distortions in history causes and consequences

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Excerpt From 'Nationalism And Distortions In Indian History' By Dr. N.S. Rajaram

Preface

Chapter I Culture and nationalism

Introduction: struggle for nationhood

Historical mythmaking

Why bring back foreign rule?

Always looking outside India

Nationalism or colonialism by proxy?

Decadent elite, incapable of leadership

National education

Nationalism and spiritualism

Chapter II Distortions in Indian history

Introduction: roots of distortion

Ancient India: Age of freedom and synthesis

Unity of India is of untold antiquity

Medieval India: Dark Age and conflict

The Freedom Movement

Independent India: dynastic blunders

Nehru and the China-Tibet blunder

Kargil and its lessons

Corruption of national institutions

What should be done?

Additional reading
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Preface

The first half century of Indias existence as a free nation is characterized by two significant failures: first, a failure to define the concept ofIndia as a nation; second, a failure to evolve national institutions in education and intellectual life. In other words, a comprehensive failure todefine a vision of nationalism rooted in the countrys history and culture. The result is that anti-national forces have had a field day, seriouslyundermining national security. Since these fifty years have been dominated by the Congress Party by the Nehru-Gandhi family in particular the party and the dynasty cannot escape responsibility for these momentous failures.

I have written this little book to meet a specific need. There is a great deal of interest among young people about the history of India, whichmany correctly believe to have been distorted by interests hostile to the nation. I receive repeated requests from organizations all over the

country to speak on these topics. It is impossible for me to honor even a small fraction of them. But there is no denying the need for theselectures and seminars. At this time there is a shortage of people who can speak and write on these subjects. I hope this little book willencourage young people to develop their own study groups to meet the need that I cannot personally meet. The final section on additionalreadings should help in this regard.

To return to the main theme of this book, most nations distort their history to enhance achievements and build their national spirit. But in India,the situation in the first fifty years since independence has been the reverse of this. Indian history has been distorted to favor ideas and groupshostile to national interests. The result is that students are brought up to be apologetic and even ashamed of their history and tradition, despitehaving one of the greatest heritages in the world, if not the greatest. This is not an accident. During the colonial era, it was natural that theBritish should have established institutions and an education system that promoted their own interests. But for fifty years after independence,the same values and instit utions were perpetuated by successors of the British.

These successors to colonial rulers identify themselves with alien values and their former rulers to such an extent that they are implacably

hostile to anything Indian, especially Hindu. Advances in knowledge brought about by archaeology and other sciences did not make them giveup discredited versions rooted in the colonial past. The result is a version of history that is not only unworthy of a great nation but also mostlyfalse. This small volume is meant partly as a corrective. I have tried also to identify the causes and suggested some remedies.

My goal in writing this little volume is therefore twofold. First, I want to expose and highlight the magnitude of the failures and distortions andidentify their causes. Second, I want young people to go to the sources given in the readings to develop their own independent study groupsand conduct seminars. This will go towards building an intellectual infrastructure rooted in Indian history and culture in contrast to copies ofdefunct colonial values that dominates the intellectual scene today.

N.S. Rajaram April 2000



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CHAPTER I

CULTURE AND NATIONALISM

Struggle for nationhood

It is a great honor for me to be invited to deliver the Second Radha Nath Phukan Memorial Lecture. I am particularly happy to beat the Vivekananda Kendra Institute of Culture, which is one of the premier institutions of its kind with an outstanding record ofscholarship and service. I am close to the Vivekananda Kendra, with many friends in the organization. Sri P. Parameswaran is anesteemed friend of mine, as are Dr. Nagaratna, Sri Raghuram and Dr. Nagendra of Bangalore.

For the topic for my lecture today, I have chosen Culture and Nationalism. My interest is mainly ancient history, especially Vedichistory. I rarely take public positions on issues of contemporary politics. In fact, some of my friends joke that my interest in theworld stops at 2000 BC, when the Vedic river Sarasvati stopped flowing. But here I will break from this practice and say somethingabout Indias Freedom Movement and its relationship to current events. This is because what I see in India today is a strugglebetween a rising historical awareness of a people belonging to a long suppressed ancient civilization and the residual forces of itscolonial past. It is in fact a struggle between Indian nationalism and the agents of past imperialisms.

In this regard, some of the things I have to say in this lecture may come to you as a surprise and even a shock. This is particularlythe case with what all of us learnt in school about the Freedom Movement and some of its leaders. One of the points I want tomake is that what we have been told was the Freedom Movement happened to be only one spoke of the wheel of history anaspect that has been blown out of proportion to help some vested interests. An accurate history of events and forces leading toIndian independence is yet to be written. Ill get to this point later, but first a few words about the role of history in thepreservation of culture and inspiring nationalism.

India is unique among the nations of the world in that it is rooted in a spiritual civilization. There are forces at work today thatwant to suppress its spirituality and replace it with a crassly materialistic system. This is how I read the political struggle going onin the country today. As I noted earlier, I normally do not take a public position on politics and political parties. But I am makingan exception to this because I see the present political turmoil as the outcome of forces of materialism mostly destructive innature trying to impose an alien materialistic culture camouflaged assecularism. If they succeed, India will share the fateother ancient nations that were destroyed by the imposition of materialistic ideologies. Greece and Egypt are examples from theancient world. American Indian civilizations destroyed by the Catholic empires of Spain and Portugal are also examples ofthe same kind. In our own time, China is engaged in destroying the highly spiritual culture of Tibet. All that the destroyers haveleft in these countries are imitative societies with little to call their own. To be convinced of this, all you have to do is visit anancient country like Egypt, Greece or Mexico and see the glaring contrast between their wonderful monuments and their currentcultural deprivation. This is what a materialistic ideology invariably does to a civilization.

The destruction of any civilization is always done through distorting its history. A version of history is created to turn the victims intovillains and the destroyers into heroes. So in defending a civilization, it is extremely important for the leaders to preserve andprotect its culture and traditions. Monuments can come and go, but an awareness of history and culture must be preserved. Ourancient sages and medieval heroes largely succeeded in this. That is why our civilization has survived the assault of theocraticand imperialistic forces, while other ancient civilizations failed. As a young French student of the Vedas, Jean Le Me wrote:

"Precious stones or durable materials gold, silver, bronze, marble, onyx or granite have been used by ancient people inan attempt to immortalize themselves. Not so however the ancient Vedic Aryans. They turned to what may seem the mostvolatile and insubstantial material of allthe spoken word.. .

"The pyramids have been eroded by the desert wind, the marble broken by earthquakes, and the gold stolen by robbers, whilethe Veda is recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations, traveling like a great wave through the living substance of


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mind."

But today, fifty years after independence, a different picture stands before us. Instead of trying to preserve and perpetuate itsancient heritage, and build upon it, the political party that claims to have brought freedom from colonial rule is trying to glorifythe destroyers and even restore foreign rule! How do we explain this? It is my contention that in the past fifty years, that is, theperiod after independence, the leaders have failed to build national institutions rooted in the culture and the history of the land.Instead, they have been trying to import ideas and models from their former colonial masters. This has now reached its absurdlimit with the party claiming to have fought for freedom from European rule asking a European to lead them and the country! Thisis enough to make one wonder if these leaders really understand the meaning of nationalism. I hope to show you that they do notand never did.

How did this sorry state come to pass, and what is the remedy? These are the questions that Ill try to answer in this lecture, butfirst some background on how history comes to be written. As I pointed out, distortion of history is the principal weapon used inthe destruction of any civilization. This is what I want to highlight next.

Historical mythmaking

To the victor belong the spoils it is said. So does history. In more homely language, President Harry Truman said: "History isalways written by the winner." By this he meant that the victorious side invariably seeks to impose a version of history that showsitself and its leaders in the most favorable light. The truth of this is reflected in the way history books were written after Indiagained independence. They dinned into the heads of impressionable young students like myself, that the Congress party and itsleaders fought long and hard to free the country from European domination. In particular, our history books told us of theHerculean struggles of Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru without which India would have remained a British colony. And likemost individuals of my generation, I accepted it as truth. Being a student of science and technology, I had little reason either toquestion or critically analyze this cozy view.

The reality is quite different. The Congress party, having inherited the Government from the British, managed to hold on to it fornearly forty years, and remained in a position to decide the fate of governments for another ten. The person responsible for thissmooth transfer of power, allowing India to have a functioning government at the time of independence was Sardar Patel, butthat is a different story. This side of Patels achievement is not widely known.

As a result, its leaders (and followers) had ample time and opportunity to create and spread their own version of history thewinners version in President Trumans words. There have always been dissenting voices from a nationalist like VeerSavarkar to a truly great historian like R.C. Majumdar who wrote a monumental, three volume History of the Freedom Movementin India. But it was easy to ignore them because the Congress controlled all areas of national life from politics to education.

As I just noted, through most of my life I had little reason or even time to doubt this version. In the last few years, however,my own studies in history made me seriously question this comforting story that the Congress and its leaders brought Indiafreedom from European rule. Here is my problem with this view: if the Congress fought so hard for freedom from colonial rule,why is it now working so hard to hand over the country to a European woman of little accomplishment and no record of service toIndia? Are they so bereft of talent and vision that they cannot find a man or woman among nearly a thousand million inhabitantsof the land? I cannot help contrasting it with the scene in the United States. Before every presidential election, dozens ofAmericans enter the arena to serve the country. After a grueling primary campaign, lasting several months, two candidatesrepresenting the two major parties fight it out for the presidency. This indicates that the culture in the United States encouragesAmericans to take leadership responsibility, while in India, members of the Congress supported elite seek only to servesomeone who can give them status through reflected glory. Instead of wanting to be leaders, they wish only to be servants andcourtiers. This is an important point that Ill take up later.

In making this point, I refer of course to Smt Sonia Gandhi, the Italian born widow of Rajiv Gandhi. She is not only a foreigner;she has not shown the slightest concern for the welfare of the people of India. This is evident from her conduct in Bihar, where


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her reversal of stand over Presidents Rule led to massacres of innocent people about which she had nothing to say. Today,neither she nor her followers dare set foot in Bihar. I do not know what made her change her stand on Bihar overnight. I dontknow why she and her followers never bothered to visit the victims of the tragedy. My point is, why does the Congress party,which supposedly fought for freedom against colonial rule, want to make a person like her the prime minister of India? So there isa clear mismatch between the claims of the Congress party as a nationalist force that fought against foreign rule and its actualconduct.

The question then is what made India free? There are two basic reasons: the mismanagement of the war economy by WinstonChurchill, and the nationalization of the Indian armed forces. Prime Minister Attlee, who made the decision to grant freedomto India, is on record as having said: "The most important were the activities of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose which weakened thevery foundation of the attachment of the Indian land and naval forces to the British Government." It is worth noting that not only

India, but also most countries of the British Empire became free after the Second World War. The Indian Army was the prop of theEmpire, but Indian soldiers were no longer prepared to fight to save the British Empire. An objective history of the changes thatbrought about Indias freedom following the Second World War is yet to be written. Mujumdars three-volume History of theFreedom Movement in India is the best that I have read.)

This is only the tip of the iceberg. This strange behavior on the part of the Congress shows it in its true colors not as anationalistic party, but the inheritor of colonial and imperialistic ideologies like Marxism and the White Mans Burden. Iwant to take this point and expand on it a little more by looking at the role of Congress in the Freedom Struggle. This will explainwhy it wants to bring back foreign rule.

Why bring back foreign rule?

So here is my basic point: a supposedly national party is trying desperately to hand over the responsibility of running the countryto a European woman of no accomplishments and no record of service to India. Not only that, for all practical purposes, it hasnothing else to offer the country. Incidentally, the objection to Smt Sonia Gandhi as prime minister of India cannot be dismissedas just chauvinism. Sovereign nations do not allow naturalized citizens to occupy the highest office for very weighty reasons. Inthe United States, for example, only native-born citizens can become president, vice president or chief justice of the SupremeCourt. When appointed to a responsible position, a naturalized citizen must undergo a very extensive background check by theFBI.

Even this is not proof against anti-national activity. To take an example, only recently, a naturalized American of Chinese originlooted the country of its defense secrets. So all the security precautions and the FBI background checks were of little avail. Thetruth is there is no way of ensuring that a person who has sworn loyalty to his or her adopted land will not continue to feel the pullof his native land and succumb to it. But there is a more fundamental issue: the very act of naturalization involves a change ofloyalty from the land of ones birth to the adopted land, but the naturalization process has no way of ensuring that such a persondoes not switch loyalties again. It is a different matter that most of us are not in a position to seriously affect the fate of a country,but a person holding the highest office can. So there are excellent reasons why sovereign nations do not allow foreign-born menand women to hold the highest office. This is not chauvinism, but just prudence exercised in the national interest.A country thatcannot produce leaders from among its own is unfit to be a free nation.

This brings us back to the original question: why is the Congress, which prides itself on being the party that brought freedom fromBritish rule, so anxious to hand over the country to a foreigner to rule? She has no significant achievements or record of service toqualify her for the high office that she is seeking. Her role in the recent coup attempt to take control of the Government alsoshowed that she has no scruples, nor any concern for stability or the well being of India or its people.

Always looking outside India

I believe that there is a simple explanation for this strange behavior on the part of the Congress and its leaders. I hold that thisfeature of seeking inspiration and help from beyond the borders of India has been the hallmark of the Congress party ever


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since its inception. What we are witnessing now, I suggest, is only the latest manifestation of a historic trend in the Congressparty. When we examine the history of the Congress over the past century without any preconceptions, we find that for at least thepast eighty years or so, the leaders of the Congress have always looked beyond the borders of India for their ideas andinspiration. (This is not to say that it has not produced outstanding nationalists, but only that the ideology of the party is outwardlooking, with a colonial orientation.) This failure was noted by no less a person than Sri Aurobindo. Writing as far back as 1906, heobserved:

"But the Congress started from the beginning with a misconception of the most elementary facts of politics, with its eyes turnedtowards the British Government and away from the people.

"Ever since the birth of the Congress, those who have been in the leadership of this great National Movement have persistently

denied the general public in the country the right of what shall and what shall not be said or done on their behalf and in theirname."

This was in 1906! This soon led to a clash within the Congress and its breakup into the so-called moderate andextremist wings, with Sri Aurobindo and Lokamanya Tilak being part of the extremist wing. We would now call themnationalists. (Sri Aurobindo himself seldom used the word extremist.) Although present day history books give it short shrift, theSwadeshi Movement, following the Partition of Bengal (1905) had all the marks of a national freedom struggle. With Tilakassuming undisputed leadership of the Congress, Swaraj or independence from foreign rule became its paramount goal.This was a truly national movement with a national goal. So during the period from the Partition of Bengal to the death of Tilak,there was a truly national party waging a struggle for freedom.

But following Mahatma Gandhis return from South Africa in 1916, things began to change. It should be noted that Gandhi beganas a moderate, as a follower of Gopala Krishna Gokhale. He supported the British in the First World War, and even served asa recruiting Sargent, though no longer in uniform. (Gandhi had served in the Boers War as a non-combatant.) He was notparticularly sympathetic to the cause of the national struggle for freedom. But circumstances allowed him to gain control of theCongress following Tilaks death in August 1920.

Here was an opportunity for Gandhi to lead Indians towards freedom, especially since the Congress, under Tilaks leadership,had declared Swaraj as its goal. But Gandhis behavior over the next couple of years highlights the point that I just madethatthe Congress has always looked beyond the borders of India for inspiration. Instead of le ading a national movement, Gandhi starteda gigantic non-cooperation movement in support of something called the Khilafat.

Most history books today mention the 1920 Non-Cooperation Movement, but barely note what gave rise to it the Khilafat. As aresult, most Indians believe that the Non-Cooperation Movement was the first great struggle for freedom launched by the Congressunder Gandhis leadership. It was nothing of the sort. It was a movement in support of the theocratic goals of the Khilafat: in fact,it was called the Khilafat Non-Cooperation Movement. Its aim was to persuade the British to restore the Sultan of Turkey whohad lost his empire following the First World War. This is an important point: the Khilafat Non-Cooperation Movement had nonational goals. Its demand was not freedom for India, but the restoration of a discredited theocratic ruler in far away Turkey whomthe Turks themselves didnt want. And strangely, Gandhi and the Congress supported this irrelevant goal to the extent even ofsuspending Swaraj! If anything, it was anti-national. Here is the little known story.

When the First World War ended in 1918, Ottoman Turkey, which had fought on the same side as Germany, had suffered amassive defeat. The result was the breakup of the Ottoman Empire ruled by the Sultan of Turkey who had also pretensions to thetitle of the Caliph or the leader of all Muslims. Turkeys defeat was seen as a major blow to the prestige of Islam, especially bymany Muslims and their leaders in India. They formed committees to press the British Government to restore the Sultan in amovement known as the Khilafat.

The Khilafat movement is often described as a demand by Muslims for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey to his rightful officeof the Caliph. This is a serious misrepresentation. Muslims outside India did not recognize the Turkish Sultan as Caliph; it was


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strictly an Indian movement but with a foreign focus. The Turks themselves under Kemal Ataturk eventually drove their Sultan intoexile. The last Caliph with a legitimate claim to the title was the Abbasid al-Mustasim. He had been executed by the MongolHuleku Khan (grandson of Chengiz) following the sack of Baghdad in 1258.

By no stretch of the imagination can the Khilafat be regarded an issue affecting the nation or Swaraj. In return for his support forthe Khilafat, Gandhi obtained, or thought he obtained Muslim support for launching his nationwide nonviolent non-cooperationmovement. In order to get their support, Gandhi went on to redefine Swaraj to mean support for the Khilafat. In his words:

"To the Musalmans Swaraj means, as it must, India's ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question. ... It is impossible notto sympathise with this attitude. ... I would gladly ask for the postponement of the Swaraj activity if we could advance theinterest of the Khilafat."

So Swaraj, which previously meant self-rule, became transformed overnight into support for the Khilafat to restore the Sultanof Turkey! Let us not forget that the Congress, only a year earlier, had adopted Swaraj (as independence) as its goal. Yet, Gandhiwas telling the nation that the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey whom the Turks themselves eventually kicked out wasmore important for him than Indian independence! The result was a jihad by Muslim leaders against the British that was laterturned against the Hindus. It led to the death of tens of thousands of innocent people all over India. It was particularly virulent inKerala where it is known as the Moplah Rebellion. And Swaraj as the goal did not return to the Congress until 1929. In otherwords, Gandhi and the Congress gave up the cause of freedom in support of a faraway theocratic institution called the Caliphate. Howcan this be called nationalism? And how can its leaders including Gandhi be callednational leaders?

As I just remarked, Swaraj returned to the Congress agenda only in 1929, leading to the Civil Disobedience Movement in 1930. Itwas a similar story with the Civil Disobedience Movement also. After the magnificent promise of the Dandi Salt March organized mainly by Sardar Patel Gandhi abandoned his followers in midstream in return for the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. Here iswhat happened though history books today seldom present the true facts.

The Lahore session of the Congress (1929) declared complete independence to be its goal. In fact it went further. Gandhi was putin charge of a national Civil Disobedience movement to force the British to grant independence. The leaders of the Congressclaimed that British rule had resulted in four basic disasters for the Indian people. Its manifesto said: (1) "India has been ruinedeconomically. Village industries such as hand-spinning, have been destroyed. (2) Customs and currency have been somanipulated as to heap further burden on the peasantry. Customs duties betray clear partiality for British manufactures, andrevenue from them is used not to lessen the burden on the masses but for sustaining a highly extravagant administration. (3)Politically, Indias status has never been so reduced as under the British regime. The tallest of us has to bend before foreignauthority. [Is it any different today in the Congress under the Sonia Gandhi regime?] (4) Culturally, the system of education hastorn us from our moorings, and our training has made us hug the very chains that bind us. Spiritually, compulsory disarmamenthas made us unmanly, and the presence of an army of occupation, employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit ofresistance" The Congress Working Committee declared:

"We hold it to be a crime against man and God to submit any longer to a rule that has caused this fourfold disaster to ourcountry We therefore hereby solemnly resolve to carry out the Congress instructions issued from time to time for thepurpose of establishing Purna Swaraj [complete independence]."

The goal of Civil Disobedience was Purna Swaraj complete independence. Independence Day was observed on January 26,1930, on the banks of the river Ravi. It evoked tremendous enthusiasm all over the country. Then something very strangehappened. Before the ink with which this manifesto was written had time to dry, Gandhi wrote something in his paperYoungIndia that practically sabotaged the whole thing. Instead of demanding complete independence, he listed eleven administrativereforms and appealed to the Viceroy in the following words:

"This is by no means an exhaustive list of pressing needs, but let the Viceroy satisfy us with regard to these very simple butvital needs of India. He will then hear no talk of Civil Disobedience; and the Congress will heartily participate in any Conference


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where there is perfect freedom of expression and demand."

What happened to the pledge to achieve Purna Swaraj complete independence? Was all this to be thrown away in exchangefor some bureaucratic measures? This is not the place to go into the history of the Civil Disobedience Movement, that began withthe magnificent roar of the Dandi Salt March but ended in the whimper of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and the Second Round TableConference, which in turn led to nothing. This is a vivid example of what Sri Aurobindo had observed that the Congress alwayslooked to the British Government rather the people of India for direction. (This is not the place to go into the 1942 Quit IndiaMovement in which the leaders again let down the people. The British crushed it in less than three months. Also, Gandhidissociated himself from it almost at the start.)

The sorry story continued even after independence. After Sardar Patels death in 1950, Nehru, for all practical purposes, ran a

colonial administration. To begin with, he requested Louis Mountabatten

a close relative of the English royal family

tocontinue as Governor General of India. Against the advice of Indian commanders General Thimmayya and General L.P. Sen, heaccepted Mountbattens advice to refer the case to United Nations, which really meant Britain and the United States.

Hyderabad, in the heart of India, might have become another festering sore like Kashmir had Nehru followed Mountbattensadvice to exercise patience. Fortunately, Rajaji replaced Mountbatten as Governor General, and he supported Patels plan forfirm and swift action. The rest is history.

It was the same story in the Northeast. Nehru was heavily influenced by Christian missionary advice. One of his most influentialadvisors was Verrier Elwin, a British missionary of no morals or scruples masquerading as an anthropologist. But in onerespect Nehru went even further than the British: he allowed Catholic missions to put down roots in the Northeast, something thatthe British had carefully kept out.

Even in domestic policy, Nehru followed Europe, the Soviet Union in particular. Indias highest priority after independenceshould have been attaining self sufficiency in food production. Instead of strengthening the village economy, he followed theSoviet model of state controlled development of heavy industries, in spite of the disastrous Soviet record in agriculture. He evenaccepted the Russian estimate that it takes three Indian engineers to do the work of one Russian! The result is that Indian publicsector units became even more overstaffed than Soviet plants. India today is paying a heavy price for this mindless copying.

It is a similar story when we look at the religious policy of the Congress. In the first place, why the supposedly secularIndian Government should have a religious policy at all is a question that only the secularists can answer. Let that be, but Ionly want to highlight one colonial policy that has been continued. This is granting special privileges to Christian institutions thatare denied to Hindu institutions. During the British rule, imported products were given tariff and tax benefits while Indian industrywas suppressed. This is the basis of colonial exploitation. The same is true of religion: Christian religious institutions and theiractivities controlled by foreign organizations like the Vatican and OMI International (Evangelical) enjoy benefits that nativeHindu institutions do not. This is also colonialism.

Nationalism, or colonialism by proxy?

Its history, both before and after independence, shows that the Congress and its leaders suffer from a deep-seated lack ofconfidence in Indians and Indian heritage. Their own inferiority complex has made them look for solutions abroad. As a result,instead of a national vision rooted in history and tradition, they import ideas and even people from outside to present them assaviors to the nation. This is the message of the Congress partys sponsorship of the Khilafat, Verrier Elwin, the Soviet model,and now Sonia Gandhi. When this also fails, where will the Congress go? Look for another import?

From all this, one is forced to conclude that the Congress party and its followers have no conception of nationalism. They seem tothink of the Indian nation as a colonial administration run by Indians rather than Europeans. But now, as the people of India beginto reject this alien imposition, they have sought to bring back a European to do a better job of it than they can. It is different storythat she went on to make a mess of it.


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Clearly, a great nation like India cannot build on borrowed foundations anymore than feed its teeming millions with importedMcDonald hamburgers. What then is the answer to the question that I raised at the beginning of the lecture: how can a party thatclaims to have led the national struggle hold on so tenaciously to colonial symbols, values and policies, even to the extent ofrestoring European rule? The answer is simple: it has no nationalist ideology at all. Its ideology is today and has been in the lastfifty years, colonialism by proxy. And now at last it has found a leader who can turn this proxy colonialism into real Europeanrule.

Decadent elite, incapable of leadership

This brings me back to the point I made earlier: in the United States, at every presidential election, dozens of candidates springup willing to brave the odds and serve the country. In India, the situation seems to be the reverse of this. Politicians look to

someone else to assume leadership whom they can serve as courtiers and enjoy the crumbs of office. This has now reached theabsurd point of a great national party being unable to find a single leader in the country. So it wants to import one!

There is another extraordinary sight. The people who want to serve as servile courtiers of this foreign woman are products ofIndias elite institutions! Just go to 10 Janpath where Smt Sonai Gandhi holds court, and you will see a glut of convent schooland Doon School products. Many of them boast degrees from St Stephens College and other holdovers from the colonial era,but not one of them seems to have the courage or the character to assume leadership. Their highest aspiration is to serve thisforeign woman with barely a high school education! In contrast, elite institutions in Europe and America keep producing leaders.For example, Roosevelt and Kennedy graduated from Harvard, while Bush and Clinton are from Yale. So there must be somethingwrong with Indian education at least what passes forelite education that it can produce servants but few leaders. This isthe sign of a decadent e lite with a servile mentality.

On the other hand, individuals who are not products of these supposedly elite institutions, true children of the soil, seem to suffer

from no such debility. When we look at the Mulayam Singhs, the Mayavaties, the Kalyan Singhs and others, whatever theirmethods and ethics, they are willing to take responsibility and go to the people. If they are misguided and overly aggressive, it isbecause the system is stacked against them. In the last fifty years, the national scene has come to be dominated by the decadentelite that I just mentioned. When we look at the nation today, the civil service, the English language media and higher educationare the monopoly of this urban, upper class educated at convents and similarelite institutions. They are in fact a colonialelite. They form the core of support for Smt Sonia Gandhi. As a just noted, they want to not lead but serve.

Actually it is no mystery. The higher education system in India was created by the British with the specific goal of producingcolonial servants not thinkers or leaders. Macaulay, the founder of the higher education system that is still followed in India,stated what the British goals were:

"We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a classof persons, Indian in blood and colour, but Engl ish in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect."

What is the result of such an education? Here is how Sir Charles Trevelyan described the products of such education as far backas 1838:

"Educated in the same way, interested in the same objects, engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, they become moreEnglish than Hindu... The young men brought up in our seminaries, turn with contempt from the barbarous despotisms underwhich their ancestors groaned... Instead of regarding us with dislike, they court our society, ... the summit of their ambition is,to resemble us."

A more infuriatingly condescending if not contemptuous description would be hard to find. And yet, this passage, written in1838, accurately reflects the state of mind of much of the intellectual elite even today.

This is not education, it is spiritual emasculation. Their conduct of avoiding leadership, but desperately eager to serve in the


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family court of Smt Sonia Gandhi, is testimony to this. The misfortune is that this alienated elite created by the rulers of abygone age still dominates and controls India's education and intellectual life. An alternative must be found. This alternativemust be through a thorough revamping of the education system from the ground up.

At the same time, I want to emphasize that the problem is mainly in the humanities, for in science and technology India isprogressing well. But leadership must come from the humanities, which should be rooted in the culture and history of a nation.(Science and technology have no national or cultural boundaries.) But Indian scholars from elite institutions only copyoutdated Western fashions. How many departments of linguistics teach Panini or Yaska? Also, why teach Freud and Jung inpsychology to the exclusion of Patanjali and the Upanishads? The result is that there is no independent Indian school of thoughtthat is taken seriously in the world today. All the important work in the humanities in India is being done by scholars outside theestablishment. This problem was diagnosed 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 twocauses, the miserable scantiness of the mastery in Sanskrit provided by our universities, ... and our lack of a sturdyindependence which makes us oveready to defer to European opinion."

It is for this reason that most of the important thinking in India is being done by individuals outside the establishment. Fortunately,there is a great national vision for India, created by ancient sages, resurrected by moderns sages like Swami Vivekananda and SriAurobindo. This is what I want to examine next.

National education

First let us look at the schools and colleges that produce this elite. Most of them are either mission schools and colleges or thosethat are modeled on them. One of the great myths put out by English language schools, especially those controlled by missions, isthat they provide excellent education. Nothing could be further from the truth. In addition, they complain about the poor quality of

Indian schools in comparison with Christian institutions. In this, they invariably point to governmentschools and not to privateHindu institutions like the Poorna Prajna schools, which are often much better. I myself attended a private, non-Christian school inBangalore, which is far superior to any convent. In addition I studied in my other tongue, not English, which in no wayhandicapped me in my research or writing.

Other criticisms of Hindus and their institutions are equally fallacious. Most importantly, Christian schools on which manyEnglish language schools model themselves seriously damage the cultural identity and the self image of their wards. Theycome out feeling that they are inferior to the Westerners, but affecting an attitude of superiority towards fellow Indians. The lateAnanda Coomaraswamy, a distinguished student of Indian history and culture, had this to say regarding the Macaulayite highereducation that produces such individuals:

"A single generation of English education suffices to break the threads of tradition and create a nondescript and superficialbeing deprived of all roots a sort of intellectual pariah who does not belong to the East or the West, the past or the future. Of

all Indian problems the educational is the most difficult and the most tragic."

If this is what are said to be the best educational institutions in India produce, it is obvious that they will continue to fail thenation. The problem is that these are alien impositions whose goal was to uproot Indian history and tradition and replace it with aland of slavish minds. As Swami Vivekananda told a group of young students 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 theytalk only of our downfall. How can foreigners, who understand very little of our manners and customs, or religion andphilosophy, write faithful and unbiased histories of India? Naturally, many false notions and wrong inferences have found theirway 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


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independent path of historical research for ourselves, to study the Vedas and the Puranas, and the ancient annals of India, andfrom them make it your life's sadhana to write accurate and soul-inspiring history of the land. It is for Indians to write Indianhistory."

What Swami Vivekananda said about history is true of all subjects especially the humanities. This brings us to the heart of oursages idea of nationalism a nationalism rooted in our history and culture. As Sri Aurobindo noted:

"We have to fill the minds of our boys [and girls] from childhood with the idea of the country, and present them with that ideaat every turn and make their whole young life a lesson in the practice of the virtues which afterwards go to make the patriotand the citizen. If we do not attempt this, we may as well give up our desire to create an Indian nation altogether; for withoutsuch a discipline, nationalism, patriotism, regeneration are mere words"

Sri Aurobindo, like Swami Vivekananda, recognized spirituality as the foundation of Indian civilization. What is interesting is thathe saw parliamentary democracy as merely an intermediate step in the progress towards making the world spiritual. "Spiritualityis Indias only politics, the fulfillment of the Sanatana Dharma its only Swaraj. I have no doubt we shall have to go through ourParliamentary period in order to get rid of the notion of Western democracy by seeing in practice how helpless it is to makenations blessed." He next observed that Swami Vivekananda had expressed similar views. As Sri Aurobindo wrote:

"Physical expansion proceeds from a desire for spiritual expansion and history also supports the assertion. But why should notIndia then be the first power in the world? Who else has the undisputed right to extend spiritual sway over the world? This wasSwami Vivekanandas plan of campaign. India can once more be made conscious of her greatness by an overmastering senseof the greatness of her spirituality. This sense of greatness is the main feeder of all patriotism."

This should be the goal of education to make students feel acutely the sense of their greatness. Today, Indias eliteinstitutions do the opposite. They fill their wards with an acute sense of inferiority. This leaves them with little in the way of self-

respect. And they indulge in behavior that no self-respecting person should. To see to what depths some members of this elite cansink, I suggest you read Arun Shouries Eminent Historians.

As both Sri Aurobindo and Swami Vivekananda repeatedly stressed, the main purpose of education in India should be to stressthe spiritual greatness of our heritage, and our responsibility to preserve this as a beacon for the whole world. If spiritualitydisappears from India, it will vanish from the world. It is therefore not just a national responsibility, but a civilizational duty.

Look at the hollowness of the doctrine called human rights. What atrocities are being committed in its name! Innocent people arebeing bombed in Yugoslavia. Women and children in Kashmir are daily victims of the most unspeakable atrocities so-calledmilitants. And self styled human rights activists like Arundhati Roy and Kuldip Nayar are silent over these atrocities while theyraised a hue and cry about Indias nuclear tests in which not a single life was lost. Why dont they protest the bombing ofinnocents in Iraq and Yugoslavia? Why does this human rights activist Nayar go to the Wagah border and hold hand withthose who connive such atrocities? Of course, they dont want to antagonize the US and Great Britain which hold the promise of

wealth and fame like the Booker Prize. This is an example of a crass material culture without a spiritual foundation wheremere words and gestures are thrown around without regard for truth or morality. Human rights for such people is nothing buta publicity stunt and a marketing gimmick. We must look elsewhere for building a nation on a foundation of spirituality.

Spiritual culture as nationalism

The thing that distinguishes India from other nations is its ancient civilization. It is the only civilization of antiquity that is stillflourishing. Others like Egypt, Mesopotamia, the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas, and even pre-Christian Europe weredestroyed to a greater or lesser extent by the rise of the theocratic forces of Christianity and Islam. The secular-humanisticWestern Civilization is essentially a reaction to the theocratic goals of Christianity that drew its inspiration from Pagan Greece. Atthe same time, secular humanism cannot substitute for nationalism. Europe is secular humanistic, but is not one nation. Themistake that Indian secularists are making is to hold up their version ofsecularism as a substitute for Indian nationalism. This


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is what makes it possible for them to submit to a foreigner. Their brand secularism is also devoid of humanism: in fact it issecular anti-humanism like Communism and Nazism. It supports the theocratic aims of Christianity and Islam, including suchbarbaric practices as triple-talaq. It is also anti-nationalistic for the reason it is hostile to anything rooted in the soil, including itsreligion and culture. It is not surprising that it is now worshipping a foreign icon and asking the country to do the same.

To see where one should reach for Indian nationalism, one needs look no further than modern Indian sages Swami Vivekanandaand Sri Aurobindo. Theirs was a vision rooted in the soil a spiritual vision. Let us hear the great sage of Indian nationalism, SriAurobindo, on the subject:

"When therefore it is said that India shall rise, it is Sanatana Dharma that shall rise. When it is said that India shall be great, it isSanatana Dharma that shall be great. When it is said that India shall expand and extend itself, it is Sanatana Dharma that shallexpand and extend itself all over the world. It is for the Dharma and by the Dharma that India exists."

This was the vision that Sri Aurobindo received and the vision that he revealed to the world at the great Uttarapara speech in1909. Towards the end of his speech, he gave also his definition of Indian nationalism:

"I say it again today, I say no longer that nationalism is a creed, a religion, a faith. I say that Sanatana Dharma which for us isthe nationalism."

Let us comprehend the truth of this. You are from Assam, in the northeast. I am from Karnataka in the south of Maharashtrianextraction but one who has spent his adult life mostly in America. What brings you and me together here is our commonheritage that we call Sanatana Dharma. That is not all. Through the greater part of my professional career, I worked as anengineer and mathematician in which I attained some distinction. And yet, if I am known in the world today, it is because ofSanatana Dharma. Does one need more evidence of the power of our heritage? The whole world accepts us and envies us, but itis these Indians who are still slaves to colonialism that want to reject it and replace it with something they call secularism.Even this is a travesty for the word secularism is grossly misused in India to mean anti-Hindu. (I have discussed it in detail intwo of my books: Secularism, the New Mask of Fundamentalism andA Hindu View of the World, both published by Voice of India,New Delhi.)

Let us now come back to Sri Aurobindos vision of Indian nationalism. In the Bhagavadgita, Krishna tells Arjuna: "I taught thistimeless Yoga to Vivasvan, who taught it to Manu. Manu then bequeathed it Ikshwaku. This ancient wisdom, transmitted throughgenerations of royal sages, became lost in the tides of time. I have taught you, my friend and my best disciple, this matchless andmost mystical knowledge."

A similar fate has befallen our civilization, which we need to resurrect and rescue from the hands of destructive forces. Only thencan India fulfill its mission as a nation and a civilization. Just as Sri Krishna resurrected the message of the ancient Vedic wisdomand the royal sages for Arjuna, Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo have resurrected it again and placed it before us thispolitical Vedanta or the politics following Veda, as Sri Aurobindo called it.

What are its roots? In the great Brihadaranyaka Upanishadit is given that Brahma Vidya the fount of Sanatana Dharma originated with Brahma himself. It was transmitted from his pupil Parameshtin through a long line of teachers that included theAshvins, Atharvan, Angirasa and Gargya, all the way to Yajnavlkya the seer ofBrihadaranyaka. Sri Aurobindo tapped thissource when he declared his vision of Sanatana Dharma as nationalism. This was Swami Vivkenandas program also, as SriAurobindo himself proclaimed it.

Until that day dawns, when this ageless and timeless Sanatana Dharma is enshrined as the national ideology and the foundationof nationalism, regardless of which political party is in power, India is an incomplete nation. The sages have done their work. It isfor us, the ordinary people and especially the leaders to heed their call and build this spiritual nation. Until that day India ispolitically free but not spiritually free.


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CHAPTER II

Distortions in Indian History

Introduction: roots of distortion

India gained independence from the British in 1947, or more than fifty years ago. But intellectually and educationally Indiacontinues be a European colony. This is because, during the first forty years of her existence as a free nation, the Congress Partyand the intellectual establishment, continued to encourage colonial institutions and thinking. The result today is that there is anEnglish educated elite that identifies itself more with the West than with India and her ancient civilization. And the CongressParty, especially after the death of Sardar Patel, has identified itself more with foreign values rather than Indian values. TheCommunists, who have always been hostile to Indian nationalism, have now joined hands with anti-national forces, which arefiercely 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 Europeanwoman 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 andinterests. This naturally makes them intensely anti-Hindu. It views with fear anything that has even a suggestion of nationalismrooted 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 tooppose the rise of national awareness that is now sweeping the country. The result is that they will go to any length to give anegative picture of India and her past. The first step in this is to distort Indian history. Fortunately for them, most of the distortionhad 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 theytalk only of our downfall. How can foreigners, who understand very little of our manners and customs, or religion andphilosophy, write faithful and unbiased histories of India? Naturally, many false notions and wrong inferences have found theirway into them.

"Nevertheless they have shown us how to proceed making researches into our ancient history. Now it is for us to strike out anindependent path of historical research for ourselves, to study the Vedas and the Puranas, and the ancient annals of India, andfrom them make it your life's sadhana to write accurate and soul-inspiring history of the land. It is for Indians to write Indianhistory."

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 duringthe Swadeshi Movement following the Partition of Bengal, lost its direction and focus in 1920 when Mahatma Gandhi sacrificedSwaraj for the sake of the Khilafat. This in turn led to the anti-Hindu orientation of the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru. This wassoon joined by the Communists, who worked hand-in-glove with the Congress. The Communists now are little more than campfollowers 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 ofthe Indian political scene by the Congress, Communist intellectuals and fellow travelers were able to dominate the intellectualscene also. As a result, the colonial version of history continues to be taught in Indian schools and colleges. This has led to grossdistortions in the history being taught in Indian schools and colleges. These distortions may be classified as follows:

1. Distortion of ancient history through theAryan invasion and the Aryan-Dravidian wars, presenting the Vedic Age as an


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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 ofthe revolutionaries, Sardar Patel and Subhas Bose.

4. Distortion of post-independent India, by whitew ashing the monumental blunders of Pandit Nehru a nd his successors to bringabout 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 ancientperiod 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 Indiannationalism. They acted as a negative force and held back progress, taking the country into a Dark Age. They continue to act as acheck 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 theonslaught 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 andnon-Aryans, while trying to portray the Medieval period dominated by Jihad (or religious wars) as a period of synthesis.

Ancient India: age of freedom and 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 theancient 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 Dravidianlanguage, 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 Ihave read and published the writing on nearly 2000 seals. (We have read many more that are yet to be published.) The languageof 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 meanscultured and not any race or language. I am myself a so-called Dravidian who speaks Kannada. Kannada, like all South Indianlanguages, is heavily influenced by Sanskrit. South Indian dynasties going back time immemorial called themselves Aryasbecause 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 Christianmissionaries played an active role. It was part of the British policy of divide and rule. Bishop Caldwell was probably the mostinfluential Dravidian scholar. When criticized for his theories, he defended them "as not only of considerable moment from aphilological [linguistic] point of view but of vast moral and political importance."Bymoral and political, he meant Christianmissionary and British colonia l interests.

This shows that one of the main forces behind the Aryan invasion theory, and of education policy in general, was the conversionof Hindus to Christianity to make them accept British rule. According to the Aryan invasion theory, the Vedas and Sanskritlanguage were brought by these Indo-European invaders and not native to India. (This is now demolished by science and also thedecipherment of the Harappan writing.) Using this false theory, the British could claim that India had always been ruled by foreign


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invaders first the Vedic Aryans, and later the Muslims. The British claimed to be Aryans (as Indo-Europeans) and therefore onlythe latest rulers of India, but related to their own ancient Aryans who also were foreign invaders! Christian missionaries tookadvantage 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. Themost influential of these was Thomas Babbington Macaulay who introduced the English education system in India. He made nosecret of his goal of conversion of India to Christianity. In 1836, while serving as chairman of the Education Board in India, heenthusiastically wrote his father:

"Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. The effect of this education on the Hindus is prodigious. ...... It is my beliefthat if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator [Hindu] among the respectable classes inBengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise, without the smallest interference withreligious 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, eventhough many Englishmen were ashamed of it. In a real sense Christian missions were not religious organizations at all but anunofficial arm of the British Administration. (The same is true of many Catholic missions in Central American countries. Many ofthem 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 missionaryinterest. To do this, he employed a German Vedic scholar now famous as Friedrich Max Mller. Macaulay used his influence withthe East India Company to find funds for Max Mller's translation of the Rigveda. There can be no doubt at all regarding MaxMller's commitment to the conversion of Indians to Christianity. Writing to his wife in 1866 Max Mller himself explained hispurpose:

"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 ofuprooting 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 isdoomed. And if Christianity does not take its place, whose fault will it be?" His job was to uproot Hinduism by giving a negativeversion of the Vedas!

Unfortunately, the version of history being taught to children in Indian schools and colleges, including the Aryan invasion, is theversion created by Macaulay and Max Mller. It is a tragedy. It is not only anti-national but also totally false.

Unity of India is of untold antiquity

It was claimed by the British, and faithfully repeated by the Leftist intellectuals, that the British unified India. This is completelyfalse. The unity of India, rooted in her ancient culture, is of untold antiquity. It may have been divided at various times intosmaller kingdoms, but the goal was always to be united under a Chakravartin or a Samrat. This unity was cultural thoughnot always political. This cultural unity was seriously damaged during the Medieval period, when India was engaged in a strugglefor survival like what is happening in Kashmir today. Going back thousands of years, India had been united under a single rulermany times. The earliest recorded emperor of India was Bharata, the son of Shakuntala and Dushyanta, but there were severalothers. I give below some examples from the Aitareya Brahmana.

"With this great anointing of Indra, Dirghatamas Mamateya anointed Bharata Daushanti. Therefore, Bharata Daushanti wentround the earth completely, conquering on every side and offered the horse in sacrifice.


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"With this great anointing of Indra, Tura Kavasheya anointed Janamejaya Parikshita. Therefore Janamejaya Parikshita wentround 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, DurmukhaPancala 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 isancient. 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 theBritish. But this unification was possible only because India is culturally one. Pakistan, with no such identity or cultural unity, isfalling apart.

Medieval India: Dark Age and conflict

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 8 th century or about a century after Harshasdeath. Iran (or Persia) collapsed within a single generation to the Islamic armies, as did the eastern part of the Byzantine Empireof Constantinople. Arabs intruded into Sind, but their hold did not last. It took the Islamic forces more than 300 years before theycould 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 wasunknown in ancient times. It was called Jihad. The idea was not merely to conquer a country but to totally destroy its history andcivilization. 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 mostinfluential of these was General Zia-ul-Haq, the former president of Pakistan and the father of Taliban. According to him, "JIHADFI-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 HolyProphet's operations against the Pagans [pre-Islamic Arabs] are an integral and inseparable part of the divine message revealedto us in the Holy Quran. ... The war he planned and carried out was total to the infinite degree. It was waged on all fronts: internaland 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 andchildren. According to the Urdu instructional manual (called Jihad) carried by the Pakistani militants in Kashmir, "The Quranicmilitary 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 decisionupon 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 whatIslamic vandals like Muhammad of Ghazni and others brought to India. The famous Alberuni, who accompanied Muhammad onhis 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 ruinedthe prosperity of the country, and performed there wonderful exploits, by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scatteredin all directions. ... Their scattered remains cherish, of course, the most inveterate aversion of all the Muslims. This is thereason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us, and have fled to places


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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 theplaces he invaded. This was part of the Jihad to uproot the civilization of India. Here is one telling statistic that should give a truepicture of the Islamic rule of India, beginning with the invasions of Muhammad of Ghazni. Pre-Islamic India was renowned for itsuniversities. Great centers of learning like Nalanda, Vaishali, Sarnath, Vikramashila, Taksha-shila, and many more theyattracted students from all over Asia and the world. Following the Islamic invasion of India, all these centers were destroyed. Inthe centuries following, during the next eight hundred years,not a single university was established by any Muslim ruler. This was aDark Age worse than what overtook Europe in the Middle Ages. Only in the last century or so is India slowly coming out of thislong 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 likeSringeri, Benares, Kanchi and a few other places. Also, Indian rulers, especially in Vijayanagara, Mysore and several othersprotected scholars and a rtists.

The problem today is that Leftist historians (secularists) claim that none of this happened even though there are literallythousands of ruined temples and monasteries all over India to prove it. One has only to go to Hampi, the former capital ofVijayanagara to see the evidence. Even Akbar allowed Rajputs and other Hindus to join his administration only because he couldnot find enough foreigners. Otherwise, the policy of the Delhi Sultans and the Moghuls was to import officials from outside thecountry just as the British did. All this is whitewashed in Indian history books. For example, students are taught that Babar wasa 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 threehundred 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 historydistortion occurred during the Ayodhya-Ramjanmabhumi controversy. Secularist historians repeatedly asserted that no RamTemple 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 Aurangazebs granddaughter wrote in 1707, in her Persian work Sahifah-i-ChihalNasa'ih Bahadurshahi:

"... keeping the triumph of Islam in view, devout Muslim rulers should keep all idolaters in subjection to Islam, brook no laxityin realization of Jizyah, grant no exceptions to Hindu Rajahs from dancing attendance on 'Id days and waiting on foot outsidemosques till end of prayer ... and 'keep in constant use for Friday and congregational prayer the mosques built up after


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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 allAurangazebs granddaughter. In addition, we have archaeological evidence showing that a temple existed at the site. After thedemolition of the Babari Masjid by karsevaks on December 6, 1992, archaeologists found a temple under it and also a stoneinscription. 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... , andbeautified with a golden spire ... unparalleled by any other temple built by earlier kings ... This wonderful temple ... was builtin the temple-city of Ayodhya situated in Saketamandala. ... Line 19 describes god Vishnu as destroying king Bali ... and theten-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 outthe excavation at Ayodhya wrote a sixty-page report on his findings. But this was suppressed, thanks to influential secularisthistorians like Irfan Habib, Romila Thapar and R.S. Sharma. These secularists then put out a propaganda pamphlet on Ayodhyadenying 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 Hindubacklash. They know very well that their rulers have persecuted the Hindus for centuries. In fact it was this fear that led to thefounding 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 nearlyfour times as large as ourselves Then, our life, our property, our honor, and our faith will all be in great danger. woe betidethe time when we become the subjects of our neighbors, and answer to them for the sins, real or imaginary of Aurangazeb, andother 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 Indiaand protect them. It was this fear combined with the Congress appeasement policy that led to the Partition. It was again this fearthat made them support the Congress dynasty from Nehru to Sonia Gandhi. And now, it is the same fear that makes them turnthemselves 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 theHindus to accept falsehoods about their history and tradition simply to serve their own interests. They cannot whitewash theirterrible record and try to put all the blame on the Hindu victims in the interests of their version of secularism. This would belike blaming the Jews for the Nazi atrocities. The only way of achieving peace and harmony is for the Muslim leadership toacknowledge the crimes of their ancestors and learn to live at peace with their Hindu neighbors. They should also give upintolerant doctrines like Jihadas medieval barbarisms incompatible with civilization. As the late K.M. Munshi wrote fifty yearsago:

"If, however, the misuse of this word 'secularism' continues, ... if, every time there is an inter-communal conflict, the majority isblamed regardless of the merits of the question,... the springs of traditional tolerance will dry up. While the majority exercisespatience and tolerance, the minorities should adjust themselves to the majority. Otherwise the future is uncertain and anexplosion 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. Thesecularist intellectuals, who were busy falsifying history, were not there to defend the disputed structure at Ramjanmabhumi orprotect the victims in the riots that followed. In fact they were the first to run from the scene. The lesson: history cannot be falsifiedforever. In the end truth will always triumph satyameva jayate. We should be prepared to face the truth.

The Freedom Movement


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Just as ancient and medieval history have been distorted under Congress patronage, history of the Freedom Movement has alsobeen dressed up to favor the Congress and the Communists. This distortion has the following three parts: (1) Building up the roleof Gandhi and Nehru while suppressing the contribution of others, notably Subhas Bose. (2) Whitewashing Gandhis terribleblunder of supporting the Khilafat Movement and the atrocities of the Mopla Rebellion that followed. (3) Whitewashing thetreachery 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 thatbrought freedom to India. This fails to explain the fact that the British granted independence only in 1947 while the Quit IndiaMovement had collapsed by the end of 1942. The question that naturally arises is why did the British leave in such great hurry inAugust 1947? The answer was provided by Prime Minister Clement Attlee, the man who made the decision to grant independenceto India.

When B.P. Chakravarti was acting as Governor of West Bengal, Lord Attlee visited India and stayed as his guest for three days atthe Raj Bhavan. Chakravarti asked Attlee about the real grounds for granting independence to India. Specifically, his questionwas, when the Quit India movement lay in ruins years before 1947, where was the need for the British to leave in such a hurry.Attlees 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 thevery foundation of the attachment of the Indian land and naval forces to the British Government. Towards the end, I asked LordAttlee about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by Gandhis activities. On hearing thisquestion Attlees 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 Boses activities, the Indian Armed Forces began to see themselves asdefenders of India rather than of the British Empire. This, more than anything else, was what led to Indias freedom. This is alsothe 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 Britishdecision was mutiny of the Indian Navy following the INA trials in 1946. While the British wanted to try Subhas Boses INA astraitors, 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 theHouse of Commons, he told Churchill that he would agree to the latters suggestion of holding on to India if he could guaranteethe 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 ofMahatma Gandhi forced the British to leave India. But both evidence and the logic of history are against this beautiful but childishfantasy. It was the fear of mutiny by the Indian armed forces and not anyspiritual 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 menunder arms. One would have to be extraordinarily dense which the British were not to fail to see the writing on the wal l.

So, as the great historian R.C. Majumdar wrote, Subhas Bose with his INA campaigns probably contributed more to Indianindependence than Gandhi, Nehru and their movements. The result of Subhas Boses activities was the rise of the nationalistspirit in the Indian Armed Forces. This is the reason why Nehru, after he became Prime Minister, did everything possible to turnBose 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 tobelieve that it was the first of Gandhis movements for Indias freedom. This is completely false. The Non-CooperationMovement was for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph. This was known as the Khilafat Movement, launched byIndian Muslims, led by Maulanas Mohamad Ali and Shaukat Ali. In fact, Gandhi postponed Tilaks Swaraj Resolution by nearly ten


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years in order to join the Khilafat. (Lokamanya Tilak had died in 1920 and Gandhi and the Ali Brothers launched the Khilafat in1921. Gandhi even diverted a substantial part of the Tilak Swaraj Fund to the Khilafat.) Indian history books omit the fact that thesole 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 MoplaRebellion 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 resultof the Gandhi-Congress support for the Khilafat Movement. What is so bad about it that they want to hide it? Sir Sankaran Nair, aneyewitness 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 atrocitiescommitted 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 Movementby 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 wasGandhi's reaction to the Mopla outrages? He called the Moplas "God fearing" and said they "are fighting for what they consider asreligion, 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 forthe Khilafat.) He correctly recognized that the Congress leaders would always back down in the face of threat of violence. Theywould rather appease than fight on principles. This happened repeatedly in 1948 and 1972 in dealing with Pakistan, and also inthe 1950s in dealing with China and Tibet. Nehru abandoned Kashmir to Pakistan (through the UN) and abandoned also Tibet toChina, sacrificing Indias national interests. As Congress ruled India for forty years following independence, this practice ofappeasement gave India the label of a soft state.

The Congresss appeasement policy reached its absurd limit, when the Nehru Government succumbed to Gandhis blackmailand gave Pakistan 55 crore rupees at a time when Indian troops were fighting the Pakistanis in Kashmir. I already noted thatGandhi had diverted a substantial sum from the Tilak Swaraj Fund to the Khilafat, in addition to postponing Tilaks SwarajResolution 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 ofrecord, though Communist intellectuals, by monopolizing institutions like the ICHR, are trying to whitewash their role. Tounderstand their treachery, we should recognize that Communist leaders in other colonized countries were first and foremostnationalists who fought for freedom. Next, they came from the masses. This is true of leaders like Mao of China, Ho Chi Min ofVietnam, Fidel Castro of Cuba and several others. Indian Communist leaders on the other hand come mostly from the Englisheducated elite. They have always looked to the West for everything. So when India was fighting for her freedom, the Communistswere 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 asNazi Germany. They were ordered by Stalin to support Hitlers 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 again

distortions in history causes and consequences

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