who mingled in the soil of India, as adumbrated in Shrimad Bhagawat (2.4.18) are: Kirat, Huna, Andhra, Pulind, Pulkash, Abhir, Shumbha, Yavana, Khasa, etc.

Violently jerked loose from these civilisational roots India will become a vicious chimera, a dreaded nightmare, an abode of evil, a frightening vista of ugliness (drab uniformity), a vast expanse of vacuity (death of creative imagination) and sterility (conformist regimentation). The resultant freak will not be India. It will have lost its bearing, and its reason for being. The detritus pretending to be India, sequent to its demolition, would be much less than even a dung heap — an affront to humanity, an assault on the senses.

Geographical territory alone isn’t enough for a nation to identify itself. That territory must have a character and an identity, forged by history and validated by time. Kurds, even without a territory, are still a nation. Violence of realpolitik may succeed in artificially creating nation-states sometimes. But it cannot create a nation. A nation is a mirror with its back to the past too.

Those who are antipathetic to this historical identity, cultural locus, and civilisational conspectus of India are foreign to its ethos as a nation and entity as a nation–state. They pose a permanent danger to the unity of the nation, to its diversity of sub–cultures and variety of sub–nationalisms, to its pluralistic conflations, and its heterogeneous self–assertions. They constitute a permanent fifth column ever ready to betray the nation and bleed it to death.

No amount of breast beating on their part can convince any sane Indian that they are patriots or nationalists. Their patriotism is parochial, their nationalism sectarian. They have carved out their narrow domain of loyalty and affinity to “their” kind. The rhetoric of “one people, one nation, one culture” is a foreign import, fascistic in intent and content, reactionary to the core, a regressive anachronism. This concept, alien to India and its psyche, had its provenance in Europe, which it drenched in blood for close to two centuries, without ever succeeding in fixing as final the territorial boundaries of any nation-state in a rational manner, fair to all its people. No saffron, the colour of fire, can purge it of its inhumane and protean contents, and render it swadeshi.

Those who denounce and repudiate this construct will do all in their power to destroy India rooted in and sustained over millennia by it. They will rather smash and shred India to smithereens than respectfully abide by its traditional ethos and let it flourish as a great model of humanistic and pluralistic nationalism for the world to emulate and be enlightened by. They will subvert it relentlessly as die–hard enemies of the nation while mumbling anathema against “others” within and without its borders. 

While tearing it apart ruthlessly and forcing its diverse peoples to secede in order to escape its steamroller of hegemonic homogeneity, they will keep howling Akhand Bharat, quixotically laying claim to Afghanistan, Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and of course, the Pak–Occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, and thus “restoring” the golden Bharat of a non–existent and mythical yore, and of a puerile lore.

Such malevolent ones can never look kindly upon secular democracy, participatory polity, egalitarian aspiration, and pluralistic impulse of the millions of people who constitute the nation. Rather than endorse and give in to this humane and holistic view of civic life in a nation disfigured by various divides, the Black Caps are seeking to further maul and mangle it in the interests of the few, traditionally privileged by the status quo at home, and militarily entrenched by the predatory (imperialist) business houses abroad. What they did in the matter of Kargil and Kandahar, viz., betrayal of the nation and open treason for the benefit of their party, is of a piece with their antecedents. 

In the freedom struggle of India these anti–national, anti–social elements not only never participated, but also did their damned best to thwart it as stool pigeons and informers of the Brits. They, a national shame, constitute an indelible stigma on the social fabric of India.
The same love for the wily aliens (“Aryan” affinity, conjured in servility by the Black Caps) who drained India of its resources and subjected its people to massive tyranny (unbearable taxes and recurrent famines) and misery (devastating immiseration), is again in evidence in the grovelling welcome laid out for Bill Clinton. 

And, these traditional traitors have offered to replace Pakistan as the imperium’s outpost in Asia. Emulating Pakistan! And, as new peons of Uncle Sam, also courting its fate — ignominy, isolation, abandonment after use, and political anarchy. 

The US–Pak strategic alliance (SEATO, CENTO) was the prototype of the newly emergent Indo-US one, fabricated to advance American interests post–Cold War. Thus reduced to a watchdog of imperialist hegemony, facilitating and participating in the subjugation of South Asia to White aliens, India is set to become an agent of tyranny and loot directed by the imperium. This is the role pre–ordained and natally prescribed for those who made common cause with India’s enemy, the Brits. 

This is the role the saffronites have played to the hilt with sickening regularity whenever they could. And, thus they betrayed the nation to Pakistan in Kargil and Talibans in Kandahar. The same role they have now pledged to play in the Indian Ocean region, ditching the interests and security of India and South Asia to oblige the foreign masters.
The number and kind of bills legislated lately by the Parliament are tell tale. They bespeak the priorities of the neo–Hindu bandwagon. 

Not one enactment redressing the grievous issues currently affecting the masses, and no hurry in that direction. All the legislative flurry that has been in evidence has been strictly in favour of the foreign traders, mortgaging sector after sector of national economy (insurance, lawyers, etc.) to interests abroad. All national resources sacrificed to the holy trinity of globalisation (hegemonic death grip), liberalisation (foreign and feral exploitation), and privatisation (a fancy name for the sweetheart give–aways of public undertakings to foreigners and their native clones).

Historically, the neo–Hindus have been inimical to the people of India. And this roster only briefly showcases their bid to hasten the sell out, all as the unholy agenda of Hindutva. For diversionary ploys they never lack issues: violence against minorities, stuffing textbooks with vicious anecdotes as history, removing scholars from the ICHR for fear of exposure as Quislings, appointing avowed murderers at the helm in the NCERT, making Pakistan’s ISI responsible for its own gross incompetence and ineptitude, subverting the democratic process by gratuitously offering the Constitution for “review” and rooting for a Presidential form of government as if their tyranny in the present set–up is terribly restricted, performing neo–Hindu havanas and chanting of shlokas in state–sponsored events, encouraging barbaric vandalism by lumpens against artistic freedom of expression, communalising the bureaucracy and the police, brazenly making the governor an unabashed agent of the ruling party at the Centre, etc.

Their offensive against Hinduism, were it to succeed, may culminate into its shrinking to a cult. Only a cult has the fanaticism, narrowness, bigotry, and brain–dead conformity that the Black Caps impose on their cadres and on the society that they seek to “Hinduise”. It will have no resemblance with historical Hinduism, scriptural and popular. It would be a version of Christianity under Hitler which was quite “popular” in Germany in the accursed decades. The Black Cap Hindutva will snuff out the liberal, multi–faceted, large–hearted openness of imaginative expanse that characterised Hinduism over the millennia gone by. It would be one more Semitic sect, though not in external appearance, with its adherents dead to the wider world of humanity and its concerns, incapable of and unwilling to contribute to it anything in solidarity and enrichment. It would be dead Hinduism over whose ashes will Hindutva prevail.

As to India, this neo-Hindu fascist onslaught will prove its undoing. Its polity and society will be rent apart irremediably. Two points are worth pondering. One: This menace has not registered its ferocity well enough on the public mind. The intelligentsia is either lethargic or naive. Since its rampage is sporadic and spread out, the generality of people have not yet woken up to its fangs. But any delay in resisting it tooth and nail will amount to inviting national disaster.

Two: Fascist Hindutva will ride to power clutching the coat-tails of democracy — elections, legislatures, etc. But conceding this fig leaf of legitimacy and respectability to the murderous cult of neo–Hindus would ring the death knell of the democratic enterprise that is India. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


"The PM refuses to face daily asaults on India's tradition of tolerance by members of his own parivar. What about us?"

Blinding Reality

The PM refuses to face daily asaults on India's tradition of tolerance by members of his own parivar. What about us? 

For Indians who truly  value tolerance, every  passing day sounds a  death knell. The ground  is slipping swiftly; we are  sinking fast into the  quicksand of brazen manipulation. Such outlets for articulating grievances that still exist are severely proscribed by the rapidity of events and happenings. Institutions for the affirmation of inalienable basic rights are limited by an apathy that is compounded by a piece–meal response to events. 

Courts, the police, the legislature and the executive are all crippled. Either because of a self–inflicted tunnel vision that refuses to recognise the calculated plan or pattern behind the systematic build up of the climate of hate in which violence appears ‘legitimate’, or because of calculated indifference, driven by bias. 

We are all witness to the wilful flouting of the rule of law, daily. As it has been happening since the mid–eighties before their formal grip on political power, and more so since 1998, after the BJP’s rise to power, the fundamental freedom of faith and the identity of Indians who are not Hindu has been a constant target. 

Constant intimidation through verbal barrage and frequent acts of violence against a section of Indians — Muslims and Christians — have come to be accepted as facts of life. Vicious utterances, that go unrestrained and unchallenged by the guardians of law, have accorded them a sinister legitimacy. The statements by the leaders of the BJP/RSS/VHP/Bajrang Dal/SS, inciting hatred and violence and acts of violence themselves, are being highlighted by the mainline media every other day. 

As the cumulative outcome of the carefully cultivated climate of coercion, other basic freedoms — right to life and liberty, of personal security of and the right of association — of thousands of Indians stand severely curtailed. Churches are attacked; copies of the Bible desecrated and burnt. A Christian priest is forced to worship inside a temple; adivasis are ‘re–converted’ amidst much fanfare but told to worship in separate shrines thereafter.

Physical attacks and intimidation of minorities have re–surfaced with a vengeance. Incidents in the past three months alone — between April and June 2000 — have crossed the three dozen mark. Christian religious persons running educational institutions or health centres have been singled out for murder or other forms of mistreatment. In every instance, mob rule and intimidation has overpowered the rule of law, with the local police reduced to wilful impotency. 

Every attack has been preceded by systematic distribution of hate spewing pamphlets (see box 2). Since 1996, media reports have drawn repeated attention to such hate campaigns. But all the vitriol has suspiciously escaped police action under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Gujarat, and now Uttar Pradesh, are living examples of life for Indians under ‘Hindu rashtra’.

Senior officials in the police, like the DGP of Gujarat, CP Singh, have stated on record that “organisations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal are clearly behind the violence” (see CC, October 1998). Concrete evidence in specific cases points clearly to the moral and ideological backing that the sangh parivar renders to the assailants. But our watchdogs and institutions fail to make the connection or see the pattern.

Four months ago, the newly appointed RSS Sarsanghchalak, KS Sudarshan, declared that an ‘epic war’ was in progress in India between Hindus and ‘anti–Hindu forces’; in Mumbai, Bal Thackeray’s Saamna is once again spitting venom with a vengeance against ‘anti–national’ Muslims (See page 25). And yet, we resist drawing the links. 

What is responsible for this selective amnesia? How is it possible for us to react to rights’ violations in individual cases but turn a blind eye to the bloody and devious design that underlies them?

One fine day, a Bajrang Dal leader, Dharmendra Sharma, sah-sahayojak for the Braj region, makes front page news declaring that Christians are now “bigger enemies” than Muslims. (The Times of India, June 23, 2000). Clarification, if any were needed, that Muslims remain the Bajrang Dal’s and the VHP’s enemies! “Maar peet to kya, hum sab kuch karne ke liye taiyar hain” (“We are prepared to use violence. There is no limit”), said Sharma, leaving no room for any confusion. 

The remark prompted an expression of outrage from India’s attorney general, Soli Sorabjee. He opined that such elements should be put behind bars. The National Human Rights Commission demanded details of attacks on Christians from the central and state governments. But only weeks earlier, the remark of the all–India Bajrang Dal convenor, Dr. Surendra Jain, calling for “a second Quit India movement” to drive away Christian missionaries had passed unnoticed and unchallenged. (The Afternoon Despatch and Courier, May 27, 2000).

Life in Gujarat for a Muslim or a Christian today is a suffocating reminder that he or she no longer enjoys the precious privilege of being regarded as an equal Indian. Muslims residing in ‘cosmopolitan’ localities in Gujarat are forcibly evicted; Muslim children have to compulsory attend school and even give examinations on Id day. Discrimination and bias has insidiously crept into the marketplace of ideas, avenues of livelihood, educational institutions, the administration, the police, the judiciary. All in all, the quality that we used to proudly describe as Indian values is fast eroding. 

What more will it take to force us to recognise the extent of corrosion? Mumbai’s classrooms, at the university level, reflect this public sanction to brazen bias in their own style. A professor advising students on how to write an essay for the All India Open School examination elaborates: “Write about how the British exploited this country. And how before that the Muslim rulers, thanks to their love of the good life, robbed this great wealthy land of all its wealth. Muslims have always loved the good life and it is this greed that has looted our country that used to be a sone ki chidiya (a golden bird). 

There is a clever and calculated plan behind every campaign launched, sustained and developed by the RSS and its faithful followers. In the eighties, the campaign for a glorious temple in the name of Lord Ram at Ayodhya fired 18,000 villages to participate in the shilanyas in 1990, and over 5,00,000 kar sevaks to be witness and participants in the demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya two years later. Clever double entendre accompanied the campaign for a temple at Lord Ram’s legendary birthplace. The justification in the nation–wide effort was through the demonising of Mughal emperor Babar. Muslims in India today, ‘Babar ki aulad’, were crudely told again and again, that they had trampled on all that is decent Indian, read Hindu.

With the campaign for the construction of a Ram mandir at Ayodhya now in the process of being actively revived, the anti–Muslim underpinnings of the campaign are also re–surfacing in subtle and not–so–subtle forms. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), nudged by an encouraging human resources development ministry under none less than Murli Manohar Joshi, is busy excavating 46 Indian historical sites, including UNESCO–protected World Heritage sites like Fatehpur Sikri. Objective? To establish that Hindu or Jain temples exist below Mughal (read Muslim), monuments.

There is a brazenness that underlines the physical assaults and intimidation whereby the assailants present themselves as victims acting in self–defence. Of late, the Bajrang Dal has publicly started arms training for its cadre in order to prepare them for ‘defending’ Hindus and Hinduism from the demons being resurrected — Muslims and Christians. The daily violators of law and those who condone verbal assaults, physical intimidation and murder are the first to point to Pakistan’s ISI as the real culprit! Union home minister, Advani also concurs, seeing a foreign hand behind the attacks on Christians. The result: the nitty–gritty facts behind those responsible for the assaults and violence in each of the cases, where culprits inspired by or belonging to the RSS, the Bajrang Dal and the VHP have been identified, are glossed over and the police just do not act. The guilty not only escape the arm of the law but enjoy government protection every time. 

Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee and his strongman, Union home minister LK Advani, have once more declared that there is “no communal twist to the recent incidents”. The liberal mukhota of the sangh parivar is useful for the saffron bandwagon at ticklish moments like this. 

Vajpayee’s admirers, who simply refuse to believe him capable of legitimising hatred and selective murder, saw his recent bowing before the Pope at the Vatican as a “master stroke”. That the pontiff raised the issue of increasing attacks on Christians at his meeting with the PM and yet again, three days later, is seen as simply a passing hitch in international relations. 

Graham Staines’ murderer, Dara Singh is today a man lionised by the literature emanating from the saffron camp. He proposes to fight the next election. For the moment, the Hindu Jagran Sammukhya, backed by the RSS, is busy distributing thousands of copies of a 16–page booklet Mu Dara Singh Kahuchi (I am Dara Singh speaking) in Manoharpur, Orissa. The booklet focuses on the activities of the Staines’ family and proclaiming that since “Staines was the killer of our culture, so his killing was necessary”. 

The officially–appointed Wadhwa Commission implicated Dara Singh in the triple murder case but despite the evidence of police officers and counsel before the Commission, it exonerated the like BJP, RSS, VHP and BD. An example, yet again, of a resistance to examine the ideological backup that allows a Dara Singh to flourish and grow in popularity.
Vajpayee has been of consistent use to the hate–driven parivar. Eighteen months ago, on New Year’s Day 1999, after visiting the southern district of The Dangs in Gujarat, that had suffered systematic violence against its minuscule resident Christian community (ruining traditional Christmas celebrations), Vajpayee spoke to the national media. Without a single word on the violence and intimidation suffered by Dang Christians, he called for a national debate on conversions! 

Union home minister, LK Advani, used to be the BJP’s most eloquent leader on every issue pertaining to minority–majority relations in the country in the eighties and nineties — before he took an oath swearing allegiance to the secular and democratic tenets of the Indian Constitution. Today, he has mastered the art of keeping a conspicuous silence. He does surface on appropriate occasions only to issue clean character certificates to the Bajrang Dal and the VHP every time their name gets associated with criminal incidents. 

Following the triple murder by burning of Graham Staines and his young sons, Advani was quick to absolve the VHP and Bajrang Dal of any involvement in the crime. He knew these organisations well, he said, adding that they were incapable of criminal acts! It is a well–programmed symphony in operation, being played out by the different organs of the sangh parivar every day. That the Vajpayee–Advani duo is right on top of the political pyramid, ever ready with alibis, helps a great deal. 

That the BJP and its supporters within and outside the sangh parivar rely heavily on Vajpayee’s liberal mask is more than understandable. What is not, however, is the wilful blindness of the secular components of the NDA, leaders such as the TDP’s technocrat, Chandrababu Naidu, the Trinamool Congress’ firebrand, Mamata Banerjee, and the ever–reasonable socialists, George Fernandes and Jaya Jaitly. 

Equally difficult to appreciate is the failure of individuals within other secular political formations to categorically affirm that the basic rights and freedoms of every Indian, regardless of religion, caste, creed or gender is inalienable. (Remember a state minister from the ‘secular’ Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) in Maharashtra, personally welcoming criminals allegedly associated with the Bajrang Dal on their release from the Nasik jail. They were charged with the vandalising a girl’s hostel in April. The deputy chief minister of Maharashtra, Chhagan Bhujbal, later justified the minister’s behaviour).

Most opinion polls conducted to gauge public opinion indicate that only about a quarter of the Indian population backs the BJP and not all the support is for communal reasons. The rest of India, which naturally includes minorities, Dalits and other Hindus within it, remains opposed to Hindutva’s antics.

The hitch lies, however, in the lack of translation of this opposition into organised protest and outrage. The ignominies of rights abuses and oppression of minorities, women and Dalits notwithstanding, there is an innate reluctance to accept, acknowledge and rise in unison against these horrors. One of the reasons is our refusal to abandon the prevalent myth of Indian civilisation as the most ancient, the most non-violent, and the mSost tolerant in the world.

Only the creative explosion of that myth will help rid us of our false cocoon of comfort and galvanise us into articulation of outrage that is long overdue.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


Attacks on Christians in 2000

The All–India Christian Council claims there have been over 300 attacks targeting Christians and their institutions in different parts of the country in the last two years. Given below is a list of attacks since the dawn of the new millennium.

 

  • January 1: Father Vikas attacked at St. Mary’s School, Panipat, Haryana.
  • February 18: Attack on a hospital and desecration of Mother Mary’s  statue, Dindigul, Tamil Nadu.
  •  March 7: Copies of Bible snatched, devotees slapped during a prayer meeting, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
  •  March 9: Ish Mata Catholic Church looted, a portion of the rear wall destroyed, Samalkha, Haryana.
  • March 12: A computer centre run by the Christians looted; inmates locked, Ghaziabad, UP.
  • March 31: Two priests attached to the Archbishop’s House taken to police station on fake charges and detained, Agra, UP.
  • April 6: St. Dominic’s School attacked and the principal abused for refusing admission to a few children, Mathura, UP.
  • April 10: Sacred Heart School attacked by parents for not promoting  students who had failed in the examinations, Mathura, UP.
  • April 11: Murderous attack on the principal and nuns of St. Teresa  School, Koshi Kalan, UP.
  • April 21: Christian group from Hyderabad attacked, literature  they were carrying set on fire by Bajrang Dal activists, Haryana.
  • April 25: Two nuns hit by a scooterist, Rewari, Haryana.
  • May 2: Masked men assault nuns at a convent, Jhansi, UP.
  • May 3: Christian group beaten up The Dangs, Gujarat.
  • May 3: Break-in at a church, Sagarpur, Delhi.
  • May 4: Mob attack on a catholic School, Patna, Bihar.
  • May 6: Bajrang Dal men beat up Christians, Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
  • May 6: 13 Christians arrested for holding prayer meetings and street plays without prior permission, The Dangs, Gujarat.
  • May 9: The VHP, Bajrang Dal men barge into a girls’ hostel and assault those watching a film on Jesus Christ, Nasik, Maharashtra.
  • May 11: A Jesuit stabbed, Basavanpura village near Bangalore, Karnataka.
  • May 13: 3 churches attacked in Indore 
  • May 16: A priest attacked, Bhind, MP.
  • May 21: 30 people injured in a bomb blast at a prayer meeting, Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
  • May 21: Prayer homes torched, Kandhmal district, Orissa.
  • May 29: IED’s found in churches, Medak, Vikarabad, AP. 
  • June 7: A priest murdered at Paulus Memorial School, Mathura,UP.
  • June 8: Bomb explosion in churches, Karnataka, AP and Goa.
  • June 11: A priest is killed, Jalandhar, Punjab.
  • June 14: Priest beaten, paraded, in a village in Jagdalpur, MP.
  • June 18: Eyewitness of priest’s murder dies in police custody, Mathura, UP.
  • June 24: Graves dug up near church, AP.
  • June 27: Miscreants ransack a church, Pusad, 
  • July 5: Missionary school guard beaten up, Jhansi, UP.
  • July 5: Bajrang Dal force closure of Christian school, Ahmedabad.

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

nciteful pamphlets distributed and incendiary speeches made at the VHP–sponsored ‘dharam sabhas’ have been ingenuously used by the BJP–RSS–VHP–Bajrang Dal combine to intensely communalise neighbourhoods and communities before an attack is launched against the minorities. Reproduced here is the English translation of a pamphlet in Gujarati, which was widely circulated in Sanjeli town and its neighbourhood a fill month before the attack on the Muslims on August 12 and 15, 1998. (First published in CC, October 1998).

 

Onwards to Sanjeli!

Let’s unite — to stop young, tribal women from being lured and kid napped. Let us unite to put an end to these unholy incidents of Hindu women being sold in Muslim countries  — Let’s respond to bricks with stones.

Onwards to Sanjeli!      Public meeting         Onwards to Sanjeli!
Date: July 7, 1998, Sunday afternoon, 3 p.m.
At Rein Bassera, Sanjeli
Leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and 
Bajrang Dal to address the meeting

A young, 18–year–old woman, Kanta, of Randhikpur, and another married adivasi woman  were seduced and kidnapped to some unknown destination by Muslim youths. We have no trace of them. This is not the first incident in our area. Whether it is Vandana from Bandibaar, or Ami and Surekha from Jhalod, or Varsha from Godhra. There have been innumerable such incidents of kidnappings and disappearances. For months and years, our sisters and daughters cannot be traced. Apart from that, tragic incidents like the suicides of several elders like Magabhai Ninama keep happening in our society.

Hindu young women are kidnapped and 
Hindu elders commit suicide
Hindu population on the decline
Produce more children by kidnapping young women
Add to Muslim population
A widespread conspiracy to add to the numbers of anti–Hindu,       anti–national  elements is at work throughout the country

For the establishment of Ram Rajya, it was the people alone who came forward to help Bhagwan Ram. Now too, adivasi  brethren will have to come forward and unite to destroy this conspiracy.

When there is a weekly village market what do these Muslim loafers do? How do these Muslim loafers behave with Adivasi women going to the river for river sand? Pretending to help, do you know how these loafers tempt and lure young adivasi women and their elders?
Without expecting anything from the police, the government, or any of the politicians who are only interested in securing our votes — come — let us save our sisters and daughters from the clutches of these yavanas (demons)  who sell them to the Arabs.

Vishwa Hindu Parishad — Bajrang Dal — Sanjeli

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story
 


Hate campaign the PM knows nothing about

VHP peppers tribal regions with hate pamphlets

 

Ranchi, June 25: By the year 2050, the Hindus would come to a minority in the ‘Akhand Bharat’ (Greater India), comprising India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, if the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its allied organisations are to be believed.

In a massive propaganda, the VHP is distributing pamphlets and booklets in the tribal hinterland exhorting the tribals and “fellow Hindus” to unify in the face of the “looming threat” and “teach a lesson” to the minorities. 

The booklets and the pamphlets have over emphasised the threat perception on Hinduism with hate propaganda against the minorities, particularly the Christian missionaries. The booklet says that in the year 1891, there were 80 per cent Hindus in the ‘Akhand Bharat’ which came down to 67.9 per cent in 1991 and it will come down to 48 per cent in 2050. 

Doling out another figure, the book published by the Sanskriti Raksha Manch says there is something called “Operation Mobilisation” by which the Christian missionaries intend to make religious literature and Bible available to 10 crore Indians by the end of the year.
The VHP and its allied organisations have planned to take their propaganda drive to every village. It has also planned several functions in the tribal hinterland to “make the people aware of their cultural and religious supremacy”.

Another booklet published by one Bharat Loktantrik Morcha, has lampooned the Christian priests and made them into actors. It claims that the Christian priests wear bhagwa (saffron) clothes and conduct artis of Jesus Christ in the church, fooling the illiterate Hindus villagers in the rural areas. “These Hindus start believing that Christ too was one of their gods and thus become Christians by default,” the booklet points out.

Taking another dramatic angle, the booklet mentions that “Christian girls entice Hindu boys” for marrying them and then converting them to Christianity. Several thousand copies of the pamphlets carrying intense hate propaganda have been lined up for distribution in the area. All of them have lampooned Christianity in particular and made the followers as some kind of “modern day monsters”. 

As a result of the large–scale circulation of the pamphlets and the booklets, it is being increasingly felt here that if its proliferation is not checked, the situation may become volatile in the near future.n 

(From a news report in The Hindustan Times, June 26).

 Distribution of anti-Christian pamphlets alarms MPs

NEW DELHI: The recent spate of attacks on minorities and the “free distribution of hate material,” attacking missionaries have caused grave concern among Christian MPs who have felt the need to form a forum in order to focus attention on this issue and take it up with the Central government.

Former minister Eduardo Faleiro of the Congress, also a member of this forum, said he was written to the home minister enclosing copies of pamphlets circulating in UP and demanded that such provocative material be confiscated. These pamphlets, purportedly published by the Hindu Jagran Manch, Kashi and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Gujarat, attack Christian missionaries for going in for conversions in the guise of helping the poor.  

(From a news report in The Times of India, May 9)

Sangh leaders gloat over Bible-bashing book

NEW DELHI, May 20: Sangh Parivar leaders have their noses buried in a new book now, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible — A Comparative Study, an attempt by a  Sangh loyalist to ridicule the Bible.

The contents is self–explanatory. It lists: Obscene episodes in Bible, Moral code of conduct in Vedas, Bible preaches atrocious intolerance, Vedas preach fraternity, Human sacrifice in Bible, non–violence in Vedas and Biblical god is jealous and vindictive, Vedic god is benevolent.

Whether it’s the RSS hedquarters in Jhandewalan, the BJP’s central office on Ashoka  Road or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad media centre, everyone is talking about how forcefully the book has “exposed” the vices in The Holy Bible and the missionaries’ design to Christianise India.

 The author is a known face in Sangh circles. Mr Kanayalal M Talreja, a migrant from Sindh, adheres to RSS ideology though Sangh leaders claim he was never a part of the organisation. The book was released recently by VHP working president Mr Ashok Singhal.
Mr Talreja has dedicated the book to Dayanand Saraswati, Veer Savarkar and RSS founder, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. 

The book questions Jesus Christ’s birth and quotes elaborately from the New Testament to prove that Mary was not a virgin and had other children. At one  place the author asks missionaries “why Christ did not accept his holy mother and his beloved brothers.”
Among the “obscene” episodes mentioned are “Reuben’s sexual intercourse with his father’s concubine, Judah’s sexual intercourse with his widoweddaughter-in-law and castration recommended by Jesus Christ.”

The leaders, however, shy from making comments in public about the book, for fear of controversy. The BJP has decided not to patronise the book. The party  headquarters’ bookstall does not have it. “It is merely the work of an individual,” a  senior BJP leader said guardedly.

However, VHP senior vice-president Mr Giriraj Kishore, did not have any qualms  talking about the book. For, he felt, the truth must come out. In fact, the book contains much less than what’s mentioned in the original version of the Bible, he  said.

(From a news report in The Statesman, May 21).
 

‘Revenge is necessary’

  •  “The police ran away, the magistrate and his staff hid under the table to save themselves. The Muslim boy and the Hindu girl were beaten to death by the people and their dead bodies were left in the court room…. since thousands were involved, no one was convicted. The incident of Halvad is etched in golden letters in the proud history  of Hindu samaj. Revenge of this type is necessary against such abduction of our girls.”
  •   “In the complaints we file to take revenge, we should implicate the top authorities of the mission and if possible, foreign missionaries also… They may not be convicted in the court in the end, but they should be made to go up and down the court for months on end… harassment is also a type of punishment.” 
(From a secret document in wide circulation in Gujarat. See Communalism Combat, April 2000 for details)
 

‘Missionaries have no right to live in India’
“For years, Christian padres have always abused (gaaliyan dekar) Hindu gods and goddessess and spread hatred against Hinduism. Christian and Muslim countries are sending thousands of crores of rupees to India in order to enslave the country through conversions. Hindus will soon become a minority and they will suffer in the same way as in Fiji, Kashmir, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Things are moving fast and soon you will be powerless to do anything about it.” 

(From, Isai missionariyon ka bharat par aakramand [Christian missionaries launch an assault on India], by A. Shankar, Bharat Loktantrik Morcha).
Another edition of the same pamphlet published by the VHP contains the chilling sentence: “Because missionaries are utilising the mercenary press to spread dozens of lies against Hindus, they have no right to live in India.” 

Christians compared to Hitler

One pamphlet compares Christian priests to Hitler (an inappropriate comparison, one would have thought, given that the founders of the RSS had a benign view of the Nazi dictator): “With the same obsession of superiority with which Hitler murdered the Jews in gas chambers, missionaries are trying to make Hindus accept that Christianity is the most superior religion. Christians are coming in the way of the work of Hindu orgainsations and are engaging in violence and murders.”

(From, Seva ki aadh mein church ka shadyantra [The church’s evil designs under cover of social service], Hindu Jagran Manch, Meerut, 1999)

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


Can India survive Hindutva’s assaults?

Were the saffron project to succeed the resultant freak will be an affront to humanity, an assault on the senses

 

History constructs the  ethos of a nation over time,  vicissitudes notwithstand ing. Overarching the peri  odical transitions and contingencies emerges the distinctive identity of a nation and stamps itself on its psyche and its being. The aeons–long experiential alchemy of India has fostered an ethos that has sustained it as a society and distinguished it as a unique nation. The various cultural encounters that India witnessed throughout its chequered and multi–layered history did not force it into an isolationist sulk. It creatively accommodated not only diverse peoples but also manifold thought currents. Both these — the people and the variegated streams of thought — contributed to the enrichment of Indian civilisation. And, like a person with multiple preferences and potentials, India subsumed layer upon layer of ideational variety and creative adventure in fields as far apart as philosophy and entertainment.

The thought processes and societal schemes of India, by and large, did not admit of elimination and exclusion in its cross cultural experiences (as its response). Its assimilative imagination overreached itself in even creating new gods and goddesses out of an amalgam that history had deposited at its doors. Its art forms reflected its refreshingly original blend of influences from far and near. All this from the free play of the inventive spirit, from the uninhibited exercise of the creative imagination, from the daring flights of experimental abandon. 

India rejoiced in multiplicity, it celebrated its multiples of hybridity and bewildering array of heterogeneity by imaginatively transforming them into a “pure” novelty and imprinting it with characteristics all its own. India revelled in the multiverse. Pluralism became its destiny, its distinction, its divertissement. It was this overwhelming glory of an abundance that was designated as Mahajati by Tagore. An approximate, but in no way adequate, English rendition of the idea enshrined in this felicitous coinage of the poet may be the Great Race. Some of the people who mingled in the soil of India, as adumbrated in Shrimad Bhagawat (2.4.18) are: Kirat, Huna, Andhra, Pulind, Pulkash, Abhir, Shumbha, Yavana, Khasa, etc.

Violently jerked loose from these civilisational roots India will become a vicious chimera, a dreaded nightmare, an abode of evil, a frightening vista of ugliness (drab uniformity), a vast expanse of vacuity (death of creative imagination) and sterility (conformist regimentation). The resultant freak will not be India. It will have lost its bearing, and its reason for being. The detritus pretending to be India, sequent to its demolition, would be much less than even a dung heap — an affront to humanity, an assault on the senses.

Geographical territory alone isn’t enough for a nation to identify itself. That territory must have a character and an identity, forged by history and validated by time. Kurds, even without a territory, are still a nation. Violence of realpolitik may succeed in artificially creating nation-states sometimes. But it cannot create a nation. A nation is a mirror with its back to the past too.

Those who are antipathetic to this historical identity, cultural locus, and civilisational conspectus of India are foreign to its ethos as a nation and entity as a nation–state. They pose a permanent danger to the unity of the nation, to its diversity of sub–cultures and variety of sub–nationalisms, to its pluralistic conflations, and its heterogeneous self–assertions. They constitute a permanent fifth column ever ready to betray the nation and bleed it to death.

No amount of breast beating on their part can convince any sane Indian that they are patriots or nationalists. Their patriotism is parochial, their nationalism sectarian. They have carved out their narrow domain of loyalty and affinity to “their” kind. The rhetoric of “one people, one nation, one culture” is a foreign import, fascistic in intent and content, reactionary to the core, a regressive anachronism. This concept, alien to India and its psyche, had its provenance in Europe, which it drenched in blood for close to two centuries, without ever succeeding in fixing as final the territorial boundaries of any nation-state in a rational manner, fair to all its people. No saffron, the colour of fire, can purge it of its inhumane and protean contents, and render it swadeshi.

Those who denounce and repudiate this construct will do all in their power to destroy India rooted in and sustained over millennia by it. They will rather smash and shred India to smithereens than respectfully abide by its traditional ethos and let it flourish as a great model of humanistic and pluralistic nationalism for the world to emulate and be enlightened by. They will subvert it relentlessly as die–hard enemies of the nation while mumbling anathema against “others” within and without its borders. 

While tearing it apart ruthlessly and forcing its diverse peoples to secede in order to escape its steamroller of hegemonic homogeneity, they will keep howling Akhand Bharat, quixotically laying claim to Afghanistan, Burma, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and of course, the Pak–Occupied Kashmir and Pakistan, and thus “restoring” the golden Bharat of a non–existent and mythical yore, and of a puerile lore.

Such malevolent ones can never look kindly upon secular democracy, participatory polity, egalitarian aspiration, and pluralistic impulse of the millions of people who constitute the nation. Rather than endorse and give in to this humane and holistic view of civic life in a nation disfigured by various divides, the Black Caps are seeking to further maul and mangle it in the interests of the few, traditionally privileged by the status quo at home, and militarily entrenched by the predatory (imperialist) business houses abroad. What they did in the matter of Kargil and Kandahar, viz., betrayal of the nation and open treason for the benefit of their party, is of a piece with their antecedents. 

In the freedom struggle of India these anti–national, anti–social elements not only never participated, but also did their damned best to thwart it as stool pigeons and informers of the Brits. They, a national shame, constitute an indelible stigma on the social fabric of India.
The same love for the wily aliens (“Aryan” affinity, conjured in servility by the Black Caps) who drained India of its resources and subjected its people to massive tyranny (unbearable taxes and recurrent famines) and misery (devastating immiseration), is again in evidence in the grovelling welcome laid out for Bill Clinton. 

And, these traditional traitors have offered to replace Pakistan as the imperium’s outpost in Asia. Emulating Pakistan! And, as new peons of Uncle Sam, also courting its fate — ignominy, isolation, abandonment after use, and political anarchy. 

The US–Pak strategic alliance (SEATO, CENTO) was the prototype of the newly emergent Indo-US one, fabricated to advance American interests post–Cold War. Thus reduced to a watchdog of imperialist hegemony, facilitating and participating in the subjugation of South Asia to White aliens, India is set to become an agent of tyranny and loot directed by the imperium. This is the role pre–ordained and natally prescribed for those who made common cause with India’s enemy, the Brits. 

This is the role the saffronites have played to the hilt with sickening regularity whenever they could. And, thus they betrayed the nation to Pakistan in Kargil and Talibans in Kandahar. The same role they have now pledged to play in the Indian Ocean region, ditching the interests and security of India and South Asia to oblige the foreign masters.
The number and kind of bills legislated lately by the Parliament are tell tale. They bespeak the priorities of the neo–Hindu bandwagon. 

Not one enactment redressing the grievous issues currently affecting the masses, and no hurry in that direction. All the legislative flurry that has been in evidence has been strictly in favour of the foreign traders, mortgaging sector after sector of national economy (insurance, lawyers, etc.) to interests abroad. All national resources sacrificed to the holy trinity of globalisation (hegemonic death grip), liberalisation (foreign and feral exploitation), and privatisation (a fancy name for the sweetheart give–aways of public undertakings to foreigners and their native clones).

Historically, the neo–Hindus have been inimical to the people of India. And this roster only briefly showcases their bid to hasten the sell out, all as the unholy agenda of Hindutva. For diversionary ploys they never lack issues: violence against minorities, stuffing textbooks with vicious anecdotes as history, removing scholars from the ICHR for fear of exposure as Quislings, appointing avowed murderers at the helm in the NCERT, making Pakistan’s ISI responsible for its own gross incompetence and ineptitude, subverting the democratic process by gratuitously offering the Constitution for “review” and rooting for a Presidential form of government as if their tyranny in the present set–up is terribly restricted, performing neo–Hindu havanas and chanting of shlokas in state–sponsored events, encouraging barbaric vandalism by lumpens against artistic freedom of expression, communalising the bureaucracy and the police, brazenly making the governor an unabashed agent of the ruling party at the Centre, etc.

Their offensive against Hinduism, were it to succeed, may culminate into its shrinking to a cult. Only a cult has the fanaticism, narrowness, bigotry, and brain–dead conformity that the Black Caps impose on their cadres and on the society that they seek to “Hinduise”. It will have no resemblance with historical Hinduism, scriptural and popular. It would be a version of Christianity under Hitler which was quite “popular” in Germany in the accursed decades. The Black Cap Hindutva will snuff out the liberal, multi–faceted, large–hearted openness of imaginative expanse that characterised Hinduism over the millennia gone by. It would be one more Semitic sect, though not in external appearance, with its adherents dead to the wider world of humanity and its concerns, incapable of and unwilling to contribute to it anything in solidarity and enrichment. It would be dead Hinduism over whose ashes will Hindutva prevail.

As to India, this neo-Hindu fascist onslaught will prove its undoing. Its polity and society will be rent apart irremediably. Two points are worth pondering. One: This menace has not registered its ferocity well enough on the public mind. The intelligentsia is either lethargic or naive. Since its rampage is sporadic and spread out, the generality of people have not yet woken up to its fangs. But any delay in resisting it tooth and nail will amount to inviting national disaster.

Two: Fascist Hindutva will ride to power clutching the coat-tails of democracy — elections, legislatures, etc. But conceding this fig leaf of legitimacy and respectability to the murderous cult of neo–Hindus would ring the death knell of the democratic enterprise that is India. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, July 2000, Year 7  No. 60, Cover Story


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