GANDHI and NEHRU --- betrayers, nay, destroyers of BHARATVARSHA-III
10-3-2010
FRONT COVER OF RADHA RAJAN’S BOOK
In my view the most important and seminal book on India’s Freedom Movement that has been published after our independence is the recent book of Smt Radha Rajan titled ‘Eclipse of the Hindu Nation, Gandhi and his Freedom Struggle.”
In the second part of my review of Smt Radha Rajan’s book, I had referred to the deliberate British subterfuge behind the founding of the Indian National Congress (INC) in December 1885. Though Shri Arobindo may not have openly articulated the British subterfuge relating to the establishment of the INC, yet he was fully aware of its serious deficiencies. Smt Radha Rajan considers 1893 as an important year in the evolution of our struggle for national freedom. She does so not because Mahatma Gandhi went to South Africa for the first time in his life in the year 1893 but because it was in 1893 that Shri Aurobindo started writing his series of 9 biting articles about the Indian National Congress (INC), titled ‘New Lamps for Old’, in Indu Prakash, a Marathi-English Daily published from Bombay. Shri Aurobindo was a young lad of 21 years at that time and the INC was barely 8 years old!
In the last part of the series written on March 6, 1894 Shri Aurobindo uses the English language in an incendiary manner to describe what he thought of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) to which Sir Allan Octavian Hume, the founder of the Indian National Congress (INC) belonged. Let me quote the biting words of Shri Aurobindo on the Indian Civil Service: “And when one knows the stuff of which the Indian Civil Service (ICS) is made, one ceases to wonder at it. A shallow school-boy stepping from a cramming establishment to the command of high and difficult affairs can hardly be expected to give us anything magnificent or princely. Still less can it be expected when the sons of small tradesmen are suddenly promoted from the counter to govern great provinces. Not that I have any fastidious prejudice against small tradesmen. I simply mean that the best education men of that class can have in England does not adequately qualify a raw youth to rule over millions of his fellow human beings.” It has to be borne in mind that Shri Aurobindo himself had also qualified for the final selection in the ICS in 1891 but he chose not to join it by deliberately absenting himself from the riding examination.
One year earlier, from August 28, 1893 onwards, Shri Aurobindo started writing a series of impassioned articles under the title New Lamps for the Old pouring vitriol on the Congress for its ‘Moderate’ policy. He was as forthright and lethal in his estimate of the Indian National Congress (INC) as he was about the ICS: “I am quite aware that in doing this, my motive and my prudence may be called into question. I am not ignorant that I am able to censure a body which to may of my countrymen seems the mightiest outcome of our national life … and if I were not fully confident that this idea of ours is a snare and a delusion, likely to have the most pernicious effects, I should simply have suppressed my own doubts and remained silent. …. I say, of the Congress, then, this --- that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishment is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts, not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.”
Shri Aurobindo came to the right conclusion: “Our actual enemy is not any force exterior to ourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.”
The Congress of that time, was quite intolerant of criticism by Shri Aurobindo and reacted in such a peculiar manner that it pressurized the editors of Indu Prakash to discontinue the series of fiery articles by Shri Aurobindo.
Following the lead given by Shri Aurobindo, the economic rape and plunder of India by the British Government came to be documented by many public men of the time. Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) wrote his famous book titled ‘Poverty and Un-British Rule in India’ in 1901. The public anger against the Colonial Government soon became a war cry. To quote the words of Smt Radha Rajan in this context: “Yet Dadabhai Naoroji, like Gandhi later in Hind Swaraj, blamed the British only partially, indeed, half-heartedly. Naoroji understood that the predatory Raj was responsible for India’s gross impoverishment and economic deprivation, yet he defined this rapaciousness as ‘Un-British’!” Excepting leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Shri Aurobindo and Veer Savarkar, all the rest of the National leaders from 1885 till 1905 seem to have been great admirers and supporters of the Colonial British (different from ‘Un-British’) Raj in India.
It is not therefore surprising that Gandhi too picked up this theme with alacrity in his famous letter dated October 30, 1909 to Lord Ampthill in this manner: “It is my deliberate opinion that India is going down not under the English heel but under that of modern civilization. The true remedy lies, in my humble opinion, in England discarding modern civilization which is ensouled by this spirit of selfishness and materialism is vain and purposeless and is a negation of the spirit of Christianity.” I would be dealing with the strategic political significance of this letter to Lord Ampthill in the coming parts of the review.
Shri Aurobindo was not taken in by the patently pro-British views of Gandhi in his Hind Swaraj and other writings. Shri Aurobindo did not share the view of Gandhi that the devilish evils of colonial administration could be attributed to modern Western civilization which ignored the Christian roots and went on the path of loot and plunder, exploiting most of Asia, Africa and America. In an explosive article titled ‘Lessons at Jamalpur, published in Bande Mataram (Shri Aurobindo was its editor) on September 01, 1906, Shri Aurobindo saw clearly the roots of Christianity and exposed them: “Under the stimulus of an intolerable wrong, Bengal in the fervour of the Swadeshi Movement parted company with the old ideals and began to seek for its own strength. It has found it in the people. But the awakening of this strength immediately brought the whole Swadeshi Movement into collision with the British interests and the true nature of the Englishman, when his interests are threatened, revealed itself. The Swadeshi Movement threatened British trade and immediately an unholy alliance was formed between the magistracy, the non-officials and the pious Missionaries of Christ, to crush the new movement by every form of persecution and harassment.”
The Swaraj and Swadeshi Movement masterminded by Shri Aurobindo, Bhupendranath Dutta, Barin Ghosh and Deshbandhu Chittaran Das, among other Bengal luminaries, was very much like the go-samrakshana (cow-protection) Movement of the 19th Century, because it was a spontaneous eruption of Hindu society, except that it made economic and broader cultural issues central to its concerns and was a spontaneous and determined reaction to the Partition of Bengal brought about by the arch-Colonial dictator Lord Curzon (1859-1925), the Viceroy of India.
According to Smt Radha Rajan, the Swaraj and Swadeshi Movement which came to be known even at that time as ‘Boycott’, aimed at total political independence from the British and not merely Self-Governance, Home-Rule, or Dominion Status, which would keep the Indian people in perpetual serfdom within the British Empire. Their Swaraj was Self-Governance as obtained not in the colonies of the Raj but in the Raj itself. Shri Aurobindo demanded Self-Rule, not like that of Canada, but like that of the United Kingdom. As articulated by Tilak and Shri Aurobindo, Swaraj and Swadeshi meant total and complete independence and therefore entailed the total boycott of all British goods, Government schools and the judiciary. I fully endorse the brilliant finding of Smt Radha Rajan to this effect: “‘Boycott’ or Swaraj and Swadeshi was only passive resistance or ‘Satyagraha’, which post-independence Indian polity, for the sake of vested interests, continues to propagate as a Gandhian principle and virtue.”
When Shri Aurobindo was at the height of his powers as a fiery, patriotic political journalist, he wrote a series of outstanding articles on “Passive Resistance” under the general title ‘New Thought’ in his own Journal, ‘Bande Mataram’ from April 11, 1907 to April 23, 1907. Smt Radha Rajan says that Gandhi’s exposition on “Satyagraha” or “Passive Resistance” seems vacuous by comparison with Shri Aurobindo’s writings on “Passive Resistance”. I fully endorse her view that Gandhi could add very little to Shri Aurobindo’s discourse on “Passive Resistance”. Smt Radha Rajan has written, “In typical Gandhi vein he does not give credit where it is due in his HIND SWARAJ, considered by Gandhians to be his seminal work. “
It is clear from Smt Radha Rajan‘s book that ‘Passive Resistance’ was the self-chosen life-boat of Gandhi's political life in South Africa and India from 1893 to 1947. It is therefore necessary to refer to Gandhi’s doctrine of ‘Passive Resistance’ in some detail.
Here I would like to digress a little and deal with Gandhi’s paranoid doctrine of ‘Passive Resistance’ in his own words. I have taken the quotations from a book titled HINDU DHARMA, by Gandhi published by Orient Paperbacks in 1978. I am presenting the front cover of this book, below.
FRONT BOOK COVER OF HINDU DHARMA BY GANDHI
I am analyzing these quotations to show the twisted and warped, tortuous and treacherous heart and mind of Gandhi. Gandhi’s quotations given below are drawn from the above book have all been put in CAPITAL LETTERS.
A. “YOU WILL FIND IN HISTORY CASES OF INJUSTICE DONE BY MUSLIMS. BUT THEIR RELIGION IS A NOBLE ONE AND THE MUSLIMS ARE A NOBLE PEOPLE. I, THEREFORE, ADVICE EVERY HINDU TO PLACE HIS FULL TRUST IN HIS MUSLIM BRETHREN.” [Hindu Dharma by Gandhi. Orient Paperbacks. Pg 54,55]
We can see that Gandhi is a confused man. After admitting that we can see in history cases of injustice by the Muslims, he concludes that Islam is a ‘NOBLE RELIGION’ and foolishly expects Hindus to repose their “FULL TRUST’ in the Muslims! Let me give an example to explain the ‘lofty’ and mysterious workings of Gandhi’s mind. If a Muslim rape-warrior called Rahmatullah with a known criminal past marked by abduction/ kidnapping/rape of Hindu minor girls and women, comes to a Hindu house with the evil intent of raping the female members of that Hindu family, the Hindu householder must place his full trust in the Muslim rapist, treat Rahamatullah as his Islamic Brother and invite him into his house and treat that known Muslim rapist in a very cultured and humane manner, extending to him the full Hindu hospitality under the ancient Vedic injunction of “atithi devo bhava”. After suggesting this course of action to the Hindu householder, Gandhi continues to remain in self-created doubt and confusion. Here I have to revert to Gandhi again to carry this story forward!
B. To quote Gandhi: “BUT SUPPOSE THAT MUSLIMS BETRAY HINDUS DESPITE THE LATTER’S GENEROUS BEHAVIOUR?” This view of Gandhi can be analyzed in detail as follows.
Should the Hindu householder resist the rape of his family members by the Muslim bully? Well if the Hindu householder does indeed dare to resist the rape of his family members, then, what do you think would be the just and balanced judicial verdict of a Bar-at-Law like Gandhi?
C. To quote Gandhi: “WE HAVE MADE NO SINCERE EFFORTS TO BRING ABOUT HINDU-MUSLIM UNITY.”
Of course, Gandhi does not think that the Hindu will resist, because, Gandhi in his Macaulay-induced utter ignorance of a thousand-year old Hindu track record of successful armed resistance to Islamic rape and rapine, believed that Hindus are cowards. So Gandhi goes on to ask,
D. To quote Gandhi: “WILL, HINDUS, IN THAT CASE REMAIN COWARDS?” The operative word here is the word “remain” since for Gandhi it is an article of faith spiritually derived from his “Inner Voice” that Hindus are cast in the same cowardly mould as himself. So if our Hindu householder does not resist the rape of his family members by Rahamatullah, Gandhi would self-righteously exclaim with grave solemnity, “Aha! I knew very well, all along, that you are a Hindu coward!!!”
Now let me go on to the most interesting part of the Islamic rape story. Now it can be asked, what should the Hindu householder do after the ‘Muslim brother’ Rahamatullah has completed his Islamic obligation of rape of Hindu kaffir woman? In order to answer this question, I have to refer to the truly Islamic words in letter and spirit of our ‘saintly’ Gandhi once again:
E. to quote Gandhi: “I DO NOT MEAN THAT HINDUS SHOULD HELP BECAUSE OF THEIR OWN WEAKNESS, BUT THAT IT HAS BECOME OUR DUTY TO HELP THE MUSLIMS AS NEIGHBOURS SINCE THEIR CASE IS JUST AND THE MEANS THEY ARE EMPLOYING ARE ALSO JUST.”
So, when the ‘Muslim brother’ rape-warrior Rahamatullah comes calling next time, to satiate his Islamic lust and carnal desire for Hindu women, Gandhi expects our “Passive Resistor” Hindu householder to perform the dominated, oppressed and suppressed “kaffir’s” “DUTY TO HELP THE MUSLIM”, by handing over his Hindu daughters to Rahamatullah, since the Islamic domination of Hindu Kaffirs is “JUST” and the Islamic “MEANS” of rape and loot of Hindus “ARE ALSO JUST”.
Gandhi then seems to ask his next and final question: what would happen if the Hindu householder in question and all the other Hindus do not do their duty as slaves of the Muslims? This will be crystal clear from the clinching and inimitable words of Gandhi.
F. to quote Gandhi: “IF THEY DO NOT DO THIS DUTY, THEY WILL STRENGTHEN THE BONDS OF SLAVERY AND LOSE FOR EVER THE OPPORTUNITY OF WINNING THE FRIENDSHIP OF MUSLIMS. DOING IT, THEY WILL SHAKE OFF SLAVERY AND WIN OVER MUSLIMS.”
Gandhi earnestly believed that every Hindu is fettered by “BONDS OF SLAVERY”. So the Hindu slave must meekly submit to the will --- every wish and whim of the violent, oppressive and rapist Muslims like Rahamatullah --- by handing over his daughters and wife to Rahamatullah in order to “WIN OVER THE MUSLIMS”. Gandhi mistakenly thought that only craven submission to the Muslims will lead to Hindu emancipation and manumission (liberation from slavery).
Gandhiji behaved like a supreme dictator in enforcing his conflicting, vague and esoteric views on different aspects of life on his unsuspecting followers. I would even say that he thought himself to be a Swayambhu Linga in respect of all matters political, economic, scientific, scriptural, religious, spiritual, social and cultural. This is the reasonable inference I can draw from the great work of Smt Radha Rajan. Gandhiji’s dictatorial approach even in the intellectual and spiritual world of ideas seems to have been based on this authoritarian working philosophy: “What I know on all matters of the mind heart and soul, perhaps one or two in the rest of the Universe (not even excluding Lord Shiva of Somnath or Lord Nataraja of Chidambaram!) might know! But what I do not know (such a rare occasion arising on one occasion out of a thousand billion occasions!) no one would in the Rest of the Universe (including Lord Shiva or Goddess Parvati in Mount Kailas!) has a natural right to know.”
So much for Gandhi’s grandiloquent conceptions and notions of the Cosmic impact of the Non-Violent Doctrine of “Passive Resistance” upon mankind, with all its lethal practical day-to-day implications for the gullible and trusting Hindus of India! Consequently, only the Hindus of India were the victims of Gandhi’s ideological wickedness and ideological obduracy.
The Muslims of India were doubly fortunate. They had the wisdom and practical commonsense to completely reject the debilitating political ideology of Gandhi dressed in seemingly Hindu religious clothes! Islamic Maulana Nehru saw to it that the Muslims remaining in India were given special Minority rights under the Indian constitution so as to continuously pamper them and raise them to the level of super citizens, reminiscent of the times of Aurangazeb’s Islamic rule. The Muslims of India have also been given the special privilege of their being governed by the Muslim Personal Law instead of the Common Civil Code uniformly applicable to all the non-Muslim citizens of India.
Those Muslims who were fortunate to go to Pakistan got their indivisible freedom not only to live in dar-ul-Islam but also to drive out all the Hindus from there to India after looting their wealth and cornering all their landed property with the full official support of the Government of Pakistan. In driving out the Hindus from Pakistan to India --- almost all of them from West Pakistan and more than 90% of them from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to India --- the Muslims of Pakistan got the full political and military support of the Islamic Government of Pakistan, on the one hand and the full political support of the anti-Hindu pseudo-secular Government of India on the other. These brutal and patently anti-Hindu facts have been clearly brought out in a graphic manner by Smt Radha Rajan in her book.
The first partition of Bengal effected by Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, was deliberately crafted on communal lines in order to create two continuously warring factions, viz, Muslim majority East Bengal and Hindu majority West Bengal. Shri Aurobindo saw this danger very clearly when he wrote: “The Partition of Bengal was no mere administrative proposal but a blow straight at the heart of the nation. That it is something for other than this (administrative purpose), that the danger involved far more urgent and appalling, is what I shall try to point out in this article. Unfortunately, to do this is impossible without treading on Lord Curzon’s corns; and indeed one of the tenderest of all the crop. We have recently been permitted to know that our great Viceroy particularly objects to the imputation fo motives to his government – and not unnaturally; for Lord Curzon is a vain man loving praise and sensitive to dislike and censure; more than that he is a statesman of unusual genius who is following subtle and daring policy on which immense issues hang and it is naturally disturbing him to find that there are wits in India as subtle as his own and which can perceive something at least of the goal at which he is aiming.”
The British Government in India met with a fierce and violent backlash from Bengal Hindus; Muslims in general and Bengali Muslims in particular were delighted with the move. This period saw Bankim Chandra Chatterji’s Bande Mataram acquiring high Hindu Nationalist overtones which inspired some of the most brilliant writings of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Shri Aurobindo along with widespread, nation-wide Hindu armed resistance to the partition.
Completely shaken up and shocked by the combined Hindu-Muslim uproar against the Partition of Bengal, the British Government under Lord Minto, the Viceroy convened a meeting of Muslim Leaders in Shimla in October 1906. Lord Minto took this decision to strengthen, if not Muslim support for the Raj, at least their non-cooperation with the Indian National Congress (INC), by widening the rift between the Hindus and Muslims.
LORD MINTO
A delegation of Muslim leaders waited upon Lord Minto on that fateful day in October 1906 and it was led by Agah Khan. In a planned act of civil sabotage, Lord Minto and his henchmen had carefully stage-managed the visit of the Agah Khan delegation to Simla. In their Memorandum to Lord Minto they stated:
“The position accorded to the Mohammedan community in any kind of representation, direct or indirect, and in all other ways affecting their status and influence, should be commensurate not merely with their numerical strength, but also with their political importance and the value of the contribution which they make to the defense of the Empire and with due regard to the position they occupied in India a little more than a hundred years ago. So as to reach this goal, we Muslims should be given the right to select our representatives through separate communal electorates.”
Lord Minto became an embodiment of diabolic courtesy, consideration and high culture when he told the Agah Khan delegation at Simla in 1906: “In any system of representation, whether it affects a Municipality, a District Board or a Legislative Council, in which it is proposed to introduce or increase the electoral organization, the Mohammedan community should be represented as a community, and its position should be estimated not merely on numerical strength but in respect to its political importance and the service it has rendered to the Empire. I am entirely in accord with you. I am as firmly convinced as I believe you to be, that any electoral representation in India would be doomed to mischievous failure which aimed at granting a personal enfranchisement, regardless of the beliefs and traditions of the communities composing the population of this continent.”
The most disastrous consequence of this act of national communal sabotage was that the British Government made it clear to all the Muslims that the key to corner the maximum benefit lay in their staying united as a community as Muslims apart from the Hindus --- in short, only by remaining different, in every sense of the word, from the Hindus. The seeds of Pakistan and Muslim separatism were thus sown by Lord Minto in October, 1906.
LADY MINTO
Lady Minto was able to see that this was a far-sighted decision from the British point of view. She recorded thus in her diary: “Very very big thing had happened today; a work of statesmanship that will affect India and Indian history for many long years. It is nothing less than pulling back 62 Millions of people from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition.”
Two months after the October 1906 Shimla conclave, in December 1906, the Muslim League was setup as a counterfoil to what was perceived as a ‘Hindu’ Indian National Congress (INC). Its mandate was to fulfill the incomplete agenda of 1857 war; the Partition of Bengal was seen as the first step towards the return of Muslim Rule over Hindustan; with hindsight, it was also the precursor to the vivisection of India on August 15, 1947. Smt Radha Rajan sums it all most brilliantly in these words: “It seems logical to deduce that just as the British created the Indian National Conggress (INC) to wean away important Hindus from opposition to British Rule and particularly armed resistance, they sponsored the Muslim League to counter the Swaraj and Swadeshi Movement.”
AGA KHAN
Aga Khan confirmed this truth much later after 1947 in his 'Memoirs' in which he wrote: Lord Minto's acceptance of our demands was the foundation of all future constitutional proposals made for India by successive British Governments and its final, inevitable consequence was the partition of India and the emergence of Pakistan.
I cannot resist the temptation of giving another quotation from the book of Smt Radha Rajan. Let us hear her: “The British Government conceived the Muslim League as a thorn in the flesh of the Hindus. State power made an ascendant Islam possible by undermining India’s Hindu community. A striking feature of the evolving Hindu polity at this time was that while the Raj exploited the gullibility of the English-educated Hindu political leadership of the Indian National Congress (INC) and planted British officials within the party besides getting one of them to create it in the first place, the Muslim League steadfastedly resisted White-penetration while playing ball with the Regime, wringing as many concessions and benefits for the Muslim community as Government was prepared to concede in separate but parallel attempts to check the rising tide of Hindu Nationalism.”
The same Hindu strategic weakness was seen on August 15, 1947 when the Congress government under Nehru allowed the British Queen appointed “White” Lord Mountbatten to continue as the Governor-General of India while in Pakistan, M.A Jinnah made it clear to Lord Mountbatten that his services were no longer required. This kind of slavish colonial mindset and fascination for the “white” skin continues even today with a Vatican appointed “White” woman Antonia Maino Gandhi of the ‘Italian Civil Service’ (instead of the Indian Civil Service of British India!!!) heading the Indian National Congress and acting as the de-facto Viceroy of the Pope in Rome for the evangelization of India.
TACITUS
Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 – AD 117) was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. I am recalling him only to say that what he adjudged to be chief objective of history is wholly applicable to the splendid work of Smt Radha Rajan on India’s Freedom Struggle and the diabolic role played by Mahatma Gandhi, with unchallenged authority, in the eclipse of the Hindu Nation. These are the famous words of Tacitus: “This I hold to be the chief office of history, to rescue virtuous actions from the oblivion to which a want of records would consign them, and that men should feel a dread of being considered infamous in the opinions of posterity, from their depraved expressions and base actions.”
(to be continued)
