In Focus
Husain and the assault against Hindu India
by
Dr Gautam Sen
Courtesy:www.organiser.org With permisssion from Dr. Gautam Sen
IT is amusing to observe so many ardent nationalists, who once made modest professional careers by proclaiming sympathy for Hindu interests, lining up to celebrate the departed Maqbool Fida Husain’s highly provocative depiction of venerated Hindu goddesses. None of them are evidently qualified to judge artistic merit, but are trotting out the tired repudiation of critics with the implied solemn query ‘when did you last beat your wife’, as a defense of Husain’s license to do as he pleased.
They do not hesitate to excoriate what one described as Internet Hindus, as if the appellation had explanatory power beyond the mundane fact that practising Hindus, irrespective of qualification, are rarely allowed a voice in India’s purchased print media and television channels. One journalist with elevated connections to Hindutva nationalism insinuated on NDTV that the Hindutva brigade ‘hounding’ Husain was akin to Nazism of the 1930s (only seeking legal opinion in the courts as it happens and occasionally disrupting exhibitions). He is apparently in need of education on what transpired in mid-1930s Germany.
The implication that artistic freedom is an absolute right and has ever been anywhere merely exposes the illogic of these venerable gentlemen.
Artistic freedoms are, in principle, bounded by written and unwritten convention and social consensus. It is not acceptable in most societies to depict the rape of a child or grossly provocative images of sexual congress or indeed celebrate grotesque violence. The boundaries may differ in time and space, but they exist and artists themselves conform, though some may childishly proclaim they should be allowed complete freedom to flout them. As it happens, they don’t or only very rarely and face legal or social sanctions if they do, even if they allegedly sup with the gods to justify demanding exemption from all restraint. Artistic freedom is not an absolute except in the minds of overwrought journalists unable to see the wood for the trees. When artistic freedom is defended in a specific case what is actually being argued is that a particular portrayal or expression is within prevailing conventions of societal restraint. Imperious claims otherwise regarding artistic license, etc. betray disingenuousness.
The terrain limiting artistic license imposed by convention and social consensus has been somewhat fluid in independent India. Offending Islam and Christianity was considered in poor taste since they were minority faiths and the adherents of the former were also able to enforce their notions of probity by recourse to murder and mayhem, if necessary. Hence, the banning of Salman Rushdie’s admittedly mediocre books and the incarceration and subsequent expulsion from India of the incredibly courageous Taslima Nasrin. But Hindus have always been fair game. The most vicious and tasteless mockery of all things Hindu have occurred with official complicity. In the past two decades, the most egregious examples of calumny (Ramakrishna sexually abusing Vivekananda, etc. etc.) have emanated from belligerently Christian, America and its hallowed Ivy League academic portals, supported by treasonous Leftist, Indians fattened on their payrolls, whether it is the US Congress library or universities. Much of this project to demonise and de-legitimise India and its civilizational claims originated in an Anglo-American Cold War attempt to offer succour to a Pakistan that proved so very difficult to sell. Now it also has the wholesale imprimatur of India’s ruling family, open season in other words on a scale unknown since the iconoclastic Ghaznavid and Aurangzeb cataclysms.
The argument is that either Husain painting the venerated divinities of the Hindu pantheon in the most offensive manner possible is legitimate or that is not what he had intended to convey. Of course there is, in addition, an unspoken undertone that Husain towers over all artistic achievement in the history of India and mere unwashed Hindus have no right to complain in any case. Indeed Indian journalists have taken to comparing him to Picasso, highlighting their impoverished education and of course an oriental penchant for hyperbole that invariably causes mirth around the world. I suspend aesthetic judgement for the moment on all Husain’s paintings of various Hindu goddesses, but two of them seem poignantly unambiguous in intent. The one of a naked Sita sitting on Ravan’s lap depicts the aftermath of rape. Would such a portrayal for public viewing of even an actual occurrence be reasonable if the victim were a close relative, leave aside a revered deity unless the purpose is to mock?
The one of a naked Brahmin alongside a clothed Muslim potentate highlights utter powerlessness (which is the usual situational meaning of nakedness in this context) with the Brahmin deprived of all humanity because he is unclothed. The Nazis routinely stripped completely naked Jewish victims (of both sexes and all ages) captured at random in streets before piling them into the backs of lorries en route to death camps. It was done to eliminate all possibility of protest, resistance or escape because in one stroke the person had already been dehumanised, murdered socially, in effect and could only contemplate suicide (the victims included women in their seventies alongside their grandchildren)
Historically, Renaissance painters have depicted the divine in the nude, but the context is important. In the case of Husain there is absence of a fully ‘fleshed’ humanised torso in his paintings and he merely sketches outlines. It may indicate lack of skill to depict the complexity of a fully formed human body, which could embody multiple meanings. Or Husain is deliberately displaying deities in humiliating sexual poses in outline because he is afraid of going beyond venal suggestion. Bear in mind insinuation of bestial copulation was not a motif in the anti-clerical rebellion of Renaissance painters showing Greek gods in nude poses. It is also relevant that some account need be taken of profound Hindu sensibilities, which, in his case, as a sectarian Muslim, is clearly one of complete disregard and utter contempt for the Hindu universe. But the devout Hindu need not be unduly dispirited by Husain’s shameful insults to his revered deities since the Lord Krishna proclaims in the fourth discourse of the Bhagavadgita: “Nor do actions pollute Me, nor is the fruit of action desired by me.”
In the final analysis, Husain should be allowed the last word on his own intentions before aspersions are hastily cast on his Islamic credentials and religiously sanctioned hostility to pagan worship. Nehurvian secularists in Rajat Sharma’s ‘Aap ki Adalat’(on 4.9. 2004) audience clapped when Husain explained that he’d painted Hitler in the nude because Hitler was a “shaitan” (evil exposed? nakedly evil?). But they didn’t insist he answer when someone asked whether the goddesses he painted naked were therefore evil too? This is the same Husain who promptly withdrew a film because Ulema had claimed a song in it was blasphemous. He also revealed to the audience that actually it was an alim attempting to extort money and paintings from him. But his Nehruvian-secular admirers in the audience who defended his aesthetic right to paint Hindu goddesses naked did not leap to his defence by attacking the alim who’d dared to blackmail him? Because the alim is a Mussulman gentleman?”
In conclusion, it might be noted that Husain paintings sold for paltry sums until he achieved notoriety in the wake of the fortuitous controversy over his depictions of nude Hindu goddesses engaged in bestiality. Recent buyers paying high prices for his paintings, the mundane reason for the sudden elevation of his artistic reputation and imbecilic comparisons to Picasso, are invariably Indian businessmen. Someone needs to explain how the likes of the businessman who recently built a billion dollar monstrosity in Mumbai to live in are bestowed with capacity for judging works of art. Their familiar nouveau riche interest in decorating their homes with expensive objects, preferably from abroad, is the universal pining of the arriviste, i.e. keeping up with the Joneses, er, Mehtas. Much more interestingly, the training manual of a major international bank has a section on compliance that alerts employees to black money, originating in over-invoiced sales abroad, being used by Indian businessmen to purchase works of art from fellow citizens at foreign auction houses. The proceeds of the arbitrarily inflated price paid for the object purchased is then donated tax-free by the grateful artist to an Indian domiciled charity of the businessman’s choice. In exchange the artist earns a handsome fee and an enhanced reputation that leads to an overall rise in prices paid for future creations of the hitherto obscure genius. This is why it would be pertinent to know how many major international collectors have paid good money for a Husain creation.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
DOES LATE M F HUSAIN MERIT "BHARATRATNA," "JEWEL OF INDIA" TITLE?
M. F. Husain : Setting the Record Straight
11/06/2011 14:21:43
Dr. Vijaya Rajiva
Courtesy: http://haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PAGEID=14026&SKIN=B
When a person dies at an advanced old age, there is a human tendency to feel sympathy even with a criminal. Take the case of Chilean dictator Auguste Pinochet whose pictures of an old man walking hesitantly provoked some sympathy. In the case of an artist, and one widely acclaimed as M. F. Husain (who died at age 95) there is not only the above sentiment, but also a tendency to eulogise the man out of all proportion. Yes, he has been hailed as the Indian Picasso (the present writer believes that he is an imitation Picasso).He has been hailed as the greatest Indian painter, not quite accurate, since there have been many great Indian painters in the past and today. Quite amusingly one of the criteria offered for his greatness is that he has put India on the artistic map by being one of the most feted artists at Christie’s ! It is a sober reminder of how values have been distorted. Some of the world’s greatest painters were never auctioned during their lifetime at Christie’s or elsewhere. Yes, Husain was probably the wealthiest Indian artist.
Setting the record straight in the current atmosphere of hyperbolic eulogizing is essential. One can sum up what is problematic about Husain’s art as follows:
1.His excessive preoccupation with bestiality in art.
2.His willfuly offensive paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses.
3.His blatantly offensive paintings against the country he claims to have loved, India.
Before looking at these three problems we have to briefly take note of some of the sycophantic expressions of loyalty and allegiance to Husain’s world view. Coming from artist Anjoli Ela Menon they could be excused as that of a camp follower who was also a protégé of Husain. But coming from the charming actress Shaban Azmi and some others of India’s glitterati, it is quite another matter, it is an expression of bad faith. We shall return to this in a moment.
1.Preoccupation with bestiality in art : some of his paintings show women copulating with animals, such as elephants and tigers. Why Husain was preoccupied with this theme can only be explained by his own conscience, if even that. A psychiatrist could offer a better explanation possibly. Did Husain identify with these animals and get a high on that ? Or was he secretly a misogynist, despite the professed admiration for beautiful women such as Madhuri Diksit who acted in one of his films. He wanted the women to be attacked by animals ?
2.Offfensive paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses. Goddess Durga is shown copulating with a tiger. Goddess Parvati is shown copulating with a bull.
Goddess Sarasvati is shown stark naked. Goddess Lakshmi is shown stark naked sitting on an elephant’s head.
Ravana is shown sitting naked with a naked Sita on his thigh.
Naked Hanuman looks leeringly at Sita. In these many paintings all of which have not been listed here, the motive is clearly an offence against Hindu sentiment. Shabna Azmi claimed in her remarks on a Times Now show that this theme was okay because nudity was there in ancient Indian sculpture and one should also consider the erotic art of Khajuraho . Ms. Azmi presumably has not seen Khajuraho, since the erotic sculpture there pertains to ordinary mortals, not gods and goddesses . Her smooth talk can be forgiven since she is not Hindu. It does not matter a cent to her whether the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon are insulted so blatanly and openly as in Husain’s paintings.
But what about the rest of the motley crew of liberal glitterati on the Times Now show, all taken up by the glamour, glitter, fame, name and yes, the big time money of the artist?
There was the redoubtable Shobha De cooing over the foods that Husain loved etc.
And ofcourse, even the intrepid Arnaub Goswami, host of the show, made dark references to Hindu intolerance towards the Husain paintings. And then, ofcourse, if nothing else works, the old canard about freedom of expression is brought out at suitable moments, forgetting that even that great champion of individual freedoms John Stuart Mill had clearly stated in his work On Liberty, that freedom of expression is not an absolute right. A man’s freedom to move his hand around ends when it meets the other man’s jaw !
And here the religious sentiments of millions of devout Hindus had been brazenly offended. And this was acclaimed by the glitterati and the liberals as high art !
3.Offensive paintings against the country he claims to have loved, India : The main
one is the infamous Bharata Mata painting which shows a nude woman (Bharatmata) spread out across a map of India with the name of Indian states on various parts of her body. The reader must be reminded that the painting was part of an exhibition organized by Nafisa Ali under the caption ‘Art for Mission Kashmir.’
Here again, one must perforce ask why Husain is wedded to the idea of portraying Bharat Mata (Mother India) in the nude. Any political statements he wished to make could just as easily have been conveyed with a robed Mother India. Was this an unconscious reply to the much hailed Vande Mataram of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya ? Did his much vaunted attachment to India exclude India’s national song ? Perhaps like the fanatical mullahs he too did not like the idea of a Mother India ? His resentment found expression in this manner ? The misogyny comes out quite unexpectedly, this time transposed to Bharata Mata, who is regularly shown in Hindu depictions as fully clothed standing beside a tiger or a lion
The present writer had previously suggested that Husain should have painted a victorious Durga (Bharat Mata) seated on a tiger or bull and slaying the asura of Terrorism. That was not to be. Instead shortly before his death he exhibited the painting The Rape of India, which shows a young scantily clad (this time) woman being attacked by ferocious animals. Clearly, an unwillingness on Husain’s part to project a victorious India.Instead, possibly some wishful thinking ! Here again his much vaunted attachment to India seems something of a myth circulated by his admirers.
Then there is the painting where he shows 4 male figures : Mao Tse Tung fully clothed, Mahatma Gandhi in his loin cloth, Churchill fully dressed and Hitler in the nude. When asked why, he is reported to have replied that he hated Hitler and wanted to humiliate him by showing him naked. Clearly then , nakedness in the painter’s mind is associated with hatred. Earlier, when asked about the nude goddesses he had made the lame excuse that nudity is a sign of purity. Which will it be : nudity as purity or nudity as an expression of his hatred ?
Summing Up
Husain left India because of the Hindu protest ( some of it violent) at his paintings and because of the lawsuits filed against him. He took Quatari citizenship , having given up his Indian citizenship. All accounts are that he enjoyed his stay there. He lived in comfort and luxury and enjoyed driving his red Ferrari around. His hosts laid out the red carpet treatment. A chagrined Indian following tried to make out that he longed for India. He was about to embark on his mammoth depictions of Arab civilization ( a wise decision, since this was his natural constituency so to speak). He basked in the glow of international fame especially in capitals such as London where his exhibitions were lauded. Above all, he made immense quantities of money.
It is reported that he was going to start work on the Ramayana. One shudders to think what he might have done with that ! Perhaps the gods wisely took him away before Ayodhya could be desecrated once again.
(The writer is a Political Philosopher who taught at a Canadian university).
11/06/2011 14:21:43
Dr. Vijaya Rajiva
Courtesy: http://haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PAGEID=14026&SKIN=B
When a person dies at an advanced old age, there is a human tendency to feel sympathy even with a criminal. Take the case of Chilean dictator Auguste Pinochet whose pictures of an old man walking hesitantly provoked some sympathy. In the case of an artist, and one widely acclaimed as M. F. Husain (who died at age 95) there is not only the above sentiment, but also a tendency to eulogise the man out of all proportion. Yes, he has been hailed as the Indian Picasso (the present writer believes that he is an imitation Picasso).He has been hailed as the greatest Indian painter, not quite accurate, since there have been many great Indian painters in the past and today. Quite amusingly one of the criteria offered for his greatness is that he has put India on the artistic map by being one of the most feted artists at Christie’s ! It is a sober reminder of how values have been distorted. Some of the world’s greatest painters were never auctioned during their lifetime at Christie’s or elsewhere. Yes, Husain was probably the wealthiest Indian artist.
Setting the record straight in the current atmosphere of hyperbolic eulogizing is essential. One can sum up what is problematic about Husain’s art as follows:
1.His excessive preoccupation with bestiality in art.
2.His willfuly offensive paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses.
3.His blatantly offensive paintings against the country he claims to have loved, India.
Before looking at these three problems we have to briefly take note of some of the sycophantic expressions of loyalty and allegiance to Husain’s world view. Coming from artist Anjoli Ela Menon they could be excused as that of a camp follower who was also a protégé of Husain. But coming from the charming actress Shaban Azmi and some others of India’s glitterati, it is quite another matter, it is an expression of bad faith. We shall return to this in a moment.
1.Preoccupation with bestiality in art : some of his paintings show women copulating with animals, such as elephants and tigers. Why Husain was preoccupied with this theme can only be explained by his own conscience, if even that. A psychiatrist could offer a better explanation possibly. Did Husain identify with these animals and get a high on that ? Or was he secretly a misogynist, despite the professed admiration for beautiful women such as Madhuri Diksit who acted in one of his films. He wanted the women to be attacked by animals ?
2.Offfensive paintings of Hindu gods and goddesses. Goddess Durga is shown copulating with a tiger. Goddess Parvati is shown copulating with a bull.
Goddess Sarasvati is shown stark naked. Goddess Lakshmi is shown stark naked sitting on an elephant’s head.
Ravana is shown sitting naked with a naked Sita on his thigh.
Naked Hanuman looks leeringly at Sita. In these many paintings all of which have not been listed here, the motive is clearly an offence against Hindu sentiment. Shabna Azmi claimed in her remarks on a Times Now show that this theme was okay because nudity was there in ancient Indian sculpture and one should also consider the erotic art of Khajuraho . Ms. Azmi presumably has not seen Khajuraho, since the erotic sculpture there pertains to ordinary mortals, not gods and goddesses . Her smooth talk can be forgiven since she is not Hindu. It does not matter a cent to her whether the gods and goddesses of the Hindu pantheon are insulted so blatanly and openly as in Husain’s paintings.
But what about the rest of the motley crew of liberal glitterati on the Times Now show, all taken up by the glamour, glitter, fame, name and yes, the big time money of the artist?
There was the redoubtable Shobha De cooing over the foods that Husain loved etc.
And ofcourse, even the intrepid Arnaub Goswami, host of the show, made dark references to Hindu intolerance towards the Husain paintings. And then, ofcourse, if nothing else works, the old canard about freedom of expression is brought out at suitable moments, forgetting that even that great champion of individual freedoms John Stuart Mill had clearly stated in his work On Liberty, that freedom of expression is not an absolute right. A man’s freedom to move his hand around ends when it meets the other man’s jaw !
And here the religious sentiments of millions of devout Hindus had been brazenly offended. And this was acclaimed by the glitterati and the liberals as high art !
3.Offensive paintings against the country he claims to have loved, India : The main
one is the infamous Bharata Mata painting which shows a nude woman (Bharatmata) spread out across a map of India with the name of Indian states on various parts of her body. The reader must be reminded that the painting was part of an exhibition organized by Nafisa Ali under the caption ‘Art for Mission Kashmir.’
Here again, one must perforce ask why Husain is wedded to the idea of portraying Bharat Mata (Mother India) in the nude. Any political statements he wished to make could just as easily have been conveyed with a robed Mother India. Was this an unconscious reply to the much hailed Vande Mataram of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya ? Did his much vaunted attachment to India exclude India’s national song ? Perhaps like the fanatical mullahs he too did not like the idea of a Mother India ? His resentment found expression in this manner ? The misogyny comes out quite unexpectedly, this time transposed to Bharata Mata, who is regularly shown in Hindu depictions as fully clothed standing beside a tiger or a lion
The present writer had previously suggested that Husain should have painted a victorious Durga (Bharat Mata) seated on a tiger or bull and slaying the asura of Terrorism. That was not to be. Instead shortly before his death he exhibited the painting The Rape of India, which shows a young scantily clad (this time) woman being attacked by ferocious animals. Clearly, an unwillingness on Husain’s part to project a victorious India.Instead, possibly some wishful thinking ! Here again his much vaunted attachment to India seems something of a myth circulated by his admirers.
Then there is the painting where he shows 4 male figures : Mao Tse Tung fully clothed, Mahatma Gandhi in his loin cloth, Churchill fully dressed and Hitler in the nude. When asked why, he is reported to have replied that he hated Hitler and wanted to humiliate him by showing him naked. Clearly then , nakedness in the painter’s mind is associated with hatred. Earlier, when asked about the nude goddesses he had made the lame excuse that nudity is a sign of purity. Which will it be : nudity as purity or nudity as an expression of his hatred ?
Summing Up
Husain left India because of the Hindu protest ( some of it violent) at his paintings and because of the lawsuits filed against him. He took Quatari citizenship , having given up his Indian citizenship. All accounts are that he enjoyed his stay there. He lived in comfort and luxury and enjoyed driving his red Ferrari around. His hosts laid out the red carpet treatment. A chagrined Indian following tried to make out that he longed for India. He was about to embark on his mammoth depictions of Arab civilization ( a wise decision, since this was his natural constituency so to speak). He basked in the glow of international fame especially in capitals such as London where his exhibitions were lauded. Above all, he made immense quantities of money.
It is reported that he was going to start work on the Ramayana. One shudders to think what he might have done with that ! Perhaps the gods wisely took him away before Ayodhya could be desecrated once again.
(The writer is a Political Philosopher who taught at a Canadian university).
Saturday, June 11, 2011
CORRUPTASUR & VIDESHVITTASUR ARE CHRISTIST SONIA'S BHARAT GILANKRITASURS
June 4, Ramlila Maidan: Sonia Gandhi’s Night of Shame
by
Radha Rajan
11 June 2011
Courtesy: http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1549&Itemid=1
What happened in the night of June 4 at Ramlila Maidan resembled a scene straight out of Macbeth. No Hindu king or ruler, not even Kamsa and Ravana, has gone so far as to use force of arms against defenseless, sleeping women and children. This is a familiar demoniac Abrahamic characteristic which the non-Christian and non-Muslim world has seen and experienced both in historical and contemporary times.
The UPA government, like Shakespeare’s infamous agents of evil and disorder, used the cover of darkness to arrest Baba Ramdev, physically molest women and children, brutally manhandle the men, and destroy the pandal and its fixtures in an orgy of violence and lawlessness. It is not difficult to guess who played Lady Macbeth.
It may perhaps come as a shock to Sonia Gandhi and her minions in the party and government, but IB sources had already informed a small group of people that Baba Ramdev would almost certainly be arrested; what was unexpected, however, was the insane midnight police assault on sleeping men, women and children. This was surely a plot scripted by a deranged mind; or was it? Judging by the end result – Sonia Gandhi, Digvijay Singh and P. Chidambaram are the most detested persons in the country today – the writer is veering towards the conclusion that there was sure-footed method in the midnight madness. Evil raged on Ramlila Maidan that night.
If Digvijay Singh’s opening statement to the media soon after Sonia Gandhi pushed the button on his back were to be carried to its logical conclusion, then from the fact that Baba Ramdev was arrested in the thick of the night, proves that the Congress is not simply afraid but terrified of what Sonia Gandhi thinks Baba Ramdev represents and symbolizes. The midnight assault on Ramlila Maidan has stripped naked Sonia Gandhi’s ill-concealed and demoniac ambition to rule a country not her own at any cost; it also revealed that someone close to her in government was determined that she will not be allowed to succeed, and in the process exposed to the discerning eye the deep divide between the Prime Minister and his imported boss lady.
While it is imperative for the nation’s collective conscience to be merciless towards Sonia Gandhi and her repeated Italian Mafioso methods to deal with a citizenry not impressed by and even affronted by the colour of her skin, it is just as important to question the rationale which catapulted an ill-equipped Baba Ramdev to political center-stage, and the motives driving the individuals who used the yoga Guru for the purpose.
The issue of ‘black’ money or money taken out of the country to be stashed in banks and garbage bins in safe and secretive tax-haven countries of the world is, of course, a matter of paramount national concern. This is but a manifestation of decades-long endemic greed and systemic corruption in the country’s polity and judiciary; it is ultimately, the country’s purchasable polity and judiciary which allowed the rot to set in and then spread.
The BJP, to its credit, did speak first about this lost national financial asset, and even made it the sole electoral issue during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. One of the first to write about the estimated volume of illegal money in tax-havens abroad and in Swiss Banks was a professor of finance from IIM Bangalore, Prof. R Vaidyanathan. The Bangalore professor was assiduously cultivated by a Chennai-based chartered accountant who is also a celebrated, if somewhat selective, investigative journalist, and is considered close to Advani. The BJP was compelled to embrace the issue of bringing back illegal money stashed abroad during the 2009 general elections because the party refused to take up any other nationalist cause, and the ideologue used this gaping hole in the BJP’s campaign to prevail upon Advani to make it an election issue.
Advani having distanced the BJP from Hindutva and all other ideology, jumped at the idea because this was in consonance with his own agenda for the BJP – to transform it into a de-Hinduised, governance-over-ideology political party. The writer’s blunt warning to Narendra Modi that the BJP’s election campaign with only the issue of black money abroad as talking point was not setting the nation on fire fell on deaf ears.
While this was undoubtedly a political issue calling for political action, in 2009 it was not an electoral issue because the voting populace had neither been informed nor educated about it then as they are now clued-up. The writer was therefore not surprised when the idea failed to capture the imagination of the ordinary voting populace and BJP suffered thumping defeat in the elections.
The Prime Minister probably as salve to the bruised BJP psyche in 2009, promised to take up the issue seriously within the first 100 days after coming to power. Considering the names of those who had stashed the money abroad, amid suspicions that the Congress leadership may well be topping the list, there was no way he would have been allowed by the Pompadour to pursue the matter even half-heartedly; and the issue which was both real and big died a natural death for want of a delivery mechanism – in this case, state power which alone could have made it possible.
Baba Ramdev’s entirely unexpected foray into the realm of domestic politics through this issue should be seen in this context, and can be attributed to the Chennai ideologue and his penchant to launch innumerable movements and forums as extensions of his own sense of grandiloquent self-importance. Seeing great potential for self-perpetuation in the idea of bringing back money kept abroad, and when the BJP’s campaign failed to get off the ground, this gentleman needed another vehicle, ideally a large vehicle to propel the idea to national center-stage, and who better than the articulate, activist Baba Ramdev with his vast following at home and abroad.
Baba Ramdev was also one of the Founders-Patron of Global Foundation for Civilizational Harmony, a forum created inter alia for Track II international politics of religion. While Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Sri Sri Ravishankar were articulate in English and could be used effectively in inter-faith dialogue in America, Vatican, Europe and UN, Baba Ramdev’s utility and USP were different. Baba Ramdev did not speak Queen’s English, but his spontaneity, his robust and rustic simplicity, his willingness to inform and educate his bhaktas on important national and Hindu issues, besides yoga, and his unmatched ability to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people ready to do their Guru’s bidding without question, made him the natural choice to launch a nation-wide movement. The question begs itself – when individuals seek to use Hindu sanyasis to launch nation-wide movements, should it not have been a Hindu movement around a Hindu issue?
Baba Ramdev was persuaded to spearhead the movement against money taken out of the country, and for as long as the movement was led by Baba Ramdev, it gathered phenomenal momentum as the yoga Guru travelled across the country rousing people’s opinion against corruption and demanding the government take immediate steps to bring back the money.
In Hindu-majority India, when people step out of their homes to participate in a public cause, the ‘people’ are Hindus; and Hindus respond spontaneously and with a sense of their responsibility to the nation when the movement is led from the front by Hindu religious leaders or by leaders who exert moral authority and whose call Hindus obey unquestioningly. This is the Hindu way, and when individuals like Gandhi and the ideologue use ordinary people to power their movements, the Hindu nation has the right to demand that the end objective of the movement serves the cause of Hindu rashtra.
Gandhi used his multi-religious, pluralist prayer meetings where the majority was Hindu to lead the country towards vivisection in 1947; this movement where individuals used Baba Ramdev ended in unmitigated disaster not only for Baba Ramdev himself, but for all those who were deceived into believing that something momentous was happening finally to serve the Hindu cause. The issue of black money abroad, which has now become a part of the national movement against corruption, is in very real danger of losing steam because the duo which used Baba Ramdev to breathe new life into the dead issue had obviously not planned even the mammoth gathering at Ramlila Maidan to the last detail, much less thought beyond the Delhi satyagraha. Such was their touching faith in Sonia Gandhi that they did not think anything could go wrong.
Had there been wider consultations, had the duo consulted thinkers, retired intelligence officers, retired army personnel, and not just adoring sycophants and loyalists, the campaign would not have come to the tragic, abrupt and ignominious end that Sonia Gandhi and her spittle-licking government inflicted upon it.
The issue of black money abroad, while important, is nevertheless not something for which people will lay down their lives, and no matter how earth-shaking the response to Baba Ramdev’s call, it had less to do with the issue and more to do with personal bhakti for their Guru; most important though, the campaign was certain to lose steam because once Baba Ramdev was removed from the venue and his bhaktas dispersed, the government was sure to allow it to die a natural death, all the while making polite and soothing noises about corruption.
The Vigil book on NGOs was a well-researched expose of foreign-funded NGOs and political activists. Subsequent to publishing the book, the website www.vigilonline.com opened a webpage for news updates on these and other NGOs, and the notorious band of activists who are unambiguously anti-Hindu in speech, writing and action, and who can be seen preening before media cameras in Sonia Gandhi’s NAC, including in team Anna Hazare and the Lokpal Bill.
The webpage NGO Watch carries detailed analysis of foreign money coming into the country from governments, churches and funding agencies in America and Europe to fund subversive NGOs and anti-Hindu political activists. Prof. Vaidyanathan and Sanjeev Nayyar (of Mumbai) have analysed the dangerous inflow of money into the country from available government data – from the website of Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs and FCRA.
If the chartered accountant-cum-investigative journalist and his partner in Delhi were planning to use Baba Ramdev to mount a national campaign, surely it should have been presented to the ordinary people as an issue which poses a great threat to Hindus, Hindu religion and the Hindu Nation. This could have been done only by-
- Making the connection between illegal money hidden abroad and foreign money coming into the country
- Making removal of Sonia Gandhi from the political arena as the explicit end objective of the campaign
- Bringing down the anti-Hindu UPA government
This duo wanted to wage what was in actual fact a war against Sonia Gandhi by hiding behind Baba Ramdev. Let there be no doubt that while the issue may be about bringing back money taken out of the country, Sonia Gandhi rightly perceived herself to be the end objective; and the chowki which she usurped from under poor Sitaram Kesri in 1998 and which had seemed invincible, was beginning to rock.
Our enemies have always had a vastly superior understanding of the war against Hindu India than Hindus have had about war or about Hinduism’s enemies.
The small group working from behind Baba Ramdev ought to have known that arraigned on the other side was not Sonia Gandhi the individual, but the Generic Church. The formidable Generic Church (American and European governments, American and European churches, the Vatican and World Council of Churches) stands behind Sonia Gandhi, equipped with all instruments of state, including weapons of war, and creatures of their making - pan-national and international structures and organizations (United Nations; International Court of Justice, The Hague; The International Criminal Court; Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; Red Cross; American think-tanks) making Sonia Gandhi almost invincible.
But the group behind Baba Ramdev, in choosing not to seek organizational or any other back up support, thought they could get Baba Ramdev to mobilize people to Delhi in tens of thousands by hiding from public view and directing the movement insultingly from the shadows and over the cellular phone.
Sonia Gandhi’s handlers can front her in the war to conquer India without soiling their coattails and without entering the battlefield because Sonia Gandhi has the entire spittle-licking Congress as slave labour to do her bidding; and since 2004, every VVIP sitting in every single high democratic institution Rashtrapati Bhavan downwards, is personally beholden to Sonia Gandhi for his or her current high profile and privileged status. These individuals as price for their undeserved elevation have allowed Sonia Gandhi to tie strings to their fingers and toes, while they themselves are not allowed even an involuntary twitch of muscle or nerve.
Baba Ramdev, in contrast, had no one. Such is the total isolation of Baba Ramdev today that he was carrying on the ill-considered fast alone in his ashram in Haridwar [and had to be removed to hospital on Friday]. But Haridwar is not Delhi and Baba Ramdev is not a politician; he is a Hindu sanyasi. The government is no longer under pressure to placate or punish Baba Ramdev for daring to challenge Sonia Gandhi’s tentacles in Delhi; the government only has to ignore him. Simply put, the government no longer cares if Baba Ramdev fasts or feasts.
This battle was won by Sonia Gandhi only because the individuals who masterminded the movement assumed leadership roles which they did not deserve, and for which they had no competence. Round 1 to Sonia Gandhi, but the war is still far from over.
Every intelligent and politically conscious Hindu must question those individuals who dragged Baba Ramdev to do politics, for publicly and humiliatingly letting down Baba Ramdev, and all those Hindus who had gathered faithfully at Ramlila Maidan on 3rd and 4th June, and all those Hindus who thought (wrongly) that this was some great Hindu awakening.
The writer sat up and took note when all of a sudden Baba Ramdev began to speak publicly, not about corruption in general terms, but specifically about foreign money stashed abroad, and came to the immediate and correct conclusion that the good professor from Bangalore had probably been taken to meet Baba Ramdev to brief the yogi about the need to mount a national campaign against illegal money in Swiss Banks and tax-havens.
This was unquestionably a brilliant move – to get Baba Ramdev to re-launch the campaign which failed in 2009 because the BJP saw it only as an election campaign talking point and not as a war tactic. But, like all other ideas which this duo dreamed up in years past, this too crash-landed because, one, the duo lacks staying ability and two, they have always failed to practice the first rule taught to students of chess who plan to play the game competitively - crawl into the mind of your opponent, work out all possible moves he can make, and work out the next twenty steps for each of these moves. In short, know thy enemy.
A war is not fought and won by flitting from cause to cause every week – cleaning Ganga one week, plight of farmers the second, bringing home illegal money the third and sinking Dayanidhi Maran in the fourth. The war to protect the Hindu Nation from Sonia Gandhi’s Christian colonial rule cannot be fought, much less won, without a battle plan, and certainly not by standing script in hand in the wings of the dais. War is not theatre. But was this group really waging war against Sonia Gandhi and for the Hindu Nation? It would seem not, considering that they are nowhere to be seen or heard since the 4th of June.
The writer has been troubled by the question – did the issue of black money in Swiss Banks and tax havens merit the kind of gathering at Ramlila Maidan, and did this issue merit a fast unto death? Sonia Gandhi’s decision to take forcible charge of the Congress Party and her subsequent rise in national politics, the corresponding weakening of the BJP, compounded by BJP’s floundering sense of self-identity, has had a catastrophic effect on Hindus and Hindu religion. Add to this was her determination to plant loyalists in every constitutional and administrative position in the country; witness -
- The rise of Christian Chief Ministers
- The rise of Christian aspirants for 7, Race Course Road
- The growing visibility of Christians in all important positions within the Congress party
- The craven and cowardly submission of all English print and electronic media to the Pompadour’s will
- The relentless mission of all denominations of the Church to end Hindu religion in its own bhumi
- UPA Government-driven empowerment of Abrahamic minorities in all spheres of public life
- The unending infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims into the country
Every one of these issues is linked directly either to the rise of Sonia Gandhi in India’s polity, or to foreign money coming into the country. In short, the rise of Sonia Gandhi in India’s polity can be traced to the Generic Church’s politico-religious agenda for Asia. China, South Korea, Japan and India are the prime targets in the Generic Church’s quest for world domination. South Korea is already Christian-majority, Japan has been irreversibly Christianised in its collective mind; China and India alone remain the last bastions against the Abrahamic onslaught.
These issues, including the sudden and steep increase in the volume of foreign money being pumped here ostensibly for social charity, which must be laid squarely at Sonia Gandhi’s door, demanded the kind of national awareness and response that Baba Ramdev created in the country.
On the midnight of June 4, when the Delhi Police crashed into the Ramlila Maidan, nearly 50,000 of Baba Ramdev’s bhaktas had gathered at the venue and another 30-40,000 people were expected on Sunday, 5th June. By any account these are mind-numbing numbers and the anti-Hindu UPA government was put on notice. That the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi are no longer on the same side of the Hindu / anti-Hindu divide within the UPA government was until now just suspected in some quarters; it came to the fore as Baba Ramdev and his bhaktas began moving towards Delhi.
On the first day, the Prime Minister sent four Cabinet Ministers, including Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, to receive Baba Ramdev at the airport. This was civilisationally the correct thing to do and the country heaved a sigh of relief. The Prime Minister is a Sikh and after he is done with being Prime Minister, he has to go back to being a disciplined soldier of the Sikh faith and answer to the Akal Takht. The Prime Minister is certain to have remembered the chastening experience of the incumbent Governor of Tamil Nadu and former Chief Minister of Punjab, Shri S.S. Barnala, who was made to sit in the Golden Temple for ten days and as an act of penitence, clean the shoes of bhaktas entering the precincts.
The writer is deeply grateful to the SGPC for asking a highly respected Sikh lawyer in the Supreme Court to withdraw from the case against Pujya Kanchi Mathathipathi. This lawyer was engaged by the then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa; and bhaktas of the Kanchi matham owe an eternal debt of gratitude to this lawyer who abided by the diktat of Sikhism’s highest religious body and refused to proceed with the case. This single act by the Sikh lawyer of refusing to be a part of this asuric act in total obedience to his religious leaders dramatically altered the then prevalent mood in the Madras High Court and in the Supreme Court, and public opinion changed decisively against the Tamil Nadu government.
This country is driven by the tapasya of our dharmic gurus and sanyasis; Dr. Manmohan Singh knew this and therefore sent four ministers to meet with Baba Ramdev; Sonia Gandhi and her spittle-lickers knew it too; that is why an emergency meeting was convened the next day at the Prime Minister’s residence and this time Sonia Gandhi presided with P. Chidambaram and A.K. Anthony in tow.
After this meeting at Number 7, Race Course Road, everything changed. Four ministers became two ministers, and on the second day no ministers at all, only government representatives. The Generic Church stepped in with full might. What was at stake was Hindu India with all its magnificent natural resources; at stake was the vast potential harvest of Hindu souls for Christ, and oil and diamonds, gold and other minerals, the vastly promising perennial rivers and abundant sunshine – all up for grabs.
The Generic Church could not have a Hindu sanyasi threatening Sonia Gandhi and in the process unravelling their plot to eventually control and rule India. And so the resistance had to be broken and broken both insultingly and brutally. This was not Jallianwala Bagh; this was 1909 – the year the British government ruthlessly removed three towering Hindu nationalists, Aurobindo, Tilak and Savarkar, from the polity to facilitate Gandhi taking over the Congress after his rather hasty departure from South Africa. It speaks volumes for the knowledge that Hindus have of their own history that while people compared what happened on June 4 to the Emergency and Jallianwala Bagh, no one saw it as a replay of 1909.
The year 1909 saw the full might of state breaking the backbone of Hindu nationalism; Sonia Gandhi was made to do the same by her handlers. They knew 1909 only too well and therefore knew exactly how to deal with it. It is frightening to know that even intelligent and political Hindus still do not know 1909; those who knew did not prepare themselves or the Hindu community to meet a similar eventuality and once again, ordinary Hindus were let down by their leaders.
The country will never know what transpired between Kapil Sibal and Baba Ramdev; will never know why the activist-ideologue duo did not accompany Baba Ramdev to the Claridges Hotel, and why they were not present in Ramlila Maidan when Sonia Gandhi sent the Delhi Police to arrest Baba Ramdev. There is still no answer why they have not surfaced till now even as this is being written; surely they owe Hindus an explanation about why they dragged a sanyasi to Delhi with his bhaktas and left them all high and dry to fend for themselves after Sonia Gandhi and her thugs were done with them.
This was in sharp contrast to the manner in which Anna Hazare addressed press conferences or when he undertook the fast-unto-death at Jantar Mantar. He was always flanked on both sides by Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal, Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan. The entire team was always seen together and there was a transparent distribution of responsibility among them. The circle expanded to include Swami Agnivesh, Mallika Sarabhai, Medha Patkar and Sandeep Pandey – all Sonia Gandhi’s men and women.
Baba Ramdev did not fail; the people who used him failed the Guru and all of us. But while there is reason for despondency and gloom, there are several lessons to be learnt and also several reasons to hope.
The RSS, preoccupied with its annual shibirs which are conducted across the country, obviously was never part of Baba Ramdev’s Delhi Satyagraha. Those familiar with the RSS’ shiksha varga know that all RSS karyalayas throughout the country empty themselves during the months of April, May and June and all swayamsevaks and pracharaks are deputed to the various camps for different tasks and duties.
The same would have been true of Delhi. When tragedy struck Ramlila Maidan on the night of June 4, there would have been no swayamsevak or pracharak in Delhi that night. The BJP had already planned its National Executive meeting in Lucknow on that day. Which brings us back to the question raised earlier – why was there no careful planning of the Delhi satyagraha considering that both the RSS and BJP would not be present in Delhi that night?
As pointed out earlier, our enemies have a far better understanding of Hindus than we have of them. Sonia Gandhi’s handlers would have known that the RSS and BJP top brass would not be in Delhi that night and that is why Sonia Gandhi sent the Delhi Police to Ramlila Maidan even as the Prime Minister’s emissaries were still negotiating with Baba Ramdev. The Prime Minister may not be in a position to tell the nation just yet if Kapil Sibal and Subodh Kant Sahay were reporting to him or to Sonia Gandhi and her minions.
The Prime Minister may also not be in a position to tell us why, if he was engaging Baba Ramdev by day, Sonia Gandhi had to arrest him at night. The Prime Minister is also not in a position to tell us why, if on the one hand he conducts himself with correctness and accords Hindu sanyasis the high respect due to them, Rahul Gandhi’s spittle-licking Digvijay Singh is allowed to run amok enraging Hindus and offending Hindu sensibilities.
This brutal mission of arresting Baba Ramdev and forcibly throwing him out of Delhi and evicting hapless men, women and children, could not have been undertaken during daytime without a violent backlash from the people; that is why in true Gestapo style, in a style befitting Italian Mafioso and Stalinist Russia, 50,000 Hindus gathered at Ramlila Maidan could be brutalised and dispersed only in the dead of the night.
The fact that Hindus will step out of their homes at the call of their religious leaders or to the call of a Hindu cause, is the biggest reason to hope that this war is not over yet. The RSS, the BJP, and our religious leaders must sit down and first acknowledge collectively that Sonia Gandhi and the Generic Church pose the biggest threat to this nation, and the quantum of foreign money which the Generic Church is pouring into the country and Sonia Gandhi’s politics of minority-ism have to be fought with the full might of Hindu power.
The Hindu Nation is losing its people and its territory to the Church and Islam. All three forces have to come together to combat the Generic Church. This cannot be done by our religious leaders without the RSS’ organizing capacity; this cannot be done by the RSS alone without the BJP’s political delivery mechanism and the sanctity and mobilising capacity of our religious leaders, and this cannot be done by the BJP alone without the moral authority of the RSS and the spiritual and religious authority of our sanyasis, Gurus and Acharyas.
We cannot allow individuals to launch nation-wide movements without preparation and without nationalism. It is not enough for the RSS to merely extend ‘support’ to our religious leaders when they step forward to take up a national cause. This is akin to outside support extended by irresponsible political parties and politicians to a government. The RSS must openly take the lead and forge a proactive and invincible partnership with the BJP and our religious leaders if Hindu India is to be saved from going the way of South Korea now, and East Timor and The Philippines before that. The synergy of Hindu religious leaders, RSS and BJP must –
- Demand stopping all foreign money from coming into India. Hindu religious leaders and Hindu organizations receiving foreign money must be prepared to do without it, because money coming to Christian and Muslim groups is the single most destructive power threatening Hindu religion
- Bring down the UPA government at the earliest
- Remove Sonia Gandhi permanently from the political arena, and if possible mount a campaign that any member of this family poses the same threat
Sonia Gandhi is the most detested person in the country today. Our religious leaders, the RSS, and the BJP, must ensure she does not rise again. The time to remove her forcibly from the political arena, like she removed Pujya Kanchi Periava and Baba Ramdev, is now. It’s payback time for the Congress and its imported usurper. Dr. Manmohan Singh may yet be called to account by the Akal Takht. He should now do what he can to make the Akal Takht look more kindly upon him.
If Ramlila Maidan showed us our weaknesses, it also showed us what is possible, and that should bring the Hindu nation together to combat the Generic Church.
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That Wondrous Creature called Global Foundation for Civilizational Harmony
The author is Editor, www.vigilonline.com
by
Radha Rajan
11 June 2011
Courtesy: http://www.vigilonline.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1549&Itemid=1
What happened in the night of June 4 at Ramlila Maidan resembled a scene straight out of Macbeth. No Hindu king or ruler, not even Kamsa and Ravana, has gone so far as to use force of arms against defenseless, sleeping women and children. This is a familiar demoniac Abrahamic characteristic which the non-Christian and non-Muslim world has seen and experienced both in historical and contemporary times.
The UPA government, like Shakespeare’s infamous agents of evil and disorder, used the cover of darkness to arrest Baba Ramdev, physically molest women and children, brutally manhandle the men, and destroy the pandal and its fixtures in an orgy of violence and lawlessness. It is not difficult to guess who played Lady Macbeth.
It may perhaps come as a shock to Sonia Gandhi and her minions in the party and government, but IB sources had already informed a small group of people that Baba Ramdev would almost certainly be arrested; what was unexpected, however, was the insane midnight police assault on sleeping men, women and children. This was surely a plot scripted by a deranged mind; or was it? Judging by the end result – Sonia Gandhi, Digvijay Singh and P. Chidambaram are the most detested persons in the country today – the writer is veering towards the conclusion that there was sure-footed method in the midnight madness. Evil raged on Ramlila Maidan that night.
If Digvijay Singh’s opening statement to the media soon after Sonia Gandhi pushed the button on his back were to be carried to its logical conclusion, then from the fact that Baba Ramdev was arrested in the thick of the night, proves that the Congress is not simply afraid but terrified of what Sonia Gandhi thinks Baba Ramdev represents and symbolizes. The midnight assault on Ramlila Maidan has stripped naked Sonia Gandhi’s ill-concealed and demoniac ambition to rule a country not her own at any cost; it also revealed that someone close to her in government was determined that she will not be allowed to succeed, and in the process exposed to the discerning eye the deep divide between the Prime Minister and his imported boss lady.
While it is imperative for the nation’s collective conscience to be merciless towards Sonia Gandhi and her repeated Italian Mafioso methods to deal with a citizenry not impressed by and even affronted by the colour of her skin, it is just as important to question the rationale which catapulted an ill-equipped Baba Ramdev to political center-stage, and the motives driving the individuals who used the yoga Guru for the purpose.
The issue of ‘black’ money or money taken out of the country to be stashed in banks and garbage bins in safe and secretive tax-haven countries of the world is, of course, a matter of paramount national concern. This is but a manifestation of decades-long endemic greed and systemic corruption in the country’s polity and judiciary; it is ultimately, the country’s purchasable polity and judiciary which allowed the rot to set in and then spread.
The BJP, to its credit, did speak first about this lost national financial asset, and even made it the sole electoral issue during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections. One of the first to write about the estimated volume of illegal money in tax-havens abroad and in Swiss Banks was a professor of finance from IIM Bangalore, Prof. R Vaidyanathan. The Bangalore professor was assiduously cultivated by a Chennai-based chartered accountant who is also a celebrated, if somewhat selective, investigative journalist, and is considered close to Advani. The BJP was compelled to embrace the issue of bringing back illegal money stashed abroad during the 2009 general elections because the party refused to take up any other nationalist cause, and the ideologue used this gaping hole in the BJP’s campaign to prevail upon Advani to make it an election issue.
Advani having distanced the BJP from Hindutva and all other ideology, jumped at the idea because this was in consonance with his own agenda for the BJP – to transform it into a de-Hinduised, governance-over-ideology political party. The writer’s blunt warning to Narendra Modi that the BJP’s election campaign with only the issue of black money abroad as talking point was not setting the nation on fire fell on deaf ears.
While this was undoubtedly a political issue calling for political action, in 2009 it was not an electoral issue because the voting populace had neither been informed nor educated about it then as they are now clued-up. The writer was therefore not surprised when the idea failed to capture the imagination of the ordinary voting populace and BJP suffered thumping defeat in the elections.
The Prime Minister probably as salve to the bruised BJP psyche in 2009, promised to take up the issue seriously within the first 100 days after coming to power. Considering the names of those who had stashed the money abroad, amid suspicions that the Congress leadership may well be topping the list, there was no way he would have been allowed by the Pompadour to pursue the matter even half-heartedly; and the issue which was both real and big died a natural death for want of a delivery mechanism – in this case, state power which alone could have made it possible.
Baba Ramdev’s entirely unexpected foray into the realm of domestic politics through this issue should be seen in this context, and can be attributed to the Chennai ideologue and his penchant to launch innumerable movements and forums as extensions of his own sense of grandiloquent self-importance. Seeing great potential for self-perpetuation in the idea of bringing back money kept abroad, and when the BJP’s campaign failed to get off the ground, this gentleman needed another vehicle, ideally a large vehicle to propel the idea to national center-stage, and who better than the articulate, activist Baba Ramdev with his vast following at home and abroad.
Baba Ramdev was also one of the Founders-Patron of Global Foundation for Civilizational Harmony, a forum created inter alia for Track II international politics of religion. While Swami Dayananda Saraswati and Sri Sri Ravishankar were articulate in English and could be used effectively in inter-faith dialogue in America, Vatican, Europe and UN, Baba Ramdev’s utility and USP were different. Baba Ramdev did not speak Queen’s English, but his spontaneity, his robust and rustic simplicity, his willingness to inform and educate his bhaktas on important national and Hindu issues, besides yoga, and his unmatched ability to mobilise hundreds of thousands of people ready to do their Guru’s bidding without question, made him the natural choice to launch a nation-wide movement. The question begs itself – when individuals seek to use Hindu sanyasis to launch nation-wide movements, should it not have been a Hindu movement around a Hindu issue?
Baba Ramdev was persuaded to spearhead the movement against money taken out of the country, and for as long as the movement was led by Baba Ramdev, it gathered phenomenal momentum as the yoga Guru travelled across the country rousing people’s opinion against corruption and demanding the government take immediate steps to bring back the money.
In Hindu-majority India, when people step out of their homes to participate in a public cause, the ‘people’ are Hindus; and Hindus respond spontaneously and with a sense of their responsibility to the nation when the movement is led from the front by Hindu religious leaders or by leaders who exert moral authority and whose call Hindus obey unquestioningly. This is the Hindu way, and when individuals like Gandhi and the ideologue use ordinary people to power their movements, the Hindu nation has the right to demand that the end objective of the movement serves the cause of Hindu rashtra.
Gandhi used his multi-religious, pluralist prayer meetings where the majority was Hindu to lead the country towards vivisection in 1947; this movement where individuals used Baba Ramdev ended in unmitigated disaster not only for Baba Ramdev himself, but for all those who were deceived into believing that something momentous was happening finally to serve the Hindu cause. The issue of black money abroad, which has now become a part of the national movement against corruption, is in very real danger of losing steam because the duo which used Baba Ramdev to breathe new life into the dead issue had obviously not planned even the mammoth gathering at Ramlila Maidan to the last detail, much less thought beyond the Delhi satyagraha. Such was their touching faith in Sonia Gandhi that they did not think anything could go wrong.
Had there been wider consultations, had the duo consulted thinkers, retired intelligence officers, retired army personnel, and not just adoring sycophants and loyalists, the campaign would not have come to the tragic, abrupt and ignominious end that Sonia Gandhi and her spittle-licking government inflicted upon it.
The issue of black money abroad, while important, is nevertheless not something for which people will lay down their lives, and no matter how earth-shaking the response to Baba Ramdev’s call, it had less to do with the issue and more to do with personal bhakti for their Guru; most important though, the campaign was certain to lose steam because once Baba Ramdev was removed from the venue and his bhaktas dispersed, the government was sure to allow it to die a natural death, all the while making polite and soothing noises about corruption.
The Vigil book on NGOs was a well-researched expose of foreign-funded NGOs and political activists. Subsequent to publishing the book, the website www.vigilonline.com opened a webpage for news updates on these and other NGOs, and the notorious band of activists who are unambiguously anti-Hindu in speech, writing and action, and who can be seen preening before media cameras in Sonia Gandhi’s NAC, including in team Anna Hazare and the Lokpal Bill.
The webpage NGO Watch carries detailed analysis of foreign money coming into the country from governments, churches and funding agencies in America and Europe to fund subversive NGOs and anti-Hindu political activists. Prof. Vaidyanathan and Sanjeev Nayyar (of Mumbai) have analysed the dangerous inflow of money into the country from available government data – from the website of Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs and FCRA.
If the chartered accountant-cum-investigative journalist and his partner in Delhi were planning to use Baba Ramdev to mount a national campaign, surely it should have been presented to the ordinary people as an issue which poses a great threat to Hindus, Hindu religion and the Hindu Nation. This could have been done only by-
- Making the connection between illegal money hidden abroad and foreign money coming into the country
- Making removal of Sonia Gandhi from the political arena as the explicit end objective of the campaign
- Bringing down the anti-Hindu UPA government
This duo wanted to wage what was in actual fact a war against Sonia Gandhi by hiding behind Baba Ramdev. Let there be no doubt that while the issue may be about bringing back money taken out of the country, Sonia Gandhi rightly perceived herself to be the end objective; and the chowki which she usurped from under poor Sitaram Kesri in 1998 and which had seemed invincible, was beginning to rock.
Our enemies have always had a vastly superior understanding of the war against Hindu India than Hindus have had about war or about Hinduism’s enemies.
The small group working from behind Baba Ramdev ought to have known that arraigned on the other side was not Sonia Gandhi the individual, but the Generic Church. The formidable Generic Church (American and European governments, American and European churches, the Vatican and World Council of Churches) stands behind Sonia Gandhi, equipped with all instruments of state, including weapons of war, and creatures of their making - pan-national and international structures and organizations (United Nations; International Court of Justice, The Hague; The International Criminal Court; Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International; Red Cross; American think-tanks) making Sonia Gandhi almost invincible.
But the group behind Baba Ramdev, in choosing not to seek organizational or any other back up support, thought they could get Baba Ramdev to mobilize people to Delhi in tens of thousands by hiding from public view and directing the movement insultingly from the shadows and over the cellular phone.
Sonia Gandhi’s handlers can front her in the war to conquer India without soiling their coattails and without entering the battlefield because Sonia Gandhi has the entire spittle-licking Congress as slave labour to do her bidding; and since 2004, every VVIP sitting in every single high democratic institution Rashtrapati Bhavan downwards, is personally beholden to Sonia Gandhi for his or her current high profile and privileged status. These individuals as price for their undeserved elevation have allowed Sonia Gandhi to tie strings to their fingers and toes, while they themselves are not allowed even an involuntary twitch of muscle or nerve.
Baba Ramdev, in contrast, had no one. Such is the total isolation of Baba Ramdev today that he was carrying on the ill-considered fast alone in his ashram in Haridwar [and had to be removed to hospital on Friday]. But Haridwar is not Delhi and Baba Ramdev is not a politician; he is a Hindu sanyasi. The government is no longer under pressure to placate or punish Baba Ramdev for daring to challenge Sonia Gandhi’s tentacles in Delhi; the government only has to ignore him. Simply put, the government no longer cares if Baba Ramdev fasts or feasts.
This battle was won by Sonia Gandhi only because the individuals who masterminded the movement assumed leadership roles which they did not deserve, and for which they had no competence. Round 1 to Sonia Gandhi, but the war is still far from over.
Every intelligent and politically conscious Hindu must question those individuals who dragged Baba Ramdev to do politics, for publicly and humiliatingly letting down Baba Ramdev, and all those Hindus who had gathered faithfully at Ramlila Maidan on 3rd and 4th June, and all those Hindus who thought (wrongly) that this was some great Hindu awakening.
The writer sat up and took note when all of a sudden Baba Ramdev began to speak publicly, not about corruption in general terms, but specifically about foreign money stashed abroad, and came to the immediate and correct conclusion that the good professor from Bangalore had probably been taken to meet Baba Ramdev to brief the yogi about the need to mount a national campaign against illegal money in Swiss Banks and tax-havens.
This was unquestionably a brilliant move – to get Baba Ramdev to re-launch the campaign which failed in 2009 because the BJP saw it only as an election campaign talking point and not as a war tactic. But, like all other ideas which this duo dreamed up in years past, this too crash-landed because, one, the duo lacks staying ability and two, they have always failed to practice the first rule taught to students of chess who plan to play the game competitively - crawl into the mind of your opponent, work out all possible moves he can make, and work out the next twenty steps for each of these moves. In short, know thy enemy.
A war is not fought and won by flitting from cause to cause every week – cleaning Ganga one week, plight of farmers the second, bringing home illegal money the third and sinking Dayanidhi Maran in the fourth. The war to protect the Hindu Nation from Sonia Gandhi’s Christian colonial rule cannot be fought, much less won, without a battle plan, and certainly not by standing script in hand in the wings of the dais. War is not theatre. But was this group really waging war against Sonia Gandhi and for the Hindu Nation? It would seem not, considering that they are nowhere to be seen or heard since the 4th of June.
The writer has been troubled by the question – did the issue of black money in Swiss Banks and tax havens merit the kind of gathering at Ramlila Maidan, and did this issue merit a fast unto death? Sonia Gandhi’s decision to take forcible charge of the Congress Party and her subsequent rise in national politics, the corresponding weakening of the BJP, compounded by BJP’s floundering sense of self-identity, has had a catastrophic effect on Hindus and Hindu religion. Add to this was her determination to plant loyalists in every constitutional and administrative position in the country; witness -
- The rise of Christian Chief Ministers
- The rise of Christian aspirants for 7, Race Course Road
- The growing visibility of Christians in all important positions within the Congress party
- The craven and cowardly submission of all English print and electronic media to the Pompadour’s will
- The relentless mission of all denominations of the Church to end Hindu religion in its own bhumi
- UPA Government-driven empowerment of Abrahamic minorities in all spheres of public life
- The unending infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims into the country
Every one of these issues is linked directly either to the rise of Sonia Gandhi in India’s polity, or to foreign money coming into the country. In short, the rise of Sonia Gandhi in India’s polity can be traced to the Generic Church’s politico-religious agenda for Asia. China, South Korea, Japan and India are the prime targets in the Generic Church’s quest for world domination. South Korea is already Christian-majority, Japan has been irreversibly Christianised in its collective mind; China and India alone remain the last bastions against the Abrahamic onslaught.
These issues, including the sudden and steep increase in the volume of foreign money being pumped here ostensibly for social charity, which must be laid squarely at Sonia Gandhi’s door, demanded the kind of national awareness and response that Baba Ramdev created in the country.
On the midnight of June 4, when the Delhi Police crashed into the Ramlila Maidan, nearly 50,000 of Baba Ramdev’s bhaktas had gathered at the venue and another 30-40,000 people were expected on Sunday, 5th June. By any account these are mind-numbing numbers and the anti-Hindu UPA government was put on notice. That the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi are no longer on the same side of the Hindu / anti-Hindu divide within the UPA government was until now just suspected in some quarters; it came to the fore as Baba Ramdev and his bhaktas began moving towards Delhi.
On the first day, the Prime Minister sent four Cabinet Ministers, including Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, to receive Baba Ramdev at the airport. This was civilisationally the correct thing to do and the country heaved a sigh of relief. The Prime Minister is a Sikh and after he is done with being Prime Minister, he has to go back to being a disciplined soldier of the Sikh faith and answer to the Akal Takht. The Prime Minister is certain to have remembered the chastening experience of the incumbent Governor of Tamil Nadu and former Chief Minister of Punjab, Shri S.S. Barnala, who was made to sit in the Golden Temple for ten days and as an act of penitence, clean the shoes of bhaktas entering the precincts.
The writer is deeply grateful to the SGPC for asking a highly respected Sikh lawyer in the Supreme Court to withdraw from the case against Pujya Kanchi Mathathipathi. This lawyer was engaged by the then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa; and bhaktas of the Kanchi matham owe an eternal debt of gratitude to this lawyer who abided by the diktat of Sikhism’s highest religious body and refused to proceed with the case. This single act by the Sikh lawyer of refusing to be a part of this asuric act in total obedience to his religious leaders dramatically altered the then prevalent mood in the Madras High Court and in the Supreme Court, and public opinion changed decisively against the Tamil Nadu government.
This country is driven by the tapasya of our dharmic gurus and sanyasis; Dr. Manmohan Singh knew this and therefore sent four ministers to meet with Baba Ramdev; Sonia Gandhi and her spittle-lickers knew it too; that is why an emergency meeting was convened the next day at the Prime Minister’s residence and this time Sonia Gandhi presided with P. Chidambaram and A.K. Anthony in tow.
After this meeting at Number 7, Race Course Road, everything changed. Four ministers became two ministers, and on the second day no ministers at all, only government representatives. The Generic Church stepped in with full might. What was at stake was Hindu India with all its magnificent natural resources; at stake was the vast potential harvest of Hindu souls for Christ, and oil and diamonds, gold and other minerals, the vastly promising perennial rivers and abundant sunshine – all up for grabs.
The Generic Church could not have a Hindu sanyasi threatening Sonia Gandhi and in the process unravelling their plot to eventually control and rule India. And so the resistance had to be broken and broken both insultingly and brutally. This was not Jallianwala Bagh; this was 1909 – the year the British government ruthlessly removed three towering Hindu nationalists, Aurobindo, Tilak and Savarkar, from the polity to facilitate Gandhi taking over the Congress after his rather hasty departure from South Africa. It speaks volumes for the knowledge that Hindus have of their own history that while people compared what happened on June 4 to the Emergency and Jallianwala Bagh, no one saw it as a replay of 1909.
The year 1909 saw the full might of state breaking the backbone of Hindu nationalism; Sonia Gandhi was made to do the same by her handlers. They knew 1909 only too well and therefore knew exactly how to deal with it. It is frightening to know that even intelligent and political Hindus still do not know 1909; those who knew did not prepare themselves or the Hindu community to meet a similar eventuality and once again, ordinary Hindus were let down by their leaders.
The country will never know what transpired between Kapil Sibal and Baba Ramdev; will never know why the activist-ideologue duo did not accompany Baba Ramdev to the Claridges Hotel, and why they were not present in Ramlila Maidan when Sonia Gandhi sent the Delhi Police to arrest Baba Ramdev. There is still no answer why they have not surfaced till now even as this is being written; surely they owe Hindus an explanation about why they dragged a sanyasi to Delhi with his bhaktas and left them all high and dry to fend for themselves after Sonia Gandhi and her thugs were done with them.
This was in sharp contrast to the manner in which Anna Hazare addressed press conferences or when he undertook the fast-unto-death at Jantar Mantar. He was always flanked on both sides by Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal, Shanti Bhushan and Prashant Bhushan. The entire team was always seen together and there was a transparent distribution of responsibility among them. The circle expanded to include Swami Agnivesh, Mallika Sarabhai, Medha Patkar and Sandeep Pandey – all Sonia Gandhi’s men and women.
Baba Ramdev did not fail; the people who used him failed the Guru and all of us. But while there is reason for despondency and gloom, there are several lessons to be learnt and also several reasons to hope.
The RSS, preoccupied with its annual shibirs which are conducted across the country, obviously was never part of Baba Ramdev’s Delhi Satyagraha. Those familiar with the RSS’ shiksha varga know that all RSS karyalayas throughout the country empty themselves during the months of April, May and June and all swayamsevaks and pracharaks are deputed to the various camps for different tasks and duties.
The same would have been true of Delhi. When tragedy struck Ramlila Maidan on the night of June 4, there would have been no swayamsevak or pracharak in Delhi that night. The BJP had already planned its National Executive meeting in Lucknow on that day. Which brings us back to the question raised earlier – why was there no careful planning of the Delhi satyagraha considering that both the RSS and BJP would not be present in Delhi that night?
As pointed out earlier, our enemies have a far better understanding of Hindus than we have of them. Sonia Gandhi’s handlers would have known that the RSS and BJP top brass would not be in Delhi that night and that is why Sonia Gandhi sent the Delhi Police to Ramlila Maidan even as the Prime Minister’s emissaries were still negotiating with Baba Ramdev. The Prime Minister may not be in a position to tell the nation just yet if Kapil Sibal and Subodh Kant Sahay were reporting to him or to Sonia Gandhi and her minions.
The Prime Minister may also not be in a position to tell us why, if he was engaging Baba Ramdev by day, Sonia Gandhi had to arrest him at night. The Prime Minister is also not in a position to tell us why, if on the one hand he conducts himself with correctness and accords Hindu sanyasis the high respect due to them, Rahul Gandhi’s spittle-licking Digvijay Singh is allowed to run amok enraging Hindus and offending Hindu sensibilities.
This brutal mission of arresting Baba Ramdev and forcibly throwing him out of Delhi and evicting hapless men, women and children, could not have been undertaken during daytime without a violent backlash from the people; that is why in true Gestapo style, in a style befitting Italian Mafioso and Stalinist Russia, 50,000 Hindus gathered at Ramlila Maidan could be brutalised and dispersed only in the dead of the night.
The fact that Hindus will step out of their homes at the call of their religious leaders or to the call of a Hindu cause, is the biggest reason to hope that this war is not over yet. The RSS, the BJP, and our religious leaders must sit down and first acknowledge collectively that Sonia Gandhi and the Generic Church pose the biggest threat to this nation, and the quantum of foreign money which the Generic Church is pouring into the country and Sonia Gandhi’s politics of minority-ism have to be fought with the full might of Hindu power.
The Hindu Nation is losing its people and its territory to the Church and Islam. All three forces have to come together to combat the Generic Church. This cannot be done by our religious leaders without the RSS’ organizing capacity; this cannot be done by the RSS alone without the BJP’s political delivery mechanism and the sanctity and mobilising capacity of our religious leaders, and this cannot be done by the BJP alone without the moral authority of the RSS and the spiritual and religious authority of our sanyasis, Gurus and Acharyas.
We cannot allow individuals to launch nation-wide movements without preparation and without nationalism. It is not enough for the RSS to merely extend ‘support’ to our religious leaders when they step forward to take up a national cause. This is akin to outside support extended by irresponsible political parties and politicians to a government. The RSS must openly take the lead and forge a proactive and invincible partnership with the BJP and our religious leaders if Hindu India is to be saved from going the way of South Korea now, and East Timor and The Philippines before that. The synergy of Hindu religious leaders, RSS and BJP must –
- Demand stopping all foreign money from coming into India. Hindu religious leaders and Hindu organizations receiving foreign money must be prepared to do without it, because money coming to Christian and Muslim groups is the single most destructive power threatening Hindu religion
- Bring down the UPA government at the earliest
- Remove Sonia Gandhi permanently from the political arena, and if possible mount a campaign that any member of this family poses the same threat
Sonia Gandhi is the most detested person in the country today. Our religious leaders, the RSS, and the BJP, must ensure she does not rise again. The time to remove her forcibly from the political arena, like she removed Pujya Kanchi Periava and Baba Ramdev, is now. It’s payback time for the Congress and its imported usurper. Dr. Manmohan Singh may yet be called to account by the Akal Takht. He should now do what he can to make the Akal Takht look more kindly upon him.
If Ramlila Maidan showed us our weaknesses, it also showed us what is possible, and that should bring the Hindu nation together to combat the Generic Church.
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The author is Editor, www.vigilonline.com
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