Indian Express is breathless in rubbishing the recent speech of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Parliament that “democracy in India wasn’t the work of Pt. Nehru….but that it was in ragon (veins) of Indians.” In last one week, Ashutosh Varshney and D.N. Jha have hogged Express’ edit pages to sneer at the Prime Minister and swoon at Pt. Nehru as the reason India has democracy.
We know too well the design of such anti-India forces to blacken our glorious heritage. You call them stooges of Western powers (for whom democracy originated from Greece) or the lackeys of Left (sworn enemies of Hinduism) but never forget the vileness of these forces. They don’t mean good of you or me or our future generations.
Varshney defines democracy as one of elected governments and universal adult suffrage, a typical Western notion. Who are we to tell him that Pt. Nehru’s own mentor, Mahatma Gandhi took a dim view of such a democracy! Gandhi saw better merit in “Republics of Village” – a direct democracy rather than a representative democracy—in which India abounded.
Varshney’s second line of propaganda is that ancient India may have had Councils (Gana or Sangha) through which a King governed but a common citizen had no role to play. Here’s what the eyewitness account of Alexander’s campaign to India in the 4th Century BCE by a Greek historian Arrian states: “ (there were) free and independent Indian communities at every turn”.
Greek writer Diodorus Siculus mentions that he mostly came across cities in India which practiced a democratic form of government.” The reference was from an account of no less than Greek traveler Megasthenes who had covered the entire Northern India and went as far as Patliputra.
Varshney probably hasn’t heard of Kautilya or his Arthashastra in the 4th Century BCE which mentions “janapadas” (Republic) where craftsmen, traders and agriculturalists had their guilds and wealth earned from trade ran the political process.
Panini, in his Sanskrit Classic “Ashtadhyayi” mentions the process of decision-making in politics. He provides various terms for voting and decision making through voting. He also mentions that in these Republics “there was no consideration of high and low.” The Buddhist literature in Pali and Brahmnical literature in Sanskrit portray a complex scenario of different groups managing their own affairs.
Indeed, the non-Monarchical governments in India go back to Vedic times. Rig Veda (10/191/2) mentions that “all resources to all stake-holders must be distributed equally.”
As for Pt. Nehru and his democratic credentials, his very appointment as Prime Minister was as undemocratic method as you could come across in any world annals. Nobody voted for him, yet he was made Prime Minister after majority’s favourite Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel bowed to the tyranny of Mahatma Gandhi.
And before touting for “democratic” Pt. Nehru, Varshney also ought to have informed the readers that the first Prime Minister of India had indeed jailed Majrooh Sultanpuri for his poem which didn’t paint him in golden colours. No wonder, his daughter Indira Gandhi went a step further and imposed Emergency.
So much for “freedom of speech” and “freedom of expression” which Varshney calls essentials in democracy.
Three communal incidents have rocked India in the last fortnight.
A 15-year-old Muslim boy, Junaid, was killed in a train. Let’s concede it was a communal murder. Arrests have been made, weapon recovered.
Then North 24-Parganas in West Bengal erupted over a Facebook post where Hindus bore the brunt of Muslim backlash. The State’s silence is viewed by most as complicity. Arrests have been few and far between. The Chief Minister hasn’t bothered to visit and soothe the nerves.
A bus on way to holy Amarnath yatra in Kashmir was ambushed by terrorists who gunned down seven and injured 19 pilgrims. All the right noises have since been made.
If the binary is only Hindu-Muslim divide in this country, the score would show: 2 Muslims; 1 Hindus. Yet you wouldn’t guess so by the narrative being played out.
Junaid’s murder, within hours, was branded as one by cow vigilantes with the implicit blessing of the ruling party in Centre.
West Bengal was dubbed as a convoluted political ploy by BJP looking to secure the upcoming Gujarat elections.
The tragic Amarnath killings were again linked to BJP for its hand in letting Kashmir become a blood-drenched valley.
In between, the stories abounded of a Hindu LeT terrorist (since proven wrong), a stray fake image on Facebook (true) and a prominent Hindi daily (see image) accused of dramatizing the horror of Amarnath yatra survivors.
None of the Lutyens Media, who I prefer to call DALALS (Damn Left and Lutyens Scribes), ever described it as an “Islamic terror”–like they do with concocted “Hindu terror” theme – and, instead, drowned us with the virtues of “Kashmiriyat” and justly heroic “Salim bhai”, the driver of that ill-fated bus.
The DALALS have concentrated on the “form” and not on “substance” or they would have highlighted the onset of Jihadi presence in India stoking and riding on Hindu-Muslim divide.
This is an anti-Hindu brigade. Since Hindus have largely hoisted BJP in the Centre, the corollary is unmistakable. This bunch is partly “brainwashed” and mostly “funded” which either way is not good for India’s unity.
The “brainwashed” ones are no better than the leaders of pre-Independence India who claimed “principle” in public but “compromised” in private with the British. Most of them were lawyers –like Gandhi, Patel and Nehru—and the first two, despite their Indian attire, had political theories of Western orientation. British had nicely sized them up and like monkeys—no offence intended for we have monkey as Gods–made them jump through the hoop.
The “funded” ones are of more dangerous variety. But they conform to the pattern of India’s history which is replete with “betrayals.” These Jaichands and Mir Jafars must have been in the mind of French Francois Bernier, physician to both Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb in the 17th century, who wrote back home that a capable French general with 20,000 soldiers could subdue all of India.
Take the case of Nizam of Hyderabad. In 1767 he joined the English and the Marathas against Haider Ali of Mysore. He then switched side in Haider’s favour. Once Haider was beaten, he again came back to the English side. Ten years later, in 1779, he again was by Haider’s side against the English. In 1786, he had joined the Marathas against Tipu Sultan, Haider’s son. In 1790, he revived a triple alliance with Marathas and English against Tipu.
There is a reason why India could never expel a foreign enemy. The likes of Alexander, Timur, Abdali or Nadir Shah only withdrew. India was a ripe picking for all and sundry—Shaka, Kushans, Huns, Arabs, Afghans and succeeding invaders. And that’s because Indians of then and Indians of now could barely rise above their petty interests. India was and is NOT a single entity in their psychology.
The same unfortunate India is again unfolding in front of our own eyes. The subjugation and invasions of over 1000 years has taught us nothing. There are still embedded forces within who are ready to betray India for personal gains. The real beneficiaries are (a) colonial powers of West and (b) Islamic forces who are breathing down its East and West flanks.
Fortunately, the majority Indians are not with them and have reposed their trust in BJP to govern the country. The danger is BJP and other Hindutva forces are still measuring themselves through the prism of this pseudo-sickular gang. It’s time to bite the bullet and say India is a “Hindu Rashtra” who protects and safeguards the interests of its minorities without distinction or prejudice. Israel has no qualms in declaring itself a Jewish state.
Or else, this fortnight of communal violence will keep itself repeating till BJP themselves falls by the wayside, losing the trust of the majority. Indians want them to stand up for India and against the DALALS.
Or the succeeding generations would hold us accountable for the misfortune which is bound to be their fate.
Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee’s death which falls on Friday (June 23, 1953), and which Atal Bihari Vajpayee termed as “Nehru Conspiracy” , was as turbulent as his heroic life.
The founder of Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), the precursor to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Dr. Mookerjee had been arrested and kept without medical care in degrading conditions for over a month in Srinagar in May-June 1953 by the Sheikh Abdullah’s J & K government,
Despite his known heart condition which the rarified air of Kashmir didn’t help, Dr. Mookerjee was finally offered the care of a hospital just a couple of days before his death—shifted in a small jeep instead of an ambulance and kept in a gynaecology ward, according to present BJP president Amit Shah–and administered penicillin injection despite his protestations that he was allergic to it, as BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra asserted in a TV show, citing evidence of an eyewitness.
Prime Minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru refused to entertain a written appeal of Dr. Mookerjee’s mother for an impartial inquiry as she believed her son’s death was a murder as the family members hadn’t been allowed to meet him during his long confinement—nor his two companions allowed to visit him—apparently illegal for it was done without a formal, legal trial.
Dr. Mookerjee had decided to take on the prevailing political situation in Kashmir where the state not only had its own constitution, it’s own flag but even it’s own Prime Minister (Sheikh Abdullah) whose permission was necessary for other citizens of the country to enter the state! Dr. Mookerjee’s war-cry that “Ek Desh Mein Do Vidhan, Do Pradhan aur Do Nishan Nahin Chalenge” (One nation can’t have two constitutions, two Prime Ministers and two Flags) would resonate for decades to come.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the future Prime Minister, who had partly accompanied Dr. Mookerjee in that fatal march to Srinagar as a journalist, insisted it was a conspiracy to let Dr. Mookerjee enter Srinagar so as he could then be incarcerated and dealt with severely. As Vajpayee was to recall: “later, we came to know that J & K government and Nehru government had entered into a conspiracy, as per which it was decided that Dr. Mookerjee would be allowed to enter J & K but not be allowed to leave.”
Dr. M.S. Gowalkar, chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Nagpur, in a premonitory caution, had warned Dr. Mookerjee he was putting his life to risk.
The academicians and historians over the years have provided several clues to Nehru’s antipathy towards Dr. Mookerjee who was his colleague in independent India’s first cabinet as industry minister not long ago.
However, three years into his job as a Union minister, Dr. Mookherjee had resigned on April 8, 1950 against the Nehru-Liaqat Pact. In Indologist Dr. Koenraad Elst’s words, the Pact was an “unequal treaty in which Nehru promised Pakistani Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan not to interfere in the treatment of the minority Hindus across the border, even while the latter were suffering large-scale atrocities in East Bengal.” The Indian part of the Pact didn’t hold water as a stable communal cease-fire had descended on India after the day of Gandhi’s murder.
Dr. Mookerjee was often at crossroads with Indian National Congress (INC) during the Freedom Struggle, including Quit India Movement (1942), which he didn’t support along with the Hindu Mahasabha of which he was a part.
Critics cite it as proof of Dr. Mookerjee and Hindu Mahasabha’s corrosive role in India’s freedom struggle. However a contrary view is that Hindu Mahasabha suspected Congress to have a “Muslim-appeasement policy” with no regard to the concern and well-being of the Hindus. They believed Quit India Movement was no better than a vent to let out the frustrations of Indians and was as phoney as the “non-cooperation” and “civil disobedience” movement. None of these achieved their objectives and were fake movements.
Dr. Mookerjee’s role in the partition of Bengal into West Bengal and East Pakistan is glorious beyond words. When the Muslim League government of Bengal in 1946 had butchered and raped minority Hindus by several thousands during the “Great Calcutta Killings” and “Noakhali Riots” of a genocidal nature, Mookherjee had championed the cause of Bengal partition so as Hindus could be safe in West Bengal rather than be subjected to genocide in East Pakistan. The Bengal Muslim League and its leader Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy had earlier sought to create an un-partitioned, an independent Bengal state—which won’t be part of either Indiia or Pakistan!!!. Suhrawardy was conscious that with its coal mines and jute mills, as well as Calcutta and its mighty port, would all go to Hindu-majority West Bengal.
The calamity of great Bengal famine of 1943 which cost 38 lakh lives also saw Dr. Mookerjee at his best. He led the Relief Coordination Committee which set up 5000 relief kitchens for famine-stricken people. He had then hit out at Food Minister of Bengal, Suharawardy, and his business friend Ispahani, with these words: “Bengal has not seen greater acts of official crime in its long history.”
Dr. Mookerjee, born on July 6, 1901, was also an illustrious scholar and became vice-chancellor of Calcutta University at the age of 33, like his father Ashutosh Mookerjee once was. Dr. Mookerjee was part of Congress and a member of the Bengal legislative assembly in 20s and 30s. Disillusioned by Congress and its policies against Hindus, he had joined the Hindu Mahasabha in 1939.
Dr. Mookerjee’s speech at Banaras Hindu University in 1940 is still relevant today:
“If I have understood the history of my country alright, a pacifism that refuses to take up arms against injustice and makes one a passive spectator of oppression and aggression, does not represent the real teaching of India…
“Disruptive forces are at work within the country itself…A divided India was always a prey to the foreign invader from the days of Alexander and Mahmud of Ghazni to those of Vasco de Gama, Dupleix and Clive.
“There is much disharmony and disunity in India today. Communal differences have taken such an acute turn that fanatic claims for the vivisection of our Motherland are widely asserted.”
These words ring a bell even today.