Author: Radha Rajan
Publication: Vijayvaani.com
Date: December 24, 2013
URL: http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3054
Modi as PM – sign of Hindu resurgence: Being anti-Modi and hatred for Modi is the essence of Gandhi’s anti-Hindu freedom struggle and anti-Hindu Nehruvian secularism. The visceral hatred and venom-laced political reaction to Modi’s unstoppable ascent is a continuation of Gandhi’s response to first Tilak, Savarkar, Aurobindo and later Sardar Patel; and Nehru’s response to Savarkar, Patel and the RSS.
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To label the Generic Church-driven anti-Hindu orientation of Indian polity as ‘secular versus communal’ is to obfuscate the truth. This is war between Hindu nationalists and all anti-Hindu political mercenaries including renegade Hindus in political parties, media and academe, the Abrahamic cults and their supporters. Irrespective of how Modi and the Rest see this, for Hindu nationalists, this all out war - Modi versus the Rest is a war for survival – of Hindus and the Hindu homeland. It is not overstating a fact that every Hindu feels he has a stake in Elections 2014.
To state the obvious -
· No political party or politician can remain in electoral politics on an explicit anti-Hindu platform; but in the absence of any distinct ideology and no commitment to even minimal good governance, these need the anti-Hindu posture and the tactical and consolidated Abrahamic minority vote to remain a viable political entity
· To garner the minority vote, anti-Hindu politicians pay jizya of politics of minority-ism under two broad categories: [1] Give anti-Hindu politics a face – it was Tilak, Aurobindo and Savarkar at the turn of the twentieth century, it is the RSS and Modi now. Gandhi could publicly insult and humiliate Tilak, maliciously ignore Aurobindo, with criminal self-interest evict proclaimed Hindus KM Munshi and NB Khare from the INC and marginalize Patel in 1946 because he was the Mahatma; but for Digvijay Singh, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and other mercenaries who cannot risk being publicly anti-Hindu, it costs nothing to be anti-RSS and anti-Modi; and [2] Practice naked politics of minority-ism, but give it the fig-leaf of constitutional secularism or even better, call it Gandhi’s vision of India and never mind if in action it is nothing less than feeding the anti-Hindu monster.
From clairvoyant Arundhati Roy (she declared recently with full certainty that Modi will not become prime minister in 2014), Sonia Gandhi and Teesta Setalvad to Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik, the reasons cited to hate Modi all go back to the fundamental reason why the British manufactured the INC in 1885, followed by Gandhi and his years as destructive political leader of the INC. It was Gandhi and the Indian National Congress (that Gandhi intentionally and successfully de-Hinduised), which gave away Hindu territory to the Muslim League (as plotted and executed by Imperial Britain) in 1947. A politically dispirited INC was disarmed, unmanned and weakened by the Mahatma over a period lasting three decades, an INC which had no self-conscious political commitment to anything Hindu and could therefore not stop the Muslim League from vivisecting the Hindu nation to create another Dar-ul Islam.
The country’s polity is burdened till today by Gandhi’s unrelenting political disempowerment of Hindus; the intense hatred for Modi is a Gandhian legacy where hatred is an effective mask to hide fear; fear of Modi is given the fig-leaf of dislike for Modi and “his brand of politics”. America’s USCIRF and the American Congress have already begun breast-beating in frustration.
http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1899&Itemid=1
http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/protect-indias-religious-minorities-us-house-resolution/article5368540.ece
Not all the verbose annual reports on religious freedom, terrorism and human rights by the US State Department and the USCIRF and special sessions on the Gujarat riots which designated India “country of interest” and Modi “person of interest” has deterred India’s Hindus from uniting behind Modi. “Person of interest”, “country of interest” is Americanism for individuals whom America holds guilty – from pickpockets and cattle rustlers to heads of government of target countries which were unwilling to serve American interests. The US government has once again deployed the USCIRF and the American Congress against Narendra Modi in the fond hope that Modi and his mammoth Hindu following will start shaking in their knees.
What America did to a senior Indian Diplomat in New York is a prelude of things to come if Modi becomes Prime Minister. America will stop at nothing to punish those who shake the edifice of American World Order.
So why do they all fear and hate Modi so much?
1. While post-Godhra Gujarat riots of 2002 makes for designer fig-leaf, we must look elsewhere for the real reason to dislike Modi. Modi made no bones about the fact that he was an RSS pracharak; but unlike the standard RSS pracharak he chose the challenging arena of electoral politics to serve the Hindu nation; Modi chose to be the in-your-face tea-vendor turned RSS pracharak-turned-Chief Minister of Gujarat and is now threatening to be the next in-your-face RSS pracharak-turned Prime Minister in 2014, instead of choosing to be a self-effacing sharirik pramukh or bauddhik pramukh in Nagpur.
The fear consuming the US State Department, USCIRF, Sonia Gandhi, Teesta Setalvad and all political mercenaries is understandable. Their worst nightmare is now reality – the hitherto in potentia RSS-in-politics has materialized in the form of Narendra Modi. Vajpayee and Advani were at best notional Hindus and notional RSS swayamsevaks.
Just as motivated propaganda by renegade Hindus and the Muslim League projected Gandhi as the ideal Hindu leading an “accommodative” INC in contrast to a determined Jinnah leading the avowedly Islamic Muslim League, motivated politics of minority-ism exemplified by the three Yadavs – Sharad, Lalu and Mulayam - projects Vajpayee, in contrast to Narendra Modi, as the ideal Hindu who led an “accommodative” BJP. Modi, until he is tamed and pacified by America to say otherwise or acts to the detriment of Hindu interests, is still looked upon by his admirers and adversaries alike, as RSS pracharak in active politics
2. The RSS is feared and therefore disliked because the RSS makes no bones about India being a Hindu nation and the RSS being a Hindu nationalist organization; and therefore antithetic to Gandhi’s and Congress’ fantasies about the face and shape of post 1947 India. Gandhi rejected the notion that Ramrajya was Hindu nation administered by Hindu state. Gandhi, in keeping with his bible selling years in South Africa and his monotheist approach to Hinduism, to the USCIRF’s delight, equated Ramrajya with the Muslim Khudai Raj and the Christian Kingdom of God. Modi’s enemies are clinging desperately to Gandhi’s fantasies hoping that in time they will break Modi and the RSS like the British government broke the backbone of the Nationalist faction of the INC which split in Surat in December 1907 over the issue of who should be elected President.
Let no one commit the mistake of thinking that Ramrajya means a rule of the Hindus. My Rama is another name for Khuda or God. I want Khudai Raj which is the same thing as the Kingdom of God on earth. The rule of the first four caliphs was somewhat comparable to it. (Speech at a prayer meeting, Haimchar, February 26, 1947, CWMG Vol. 94, page 76 and Radha Rajan, Eclipse of the Hindu Nation: Gandhi and his Freedom Struggle Chapter 7, Unraveling the Mahatma, page 460)
Gandhi did not stop with his queer interpretation of Hindu scriptures and itihaasa; he had to diminish and belittle everything Hindu – Hindu temples, Hindu sanyasis, Hindu customs and traditions and critically during the 1940s decade, Hindu rulers, kings and princes, to implement the colonial agenda of seeking to find the holy grail of Hindu-Muslim unity; Gandhi was pre-occupied with this delusory unity until 1947 when Gandhi lost nothing but the Hindu nation lost territory.
Thousands of people doubtless look upon Rama and Krishna as historical figures and literally believe that God came down in person on earth in the form of Rama the son of Dasaratha, and that by worshipping him one can attain salvation. History, imagination and truth have got so inextricably mixed up, it is next to impossible to disentangle them. I have accepted all the names and forms attributed to God as symbols denoting one formless omnipotent Rama. (Who is Rama, New Delhi, May 26, 1946, CWMG Vol. 91, pp 44-45)
Thinking of the historical Rama of Valmiki or Tulsidas, one was liable to have many doubts as for instance why Rama banished Sita and so on. But when one thought of Ramanama in the abstract forgetting who Rama was and what he did, Rama at once became omnipresent and omnipotent God, above doubt and criticism. (CWMG, Vol. 89, pp 298-99; Eclipse of the Hindu Nation, page 467 footnote 61)
Such was Gandhi’s standing among people inside and outside the INC he could pass off drivel as high wisdom. In a letter to Jehangir Patel at Sevagram on August 8, 1946, Gandhi presents his own comical description of Ramanama thus –
Remember that Ramanama is the unfailing remedy for eradicating malaria. Having become a trustee of a nature-cure institution, you have got to appreciate this thing. And Ramanama is the same as Ahurmazda. (CWMG vol. 91, page 430, Eclipse of the Hindu Nation, page 448, footnote 31)
Gandhi had an equally bizarre and un-Hindu interpretation of the Bhagwad Gita. His views on the Bhagwad Gita in 1919 came at a time when Tilak during his six years internment in the Mandalay prison penned his Srimad Bhagwad Gita Rahasya, a handbook on karmayoga. Tilak’s scholarly commentary on the Bhagwad Gita is also known as Karmayoga sastra. Gandhi returned to India in a hurry in 1915 because he had to occupy the position as thinker and leader of the INC – a position that empire loyalist Gokhale, aging and now quite ill, kept in readiness for him after the British had removed first Aurobindo, next Tilak and then Savarkar from public life.
Tilak’s Bhagwad Gita as Karmayoga and Gandhi’s Bhagwad Gita as ‘love force’
Gandhi was brought back from South Africa to re-direct the INC and the Hindus of the country away from armed resistance to British rule; Gandhi was tasked with dousing the fire of political freedom in the hearts of people. He had to give the INC a new direction and he had to make ordinary Hindus follow him in that direction. To do that Gandhi had to diminish Tilak and his fiery, Hindu nationalist writings.
There was little doubt that Tilak, through Karmayoga Sastra was renewing the call to action – to continue with the freedom struggle that was interrupted with his arrest and with Aurobindo choosing spirituality over political kurukshetra. Gandhi had to debunk Tilak’s bhashya and give the Sri Bhagwad Gita his own interpretation which every ordinary Hindu on the street knew was war between the forces of dharma and adharma on a real battlefield. This was not a fictional story about intra-family dispute or feud. The essence of Srikrshna’s political discourse to Arjuna on the battlefield was that adharma had to be ended even if it was embodied in relatives and family – that was the primary kshatriya dharma. And yet this is what the Mahatma had to say about the Bhagwad Gita:
I shall now endeavor to consider in all humility a doubt raised by some Hindu friends regarding the meaning of the Bhagwad Gita. They say that in the Bhagwad Gita Srikrishna has encouraged Arjuna to slay his relations and they therefore argue that there is warrant in this work for violence and that there is no satyagraha in it. Now the Bhagwad Gita is not a historical work, it is a great religious book, summing up the teaching of all religions. The poet has seized the occasion of the war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas on the field of Kurukshetra for drawing attention to the war going on in our bodies between the forces of good (Pandavas) and the forces of evil (Kauravas).
To confuse the description of this universally acknowledged spiritual war with momentary world strife is to call holy unholy. We who are saturated with the teachings of the Bhagwad Gita but who do not pretend to any special spiritual qualifications, do not draw out sword against our relations whenever they perpetuate injustice but we win them over by our affection for them.
That encouragement for violence can be deduced from the Bhagwad Gita demonstrates the deadliness of kaliyuga. I have found nothing but love in every page of the Gita and I hope and pray that everyone will have similar experience on Sunday. (Excerpts from True meaning of Bhagwad Gita’s teachings, May 8, 1918, CWMG Vol. 17, pp 25-26)
This gibberish pronounced with élan was not Gandhi of the1890s decade in South Africa while under the thrall of Jesus Christ and European Christian Missionaries; this was the Mahatma, the anointed leader of the INC in 1919 and later in 1946-47. Ten years later, in 1929 Gandhi would write his own commentary on the Bhagwad Gita - Anasakthiyoga (as always Gandhi usurped and used names and concepts previously coined and elaborated upon by other thinkers whom he had set out to debunk and dethrone). Gandhi called his commentary ‘yoga’ because Tilak’s commentary on the Gita was called ‘karmayoga sastra’. And in keeping with his Abrahamic mindset he also called it The Gospel of selfless action.
Gandhi’s intent behind writing his own ‘yoga’ was almost childishly simple. If Tilak made his commentary on the Sri Bhagwad Gita a treatise on karmayoga, calling upon Indians to act decisively and forcefully to end political enslavement, then Gandhi fulfilling the objective of why empire loyalists handed over the INC to him on a platter, had to interpret the same Bhagwad Gita to be anasaktiyoga enjoining passivity, endless self-suffering, invoking what Gandhi called ‘soul force’ inside them and experiencing ‘love force’ – any force other than real force.
Gandhi wanted people to do charkha, temple entry, Hindu-Muslim unity, promote Hindi and get their sons and daughters to marry Harijans without any expectation of political freedom. And that is why he called his commentary a gospel of selfless action - anasaktiyoga. Gandhi stood Srikrshna’s exhortation to Arjuna on the battle field in Kurukshetra, on its head.
He twisted and tortured the Hindu understanding of ahimsa, of passive resistance, into a grotesque political principle which could not deal with the Muslim League’s demand for Hindu territory.
Hindus should not harbor anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives. None should fear death. Birth and death are inevitable for every human being. Why should we then rejoice or grieve? If we die with a smile we shall enter into a new life, we shall be ushering in a new India. (Prayer meeting, April 6, 1947, New Delhi, CWMG Vol. 94 page 249)
That nation is great which rests its head upon death as its pillow. Those who defy death are free from all fear. (Hind Swaraj, Chapter XVII, Passive Resistance, pp94-95)
Gandhi walked to the pinnacle of INC leadership immediately after his return to India in 1915. He was placed there for two reasons –
· To replace Tilak as leader of the masses and to replace Aurobindo as thinker who galvanized the masses
· To disarm and dis-empower the majority Hindu populace inside the INC and outside so that they would never be in a position to - (a) resist either the British Imperial government which was not going to give up India in a hurry and (b) to be so weak as to be unable to defend the territory of the nation when the British Imperial government and the Muslim League made vivisection a package deal with transfer of power
Gandhi, notwithstanding the narration in treacherous writing of distorted and even false history, did exactly that. He declared that the Congress would not forcefully resist the British or the Muslims. For a man who did not allow any other Hindu political voice other than his own in the country during three decades of his farcical freedom struggle, Gandhi continued to sell the lemon that Muslims should believe in the idea of his India and have faith in Gandhi’s “Indian-ness”. Hindus of the country had no other vehicle except the INC and when Gandhi weakened the INC he actually weakened the Hindus and rendered the Hindu voice powerless to be heard.
The greatest coercion is British coercion. And the Congress is impatient to get out of that coercion. My hope in desiring a Constituent Assembly is that whether the Muslims are represented by the Muslim League mentality or any other, the representatives when they are face to face with the reality will not think of cutting up India according to religion but will regard India as an indivisible whole and discover a national, that is, Indian solution of even especially Muslim questions.
But if the hope is frustrated, the Congress cannot forcibly resist the express will of the Muslims of India. Needless to say Congress can never seek the assistance of British forces to resist the vivisection. It is the Muslims who will impose their will by force singly or with British assistance on an unresisting India.
If I can carry the Congress with me, I would not put the Muslims to the trouble of using force. I would be ruled by them for it would still be Indian rule. In other words the Congress will have only a non-violent approach to every question and difficulty arising. (Question Box, Ramgarh, March 17, 1940, CWMG Vol. 78, page 66)
The greatest coercion was not British coercion, but even intelligent leaders like Rajaji and Patel who had their own doubts about Gandhi’s political competence remained silent all through their years with Gandhi. Muslim coercion was worse because it was coercion from within the country and also because it had recourse to jihad. This was Gandhi’s political principle in essence and this was in 1940. Gandhi “hoped” that Muslims will discover a “national, that is, Indian solution” to Muslim issues. What kind of “Indian” and what kind of “national” Gandhi did not specify. He did not have to. The only India that remained a viable force which was not Muslim was Hindu. But then Gandhi had already made it clear that the Congress was not a Hindu organization. If the Congress was not a Hindu organization and Gandhi wanted an “Indian” solution to the Muslim question which was not Islamic separatist and secessionist, which “Indian” solution did he have in mind except the solution of the weak, disarmed and passive Hindu nation?
It was but a small step for Indian polity from Gandhi’s non-Hindu “Indian” to Nehru’s anti-Hindu “Indian”.
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