ONE unexpected side effect of the VHP leader, Shri Pravin Togadia's hard hitting address at Lodia Village of Bhuj district of Gujarat last week was that the secularist media forgot Balasaheb Thackeray's equally classic Dussehra address at Bombay, calling upon the hard pressed Hindus to form suicide squads to face Islamic terrorism now threatening to engulf the whole of the country. Instead now the Secularist Animal Farm is snarling and yelping at Shri Togadia. While Shri Togadia's address was a warning to Muslims against turning Mahatma Gandhi's Gujarat into modern Mahmud Ghaznavis' and Mian Musharraf's happy hunting ground, on second thoughts, Balasaheb's plea seemed to be OK for the media brazen pots perhaps because it perfectly accords with Mahatma Gandhi's repeated sermons to Hindus after Muslim League's Direct Action mayhem in Calcutta and Noakhali in August-October 1946 that self-sacrifice was the chief glory of Hinduism and that as he had no effective non-violent remedy for the escalating Hindu-Muslim communal conflict, the best thing for Hindus was to “offer themselves to be cut to pieces in lakhs” to satisfy the instiable hunger of the Islamic Moloch. In any case, it was for the Hindus to die at the altar of Islamic jehad and Muslims to kill the Kafirs. The Killer instinct was taboo for the Hindus in Gandhian philosophy.

The Mahatma went so far as to say that while such mass suicide would bring glory to Hinduism, it would cleanse Islam of its dross. How, he would not say, except that if they offered themselves as the cows to be eaten up by the Muslim tiger in endless numbers, it may ultimately be satiated with over-feeding and give up eating more for sheer tiredness. (Vide MAHATMA GANDHI by Dhananjay Keer, p. 751) Sadistic Jinnah, however, always made fun of Gandhi's non-violent cult of sacrificing his satyagrahi followers “like goats led to butcher's knife with bent heads”. And that contempt for the imbecile Bania Hindu has been inherited by his political progeny in Pakistan.

Anyway even Mahatma Gandhi despaired of solving the Hindu-Muslim problem at last as he had no remedy to stop the mass violence started as a coercive civil war to make the helplessly confused Congress concede Pakistan, except complaining to God again and again that He had let him down, making his existence unsufferable in this world. In fact, it would be a fit subject for a Ph.D. student to record how many times he prayed to God to take him away from the world, exposing the Hindus to ridicule for blindly following such feminine leaders shedding tears after every Himalayan failure of which there was no end. One of the eminent contributors of Organiser, Prof. M.M. Kothari, formerly Head of Deptt. of Philosophy of Jodhpur University has done so in his excellent study Critique of Gandhi to shatter the Gandhian myth so meticulously that a reviewer of the ultra secular Hindu recommended the book to be banned which in itself is a tribute to Prof Kothari's labour of love for the hapless Hindus, who as the eminent English novelist Somerset Maugham says “do not know the difference between self-sacrifice and self-destruction”—a result of following such failed leader who left the reins of power in the hands of a more disastrous heir who played puppet to Lord and Lady Mountbatten, reducing India to a third class power, unable to deal with even a puny failed state like Pakistan. Another such recent study is The Poverty of Gandhian Philosophy by Himansu Rai, though on a less pithy scale than Prof. Kothari's classic work.

And now comes another even more un-Indian heir to Nehru, the self-styled ‘Last Viceroy’ and ‘Last Englishman of India’ who was “Indian only as far as his raw material was concerned, otherwise being through and through a British made product”. His and his daughter's fortification of the dynastic cult has paved way for an Italian Lady called Sonia Maino Gandhi who in the manner of Homer's Siren has effortlessly made them utter slaves. This again reminds me of Mahatma Gandhi for his prophecy that with the creation of ever-belligerent anti-Hindu Pakistan and internationalisation of the communal problem, partitioned India could well lose her freedom in 150 years. Which shows how well he understood the consequences of reducing the great Hindu society to a mass of cows and goats for Islamic butchers. But ironically enough his prophecy has come true just in 50 years at least in case of Congress which has already passed under the stranglehold of the Italian Sphinx whose antecedents and ultimate agenda nobody knows.

But as Congressmen want power at any cost, they have accepted this new form of slavery gladly in the belief that the revival of the dynastic cult and slavish mentality in Indians though the British legacy of awe and aura of a vilayati icon and white skin, they may regain the much lamented power loss at the Centre without which there is no emancipation for them in this or the next world. This pathetic dependence on a mysterious foreigner to delude the masses reminds one of Mountbatten's description of ingrained Indian fixation for the Mai-Baap syndrome as a hangover of long slavery. In one of his anecdotes related in Mountbatten and Independence of India by M/S Collins and Lapierre (p. 48), he describes how when during a visit to Kashmir in early twenties, he angrily called a minor Indian official of the Maharaja attending on him as “damn fool”, the latter pestered him with a request for a certificate from him that the British Lord had called him a “damn fool” as for Indian minion this too was a matter of great pride and honour to be flaunted as a qualification for promotion. The same is the case with the Animal Farm of the present day Nehru-Gandhian Congress which is behaving as a conglomeration of tail-wagging dogs for rosy dreams of sure restoration of power. So, this revival of slavish psychology for the Gora Vilayati Log is the final result of all the Gandhian teachings and another feather for the Gandhian greatness.

Incidentally, while one may completely disapprove of Shri Togadia's reference to “Italian dog” whatever the truth of his having said so or not, one needs to be thankful to him for his graphic description of the behaviour of the English language press as that of village dogs for their uncanny habit of starting barking at night non-stop when one of them does so. For the last five months the media with its host of anti-Hindu vitriotic pen-pushers have been barking non-stop over the retaliatory mass reaction to the gory episode of Godhra, while it is completely irrelevant and perverse as they failed to do so over the barbaric killings and ethnic cleansing of lakhs of Pandits of Kashmir a decade ago.

“HAVE the Muslims of Bangladesh gone mad?” asks the Editor of a Jamaat-e-Islami paper in a frontpage comment on the Indian media reports about renewed large scale atrocities on Hindus in Bangladesh during and after the last year's elections when Khalida Zia's BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami together scored a massive victory in the polls against Hasina Wajid's Awami League? In reply one may say, “Yes, not only mad but madly fanatical,” as per the standard Islamic precept and practice. However, the Editor, says that the reports of atrocities like plunder of Hindus' assets and properties, desecration of temples, conversions etc. attributed to Bangladeshi Muslims are false as these against the teachings of Islam. It refutes harrowing details of barbaric excesses like poisoning of fish ponds and heavy extortions, abduction and rape of women, destruction of houses, killing of Hindu youth related by the incoming flood of Hindu refugees and published even in partisan papers like the Times of India are concocted exaggerations. It says all these are meant to create a propaganda storm against Bangladesh by Indian papers and TV channels, to create an impression that Bangladesh has become a staunch Islamic fundamentalist country, after they failed to create an atmosphere in favour of Hasina Wajid by warnings against Islamic fundamentalism.

An enquiry conducted by a prominent Congressman, Dr Syed Mahmud, later a Minister in Congress Government of Bihar, at the instance of Gandhiji whitewashed the whole gory thing saying that the reports of atrocities were exaggerated and that “No conversion had taken place”. Another Congress-cum-Muslim League Khilafatist however added insult to injury by justifying conversions etc. by brazenly declaring at the subjects committee of the Congress that “Moplahs suspected Hindus of collusion with the Government and were, therefore, justified in ‘presenting the Quran to the Hindus. And if the Hindus became Musalmans to save themselves from death, it was a voluntary change of faith and not forcible conversion.’ But Malaviya, Lajpat Rai, Moonje and Shraddhanand were not satisfied with this explanation, arguing that fanaticism was used as instrument by pan-Islamists to excite Muslims against Hindus. They demanded that Hindus should be united, integrated and consolidated in defence against any such future occurrence.” (Vide Mushirul Hasan's Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, Manohar Publishers, P. 168)

That was the beginning of the shuddhi (reconversion) and sanghatan (consolidation of Hindu society) movements by the above named Hindu leaders to which Gandhiji also lent his support in the beginning though later on under Muslim pressure, he started vilifying the Hindu leaders so that it was even alleged that Swami Shraddhanand's murder was the indirect result of Gandhi's fulminations against Arya Samaj and its leaders who reconverted some two thousand Hindus converted to Islam by Moplahs. That was also the big reason that Dr Hedgewar started the great RSS movement as attacks on Hindus from all over India by Muslim goondas became widespread all over India. It is another matter that after calling Muslims as ‘bullies’ and Hindus as ‘cowards’, Gandhiji backed out from the Sangathan and Shuddhi prescriptions.

Anyway, the news of Moplah atrocities greatly disturbed Savarkar in Ratnagiri jail, especially because he saw Congress non-cooperators jailed there hardly bothered about it. He was all the more flabbergasted to see Congressmen ready to accept Islam for Hindu-Muslim unity if it could bring swaraj. However, the Khilafatist Pathans had other ideas of unity. They rioted and Hindu prisoners were saved only “because Savarkar forewarned about them.” That was the time when Savarkar wrote his famous treatise on Hindutva or Hindu nationalism.

“Nehru-Liaquat Pact envisaged no exchange of population in the East and consequently no mechanism of exchange of assets and compensation was available to the refugees from East Pakistan to India. In fact, they were discouraged to migrate (despite impossible conditions in East Bengal). This policy robbed millions of refugees from East Bengal of thousands of crores of rupees which, if recovered as in West Pakistan, could have produced economic revival in Eastern region of India. Not only that in East Bengal the lure of assets left by Hindus produced an upsurge of fundamentalist fervour. A climate of communal terror was let loose and properties of Hindus who were forced to leave, were expropriated by Muslims, often with the connivance of the administration. This helped in the economic amelioration of the East Pakistan and then of Bangladesh. We recall that one of the reasons for Hitler's programme of dispossessing the Jews was economic betterment of the non-Jewish Germans which was used to purchase their support. The same scenario was enacted here with the ideological support of the Indian politicians both of the Congress and the Left.

“No proper analysis of this economic expropriation has been done; no official estimate of the total loss had ever been given. Muslims also left West Bengal but their number was much less and also, since most of the time they did not leave as a result of communal frenzy, they could arrange unofficial exchange of property or sell them. Hindu refugees were vastly greater in number and most of the time they left being victims of communal terrorism and thus could not arrange private exchange of property and most of the time it was not possible because they were overwhelmingly greater in number. Recently some attempts were made by the India Government to compensate for the loss of assets in Bangladesh, but the net effect has been negligible.

“The third factor was the role of fundamentalist Marxists and their fellow-travellers. The communist-reaction shows the characteristic common to all adherents of fundamentalism, that is, frozen imagination, and unconcern for human suffering for ideological profitable matters. From the partition days, the communist strategy has been to emphasise the separatist movements with overt purpose of saving the Muslims from so-called exploitation by the majority, and the covert intention of infiltrating them, in all these, the sure knowledge that class struggle would ultimately put them on to the path of progress propelled them to dispense with any ethical compunction.

“The communists succeeded in producing a perception in the country which helped to triviliase the immigration problem. According to them, anybody giving importance to it would provide a sure sign of being a Hindu fundamentalist. They welcome both Hindu and Muslim immigrants as members of their vote-bank. In this way, a synergy developed in effect between Muslim and Marxist fundamentalism. As long as the majority community in India is inactively present here, the two fundamentalisms work on concert; it is jeu de deux, a duet. When they come together without the third party, they become destructive to each other, as has happened in Bangladesh and Pakistan, where communists have been marginalised (because of the fundamentalism of the Muslim majority). On the other hand the continuous infiltration of Muslims, having fundamentalist outlook from Bangladesh in India due to economic reason, is pushing the Hindu population of eastern region to fundamentalism. The total refusal by the left parties to respond to the call of reason, in convincing the Hindu population the need to fanatical self-preservation.” (N.K. Ganguly in Faces of Fundamentalism in India, Pp. 181-82)