CHAPTER II
India gained independence from the British in 1947, or more
than fifty years ago. But intellectually and educationally India continues be a
European colony. This is because, during the first forty years of her existence
as a free nation, the Congress Party and the intellectual establishment,
continued to encourage colonial institutions and thinking. The result today is
that there is an English educated elite that identifies itself more with the
West than with India and her ancient civilization. And the Congress Party,
especially after the death of Sardar Patel, has identified itself more with
foreign values rather than Indian values. The Communists, who have always been
hostile to Indian nationalism, have now joined hands with anti-national forces,
which are fiercely anti-Hindu. This is reflected in the attitude and behavior
of the English educated intellectuals, including the media.
The signs of this are everywhere — from hostility to
Sarasvati Vandana and the Pokharan nuclear tests to begging a European woman of
no experience or service to the nation, to rule the country. As a result, this
colonial holdover consisting of the Congress, the Communists and the Leftist
intellectual class (including the media) have come together to perpetuate
anti-national values and interests. This naturally makes them intensely
anti-Hindu. It views with fear anything that has even a suggestion of
nationalism rooted in Indian history and tradition.
Since Indian nationalism can only exist as a product of the
Hindu Civilization, these forces hostile to Hinduism have combined to oppose
the rise of national awareness that is now sweeping the country. The result is
that they will go to any length to give a negative picture of India and her
past. The first step in this is to distort Indian history. Fortunately for
them, most of the distortion had already been done for them by the British, and
their successors during the Congress rule. So all they had to do was to
continue with the colonial version of Indian history. As Swami Vivekananda
pointed out more than a century ago:
"The histories of our country written by English [and
other Western] writers cannot but be weakening to our minds, for they talk only
of our downfall. How can foreigners, who understand very little of our manners
and customs, or religion and philosophy, write faithful and unbiased histories
of India? Naturally, many false notions and wrong inferences have found their
way into them.
"Nevertheless they have shown us how to proceed making
researches into our ancient history. Now it is for us to strike out an
independent path of historical research for ourselves, to study the Vedas and
the Puranas, and the ancient annals of India, and from them make it your life's
sadhana to write accurate and soul-inspiring history of the land. It is for
Indians to write Indian history."
As Swami Vivekananda pointed out, the goal of the British
was to weaken the Indian spirit, particularly the Hindu spirit, because the
nationalist movement in India was mainly a Hindu movement. The nationalist
movement, which rose to great heights during the Swadeshi Movement following
the Partition of Bengal, lost its direction and focus in 1920 when Mahatma
Gandhi sacrificed Swaraj for the sake of the Khilafat. This in turn led to the
anti-Hindu orientation of the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru. This was soon
joined by the Communists, who worked hand-in-glove with the Congress. The
Communists now are little more than camp followers of Sonia Gandhi and her
party.
So it is in the interests of these anti-national forces to
keep alive the colonial version of Indian history. Thanks to the domination of
the Indian political scene by the Congress, Communist intellectuals and fellow
travelers were able to dominate the intellectual scene also. As a result, the
colonial version of history continues to be taught in Indian schools and
colleges. This has led to gross distortions in the history being taught in
Indian schools and colleges. These distortions may be classified as follows:
1. Distortion of ancient history through the ‘Aryan invasion’ and the
Aryan-Dravidian wars, presenting the Vedic Age as an ‘age of conflict’
2. Distortion of the Medieval history, by
whitewashing the Islamic record and presenting it as the 'age of synthesis'.
3. Distortion of the period of the Freedom
Struggle, by whitewashing Congress blunders and suppressing the contribution of
the revolutionaries, Sardar Patel and Subhas Bose.
4. Distortion of post-independent India, by
whitewashing the monumental blunders of Pandit Nehru and his successors to
bring about dynastic rule under the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty at the cost of
national interest.
It is worth taking a brief look at each one of them,
beginning with the ancient period. The first point to note that it was the
ancient period that gave India both its unity and its sense of the nation. The
Medieval period was a Dark Age, during which the Hindu civilization was engaged
in a desperate struggle for survival. In addition, the forces of medievalism
contributed nothing to Indian nationalism. They acted as a negative force and
held back progress, taking the country into a Dark Age. They continue to act as
a check against progress by holding on to medieval ideas and practices.
The important point to note is that the ancient period was
an age of synthesis, when people of different viewpoints like the Vedic,
Tantric, Buddhistic, Jain and other sects lived in relative harmony. There was
also free exchange of ideas and unfettered debate. The Medieval period was the
age of conflict when Hindu society was engaged in a desperate struggle for
survival against the onslaught of Jihad — something like what is happening in
Kashmir today. What the Congress sponsored Leftist (‘secularist’) historians
have done is to exactly reverse this. They have said that the ancient period
was an age of conflict between Aryans and non-Aryans, while trying to portray
the Medieval period — dominated by Jihad (or religious wars) — as a period of
synthesis.
History books today begin with the Aryan invasion of India,
which is said to have taken place in 1500 BC. Students are told that the ancient
civilization of the Indus Valley or the Harappan Civilization was Dravidian
that was destroyed by the invading Aryans. According to this theory, the
language of the Harappan seals, which contain a good deal of writing, is some
form of Dravidian language, unrelated to Sanskrit. There are nearly 4000 of
these with writing on them, but until recently, no one could read them.
Recently, the great Vedic scholar N. Jha made a major breakthrough in
deciphering it. Following the breakthrough, Jha and I have read and published
the writing on nearly 2000 seals. (We have read many more that are yet to be
published.) The language of the seals is Vedic Sanskrit. This means the
Harappan Civilization was Vedic.
This also means there was no Aryan invasion and no Aryan-Dravidian
conflicts either. In Sanskrit, ‘Aryan’ simply means cultured and not any race
or language. I am myself a so-called Dravidian who speaks Kannada. Kannada,
like all South Indian languages, is heavily influenced by Sanskrit. South
Indian dynasties going back time immemorial called themselves ‘Aryas’ because
they were followers of the Vedic culture. South has always been a stronghold of
Vedic culture and learning. Sayana, probably the greatest Vedic scholar of the
last thousand years was a South Indian. (He was the brother of Vidyaranya, who
helped Harihara and Bukka found the great Vijayanagara Empire.)
The idea of Aryans and Dravidians as mutually hostile
people was created during the colonial period, in which Christian missionaries
played an active role. It was part of the British policy of divide and rule.
Bishop Caldwell was probably the most influential Dravidian scholar. When
criticized for his theories, he defended them "as not only of considerable
moment from a philological [linguistic] point of view but of vast moral and
political importance." By ‘moral and political’, he meant Christian
missionary and British colonial interests.
This shows that one of the main forces behind the Aryan
invasion theory, and of education policy in general, was the conversion of
Hindus to Christianity to make them accept British rule. According to the Aryan
invasion theory, the Vedas and Sanskrit language were brought by these
Indo-European invaders and not native to India. (This is now demolished by
science and also the decipherment of the Harappan writing.) Using this false
theory, the British could claim that India had always been ruled by foreign
invaders — first the Vedic Aryans, and later the Muslims. The British claimed
to be Aryans (as Indo-Europeans) and therefore only the latest rulers of India,
but related to their own ancient Aryans who also were foreign invaders!
Christian missionaries took advantage of this by enjoying the patronage of
colonial rulers. The presented the Bible as ‘Yesurveda’ — or the Veda of Yesu
(Jesus).
Many influential British officials felt that the conversion
of Hindus to Christianity would make them readily accept British rule. The most
influential of these was Thomas Babbington Macaulay who introduced the English
education system in India. He made no secret of his goal of conversion of India
to Christianity. In 1836, while serving as chairman of the Education Board in
India, he enthusiastically wrote his father:
"Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The
effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious. ...... It is my belief
that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single
idolator [Hindu] among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence.
And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise, without the
smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge
and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project."
So religious conversion and colonialism were to go hand in
hand. Christian missions always supported the colonial government, with
missionaries working hand in glove with the British government. They supported
the Jallianwallah Bagh Massacre also, even though many Englishmen were ashamed
of it. In a real sense Christian missions were not religious organizations at
all but an unofficial arm of the British Administration. (The same is true of
many Catholic missions in Central American countries. Many of them are in the
pay of the American CIA. This was admitted by a CIA director, testifying before
the Congress.)
It was part of the Macaulayite education program to distort
Indian history to serve British colonial and Christian missionary interest. To
do this, he employed a German Vedic scholar now famous as Friedrich Max Müller.
Macaulay used his influence with the East India Company to find funds for Max
Müller's translation of the Rigveda. There can be no doubt at all
regarding Max Müller's commitment to the conversion of Indians to Christianity.
Writing to his wife in 1866 Max Müller himself explained his purpose:
"It [the Rigveda] is the root of
their religion [Hinduism] and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is
the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three
thousand years."
Two years later he also wrote the Duke of Argyle, then
acting Secretary of State for India: "The ancient religion of India is
doomed. And if Christianity does not take its place, whose fault will it
be?" His job was to uproot Hinduism by giving a negative version of the
Vedas!
Unfortunately, the version of history being taught to
children in Indian schools and colleges, including the Aryan invasion, is the
version created by Macaulay and Max Müller. It is a tragedy. It is not only
anti-national but also totally false.
It was claimed by the British, and faithfully repeated by
the Leftist intellectuals, that the British unified India. This is completely
false. The unity of India, rooted in her ancient culture, is of untold
antiquity. It may have been divided at various times into smaller kingdoms, but
the goal was always to be united under a ‘Chakravartin’ or a ‘Samrat’. This
unity was cultural though not always political. This cultural unity was
seriously damaged during the Medieval period, when India was engaged in a
struggle for survival — like what is happening in Kashmir today. Going back
thousands of years, India had been united under a single ruler many times. The
earliest recorded emperor of India was Bharata, the son of Shakuntala and
Dushyanta, but there were several others. I give below some examples from the Aitareya
Brahmana.
"With this great anointing of Indra, Dirghatamas
Mamateya anointed Bharata Daushanti. Therefore, Bharata Daushanti went round
the earth completely, conquering on every side and offered the horse in
sacrifice.
"With this great anointing of Indra, Tura Kavasheya
anointed Janamejaya Parikshita. Therefore Janamejaya Parikshita went round the
earth completely, conquering on every side and offered the horse in
sacrifice."
There are similar statements about Sudasa Paijavana
anointed by Vasistha, Anga anointed by Udamaya Atreya, Durmukha Pancala
anointed by Brihadukta and Atyarati Janampati anointed by Vasistha Satyahavya.
Atyarati, though not born a king, became an emperor and went on conquer even
the Uttara Kuru or the modern Sinkiang and Turkestan that lie north of Kashmir.
There are others also mentioned in the Shathapatha Brahmana and also the
Mahabharata. This shows that the unity of India is ancient. Also, the
British did not rule over a unified India. They had treaties with the rulers of
hereditary kingdoms like Mysore, Kashmir, Hyderabad and others that were more
or less independent. The person who united all these was Sardar Patel, not the
British. But this unification was possible only because India is culturally
one. Pakistan, with no such identity or cultural unity, is falling apart.
Harshavardhana was the last great Indian ruler of North
India. Several empires continued in the south like the Chalukya, the
Rashtrakuta and finally Vijayanagara. Islamic invasions into India began in the
8th century or about a century after Harsha’s death. Iran (or
Persia) collapsed within a single generation to the Islamic armies, as did the
eastern part of the Byzantine Empire of Constantinople. Arabs intruded into
Sind, but their hold did not last. It took the Islamic forces more than 300
years before they could defeat the Hindu kingdom of Afghanistan. Then the
invasion of India began in earnest with the Mahmud of Ghazni in the 10th
– 11th centuries.
It should be understood that what Islam brought to India —
and other parts of the world — was a new kind of warfare that was unknown in
ancient times. It was called Jihad. The idea was not merely to conquer a country
but to totally destroy its history and civilization. Iran and Egypt had great
civilizations going back thousands of years, but they have been totally wiped
out. This is what is happening to Afghanistan today and also what the Jihadists
are trying to do to Kashmir.
To understand what these warriors brought to India, it
helps to look at what believers in Jihad have to say today. The most
influential of these was General Zia-ul-Haq, the former president of Pakistan
and the father of Taliban. According to him, "JIHAD FI-SABILILLAH is not
the exclusive domain of the professional soldier, nor is it restricted to the
application of military force alone." The book The Quranic Concept of
War, sponsored by him, tells us that "More than mere military
campaigns and battles, the Holy Prophet's operations against the Pagans
[pre-Islamic Arabs] are an integral and inseparable part of the divine message
revealed to us in the Holy Quran. ... The war he planned and carried out was
total to the infinite degree. It was waged on all fronts: internal and
external, political and diplomatic, spiritual and psychological, economic and
military."
This is what Jihad means: was total war — fought not only
against soldiers, but also against civilians, including women and children.
According to the Urdu instructional manual (called Jihad) carried by the
Pakistani militants in Kashmir, "The Quranic military strategy thus
enjoins us to prepare ourselves for war to the utmost in order to strike terror
into the heart of the enemy,… Terror struck into the hearts of the enemy is not
only a means, it is the end in itself. …Terror is not a means of imposing
decision upon the enemy; it is the decision we wish to impose upon him."
So terrorism is not an exception but an integral policy of
Jihad. This is what we are seeing today in Kashmir, and this is also what
Islamic vandals like Muhammad of Ghazni and others brought to India. The famous
Alberuni, who accompanied Muhammad on his campaigns into India wrote:
"... Nasir-addaula Sabuktagin. This prince chose the
holy war as his calling. ... his son Yamin-addaula Muhammad [of Ghazni] marched
into India during a period of thirty years and more. God be merciful to both
father and son! Muhammad utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed
there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust
scattered in all directions. ... Their scattered remains cherish, of course,
the most inveterate aversion of all the Muslims. This is the reason, too, why
Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered
by us, and have fled to places which our hand cannot yet reached."
So it was not just the wealth that was looted; Muhammad the
Holy Warrior was responsible for uprooting Hindu learning from the places he
invaded. This was part of the Jihad to uproot the civilization of India. Here
is one telling statistic that should give a true picture of the Islamic rule of
India, beginning with the invasions of Muhammad of Ghazni. Pre-Islamic India
was renowned for its universities. Great centers of learning like Nalanda,
Vaishali, Sarnath, Vikramashila, Taksha-shila, and many more — they attracted
students from all over Asia and the world. Following the Islamic invasion of
India, all these centers were destroyed. In the centuries following, during
the next eight hundred years, not a single university was established by
any Muslim ruler. This was a Dark Age worse than what overtook Europe in
the Middle Ages. Only in the last century or so is India slowly coming out of this
long Dark Age.
This is the true picture of Medieval India, which was a
long Dark Age. As the distinguished American historian Will Durant says,
"The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in
history." Fortunately, Hindu learning survived in places like Sringeri,
Benares, Kanchi and a few other places. Also, Indian rulers, especially in
Vijayanagara, Mysore and several others protected scholars and artists.
The problem today is that Leftist historians
(‘secularists’) claim that none of this happened even though there are
literally thousands of ruined temples and monasteries all over India to prove
it. One has only to go to Hampi, the former capital of Vijayanagara to see the
evidence. Even Akbar allowed Rajputs and other Hindus to join his
administration only because he could not find enough foreigners. Otherwise, the
policy of the Delhi Sultans and the Moghuls was to import officials from
outside the country — just as the British did. All this is whitewashed in
Indian history books. For example, students are taught that Babar was a
tolerant ruler who loved India. But here is what Babar himself says in his
autobiography, the Baburnama.
"Chanderi had been in the daru'l-harb [Hindu rule] for
some years and held by Sanga's highest-ranking officer Meidini Rao, with four
or five thousand infidels, but in 934 [1527-28], through the grace of God, I
took it by force within a ghari or two, massacred the infidels, and brought it
into the bosom of Islam."
And when in a particularly happy mood, he wrote the
following poem:
For the sake of Islam I became a wanderer;
I battled infidels and Hindus.
I determined to become a martyr.
Thank God I became a holy warrior.
And what did he find interesting in India?
"Hindustan," he wrote, "is a place of little charm. ... The one
nice aspect of Hindustan is it is a large country with lots of gold and
money." In other words, he came to India attracted by loot. For the better
part of three hundred years, the Moghuls ruled North India as foreign
occupiers, using a foreign language — Persian — in their administration.
This record of Medieval India has been whitewashed in
history books in use today. One of the clearest examples of history distortion
occurred during the Ayodhya-Ramjanmabhumi controversy. Secularist historians
repeatedly asserted that no Ram Temple had been destroyed at the site of Babri
Masjid. The first point is that Muslim writers have made no secret of the fact
that they destroyed the temple. Here is what Aurangazeb’s granddaughter wrote
in 1707, in her Persian work Sahifah-i-Chihal Nasa'ih Bahadurshahi:
"... keeping the triumph of Islam in view, devout
Muslim rulers should keep all idolaters in subjection to Islam, brook no laxity
in realization of Jizyah, grant no exceptions to Hindu Rajahs from dancing
attendance on 'Id days and waiting on foot outside mosques till end of prayer
... and 'keep in constant use for Friday and congregational prayer the mosques
built up after demolishing the temples of the idolatrous Hindus situated at
Mathura, Banaras and Avadh."
In addition to the matter of fact statement of the
destruction, what is striking is the tone of intolerance. She was after all
Aurangazeb’s granddaughter. In addition, we have archaeological evidence
showing that a temple existed at the site. After the demolition of the Babari
Masjid by karsevaks on December 6, 1992, archaeologists found a temple
under it and also a stone inscription. Here is what an important part of the
inscription says:
"Line 15 of this inscription, for example, clearly tells
us that a beautiful temple of Vishnu-Hari, built with heaps of stones... , and
beautified with a golden spire ... unparalleled by any other temple built by
earlier kings ... This wonderful temple ... was built in the temple-city of
Ayodhya situated in Saketamandala. ... Line 19 describes god Vishnu as
destroying king Bali ... and the ten-headed personage (Dashanana, or
Ravana)."
After all this, no one can argue that no temple was
destroyed. The distinguished archaeologist Professor B.B. Lal who carried out
the excavation at Ayodhya wrote a sixty-page report on his findings. But this
was suppressed, thanks to influential secularist historians like Irfan Habib,
Romila Thapar and R.S. Sharma. These secularists then put out a propaganda
pamphlet on Ayodhya denying that there ever was a temple at Ramjanmabhumi.
While the secularist intellectuals are motivated by their
hatred of Hinduism, Muslim intellectuals are driven by fear of Hindu backlash.
They know very well that their rulers have persecuted the Hindus for centuries.
In fact it was this fear that led to the founding of the Muslim League, with
the goal of asking the British never to leave India. Its first president Nawab
Viqar-ul-Mulk, Mushtaq Hussain said that if the British left, "then the
rule of India would pass into the hands of that community which is nearly four
times as large as ourselves … Then, our life, our property, our honor, and our
faith will all be in great danger. … woe betide the time when we become the
subjects of our neighbors, and answer to them for the sins, real or
imaginary of Aurangazeb, and other Mussalman conquerors and rulers who went
before him."
This is still the fear that haunts the Muslim intellectuals
in India. That is the reason why they begged the British to hold on to India
and protect them. It was this fear combined with the Congress appeasement
policy that led to the Partition. It was again this fear that made them support
the Congress dynasty from Nehru to Sonia Gandhi. And now, it is the same fear
that makes them turn themselves into a vote bank to be manipulated by cynical
politicians like Mulayam Singh and Laloo Prasad Yadav.
This fear is baseless. Hindus are not a vindictive people.
But the Muslims and their newfound secularist allies cannot expect the Hindus
to accept falsehoods about their history and tradition simply to serve their
own interests. They cannot whitewash their terrible record and try to put all
the blame on the Hindu victims in the interests of their version of
‘secularism’. This would be like blaming the Jews for the Nazi atrocities. The
only way of achieving peace and harmony is for the Muslim leadership to
acknowledge the crimes of their ancestors and learn to live at peace with their
Hindu neighbors. They should also give up intolerant doctrines like Jihad as
medieval barbarisms incompatible with civilization. As the late K.M. Munshi
wrote fifty years ago:
"If, however, the misuse of this word 'secularism'
continues, ... if, every time there is an inter-communal conflict, the majority
is blamed regardless of the merits of the question,... the springs of
traditional tolerance will dry up. While the majority exercises patience and
tolerance, the minorities should adjust themselves to the majority. Otherwise
the future is uncertain and an explosion cannot be avoided."
This is exactly what happened at Ayodhya. If the country
does not learn its lessons, it will be repeated over and over again. The
secularist intellectuals, who were busy falsifying history, were not there to
defend the disputed structure at Ramjanmabhumi or protect the victims in the
riots that followed. In fact they were the first to run from the scene. The
lesson: history cannot be falsified forever. In the end truth will always
triumph — satyameva jayate. We should be prepared to face the truth.
Just as ancient and medieval history have been distorted
under Congress patronage, history of the Freedom Movement has also been dressed
up to favor the Congress and the Communists. This distortion has the following
three parts: (1) Building up the role of Gandhi and Nehru while suppressing the
contribution of others, notably Subhas Bose. (2) Whitewashing Gandhi’s terrible
blunder of supporting the Khilafat Movement and the atrocities of the Mopla
Rebellion that followed. (3) Whitewashing the treachery of the Communists. We
can next take a brief look at each one of them.
It is commonly believed that it was the Congress Party
through its various movements like the Quit India Movement of 1942 that brought
freedom to India. This fails to explain the fact that the British granted
independence only in 1947 while the Quit India Movement had collapsed by the
end of 1942. The question that naturally arises is— why did the British leave
in such great hurry in August 1947? The answer was provided by Prime Minister
Clement Attlee, the man who made the decision to grant independence to India.
When B.P. Chakravarti was acting as Governor of West
Bengal, Lord Attlee visited India and stayed as his guest for three days at the
Raj Bhavan. Chakravarti asked Attlee about the real grounds for granting
independence to India. Specifically, his question was, when the Quit India
movement lay in ruins years before 1947, where was the need for the British to
leave in such a hurry. Attlee’s response is most illuminating and important for
history. Here is what Attlee told him:
In reply Attlee cited several reasons, the most important
were the activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose which weakened the very
foundation of the attachment of the Indian land and naval forces to the British
Government. Towards the end, I asked Lord Attlee about the extent to which the
British decision to quit India was influenced by Gandhi’s activities. On
hearing this question Attlee’s lips widened in a smile of disdain and he
uttered, slowly, putting emphasis on each single letter —
"mi-ni-mal." (Emphasis added.)
The crucial point to note is that thanks to Subhas Bose’s
activities, the Indian Armed Forces began to see themselves as defenders of
India rather than of the British Empire. This, more than anything else, was
what led to India’s freedom. This is also the reason why the British Empire
disappeared from the face of the earth within an astonishingly short space of
twenty years. Indian soldiers, who were the main prop of the Empire, were no
longer willing to fight for the British. What influenced the British decision
was mutiny of the Indian Navy following the INA trials in 1946. While the
British wanted to try Subhas Bose’s INA as traitors, Indian soldiers saw them
as nationalists and patriots. This scared the British. They decided to get out
in a hurry.
(Attlee repeated his argument on at least two other
occasions, including once in the House of Commons. During a debate in the House
of Commons, he told Churchill that he would agree to the latter’s suggestion of
holding on to India if he could guarantee the loyalty of the Indian armed
forces. Churchill had no reply. The Labour Prime Minister was as much an
imperialist as Churchill, but more pragmatic, prepared to see the writing on
the wall.)
This will come as a shock to most Indians brought up to
believe that the Congress movement driven by the ‘spiritual force’ of Mahatma
Gandhi forced the British to leave India. But both evidence and the logic of
history are against this beautiful but childish fantasy. It was the fear of
mutiny by the Indian armed forces — and not any ‘spiritual force’ — that forced
the issue of freedom. The British saw that the sooner they left the better for
themselves, for, at the end of the war, India had some three million men
under arms. One would have to be extraordinarily dense — which the British
were not — to fail to see the writing on the wall.
So, as the great historian R.C. Majumdar wrote, Subhas Bose
with his INA campaigns probably contributed more to Indian independence than
Gandhi, Nehru and their movements. The result of Subhas Bose’s activities was
the rise of the nationalist spirit in the Indian Armed Forces. This is the
reason why Nehru, after he became Prime Minister, did everything possible to
turn Bose into a non-person. He wanted no rivals.
This brings us to Mahatma Gandhi and his ill-fated
Nonviolent Non-Cooperation Movement. Most Indians have been made to believe
that it was the first of Gandhi’s movements for India’s freedom. This is
completely false. The Non-Cooperation Movement was for the restoration of the
Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph. This was known as the Khilafat Movement,
launched by Indian Muslims, led by Maulanas Mohamad Ali and Shaukat Ali. In fact,
Gandhi postponed Tilak’s Swaraj Resolution by nearly ten years in order to join
the Khilafat. (Lokamanya
Tilak had died in 1920 and Gandhi and the Ali Brothers launched the Khilafat in
1921. Gandhi even diverted a substantial part of the Tilak Swaraj Fund to the
Khilafat.) Indian history books omit the fact that the sole purpose of the
Non-Cooperation Movement was the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey.
Gandhi promised the Ali Brothers that the British would be
driven out ‘within the year’. The failure of the Khilafat agitation, whose goal
was to replace the British Raj with what Annie Beasant called ‘Khilafat Raj’,
led to a Jihad known as the Mopla Rebellion in which thousands of innocent
people were slaughtered. (Moplas are a Muslim sect of the Malabar district in
Kerala.) History books, controlled by the Congress-secularist establishment
rarely mention the Mopla Rebellion, which was the main result of the
Gandhi-Congress support for the Khilafat Movement. What is so bad about it that
they want to hide it? Sir Sankaran Nair, an eyewitness to the Mopla horrors had
this to say in his book Gandhi and Anarchy:
"For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember
anything in history to match the Malabar [Mopla] rebellion. ... The atrocities
committed more particularly on women are so horrible and unmentionable that I
do not propose to refer to them in this book." (See Gandhi, Khilafat and the
National Movement by N.S. Rajaram for several eyewitness accounts.)
This brutality was to be equaled if not surpassed in the
holocaust of the Partition — now being re-enacted in Kashmir. What was Gandhi's
reaction to the Mopla outrages? He called the Moplas "God fearing"
and said they "are fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a
manner they consider as religious." This from the Apostle of Nonviolence!
The message of the Khilafat was not lost on Muslim leaders
like Mohammed Ali Jinnah. (He had opposed the Congress support for the
Khilafat.) He correctly recognized that the Congress leaders would always back
down in the face of threat of violence. They would rather appease than fight on
principles. This happened repeatedly — in 1948 and 1972 in dealing with
Pakistan, and also in the 1950s in dealing with China and Tibet. Nehru
abandoned Kashmir to Pakistan (through the UN) and abandoned also Tibet to
China, sacrificing India’s national interests. As Congress ruled India for
forty years following independence, this practice of appeasement gave India the
label of a ‘soft state’.
The Congress’s appeasement policy reached its absurd limit,
when the Nehru Government succumbed to Gandhi’s blackmail and gave Pakistan 55
crore rupees at a time when Indian troops were fighting the Pakistanis in
Kashmir. I already noted that Gandhi had diverted a substantial sum from the Tilak
Swaraj Fund to the Khilafat, in addition to postponing Tilak’s Swaraj
Resolution in favor of the Khilafat Movement.
Another source of distortion of this period of history is
rooted in the treacherous role played by the Communists. This is a matter of record,
though Communist intellectuals, by monopolizing institutions like the ICHR, are
trying to whitewash their role. To understand their treachery, we should
recognize that Communist leaders in other colonized countries were first and
foremost nationalists who fought for freedom. Next, they came from the masses.
This is true of leaders like Mao of China, Ho Chi Min of Vietnam, Fidel Castro
of Cuba and several others. Indian Communist leaders on the other hand come
mostly from the English educated elite. They have always looked to the West for
everything. So when India was fighting for her freedom, the Communists were
agents of foreign governments like Germany, Russia, Britain and finally even
Pakistan!
When the Second World War began, because of the Stalin-Hitler
Pact, the Communists found themselves on the same side as Nazi Germany. They
were ordered by Stalin to support Hitler’s war as a war against imperialist
countries like Britain and France. When Germany attacked Russia in June 1941,
the Indian Communists made a 180-degree turn and began supporting the British!
This meant working against national leaders like Gandhi and Subhas Bose, who
were seen as enemies of the British. The great historian R.C. Majumdar wrote:
"During the great national upsurge of 1942, the
Communists acted as stooges and spies of the British Government… Mr. Joshi (of
the Communist Party) was placing at the disposal of India the services of his
Party Members… Joshi had, as General Secretary of the Party, written a letter
in which he offered ‘unconditional help’ to the then Government of India and
the Army GHQ to fight the 1942 underground workers and the Azad Hind Fauz (INA)
of Subhas Chandra Bose… Joshi’s letter revealed that the CPI was receiving
financial aid from the British Government, had a secret pact with the Muslim
League…"
As part of their pact with the Muslim League, the
Communists openly supported the demand for Pakistan, "but went much
further by saying that every linguistic group in India had a distinct
nationality and was entitled … to secede." After independence, the
Communists struck a deal with the Nizam’s Government in Hyderabad and joined
hands with the Razakars to fight Hyderabad’s accession to India with Pakistan’s
help. When Sardar Patel sent troops into Hyderabad, Kasim Rizvi ran away to
Pakistan, handing over the bulk of his guns and other arms to the Communists.
The Communists kept up an armed insurrection in the Telengana region for a few
years until ordered to stop by the Soviet dictator Stalin.
The Communists supported China’s attack on India and 1962
and also the Chinese nuclear tests, while vehemently opposing India’s
successful tests at Pokharan. It is this formidable record of treachery that
the Communist intellectuals are trying to erase by controlling institutions
like the ICHR, NIEPA and NCERT. They have now joined hands with the Sonia
Congress in a desperate struggle for survival.
For over forty years after independence, India was ruled
directly or indirectly by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. As a result, national
interest was often sacrificed for personal dynastic interests. On at least
three occasions, Nehru sacrificed India’s interests for the sake of
international glory for himself. First is his well-known blunder of referring
Kashmir to the United Nations when Indian troops were on the verge of driving
the Pakistanis out of Kashmir. The next was his betrayal of Tibet to please
China and gain glory for himself in Korea. The third was his failure to settle
the border with China because of his preoccupation with his fantasy of Pancha
Sheel. Nehru’s colossal blunder in Kashmir is well known, so I will briefly
discuss his fiasco in dealing with Tibet and China.
But first I want to highlight an important but often
overlooked point. It was not Pakistan that created the Kashmir problem. Nehru
created the problem with his two blunders: referring Kashmir to the United
Nations and agreeing to the present cease fire line or the LOC. At the very
least Nehru should have asked for the Indus River as the Line of Control. Similarly,
what I want to next is explain that it was not China but again Nehru that
created the border problem with China with his multiple blunders. With his
blunder upon blunder Nehru sacrificed thousands of lives— both soldiers and
civilians. His grandson Rajiv Gandhi contributed his own share of blunders by
sending Indian troops into Sri Lanka unprepared. Let me next examine the
Chinese scene.
In the year 1950, two momentous events shook Asia and the
world. One was the Chinese invasion of Tibet, and the other, Chinese
intervention in the Korean War. The first was near, on India’s borders, the
other, far away in the Korean Peninsula where India had little at stake. By all
canons of logic, India should have devoted utmost attention to the immediate
situation in Tibet, and let interested parties like China and the U.S. sort it
out in Korea. But Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Prime Minister, did exactly the
opposite. He treated the Tibetan crisis in a haphazard fashion, while getting
heavily involved in Korea. India today is paying for this folly by being the
only country of its size in the world without an official boundary with its
giant neighbor. Tibet soon disappeared from the map. As in Kashmir, Nehru
sacrificed national interest at home in pursuit of international glory abroad.
India at the time maintained missions in Lhasa and
Gyangtse. Due to the close relations that existed between India and Tibet going
back centuries and also because of the unsettled conditions in China, Tibet’s
transactions with the outside world were conducted mainly through India. Well
into 1950, the Indian Government regarded Tibet as a free country.
The Chinese announced their invasion of Tibet on 25 October
1950. According to them, it was to ‘free Tibet from imperialist forces’, and
consolidate its border with India. Nehru announced that he and the Indian
Government were "extremely perplexed and disappointed with the Chinese
Government’s action..." Nehru also complained that he had been "led
to believe by the Chinese Foreign Office that the Chinese would settle the
future of Tibet in a peaceful manner by direct negotiation with the
representatives of Tibet…"
This was not true, for in September 1949, more than a year
before the Chinese invasion, Nehru himself had written: "Chinese
communists are likely to invade Tibet." The point to note is that Nehru,
by sending mixed signals, showing more interest in Korea than in Tibet, had
encouraged the Chinese invasion; the Chinese had made no secret of their desire
to invade Tibet. In spite of this, Nehru’s main interest was to sponsor China
as a member of the UN Security Council instead of safeguarding Indian interests
in Tibet.
Because of this, when the Chinese were moving troops into
Tibet, there was little concern in Indian official circles. Panikkar, the
Indian Ambassador in Beijing, went so far as to pretend that there was ‘lack of
confirmation’ of the presence of Chinese troops in Tibet and that to protest
the Chinese invasion of Tibet would be an "interference to India’s efforts
on behalf of China in the UN". So Panikkar was more interested in
protecting Chinese interests in the UN than India’s own interests on the
Tibetan border! Nehru agreed with his Ambassador. He wrote, "our primary
consideration is maintenance of world peace… Recent developments in Korea have
not strengthened China’s position, which will be further weakened by any
aggressive action [by India] in Tibet." So Nehru was ready to sacrifice
India’s national security interests in Tibet so as not to weaken China’s case
in the UN!
It is nothing short of tragedy that the two greatest
influences on Nehru at this crucial juncture in history were Krishna Menon and
K.M. Panikkar, both communists. Panikkar, while nominally serving as Indian
ambassador in China, became practically a spokesman for Chinese interests in
Tibet. Sardar Patel remarked that Panikkar "has been at great pains to
find an explanation or justification for Chinese policy and actions."
India eventually gave up its right to have a diplomatic mission in Lhasa on the
ground that it was an ‘imperialist legacy’. This led to Nehru’s discredited
‘Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai’. Mao had no reciprocal affection for India and never
spoke of ‘Chini-Hindi Bhai Bhai’ — or its Chinese equivalent. Far from it, he
had only contempt for India and its leaders. Mao respected only the strong who
would oppose him, and not the weak who bent over backwards to please him.
Sardar Patel warned Nehru: "Even though we regard
ourselves as friends of China, the Chinese do not regard us as friends."
He wrote a famous letter in which he expressed deep concern over developments
in Tibet, raising several important points. In particular, he noted that a free
and friendly Tibet was vital for India’s security, and everything including
military measures should be considered to ensure it. On November 9, 1950, two
days after he wrote the letter to Nehru, he announced in Delhi: "In Kali
Yuga, we shall return ahimsa for ahimsa. If anybody resorts to
force against us, we shall meet it with force." But Nehru ignored Patel’s
letter. The truth is that India was in a strong position to defend its
interests in Tibet, but gave up the opportunity for the sake of pleasing China.
It is not widely known in India that in 1950, China could have been
prevented from taking over Tibet.
Patel on the other hand recognized that in 1950, China was
in a vulnerable position, fully committed in Korea and by no means secure in
its hold over the mainland. For months General MacArthur had been urging
President Truman to "unleash Chiang Kai Shek" lying in wait in
Formosa (Taiwan) with full American support. China had not yet acquired the
atom bomb, which was more than ten years in the future. India had little to
lose and everything to gain by a determined show of force when China was
struggling to consolidate its hold.
In addition, India had international support, with world
opinion strongly against Chinese aggression in Tibet. The world in fact was
looking to India to take the lead. The highly influential English journal The
Economist echoed the Western viewpoint when it wrote: "Having
maintained complete independence of China since 1912, Tibet has a strong claim
to be regarded as an independent state. But it is for India to take a lead
in this matter. If India decides to support independence of Tibet as a
buffer state between itself and China, Britain and U.S.A. will do well to
extend formal diplomatic recognition to it."
So China could have been stopped. But this was not to be. Nehru ignored
Patel’s letter as well as international opinion and gave up this golden
opportunity to turn Tibet into a friendly buffer state. With such a principled
stand, India would also have acquired the status of a great power while
Pakistan would have disappeared from the radar screen of world attention. Much
has been made of Nehru’s blunder in Kashmir, but it pales in comparison with
his folly in Tibet. As a result of this monumental failure of vision — and
nerve — India soon came to be treated as a third rate power, acquiring ‘parity’
with Pakistan. Two months later Patel was dead.
Even after the loss of Tibet, Nehru gave up opportunities
to settle the border with China. To understand this, it is necessary to
appreciate the fact that what China desired most was a stable border with
India. With this in view, the Chinese Premier Zhou-en-Lai visited India
several times to fix the boundary between the two countries. In short, the
Chinese proposal amounted to the following: they were prepared to accept the
McMahon Line as the boundary in the east — with possibly some minor adjustments
and a new name — and then negotiate the unmarked boundary in the west between
Ladakh and Tibet. In effect, what Zhou-en-Lai proposed was a phased settlement,
beginning with the eastern boundary. Nehru, however, wanted the whole thing
settled at once. The practical minded Zhou-en-Lai found this politically
impossible. And on each visit, the Chinese Premier in search of a boundary
settlement, heard more about the principles of Pancha Sheela than India’s stand
on the boundary. He interpreted this as intransigence on India’s part.
China in fact went on to settle its boundary with Mayammar
(Burma) roughly along the McMahon Line following similar principles. Contrary
to what the Indian public was told, the border between Ladakh (in the Princely
State of Kashmir) and Tibet was never clearly demarcated. As late as 1960, the
Indian Government had to send survey teams to Ladakh to locate the boundary and
prepare maps. But the Government kept telling the people that there was a
clearly defined boundary, which the Chinese were refusing to accept.
What the situation demanded was a creative approach,
especially from the Indian side. There were several practical issues on which
negotiations could have been conducted — especially in the 1950s when India was
in a strong position. China needed Aksai Chin because it had plans to construct
an access road from Tibet to Xinjiang province (Sinkiang) in the west. Aksai
Chin was of far greater strategic significance to China than to India. (It may
be a strategic liability for India — being expensive to maintain and hard to
supply, even more than the Siachen Glacier.) Had Nehru recognized this he might
have proposed a creative solution like asking for access to Mount Kailash and
Manasarovar in return for Chinese access to Aksai Chin. The issue is not
whether such an agreement was possible, but no solutions were proposed. The
upshot of all this was that China ignored India — including Pancha Sheel — and
went ahead with its plan to build the road through Aksai Chin.
This is still not the full story. On the heels of this twin
blunder — abandonment of Tibet and sponsorship of China, with nothing to show in
return — Nehru deceived the Indian public in his pursuit of international glory
through Pancha Sheel. Pancha
Sheel, which was the principal ‘policy’ of Nehru towards China from the
betrayal of Tibet to the expulsion of Dalai Lama in 1959, is generally regarded
as a demonstration of good faith by Nehru that was exploited by the Chinese who
‘stabbed him in the back’. This is not quite correct, for Nehru (and Krishna
Menon) knew about the Chinese incursions in Ladakh and Aksai Chin but kept it
secret for years to keep the illusion of Pancha Sheel alive.
General Thimayya had brought the Chinese activities in
Aksai Chin to the notice of Nehru and Krishna Menon several years before that.
An English mountaineer by name Sydney Wignall was deputed by Thimayya to verify
reports that the Chinese were building a road through Aksai Chin. He was
captured by the Chinese but released and made his way back to India after
incredible difficulties, surviving several snowstorms. Now Thimayya had proof
of Chinese incursion. When the Army presented this to the Government, Menon
blew up. In Nehru’s presence, he told the senior officer making the
presentation that he was "lapping up CIA propaganda."
Wignall was not Thimayya’s only source. Shortly after the
Chinese attack in 1962, I heard from General Thimayya that he had deputed a
young officer of the Madras Sappers (MEG) to Aksai Chin to investigate reports
of Chinese intrusion who brought back reports of the Chinese incursion. But the
public was not told of it simply to cover up Nehru’s blunders. He was still
trying to sell his Pancha Sheel and Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai to the Indian public.
Even today, Nehru’s family members exercise dictatorial control over the
documents pertaining to this crucial period. Even documents in the National
Archives are not available to scholars without permission from the Nehru-Gandhi
family heirs. This is to protect his reputation from being damaged by the
truth.
The sorry catalog of blunders continued after Nehru’s
death. In the Bangladesh war, India achieved one of the most decisive victories
in modern history. More than 90,000 Pakistani soldiers were in Indian custody.
The newly independent Bangladesh wanted to try these men as war criminals for
their atrocities against the people of East Bengal. The Indian Government could
have used this as a bargaining chip with Pakistan and settled the Kashmir
problem once and for all. Instead, Indira Gandhi threw away this golden
opportunity in exchange for a scrap of paper called the Shimla Agreement.
Thanks to this folly, Pakistan is more active than ever in Kashmir.
Kargil and its lessons: brush with disaster
This sad string of failures holds an important lesson in
history. The Congress has always been a party held together by a personality —
first the Mahatma, later Nehru, and now Sonia Gandhi. It is inevitable
therefore that force of personality rather than concern of national interest
should have influenced major decisions even at crucial points in history. This
was so in Kashmir, in Tibet, over the border dispute with China, the Shimla
Agreement, and most recently, the misadventure in Sri Lanka. It is India’s
misfortune that this personality dominated entity should have controlled the
fate of the nation for the better part of half a century since independence. The
question for the future is — will history repeat itself or have the people of
India learnt their lesson. The Congress apparently has not. This is clear from
its behavior preceding the brief war with Pakistan over Kargil, when Sonia
Gandhi tried to takeover the Government in a coup under false pretences.
It is unnecessary to go into the details of this sordid
episode, but a basic question needs to be asked. There are complaints all
around that Sonia Gandhi is destroying the Congress party because of her inexperience
and her style of functioning. But the same Congressmen were willing to bring
down the Government and install her as Prime Minister — just as Pakistani
soldiers were infiltrating across the LOC in Kashmir. The question is — what
would have been the fate of Kashmir and India, had the coup attempt succeeded,
with the immature not to say irresponsible Sonia Gandhi in the place of
Vajpayee as Prime Minister, with the likes of Jayalalitha and Subramanian Swamy
in control? It does not take much intelligence to see that Kashmir would have
been lost, giving Sonia Gandhi an excellent excuse to declare Emergency leading
to dynastic dictatorship. This would bring back European rule with a vengeance.
At the very least, the episode involving the infamous tea party
and the coup attempt showed that there are people at the highest level who have
no conception of national security. Anyone who indulges in such a reckless
adventure, treating the nation and its interests in such a lighthearted manner
is unfit for high office.
This is what India escaped in April 1999 — no thanks to the
Congress party. Nehru may no longer be on the scene but his legacy of
sacrificing national interest for personal gain — or what N.R. Waradpande in a
forthcoming book on Nehru has called ‘assault on nationhood’ — continues
unabated. By no stretch of the imagination can the dynasty or its party be
called nationalistic. The behavior of the Congress party in mindlessly
supporting Sonia Gandhi’s coup attempt at the cost of national interest shows
both Nehru and his party in their true colors.
As I just noted, even some documents in the National
Archives are not available to scholars if the Nehru family members feel that
they might contain any damaging information. But the Congress, joined by the
Communists, went much further, especially when Indira Gandhi became Prime
Minister. Just as Nehru sought control of the 'commanding heights of the
economy' with his socialistic planning, he and his successors built a centralized
educational establishment that would perpetuate his anti-Hindu view of Indian
history and civilization. This led to anti-Hindu forces dominating education
for nearly fifty years.
The first minister of education was Maulana Azad — said to
be a 'nationalist' Muslim and a close friend and open admirer of Nehru — at
least in public. Azad was an indolent man and an ineffective administrator, but
with a strong commitment to exalting the glory of Islamic rule in India. (He
had also a hand in sabotaging R.C. Majumdar’s multi-volume work on the Indian
Freedom Movement, which at times was critical of the Congress.) So the official
rewriting of Indian history had begun — with its whitewashing of the horrors of
Islamic rule accompanied by the introduction of anti-Hindu propaganda —
describing Hinduism as full of inequities and Islam as egalitarian. Nehru
himself had set the trend with his glorification of Muhammad of Ghazni and
Babar.
Under this program of de-Hinduisation, vandals and
terrorists like Ghazni, Babar and Aurangazeb were treated as bringers of
civilization and equality, while portraying such freedom fighters as Shivaji,
Rana Pratap, Chandrashekar Azad and others as obstructionists standing in the
way of progress. But thanks to the official hospitality extended to such
historical revisions, the influential National Council for Educational Research
and Training (NCERT) came to be dominated by scholars who pursued the Nehruvian
agenda or were willing to cater to it. The same was true of another influential
educational body — National Institute for Educational Planning and
Administration (NIEPA). Independent minded historians and other scholars who
were not prepared to toe this official line were removed or made ineffective.
A fateful event that played into the hands of the
Secularists was the appointment of Nurul Hassan as education minister in the
Indira Gandhi regime. He claimed to be a Marxist, but he pursued an anti-Hindu
agenda like a Muslim Fundamentalist. (After the creation of Pakistan, many Muslim
Fundamentalists pretended to be Marxists, and kept attacking Hinduism for its
‘inequality’.) As a result, anti-Hinduism acquired a stranglehold on education.
NIEPA is a particularly influential body that administers and oversees
educational policy in India. NCERT controls textbooks and other materials that
are used in schools and colleges in India. Both were now under the firm control
of anti-Hindu forces.
Through his control of these two powerful bodies, Nurul
Hassan became education Czar in India. He extended patronage to the Marxist
dominated Jawaharlal Nehru University and Muslim separatist Aligarh Muslim
University. They were allowed to provide consultants and experts on all
educational matters. As a result, these two academically undistinguished but
politically opportunistic universities have come to command resources and
influence out of all proportion to their merit.
A single example should help give an idea of the dangers of
this centralized feudal educational policy. For over 20 years, H.S. Khan headed
the history and sociology division of the NCERT. He is known to hold the view
that India became civilized only through the introduction of Islam. This
incidentally is also the official Pakistani line. This was also the view of
Nurul Hassan who was of course the patron of H.S. Khan. This is taking the
Aryan invasion idea a giant step forward (or backward).
In 1986, on Khan's initiative, textbook writers in all the
states were directed to change the version of history to accord with the
anti-Hindu model. Specific guidelines were issued to all the states instructing
them not to glorify any period of history — meaning any Hindu period — as a
Golden Age; the Gupta period therefore was not to be glorified despite its
great achievements. As a further step in de-Hinduisation and rehabilitation of
tyrannical Muslim rulers, Hindu leaders like Shivaji, Chandrashekara Azad and
Rana Pratap were not to be described as freedom fighters against alien rule,
but treated as terrorists who opposed 'civilized and civilizing' rulers like
Aurangazeb. As a result, the anti-Hindu agenda, which had been gaining strength
since the early 1950s, accelerated dramatically under the feudal regime of
Nurul Hassan. Only now, following the rout of the Congress party in the 1999
elections, their monopoly has come under threat. This has made these men and
women resort to desperate measures like what is coming out in the ICHR
scandals.
From all this two points become clear. First, the history being
taught in Indian schools and colleges was created by colonial masters and their
willing servants to serve anti-national interests and damage India’s heritage
and culture. Second, institutions created to serve national educational goals
were dominated by self-serving individuals who are hostile to national
aspirations. The result is that institutions like the ICHR fell into the hands
of mediocre scholars with political influence. They have contributed little of
significance because of their worship of the West and their inferiority
complex. They have built no Indian schools of thought, especially in history.
This had been foreseen by Sri Aurobindo long ago when he wrote:
"[That] Indian scholars have not
been able to form themselves into a great and independent school of learning is
due to two causes: the miserable scantiness of the mastery of Sanskrit provided
by our universities, crippling to all but born scholars, and our lack of sturdy
independence which makes us over-ready to defer to European [and Western]
authority."
There is another problem. In the fifty years after
independence, the Government and its agencies like the ICHR, NCERT and NIEPA
have supported only such scholars who are weak in scholarship and afraid of
thinking independently, but willing to toe the official line. They are products
of the Macaulayite education system, which was created to produce colonial
servants and not independent thinkers. When we look at scholars doing
independent work like Natwar Jha, David Frawley, R.C. Majumdar, Shriakant
Talageri, Sita Ram Goel and others, none of them has received support from the
Government. (I too have received no support though I have worked closely with
several distinguished scholars including Jha and Frawley on important problems
like the decipherment of the Indus script.)
This shows that the Government has been supporting
political favorites rather than capable scholars. When we look at Government
sponsored scholars the picture is dismal. The only time anyone hears about them
is when there is a scandal or a political dispute like the ICHR scandal. They
have no important contributions that can be compared to, say, the decipherment
of the Indus Script. They are political hangers-on rather than historians. They
are able to get away with it because of their monopoly hold over the
establishment.
It is clear that a self-respecting nation like India cannot
allow this disgraceful state of affairs to continue. It cannot have its
children’s education controlled by men and women with slavish minds and a
hostile attitude towards the nation and its history and culture. The first step
is to break the monopoly of these people, which has already begun to happen to
some extent. But this is only because there is a Government in power that is
more nationalistic in orientation than previous Governments. A more permanent
solution should be found so that history and education are not subject to the
whims of politicians and special interests.
So both the causes and the consequences of this domination
by anti-national interests are clear. The question now is how to remedy the
situation? The first step would be to rewrite history books based on the latest
findings and the primary sources. But this is not enough, for history can
change as more discoveries are made. To ensure a free-spirited inquiry and
unfettered research, there should be no Government organizations that tell
educators and scholars how to write and teach history. This means disbanding
organizations like NIEPA and NCERT. They have become little more than centers
for thought control and political propaganda. The ICHR should be reorganized
strictly as a funding agency that invites and funds proposals. For any major
research program, several scholars and/or groups of scholars should be funded
so that independent schools of thoughts can flourish. It should never be
allowed to become the monopoly of a single ideological advocacy group as
happened under the Congress regime.
But ultimately, the nation’s education system should be
changed to encourage to independent and critical thinking. No subject or
personality should be placed beyond review and criticism. As Karl Popper once
observed: "If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit
of deference to great men. Great men make great mistakes." This means that
no one — be he Mahatma, Prophet or anything else — can be put beyond the pale
of review and criticism.
Popper of course was speaking in the context of the Western
Civilization. Indian sages have also expressed similar views. In his Vishnu-tattva-vinirnaya,
Sri Madhvacharya said:
"Never accept as authority the word of any human.
Humans are subject to error and deception. One deludes oneself in believing
that there was a man who was free of error and beyond deception, and he alone
was the author of any text."
And Bhagavan Buddha said: "Accept nothing on my
authority. Think, and be a lamp unto thyself."
This should be the guiding principle of education and
intellectual life.
Additional reading
This is only a brief summary of the distortions deliberately
introduced into Indian history, first by the British and then by their
followers in the Government and the intelligentsia. I have written this section
as a guide for readers who want to follow up on the topics discussed in this
essay. The literature on the subjects discussed in this essay is huge, but I
will point to a few easily available works.
On ancient India, there have been so many new discoveries
that most books written before 1985 or so are more or less obsolete. The book Vedic
Aryans and the Origins of Civilization by N.S. Rajaram and David Frawley
(Voice of India, New Delhi) gives a picture of Vedic India based on primary
sources and scientific evidence. The two volumes by Shrikant Talageri, Aryan
Invasion Theory, A Reappraisal and Rigveda— A Historical Analysis (Aditya
Prakashan, Delhi) provide a comprehensive study of the Vedic and Puranic
sources. The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India by David Frawley (Voice
of India) is a popular account of the subject. The Politics of History by
N.S. Rajaram (Voice of India) is a systematic study of the colonial and
missionary background to the Aryan invasion theory. Missionaries in India by
Arun Shourie (Harper Collins, New Delhi) discusses in detail the Christian
missionary background to the British colonial politics.
For a detailed discussion of the decipherment of the Indus
script and its ramifications see The Deciphered Indus Script by N. Jha
and N.S. Rajaram (Aditya Prakashan, Delhi). For a popular account of the new
picture of ancient India based on the latest discoveries including the
decipherment, see From Sarasvati River to the Indus Script by N.S.
Rajaram (Mitra Madhyama, Bangalore).
When we come to the medieval period, there is no single
work that is satisfactory. The most comprehensive account is the eight-volume History
of India as Told by Its Own Historians translated by Elliot and Dowson,
recently reissued by DK Publishers of Delhi. Several works by K.S. Lal,
including The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India, Twilight of the Sultanate,
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India and Muslim Slave System in
Medieval India (Aditya Prakashan, Delhi) are highly informative. Jihad:
The Islamic Concept of Permanent War by Suhas Majumdar (Voice of India) is
a brilliant study of the subject. The best source for understanding the
ideology of Islam (and Jihad) and its application in India is The Calcutta
Quran Petition by Sita Ram Goel (Voice of India, Delhi). Sita Ram Goel has
also written the two-volume Hindu Temples, What Happened to Them? (Voice
of India), which is a monumental compilation relating to the temples destroyed
in Medieval India. His book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (Voice
of India) is a highly readable summary. Voice of India has also published
several volumes on the Ayodhya dispute. See for example Profiles in
Deception: Ayodhya and the Dead Sea Scrolls by N.S. Rajaram (Voice of
India). See Negationism in India by Koenraad Elst (Voice of India) for a
brilliant account of the falsification of history by secularist historians.
For the modern period also there are few satisfactory books
that view the freedom movement objectively. The best by far is the three-volume
History of the Freedom Movement in India by R.C. Majumdar (Firma-KLM,
Calcutta). The Tragic Story of Partition by H.V. Seshadri (Jagarana
Prakashan) is an excellent account of the Congress blunders that led to the
tragedy. Muslim Separatism, Causes and Consequences by Sita Ram Goel
(Voice of India) is a valuable summary of the same topic but with some new
insights. Gandhi, Khilafat and the National Movement by N.S. Rajaram
(Sahitya Sindhu, Bangalore) offers a revisionist view as well as eyewitness
accounts of the sadly neglected Mopla Rebellion. For the betrayal of Tibet and
the India-China relations, The Fate of Tibet by Claude Arpi (Har-Anand,
New Delhi) is the best source. India Betrayed: Role of Nehru by Brigadier B.N. Sharma (Manas, New Delhi) is a valuable
source on the India-China relations including the border problem.
For a thorough expose of the corruption of national
institutions, see Eminent Historians by Arun Shourie (Harper-Collins,
New Delhi) and also Profiles in Deception by N.S. Rajaram (Voice of
India, New Delhi).
On the subject of spirituality as the foundation of
nationalism, there are several works, from Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda
to our own times. A collection of essays on the Sri Aurobindo’s sayings on
nationalism called India’s Rebirth (Mira-Aditi Centre of Mysore) is
indispensable for understanding the spiritual foundation of nationalism. These
are further explored and expanded in A Hindu View of the World by N.S.
Rajaram (Voice of India, New Delhi). The two books by David Frawley Arise
Arjuna and Awaken Bharata (Voice of India, New Delhi) expand on
these themes as well as analyzing the contemporary Indian scene.