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August 12, 2002
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Varsha Bhosle
Towards Balkanisation, Part IOn August 2, the Supreme Court heard Solicitor General Harish Salve read out a 1992 question paper set for West Bengal's higher secondary Hindi examination under the auspices of its Communist government. Students were asked to write an essay on one of the following:
Or, expanding upon: "Red Flag in Red Fort is the demand of Hindustan." Next came a question in the mathematics paper for the 1999-2000 annual examination for Class VI students in a higher secondary school: "Three friends, Pervez, Atal and Bill went on a picnic. Pervez bought 750 grams of meat at Rs 120 a kg; Atal bought other food for Rs 75, and Bill gave some money to Atal and Pervez, so that their expenditure was equal. How much money did Atal and Pervez receive from Bill?" At which point, Justice M B Shah got the gist of it and asked Mr Salve "not to read any more." Of course the papers are hilariously blatant examples of leftist indoctrination, variations of which are being hammered into Indian children since the prime ministership of Jawaharlal Nehru, he of Glimpses of World History. However, more hilarious and blatant are the comments in The Telegraph's report:
When the scribe -- or the copy editor -- couldn't avoid reporting material damaging to his ideological masters, he ensured that readers at least got the impression that the Solicitor General of India is no more than a loud actor, one carrying a Hindutva party card. No matter that the "propaganda" Mr Salve "attached" to his argument was: "Marxists, who have reached ideological bankruptcy, are now targeting young students through education in West Bengal. They are making an attempt to sow poisonous seeds, reflective of their low thinking, into the consciousness of the children in Burdwan district of West Bengal." But even more comical is the impetus for Mr Salve's sins: The court is hearing a public interest litigation filed by social activist Aruna Roy, columnist B G Verghese and sociologist Meena Tyabji, challenging the revised national curriculum -- which is "saffron" and "impinges on the country's secular character," hahahahahaha... And how reasonable was the pinko attack? Well, when their counsel repeatedly made disparaging references to Hindu castes and scriptures, the Bench shot him down with: "Do not abuse any caste, do not abuse the word 'Brahmin' as it has a wider meaning... How can India live without the Vedas and the Upanishads which are the essence of the spiritual heritage of the country? If you look at it with a coloured approach, it is coloured." Thank god for the Supreme Court. "Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality," is an extract from a textbook for Class V in West Bengal. From the books written by our "eminent" historians, we learn that Veer Savarkar, Khudi Ram Bose and Hardayal were terrorists; Bengal's disparate revolutionaries, bound by their devotion to Ma Kali, were terrorists; Aurangzeb was a "zinda pir"; in ancient India, "people ate beef but did not take pork on any considerable scale"; Chhatrapati Shivaji's victories were a mere "growth of Maratha national sentiment"; Jats were "plunderers"; the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur "was due to the intrigues of some members of his family"; and Alauddin's attack on Chittor to get Padmini is a "popular legend." Fortunately, my school curriculum was regulated by, what was known as, Senior Cambridge (yup, a thorough Macaulite). So I can discern why Prof Amartya Sen sees nothing wrong in "Red Flag in Red Fort is the demand of Hindustan," even as he claims an "organised attempt [is] on to distort history." Or why Prof Irfan Habib is silent about "In Hindustan, there is no place for Hindu," even as he states that the Sangh Parivar wants to "present facts in such a fashion as to inculcate 'pride in the nation' which in turn is the India of their narrow imagination." "India of their narrow imagination"? Not too long ago, Pakistani columnist Irfan Hussain wrote in the Dawn: "Recently, a very perceptive and learned Indian reader wrote me a long e-mail in which... he argued that over time, large groupings of disparate nationalities like India would break up into their component parts which would then be more vibrant entities, freed from the stifling stranglehold of the centre." Need we wonder about the ideological moorings of this Indian reader...? Especially in the light of "National unity and integrity are false political slogans"? Did you, for instance, know that the thesis of a Sikh homeland -- propagated as "Khalistan" in the 1980s -- was propounded for the first time by the Communists in the 1940s, had its roots in the Soviets' Thesis of Nationalities, and was drafted by CPI-M's Harkishan Singh Surjeet...? Though the final draft of the Sikh homeland thesis was published in the name of senior leader Gangadhar Adhikari on behalf of the CPI in 1944 (the Punjabi translation was done by CPI's Avtar Singh Malhotra in 1946), Surjeet is the one to whom we owe the concept of Khalistan. The creation of political instability is a key feature of the Left's politics. They neither believe in parliamentary democracy nor do they accept the existence of one Indian nationality -- their views on nationality inclining towards the balkanisation of the Indian state. During the 1940s, the CPI supported the Muslim League's demand for Pakistan and Gangadhar Adhikari became the self-styled spokesman of the League. The pinkos held that the country must concede the Muslims' "right to self-determination accompanied by the right of autonomous state of existence" -- prompting Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, himself a leftist, to say, "India was killed by the CPI, which provided the Muslim separatists with an ideological basis for the irrational and anti-national demand for Pakistan." Even after Independence, the 1951 Madurai congress of the CPI, and the third party congress in 1953, endorsed the "right of nationalities and their right to self-determination." That spirit of balkanisation still exists in their concept of Indian nationality -- and is the mooring of the "learned Indian reader" who dreams of an India shattering into tiny pieces. Hindutva at least has an imagination of India; Communism wishes its annihilation. Which is why India is touted as a "multilingual, multinational and multiracial subcontinent, and it was merged into a single state under British rule by the British bayonet." Which is why Adivasis are "animists." Which is why "if India had a golden age before the coming of the Muslims, it was a Buddhist age." Which is why there's nothing like a Hindu period in Indian history. Which is why Ramakrishna Missions are attacked by the CPI-M's goons. Which is why a separate identity is legitimised as a "sub-nationality." Which is why the demand for the UCC is condemned as an attack on the existence of minorities... Bottom-line: Should India's 85 per cent majority get a sense of pride in its Hindu identity, the Red blocks would swiftly come tumbling down. Nevertheless, I must admit that pinkos think laterally. While the few proud Hindus who still exist in India are busy defending their religion in their own backyard, the leftists have embarked on an attack to weaken Hinduism's roots abroad -- among whites! Wow, I didn't even know about the threat of Hinduism entering mainstream America. Ace pinko Vijay Prashad brought it to my notice with his article, "Suburban Whites and Pogroms in India," in Z Magazine. Overtly, this piece acts as a warning to whites to stop funding the Sangh Parivar for its supposed pogroms against minorities in India, and is the usual spit-and-bile trash pinkos regularly churn out. Normally, like the other 15-per-week of this genre, I'd have junked the piece after a scan. But this got my attention with its anti-Hinduism undercurrent -- one that subtly ridicules whites for being attracted to or being conned towards Hinduism. Thus:
Ok, let's take the funding of Hindutva pogroms. Prashad says, millions of dollars "finance right-wing activity in the subcontinent. This long-distance theocratic fascism was part of the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in 1992, the anti-Christian riots in Gujarat... in the state-engineered pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat." Kanwal Rekhi claims, "recipients of their money are out to destroy minorities and their places of worship." Robert Hathaway adds, "monies so raised are used to promote religious bigotry." Yes, ok, we got all that. But could you please tell us, into what do the millions of dollars actually go? Have you heard of Uzi firings in Gujarat, or RDX blasts in Ayodhya, or Dara Singh's using Stingers? Do the worthies of the RSS zip around in private jets? No, na? Then where have these millions disappeared?? To make accusations as grave as these stick, they must be supported by evidence about the other end of the saffron-dollar channel. But there's none forthcoming! Except stuff like "Hindutva-style cruelty devastates the landscape" -- the kind of garbage spewed by a mediocre "secular" columnist. In December 1999, Thomson and Thomson (ie, Prashad and Biju Mathew) penned an "exposé" in Himal about saffron dollars. In it, they claimed to have begun a "study of the Hindu Right in the US several years ago." They vilified the Indian Development and Relief Fund, they slammed the Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra, the Keshava Seva Samithi and the Hindu Heritage Endowment, all with the typical polemics against Hindutva. Point is, after the "several years" plus two years, they still can't offer a shred of evidence on monies funding Hindu terrorism... But we all know what the desperation is all about, don't we? It's the dreaded "A" and "D" words -- Adivasis and Dalits, groups which are being guided *back* to the Hindu stream by the Parivar. For instance, in January 1999, the Vishwa Hindu Sammelan re-converted 37 Adivasis from Christianity; in January 2002, 2 lakh Adivasis vowed to save Hinduism at a rally organised by Sewa Bharati at Jhabua. That's where the bulk of these dollars go: to educate the tribals and Dalits and make them aware of being constituents of Hindu society. And that's what worries the pinkos, Rekhi-with-a-Christian-wife, Father Prakash et al -- an integrated Hindu populace. No wonder Arundhati Roy moans, "How else can you explain why Dalits in Gujarat, who have been despised, oppressed and treated worse than refuse by the upper castes for thousands of years, have joined hands with their oppressors..." (By the way, what "thousands" of years? But novelists earn via fiction. And bad novelists, via bad fiction.) Since decades, Christian missionaries and Islamists have been pumping money into India. And what did that get Hindus...? Expulsion from Mizoram; massacres in Meghalaya; harassment in Nagaland; reduction to a minority status in J&K, as well as in many districts of Assam, West Bengal, Bihar and Kerala; and subversive madarssas in every nook and cranny of the country. Do pinkos protest about any of this? Any testimonies before the US Commission on International Religious Freedom...? Why would they?! Unlike the RSS' Adivasi programmes, those of Islamists and Christian fundamentalists take pinkos towards their ultimate goal -- the balkanisation of India.
Towards Balkanisation, Part II
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