Friday, October 7, 2011
Krishna worship and Rathayatra Festival in Ancient Egypt?
http://bibhudev.blogspot.com/2011/03/krishna-worship-and-rathayatra-festival.html
Krishna worship and Rathayatra Festival in Ancient Egypt?
Note: This article has been published on the Iskcon News site, the Graham Hancock website, eSamskriti and the Viewzone Magazine
An interesting piece of information caught my attention during my journey across the sacred sites of Egypt during early 2010. During the light and sound show in the magnificent temple complex of Karnak, I heard a voice booming over the loudspeakers: “I am Amon-Ra...The waters of the Nile sprout from my sandals.” This immediately reminded me of the Vedic Creator God Vishnu. In the typical depiction of Vishnu in Hindu iconography, the sacred river Ganges is always shown emerging from the toe of the Vishnu, while in Egypt, we find a very similar imagery associated with Amun. But who was Amun? I knew that Amun was the presiding diety of Karnak, and he was worshipped there as the Creator God, along with his wife Mut, and his son Khonsu.
The next day, while discussing about the light and sound show with my tour guide, he suddenly gave me another piece of information that I was not aware of, and that took me completely by surprise: “Amun was always depicted in funerary art and temple inscriptions with a ‘blue skin colour’ and having two feathers in his headdress.”
Now, if anyone ever travels to India, and he talks to the people there about a god having a blue skin colour, with a couple of feathers in his headdress, and from whose sandals or toes a ‘sacred river’ emerges, he will get a single answer: Vishnu, or more correctly Krishna, for it is Krishna who was always depicted with two ‘peacock’ feathers in his headdress. This realization has significant implications. Krishna is an exclusively Indian diety, whose demise in 3102 BC signified the start of the present Kali Yuga in the Vedic Yuga system. Amun on the other hand, was not worshipped in Egypt prior to the establishment of the Temple complex at Thebes. He is mentioned in the creation myth of Hermopolis as one of the four pairs of divinities who were present in the Primeval Waters of Nun. As Amun-Amaunet, he represented the ‘hidden’ properties of the Primordial Ocean. However, he was not a part of the Egyptian Ennead, the Divine Company of Gods, who were the primary deities of worship. But suddenly at Karnak, sometime during the Middle Kingdom, Amun usurped the position of Atum, as the head of the state patheon. He became the self-engendered Creator God; an early Twelfth-Dynasty inscription in the jubilee chapel of King Senusret I (c.1965 – c.1920 BC) at Karnak describes Amun as ‘the king of the gods’. Current evidence indicates that the construction of the temple complex at Luxor and Karnak may have started as early as the Middle Kingdom (c.2055 – c.1650 BC), although the buildings visible today date from the reign of Amenhotep III (c.1390 – c.1352 BC), the great temple builder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. What could have trigerred his precipitous rise to the head of the Egyptian pantheon from relative obscurity as a diety of the Primeval Ocean? And how did a whole new patheon of deities, along with associated symbolisms, rites and rituals, with gigantic temple complexes dedicated to them, suddenly spring up in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom?
The blue colored Amun The blue colored Krishna
I was also taken aback by the descriptions of the annual Opet festival that used to be celebrated in Karnak, during the season of the flooding of the Nile. In this grand festival, the idols of Amun, Mut and Khonsu were placed on sacred barques, which were carried in a splendid, joyous procession down the Avenue of the Sphinxes, along the 2 mile road that connects the temples of Karnak and Luxor. The celebrations have been depicted in detail on the walls of the Great Colonnade at Luxor. At Karnak, the idols of the Thebian triad were first ceremoniously washed and magnificently dressed with colorful linen and precious jewellery and placed on sacred barques (boats). The pharaoh then offered his obeisances to the barques, which were then carried by the priests, accompanied by musicians, and soldiers carrying standards decorated with brilliant plumes and streamers. Elegantly decorated horse drawn chariots, would also accompany the procession. Huge crowds of people gathered along the road, blowing trumpets, dancing and singing, clapping, offering prayers, burning incense sticks and generally raising a tremendous din. Nubian musicians and female acrobats entertained the crowd. The barques rested along the way at six way-stations that were built by Queen Hatshepsut. Once the idols reached Luxor Temple, the coronation rites of the king were repeated in a sacred ritual, which effectively transferred the power of divine ruleship from Amun to the pharaoh. The idols rested in Luxor for a period of time and subsequently came back to Karnak, in another procession along the river Nile. Although the Opet festival was initially celebrated over only 11 days, later it was extended to nearly 24 to 27 days. The festival not only symbolized a restoration of the divine right of the king to rule, but also signified a rejuvenation of the creative forces of the cosmos, through the sacred rituals and boisterous celebrations.
Amazingly enough, an exactly similar festival is still celebrated every year in the tiny coastal town of Puri, in the state of Orissa in eastern India, after the onset of monsoon in the month of July. Here, in the yearly Rathayatra festival, the idols of Krishna (or Jagannath), his brother Balaram and his sister Subhadra are carried in three magnificent chariots pulled by thousands of devotees along the 2 km (1.5 mile) road that connects the Jagannath Temple to the Gundicha Temple. I had the good fortune of being able to witness this grand spectacle last year. An immense collection of humanity had descended on Puri on this day from all over India. The actual festival, of course, had started nearly two weeks earlier when the idols of Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra were given a ritual bath and redecorated. On the day of the Rathayatra, the idols were installed on the three massive chariots, nearly 45 feet high, which had been constructed for the three deities. The chariots were kept outside the Jagannath Temple walls and the endless stream of devotees blew conch-shells and played trumpets as soon as the idols were brought out of the temple and placed in the chariots. Then the King of Puri paid his obeisance to each of the chariots. He sprinkled sacred water on the chariots, and swept the chariots clean with his golden broom. The chariots then started making their way along the Grand Avenue one by one, pulled by ropes by the thousands of devotees. Needless to say a considerable din ensured. There was loud chanting and singing, beating of drums and blaring of trumpets, as the procession slowly made its way to the Gundicha Temple. The chariots stopped at many points along the way, in order to provide an opportunity to the devotees to catch a glimpse of the idols inside the chariot and offer their prayers. It is said that one who observes the face of Jagannath during the Rathyatra festival gets absolved of all past sins. I did not accompany the procession the entire way to the Gundicha Temple. But what happens is that, after the procession reaches the Gundicha Temple, the idols rest there for a period of 7 days. After this they return back to the Temple of Jagannath, in another joyous, noisy procession known as the Ulta-Rath. The entire celebration, starting from day of Jagannath’s bathing ceremony, till his return from the Gundicha Temple, lasts for 25-26 days, nearly the same as the Opet festival of Karnak and Luxor.
The Opet Festival The Jagannath Rathyatra
The similarities between these two ancient festivals are obvious and striking. There was no doubt in my mind that the Opet festival of Karnak is identical in form and spirit to the Rathayatra festival of Puri.
As per Vedic accounts, the festival of Rathayatra has been celebrated in India for thousands of years, although the current Temple of Jagannath only dates from the 12th century CE. The festival has been mentioned in multiple Puranas, which are Vedic historical documents of unknown antiquity. The Skanda Purana states that the first Jagannath Temple was established in Puri in the Krita Yuga, which, as per the currently accepted Yuga Cycle doctrines, began at around 10,900 BC. Since Jagannath refers to Vishnu i.e. the Lord of the Universe, he was worshipped in different forms in the different Yugas. In the Kali Yuga he is worshipped in the form of Krishna. The Skanda Purana also specifies the date of the Rathyatra festival. In many other Vedic documents such as the Narada Purana, Padma Purana and the Ramayana, the virtues of worshipping Jagannath have been extolled. The festival is, therefore, indubitably Vedic in origin.
That would imply that this ancient festival, along with the cult of Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra was transferred from India to Egypt, sometime prior to 2000 BC!
Amun, Mut and Khonsu -
The Thebian Triad Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra -
The 'Puri' Triad
That is a phenomenal idea. Although we know that Indian traders had extensive trade relations with the first Pharaohs of dynastic Egypt in 3000 BC, and sold them cotton, muslin, spices, gold and ivory, such a major influence of India on Egyptian religious systems has not been explicitly identified by historians till now. Some scholars have, however, pointed out the similarity between the culture of Egypt and Eastern India. Peter Von Bohlen, a German Indologist, mentioned that there are elements of folk art, language, place names and rural culture of Bengal (the state adjacent to Orissa and included in it in ancient times) which have an affinity with their Egyptian counterparts. However, when you consider the fact that an entire patheon along with associated ceremonies and rituals seems to have been exported to Egypt from India, it appears that the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Emperors of India must have maintained very close relations since ancient times. This ‘pantheon’ transfer would have been possible only through express royal patronage. But when and why did this happen? Who all were involved?
We know that when the Hyskos invaders of Egypt were finally evicted from the country after 200 years of occupation, the pharaohs Kames and Ahmes had fought under the banner of their new-found god - Amun. This event which took place in 1580 BC, signified the beginning of the 18th dynasty, which is acknowledged as the greatest royal families of Egypt. Amun became the supreme protector god of the monarchy and the state and his priesthood gained immense power. Magnificent temple complexes dedicated to Amun were established in Thebes. Is it possible, therefore, that this 'pantheon transfer' from India to Egypt was also accompanied by a transfer of armed forces which resulted in the defeat of the Hyskos invaders and the reunification of entire Egypt under the Pharaohs?
Interestingly, the people of Egypt themselves claimed to have come from a land called ‘Puanit’ (corrupted to ‘Punt’) located on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Punt was referred to as the 'Gods land' or the 'land of gods and ancestors'. Punt can be reached leading off the Red Sea, in a south-east direction, and is described by the scholar Dr. Adolf Erman as ‘a distant country washed by the great seas, full of valleys, incense, balsum, precious metals and stones; rich in animals, cheetahs, panthers, dog-headed apes and long tailed monkeys, winged creatures with strange feathers to fly up to the boughs of wonderful trees, especially the incense tree and the coconut trees.’ These descriptions strongly suggest that Punt may be a reference to India. The ancient maritime trade routes, popularly known as the Silk Route, led from Egypt in a south-east direction, to the flourishing ports on the western and eastern coasts of India. Along these ancient routes, Egyptian and Indian ships plied back and forth since unknown antiquity, carrying precious objects of trade such as gold, ivory, myrrh, incense etc.
The Silk Route
Col. Henry Steel Olcott, a former president of the Theosophical Society, explained in the March, 1881 edition of The Theosophist that, “by the pictorial hieroglyphic inscription found on the walls of the temple of the Queen Haslitop (Hatshepsut) at Der-el-babri, we see that this Punt can be no other than India. For many ages the Egyptians traded with their old homes, and the reference here made by them to the names of the Princes of Punt (King Parahu and Queen Ati) and its fauna and flora, especially the nomenclature of various precious woods to be found but in India, leave us scarcely room for the smallest doubt that the old civilization of Egypt is the direct outcome of that the older India." The expedition of Hatshepsut to the land of Punt was done primarily with the objective of acquiring incense and a number of exotic goods, which she dedicated to Amun, the presiding diety of Thebes. Does that not indicate that ‘Punt’ and ‘Amun’ may somehow be connected? Is it possible that Hatshepsut felt that by bringing these items from the land of her forefathers, and from the place where Amun himself had originated, she would be performing a great service to her ‘father’, Amun, and thereby acquire his blessings.
That India may be Punt, should not come as a great surprise, since it is now widely accepted that Hindu traders colonized Ethiopia. The earliest Ethiopian tradition says that they came from a land situated near the mouth of the Indus, and this has been confirmed by the testimony of Eusebius and Philostratus. In the seventh century, St. Isidore made a summary in his Encyclopedia of knowledge derived from ancient Greek and Latin authors, many of whose works have now disappeared. Regarding 'Ethiopians' he says in his Etymologiarium (IX.2.128): “They came in ancient times from the River Indus, established themselves in Egypt between the Nile and the sea, towards the south, in the equatorial regions. Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren (1760-1842) an Egyptologist has observed (Historical Researches - Heeran p. 309): "It is perfectly agreeable to Hindu manners that colonies from India, i.e., Banian families should have passed over Africa, and carried with them their industry, and perhaps also their religious worship." "Whatever weight may be attached to Indian tradition and the express testimony of Eusebius confirming the report of migrations from the banks of the Indus into Egypt, there is certainly nothing improbable in the event itself, as a desire of gain would have formed a sufficient inducement."
Many questions are raised here. If Punt is India, then when did the ancient Egyptians migrate to the shores of the Nile from Punt? If we assume that the migration took place sometime around 3000 BC, at the beginning of the ‘Kali Yuga’, then who built the Giza Pyamids? Since the Pyramid complex at Giza has now been dated to around 10,500 BC (Hancock and Bauval), and since this magnificent pyramid complex is entirely devoid of any hieroglyphic engravings or inscriptions, which is very unlike the Egyptian pysche, it raises the question whether the Giza Pyramid complex was built by the ancient Egyptians or by others before them. Is it possible that was it built by a ‘race of giants’ who built similar megalithic structures around the world, including many of them in Mesoamerica? Maybe the arrival of the ancient Egyptians to the shores of the Nile from the distant Punt displaced this ‘race of giants’ and a new civilization was initiated? Whatever be the truth about ancient Egypt, it is clear that we are barely scratching the surface of it in the present times.
Suggested Readings:
1. Ancient Egypt: An Illustrated Reference to the Myths, Religions, Pyramids and Temples
2. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
3. The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind
An interesting piece of information caught my attention during my journey across the sacred sites of Egypt during early 2010. During the light and sound show in the magnificent temple complex of Karnak, I heard a voice booming over the loudspeakers: “I am Amon-Ra...The waters of the Nile sprout from my sandals.” This immediately reminded me of the Vedic Creator God Vishnu. In the typical depiction of Vishnu in Hindu iconography, the sacred river Ganges is always shown emerging from the toe of the Vishnu, while in Egypt, we find a very similar imagery associated with Amun. But who was Amun? I knew that Amun was the presiding diety of Karnak, and he was worshipped there as the Creator God, along with his wife Mut, and his son Khonsu.
The next day, while discussing about the light and sound show with my tour guide, he suddenly gave me another piece of information that I was not aware of, and that took me completely by surprise: “Amun was always depicted in funerary art and temple inscriptions with a ‘blue skin colour’ and having two feathers in his headdress.”
Now, if anyone ever travels to India, and he talks to the people there about a god having a blue skin colour, with a couple of feathers in his headdress, and from whose sandals or toes a ‘sacred river’ emerges, he will get a single answer: Vishnu, or more correctly Krishna, for it is Krishna who was always depicted with two ‘peacock’ feathers in his headdress. This realization has significant implications. Krishna is an exclusively Indian diety, whose demise in 3102 BC signified the start of the present Kali Yuga in the Vedic Yuga system. Amun on the other hand, was not worshipped in Egypt prior to the establishment of the Temple complex at Thebes. He is mentioned in the creation myth of Hermopolis as one of the four pairs of divinities who were present in the Primeval Waters of Nun. As Amun-Amaunet, he represented the ‘hidden’ properties of the Primordial Ocean. However, he was not a part of the Egyptian Ennead, the Divine Company of Gods, who were the primary deities of worship. But suddenly at Karnak, sometime during the Middle Kingdom, Amun usurped the position of Atum, as the head of the state patheon. He became the self-engendered Creator God; an early Twelfth-Dynasty inscription in the jubilee chapel of King Senusret I (c.1965 – c.1920 BC) at Karnak describes Amun as ‘the king of the gods’. Current evidence indicates that the construction of the temple complex at Luxor and Karnak may have started as early as the Middle Kingdom (c.2055 – c.1650 BC), although the buildings visible today date from the reign of Amenhotep III (c.1390 – c.1352 BC), the great temple builder of the Eighteenth Dynasty. What could have trigerred his precipitous rise to the head of the Egyptian pantheon from relative obscurity as a diety of the Primeval Ocean? And how did a whole new patheon of deities, along with associated symbolisms, rites and rituals, with gigantic temple complexes dedicated to them, suddenly spring up in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom?
The blue colored Amun The blue colored Krishna
I was also taken aback by the descriptions of the annual Opet festival that used to be celebrated in Karnak, during the season of the flooding of the Nile. In this grand festival, the idols of Amun, Mut and Khonsu were placed on sacred barques, which were carried in a splendid, joyous procession down the Avenue of the Sphinxes, along the 2 mile road that connects the temples of Karnak and Luxor. The celebrations have been depicted in detail on the walls of the Great Colonnade at Luxor. At Karnak, the idols of the Thebian triad were first ceremoniously washed and magnificently dressed with colorful linen and precious jewellery and placed on sacred barques (boats). The pharaoh then offered his obeisances to the barques, which were then carried by the priests, accompanied by musicians, and soldiers carrying standards decorated with brilliant plumes and streamers. Elegantly decorated horse drawn chariots, would also accompany the procession. Huge crowds of people gathered along the road, blowing trumpets, dancing and singing, clapping, offering prayers, burning incense sticks and generally raising a tremendous din. Nubian musicians and female acrobats entertained the crowd. The barques rested along the way at six way-stations that were built by Queen Hatshepsut. Once the idols reached Luxor Temple, the coronation rites of the king were repeated in a sacred ritual, which effectively transferred the power of divine ruleship from Amun to the pharaoh. The idols rested in Luxor for a period of time and subsequently came back to Karnak, in another procession along the river Nile. Although the Opet festival was initially celebrated over only 11 days, later it was extended to nearly 24 to 27 days. The festival not only symbolized a restoration of the divine right of the king to rule, but also signified a rejuvenation of the creative forces of the cosmos, through the sacred rituals and boisterous celebrations.
Amazingly enough, an exactly similar festival is still celebrated every year in the tiny coastal town of Puri, in the state of Orissa in eastern India, after the onset of monsoon in the month of July. Here, in the yearly Rathayatra festival, the idols of Krishna (or Jagannath), his brother Balaram and his sister Subhadra are carried in three magnificent chariots pulled by thousands of devotees along the 2 km (1.5 mile) road that connects the Jagannath Temple to the Gundicha Temple. I had the good fortune of being able to witness this grand spectacle last year. An immense collection of humanity had descended on Puri on this day from all over India. The actual festival, of course, had started nearly two weeks earlier when the idols of Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra were given a ritual bath and redecorated. On the day of the Rathayatra, the idols were installed on the three massive chariots, nearly 45 feet high, which had been constructed for the three deities. The chariots were kept outside the Jagannath Temple walls and the endless stream of devotees blew conch-shells and played trumpets as soon as the idols were brought out of the temple and placed in the chariots. Then the King of Puri paid his obeisance to each of the chariots. He sprinkled sacred water on the chariots, and swept the chariots clean with his golden broom. The chariots then started making their way along the Grand Avenue one by one, pulled by ropes by the thousands of devotees. Needless to say a considerable din ensured. There was loud chanting and singing, beating of drums and blaring of trumpets, as the procession slowly made its way to the Gundicha Temple. The chariots stopped at many points along the way, in order to provide an opportunity to the devotees to catch a glimpse of the idols inside the chariot and offer their prayers. It is said that one who observes the face of Jagannath during the Rathyatra festival gets absolved of all past sins. I did not accompany the procession the entire way to the Gundicha Temple. But what happens is that, after the procession reaches the Gundicha Temple, the idols rest there for a period of 7 days. After this they return back to the Temple of Jagannath, in another joyous, noisy procession known as the Ulta-Rath. The entire celebration, starting from day of Jagannath’s bathing ceremony, till his return from the Gundicha Temple, lasts for 25-26 days, nearly the same as the Opet festival of Karnak and Luxor.
The Opet Festival The Jagannath Rathyatra
The similarities between these two ancient festivals are obvious and striking. There was no doubt in my mind that the Opet festival of Karnak is identical in form and spirit to the Rathayatra festival of Puri.
As per Vedic accounts, the festival of Rathayatra has been celebrated in India for thousands of years, although the current Temple of Jagannath only dates from the 12th century CE. The festival has been mentioned in multiple Puranas, which are Vedic historical documents of unknown antiquity. The Skanda Purana states that the first Jagannath Temple was established in Puri in the Krita Yuga, which, as per the currently accepted Yuga Cycle doctrines, began at around 10,900 BC. Since Jagannath refers to Vishnu i.e. the Lord of the Universe, he was worshipped in different forms in the different Yugas. In the Kali Yuga he is worshipped in the form of Krishna. The Skanda Purana also specifies the date of the Rathyatra festival. In many other Vedic documents such as the Narada Purana, Padma Purana and the Ramayana, the virtues of worshipping Jagannath have been extolled. The festival is, therefore, indubitably Vedic in origin.
That would imply that this ancient festival, along with the cult of Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra was transferred from India to Egypt, sometime prior to 2000 BC!
Amun, Mut and Khonsu -
The Thebian Triad Krishna, Balaram and Subhadra -
The 'Puri' Triad
That is a phenomenal idea. Although we know that Indian traders had extensive trade relations with the first Pharaohs of dynastic Egypt in 3000 BC, and sold them cotton, muslin, spices, gold and ivory, such a major influence of India on Egyptian religious systems has not been explicitly identified by historians till now. Some scholars have, however, pointed out the similarity between the culture of Egypt and Eastern India. Peter Von Bohlen, a German Indologist, mentioned that there are elements of folk art, language, place names and rural culture of Bengal (the state adjacent to Orissa and included in it in ancient times) which have an affinity with their Egyptian counterparts. However, when you consider the fact that an entire patheon along with associated ceremonies and rituals seems to have been exported to Egypt from India, it appears that the Pharaohs of Egypt and the Emperors of India must have maintained very close relations since ancient times. This ‘pantheon’ transfer would have been possible only through express royal patronage. But when and why did this happen? Who all were involved?
We know that when the Hyskos invaders of Egypt were finally evicted from the country after 200 years of occupation, the pharaohs Kames and Ahmes had fought under the banner of their new-found god - Amun. This event which took place in 1580 BC, signified the beginning of the 18th dynasty, which is acknowledged as the greatest royal families of Egypt. Amun became the supreme protector god of the monarchy and the state and his priesthood gained immense power. Magnificent temple complexes dedicated to Amun were established in Thebes. Is it possible, therefore, that this 'pantheon transfer' from India to Egypt was also accompanied by a transfer of armed forces which resulted in the defeat of the Hyskos invaders and the reunification of entire Egypt under the Pharaohs?
Interestingly, the people of Egypt themselves claimed to have come from a land called ‘Puanit’ (corrupted to ‘Punt’) located on the shores of the Indian Ocean. Punt was referred to as the 'Gods land' or the 'land of gods and ancestors'. Punt can be reached leading off the Red Sea, in a south-east direction, and is described by the scholar Dr. Adolf Erman as ‘a distant country washed by the great seas, full of valleys, incense, balsum, precious metals and stones; rich in animals, cheetahs, panthers, dog-headed apes and long tailed monkeys, winged creatures with strange feathers to fly up to the boughs of wonderful trees, especially the incense tree and the coconut trees.’ These descriptions strongly suggest that Punt may be a reference to India. The ancient maritime trade routes, popularly known as the Silk Route, led from Egypt in a south-east direction, to the flourishing ports on the western and eastern coasts of India. Along these ancient routes, Egyptian and Indian ships plied back and forth since unknown antiquity, carrying precious objects of trade such as gold, ivory, myrrh, incense etc.
The Silk Route
Col. Henry Steel Olcott, a former president of the Theosophical Society, explained in the March, 1881 edition of The Theosophist that, “by the pictorial hieroglyphic inscription found on the walls of the temple of the Queen Haslitop (Hatshepsut) at Der-el-babri, we see that this Punt can be no other than India. For many ages the Egyptians traded with their old homes, and the reference here made by them to the names of the Princes of Punt (King Parahu and Queen Ati) and its fauna and flora, especially the nomenclature of various precious woods to be found but in India, leave us scarcely room for the smallest doubt that the old civilization of Egypt is the direct outcome of that the older India." The expedition of Hatshepsut to the land of Punt was done primarily with the objective of acquiring incense and a number of exotic goods, which she dedicated to Amun, the presiding diety of Thebes. Does that not indicate that ‘Punt’ and ‘Amun’ may somehow be connected? Is it possible that Hatshepsut felt that by bringing these items from the land of her forefathers, and from the place where Amun himself had originated, she would be performing a great service to her ‘father’, Amun, and thereby acquire his blessings.
That India may be Punt, should not come as a great surprise, since it is now widely accepted that Hindu traders colonized Ethiopia. The earliest Ethiopian tradition says that they came from a land situated near the mouth of the Indus, and this has been confirmed by the testimony of Eusebius and Philostratus. In the seventh century, St. Isidore made a summary in his Encyclopedia of knowledge derived from ancient Greek and Latin authors, many of whose works have now disappeared. Regarding 'Ethiopians' he says in his Etymologiarium (IX.2.128): “They came in ancient times from the River Indus, established themselves in Egypt between the Nile and the sea, towards the south, in the equatorial regions. Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren (1760-1842) an Egyptologist has observed (Historical Researches - Heeran p. 309): "It is perfectly agreeable to Hindu manners that colonies from India, i.e., Banian families should have passed over Africa, and carried with them their industry, and perhaps also their religious worship." "Whatever weight may be attached to Indian tradition and the express testimony of Eusebius confirming the report of migrations from the banks of the Indus into Egypt, there is certainly nothing improbable in the event itself, as a desire of gain would have formed a sufficient inducement."
Many questions are raised here. If Punt is India, then when did the ancient Egyptians migrate to the shores of the Nile from Punt? If we assume that the migration took place sometime around 3000 BC, at the beginning of the ‘Kali Yuga’, then who built the Giza Pyamids? Since the Pyramid complex at Giza has now been dated to around 10,500 BC (Hancock and Bauval), and since this magnificent pyramid complex is entirely devoid of any hieroglyphic engravings or inscriptions, which is very unlike the Egyptian pysche, it raises the question whether the Giza Pyramid complex was built by the ancient Egyptians or by others before them. Is it possible that was it built by a ‘race of giants’ who built similar megalithic structures around the world, including many of them in Mesoamerica? Maybe the arrival of the ancient Egyptians to the shores of the Nile from the distant Punt displaced this ‘race of giants’ and a new civilization was initiated? Whatever be the truth about ancient Egypt, it is clear that we are barely scratching the surface of it in the present times.
Suggested Readings:
1. Ancient Egypt: An Illustrated Reference to the Myths, Religions, Pyramids and Temples
2. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt
3. The Message of the Sphinx: A Quest for the Hidden Legacy of Mankind
Thursday, September 22, 2011
French, American & Brit
The train was quite crowded, so a U. S. Marine walked the
entire length looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a well dressed, middle-aged, French woman's poodle...
The war-weary Marine asked, 'Ma'am, may I have that seat?'
The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in
particular 'Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.' The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. 'Please, ma'am. May I sit down? I'm very tired.
She snorted, 'Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!'
This time the Marine didn't say a word; he just picked up the little dog, threw it out of the train window, and sat down.
The woman shrieked, 'Someone must defend my honour! This American should be put in his place!'
An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up, 'Sir, you Americans often seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing.
You hold the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road.
And now, sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window.
entire length looking for a seat, but the only seat left was taken by a well dressed, middle-aged, French woman's poodle...
The war-weary Marine asked, 'Ma'am, may I have that seat?'
The French woman just sniffed and said to no one in
particular 'Americans are so rude. My little Fifi is using that seat.' The Marine walked the entire train again, but the only seat left was under that dog. 'Please, ma'am. May I sit down? I'm very tired.
She snorted, 'Not only are you Americans rude, you are also arrogant!'
This time the Marine didn't say a word; he just picked up the little dog, threw it out of the train window, and sat down.
The woman shrieked, 'Someone must defend my honour! This American should be put in his place!'
An English gentleman sitting nearby spoke up, 'Sir, you Americans often seem to have a penchant for doing the wrong thing.
You hold the fork in the wrong hand. You drive your cars on the wrong side of the road.
And now, sir, you seem to have thrown the wrong bitch out of the window.
teachers and Educators
A number of girls at an expensive boarding school were beginning lo use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine, but after they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.
Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back. Finally the headmistress decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the maintenance man who had to clean the mirrors every night.
To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.
Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
There are teachers, and then there are educators!
Every night, the maintenance man would remove them and the next day, the girls would put them back. Finally the headmistress decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the maintenance man who had to clean the mirrors every night.
To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.
Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror.
There are teachers, and then there are educators!
mukesh Ambani
Mukesh Ambani in his 27 storied home...
Mukesh bhai gets up from his bed room on 15th floor,
takes a swim in the swimming pool on 17th floor,
has breakfast on the 19th floor,
dresses up for office on 14th floor,
collects his files and office bag
from his personal office on 21st floor,
wishes bye to Nita Ambani on 16th floor,
says ‘see you’ to his children on 13th floor,
and goes down on 3rd floor
to self drive his 2.5 Crore Mercedes to office, but then he finds out that he has forgotten the car keys upstairs.
But on which floor?
15th, 17th, 19th, 14th, 21st, 16th or 13th?
He phones all his servants, cooks, maids, secretaries, pool attendants, gym trainers, lift attendants etc. on all the floors. There is a hectic search and lot of running around on all the floors, but the key is not traceable.
Fed up, after half an hour of frantic search, Mukesh bhai leaves in a huff in a chauffeur driven Ikon car.
At 3.30 pm late in the afternoon it is discovered that 4 days back, a temporary replacement maid had washed Mukesh bhai's pant and hung it to dry on a string in the balcony of 16th floor, with car keys in the pant pocket. The key had blown away somewhere in the high winds at 16th floor level and was never found.
This was detected because of Nita Ambani's habit of checking clothes given for ironing personally. Meanwhile, after 3 days of the incident, Nita Ambani with all irritation writ large on her face, complained to Mukesh bhai asking him where he was roaming till 3 am last night.
Mukesh replied that he was at home all night. “Then why did the helicopter land in the terrace at 3 am?
I was so much worried. I could not sleep whole night," quizzed Nita.
"Oh that helicopter”.
That helicopter came from Germany , sent by Mercedes people to deliver the duplicate car key"... mumbled Mukesh.
Moral of the story: Stay in two room kitchen flat only. ....... Least problems at Home ;)
Mukesh bhai gets up from his bed room on 15th floor,
takes a swim in the swimming pool on 17th floor,
has breakfast on the 19th floor,
dresses up for office on 14th floor,
collects his files and office bag
from his personal office on 21st floor,
wishes bye to Nita Ambani on 16th floor,
says ‘see you’ to his children on 13th floor,
and goes down on 3rd floor
to self drive his 2.5 Crore Mercedes to office, but then he finds out that he has forgotten the car keys upstairs.
But on which floor?
15th, 17th, 19th, 14th, 21st, 16th or 13th?
He phones all his servants, cooks, maids, secretaries, pool attendants, gym trainers, lift attendants etc. on all the floors. There is a hectic search and lot of running around on all the floors, but the key is not traceable.
Fed up, after half an hour of frantic search, Mukesh bhai leaves in a huff in a chauffeur driven Ikon car.
At 3.30 pm late in the afternoon it is discovered that 4 days back, a temporary replacement maid had washed Mukesh bhai's pant and hung it to dry on a string in the balcony of 16th floor, with car keys in the pant pocket. The key had blown away somewhere in the high winds at 16th floor level and was never found.
This was detected because of Nita Ambani's habit of checking clothes given for ironing personally. Meanwhile, after 3 days of the incident, Nita Ambani with all irritation writ large on her face, complained to Mukesh bhai asking him where he was roaming till 3 am last night.
Mukesh replied that he was at home all night. “Then why did the helicopter land in the terrace at 3 am?
I was so much worried. I could not sleep whole night," quizzed Nita.
"Oh that helicopter”.
That helicopter came from Germany , sent by Mercedes people to deliver the duplicate car key"... mumbled Mukesh.
Moral of the story: Stay in two room kitchen flat only. ....... Least problems at Home ;)
India is still a developing country !!!
An Old Story:
***********
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
Indian Version:
*************
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The Grasshopper thinks the Ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house.
Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter .
Mayawati states this as `injustice' done on Minorities.
Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.
The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .
Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for 'Bengal Bandh' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.
CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ' Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.
Arjun Singh makes 'Special Reservation ' for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.
The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes,it's home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice'.
Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice '.
CPM calls it the ' Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden '
Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later...
The Ant has since migrated to the US set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley,
100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India,
..AND
As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the grasshoppers,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
India is still a developing country !!!
***********
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The Grasshopper thinks the Ant is a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the Ant is warm and well fed. The Grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.
Indian Version:
*************
The Ant works hard in the withering heat all summer building its house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The Grasshopper thinks the Ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering Grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the Ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering Grasshopper next to a video of the Ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.
The World is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be that this poor Grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the Ant's house.
Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other Grasshoppers demanding that Grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter .
Mayawati states this as `injustice' done on Minorities.
Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government for not upholding the fundamental rights of the Grasshopper.
The Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the Grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) .
Opposition MPs stage a walkout. Left parties call for 'Bengal Bandh' in West Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.
CPM in Kerala immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat so as to bring about equality of poverty among Ants and Grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the ' Prevention of Terrorism Against Grasshoppers Act' [POTAGA], with effect from the beginning of the winter.
Arjun Singh makes 'Special Reservation ' for Grasshoppers in Educational Institutions & in Government Services.
The Ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes,it's home is confiscated by the Government and handed over to the Grasshopper in a ceremony covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it ' A Triumph of Justice'.
Lalu calls it 'Socialistic Justice '.
CPM calls it the ' Revolutionary Resurgence of the Downtrodden '
Koffi Annan invites the Grasshopper to address the UN General Assembly.
Many years later...
The Ant has since migrated to the US set up a multi-billion dollar company in Silicon Valley,
100s of Grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in India,
..AND
As a result of loosing lot of hard working Ants and feeding the grasshoppers,
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
India is still a developing country !!!
Friday, September 16, 2011
India on the radar of Anglo-American imperialism
By Dr Gautam Sen
THE collapse of a country often occurs suddenly though warning signs will be visible to careful observers. Almost no one expected the mighty USSR to implode in 1989 and become marginalised rapidly, virtually overnight. The banal psychology of the instigator of the chain of events, President Mikhail Gorbachev, was poignantly underlined when he triumphantly named an utter nonentity, the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, as the leader he admired most. More recently, European leaders were bowing and scraping before an idiot ruler one day, but within weeks he was fighting for his survival and Libya for its sovereign future. Many other countries have been similarly suborned and divided by the intervention foreign interests, taking advantage of local difficulties, including Yugoslavia, the Sudan and Indonesia, to name only a few. The fate of India within the compass of its current borders is not inviolably guaranteed either, a harsh truth its conceited and incompetent rulers might have understood after Partition itself, the loss of territories to China and truncated sovereignty in J&K and the North-east. Instead, quite staggeringly, Sonia Gandhi and her retainers are engaged in a virtual campaign to eject Gujarat from the Indian Union by relentless hostility toward its elected representatives.
Intervention to take advantage in a country that appears ready to fall apart is opportunistic. The moment such an opportunity arises all bets are off, earlier sentiments irrelevant and historic friendships immediately erased. The motive for such foreign intervention is to prevent other third parties emerging stronger through their own involvement and of course neighbours feel compelled to enter the fray to settle outstanding territorial claims. The collapse of the USSR, over which the remarkably incompetent Gorbachev presided, led to a NATO-sponsored attempt to consolidate its Cold War victory by seizing control over a Russia reeling in chaos. Western international economic agencies and academics from American and European universities were also active trying to wreck the Russian economy. These diabolical designs were accompanied by the implantation of their preferred candidate, the drunken, buffoon, Boris Yeltsin, as Russian President. It failed in the end because Russia is a formidable foe. The on-going attempt to divide Libya to corner its oil producing regions remains an on-going reminder of imperials instincts, evidenced earlier by the conquest of Iraq by Anglo-American imperialists.
India has always been on their radar too since Britain’s expulsion from it in 1947. Britain had hoped to leave behind a broken backed India of warring regions and princely states beholden to the wishes of London. Eventually, Pakistan and the dispute over Kashmir were to become the long-term vehicle to keep India on the run and permanently off balance. In addition, their local protégés within India were mobilised to harass the nascent Indian State to prevent its consolidation as a viable and self-sufficient entity. The most lethal fifth column turned out to be Indian communists, simultaneously serving both Anglo-American and Chinese imperialism, which had become an ally of the latter against the Soviet Union by the 1960s. Indian communists sided with China in 1962 and Pakistan, the US and China when India sought to end genocide in East Pakistan, revealing a level of venality and treasonous conduct that should have prompted the execution of its entire national leadership. Their treasonous machinations to challenge the Indian Union in assaults coordinated with Islamic Jihadis, without commensurate response from the Indian State, is a spectacle to behold. As one senior Indian intelligence officer has recently observed, these anti-national forces have infiltrated every institution of State and civil society and enjoy the empathetic ear of India’s dominant political leader.
In the decades after Indian Independence, foreign interests, particularly the Anglo-Americans, inserted themselves into every social, economic and regional fissure in India and deployed them against it. Spurious divisions and human rights abuses are the excuse to pillory India and weaken its national resolve. Evangelists, the original sponsors of the Dravidian movement and its leaders, all known British agents, just like the communist leadership after 1941, are being used to demoralise India and divide its voters along numerous axes. Today, the monstrously distorted politics of alleged or real caste divisions have become deeply embedded in every facet of Indian life. Apparently, legislative measures are planned in some countries abroad and by the UN to denounce Hinduism as synonymous with demoniac caste oppression and fascism, apparently, a final push, to break India. The Indian Congress, India’s first family and the anointed crown prince are vocally supporting this conspiracy by, helpfully, fabricating cases against Hindus for terrorism. Unfortunately, the grave wounding of India, particularly on the issue of caste, is being aided by Hindu organisations in the US and the UK and some activists of India’s own Hindu organisations. They have shockingly succumbed to bribery and a disgraceful desire for crumbs from the tables of White Christians, hell-bent on India’s destruction.
The Indian State apparatus is the most vitally unavoidable structure for the welfare and long-term survival of the nation. Once its ability to act is compromised many dire evils are liable to overtake it. The ability to engage decisively with events, issue commands that are respected and obeyed are of paramount importance because without it other governance structures are in danger of collapsing in the face of threat and assault. Even a cursory reading of history immediately highlights the terrifying consequences of paralysis at the heart of decision-making and serial errors of judgement. I choose random the failure of ancient Carthage’s political elites to act decisively in the face of Roman invasion, which then resulted in the permanent erasure of Carthage from history, i.e. its extinction. A similar phenomenon occurred when Nadir Shah invaded India and left behind in his wake utter devastation because the Mughal imperial family and its generals were at odds with each other and decision-making paralysed. Ever since Indian independence the Anglo-Americans have waged relentless war against the Indian State and its political leaders, by sponsoring subversion from within and using Pakistan. They were soon joined by China and it is no surprise that these four countries remain firm allies as far as antagonism to India is concerned.
The destruction of a State occurs because of internal collapse and external aggression. The current situation in India combines features of both. India has been a divided country historically except when held together by overwhelming force under some Mughal rulers and superior political cunning, of the kind especially deployed by the British for several generations. The great present danger for India is the rise of regional political forces that do not possess any national vision. They are self-righteously parochial, inward-looking and interested almost exclusively in personal power and wealth. When they espouse an ideological perspective it derives from pure opportunism. Their banal ideological strains are ready for misuse by the enemies of India, keenly alert to any opportunity for causing mischief and, ultimately, the demise of the Indian Union. Regional political forces are highly likely to do a deal with such enemies of India in a moment of grave national crisis at the expense of the integrity of the nation, a reality numerous separatist movements across the country already highlight. Maoists and Islamic Jihadis are working together assiduously on behalf of Anglo-American and Chinese imperialism to destroy India. They are ably assisted by a swathe of India’s liberal intelligentsia, many recently discovered to be on the pay of foreign intelligence agencies waging war against India and killing its citizens. This fifth column also enjoys the personal patronage of India’s supreme leader as members of India’s real decision-making organs, by-passing the Union Cabinet. The latter and its occupants are shameless ciphers.
The only real problem for India’s external enemies and their internal allies is the existence of its formidable armed forces. Observers of the treatment of India should note with alarm that these are being systematically undermined even as vast sums are spent on the import of an array of weapons from abroad. The patriotic sensibilities of young officers and fighting men and women are being systematically corroded and the most senior officers increasingly selected for their political loyalty to India’s first family rather than professional merit. The banning of rakhi within the armed forces, which passed without vigorous protest from India’s seasonal nationalists, is an illustration of the vicious warfare being waged against India’s warriors. India’s first two Param Vir Chakra awardees, Majors, Somnath Sharma and Piru Singh, made the supreme sacrifice with the teachings of the Gita in their hearts and Sri Ram on their lips. In addition, the misuse of human rights ruses, sponsored by foreign intelligence services, to harass the armed forces, also promoted with alacrity by India’s English media, is merely a vehicle to reduce effectiveness in situations of armed combat in which civilian casualties are unavoidable. The spectacle of rampant corruption at the highest levels of Indian society, shielded by the Indian Prime Minister himself, constitutes a further grievous danger since it must inevitably affect their commitment to fight and die for their country. In the end, the integrity of India’s armed forces depends on the survival of legitimate political authority within the country, without which it cannot engage in integrated combat and will be left rudderless.
Ordinary Indians may somehow imagine their country is immune to the dangers of a new partition or the loss of national sovereignty, but the signs of peril are flashing bright. The contemporary attempt to perpetuate the Nehru dynasty, turning the Indian Republic into a quasi-monarchy, has prompted a non-holds barred contest that is reducing the most critical political and administrative structures of the Indian polity to a hollow shell. The vital decision-making apparatus of government, the Indian Union Cabinet and the office of the Prime Minister have virtually ceased to exist. In its place, retainers of the first family and any section of society that might be organised to support it are running amok. Along with the purchased mainstream media, opportunistic professionals (e.g. academics from US universities advising Rahul Gandhi) and political entrepreneurs are straining to influence events in favour of the crown prince and his family. So absurd is the situation that his semi-literate, octogenarian Italian grandmother can determine matters of state alongside cynical political retainers of the likes of Manish Tiwari and Ahmed Patel. Their interest in the welfare of the Indian State and society is deeply suspect and their capacity for subversion enormous. Any self-respecting country would have immediately sanctioned their judicial incarceration and worse.
The priority accorded by the Indian political elite to the fortunes of the Nehru dynasty progressively unloosened the fragile socio-political ties that bound India after Independence. Securing Indira Gandhi’s personal rule was achieved by curtailing meaningful expressions of democracy in the Congress party, which her father had managed by force of personality as a prominent leader of Indian Independence. Indira Gandhi placed family retainers in positions of power and the Congress party lost touch with its far flung support base in the country. It increasingly became opportunistically beholden to narrow political constituencies whose sectarian interests and identities were cultivated and accentuated to ensure divisive political loyalties. The final act of this sombre drama is now being played out. The narrow political appeal of the Congress party is precariously perched in the hands of a truculent Islamic Ummah and a rural-urban lumpen proletariat, wantonly enticed through bribery. This alliance is haunted by failure because a divided India is readying to descend into political chaos. A resulting shrill cry of desperation is emanating from India’s first family, appealing to the basest instincts and most extreme demands of constituents. The extraordinary attempt to identify Hindus as the chief perpetrators of terrorism in India, almost exclusively the responsibility of Islam, is but one sign of this despair.
THE collapse of a country often occurs suddenly though warning signs will be visible to careful observers. Almost no one expected the mighty USSR to implode in 1989 and become marginalised rapidly, virtually overnight. The banal psychology of the instigator of the chain of events, President Mikhail Gorbachev, was poignantly underlined when he triumphantly named an utter nonentity, the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, as the leader he admired most. More recently, European leaders were bowing and scraping before an idiot ruler one day, but within weeks he was fighting for his survival and Libya for its sovereign future. Many other countries have been similarly suborned and divided by the intervention foreign interests, taking advantage of local difficulties, including Yugoslavia, the Sudan and Indonesia, to name only a few. The fate of India within the compass of its current borders is not inviolably guaranteed either, a harsh truth its conceited and incompetent rulers might have understood after Partition itself, the loss of territories to China and truncated sovereignty in J&K and the North-east. Instead, quite staggeringly, Sonia Gandhi and her retainers are engaged in a virtual campaign to eject Gujarat from the Indian Union by relentless hostility toward its elected representatives.
Intervention to take advantage in a country that appears ready to fall apart is opportunistic. The moment such an opportunity arises all bets are off, earlier sentiments irrelevant and historic friendships immediately erased. The motive for such foreign intervention is to prevent other third parties emerging stronger through their own involvement and of course neighbours feel compelled to enter the fray to settle outstanding territorial claims. The collapse of the USSR, over which the remarkably incompetent Gorbachev presided, led to a NATO-sponsored attempt to consolidate its Cold War victory by seizing control over a Russia reeling in chaos. Western international economic agencies and academics from American and European universities were also active trying to wreck the Russian economy. These diabolical designs were accompanied by the implantation of their preferred candidate, the drunken, buffoon, Boris Yeltsin, as Russian President. It failed in the end because Russia is a formidable foe. The on-going attempt to divide Libya to corner its oil producing regions remains an on-going reminder of imperials instincts, evidenced earlier by the conquest of Iraq by Anglo-American imperialists.
India has always been on their radar too since Britain’s expulsion from it in 1947. Britain had hoped to leave behind a broken backed India of warring regions and princely states beholden to the wishes of London. Eventually, Pakistan and the dispute over Kashmir were to become the long-term vehicle to keep India on the run and permanently off balance. In addition, their local protégés within India were mobilised to harass the nascent Indian State to prevent its consolidation as a viable and self-sufficient entity. The most lethal fifth column turned out to be Indian communists, simultaneously serving both Anglo-American and Chinese imperialism, which had become an ally of the latter against the Soviet Union by the 1960s. Indian communists sided with China in 1962 and Pakistan, the US and China when India sought to end genocide in East Pakistan, revealing a level of venality and treasonous conduct that should have prompted the execution of its entire national leadership. Their treasonous machinations to challenge the Indian Union in assaults coordinated with Islamic Jihadis, without commensurate response from the Indian State, is a spectacle to behold. As one senior Indian intelligence officer has recently observed, these anti-national forces have infiltrated every institution of State and civil society and enjoy the empathetic ear of India’s dominant political leader.
In the decades after Indian Independence, foreign interests, particularly the Anglo-Americans, inserted themselves into every social, economic and regional fissure in India and deployed them against it. Spurious divisions and human rights abuses are the excuse to pillory India and weaken its national resolve. Evangelists, the original sponsors of the Dravidian movement and its leaders, all known British agents, just like the communist leadership after 1941, are being used to demoralise India and divide its voters along numerous axes. Today, the monstrously distorted politics of alleged or real caste divisions have become deeply embedded in every facet of Indian life. Apparently, legislative measures are planned in some countries abroad and by the UN to denounce Hinduism as synonymous with demoniac caste oppression and fascism, apparently, a final push, to break India. The Indian Congress, India’s first family and the anointed crown prince are vocally supporting this conspiracy by, helpfully, fabricating cases against Hindus for terrorism. Unfortunately, the grave wounding of India, particularly on the issue of caste, is being aided by Hindu organisations in the US and the UK and some activists of India’s own Hindu organisations. They have shockingly succumbed to bribery and a disgraceful desire for crumbs from the tables of White Christians, hell-bent on India’s destruction.
The Indian State apparatus is the most vitally unavoidable structure for the welfare and long-term survival of the nation. Once its ability to act is compromised many dire evils are liable to overtake it. The ability to engage decisively with events, issue commands that are respected and obeyed are of paramount importance because without it other governance structures are in danger of collapsing in the face of threat and assault. Even a cursory reading of history immediately highlights the terrifying consequences of paralysis at the heart of decision-making and serial errors of judgement. I choose random the failure of ancient Carthage’s political elites to act decisively in the face of Roman invasion, which then resulted in the permanent erasure of Carthage from history, i.e. its extinction. A similar phenomenon occurred when Nadir Shah invaded India and left behind in his wake utter devastation because the Mughal imperial family and its generals were at odds with each other and decision-making paralysed. Ever since Indian independence the Anglo-Americans have waged relentless war against the Indian State and its political leaders, by sponsoring subversion from within and using Pakistan. They were soon joined by China and it is no surprise that these four countries remain firm allies as far as antagonism to India is concerned.
The destruction of a State occurs because of internal collapse and external aggression. The current situation in India combines features of both. India has been a divided country historically except when held together by overwhelming force under some Mughal rulers and superior political cunning, of the kind especially deployed by the British for several generations. The great present danger for India is the rise of regional political forces that do not possess any national vision. They are self-righteously parochial, inward-looking and interested almost exclusively in personal power and wealth. When they espouse an ideological perspective it derives from pure opportunism. Their banal ideological strains are ready for misuse by the enemies of India, keenly alert to any opportunity for causing mischief and, ultimately, the demise of the Indian Union. Regional political forces are highly likely to do a deal with such enemies of India in a moment of grave national crisis at the expense of the integrity of the nation, a reality numerous separatist movements across the country already highlight. Maoists and Islamic Jihadis are working together assiduously on behalf of Anglo-American and Chinese imperialism to destroy India. They are ably assisted by a swathe of India’s liberal intelligentsia, many recently discovered to be on the pay of foreign intelligence agencies waging war against India and killing its citizens. This fifth column also enjoys the personal patronage of India’s supreme leader as members of India’s real decision-making organs, by-passing the Union Cabinet. The latter and its occupants are shameless ciphers.
The only real problem for India’s external enemies and their internal allies is the existence of its formidable armed forces. Observers of the treatment of India should note with alarm that these are being systematically undermined even as vast sums are spent on the import of an array of weapons from abroad. The patriotic sensibilities of young officers and fighting men and women are being systematically corroded and the most senior officers increasingly selected for their political loyalty to India’s first family rather than professional merit. The banning of rakhi within the armed forces, which passed without vigorous protest from India’s seasonal nationalists, is an illustration of the vicious warfare being waged against India’s warriors. India’s first two Param Vir Chakra awardees, Majors, Somnath Sharma and Piru Singh, made the supreme sacrifice with the teachings of the Gita in their hearts and Sri Ram on their lips. In addition, the misuse of human rights ruses, sponsored by foreign intelligence services, to harass the armed forces, also promoted with alacrity by India’s English media, is merely a vehicle to reduce effectiveness in situations of armed combat in which civilian casualties are unavoidable. The spectacle of rampant corruption at the highest levels of Indian society, shielded by the Indian Prime Minister himself, constitutes a further grievous danger since it must inevitably affect their commitment to fight and die for their country. In the end, the integrity of India’s armed forces depends on the survival of legitimate political authority within the country, without which it cannot engage in integrated combat and will be left rudderless.
Ordinary Indians may somehow imagine their country is immune to the dangers of a new partition or the loss of national sovereignty, but the signs of peril are flashing bright. The contemporary attempt to perpetuate the Nehru dynasty, turning the Indian Republic into a quasi-monarchy, has prompted a non-holds barred contest that is reducing the most critical political and administrative structures of the Indian polity to a hollow shell. The vital decision-making apparatus of government, the Indian Union Cabinet and the office of the Prime Minister have virtually ceased to exist. In its place, retainers of the first family and any section of society that might be organised to support it are running amok. Along with the purchased mainstream media, opportunistic professionals (e.g. academics from US universities advising Rahul Gandhi) and political entrepreneurs are straining to influence events in favour of the crown prince and his family. So absurd is the situation that his semi-literate, octogenarian Italian grandmother can determine matters of state alongside cynical political retainers of the likes of Manish Tiwari and Ahmed Patel. Their interest in the welfare of the Indian State and society is deeply suspect and their capacity for subversion enormous. Any self-respecting country would have immediately sanctioned their judicial incarceration and worse.
The priority accorded by the Indian political elite to the fortunes of the Nehru dynasty progressively unloosened the fragile socio-political ties that bound India after Independence. Securing Indira Gandhi’s personal rule was achieved by curtailing meaningful expressions of democracy in the Congress party, which her father had managed by force of personality as a prominent leader of Indian Independence. Indira Gandhi placed family retainers in positions of power and the Congress party lost touch with its far flung support base in the country. It increasingly became opportunistically beholden to narrow political constituencies whose sectarian interests and identities were cultivated and accentuated to ensure divisive political loyalties. The final act of this sombre drama is now being played out. The narrow political appeal of the Congress party is precariously perched in the hands of a truculent Islamic Ummah and a rural-urban lumpen proletariat, wantonly enticed through bribery. This alliance is haunted by failure because a divided India is readying to descend into political chaos. A resulting shrill cry of desperation is emanating from India’s first family, appealing to the basest instincts and most extreme demands of constituents. The extraordinary attempt to identify Hindus as the chief perpetrators of terrorism in India, almost exclusively the responsibility of Islam, is but one sign of this despair.
Squandering national wealth to earn personal goodwill
Criminal UPA profligacy
THE UPA government has gifted away Rs 9003 crore ($ two billion) of the tax payers’ money to foot the bills of the European countries. The money is being given to New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) fund of the International Monetary Fund, set up in March this year to bailout the European Union economies which are in the grip of a huge cash crunch. Years of reckless spending, poor domestic saving and living on credit have brought about this situation for many EU countries, which are otherwise considered developed. NAB has a corpus of $500 billion for this purpose. The corpus was increased 10-fold since setting up to meet the worsening debt situation in Europe. In order to rope in more donors, especially the growing economies like India and China, the membership to the ‘prestigious’ NAB was expanded, to include 13 emerging economies. Originally, the NAB was controlled by the G-7.
The government needed the Parliament’s consent to make this generous gift. And it adopted a mean device. It included this amount as one of the items in the table of the supplementary demands of the general budget. The move was introduced on August 2 and was probably cleared the same day. No case study, no debate, no explanation. Not one party or MP, including the leftists, raised any question, though the report appeared in a small section of the media. At least the enormity of the amount involved should have made them wary.
The donation of such a huge amount without batting an eyelid shows the arrogance of the UPA government. At a time when the fiscal deficit is burgeoning, when the money available for infrastructure and development programme is dwindling, this grand gesture appears haughty. According to government’s own admission, 70 per cent of India’s population is in need of food security, which means that millions in the country are starving, finding it difficult to make two ends meet.
Is it the conspiracy of silence or a ridiculously low level of economic understanding that has made our political parties indifferent to this big give-away. In no other country such huge donation to another country would have gone unnoticed and undebated in parliament. Even the US President cannot gift away the US aid without justifying it in the House and the Congress. Surprisingly, even the left parties which celebrate the collapse of capitalism in the West did not raise any question about India supporting the lavish lifestyles of the European countries. Remember, the IMF was supposed to have been set up to aid the developing nations in their effort to eradicate poverty.
The money was given without any pre-conditions. Whenever the IMF or the World Bank had given loans to the developing countries, severe restrictions and conditions that squeezed the borrowing countries dry were imposed. Even today, India is repaying in millions of dollars every year, the loan it took from these international financial institutions.
What galls one the most is the fact that the bankrupt countries, whose economy donors like India and China are trying to help, are refusing to learn a lesson from their crisis. In several of these countries people have rioted against the government, demanding continuation of privileges and entitlements, which the bankrupt governments were in no position to give. Greek is one such nation. Already a recipient of $300 billion, this Mediterranean nation is demanding more. The added problem for Europe is that since the formation of the ambitious European Union (it has 19 members), their economies have been inter-linked and inter-dependent. A classic case of Italy catching cold if Portugal sneezes or France shivering in chill if it snowed in Germany.
In the credit ratings of international agencies, India has a status of BBB– along with Portugal and Iceland, whereas most European countries even in their pauper situation enjoy better rankings. It makes no logic for UPA to rob our piggy bank savings to give money to the richer nations. Either India’s credit ratings have to go up or theirs should come down for a transaction like this.
It may be recalled that the US was in a financial crisis in July, unable to pay bills without extending the debt ceiling. Which the US Congress allowed after much trouble, keeping the government in suspense. The US House and Senate allowed this only after the government committed to reduce spending by $900 billion over a decade. This extension only means that the Americans can continue to spend and borrow and live on potential future income until the collective debt of the nation reaches an estimated $20.1 trillion (which is 85 per cent of its GDP) by the year 2020.
Under Manmohan Singh, the Indian government has been at its profligate best, handing out cash to other countries. Afghanistan has been the biggest recipient of UPA charity. In May this year the Prime Minister promised $500 million taking to $ two billion Indian aid to Afghanistan since Karzai came to power. It even thrust money into the coffers of an unwilling Pakistan after an earthquake. The money was given through an international aid agency as our western neighbour refused to accept India’s magnanimity directly.
While helping the neighbours and smaller nations is part of international diplomacy, India has never leveraged on them. Internationally donors look at aid, donations and even lending as a means of increasing clout and influence. Indian regime, with flimsy political mandate is distributing money without any visible return leverage.
Some of the tax havens where black money from India has been stashed away are in Europe. India could well use this occasion to bargain for the return of the booty. Instead the government is busy explaining to the Supreme Court that its direction on tracing and bringing back the loot is not possible to implement.
The politicians who are today tirelessly singing the chorus ‘Parliament is supreme’ must demand an answer from the government on its munificence. It is after all the treasure of the hard working and law-abiding Indian tax payers.
THE UPA government has gifted away Rs 9003 crore ($ two billion) of the tax payers’ money to foot the bills of the European countries. The money is being given to New Arrangement to Borrow (NAB) fund of the International Monetary Fund, set up in March this year to bailout the European Union economies which are in the grip of a huge cash crunch. Years of reckless spending, poor domestic saving and living on credit have brought about this situation for many EU countries, which are otherwise considered developed. NAB has a corpus of $500 billion for this purpose. The corpus was increased 10-fold since setting up to meet the worsening debt situation in Europe. In order to rope in more donors, especially the growing economies like India and China, the membership to the ‘prestigious’ NAB was expanded, to include 13 emerging economies. Originally, the NAB was controlled by the G-7.
The government needed the Parliament’s consent to make this generous gift. And it adopted a mean device. It included this amount as one of the items in the table of the supplementary demands of the general budget. The move was introduced on August 2 and was probably cleared the same day. No case study, no debate, no explanation. Not one party or MP, including the leftists, raised any question, though the report appeared in a small section of the media. At least the enormity of the amount involved should have made them wary.
The donation of such a huge amount without batting an eyelid shows the arrogance of the UPA government. At a time when the fiscal deficit is burgeoning, when the money available for infrastructure and development programme is dwindling, this grand gesture appears haughty. According to government’s own admission, 70 per cent of India’s population is in need of food security, which means that millions in the country are starving, finding it difficult to make two ends meet.
Is it the conspiracy of silence or a ridiculously low level of economic understanding that has made our political parties indifferent to this big give-away. In no other country such huge donation to another country would have gone unnoticed and undebated in parliament. Even the US President cannot gift away the US aid without justifying it in the House and the Congress. Surprisingly, even the left parties which celebrate the collapse of capitalism in the West did not raise any question about India supporting the lavish lifestyles of the European countries. Remember, the IMF was supposed to have been set up to aid the developing nations in their effort to eradicate poverty.
The money was given without any pre-conditions. Whenever the IMF or the World Bank had given loans to the developing countries, severe restrictions and conditions that squeezed the borrowing countries dry were imposed. Even today, India is repaying in millions of dollars every year, the loan it took from these international financial institutions.
What galls one the most is the fact that the bankrupt countries, whose economy donors like India and China are trying to help, are refusing to learn a lesson from their crisis. In several of these countries people have rioted against the government, demanding continuation of privileges and entitlements, which the bankrupt governments were in no position to give. Greek is one such nation. Already a recipient of $300 billion, this Mediterranean nation is demanding more. The added problem for Europe is that since the formation of the ambitious European Union (it has 19 members), their economies have been inter-linked and inter-dependent. A classic case of Italy catching cold if Portugal sneezes or France shivering in chill if it snowed in Germany.
In the credit ratings of international agencies, India has a status of BBB– along with Portugal and Iceland, whereas most European countries even in their pauper situation enjoy better rankings. It makes no logic for UPA to rob our piggy bank savings to give money to the richer nations. Either India’s credit ratings have to go up or theirs should come down for a transaction like this.
It may be recalled that the US was in a financial crisis in July, unable to pay bills without extending the debt ceiling. Which the US Congress allowed after much trouble, keeping the government in suspense. The US House and Senate allowed this only after the government committed to reduce spending by $900 billion over a decade. This extension only means that the Americans can continue to spend and borrow and live on potential future income until the collective debt of the nation reaches an estimated $20.1 trillion (which is 85 per cent of its GDP) by the year 2020.
Under Manmohan Singh, the Indian government has been at its profligate best, handing out cash to other countries. Afghanistan has been the biggest recipient of UPA charity. In May this year the Prime Minister promised $500 million taking to $ two billion Indian aid to Afghanistan since Karzai came to power. It even thrust money into the coffers of an unwilling Pakistan after an earthquake. The money was given through an international aid agency as our western neighbour refused to accept India’s magnanimity directly.
While helping the neighbours and smaller nations is part of international diplomacy, India has never leveraged on them. Internationally donors look at aid, donations and even lending as a means of increasing clout and influence. Indian regime, with flimsy political mandate is distributing money without any visible return leverage.
Some of the tax havens where black money from India has been stashed away are in Europe. India could well use this occasion to bargain for the return of the booty. Instead the government is busy explaining to the Supreme Court that its direction on tracing and bringing back the loot is not possible to implement.
The politicians who are today tirelessly singing the chorus ‘Parliament is supreme’ must demand an answer from the government on its munificence. It is after all the treasure of the hard working and law-abiding Indian tax payers.
Maoists supporting Christian Missionaries in forced conversion
National Tribunal and Workshop on Evangelism: Impact on Faith, Culture, Economy and Life of Vanvasis
FOC
ARCHANA Bhagat, a 21-year old Vanvasi woman from Jashpur Nagar district of Chhattisgarh, made her way to Delhi to give her testimony before a Tribunal comprising of eminent bureaucrats, retired judges, ambassadors, academicians and journalists on September 5. Her husband was brutally assassinated by missionaries for resisting an onslaught on his Vanvasi culture two years ago, leaving Archana to fend for herself and her ten months baby.
The proceedings of the Tribunal were conducted under the banner of Forum for Social Justice. The Tribunal comprised of eminent people like former DG of Punjab Police Shri KPS Gill, senior writer Bhavdeep Kang, former IPS Shri PC Dogra, Air Marshal (retd) Shri RS Bedi, Swami Shantatmananda, Justice (retd) Shri Suresh Soni, Justice (retd) Shri BK Gupta, Justice (retd) Shri DS Tewatia, former Ambassador Shri Prabhat Shukla, director of Centre for Policy Studies Dr JK Bajaj, Smt Usha Goel, Shri Vinod Bawari, Shri Shaurya Doval and Col. (retd) Shri PK Panda. The Tribunal, after preparing a detailed report, will present it the Union Minister of Tribal Affairs, different Commissions and authorities with a memorandum within one month.
Archana Bhagat’s heartbreaking story is not in isolation. More than 100 Vanvasis from different parts of India were in Delhi from September 5 to 6 to appeal to the government authorities to take preventive measures to save their culture, economy and the distinguished way of life.
The impact, extent and penetration of evangelic activities today came clear to an extent to everybody when a Jamatia Vanvasi student of Law (final year) in Delhi University informed about the conversion of his fellow 17 students in the national capital itself, by funds provided by Tripura Christian Fellow Organisation. One Vanvasi named Nikhil pointed out that now the Christian missionaries are taking help of Maoists to pressurise the Hindu Vanvasis for conversion. He also told that there is a clear nexus between Maoists and Christian Missionaries. Maoists are appointing Christians as their commander in the area.
Gadadhar Pradhan from Kandhmal district of Orissa informed the Tribunal how the land of his family members and other villagers was forcibly garbed by the Christians. Nandini Pradhan from same Kandhmal district pointed out that Christians intimidate the women against using Hindu symbols like bindi, sindoor, etc. They even torture the Hindu farmers visiting the market to sell their agriculture produces. The local administration do not listen to such complaints of the people and many times they even support the church people.
Pawitra Kanhal, who is a teacher in Kandhmal district of Orissa explained how he was framed in a false case by the missionaries and he had to remain in jail for 50 days. His only crime was that he had opposed the cow slaughter. Passing Golmai from Imphal said he was himself allured to get married with a beautiful and working Christian girl if I became a Christian, but he refused. He said 64 villages in his region are facing direct onslaughts from the missionaries and the identity and traditions of the Hindus are in danger in the entire region. Bhaikabhai Pawar from the Dangs, Gujarat, informed the Tribunal how the gochar land of his village was garbed for constructing a church. “Once a group of church people caught me and intimidated to stop doing bhajan keertan in the region. They set me free with the threat to face dire consequences if I did not stop doing bhajan keertan. They also create troubles in the celebration of Hindu festivals, he said pointing out that over 200 of the total 311 villages in his region have now churches.
Sunil from Golaghat (North East) informed how he was converted into Christianity for just Rs 500 and when he returned Hinduism after sometime he was forced to return the amount with interest. Rameshwar Rathia from Korba district of Chhattisgarh said church-supported people come from Jharkhand side and forcefully settle on the vacant land of their village. He said the land that they once occupy is not vacant at any cost. Jamdari Reang who was forced to leave Mizoram with his family some years back and now lives in Tripura, informed how all his family members converted into Christianity but he refused despite repeated pressure. He pointed out that with the change of religion the thinking of the entire family changed towards him and Hindu customs.
In their testimonies these Vanvasis clearly stated that evangelical Christian missionaries are forcing them to convert into their religion. They clearly stated that there was an increase in the nexus between Maoists and these Evangelist forces and the leaders.
After the testimony before the Tribunal for two days, these Vanvasis who had come from more than 14 states of the country, assembled at Jantar Mantar on September 6 to register their protest against various challenges posing a threat to their traditional life. They said evangelical missionaries are very much involved in these kinds of activities. In the demonstration, five Members of Parliament (MPs) also participated and lent their support to the demands raised by the Vanvasis. The MPs who attended the demonstration were Smt Jyoti Dhurve from Madhya Pradesh, Shri Murali Lal from Chhattisgarh, Shri Kanjibhai Patel from Gujarat and Shri Sudarshan Bhagat from Jharkhand. They all assured them to raise the issues of atrocities on Vanvasis in the Parliament and at other important forums.
Earlier, inaugurating the proceedings of the Tribuanl on September 5, former DG of Punjab Police Shri KPS Gill said the Vanvasis have been facing a threat to their culture, economy and way of life since the British period and it must stop now.
President of the Forum for Social Justice Shri PC Dogra said the Vanvasis are in grave danger and it is our duty to help our Vanvasi brothers and sisters living in remote areas. He said the number of Christians in census is less than 50 per cent of actual numbers. Most of the Christian don’t reveal their identity because they fear that they will lose the benefit of reservation. He also said that Christian missionaries are not just alluring poor and innocent Vanvasis but they are also forcing them and providing support to Maoists to pressurise Vanvasis to convert to Christianity.
Swami Shantatmananad Maharaj of Ramakrishna Math, Delhi, said conversions are taking place because there is no development in Vanvasi areas. Christian Missionaries are destroying Vanvasi culture. He said those who are capable enough should economically support and do some sewa in the Vanvasi areas.
The Tribunal took note of the actual distressing situation on grounds by interacting straight with the affected Vanvasis. For this purpose a variety of individuals from distinct Vanvasi cultures of India commonly affected by this phenomenon were brought on a single platform by Forum for Social Justice and India Foundation, New Delhi. This direct interaction with the blighted individuals proved to be very helpful for the jury in making an impact assessment of the detrimental effects of evangelism upon the life and culture of the Vanvasis in India. This was amply reflected in the panel observation and adjudications.(FOC)
FOC
ARCHANA Bhagat, a 21-year old Vanvasi woman from Jashpur Nagar district of Chhattisgarh, made her way to Delhi to give her testimony before a Tribunal comprising of eminent bureaucrats, retired judges, ambassadors, academicians and journalists on September 5. Her husband was brutally assassinated by missionaries for resisting an onslaught on his Vanvasi culture two years ago, leaving Archana to fend for herself and her ten months baby.
The proceedings of the Tribunal were conducted under the banner of Forum for Social Justice. The Tribunal comprised of eminent people like former DG of Punjab Police Shri KPS Gill, senior writer Bhavdeep Kang, former IPS Shri PC Dogra, Air Marshal (retd) Shri RS Bedi, Swami Shantatmananda, Justice (retd) Shri Suresh Soni, Justice (retd) Shri BK Gupta, Justice (retd) Shri DS Tewatia, former Ambassador Shri Prabhat Shukla, director of Centre for Policy Studies Dr JK Bajaj, Smt Usha Goel, Shri Vinod Bawari, Shri Shaurya Doval and Col. (retd) Shri PK Panda. The Tribunal, after preparing a detailed report, will present it the Union Minister of Tribal Affairs, different Commissions and authorities with a memorandum within one month.
Archana Bhagat’s heartbreaking story is not in isolation. More than 100 Vanvasis from different parts of India were in Delhi from September 5 to 6 to appeal to the government authorities to take preventive measures to save their culture, economy and the distinguished way of life.
The impact, extent and penetration of evangelic activities today came clear to an extent to everybody when a Jamatia Vanvasi student of Law (final year) in Delhi University informed about the conversion of his fellow 17 students in the national capital itself, by funds provided by Tripura Christian Fellow Organisation. One Vanvasi named Nikhil pointed out that now the Christian missionaries are taking help of Maoists to pressurise the Hindu Vanvasis for conversion. He also told that there is a clear nexus between Maoists and Christian Missionaries. Maoists are appointing Christians as their commander in the area.
Gadadhar Pradhan from Kandhmal district of Orissa informed the Tribunal how the land of his family members and other villagers was forcibly garbed by the Christians. Nandini Pradhan from same Kandhmal district pointed out that Christians intimidate the women against using Hindu symbols like bindi, sindoor, etc. They even torture the Hindu farmers visiting the market to sell their agriculture produces. The local administration do not listen to such complaints of the people and many times they even support the church people.
Pawitra Kanhal, who is a teacher in Kandhmal district of Orissa explained how he was framed in a false case by the missionaries and he had to remain in jail for 50 days. His only crime was that he had opposed the cow slaughter. Passing Golmai from Imphal said he was himself allured to get married with a beautiful and working Christian girl if I became a Christian, but he refused. He said 64 villages in his region are facing direct onslaughts from the missionaries and the identity and traditions of the Hindus are in danger in the entire region. Bhaikabhai Pawar from the Dangs, Gujarat, informed the Tribunal how the gochar land of his village was garbed for constructing a church. “Once a group of church people caught me and intimidated to stop doing bhajan keertan in the region. They set me free with the threat to face dire consequences if I did not stop doing bhajan keertan. They also create troubles in the celebration of Hindu festivals, he said pointing out that over 200 of the total 311 villages in his region have now churches.
Sunil from Golaghat (North East) informed how he was converted into Christianity for just Rs 500 and when he returned Hinduism after sometime he was forced to return the amount with interest. Rameshwar Rathia from Korba district of Chhattisgarh said church-supported people come from Jharkhand side and forcefully settle on the vacant land of their village. He said the land that they once occupy is not vacant at any cost. Jamdari Reang who was forced to leave Mizoram with his family some years back and now lives in Tripura, informed how all his family members converted into Christianity but he refused despite repeated pressure. He pointed out that with the change of religion the thinking of the entire family changed towards him and Hindu customs.
In their testimonies these Vanvasis clearly stated that evangelical Christian missionaries are forcing them to convert into their religion. They clearly stated that there was an increase in the nexus between Maoists and these Evangelist forces and the leaders.
After the testimony before the Tribunal for two days, these Vanvasis who had come from more than 14 states of the country, assembled at Jantar Mantar on September 6 to register their protest against various challenges posing a threat to their traditional life. They said evangelical missionaries are very much involved in these kinds of activities. In the demonstration, five Members of Parliament (MPs) also participated and lent their support to the demands raised by the Vanvasis. The MPs who attended the demonstration were Smt Jyoti Dhurve from Madhya Pradesh, Shri Murali Lal from Chhattisgarh, Shri Kanjibhai Patel from Gujarat and Shri Sudarshan Bhagat from Jharkhand. They all assured them to raise the issues of atrocities on Vanvasis in the Parliament and at other important forums.
Earlier, inaugurating the proceedings of the Tribuanl on September 5, former DG of Punjab Police Shri KPS Gill said the Vanvasis have been facing a threat to their culture, economy and way of life since the British period and it must stop now.
President of the Forum for Social Justice Shri PC Dogra said the Vanvasis are in grave danger and it is our duty to help our Vanvasi brothers and sisters living in remote areas. He said the number of Christians in census is less than 50 per cent of actual numbers. Most of the Christian don’t reveal their identity because they fear that they will lose the benefit of reservation. He also said that Christian missionaries are not just alluring poor and innocent Vanvasis but they are also forcing them and providing support to Maoists to pressurise Vanvasis to convert to Christianity.
Swami Shantatmananad Maharaj of Ramakrishna Math, Delhi, said conversions are taking place because there is no development in Vanvasi areas. Christian Missionaries are destroying Vanvasi culture. He said those who are capable enough should economically support and do some sewa in the Vanvasi areas.
The Tribunal took note of the actual distressing situation on grounds by interacting straight with the affected Vanvasis. For this purpose a variety of individuals from distinct Vanvasi cultures of India commonly affected by this phenomenon were brought on a single platform by Forum for Social Justice and India Foundation, New Delhi. This direct interaction with the blighted individuals proved to be very helpful for the jury in making an impact assessment of the detrimental effects of evangelism upon the life and culture of the Vanvasis in India. This was amply reflected in the panel observation and adjudications.(FOC)
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Bhima: Strong and virtuous
By KK Shanmukhan
BHIMA who was the main pillar of support for the life of the Pandavas and Kunti was a voracious eater and a good cook too. He had hardly any match to his immense physical strength.
After escape form the wax palace, Kunit and her sons sought refuge in a Brahman’s house at Ekachakra in the guise of Brahmans.
Bakasura was the ruler of Ekachakra. He stayed in a cave many miles away. It was stipulated that each household should carry his food daily failing which he would consume the entire inhabitants. Quintals of rice, curd, side dishes, intoxicating wines, meat, two buffaloes that drive the cart and the cart driver were his lunch ingredients. One day the turn fell on the house where Kunti and her sons lived. Bhima took up the task of taking the food to Bakasura on behalf of the household.
Bhima carrying the eatables reached the cave on the face of which was impatiently waiting Bakasura with burning hunger. Seeing Bhima approach slowly, his anger rose. Ignoring his wrath, Bhima halted the cart and started consuming the food items himself. Bakasura unable to contain his anger plucked a tree and attacked him. Unmindful still, Bhima went on eating. He, having finished eating to his satisfaction responded to Bakasura in his fight. A terrible fight ensued between them. The rakshasa approached Bhima fiercely but the latter did not lose his cool. Finally, Bhima threw him down, pressed his knee on his back and broke his bones. Bakasura uttered a fightful haul with pain, vomited blood and died.
Bhima also killed Hidimba and many other rakshasas who posed threat to their life and the general public.
When Yudhishtira was ruling at Hastinapura, it was unanimously decided that the Pandavas should conduct a grand Rajasuya yajna and Yudhishtira be conferred with the little of Emperor. To become an Emperor, all other contemporary kings are to be subdued. Jarasandha was the only obstacle.
It was also resolved to kill Jarashandha in a single combat. Sri Krishna, Bhima and Arjuna proceeded to Magadha. They disguised themselves as religious pilgrims and entered the kingdom, unarmed. Nevertheless, Jarasandha could smell a rat in their behaviour and demanded them of the truth. Then they said: “We are actually your enemies and desire instant combat. You may choose any of us.”
Laughing heartily Jarasandha agreed and said: “Krishna, you are a cowherd and a coward. Arjuna is yet a boy. Bhima is famous for his physical strength. Let the fight be between us.”
They were so equally matched and the fight continued for twelve days—day and night. Finally, Bhima thrashed Jarasandha on the floor and tore him into two pieces and threw them away. To his utter surprise Bhima saw that the two pieces joined together and Jarasandha leapt up into life again.
Bhima looked at Sri Krishna helplessly who took a straw, tore it into two and cast the parts in opposite directions. Bhima took the hint. Once again he tore Jarasandha asunder and threw the two pieces in opposite directions. Jarasandha met with his end.
After twelve years of exile the Pandavas were living in King Virata’s kingdom for one year incognito; all under pseudonym. Bhima was Valala, the chief cook and Draupadi served queen Sudeshna as Sairandhri. Virata’s commander-in-chief was his mighty brother-in-law, Kichaka, who was the de facto king.
Kichaka, one of the mightiest of men on earth then, was infatuated at the beauty of Sairandhri, his sister’s servant-maid. He made overtures to her. It grew into intolerable extent. Once Kichaka in connivance with the queen bade her to his house and entreated to submit to his wills. Sairandhri violently reacted and warned him of the dire consequences. Thereuon Kichaka kicked and thrashed her. She somehow escaped and in the night went to Valala and told the whole incident . Valala advised her of a plan. Accordingly, on the next day Sairandhri approached Kichaka alone and told him that she was willing to fulfill his desires and only because of fear and same that she had been resisting his advances. She invited him to the dancing hall alone at the night. When Kichaka entered, there in the dim light he could see Sairandhri lying on the cot. He slowly approached her and embraced her. Alas! It was an iron clasp. It was Bhima. After a tough wrestle Bhima killed Kichaka.
Bhima slew several warriors and generals in the Mahabharata war. He single handed killed all the sons of Dhritarashtra as he had promised. In the single combat with Duryodhana, he broke his leg with his mace and killed him.
He tore the chest of Dussasana, drank his blood and gave a lion-roar which reverberated the entire Kurukshetra and struck terror in the hearts of the remaining Kaurava forces.
Such was the strength of Bhima.
BHIMA who was the main pillar of support for the life of the Pandavas and Kunti was a voracious eater and a good cook too. He had hardly any match to his immense physical strength.
After escape form the wax palace, Kunit and her sons sought refuge in a Brahman’s house at Ekachakra in the guise of Brahmans.
Bakasura was the ruler of Ekachakra. He stayed in a cave many miles away. It was stipulated that each household should carry his food daily failing which he would consume the entire inhabitants. Quintals of rice, curd, side dishes, intoxicating wines, meat, two buffaloes that drive the cart and the cart driver were his lunch ingredients. One day the turn fell on the house where Kunti and her sons lived. Bhima took up the task of taking the food to Bakasura on behalf of the household.
Bhima carrying the eatables reached the cave on the face of which was impatiently waiting Bakasura with burning hunger. Seeing Bhima approach slowly, his anger rose. Ignoring his wrath, Bhima halted the cart and started consuming the food items himself. Bakasura unable to contain his anger plucked a tree and attacked him. Unmindful still, Bhima went on eating. He, having finished eating to his satisfaction responded to Bakasura in his fight. A terrible fight ensued between them. The rakshasa approached Bhima fiercely but the latter did not lose his cool. Finally, Bhima threw him down, pressed his knee on his back and broke his bones. Bakasura uttered a fightful haul with pain, vomited blood and died.
Bhima also killed Hidimba and many other rakshasas who posed threat to their life and the general public.
When Yudhishtira was ruling at Hastinapura, it was unanimously decided that the Pandavas should conduct a grand Rajasuya yajna and Yudhishtira be conferred with the little of Emperor. To become an Emperor, all other contemporary kings are to be subdued. Jarasandha was the only obstacle.
It was also resolved to kill Jarashandha in a single combat. Sri Krishna, Bhima and Arjuna proceeded to Magadha. They disguised themselves as religious pilgrims and entered the kingdom, unarmed. Nevertheless, Jarasandha could smell a rat in their behaviour and demanded them of the truth. Then they said: “We are actually your enemies and desire instant combat. You may choose any of us.”
Laughing heartily Jarasandha agreed and said: “Krishna, you are a cowherd and a coward. Arjuna is yet a boy. Bhima is famous for his physical strength. Let the fight be between us.”
They were so equally matched and the fight continued for twelve days—day and night. Finally, Bhima thrashed Jarasandha on the floor and tore him into two pieces and threw them away. To his utter surprise Bhima saw that the two pieces joined together and Jarasandha leapt up into life again.
Bhima looked at Sri Krishna helplessly who took a straw, tore it into two and cast the parts in opposite directions. Bhima took the hint. Once again he tore Jarasandha asunder and threw the two pieces in opposite directions. Jarasandha met with his end.
After twelve years of exile the Pandavas were living in King Virata’s kingdom for one year incognito; all under pseudonym. Bhima was Valala, the chief cook and Draupadi served queen Sudeshna as Sairandhri. Virata’s commander-in-chief was his mighty brother-in-law, Kichaka, who was the de facto king.
Kichaka, one of the mightiest of men on earth then, was infatuated at the beauty of Sairandhri, his sister’s servant-maid. He made overtures to her. It grew into intolerable extent. Once Kichaka in connivance with the queen bade her to his house and entreated to submit to his wills. Sairandhri violently reacted and warned him of the dire consequences. Thereuon Kichaka kicked and thrashed her. She somehow escaped and in the night went to Valala and told the whole incident . Valala advised her of a plan. Accordingly, on the next day Sairandhri approached Kichaka alone and told him that she was willing to fulfill his desires and only because of fear and same that she had been resisting his advances. She invited him to the dancing hall alone at the night. When Kichaka entered, there in the dim light he could see Sairandhri lying on the cot. He slowly approached her and embraced her. Alas! It was an iron clasp. It was Bhima. After a tough wrestle Bhima killed Kichaka.
Bhima slew several warriors and generals in the Mahabharata war. He single handed killed all the sons of Dhritarashtra as he had promised. In the single combat with Duryodhana, he broke his leg with his mace and killed him.
He tore the chest of Dussasana, drank his blood and gave a lion-roar which reverberated the entire Kurukshetra and struck terror in the hearts of the remaining Kaurava forces.
Such was the strength of Bhima.
India tops black money list
By VK Singh
INDIA tops the list of black money in the entire world. While there is no official estimate available for the magnitude of India’s black money, unofficial estimates put the figure at around $1.4 trillion (over Rs 70 lakh crore). This amount is more than one year’s GDP of India. Most of this money has been stashed away in banks in ‘tax havens’ abroad over the last 60 years by corrupt politicians, industrialists, bureaucrats and middlemen.
The bulk of India’s black money is stashed away in secret bank accounts in Switzerland, according to data provided by the Swiss Bankers Association. India has more black money than rest of the world combined. India tops the list with almost $1,456 billion in Swiss banks, followed by Russia $470 billion, the UK $390 billion, Ukraine $100 billion and China, with $96 billion. Indian Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt.
India is ranked 6th on the black money top-ten countdown for illicit outflows monitored during 2002-2006. The estimated average amount stashed away annually from India during 2002-2006 is $27.3 billion. Switzerland is the top destination for illegal funds because of its strict secrecy laws. Also, Swiss banks sell additional masks to hide the identity of their rich clients, like trusts in the Cayman islands, shell companies in Panama, or foundations in Liechtenstein, all run by nominees.
Political and bureaucratic corruptions in India are major concerns. Transparency International, an international organisation that ranks countries on a Corruption Perception Index (CPI), ranked India 86th out of the 180 countries ranked by it in 2009. The CPI rates countries on a scale of zero to 10, with zero indicating high levels of corruption and 10, low. India’s CPI score was a measly 3.4 out of 10, indicating fairly large levels of corruption. A 2005 study conducted by the organisation found that more than 15 per cent of Indians had first-hand experience of paying bribes or influence peddling to successfully complete jobs in public office. Taxes and bribes are a fact of daily life and common between state borders. Transparency International estimates that truckers pay US$5 billion in bribes annually. According to Transparency International, judicial corruption in India is attributable to factors such as “delays in the disposal of cases, shortage of judges and complex procedures, all of which are exacerbated by a preponderance of new laws”.
A 2009 survey of the leading economies of Asia, revealed Indian bureaucracy to be not just least efficient out of Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Philippines and Indonesia; further it was also found that working with India’s civil servants was a “slow and painful” process.
The total share in FDI of Mauritius is 55,203 million or Rs 2,47,092.30 crore. Indeed, they are believed to be the ones leading the boom in the stock markets. But the Mauritius angle does not end there. Reports in the financial media indicate that a substantial part of FII investment is believed to be coming from Non-resident Indians (NRIs) bringing back funds to participate in the ongoing speculative orgy in the Indian stock markets, much of which is said to be routed through Mauritius-based paper companies. Black money stashed by Indian abroad has found way in India through this route. The Capital Gains Tax exemption giving to this Tax Haven has given the national exchequer on account of lost capital gains tax in the decade ending 2003 would amount to a whopping Rs 28,139 crore. Even if it is an admitted policy of the state to woo foreign capital at any cost, the question is whether losses of this kind are acceptable to the polity at large.
In a most recent example of corruption, even as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) probes US$8 billion worth transactions allegedly involving suspected money launderer Hasan Ali Khan, evidence available with a news source in India shows that he had transactions of over Rs 112,000 crore (US$24.86 billion) between years 2005 and 2006. This amount is enough to fund the national drinking water project in all the six lakh villages in India for the next 10 years. Even as the Hasan Ali case has hit the headlines and the Enforcement Directorate claims that India’s biggest tax offender has as much as eight billion dollars stashed away abroad, he is only one of the big tax offenders and this stash is only a part of the huge illicit outflow from India. Documents seized by ED reveal that Hasan Ali transferred $700,000 from Sarasin Bank, Switzerland to the account of SK Financial services UK maintained with Barclays Bank, London through Citibank, New York.
If the estimates of Rs 70 lakh crore of Indian black money parked abroad are brought back this money can surely lift the 40 crore Indians living below poverty line out of poverty, or it can fund entire infrastructure building for the next 15-20 years. It can also educate all Indian children for next 50 years.
Fortified Havens For Plunder From India
European, American Museums: Fortified Havens For Plunder From India
By Radha Rajan
SHOULD the people of India, Greece, Egypt and Africa, and Native American peoples succeed in getting American and European museums and libraries to return all objects which constitute the tangible roots of ancient civilisations, and thousands of years of history pre-dating the cults of Jesus and Mohammed, then the Louvre, British Museum, Smithsonian, Vatican and the Kunsthistoriches Museum to mention just five, would be emptied of all their prized possessions.
European and American museums and libraries are no more than fortified thieves’ dens and state-sponsored and supported safe havens for Abrahamic plunder; they house the spoils of Christian war and genocide against African peoples, against the nations of now extinct and almost extinct Native American peoples, colonial loot from Asia, and from archaeological and anthropological pseudo-science expeditions, which European marauders undertook across continents.
To the list of permanent exhibits and possessions officially declared by these museums and libraries must be added—objects which are never exhibited for public viewing, objects which are now in private collections of the rich and infamous, and objects which even people in the countries of their origin may not know about in some private collection and in the dark interiors of museums and libraries
The only history to be spared the depredations of Christian vandals, which they could not uproot and cart away to Europe and America, and those which successive jihadi hordes could not destroy and reduce to rubble are the petroglyphs and pictograms in the caves of India.
India should demand that all such objects including the priceless Saraswati-Indus seals, temple pediments and colonnades and every murti of our gods and goddesses once worshipped in our temples and homes be returned to India where they belong.
In the British Museum alone the writer saw objects inscribed with Saraswati-Indus script. There are currently around 4200 such inscribed objects of which over 2500 are seals and sealings. According to Dr Subhash Kak, most of the sites of what is called the Indus civilisation are in the Saraswati valleys and some of the biggest sites in vivisected India are yet to be excavated.
Several among the 4200 objects are scattered across major museums of the world and libraries. According to Dr Kak besides the 14 in the British Museum, there is one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and one in the Berkeley Museum, University of California.
The Saraswati-Indus script has not been deciphered conclusively and all work including that of some Hindu scholars and amateurs continues to remain at best in the domain of conjecture. All objects bearing the Saraswati-Indus script, currently located in foreign museums and libraries must therefore come back to India to enable future scholars to access them at one place without having to travel around the world; what belongs to the Indian people must be returned to India.
Besides the 14 objects with the Saraswati-Indus script, the writer saw in the collection of colonial loot, a portion of the Mathura Lion Capital, the base of an exquisitely carved temple column from Dwarka, breathtakingly beautiful murtis from every corner of our country—of Vishnu, Shiva, Surya, Parvati, Rukmani, Vaishnavi, Kartikeya and Narthana (Dancing) Ganesha.
The defilement of temples and sacred places was not confined to India. A magnificent wall torn down from the Memorial Temple of Rameses II in Abydos, Egypt, built of limestone and sandstone around 1250 BC, bearing precious hieroglyphs giving a detailed list of names of the kings and gods of Egypt in exquisitely carved cartouches also stands in the British Museum.
The memorial temple to Rameses II also had seven shrines dedicated to seven gods including Osiris, God of Death and the netherworld. Auguste Mariette was to Abydos what Lord Elgin was to the Acropolis. If Elgin vandalised the sacred Acropolis and brought home the plunder for the British Museum, Mariette vandalised the sacred city of Abydos and brought home the loot for the Egyptian Museum in the Louvre.
Temples which were plundered and destroyed by pre-Christian and pre-Islam kings and soldiers were always re-built and the gods were re-installed and worshipped again. Oftentimes some future king from the victor country would re-build the temple which had been destroyed earlier by his predecessor; but that which was destroyed by Christian crusaders, colonisers and archaeologists and Muslim jihadi armies remain to this day only as ruins.
White Christian countries built museums as truimphant monuments of this destruction and vandalism. Pre-Christian and pre-Islam kings destroyed temples as an asuric act of victory but even they did not vandalise graves and tombs. Vandalising tombs and pyramids, digging up graves and mutilating the bodies of the dead is an Abrahamic trait and Native Americans are still fighting to get back the mortal remains of their forefathers displayed in American museums so that they can be respectfully laid back to rest.
If India, Greece and Egypt bore the brunt of western archaeologists, Native Americans suffered anthropologists.
While their historical precedent is uncertain, anthropologists can be readily identified on the Reservations. Go into any crowd of people. Pick out a tall gaunt white man wearing Bermuda shorts, a World war II Army Air Force flying jacket, an Australian bush hat, tennis shoes, and packing a large knapsack incorrectly strapped on his back. He will invariably have a thin wife with stringy hair, an IQ of 191, and a vocabulary in which even the prepositions have eleven syllables. This creature is an anthropologist. (Vine Deloria, JR., Custer Died For Your Sins, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1988, page 79)
While native American writer Vine Deloria’s biting satire may have reduced the anthropologist and Christian missionary to caricatures, the destruction wreaked on ancient civilisations and peoples is real; very real. The extent of destruction, vandalism, brazen appropriation of the wealth of other nations which these museums and libraries continue to hold on to and exhibit with scant regard for morality and justice, and the sensibilities of the nations to which this wealth belongs, has to be seen to be really understood.
A museum, as conceived by what goes in the name of western civilisation is primarily a victory monument displaying the remains of dead and extinct or once conquered and elslaved civilisations; and they are dead because of the rise and expansion of the Abrahamic religions. One such museum was the Baghdad museum which housed the remains of the Mesopotamian civilisation. In an act of Abrahamic atavism, the Baghdad museum was made a precision target during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
American tanks fired at the Baghdad museum leaving a gaping hole on the forehead; the attack on Baghdad museum facilitated the pre-planned vandalism and plunder of the magnificent wealth of the Mesopotamian civilisation. The world will never know how much was destroyed, how much was looted and where these precious objects are now.
By ordering the vaults of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple to be opened, the judges of the Supreme Court have only facilitated the possible destruction and loot of Hindu temple wealth which is the priceless wealth of the Hindu civilisation. Christian fundamentalism vandalised the Acropolis, Abydos and now the Baghdad museum; while Islamic jihadi fundamentalism vandalised Belur, Halebid and now the Bamiyan Buddhas.
India’s Hindus must begin to think long and hard about how best to preserve and protect our history besides resisting all efforts to display parts of our living temples, including the wealth of our gods in museums. In the meanwhile we must begin to make serious and unrelenting efforts to bring back the civilisational wealth now flaunted in American and European museums and libraries.
This is the invaluable and priceless wealth, our history and heritage, objects which define national self-identity, which we must bring back. This is wealth which cannot be replicated, regenerated or renewed; black money, however big in monetary terms, is only a very small and negligible aspect of our national wealth.
India has to take the lead in this direction as only India can because India’s Hindu civilisation is still alive and vibrant. More importantly, India has the moral authority as a non-aggressive and non-acquisitive civilisation to make the demand for the return of all objects of history and national self-identity to the nations of their origin.
By Radha Rajan
SHOULD the people of India, Greece, Egypt and Africa, and Native American peoples succeed in getting American and European museums and libraries to return all objects which constitute the tangible roots of ancient civilisations, and thousands of years of history pre-dating the cults of Jesus and Mohammed, then the Louvre, British Museum, Smithsonian, Vatican and the Kunsthistoriches Museum to mention just five, would be emptied of all their prized possessions.
European and American museums and libraries are no more than fortified thieves’ dens and state-sponsored and supported safe havens for Abrahamic plunder; they house the spoils of Christian war and genocide against African peoples, against the nations of now extinct and almost extinct Native American peoples, colonial loot from Asia, and from archaeological and anthropological pseudo-science expeditions, which European marauders undertook across continents.
To the list of permanent exhibits and possessions officially declared by these museums and libraries must be added—objects which are never exhibited for public viewing, objects which are now in private collections of the rich and infamous, and objects which even people in the countries of their origin may not know about in some private collection and in the dark interiors of museums and libraries
The only history to be spared the depredations of Christian vandals, which they could not uproot and cart away to Europe and America, and those which successive jihadi hordes could not destroy and reduce to rubble are the petroglyphs and pictograms in the caves of India.
India should demand that all such objects including the priceless Saraswati-Indus seals, temple pediments and colonnades and every murti of our gods and goddesses once worshipped in our temples and homes be returned to India where they belong.
In the British Museum alone the writer saw objects inscribed with Saraswati-Indus script. There are currently around 4200 such inscribed objects of which over 2500 are seals and sealings. According to Dr Subhash Kak, most of the sites of what is called the Indus civilisation are in the Saraswati valleys and some of the biggest sites in vivisected India are yet to be excavated.
Several among the 4200 objects are scattered across major museums of the world and libraries. According to Dr Kak besides the 14 in the British Museum, there is one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and one in the Berkeley Museum, University of California.
The Saraswati-Indus script has not been deciphered conclusively and all work including that of some Hindu scholars and amateurs continues to remain at best in the domain of conjecture. All objects bearing the Saraswati-Indus script, currently located in foreign museums and libraries must therefore come back to India to enable future scholars to access them at one place without having to travel around the world; what belongs to the Indian people must be returned to India.
Besides the 14 objects with the Saraswati-Indus script, the writer saw in the collection of colonial loot, a portion of the Mathura Lion Capital, the base of an exquisitely carved temple column from Dwarka, breathtakingly beautiful murtis from every corner of our country—of Vishnu, Shiva, Surya, Parvati, Rukmani, Vaishnavi, Kartikeya and Narthana (Dancing) Ganesha.
The defilement of temples and sacred places was not confined to India. A magnificent wall torn down from the Memorial Temple of Rameses II in Abydos, Egypt, built of limestone and sandstone around 1250 BC, bearing precious hieroglyphs giving a detailed list of names of the kings and gods of Egypt in exquisitely carved cartouches also stands in the British Museum.
The memorial temple to Rameses II also had seven shrines dedicated to seven gods including Osiris, God of Death and the netherworld. Auguste Mariette was to Abydos what Lord Elgin was to the Acropolis. If Elgin vandalised the sacred Acropolis and brought home the plunder for the British Museum, Mariette vandalised the sacred city of Abydos and brought home the loot for the Egyptian Museum in the Louvre.
Temples which were plundered and destroyed by pre-Christian and pre-Islam kings and soldiers were always re-built and the gods were re-installed and worshipped again. Oftentimes some future king from the victor country would re-build the temple which had been destroyed earlier by his predecessor; but that which was destroyed by Christian crusaders, colonisers and archaeologists and Muslim jihadi armies remain to this day only as ruins.
White Christian countries built museums as truimphant monuments of this destruction and vandalism. Pre-Christian and pre-Islam kings destroyed temples as an asuric act of victory but even they did not vandalise graves and tombs. Vandalising tombs and pyramids, digging up graves and mutilating the bodies of the dead is an Abrahamic trait and Native Americans are still fighting to get back the mortal remains of their forefathers displayed in American museums so that they can be respectfully laid back to rest.
If India, Greece and Egypt bore the brunt of western archaeologists, Native Americans suffered anthropologists.
While their historical precedent is uncertain, anthropologists can be readily identified on the Reservations. Go into any crowd of people. Pick out a tall gaunt white man wearing Bermuda shorts, a World war II Army Air Force flying jacket, an Australian bush hat, tennis shoes, and packing a large knapsack incorrectly strapped on his back. He will invariably have a thin wife with stringy hair, an IQ of 191, and a vocabulary in which even the prepositions have eleven syllables. This creature is an anthropologist. (Vine Deloria, JR., Custer Died For Your Sins, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1988, page 79)
While native American writer Vine Deloria’s biting satire may have reduced the anthropologist and Christian missionary to caricatures, the destruction wreaked on ancient civilisations and peoples is real; very real. The extent of destruction, vandalism, brazen appropriation of the wealth of other nations which these museums and libraries continue to hold on to and exhibit with scant regard for morality and justice, and the sensibilities of the nations to which this wealth belongs, has to be seen to be really understood.
A museum, as conceived by what goes in the name of western civilisation is primarily a victory monument displaying the remains of dead and extinct or once conquered and elslaved civilisations; and they are dead because of the rise and expansion of the Abrahamic religions. One such museum was the Baghdad museum which housed the remains of the Mesopotamian civilisation. In an act of Abrahamic atavism, the Baghdad museum was made a precision target during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.
American tanks fired at the Baghdad museum leaving a gaping hole on the forehead; the attack on Baghdad museum facilitated the pre-planned vandalism and plunder of the magnificent wealth of the Mesopotamian civilisation. The world will never know how much was destroyed, how much was looted and where these precious objects are now.
By ordering the vaults of Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple to be opened, the judges of the Supreme Court have only facilitated the possible destruction and loot of Hindu temple wealth which is the priceless wealth of the Hindu civilisation. Christian fundamentalism vandalised the Acropolis, Abydos and now the Baghdad museum; while Islamic jihadi fundamentalism vandalised Belur, Halebid and now the Bamiyan Buddhas.
India’s Hindus must begin to think long and hard about how best to preserve and protect our history besides resisting all efforts to display parts of our living temples, including the wealth of our gods in museums. In the meanwhile we must begin to make serious and unrelenting efforts to bring back the civilisational wealth now flaunted in American and European museums and libraries.
This is the invaluable and priceless wealth, our history and heritage, objects which define national self-identity, which we must bring back. This is wealth which cannot be replicated, regenerated or renewed; black money, however big in monetary terms, is only a very small and negligible aspect of our national wealth.
India has to take the lead in this direction as only India can because India’s Hindu civilisation is still alive and vibrant. More importantly, India has the moral authority as a non-aggressive and non-acquisitive civilisation to make the demand for the return of all objects of history and national self-identity to the nations of their origin.
Hindutva is the Cure
If Corruption is India’s Disease then Hindutva is the Cure
By Dr Subramanian Swamy
CORRUPTION in India is now a major concern for all patriotic citizens because of scams galore such as Satyam, IPL, CWG, and 2G Spectrum etc, etc. By all objective criteria, India today has by far one of the most corrupt governance. It is fuelled by greed and single-minded adherence to materialism.
Corruption generally is any inducement, or bribe, to do or not to do anything that the bribe giver wants from the bribe taker who otherwise will not do or will do. By this broad definition even dowry payments is corruption. We are, however, concerned here with misuse of public office for private gain either for oneself, family or friend. This represents a governance failure and hence of primary national concern.
Corruption is, therefore, inherently bad for the efficient functioning of any economic system. It blurs the incentive to perform and discourages relying on merit as a means to success.
It is prosecutable in India under the Prevention of Corruption Act which was re-casted in 1988, or Money Laundering (Prevention) Act, which any citizen can set into motion subject to some safeguards such as Sanction. A more drastic law sought by the civil society at large, to be known Lok Pal Act obviates the requirement of Sanction, and institutes an independent prosecutor who can order a CBI inquiry without government permission.
Corruption under the case laws of the Supreme Court is also sue-able such as under the Doctrine of Public Trust, for malfeasance in office.Hence, attach or confiscate the properties public officials once they are convicted of the crime.
However, India although is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Corrupt adopted by the General Assembly in October 2003, it has not yet ratified the Convention. The Convention, however, came into force on December 14, 2005 when the 38 countries ratified it. Its asset recovery provision is very appealing, and yet the Indian government is not yet moved to ratify the Convention. Switzerland was, therefore, compelled to enact a law called Restitution of Illicit Assets Act(2010) especially of “Politically Exposed Persons”. It was by this Act that Egypt’s Mubarak’s and Libya’s Gaddafi’s accounts in Swiss Banks were frozen.
An international watchdog committee conducted a study on the illicit flight of money from India, perhaps the first ever attempt at shedding light on a subject steeped in secrecy, and concluded that India has been drained of $462 billion (over Rs 20 lakh crore) between 1948 and 2008. The amount is nearly 40 per cent of India’s gross domestic product.
One of the worst problems with corruption in India is the creation of “black money,” i.e., money that is used in such transactions which is neither taxed nor is spent openly. It travels to and from secret bank accounts abroad, or, worse, is used by the corrupt to indulge in gross luxurious consumption and bribery.
Black money also funds elections and there is no proper accounting. It tempts the receiver to stash and salt away part of the campaign funds. Since elections leads to political power of those thus funded and enriched, future governments become bribe-compliant and therefore protect the crooked.
This money enables politicians and business persons to carry cash around the world for pleasure, and sometimes even be caught with it. For example, on September 27, 2001, Rahul Gandhi and his live-in girlfriend were arrested by the FBI at Boston’s Logan airport with $ 160,000 in cash, for declaring it to the US Customs. US law requires cash at hand of more than $10,000 to be so declared. But he was let off after nine hours in FBI custody at the intervention of the then BJP- led government, which for some mysterious reason had played guardian to Ms Sonia Gandhi and her family throughout their tenure.
2 Impact of Corruption
Corruption impacts on economic development of a nation in five dimensions:
(1) Decisions taken for corrupt motive sub-optimises the allocation of scarce national resources and hence in the long run lowers the rate of growth in GDP. It also encourages buccaneers and robber barons to flourish instead of innovative entrepreneurs.
(2) By the use of bribe money which escapes the tax net and is mostly stashed away in banks abroad or in trunks in safe houses, is deployed in luxury goods purchase, ostentatious life, splurging in five star hotels, real estate, and on partying. This raises demand for luxury production and services, and in turn distorts investment priorities. In India 70 per cent of the investment goes directly or indirectly to sustain the luxury sector.
(3) Unaccounted bribe money is lent to hoarders and speculators who then cause artificial shortages and thus inflation and property bubbles.
(4) Since the most in corrupt activities would be in public office, they enact laws to not only to safeguard the booty by lax criminal investigations and prosecutions, but to enable earning interest or return on the bribe money. The invention of Participatory Notes (PNs) and the Mauritius Tax and Capital Gains exemption treaties is aimed at that sordid objective (see below).
(5) Corruption enables beneficiaries to involve foreign governments seeking influence and criminal gangs resident abroad to launder money and provide protection.
‘Hence, as a country becomes industrialised, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear. They simply morph and become more sophisticated: It becomes a complex phenomenon than just transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash in a Swiss bank. The formation of shell companies in tax haven islands, for example, makes the tracing of the money trail very difficult.
Now subtler forms of “legal corruption” also exist eg, an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached. In many countries this may be legal, even if unethical. In industrialised nations undue influence is often legally exercised by powerful private interests, which in turn influence the nation’s regulations, policies and laws.
2. Subversion of the Indian Financial System by Corruption
As I have pointed out in my earlier writings, the Participatory Notes (PN) which account for 55 per cent of the foreign funds into the Stock Market in India have no requirement to comply with even the SEBI disclosure rules, and are obviously meant for laundering black money of politicians, industrialists and even including those of terrorists. Even after Tarapore Committee ridiculed the PNs, the SEBI had to keep silent because the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram favoured P-Notes to launder ill-gotten money of his own and of his political masters. The lack of ethics and patriotism thus appears maximum inside the government today.
Investments through the P-notes route are believed to be largely responsible for sudden, unexplained fluctuations in the stock-market indices, including the huge falls which have even resulted in suicides in Dalal Street. The Finance Ministry however has failed to answer why this special exemption to P-Notes is being provided. The Ministry has refused to publish the list of P-note holders, along with their details and the amount of investment, on its website, or on the website of SEBI, or anywhere else. The Finance Ministry does not track the names of the owners/promoters of beneficiaries of that company. Hence company using P-notes in the BSE could well be promoted or funded by an Osama bin-Laden, a Dawood Ibrahim or the late Velupillai Prabhakaran?
Corruption as a Grave National Security Threat
In his address to the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 11, 2007, MK Narayanan, the National Security Advisor to the Government of India, listed out the various ways by which terrorists in India were funded. He admitted: “Instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations have been reported. Stock exchanges in Mumbai and Chennai have, on occasion, reported that fictitious or notional companies were engaging in stock market operations. Some of these companies were later traced to terrorist outfits”. This is a truly shocking admission.
Thus, the Government of India is well aware that terrorists are parking funds in Indian ventures. Yet the Finance Ministry has done nothing about the system of P-notes, which gives terrorists the additional benefit of anonymity while making hefty investments in the Indian market, which could later be used to fund terrorist activities against the Indian people in India!
According to conservative estimates, there are over Rs 2,50,000 crore rupees worth of P-notes issued abroad by FIIs and brokers being actively traded in the Indian market! At present P-Notes fuels about 53 per cent of all foreign investments in the stock markets of India.
While an Indian citizen in India has to provide his/her address proof, photo ID proof, PAN details, etc to open even an ordinary savings bank account in a local bank, foreign investors can hide their identity under a sub-account by making use of Participatory Notes to route their investments, often running into hundreds of crores in a single transaction. In one transaction about the time the 2G spectrum licences were given, Ms Sonia Gandhi had issued a single certified cheque of Rs 18,000 crores to Ketan Parikh at his London Office to buy P-Notes! The main reason thus for the popularity of a P-note is in fact the anonymity it provides to crooks and terrorists.
Indians have about $ 0.5 trillion to $ 1.5 trillion in Swiss banks alone, not to mention Liechtenstien, Isle of Man, Cayman Islands, Macao etc, etc.. They are the largest deposit holders in Swiss Banks! In 1991 the respected Swiss magazine Schweitzer Illustrate published the by-product revelations of the Marcos investigation from which, Sonia Gandhi, it can be seen had been a legatee of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination to Rs10,000 crores (in 1991 exchange rate) in illegal Swiss bank deposits. Earlier, this money used lie in the Swiss Bank vaults, but now thanks to Participatory Notes(PNs) and the Mauritius route, this money is returning to India and in the BSE to earn windfall profits.
All this money can be brought back by legal methods within two months, but the UPA government has shown its brazen determination to block that by dragging its feet in the Supreme Court or by brutally beating the satyagrahis at the Swami Ramdev gathering in Ramlila grounds.
Then what is the cure ? In the short run of course, prosecuting and convicting the corrupt big fish of society is the way of curbing the greed by setting these crooks and traitors as examples. But the cure for the long run is that we must imbibe Hindutva by a national movement and political churning, and without hesitation or obfuscation.
Long years ago, Deendayal Upadhyaya had in his seminal work: Integral Humanism had warned the nation of this greed driven materialistic society. He said that our cultural values are based on Sanatana Dharma, thus embodied as Hinduness or Hindutva. This means that while we pursue material growth it has to be harmonised with our spiritual values to prevent it lapsing into greed. Greed legitimises corruption because then acquisition of wealth becomes an end objective of life.
Such a life can never assure happiness as now many rich Americans converting to Hindu faith are declaring openly. The richest and famous Oscar winning Hollywood actress Julia Roberts recently converted with her husband and children to Hinduism, and declared that in seeking personal contentment, Hindu values showed her the way. This why our Swamijis are attracting so many rich Westerners to their ashrams.
In a society based on Hindutva, wealth cannot determine a person’s social status. It is vidya and tyaga leading to vairagya that merits the highest social status. Even wealthy persons by philanthrophy can get social status. Rishis Bhrigu and Bharadwaja thus devised the Varna system of society which regrettably now has degenerated into a birth-based vested interest of communities. Thus, Hindutva renaissance culled from Vedanta is the cure for greed and of corruption in the long run. This should be every patriotic Hindu’s battle cry for the coming war against corruption.
By Dr Subramanian Swamy
CORRUPTION in India is now a major concern for all patriotic citizens because of scams galore such as Satyam, IPL, CWG, and 2G Spectrum etc, etc. By all objective criteria, India today has by far one of the most corrupt governance. It is fuelled by greed and single-minded adherence to materialism.
Corruption generally is any inducement, or bribe, to do or not to do anything that the bribe giver wants from the bribe taker who otherwise will not do or will do. By this broad definition even dowry payments is corruption. We are, however, concerned here with misuse of public office for private gain either for oneself, family or friend. This represents a governance failure and hence of primary national concern.
Corruption is, therefore, inherently bad for the efficient functioning of any economic system. It blurs the incentive to perform and discourages relying on merit as a means to success.
It is prosecutable in India under the Prevention of Corruption Act which was re-casted in 1988, or Money Laundering (Prevention) Act, which any citizen can set into motion subject to some safeguards such as Sanction. A more drastic law sought by the civil society at large, to be known Lok Pal Act obviates the requirement of Sanction, and institutes an independent prosecutor who can order a CBI inquiry without government permission.
Corruption under the case laws of the Supreme Court is also sue-able such as under the Doctrine of Public Trust, for malfeasance in office.Hence, attach or confiscate the properties public officials once they are convicted of the crime.
However, India although is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Corrupt adopted by the General Assembly in October 2003, it has not yet ratified the Convention. The Convention, however, came into force on December 14, 2005 when the 38 countries ratified it. Its asset recovery provision is very appealing, and yet the Indian government is not yet moved to ratify the Convention. Switzerland was, therefore, compelled to enact a law called Restitution of Illicit Assets Act(2010) especially of “Politically Exposed Persons”. It was by this Act that Egypt’s Mubarak’s and Libya’s Gaddafi’s accounts in Swiss Banks were frozen.
An international watchdog committee conducted a study on the illicit flight of money from India, perhaps the first ever attempt at shedding light on a subject steeped in secrecy, and concluded that India has been drained of $462 billion (over Rs 20 lakh crore) between 1948 and 2008. The amount is nearly 40 per cent of India’s gross domestic product.
One of the worst problems with corruption in India is the creation of “black money,” i.e., money that is used in such transactions which is neither taxed nor is spent openly. It travels to and from secret bank accounts abroad, or, worse, is used by the corrupt to indulge in gross luxurious consumption and bribery.
Black money also funds elections and there is no proper accounting. It tempts the receiver to stash and salt away part of the campaign funds. Since elections leads to political power of those thus funded and enriched, future governments become bribe-compliant and therefore protect the crooked.
This money enables politicians and business persons to carry cash around the world for pleasure, and sometimes even be caught with it. For example, on September 27, 2001, Rahul Gandhi and his live-in girlfriend were arrested by the FBI at Boston’s Logan airport with $ 160,000 in cash, for declaring it to the US Customs. US law requires cash at hand of more than $10,000 to be so declared. But he was let off after nine hours in FBI custody at the intervention of the then BJP- led government, which for some mysterious reason had played guardian to Ms Sonia Gandhi and her family throughout their tenure.
2 Impact of Corruption
Corruption impacts on economic development of a nation in five dimensions:
(1) Decisions taken for corrupt motive sub-optimises the allocation of scarce national resources and hence in the long run lowers the rate of growth in GDP. It also encourages buccaneers and robber barons to flourish instead of innovative entrepreneurs.
(2) By the use of bribe money which escapes the tax net and is mostly stashed away in banks abroad or in trunks in safe houses, is deployed in luxury goods purchase, ostentatious life, splurging in five star hotels, real estate, and on partying. This raises demand for luxury production and services, and in turn distorts investment priorities. In India 70 per cent of the investment goes directly or indirectly to sustain the luxury sector.
(3) Unaccounted bribe money is lent to hoarders and speculators who then cause artificial shortages and thus inflation and property bubbles.
(4) Since the most in corrupt activities would be in public office, they enact laws to not only to safeguard the booty by lax criminal investigations and prosecutions, but to enable earning interest or return on the bribe money. The invention of Participatory Notes (PNs) and the Mauritius Tax and Capital Gains exemption treaties is aimed at that sordid objective (see below).
(5) Corruption enables beneficiaries to involve foreign governments seeking influence and criminal gangs resident abroad to launder money and provide protection.
‘Hence, as a country becomes industrialised, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear. They simply morph and become more sophisticated: It becomes a complex phenomenon than just transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash in a Swiss bank. The formation of shell companies in tax haven islands, for example, makes the tracing of the money trail very difficult.
Now subtler forms of “legal corruption” also exist eg, an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached. In many countries this may be legal, even if unethical. In industrialised nations undue influence is often legally exercised by powerful private interests, which in turn influence the nation’s regulations, policies and laws.
2. Subversion of the Indian Financial System by Corruption
As I have pointed out in my earlier writings, the Participatory Notes (PN) which account for 55 per cent of the foreign funds into the Stock Market in India have no requirement to comply with even the SEBI disclosure rules, and are obviously meant for laundering black money of politicians, industrialists and even including those of terrorists. Even after Tarapore Committee ridiculed the PNs, the SEBI had to keep silent because the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram favoured P-Notes to launder ill-gotten money of his own and of his political masters. The lack of ethics and patriotism thus appears maximum inside the government today.
Investments through the P-notes route are believed to be largely responsible for sudden, unexplained fluctuations in the stock-market indices, including the huge falls which have even resulted in suicides in Dalal Street. The Finance Ministry however has failed to answer why this special exemption to P-Notes is being provided. The Ministry has refused to publish the list of P-note holders, along with their details and the amount of investment, on its website, or on the website of SEBI, or anywhere else. The Finance Ministry does not track the names of the owners/promoters of beneficiaries of that company. Hence company using P-notes in the BSE could well be promoted or funded by an Osama bin-Laden, a Dawood Ibrahim or the late Velupillai Prabhakaran?
Corruption as a Grave National Security Threat
In his address to the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy on February 11, 2007, MK Narayanan, the National Security Advisor to the Government of India, listed out the various ways by which terrorists in India were funded. He admitted: “Instances of terrorist outfits manipulating the stock markets to raise funds for their operations have been reported. Stock exchanges in Mumbai and Chennai have, on occasion, reported that fictitious or notional companies were engaging in stock market operations. Some of these companies were later traced to terrorist outfits”. This is a truly shocking admission.
Thus, the Government of India is well aware that terrorists are parking funds in Indian ventures. Yet the Finance Ministry has done nothing about the system of P-notes, which gives terrorists the additional benefit of anonymity while making hefty investments in the Indian market, which could later be used to fund terrorist activities against the Indian people in India!
According to conservative estimates, there are over Rs 2,50,000 crore rupees worth of P-notes issued abroad by FIIs and brokers being actively traded in the Indian market! At present P-Notes fuels about 53 per cent of all foreign investments in the stock markets of India.
While an Indian citizen in India has to provide his/her address proof, photo ID proof, PAN details, etc to open even an ordinary savings bank account in a local bank, foreign investors can hide their identity under a sub-account by making use of Participatory Notes to route their investments, often running into hundreds of crores in a single transaction. In one transaction about the time the 2G spectrum licences were given, Ms Sonia Gandhi had issued a single certified cheque of Rs 18,000 crores to Ketan Parikh at his London Office to buy P-Notes! The main reason thus for the popularity of a P-note is in fact the anonymity it provides to crooks and terrorists.
Indians have about $ 0.5 trillion to $ 1.5 trillion in Swiss banks alone, not to mention Liechtenstien, Isle of Man, Cayman Islands, Macao etc, etc.. They are the largest deposit holders in Swiss Banks! In 1991 the respected Swiss magazine Schweitzer Illustrate published the by-product revelations of the Marcos investigation from which, Sonia Gandhi, it can be seen had been a legatee of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination to Rs10,000 crores (in 1991 exchange rate) in illegal Swiss bank deposits. Earlier, this money used lie in the Swiss Bank vaults, but now thanks to Participatory Notes(PNs) and the Mauritius route, this money is returning to India and in the BSE to earn windfall profits.
All this money can be brought back by legal methods within two months, but the UPA government has shown its brazen determination to block that by dragging its feet in the Supreme Court or by brutally beating the satyagrahis at the Swami Ramdev gathering in Ramlila grounds.
Then what is the cure ? In the short run of course, prosecuting and convicting the corrupt big fish of society is the way of curbing the greed by setting these crooks and traitors as examples. But the cure for the long run is that we must imbibe Hindutva by a national movement and political churning, and without hesitation or obfuscation.
Long years ago, Deendayal Upadhyaya had in his seminal work: Integral Humanism had warned the nation of this greed driven materialistic society. He said that our cultural values are based on Sanatana Dharma, thus embodied as Hinduness or Hindutva. This means that while we pursue material growth it has to be harmonised with our spiritual values to prevent it lapsing into greed. Greed legitimises corruption because then acquisition of wealth becomes an end objective of life.
Such a life can never assure happiness as now many rich Americans converting to Hindu faith are declaring openly. The richest and famous Oscar winning Hollywood actress Julia Roberts recently converted with her husband and children to Hinduism, and declared that in seeking personal contentment, Hindu values showed her the way. This why our Swamijis are attracting so many rich Westerners to their ashrams.
In a society based on Hindutva, wealth cannot determine a person’s social status. It is vidya and tyaga leading to vairagya that merits the highest social status. Even wealthy persons by philanthrophy can get social status. Rishis Bhrigu and Bharadwaja thus devised the Varna system of society which regrettably now has degenerated into a birth-based vested interest of communities. Thus, Hindutva renaissance culled from Vedanta is the cure for greed and of corruption in the long run. This should be every patriotic Hindu’s battle cry for the coming war against corruption.
Secularists: The enemies of logic & truth
Goebel’s proud descendants
Secularists: The enemies of logic & truth
By Amba Charan Vashishth
TWO latest disclosures by people of eminence, whose integrity and credibility is unquestionable, have given a knock-out punch to the stubborn die-hard ‘secularists’ who preach the Goebel’s “big lie” doctrine to some too credulous folks to promote their sectarian political objectives. These revelations have been reiterated by none other than Mahatma’s great grandson Sreekrishna Kulkarni and former Supreme Court judge Justice KT Thomas.
Shri Kulkarni on August 7, asserted that it was not right to link the RSS name with Mahatma’s murder. “In 63 years’ time the Government of India has instituted many judicial commissions and committees to investigate the assassination. None could establish the RSS connection,” he said.
Shri Kulkarni said it was time people learnt to respect the judicial findings in the matter and rested the issue. As for the RSS, he said it is also an organisation of national stature which had contributed immensely to the nation’s development.
“It’s incorrect to drag the RSS name again and again. So, it’s my considered view that the matter shouldn’t be raked up again and again for petty political reasons,” he appealed.
After Bapu’s assassination, Shri Kulkarni disclosed, his grandfather Ramdas Gandhi had written to Pandit Nehru requesting him not to hang Godse. “But, his request was turned down,” he asserted. In contrast, the ‘secularists’ are very soft on Afzal who has been sentenced to death for attack on the temple of democracy, the Parliament, by the Supreme Court.
A day earlier on August 4, former Supreme Court judge Justice KT Thomas, a devout Christian, reiterated that there was no evidence to suggest that the RSS had anything to do with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. He said that no inquiry at any point of time had found any role of the RSS in the assassination. That Nathuram Godse had identified himself as an RSS volunteer was mere propaganda, he said. Godse had left the RSS much before Gandhiji’s assassination, he added.
“As arguments grew, Indira Gandhi had asked Justice JL Kapur of the Supreme Court to carry out an inquiry. After a long and detailed probe, the judge concluded that there was no proof against the RSS,” he said, adding that the rest was only false campaign.
Interestingly, the ‘secular’ Congress Kerala state president Ramesh Chennithala castigated Justice Thomas for ‘distorting history’ and demanded to withdraw the statement, which Justice Thomas refused.
Yet, for our priggish self-proclaimed ‘secularists’, overlooking the reality continues to be a paying profession. They won’t hark even what their god, Allah or Ishwar says, only because they are ‘secular’.
The British left India 64 years back but the ‘secular’ Congress continues to thrive on the alien legacy whose essential leadership secret, it is said, does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. They follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
And this is what our ‘secularists’ are doing in India.
Secularists: The enemies of logic & truth
By Amba Charan Vashishth
TWO latest disclosures by people of eminence, whose integrity and credibility is unquestionable, have given a knock-out punch to the stubborn die-hard ‘secularists’ who preach the Goebel’s “big lie” doctrine to some too credulous folks to promote their sectarian political objectives. These revelations have been reiterated by none other than Mahatma’s great grandson Sreekrishna Kulkarni and former Supreme Court judge Justice KT Thomas.
Shri Kulkarni on August 7, asserted that it was not right to link the RSS name with Mahatma’s murder. “In 63 years’ time the Government of India has instituted many judicial commissions and committees to investigate the assassination. None could establish the RSS connection,” he said.
Shri Kulkarni said it was time people learnt to respect the judicial findings in the matter and rested the issue. As for the RSS, he said it is also an organisation of national stature which had contributed immensely to the nation’s development.
“It’s incorrect to drag the RSS name again and again. So, it’s my considered view that the matter shouldn’t be raked up again and again for petty political reasons,” he appealed.
After Bapu’s assassination, Shri Kulkarni disclosed, his grandfather Ramdas Gandhi had written to Pandit Nehru requesting him not to hang Godse. “But, his request was turned down,” he asserted. In contrast, the ‘secularists’ are very soft on Afzal who has been sentenced to death for attack on the temple of democracy, the Parliament, by the Supreme Court.
A day earlier on August 4, former Supreme Court judge Justice KT Thomas, a devout Christian, reiterated that there was no evidence to suggest that the RSS had anything to do with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. He said that no inquiry at any point of time had found any role of the RSS in the assassination. That Nathuram Godse had identified himself as an RSS volunteer was mere propaganda, he said. Godse had left the RSS much before Gandhiji’s assassination, he added.
“As arguments grew, Indira Gandhi had asked Justice JL Kapur of the Supreme Court to carry out an inquiry. After a long and detailed probe, the judge concluded that there was no proof against the RSS,” he said, adding that the rest was only false campaign.
Interestingly, the ‘secular’ Congress Kerala state president Ramesh Chennithala castigated Justice Thomas for ‘distorting history’ and demanded to withdraw the statement, which Justice Thomas refused.
Yet, for our priggish self-proclaimed ‘secularists’, overlooking the reality continues to be a paying profession. They won’t hark even what their god, Allah or Ishwar says, only because they are ‘secular’.
The British left India 64 years back but the ‘secular’ Congress continues to thrive on the alien legacy whose essential leadership secret, it is said, does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. They follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.
And this is what our ‘secularists’ are doing in India.
Death and rebirth
AFTER the Mahabharata war and following Bhishma’s death, all the kings from all corners of the country attended his cremation ceremony. It was a sad occasion because he was not only the elder of the Kuru clan but also the last representative of the old order. For the Pandavas, Bhishma’s death was a personal tragedy as he was the only father they had known.
A few days after the cremation, Abhimanyu’s widow, Uttari, gave birth to a son but the midwife who helped in the delivery, cried out, “This boy is not crying or moving. I think he is stillborn.”
On hearing this, all the Kuru women began to weep and wail, “This is a curse on us. Now the Kauravas will not have any descendant.”
On hearing them cry, Sri Krishna came to them and said, “Don’t be worried. The child is alive.” He then turned to the stillborn child and tired to revive him by saying, “Do not worry, the world is not such a bad place to live in.”
On hearing his comforting words, the child opened his eyes and smiled. Sri Krishna reciprocated the smile and gave him to Uttari, saying, “This is Parikshit, the first of the next generation.”
There was rejoicing all around and the Kuru women began to dance and sing.
ISI friends in the media
Media Watch
THE busting of a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ring in the United States fronted by one Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Kashmiri of Indian extraction and now an American citizen, has raised many issues that are now demanding attention. Fai was running an outfit in Washington called Kashmir American Council(KAC). It was being secretly financed by the ISI, of which nobody seems to have been aware. It was presumed to be an American organisation, run by an American, and so did not have to be registered. It regularly held international conferences and seminars on the Kashmir issue and among other invitees, it invited distinguished Indians, including well-known politicians and journalists they were, of course, well-paid and all their expenses were taken care of.
They now claim that they were not aware of either Fai’s or the Council’s links with the ISI. This is now being challenged. The point is that, as The Asian Age (July 22) has now made plain, the presence of distinguished Indians raised the stock of the Council (KAC) and gave it respectability, on which Fai cleverly cashed in. As the paper put it, it made it easier for KAC to seem like an even-handed organisation “interested solely in the merits of the case and helped it to launder the ISI stain” and that, in turn, made it easier for KAC “to establish contacts with US Senators and Congressmen …. to put their weight behind America’s Kashmir policy”.
In effect what this suggests is that Indians of high reputation were helping Fai and his KAC, unknowingly, as they claim, to corner Senators, Congressmen and other public citizens in his campaign against India on the Kashmir issue! As Asian Age sees it, Fai is a “sleeper ISI mole”; the FBI has now found that out. But can one take it for granted that well-known Indians were unaware of Fai’s background? S. Gurumurthy is very skeptical in this regard. Writing in The Indian Express (July 26) Gurumurthy has made the point that “a look at the facts publicly known about Fai, as far back as 2001, which the well-informed liberals cannot feign not to know, clearly rules out their claim to innocence”.
And what are the facts? The Institute of Conflict Management, with excellent faculty, led by the legend are KPS Gill, had clearly stated in a paper dated June 1, 2001 that “the HM (Hizbul Mujahideen) is closely linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami and is allegedly backed by Ghulam Nabi Fai’s Kashmiri American Council”. Praveen Swami, a well known expert on terror and also a correspondent of The Hindu had written in February 2003, thus: “The Hizb also regularly received funds gathered in the United States and United Kingdom by activists like Ayub Thakur and Ghulam Nabi Fai”. In his comments on our liberal intellectuals Gurumurthy is sharp as a nail. According to him “The leading lights of liberal India cannot feign that they did not know about Fai’s antecedents; Their claim to innocence is a post-facto alibi”.
Adds Gurumurthy “Fai invited them (Indian liberals) not as neutrals to add credibility to his show, but as accomplices to push his anti-India propaganda. Fai has finally exposed the real face of the Indian liberals to Indians”. Pakistan is increasingly becoming a sickening state. According to the Sikh community in the eastern city of Lahore, it has been barred from organising a religious celebration at a disputed gurudwara. This year they have been barred. Shouldn’t there be some protest? Pakistan can get away with anything. The Indian media – with the FPJ’s exception – has not reported it. It is interesting to go back to history as Jan Sangh Today (March 2011) did in recounting the conversation between the Cabinet Mission that came to India in 1944 and part of the discussion it had with Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It went like this:
Cabinet Mission: Do you realise that the Pakistan you are demanding will leave substantial Hindus under Muslim domination?
Jinnah: That will be so, but I will leave many more Muslims under Hindu domination in Hindustan.
Cabinet. M: How does it then resolve Hindu-Muslim discord? It will only perpetuate the hostilities.
Jinnah: It will free at least two thirds Muslims from Hindu domination.
Cabinet. M: And you will put more than that number of Hindus under Muslim domination. That is so solution.
Jinnah: That is the only solution if you do not want civil war.
Cabinet. M: But should you adopt such a callous attitude towards the minorities in the two states, they will be in worse condition than the Muslims in united India…
Jinnah: Their best protection will be the establishment of two strong states neither of which will dare to misbehave towards each other’s minorities.
Cabinet. M: You mean to say that these minorities will be hostages?
Jinnah: Exactly. If one state mistreats its minorities the other state will retaliate against its minorities. It will be tit for tat.
Has India mistreated the Muslims? How many Muslims have migrated to Pakistan in recent times? But a recent report noted that some 15,000 Hindus have come to India and have been seeking India citizenship. The media ignores the story. In Gujarat, the much-maligned Narendra Modi is even offering Muslims a university. For acknowledging the good work that is being done in Gujarat, Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi, Vice Chancellor of Darul Uloom Deoband is sacked. One wonders what Jinnah would be saying were he to be born again, not in India, but in his dream state, Pakistan. For all their faults, Indians do not believe in tit for tat. And they are paying dearly for their decency in public life. Islamists can bomb Mumbai half a dozen times in as many years, but not a single Muslim shop was attacked all down Mohammad Ali Road. Are you listening, General Kayani?
THE busting of a Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ring in the United States fronted by one Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Kashmiri of Indian extraction and now an American citizen, has raised many issues that are now demanding attention. Fai was running an outfit in Washington called Kashmir American Council(KAC). It was being secretly financed by the ISI, of which nobody seems to have been aware. It was presumed to be an American organisation, run by an American, and so did not have to be registered. It regularly held international conferences and seminars on the Kashmir issue and among other invitees, it invited distinguished Indians, including well-known politicians and journalists they were, of course, well-paid and all their expenses were taken care of.
They now claim that they were not aware of either Fai’s or the Council’s links with the ISI. This is now being challenged. The point is that, as The Asian Age (July 22) has now made plain, the presence of distinguished Indians raised the stock of the Council (KAC) and gave it respectability, on which Fai cleverly cashed in. As the paper put it, it made it easier for KAC to seem like an even-handed organisation “interested solely in the merits of the case and helped it to launder the ISI stain” and that, in turn, made it easier for KAC “to establish contacts with US Senators and Congressmen …. to put their weight behind America’s Kashmir policy”.
In effect what this suggests is that Indians of high reputation were helping Fai and his KAC, unknowingly, as they claim, to corner Senators, Congressmen and other public citizens in his campaign against India on the Kashmir issue! As Asian Age sees it, Fai is a “sleeper ISI mole”; the FBI has now found that out. But can one take it for granted that well-known Indians were unaware of Fai’s background? S. Gurumurthy is very skeptical in this regard. Writing in The Indian Express (July 26) Gurumurthy has made the point that “a look at the facts publicly known about Fai, as far back as 2001, which the well-informed liberals cannot feign not to know, clearly rules out their claim to innocence”.
And what are the facts? The Institute of Conflict Management, with excellent faculty, led by the legend are KPS Gill, had clearly stated in a paper dated June 1, 2001 that “the HM (Hizbul Mujahideen) is closely linked to the Jamaat-e-Islami and is allegedly backed by Ghulam Nabi Fai’s Kashmiri American Council”. Praveen Swami, a well known expert on terror and also a correspondent of The Hindu had written in February 2003, thus: “The Hizb also regularly received funds gathered in the United States and United Kingdom by activists like Ayub Thakur and Ghulam Nabi Fai”. In his comments on our liberal intellectuals Gurumurthy is sharp as a nail. According to him “The leading lights of liberal India cannot feign that they did not know about Fai’s antecedents; Their claim to innocence is a post-facto alibi”.
Adds Gurumurthy “Fai invited them (Indian liberals) not as neutrals to add credibility to his show, but as accomplices to push his anti-India propaganda. Fai has finally exposed the real face of the Indian liberals to Indians”. Pakistan is increasingly becoming a sickening state. According to the Sikh community in the eastern city of Lahore, it has been barred from organising a religious celebration at a disputed gurudwara. This year they have been barred. Shouldn’t there be some protest? Pakistan can get away with anything. The Indian media – with the FPJ’s exception – has not reported it. It is interesting to go back to history as Jan Sangh Today (March 2011) did in recounting the conversation between the Cabinet Mission that came to India in 1944 and part of the discussion it had with Mohammad Ali Jinnah. It went like this:
Cabinet Mission: Do you realise that the Pakistan you are demanding will leave substantial Hindus under Muslim domination?
Jinnah: That will be so, but I will leave many more Muslims under Hindu domination in Hindustan.
Cabinet. M: How does it then resolve Hindu-Muslim discord? It will only perpetuate the hostilities.
Jinnah: It will free at least two thirds Muslims from Hindu domination.
Cabinet. M: And you will put more than that number of Hindus under Muslim domination. That is so solution.
Jinnah: That is the only solution if you do not want civil war.
Cabinet. M: But should you adopt such a callous attitude towards the minorities in the two states, they will be in worse condition than the Muslims in united India…
Jinnah: Their best protection will be the establishment of two strong states neither of which will dare to misbehave towards each other’s minorities.
Cabinet. M: You mean to say that these minorities will be hostages?
Jinnah: Exactly. If one state mistreats its minorities the other state will retaliate against its minorities. It will be tit for tat.
Has India mistreated the Muslims? How many Muslims have migrated to Pakistan in recent times? But a recent report noted that some 15,000 Hindus have come to India and have been seeking India citizenship. The media ignores the story. In Gujarat, the much-maligned Narendra Modi is even offering Muslims a university. For acknowledging the good work that is being done in Gujarat, Maulana Ghulam Mohammad Vastanvi, Vice Chancellor of Darul Uloom Deoband is sacked. One wonders what Jinnah would be saying were he to be born again, not in India, but in his dream state, Pakistan. For all their faults, Indians do not believe in tit for tat. And they are paying dearly for their decency in public life. Islamists can bomb Mumbai half a dozen times in as many years, but not a single Muslim shop was attacked all down Mohammad Ali Road. Are you listening, General Kayani?
Secrecy, sycophancy and coterie
Like Communist dictatorship Congress democracy
By Ravi
THE news that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had gone abroad for surgery—for cancer, as was reported later—not only caught the nation unawares but also highlighted the awe that has been built around her personality. The Economic Times (August 5) rightly summed up the situation in its headline, ‘The woman who runs India is unwell & India does not know’ (Surprisingly, though, the headline and the story are not on the Internet).
This brings us to the big tragedy of contemporary India: there is an undeclared Emergency, an insidious tyranny that stops the truth from surfacing; if it somehow does, it is effaced like the ET story. The assertion seems nonsensical, for aren’t there countless news channels, newspapers, and magazines which are scarcely ever troubled by state coercion? Apparently, there is so much freedom—to mouth platitudes, to play to the gallery, to indulge in political correctness, to trivialise—that one may get the impression that individual liberty is real. The reality, however, is quite different—and disturbing.
Details are analysed and commented upon in the right earnest, the details like whether security and intelligence failure was responsible for Mumbai blasts, why Shivraj Patil could not check terrorism, what will make food security legislation a success, why MS Dhoni is not doing well in England, is Katrina Kaif going around with Salman Khan. On the other hand, the real issues are rarely touched upon by the media and the political class. Few talk about how Sonia Gandhi’s appeasement of the most retrograde sections of Muslims is imperiling security, how her National Advisory Council (NAC) is laying landmines in the economy by draining the exchequer, why did she allow the corrupt to hold high offices. Everybody knows that she is the real ruler—who runs the Central government if not the country—and yet nobody even talks about her responsibility. A Raja, Suresh Kalmadi, Shivraj Patil, SM Krishna, even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the PMO take the blame, but few dare to take her name. The Code of Omerta is seldom breached.
Sea of irrelevance
Opinion makers get so engrossed in the inconsequential things and marginal issues that they tend to miss the real thing—the diarchy which ensures two sets of people: those who have power but not the responsibility (Sonia and her cronies) and those who have responsibility but little power (Singh and his office). I suspect that the intellectual grandees concentrate on the marginal because discussing the reality would mean speaking the truth, and the truth is troublesome to those who matter in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
This reminds me of American media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman’s comparison and contrasting between the worlds of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Postman wrote: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture…”
In India, truth indeed is being “drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” We see it happens everyday, everywhere. It is unprecedented in the history of Independent India that a large number of representatives of India Inc have castigated the incumbent government in no uncertain terms. Ratan Tata, Deepak Parekh, NR Narayana Murthy, YC Deveshwar, Azim Premji—long is the list of business magnates who have expressed their disgust with the state of affairs.
Similarly, many serving military chiefs have made public their dismay at the state of preparedness, especially vis-à-vis China. Our foreign policy, too, has been a disaster in the last seven years. On the economic front, the less said the better: inflation is rising; the business environment is getting polluted, thanks to the mischief of econuts; rent-seeking is spreading like cancer; public finance is in a mess because of the NAC’s unending populism; and the aam aadmi is groaning because of economic mismanagement and corrupt governance.
The signature of Sonia and her buddies is unmistakable wherever there is a problem, but she never gets the blame. We shall see why.
Treachery of intellectuals
No politician in recent understood the minds and hearts of intellectuals better than Sonia Gandhi did. She knows that while for normal human beings seeing is believing, for intellectuals it is the other way around. Lesser mortals like us believe in commonsense, empirical evidence, and reason. When we see, read, or find anything unacceptable or egregious, we disapprove of it. So, communism which was responsible for the killing of 80 to 100 million people in the world in the last century has been repudiated by the people. Its milder cognate, Nehruvian socialism, arrested growth and development, bloated the bureaucracy, drained the exchequer, and spawned corruption. It was rejected by none other than a Congress Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao. The consequences were salutary for the nation: faster growth, bigger investment (domestic as well as foreign), galvanisation of Indian business (as evident from domestic groups acquiring companies overseas), and reduction in poverty.
But for our intellectuals dogmas are more important than facts. They cannot give up an ideology even if it has been universally discredited. They still claim to be the custodians of all that is true, good, noble, and beneficial in the world, howsoever flimsy their claims may be. At any rate, the ivory towers they live in are not hurt by the reality; but the fear is always there. So, the tenured and the sinecured always love to gang up with anybody who can secure their quixotic realm. Sonia saw natural allies in them. She sympathised with their various causes; she lionised them; she allowed them to peddle their retrograde ideas; she even accepted some of the ideas and forced a supine government to implement them. An unholy nexus was established between the the self-appointed guardians of mankind and the hard-nosed politicians led by She-who-must-be-obeyed.
History in reverse gear
The arrangement has worked very well so far. The socialism-loving lords of ivory towers charted out a course that the Congress leaders loved to take. It needs to be remembered that when the Congress-led government assumed office in 2004, it had spent eight years out of power—the longest such stretch since Independence. Worse, in that period the role of government in economy had considerably reduced, thanks to the reforms agenda carried out by various regimes since 1991. Till 2004, most liberalisers said that reforms were “irreversible” in India; nobody says that today because the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA managed to reverse many of reforms.
The result was that the role and intervention of state functionaries increased tremendously, much to the delight of the venal. It also made intellectuals happy because many of their harebrained ideas were put into practice. Socialist claptrap is a perfect mask to cover rent-seeking. In short, Sonia managed to keep the idealist and the cynic in good humor.
And since pinkish intellectuals infest the opinion-making apparatus, we find that Sonia is kept out of the sphere of culpability. Nothing negative about her personality—not even health concerns—is allowed to appear in the public domain. Our opinion makers choose to drown us in a sea of irrelevance instead.
By Ravi
THE news that Congress president Sonia Gandhi had gone abroad for surgery—for cancer, as was reported later—not only caught the nation unawares but also highlighted the awe that has been built around her personality. The Economic Times (August 5) rightly summed up the situation in its headline, ‘The woman who runs India is unwell & India does not know’ (Surprisingly, though, the headline and the story are not on the Internet).
This brings us to the big tragedy of contemporary India: there is an undeclared Emergency, an insidious tyranny that stops the truth from surfacing; if it somehow does, it is effaced like the ET story. The assertion seems nonsensical, for aren’t there countless news channels, newspapers, and magazines which are scarcely ever troubled by state coercion? Apparently, there is so much freedom—to mouth platitudes, to play to the gallery, to indulge in political correctness, to trivialise—that one may get the impression that individual liberty is real. The reality, however, is quite different—and disturbing.
Details are analysed and commented upon in the right earnest, the details like whether security and intelligence failure was responsible for Mumbai blasts, why Shivraj Patil could not check terrorism, what will make food security legislation a success, why MS Dhoni is not doing well in England, is Katrina Kaif going around with Salman Khan. On the other hand, the real issues are rarely touched upon by the media and the political class. Few talk about how Sonia Gandhi’s appeasement of the most retrograde sections of Muslims is imperiling security, how her National Advisory Council (NAC) is laying landmines in the economy by draining the exchequer, why did she allow the corrupt to hold high offices. Everybody knows that she is the real ruler—who runs the Central government if not the country—and yet nobody even talks about her responsibility. A Raja, Suresh Kalmadi, Shivraj Patil, SM Krishna, even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the PMO take the blame, but few dare to take her name. The Code of Omerta is seldom breached.
Sea of irrelevance
Opinion makers get so engrossed in the inconsequential things and marginal issues that they tend to miss the real thing—the diarchy which ensures two sets of people: those who have power but not the responsibility (Sonia and her cronies) and those who have responsibility but little power (Singh and his office). I suspect that the intellectual grandees concentrate on the marginal because discussing the reality would mean speaking the truth, and the truth is troublesome to those who matter in the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
This reminds me of American media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman’s comparison and contrasting between the worlds of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Postman wrote: “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture…”
In India, truth indeed is being “drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” We see it happens everyday, everywhere. It is unprecedented in the history of Independent India that a large number of representatives of India Inc have castigated the incumbent government in no uncertain terms. Ratan Tata, Deepak Parekh, NR Narayana Murthy, YC Deveshwar, Azim Premji—long is the list of business magnates who have expressed their disgust with the state of affairs.
Similarly, many serving military chiefs have made public their dismay at the state of preparedness, especially vis-à-vis China. Our foreign policy, too, has been a disaster in the last seven years. On the economic front, the less said the better: inflation is rising; the business environment is getting polluted, thanks to the mischief of econuts; rent-seeking is spreading like cancer; public finance is in a mess because of the NAC’s unending populism; and the aam aadmi is groaning because of economic mismanagement and corrupt governance.
The signature of Sonia and her buddies is unmistakable wherever there is a problem, but she never gets the blame. We shall see why.
Treachery of intellectuals
No politician in recent understood the minds and hearts of intellectuals better than Sonia Gandhi did. She knows that while for normal human beings seeing is believing, for intellectuals it is the other way around. Lesser mortals like us believe in commonsense, empirical evidence, and reason. When we see, read, or find anything unacceptable or egregious, we disapprove of it. So, communism which was responsible for the killing of 80 to 100 million people in the world in the last century has been repudiated by the people. Its milder cognate, Nehruvian socialism, arrested growth and development, bloated the bureaucracy, drained the exchequer, and spawned corruption. It was rejected by none other than a Congress Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao. The consequences were salutary for the nation: faster growth, bigger investment (domestic as well as foreign), galvanisation of Indian business (as evident from domestic groups acquiring companies overseas), and reduction in poverty.
But for our intellectuals dogmas are more important than facts. They cannot give up an ideology even if it has been universally discredited. They still claim to be the custodians of all that is true, good, noble, and beneficial in the world, howsoever flimsy their claims may be. At any rate, the ivory towers they live in are not hurt by the reality; but the fear is always there. So, the tenured and the sinecured always love to gang up with anybody who can secure their quixotic realm. Sonia saw natural allies in them. She sympathised with their various causes; she lionised them; she allowed them to peddle their retrograde ideas; she even accepted some of the ideas and forced a supine government to implement them. An unholy nexus was established between the the self-appointed guardians of mankind and the hard-nosed politicians led by She-who-must-be-obeyed.
History in reverse gear
The arrangement has worked very well so far. The socialism-loving lords of ivory towers charted out a course that the Congress leaders loved to take. It needs to be remembered that when the Congress-led government assumed office in 2004, it had spent eight years out of power—the longest such stretch since Independence. Worse, in that period the role of government in economy had considerably reduced, thanks to the reforms agenda carried out by various regimes since 1991. Till 2004, most liberalisers said that reforms were “irreversible” in India; nobody says that today because the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA managed to reverse many of reforms.
The result was that the role and intervention of state functionaries increased tremendously, much to the delight of the venal. It also made intellectuals happy because many of their harebrained ideas were put into practice. Socialist claptrap is a perfect mask to cover rent-seeking. In short, Sonia managed to keep the idealist and the cynic in good humor.
And since pinkish intellectuals infest the opinion-making apparatus, we find that Sonia is kept out of the sphere of culpability. Nothing negative about her personality—not even health concerns—is allowed to appear in the public domain. Our opinion makers choose to drown us in a sea of irrelevance instead.
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