Monday, December 15, 2014

DR. VIVEK MURTHY CONFIRMED AS U.S. SURGEON GENERAL

Murthy, 37, a physician at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School, won confirmation on a 51-43 vote. He's a co-founder of Doctors for America, a group that has pushed for affordable health care and supports Obama's health care law.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said most of Murthy's career has been spent as an activist focused on gun control and other political issues, rather than on treating patients. "Americans don't want a surgeon general who might use this position of trust to promote his own personal campaign against the Second Amendment of the Constitution," Barrasso said.

Supporters said Murthy is well-qualified and noted his promise not to use the position as a bully pulpit for gun control.

The nation has been without a Senate-confirmed surgeon general since July 2013. The surgeon general does not set policy but is an advocate for the people's health.

Murthy's confirmation "makes us better positioned to save lives around the world and protect the American people here at home," Obama said in a statement. Murthy "will also help us build on the progress we've made combatting Ebola, both in our country and at its source" in West Africa.

Doctor Vivek Murthy stands among other bystanders during the first day of legal arguments over the Affordable Care …

Murthy's confirmation represented a rare defeat for the National Rifle Association, which told senators that a vote for Murthy would be scored against them when they rate lawmakers' votes during election campaigns.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Murthy has been "pilloried and excoriated" by the NRA and its supporters for his backing of stricter gun laws, including an assault weapons ban, and statements that gun violence is a public health issue.

Murthy has made clear he is not "aspiring to be the leading doctor in America to engage in a political debate, but rather to engage in public health debates about obesity and tobacco and things that make a dramatic difference to the lives of so many people who live in this country," Durbin said.

Murthy expressed support for gun control in a letter to Congress after the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting.

His nomination was endorsed by more than 100 health organizations, including the American College of Physicians, the American Heart Association and the American Diabetes Association.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a staunch supporter of gun rights, did not mention guns in a statement opposing Murthy but said he does not believe it's appropriate for America's top doctor to participate in political activism.

While he does not question Murthy's medical qualifications, Manchin said he wonders whether the public will believe that Murthy "can separate his political beliefs from his public health views."

Manchin was one of three Democrats to oppose Murthy, along with Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk was the lone Republican to support Murthy.

Before founding Doctors for America, Murthy created a nonprofit that focused on HIV/AIDS education in India and the U.S. And he co-founded a technology company, TrialNetworks, that helps drug developers collaborate on clinical trials.

At a Senate hearing in February, Murthy said he wouldn't use the position to push gun control. He said his priorities include fighting obesity and helping communities promote healthier living.

The son of immigrants from India, Murthy told senators he was inspired to become a doctor while helping out on weekends at his father's family medicine clinic in Miami.

Washington, D.C. (December 15, 2014) - The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) celebrated the U.S. Senate's confirmation of Dr. Vivek Murthy to be the U.S. Surgeon General, in a vote that concluded minutes ago. HAF leaders joined a broad coalition in demanding that the U.S. Senate call for a vote to confirm Murthy, who will now be the first Indian and Hindu American to serve as Surgeon General.

"Today is a proud day for Hindu Americans and a great day for all Americans who will be served by an accomplished doctor whose career is defined by service," noted Dr. Aseem Shukla, a pediatric urologist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a member of HAF's Board of Directors. "The Senate's historic vote means that Americans can benefit from the leadership of a healthcare visionary."

Murthy's nomination was confirmed by a vote of 51-43, after months of uncertainty. Despite confirmation hearings marked by Murthy's elaborate discussion of his policy focus on mental health, obesity, and vaccinations, the nomination was endangered by a sustained attack by the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA sought to torpedo Murthy based on tweets he had sent calling for background checks on gun owners in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings that left 26 dead. HAF, along with a broad coalition of health advocates and community leaders, worked to organize supporters, call Senate offices, and build momentum behind the nomination.

HAF mobilized its network of supporters to call Senators, meet with their staff, and write letters on Murthy's behalf. HAF staff personally connected with every Senate office to discuss the nomination, and Dr. Shukla wrote a widely cited editorial in Dr. Murthy's support.

Photo courtesy of C-SPAN2

"Today's vote is a culmination of months of hard work and perseverance," noted Harsh Voruganti, HAF's Associate Director of Public Policy. "We are excited that the Senate chose to stand with America's doctors and families by confirming Dr. Murthy and rejecting the cynical NRA campaign against him."

Beyond his focus on stated health priorities, Murthy will additionally be charged with assisting in the response to the Ebola outbreak and other health crises.

Like Murthy, HAF found itself in opposition to the NRA in the wake of the same massacre in Connecticut when it wrote a letter to President Obama urging strong legislation to strengthen background checks and ban high capacity assault rifles.

"The NRA reflexively opposed Dr. Murthy's nomination for views that very much reflect our own--we were proud to stand with Dr. Murthy in this good fight," added Shukla.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

FINALLY HINDUS WAKE UP TO STRATEGIC THINKING AFTER 1200 YEARS, LEARN TO VOLUNTARILY CONVERT OTHERS TO ACCEPT FREE THINKING LIBERAL NON-COERSIVE HINDUISM TO ENJOY FREEDOM AND PARADISE IN THIS LIFE WITHOUT WAITING FOR AFTERLIFE A BUNCUM SOLD FOR 2000 YEARS.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/Is-the-Stage-Set-for-Mother-of-All-Debates/2014/12/13/article2569077.ece

Is the Stage Set for Mother of All Debates?

By S Gurumurthy

Published: 13th December 2014 05:56 AM

If, as reported, the conversion of 350 odd Muslims in Ved Nagar in Agra to Hinduism is the work of RSS, it is clear that the RSS has grown strategic. By a small move that is smart too, the RSS seems to have triggered a debate on conversions which it has been asking for decades but evaded by its critics who merely kept abusing the RSS. Hindus are not best known for strategic thinking, save exceptions like Sri Krishna, Chanakya, Chatrapati Shivaji and Mahatma Gandhi. Lack of strategic thinking among Hindus is no surprise because they did not have any agenda to capture, subordinate and rule the world through their religion, Gods or weapons.

http://media.newindianexpress.com/Untitled-16.jpg/2014/12/13/article2569075.ece/binary/original/Untitled-16.jpg

Recently [March 30, 2013] ‘The Economist’ magazine derided India’s lack strategic culture as the main impediment to its emergence as global power. The Economist is right. Hindus did not need, and therefore did not have, offensive strategy against any. Stray strategic thinking like uniting the Hindus has been late development in Hindu history, more oriented to defending their religion and culture that is inclusive.

The RSS, which spearheads efforts for a harmonious Hindu society, has been quite plain about its agenda yet inclusive in its philosophy. It calls this nation, not the Indian state, as Hindu Rashtra. It believes that Indian Muslims are not heirs of the Arabs, but very much indigenous in stock. Nor Christians in India, in its view, European descendants. Its conviction is that all Indians have the same, not different, forefathers and culture.

On facts and logic, the RSS seems right. Even Muslims, who are generally exclusive, never claimed a different ancestry till as late as early 19th century. In the Census of India in 1901, out of some 6.6 crore Muslims living in undivided India, only 3.5 lakh (just a minuscule one in two hundred) had claimed to be heirs of Mughals (Hindu Culture During and after Muslim Rule: Survival and Subsequent Challenges by Dr. Ram Gopal. 1994).

The RSS had relied on this logic and fact of common ancestry to seek to assimilate Muslims and Christians into the national mainstream.

Assimilation harmonises. And does not antagonise. Swami Vivekananda told the proselytising religions at World Parliament of Religions in his final address to them on September 27, 1893, to assimilate, not destroy .

Assimilation is not destruction because it is not conversion. Conversion destroys.

According to the Nobel Laureate Sir V S Naipaul, “To be converted you have to destroy your past, destroy your history. You have to stamp on it, you have to say ‘my ancestral culture does not exist, it doesn’t matter .”

Conversion is destruction of culture, nation and state, while assimilation is construction of all the three. Mahatma Gandhi was as plain as the RSS in his testament Hind Swaraj [1909]. In which after three decades, he said, he was unwilling to change a comma or full stop -- that assimilation of Muslims was the answer to Hindu-Muslim problem. Asked whether the introduction of Mohammedanism had not unmade India as a nation, Mahatma Gandhi said: “India cannot cease to be one nation because people belonging to different religions live in it. The introduction of foreigners does not necessarily destroy the nation, they merge in it. A country is one nation only when such a condition obtains in it.”

That country must have a faculty for assimilation, India has ever been such a country. But, when RSS spoke of assimilation, the ‘seculars’, ignorant of what Gandhi or Vivekananda had said or ignoring both, abused it as communal. The ‘secular’ megaphones were so noisy that they drowned all feeble voices calling for saner debate.

Does it need a seer to say that the people most devastated by conversion are and continue to be Hindus? Undeniably, every non-Hindu in India is a convert from Hinduism. Conversion hits almost exclusively only the non-proselytising Hinduism. Therefore, for several decades, it is the Hindu outfits which have been demanding ban on conversions. The Christians and Muslims and, for their ballot papers, the ‘seculars’, were opposing.

Now Agra conversions seem to have trapped the ‘seculars’ into debating the very idea of religious conversions. When the RSS called for ban on conversions the ‘seculars’ said it was an attempt to stifle religious freedom. The ‘seculars’ have been evading this debate for decades even after the Supreme Court approved the anti-conversion laws passed by Madhya Pradesh and Orissa Governments in 1967.After the Neogi Committee appointed by the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh had established that innocent tribals were being converted by allurement, fraud, force, inducement, or fraud€ , the anti-conversion laws were passed.No one could say that any one could be converted by such uncivilised means. Yet the Church challenged the law as stifling the right to profess and propagate one’s faith granted under Art 25(1) of the Constitution. The Court threw it out saying “what Article 25(1) grants, by the word propagate, is not the right to convert another person to one’s own religion by exposition of its tenets. So propagation and conversion are not identical. Propagation is permitted by law but conversion is not.

Did any ‘secular’ party or leader tell the Parliament that this is what the Supreme Court said in 1977? If they did that then they have to talk against conversion of Hindus too. They only talked against Agra conversions, not conversions as such. And in line with them, the ‘secular’ media screams poor Muslims converted by Hindutva outfits . Undoubtedly both the ‘secular’ parties and the ‘secular’ media have been shocked by the Agra development. Why?

For them it has been normal and quite acceptable for poor Hindus to get converted to the only true faiths of the world. They never imagined that Hindus who believe all faiths are valid for their respective followers would ever convert others to their faith. The ‘seculars’ had almost reserved the right to convert only to those religions which believe their God as the only true God and the Gods of others fake and false and therefore have to be wiped out.

When the ‘seculars’ bowled the full toss of Agra conversions at Modi government, Venkiah Naidu promptly seized the opportunity “hitting the ball for a six “ to propose a central law for ban on conversions. Now is the Modi government not free to bring a law to ban conversions by inducement and fraud, including Agra conversions? It is. If it does, can the ‘seculars’ oppose it? Cannot. Because if they do then they cannot fault Agra conversions. If they do not, then they cannot oppose a law that will stop millions of Hindus being converted through inducement and allurement.

What the RSS could not achieve by decades of reasoning and pleading, it seems to have got on a platter by its single act of converting a few hundred Muslims into Hindus and trapping the ‘seculars’ to oppose it.

Indeed a very small price to pay for a very logical outcome namely debate for ban on induced and fraudulent conversions. The stage is now clearly set for this mother of all debates.

Tail piece: Ban on such conversions is fully in line with the declaration of all world religious leaders on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of human rights held in Amsterdam under the aegis of United Nations on 10th December 2008.

All religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and the two proselytising religions Islam and Christianity have signed a declaration that they shall mutually respect, not deride, each others’ faith. It is not clearly the Hindu view? They also agreed that the freedom to retain one’s religion or choose another shall be without coercion or inducement. Is this not what the RSS has been asking for decades?

S Gurumurthy is a well-known commentator on political and economic issues.

Email:comment@gurumurthy.net

Saturday, December 13, 2014

DID NETAJI SUBHASH CHANDRA BOSE DIE IN AUGUST 1945 ?

Why it’s difficult to believe Netaji died in August 1945

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A narrative of the veritable rabbit hole of the modern India’s longest-running mystery.

The controversy surrounding Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s disappearance is free India’s longest-running with new dimensions added to it in every few years. The sheer timeframe across which the Bose mystery has spread out, the subplots it has spawned and the number of high-profile personalities it has dragged into its net will bewilder anyone trying to make a sense of this absorbing issue.

The situation has been compounded to unimaginable proportions by the inexplicable state secrecy. Security classification has over the years resulted in the stockpiling of secret files. The Prime Minister’s Office alone has 33 of them as per its own admission under the Right to Information Act.

In such a befuddling scenario, the people of India have reacted to the controversy in two broad ways. They have either shut their minds to it, or embraced conspiracy theories. Both ways, it does not lead to anything worthwhile. The lack of a proper public discourse on the Netaji disappearance controversy is due to the absence of freely available literature breaking down its complexities into an easy to understand account.

The starting point of the mystery is an announcement made by the Japanese, Netaji’s benefactors during the Second World War, on 23 August 1945 when the Japanese forces were surrendering to the Red Army in Manchuria. According to the announcement, Bose was killed following a plane crash in Taihoku, the present-day Taipei city of Taiwan. The Japanese said that Bose was coming to Tokyo for talks with the Japanese government about the INA’s surrender but the crash ended his story. Badly burnt as a result of the crash, they claimed, he was given treatment in Taipei but died midnight on August 18.

Bose meeting Japanese prime minister Hideki Tōjō in 1943

Contrary to popular perception, doubts about this announcement did not sprout from of some fertile Bengali mind. “I wonder if the Japanese announcement of Subhas Chandra Bose’s death in an air-crash is true. I suspect it very much; it is just what should be given out if he meant to go underground,” observed Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, the Viceroy of India, when he heard about it. The nomenclature “Bose mystery” itself was coined by a British military officer later on when inquiries into the matter were launched.

The first person claiming to have seen Bose after his reported death was an American journalist embedded with the US army. Alfred Wagg, then associated with the Chicago Tribune, dramatically interrupted a press meet of Jawaharlal Nehru on 29 August 1945 to claim that he had seen Bose near Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) a few days after the reported death.

From late 1945 to early 1946 Mahatma Gandhi was the chief promoter of the theory that many today would associate with freaks and conspiracy theorists. His January 1946 statement made headlines the world over. The New York Times on 6 January reported “… Gandhi as declaring in a speech that he believed Subhas Chandra Bose was still alive and awaiting a propitious time to reappear”. On 30 March 1946, Harijan announced that “there was ‘strong evidence to counteract the feeling’ that Subhas Bose was dead.”

Bose and Gandhi,1938

The inquiries launched by the authorities were headed by an IB deputy director who was assisted by many of his juniors and army personnel. It did not take them long to discover many loopholes in the Japanese version. For one, the Japanese had lied about Bose’s coming over to Tokyo because he was bound for Soviet Russia, the only country that could have given him refuge. The general in whose plane he was travelling was a Russia expert heading for Manchuria.
In the absence of Bose’s body or a picture of it, the entire story of the death was reconstructed by a few Japs and Bose’s loyal ADC Habibur Rahman, who claimed to have been with Bose when he died.

Rahman’s repeated interrogations did not convince the authorities about the veracity of his claims. There were many who believed that Rahman was just carrying out an order from Bose. The intelligence community was also confused by reports — including from the Russians sources — that Bose was possibly in Soviet Russia after August 1945.

As a result, in the 1940s, the Governments of India and the United Kingdom never officially announced the death of Bose. On 3 October 1946 in the Council of State, Member Ahmed Jaffer asked the Home Member (Minister) Vallabhbhai Patel if the Government of India had any evidence whether Netaji was dead or alive. Sardar Patel’s response was: “Government are not in a position to make any authoritative statement on the subject.”

However, the situation changed with Nehru making a statement that very year that he was inclined to believe in the death of Bose. Post-1947 that effectively became the government stand as the authorities parried all requests to have the matter examined afresh.

Around 1955, after trying in vain for years, a civil society group decided to form a non-official body under eminent judge Justice Radha Binode Pal to probe Netaji’s ‘death’. Justice Pal was one of the judges at the Tokyo trials. He had seen relevant papers of the Allied Power and heard from the Japanese, American and British sources that Taipei crash was a smokescreen to let Bose escape to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

This development became the main trigger for the Pandit Nehru government to promptly form a committee in April 1956. It was headed by Congress MP Shah Nawaz Khan, formerly of the INA, and an aide to the Railway Minister. Despite passionate appeals, Justice Pal was kept out of the committee. There were two other members on this panel: the Bengal government nominee SN Maitra and Suresh Chandra Bose, one of Netaji’s non-politician elder brothers.

The committee’s report — that Netaji had indeed died in Taipei — became disputed due to several reasons. The government was criticised for not letting the committee visit Taipei to carry out an on-the-spot investigation. Suresh Bose left the committee, accusing the Nehru government of trying to force him to sign on the dotted lines. He went on to publish on his own his Dissentient Report, stating that the evidence he had come across as member the committee proved that Netaji had escaped to the USSR.

The controversy returned to haunt the nation in the late 1960s, mainly due to the activism of Professor Samar Guha, a Lok Sabha MP with a revolutionary background. The Indira Gandhi government too was most unwilling to look into the matter, but had to relent when the demand was backed by over 350 MPs, especially by Amiya Nath Bose (son of Sarat Bose), Mulka Govinda Reddy, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and others.

In June 1970, the government appointed a one-man commission headed by Justice GD Khosla, a retired Chief Justice of the Punjab High Court, who had been making news for his prolific writings and a scandalous act that began when he was not accorded a ceremonial send-off by the Punjab Bar Association on his retirement. Khosla also happened to be a junior to Netaji at Cambridge University and, going by his own account, the former did not like the latter much.

The Khosla Commission upheld the Taipei crash theory, too, and faced charges of wrongly assessing the evidence. The government, this time again, did not want the commission to visit Taiwan but was prevailed upon by Guha, Vajpayee and others. GD Khosla, Guha later alleged, “sabotaged” his own inquiry in Taiwan. Following a “secret diktat” of the Ministry of External Affairs, he refused to contact the Taiwanese authorities to find out if there had actually been a crash in August 1945.

Khosla gave his report-cum-political testament against Subhas Bose in June 1974. Almost simultaneously he released a hagiographical biography of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. The report as well as a book Khosla churned out from it contained several derogatory statements against Netaji and Japan, which had helped India attain freedom.

Guha moved a motion in Parliament in 1977. In its course, he adduced new evidence against the crash theory and the dubious ways of Justice Khosla. On 28 August 1978, Prime Minister Morarji Desai, never an admirer of Subhas, was constrained to admit that there were “various important contradictions in the testimony of the (mostly Japanese) witnesses” to Bose’s death. And that “some further contemporary official documentary records have also become available”, making the Government of India think that the conclusions reached by GD Khosla and Shah Nawaz Khan were not “decisive”.

At that stage, Guha became overtly emotional and announced in the Lok Sabha “in the name of God” that “Netaji is alive”. Obviously, Guha was laughed off. The next year he repeated the same claim, producing a picture which, according to him, showed Netaji in a temple in India. The picture was out and out fake and Guha lost all credibility. Towards the end of his life, Guha wrote that he had fallen victim to a ploy devised by his opponents who knew of his belief that a certain holy man in north India was actually Netaji.

The Mukherjee Commission (1999-2005) was the third official probe into Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s disappearance in 1945. What clearly set the new commission apart from the earlier probes was its coming into being following a court order whereas the decisions to institute the earlier probes were taken by the government under public pressure.

By the 1990s, the Netaji mystery had almost died down. But then, after the fall of the USSR, some sensational stories came to light, mostly due to the efforts of Dr Purabi Roy, then a professor with the International Relations Department of Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Subsequently a PIL was filed by lawyer Rudrajyoti Bhattacharjee in the Calcutta High Court at the behest of Sunil Krishna Gupta, brother of martyr Dinesh Gupta and friend of Samar Guha. Acting on the PIL, then Chief Justice Prabha Shankar Mishra ordered on 30 April 1998 that the Union Government should “launch a vigorous inquiry… as a special case for the purpose of giving an end to the controversy” surrounding Netaji’s disappearance.

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government of that time consequently notified on 14 April 1999 that “the Central Government is of the opinion that it is necessary to appoint a Commission of Inquiry for the purpose of making an in-depth inquiry into a definitive matter of a public importance”. The name of Manoj Kumar Mukherjee, a former judge of the Supreme Court of India, was suggested by the Chief Justice of India.

The Mukherjee Commission did not just nix the air-crash story; it paved the way for further inquiry, maintaining that Subhas had disappeared while heading towards the Soviet Union. Its main conclusion was:

“It stands established that emplaning at Saigon on August 17, 1945 Netaji succeeded in evading the Allied Forces and escaping out of their reach and as a camouflage thereof the entire make-believe story of the air crash, Netaji’s death therein and his cremation was engineered by the Japanese army authorities including the two doctors and Habibur Rahman and then aired on August 23, 1945… Whether Netaji thereafter landed in Russia or elsewhere cannot be answered for dearth of evidence.”

In reaching this conclusion, the commission also received information and records from the Government of Taiwan that showed that there was no air-crash in Taiwan at that time, nor did he die, nor was cremated there. It is to be noted that the Vajpayee government did not allow Justice Mukherjee to visit Taiwan.

It became possible after this writer obtained information from the Government of Taiwan and informed the commission of inquiry. Using the same, the commission was able to establish direct contact with the Taiwanse and eventually visit their country.

News paper clipping from Japanese newspaper, published on 23 August 1945.

The commission also investigated some holy men angles and rejected outright all except one — the strange case of Bhagwanji (Gumnami baba) who lived in several places in Uttar Pradesh, lastly in Faizabad from 1983 to 1985. If he were alive in 1984, Bose would have been 87. The commission’s conclusion on this angle was that in “absence of any clinching evidence” it could not be said whether or not Bhagwanji was Bose.

The Mukherjee Commission report was arbitrarily dismissed by the Manmohan Singh government in May 2006. The Memorandum of Action Taken Report tabled in Parliament assigned no reasons for this decision of the government and in the ensuing discussions several members made castigating observations and comments against the government.

There was an interesting development in 2010 when Justice Mukherjee’s off-the-record comments about the unseen holy man of Faizabad were surreptitiously recorded by independent filmmaker Amlan Ghosh for his documentary “Black box of history”.

The former Supreme Court judge said that he was “100 per cent” sure that Bhagwanji was Netaji and rued that he could not prove that in his report due to non-cooperative attitude of the Government.

On 31 January 2013, a new chapter was opened with the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court directing the Uttar Pradesh government to consider constituting an inquiry headed by a retired judge into the Bhagwanji episode. The court ruling stated that “considerable documentary and eyewitness evidence” existed warranting this inquiry. With the state government not willing to carry out this inquiry, a fresh PIL was filed by this writer and others including members of the Bose family seeking a probe under the court’s supervision. The case is on.

The truth about Netaji is out there. We can get to it by taking the issue head on, not by turning our backs on it. As I see it, the starting point is Russia. The endgame could be in Russia or Faizabad. This is the point we have reached in the veritable rabbit hole of the modern India’s longest-running mystery.

1200 YEARS OF SLAVERY OF HINDUS A HISTORICAL FACT

MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2014

"1200 years of slavery"

In an opinion piece in Outlook (“Chaining 1200 years”, 7-7-2014), Hasan Suroor takes issue with PM Narendra Modi’s diagnosis that Indians suffer from a slave mentality due to “1200 years” of oppression. He thereby defends the central falsehood that the Marxist historians have introduced into Indian education, viz. that British rule was colonial oppression while he preceding Muslim regimes were somehow indigenous. Fortunately he makes no secret of where he himself stands: by classifying Makkhan Lal as “ pro-RSS historian” but praising his opponent Mushirul Hasa as a “noted historian”, he plays the well-known Leftist game of denouncing the other as ideologically biased but their own as wearing the mantle of objectivity.

The respective language policies already give the true story. The British are remembered for imposing English as language of administration and partly of education. But firstly, this was introduced against a faction of administrators, the Orientalizers, who had preferred the use of native languages (a faction unknown in the Muslim regimes), and secondly, every British official had to take an exam of “Hindustani” before even being posted to India. The Muslim rulers had mostly not even bothered to learn an indigenous language and at any rate kept on using Arabic and then Persian as medium to administer India. Muslim rule was even more colonial than British rule.

To be sure, though Muslim regimes typically started out as based in Central Asia and then expanded into India, they all lost their basis outside India to their local competitors and then had to make do with India. But that doesn’t make them less foreign. The White regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa were also nominally independent from the European motherland but were nonetheless treated as hold-overs of colonialism.

The British exploited India? So did the Muslim regimes. Land tax was very high under the Delhi Sultanate and peasant famines as frequent as under the British. Moreover, apart from their negative effect on Indian society and the economy, the British cloud also had the silver lining of modernization, as physically represented by the railway system. They “enslaved” India but also brought the abolition of slavery (which they forced the Moghul and Ottoman empires to abolish as well). The Muslim regimes cannot boast of such contributions. On the contrary, they destroyed the Indian universities and brought only the sterile dogmatism of Islamic theological academies in return.

As for “1200 years”, Suroor rightly considers this inaccurate, as Muslim rule started in Sindh 1300 years ago, in most of India centuries later, and in some pockets never at all. He also has the merit of pointing out that it was effectively over in the 18^th century, as not the British but the Marathas broke the back of the Moghul empire. So, he is right on this, but then, a political speech is not a Ph.D. dissertation. At any rate, the fuss about the exact number of years is only meant to belittle Modi’s message, which is in essence that Muslim rule deserves to be classified as oppressive and colonial.

Suroor’s article is part of the “secularist” attempt to keep control of Indian history. Not just the institutions, where the Modi regime will have a hard time introducing more objective historians against the anti-Hindu lot presently ruling the roost. But more importantly, the general public’s perception of Indian history, which his own kind has tried to slant communally.

In fact, experience teaches that the Marxists have little to fear from the BJP. The textbook reform by Murli Manohar Joshi of ca. 2002 was a failure. Subsequent Indologist conferences which I attended all had sessions on history-rewriting, where the mood among the mostly anti-Hindu scholars was upbeat and in expectation of a further decline of any Hindu activism. The conclusion came down to: “The Hindu nationalists are unspeakably evil, but fortunately, they are also abysmally stupid.” The Hindu movement has never bothered to invest in scholarship and even after Modi’s accession to power, it simply lacks the historians equipped to effect the glasnost (openness) which a Marxist-controlled sector urgently needs.

Regardless of this power struggle between contending views of history, however, at a deeper level the established historians have already lost the battle. Of course, the anti-Hindu school has the key positions both in the relevant Indian sectors (including Bollywood) and in the foreign India-watching institutions, so they still keep the lid on this development. But they have suffered some embarrassing defeats.

On Ayodhya, for more than twenty years they have managed to make the world think that history is being falsified by Hindu extremists asserting that the Babri mosque there had been built in forcible replacement of a Hindu temple. This was in defiance of the preceding consensus among all the parties concerned that there had indeed been a Hindu temple at the site, as still asserted in the 1989 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. But suddenly the consensus reversed, not because of any scientific discovery, but because of political compulsions. Like babes in the wood, all the India-watchers world-wide started toeing this new line and lambasting the Hindus for “falsely” staying true to the old consensus. One Dutch professor who had personally registered evidence for the temple, felt compelled to eat his own findings and parrot the new consensus. Unfortunately for all of them, the Archaeological Survey of India (2003) and the Allahabad High Court (2010) reconfirmed the old consensus: of course, a Hindu temple had stood at the site and had been forced to make way for the mosque. So, all these Leftist efforts to impose a rewritten version of history had been in vain. Moreover, in her recent bookRama and Ayodhya, Meenakshi Jain has documented what a sorry figure these supposed “experts” have cut when they were questioned in court during the Ayodhya proceedings. One after another was forced to admit that he didn’t really know, that he hadn’t been to the site though pontificating on its archaeology, that is was all just a hypothesis. So, those were the people who had been cited as authority by all the politicians, journalists and India-watchers. If the truth of their politically motivated deception is given proper publicity, their game will be over.

On Nalanda, the Left has staged a really daring history falsification. This Buddhist university, then the biggest in the world, was destroyed by Bakhtiar Khilji’s mujahedin in 1194, and has recently been refounded under tight Leftist control. Today, the Buddha is being used as a weapon against Hinduism, so the anti-Hindu forces would like to take possession of the memory of Nalanda. Unfortunately, that would normally force them also to memorize the way in which the historical Nalanda University had disappeared. What to do? Well, in 2004, the then president of the Indian History Congress managed to put the blame on the Hindus and simply ignored the true story, though as usual it had been proudly proclaimed by the Muslim perpetrators themselves. As Arun Shourie has shown (“How history was made up at Nalanda”, Indian Express, 28 June 2014), he violated all the norms of his discipline by citing a hearsay foreign document of five centuries later, and only giving a manipulated quote from it, all while keeping out of view the real, immediate and contemporary testimony. The historical fact that Nalanda was destroyed by warriors for Islam still stands, but the reputation of this prominent Leftist historian among his many parrots should be revised.

The anti-Hindu bias taught by the History professors also translates into a bias on contemporary matters, where it has not fared better. In autumn 1996, I attended the Annual South Asia Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The NDA alliance led by the BJP had been in power for 13 days and was widely expected to accede to government for real. The Indian, American and Indo-American academics at the conference outdid each other in doomsday predictions: Fascism was going to be installed, the Muslims were going to be thrown into the Indian Ocean, the Government was going to come down on Dalits/women/artists/journalists, India was going to attack Pakistan, and so on. The BJP did come to power in 1998 and led the government till 2004, yet nothing at all of these dire forecasts came true. The BJP observed all the democratic procedures, Pakistan attacked India (Kargil) but not the reverse, and on the social front nothing sensational happened, except that the economy boomed. Rarely has an army of accredited “experts” been proven so completely wrong.

In 2002, in spite of BJP rule, Muslims felt confident enough to start a pogrom of 59 Hindus in Godhra. Hindus had not reacted to a series of Islamic terrorist acts including attacks on the Parliament buildings in Srinagar and Delhi, but this time they finally did. Communal riots ensued, killing some 800 Muslims and 200 Hindus. Bad enough, but by Congress standards not that unusual: the 1984 massacre of Sikhs by Congress Party activists killed 3.000, and afterwards Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi had only seen fit to minimize the issue. This time, however, the man in charge had the wrong political colour: Gujarat CM Narenda Modi. He was accused of being complicit in the riots, or even of having organized them. Though he was campaigned against and scrutinized like nobody before him, he was repeatedly cleared by the courts. All the Indian and foreign “specialists” who go on accusing him, are simply in contempt of court.

Moreover, he has been accused of piloting history textbooks that praised Adolf Hitler and denied the Holocaust. Naturally, this propaganda offensive too has been copied in media around the world. However, investigation of the textbooks showed that these did not praise Hitler, did mention the Holocaust, and had been issued by a previous Congress government anyway. But this follow-up did not get any attention in the world media. The slander may have been successful in the short run (e.g. I heard it cited and discussed in all seriousness in a session on Hindu-Jewish relations at the American Academy of Religion Conference in 2009), but truth has a way of prevailing in the end.

Modi’s accession to power and the respect he clearly enjoys among the neighbouring governments (and even in the US, which has to rescind its visa ban against him, in spite of the pressure by Indo-American Leftists) may well be an apt occasion to rethink our attitude towards the ideological power struggle in India. So far, Indians and foreigners, and even many inside the BJP, have looked at India through the glasses which the wrongly-named “secularists” have put on their noses. Millions of people busy with other things have relied on the “experts” to decide for them what is what, not realizing that the positions normally associated with expertise have been cornered by a politically motivated school. It is time to change this power equation.

Meanwhile, we can already free ourselves from this school’s exceeding sympathy for the Muslim regimes in Indian history. These regimes were part of a long intermezzo of oppression, which has conditioned the minds of the Indians (especially of those people loyal to the native civilization) to attitudes of servility. It remains to be seen whether Narendra Modi’s government will live up to the expectations. But by publicly redefining the intermezzo of colonization as including the Muslim period, he has already changed the terms of discourse.

BRAHMIN BASHING IN TAMIL NADU, IN THE WESTERN WORLD VIEW AND IN INDIAN MEDIA MUST END

'The angst of the Tamil brahmin: Live and let live'

Dec 8, 2014, 06.58 AM IST

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By Badri Seshadri

When Narendra Modi expanded his cabinet and made Manohar Parrikar and Suresh Prabhu cabinet ministers, journalist Rajdeep Sardesai tweeted thus: "Big day for my Goa. Two GSBs (Gowd Saraswat Brahmin), both talented politicians become full cabinet ministers. Saraswat pride!!" The last bit "Saraswat pride" indicating brahmin caste affinity and pride caused considerable stir in the media.

Brahmins may be at the top of the archaic social hierarchy, (Editor's note: not economic hierarchy, as Brahmins seldom acquired wealth and majority of them lived in penury yet devoted to education and teaching) but in reality they hold little or no power across the country. They are numerically insignificant in most states and are not found in the public sphere at all. This is more so in Tamil Nadu than any other state. (Editor's note: What is stated about the Tamil Brahmins mostly applies to all Brahmins in India, but the Tamil and Kashmiri Brahmins in particular were most cruelly persecuted in their respective states)

Share of Tamil and Telugu brahmins was disproportionately large in the government of pre-independent Madras province. But the quota system initiated by the Justice party and the Dravidian movement over the years has meant that brahmins are almost completely excluded from medical seats, and are mostly out of contention in government jobs and good engineering schools. Brahmins once formed a significant percentage in teaching jobs in schools and colleges. Now, their percentage is minuscule.

Politically, brahmins have been complete ly stripped of any possible power. With very few options available in TN, there was a brahmin exodus to Bombay and Delhi in search of jobs in the 1970s. Post the liberalised 1990s, and the proliferation of self-financed engineering colleges, brahmins chose engineering and then IT jobs. As the need for executive managers arose in companies, many took to MBA. Today IT, management and CA are the chosen professions of brahmins. Many have migrated to the US and have been instrumental in many Silicon Valley start-up successes. Many have taken to entrepreneurship in India too and helped to seed the IT revolution in India. In Tamil Nadu, the political narrative has been stridently anti-brahminical. Though brahmins have been away from politics, the Dravidian parties have always resorted to blaming everything on a purported "brahminical conspiracy". Modi is brahminical. Jayalalitha too is, but only for DMK and not for AIADMK. Centre's promotion of Sanskrit or Hindi is brahminical. Congress or BJP's anti-LTTE stand is brahminical. Market economy and globalisation are also termed brahminical!!

(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is akin to a primitive paranoia culturally and socially promulgated)

It is also routine for Tamil movies to depict brahmins in bad light. The theme of the recent movie, `Jeeva', is that a brahminical conspiracy is keeping talented non-brahmin cricket players from reaching the state team. A putative theory about brahmins suppressing nonbrahmins for the last 2,000 years and denying them education and other privileges has gained currency and is today taken for granted. No proof is required. No further research is required.

Even OBC violence on dalits across the state is explained in terms of brahminism, a term that implies that all evils of the caste system are because of brahmins and hence they and only they have to be held responsible for such violence.

Yet, the reality is very different. Though no statistical data is available, anecdotally I can say that brahmins have inter-married more than any other caste in Tamil Nadu.

There is no rancour or resorting to honour killing when inter-caste or inter-religious marriages happen. They have been at the forefront of pre serving performing arts, heritage monuments and culture in the state and have done much to promote Tamil language and literature. They have contributed immensely to science, engineering, medical science, engineering, medicine and education in the state.

Politically excluded and socially reviled, what can the Tamil brahmins do to preserve their identity and yet feel secure within the social space in Tamil Nadu and India?

Brahmins are unlikely to demand any kind of reservation in education, job or political sphere. All they would look for is an amenable climate where they can, like other communities, contribute to the progress of the nation.In a liberal country , we would like communities such as Muslims, Christians, Parsis and Jains preserving their unique faith, tradition, customs, attire, language and practices. The same has to be extended to the brahmins of Tamil Nadu. They should be allowed to retain multiple identities - that of a brahmin, a Tamil and an Indian - with pride.

The political hate narrative in Tamil Nadu must change.

(A co-founder of cricinfo.com, the author is managing director of New Horizon Media Private Limited)