Kindle Notes & Highlights
Started reading
January 21, 2019
The Mahatma murder case was the end of the HMS as a political alternative to the Congress. Immediately after the murder the party was banned, its offices closed down (if not burnt down by mobs), its workers arrested. Less well-known is that the followers of the apostle of nonviolence murdered an unknown number of Brahmins, especially Chitpavan Brahmins, the caste to which the murderer belonged.
Its last MP so far was Mahant Avaidyanath, elected from Gorakhpur in 1989,
on several points, Foreign Affairs Minister A.B. Vajpayee (1925) out-Nehrued the Nehruvians. On a visit to China, he formally expressed India’s acceptance of China’s claim that Tibet is an integral part of China, a position diametrically opposed to the one stated in the BJS election manifestoes.
In the Janata interregnum (1977-79), former BJS members constituted the largest faction in the Janata Party parliamentary representation, c. 95 out of 295. Yet, this did not in the least lead to any kind of “hinduization” of the polity: they did not influence policy in proportion to their numerical strength (one in three), nor even to the extent of one half or one tenth or one percent of their strength. It remains puzzling that all manner of India-watchers have painted grim doomsday scenarios about “Hindu theocracy” in case of a Hindu nationalist majority, when the historical experience of the
...more
The VHP shot to prominence (or notoriety) with the campaign for the liberation of the Hindu sacred sites in Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi. This issue had been on its agenda since its foundation in 1964, but became a priority in 1986. That was when a major concession to Muslim pressure on an issue of the separate Muslim Personal Law (the Shah Bano affair) forced the Rajiv Gandhi government to make a compensatory gesture to Hindu sensibilities.
In 1994, the Supreme Court rejected a request from the Narasimha Rao Government to express an opinion on the historical question. At any rate, most Muslim claimants insist that even undeniable evidence that the mosque had been built in forcible replacement of a temple does not invalidate their claim. So, the litigation which started in 1950 has continued, with little promise of a satisfactory verdict.
in terms of death toll, the five years before mid-January 1993 (when the post-demolition fervour had spent itself) with the five subsequent years, one finds a contrast of thousands vs dozens. One cannot deny that among the unforeseen effects of the demolition, the best surprise was a salutory psychological shock which made people reconsider the Hindu-Muslim polarization. This can hardly be counted as a “merit” of the demolishers, but all the same, it ought to cool tempers when the demolition is evaluated in retrospect.
Sushma Swaraj even dismissed any further investment of energy into the Ayodhya issue with a laconical: “You cannot cash a cheque twice”, as if to confirm the suspicion that Ayodhya had never been anything except an electoral tactic for the BJP.
BJP has earned a certain credit, e.g. in 1992, its UP government introduced legislation against a very popular form of corruption: copying during exams. The next Government, headed by Mulayam Singh Yadav, championed the Backward Castes cause and denounced this law as “anti-Backward” and immediately abrogated it upon coming to power in 1993.221 In 1998, the BJP reintroduced it again.
The only authentic party of the traditional Right, as that term would be understood in Europe, was the Swatantra party, a coalition of urban big business and rural aristocratic and landlord elements in which the latter were dominant.
The open princely support for the leading opposition party was the most important reason for Indira Gandhi to abolish the princes’ privileges in violation of the promises made to them at the time of their accession to the Union of India.
The BJP is in tune with the Hindu electorate to a large degree when it takes a soft line.
some of its ideas were adopted by the Eisenhower administration in its agenda for the Geneva Conference in 1955.
Great Calcutta Killing of 16 August 1946, organized by the Muslim League to give more force to the Pakistan demand.
most remarkable feature of Sita Ram Goel’s position in the Indian intellectual arena was that nobody even tried to make a serious rebuttal to his theses: the only counter-strategy has always been, and still is, “strangling by silence”, simply refusing to ever mention his name, publications and arguments.
the Home Ministry invited him to take a leadership role in the plans for a guerrilla war against the then widely-expected Chinese occupation of eastern India.
Goel’s critique of Nehru’s pro-China policies was eloquently vindicated by the Chinese invasion in October 1962,
Goel’s writings are practically boycotted in the media, both by reviewers and by journalists and scholars collecting background information on the communal problem.
he straightened and corrected the clumsily drafted BJP White Paper on Ayodhya.
S R Goel
occasion, Naipaul made waves with his assessment that “what is happening in India is a new historical awakening
his “works provide virtually a complete education in themselves
A K Coomaraswamy
No Fear by the most famous Brahmoist, Rabindranath Tagore (from Ravîndra Rachanâvalî, vol.5, p.441), which turns out to contain an unabashed glorification of sat
Prominent Congressman K.M. Munshi, who as Agent General saw to the administrative integration of Hyderabad, said: “The part played by Vandematharam brothers was accompanied with great risks. I am surprised to see them alive today”
This claim is hotly contested by the Christian missionaries, who insist that “tribals are not Hindus”. Yet, whenever tribals misbehave, e.g. by attacking Christian mission posts, Christian and pro-Christian media invariably report that “Hindu fanatics attack missions”
An illustration of media bias is the total silence about this service aspect of RSS work. Thus, after the plane crash near Delhi in November 1996, the Marxist weekly Frontline published pictures of the relief work, on which the Hindi-speaking reader can recognize RSS banners, but the captions are strictly silent about the RSS participation. The Western media have duly noted that the Islamists in Turkey and Egypt have built themselves a respected position with their social work, but the corresponding information about the RSS is systematically withheld.
the RSS uniform (originally the uniform of Congress volunteers during a Congress session in Nagpur, shortly before Dr. Hedgewar founded the RSS there),
Madhu Limaye had earlier disrupted the (admittedly not too vital) Praja Socialist Party from within, a Leftist but anti-Communist party. When he also wrecked the Janata Government, which had replaced Indira Gandhi’s Moscow-friendly regime, and which included veteran anti-Communists like Morarji Desai, Limaye was called the “one-man demolition squad” and people wondered aloud if he was in the pay of Moscow. In India, the role of foreign money is a reality, and while such rumours should be kept between brackets until tangible proof is forthcoming, they should not immediately be laughed off
...more
During the discussion on the 1996 Lok Sabha elections in the subsequent South Asia conference in Madison, Paul Brass cut short musings by some panelists about Vajpayee’s “moderate views” with the curt reminder that “Vajpayee is a dyed-in-the-wool RSS man”. This is quite right, but the question is: should this make us suspect Vajpayee’s “progressive” statements, or should it make us rethink our frozen views about RSS “Rightism
Likewise, in Belgium between 1920 and 1948, the Christian-Democrats championed the extension of voting rights to women, while the Socialists opposed it, precisely because both parties assumed that women are more religious, hence more inclined to vote for a “religious” party.
Saibal Dasgupta: “RSS tampering with ‘Shâstras’, says Sankaracharya”, Times of India, 5.1.1993. None the less, the Shankaracharya also declared: “Whatever else you write about this interview, you must also write that I fully support the demolition in Ayodhya. It was a Hindu temple and Hindus have demolished it. The Muslims have no reason to complain.
When the British left, they forgot a few files by mistake, and one of these revealed Ali’s espionage. Ali, already sent to Washington as India’s first ambassador there, was recalled and sidelined as Governor of Orissa, though Mahatma Gandhi intervened to spare him an overt fall from grace.
relative to the age and membership of this family of organizations, its literary output is quite small.
repetitive. A movement with literally millions of activists, in existence for more than seventy years, and operating in a country where opinions are free and publishing is cheap and easy, has little excuse for its very limited achievements in the intellectual processing of the situation and challenges before it. As we shall see, it does not even want an excuse, for it has deliberately chosen the non-intellectual mode of functioning.
What can I tell you? If you want to deal with such an important matter, why such amateurish improvization?
the consequences of this long-standing policy of mindless activism are bound to run their course for some more years.
The Sangh has a basic commitment to India and to Hindu culture, but beyond that, its ideological position is hazy and undeveloped.
Personal differences rather than ideological factors lie at the root of the rifts within the Sangh Parivar.
I believe that the main cause of India’s weakness is not subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see an inability or unwillingness to think—incapacity of thought or ‘thought phobia
However, modern history teaches that organization and numerical strength cannot prevent movements from failing if they don’t develop a good analysis of the situation they are facing.13 Consider the fortunes of Gandhism and Communism. Gandhi was immensely popular, and he appealed deliberately to people’s emotions, while the Communists were a fringe group, but they worked on people’s minds. Now, who won? In the 1940s, while Gandhi was still alive, the Gandhians imbibed ever-larger doses of Marxist ideas and phraseology, and started saying: “We, too, are socialists.”14 This was simply untrue, at
...more
Thus, in 1951 Nehru demanded the abdication of the democratically elected party president Purushottamdas Tandon (“an old Hindu communalist and bigot”)16 by threatening his own abdication as Prime Minister.
In modern politics, public opinion is important, not the “silent majority” which the RSS claims to represent, but vocal public opinion which influences the views of the silent majority. It is no use controlling an institution, when that institution is recruiting among people whose convictions are largely borrowed from the hostile dominant ideology.
Instead of defending Hindu polytheism against the missionary vilification of “idolatry”, the Brahmo Samaj and Arya Samaj movements claimed that monotheism was indeed right and polytheism was indeed wrong, but that Hinduism, properly understood,
Thought or opinion is not what the Sangh values, but status, and in the Nehruvian dispensation, status would imply contempt of Hindutva.
Such are the results when you make it your priority to control the ideological air space, rather than the ground level of work among the masses.
Congress and the BJP have succeeded where even Aurangzeb failed: to prevent the Hindus from honouring their heroines who braved death itself and provided inspiration for the Hindu warriors riding to their probable deaths in desperate struggles against the Muslim armies.
Nothing determines the BJP position as predictably as the fear of being associated with anything of which the secularist establishment disapproves.
Consider this reading of the BJP’s friendly face by Islamic scholar Ausaf Vasfi: “Mr. L.K. Advani has gone to the extent of saying that the BJP is not anti-minority. … For the sake of power he has not hesitated to dilute his party’s very raison d’être… it would have been far more upright morally had Mr. Advani plainly admitted his party’s Hindu character and constituency. But he wants to have the best of both worlds. It is sheer hypocrisy.
a lot of the killing of Hindus and of Indian defence personnel in Panjab, Kashmir and the North-east was made possible by the diplomatic or indirect material support which the separatists there were receiving from foreign countries; and this support, in turn, was made possible by an anti-Hindu or anti-India tilt in Western media opinion.
Hindus and others have been killed as a consequence of the absence of the Hindu or even just a neutral perspective in the international media,
if due publicity had been given to the expulsion of around 200,000 Hindus from Kashmir in early 1990 by the Muslim separatists, or to the instant expulsion of 50,000 Hindus from Kabul immediately after the Islamic conquest of the city in April 1992, this might have influenced world opinion in a pro-India and pro-Hindu sense.
