Tarun Vijay

My name is not Khan, I am Mr Kaul

I am not Khan. My name bears a different set of four letters: K A U L. Kaul. As those who know Indian names would understand I happened to be born in a family which was called Hindu by others. Hence, we were sure, we would never get a friend like KJ to make a movie on our humiliations, and the contemptuous and forced exile from our homeland. It’s not fashionable. It’s fashionable to get a Khan as a friend and portray his agony and pains and sufferings when he is asked by a US private to take off his shoes and show his socks. Natural and quite justifiable that Khan must feel insulted and enraged. Enough Masala to make a movie.

But unfortunately I am a Kaul. I am not a Khan.

Hence when my sisters and mothers were raped and killed, when six-year-old Seema was witness to the brutal slaughtering of her brother, mother and father with a butcher’s knife by a Khan, nobody ever came to make a movie on my agony, pain and anguish, and tears.

No KJ would make a movie on Kashmiri Hindus. Because we are not Khans. We are Kauls.

When we look at our own selves as Kauls, we also see a macabre dance of leaders who people Parliament. Some of them were really concerned about us. They got the bungalows and acres of greenery and had  their portraits  were worshipped by the gullible devotees of patriotism.

They made reservations in schools and colleges for us. In many many other states. But never did they try that we go back to our homes. They have other priorities and ‘love your jihadi neighborhood’ programmes. They get flabbier and flabbier with the passing of each year, sit on sacks of sermons; issue instructions to live simply and follow moral principles delivered by ancestors and kept in documents treated with time-tested preservatives.

They could play with me because my name is Kaul. And not Mr Khan. I saw the trailer to this fabulous movie, which must do good business at the box office.

There was not even a hint that terror is bad and it is worse if it is perpetuated in the name of a religion that means Peace. Peace be upon all its followers and all other the creatures too.

So you make a movie on the humiliation of taking off shoes to a foreign police force which has decided not to allow another 9/11.

The humiliation of taking off the shoes and the urge to show that you are innocent is really too deep. But what about the humiliation of leaving your home and hearth and the world and the relatives and wife and mother and father? And being forced to live in shabby tents, at the mercy of nincompoop leaders encashing your misery and bribe-seeking babus? And seeing your daughters growing up too sudden and finding no place to hide your shame?

No KJ would ever come forward to make a movie, a telling, spine-chilling narration on the celluloid, of five-year-old Seema, who saw her parents and brother being slaughtered by a butcher’s knife in Doda. Because her dad was not Mr Khan. He was one Mr Kaul.

Sorry, Mr Kaul and your entire ilk. I can’t help you.

It’s not fashionable to side with those who are Kauls. And Rainas. And Bhatts. Dismissively called KPs. KPs means Kashmiri Pandits. They are a bunch of communalists. They were the agents of one Mr Jagmohan who planned their exodus so that Khans can be blamed falsely. In fact, a movie can be made on how these KPs conspired their own exile to give a bad name to the loving and affectionate Khan brothers of the valley.

To voice the woes of Kauls is sinful. The right course to get counted in the lists of the Prime Minister’s banquets and the President’s parties is to announce from the roof top: hey, men and ladies, I am Mr Khan.

The biggest apartheid the state observes is to exclude those who cry for Kauls, wear the colours of  Ayodhya, love the wisdom of the civilisational heritage, dare to assert as Hindus in  a land which is known as Hindustan too and  struggle to live with dignity as Kauls. They are out and exiled. You can see any list of honours and invites to summits and late-evening gala parties to toast a new brand. All that the Kauls are allowed is a space at Jantar Mantar: shout, weep and go back to your tents after a tiring demonstration. Mr Kaul, you have got a wrong name.

A dozen KJs would fly to take you atop the glory – posts and gardens of sympathies if you accept to wear a Khan name and love a Sunita, Pranita, Komal or a Kamini. Well, here you have a sweetheart in Mandira. That goes well with the story.

And you pegged the movie plot on autism.

I wept. It was too much. I wept as a father of a son who needed a story as an Indian. Who cares for his autistic son, his relationship with the western world, his love affair with a young  sweet something as a human, as someone whose heart goes beyond being a Hindu, a Muslim or a proselytizing Vatican-centric aggressive soul. Not the one who would declare in newspaper interviews: “I think I am an ambassador for Islam”.  Shah Rukh is Shah Rukh, not because he is an ambassador for Islam. If that was true, he could have found a room in Deoband. Fine enough. But he became a heartthrob and a famousl star because he is a great actor. He owes everything he has to Indians and not just to Muslims. We love him not because he is some Mr Khan. We love him because he has portrayed the dreams, aspirations, pains, anguish and ups and downs of our daily life. As  an Indian. As one of us.

If he wants to use our goodwill and love for strengthening his image as an ambassador for Islam, will we have to think to put up an ambassador for Hindus? That, at least to me, would be unacceptable because I trust everyone: a Khan or a Kaul or a Singh or a Victor. Who represents India represents us all too, including Hindus. My best ambassadorship would be an ambassadorship for the tricolour and not for anything else because I see my Ram and Dharma in that. I don’t think even an Amitabh or a Hritik would ever think in terms Shah Rukh has chosen for himself.  But shouldn’t these big, tall, successful Indians who wear Hindu names make a movie on why Kauls were ousted? Why Godhra occurred in the first place? Why nobody, yes, not a single Muslim, comes forward to take up the cause of the exiled and killed and contemptuously marginalized Kauls whereas every Muslim complainant would have essentially a Hindu advocate to take on Hindus as fiercely as he can?

If you are Mr Khan and found dead on the railway tracks, the entire nation would be shaken. And he was also a Rizwan. May be just a coincidence that our Mr Khan in the movie is also a Rizwan.

Rizwan’s death saw the police commissioner punished and cover stories written by missionary writers. But if you are a Sharma or a Kaul and happened to love an  Ameena Yusuf in Srinagar, you would soon find your corpse inside the police thana and NONE, not even a small-time local paper would find it worthwhile to waste a column on you.  No police constable would be asked to explain how a wrongly detained person was found dead in police custody?

Because the lover found dead inside a police thana was not Mr Khan. No KJ would ever come forward to make a movie on ‘My name is Kaul. And I am terror-struck by Khans’.

Give me back my identity as an Indian, Mr. Khan and I would have no problem even wearing your name and appreciating the tender love of an autistic son.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indus-calling/entry/my-name-is-not-khan

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Misplaced priorities

Copenhagen pundits rushing from poor countries are the same as who once adorned the Mughal durbar. Never thinking or doing what they actually need to, but following what they are told. The mad rush of articles and a craze to be seen and counted with the western sahibs with very serious and very gloomy faces is just hilarious.

True, we have got to save our planet and rivers and water and mountains and the good earth. But today India needs much more than that to save humans from dying on footpaths. Reducing carbon emissions is fine. But should it be reduced before we reduce the levels of corruption, illiteracy and terrorism?

We may allocate a thousand crore rupees after  Copenhagen for addressing issues handed over to us by those who have been actually responsible for the climatic mess we find ourselves in. Still, all that would go down the drain if we keep on living with high corruption levels, widespread rural and urban illiteracy and unimaginable poverty amid islands of stinking wealthy sections who organize seminars on Kyoto protocol.

India needs immediately to address the highly inflammable issues of terror, improve the public health system and spread literacy on a war footing. Everything else will work better afterwards. If we try to copy blindly a highly literate and prosperous west and set our priorities accordingly, we shall be doomed. Look at the messy preparations for the Commonwealth Games, the billions wasted on the Ganga cleansing project, Yamuna turned into a nullah and the agricultural scene presenting suicidal tendencies with Maoists cashing in on the resultant unrest. What have we done seriously on these issues that suddenly a Copenhagen jamboree took overwhelming everything else?

The problems created by the gora-lands can’t be our burden like Kipling’s Ramu. Time is ripe for the Asian power centres to lead the west rather that offering to be led by their misplaced priorities.

Just have a bird’s eye view of what they have ‘gifted’ us so far. Massacred aborigines in the Americas, New Zealand, Australia etc, and then created endowments to study their ‘rich’ culture, put the original owners into reservations and asked the rest of the world to come and see them as tourist attractions.

They wanted the whole world look, worship and behave like them, the way they would understand and appreciate and hence began the wars first, second, the atom bombs and Hiroshima and Vietnams. Then they began a movement to stop nuclear proliferation, compel us to sign the CTBT, which they won’t do themselves. Start peace missions and grab all the Nobel peace decorations rejecting Gandhi purely on racist basis.

They send armies to foreign lands to kill people, including children (reported as accident), create an atmosphere where large populations are devoid of progress and food unless they accept their hegemony and then ask us to clean up the dirt in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq making friends with Beijing, giving it the ‘responsibility’ to get Kashmir crisis resolved. Wow! Isn’t it a wonderful mechanism of neo-world order of the old colonialist mind?

They destroyed the largest hectares of rain forest, built huge monstrous dams, angered nature and now ask us to come to Copenhagen forgetting our national priorities and sign on papers they have prepared.

Good that we have a Jairam. One can only hope he will do what India needs and not what the western conceptualisers of new anxieties dish out for us.

In our part of the world more people die and will continue to die, unless immediate action is taken, of hunger, poverty, terrorism, unavailable or bad healthcare, political and administrative corruption.

We get sick of these daily doses of high levels of carbonized inactions and see nauseatingly a group of disconnected mediapersons and politicians eating out of the hands of Copenhagen’s starlets. They must focus on environmental issues more seriously and in a committed way. That alone is going to bring about the change, nothing else.

The tricks they crack on us are not new. Remember the Y2K scare just before the new millennium began? All the machines would crash, time zones would mismatch, stock exchanges would collapse and all that blah-blah. It was fun to awake in the first morning of 2000 without anything bad happening. Not that pollution or drying up rivers and changing climate is a false scare like that. But this is just an example of the western attempt to confuse and misguide the rest of the world setting our agenda.

In fact, we just don’t need a Copenhagen to make us work for addressing our issues. We are responsible for polluting Dal lake, making most of the water bodies in districts disappear, seeing Gangotri glacier receding and shackling Ganga in a most horrendous way – with unbelievable thoughtless action to produce more hot money than generating power for the poor. It all happens because of a callous administration unawakened masses, huge socio-political divide that thrives on corruption. Climate change is not an isolated issue to be resolved through rich men’s papers. It’s our own creation and hence needs a domestic cleanup first. The money we have to spend on security because of the two nuclear-powered hostile countries around and to tackle insurgencies and terrorism, supported by the enemies looking down our necks is too enormous and has to be saved through an invincible defence and a ruthless mechanism to end internal insecurity. What’s our response on this front? Can any leader or even a middle-level bureaucrat think of going to a government hospital in times of an emergency? If not what right these dummies have to talk of an issue that a common Indian will take years to understand? Why can’t we prioritize issues that make his life better and address the other issues in a different way, the way our domestic needs guide?

Fifty-six newspapers in 45 countries taking the unprecedented step of speaking in one voice through a common editorial was a good idea. But for those whose stomachs were full and had access to read a news sheet. What about those who were far away from these ‘luxuries’ and have to face the brunt of the climatic change more than anyone else? Who loses land, finds polluted rivers unusable for agriculture, unavailable schools and wells filled with industrial waste? Not those who write special edits and have  access to mineral water bottles? Should they decide what the majority needs?

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The candles Manmohan missed

I had visualized a 26/11 anniversary befitting the solemnity of the occasion with all parties’ leaders led by Manmohan Singh and Ratan Tata at Gateway of India paying homage to the innocent victims, saluting the security personnel and resolving in unison to never let such an incident happen again. After all,  the nation is greater than party politics and ideological differences.

But 24 hours before the deadly date I feel defeated as an Indian, by my own fellow men, who were supposed to lead us to a more secure future, while seeing a blank and a shallow 26/11 anniversary. A billion nice people, condemned to have ugly leaders with an eye on personal aggrandizement and glory deserved better.

See what are the two most important stories hogging the space on our channels and newspapers on the eve of 26/11. One is about Shilpa’s marriage reception and the other is a reception hosted by Obama in Washington for our PM.

If the opposition is confusedly mired in the dud dirty linen of another Manmohan, who gave a report that could have well have been released at the AICC headquarters , the ruling clique is eyeing the next elections and the enthronement of its prince charming hence the preparations for repeating the Hindu-Muslim division game have begun in right earnest.

The only hope lies in the people’s power and passionate regards for their dead and honest. While we may have a few words of empathy and assurances delivered by a failed CEO of the country who thought it wise to spend the anniversary of an attack on India in Washington, rather than spending a quiet day with those who suffered and comfort the nation with his presence, the people are emotionally observing the day with an angst in their heart and homage to the dead who fell on this day last year to the bullets of the most cowardly savages.

Nobody can forget that while the security personnel were fighting a battle with less professional weapons and instruments, the leaders were making a tamasha of the incident. Hence the shame brought to them by a media and people’s all-pervasive anguish had the home minister and the chief minister’s head rolling with the state home minister too following suit.

The year post-26/11 saw Maoist killings on an extraordinary rise.Unparalleled Chinese incursions.LeT overactivated with a Pakistan refusing to listen to us or even accept our evidences.India losing moral ground as a biggest target of terror on this planet and forced to talk economy with the US in times of facing multifaceted terror wars without any conceivable joint action plan with so-called avowed friends to eliminate murder machines.

And we continued with Rahul’s roadshows, dalit hut stopovers, Koda fumblings, Vande Mataram opposed in presence of the home minister, ‘Mee Marathi’ chauvinism, a traitor in the valley invited Chinese intervention, Liberhan’s 17 years of no-consequence deadwood, a fratricidal opposition and churning of shallow political gossip which they call journalism.

That was the year we saw after India was shaken up by 10 mad lads. And we say we shall try to convince Obama to eliminate terror for us. Ha!

The much-touted Force One’s first demo fizzling out as a laughing stock and a year later, the same party is in governance, not because people thought it’s a better option but because the opposition failed to prove its credentials. The same state home minister is again installed. Not a single guilty man has been punished. Taj decided to have its own security arrangement rather than depend on the khaki that remains a victim of lack of professional preparedness due to lethargic political support to provide latest equipments. The martyrs, who were promised a lot last year by the paan-chewing politicos, have yet to receive the help, and the wives of Karkare and Saluskar had to travel to Delhi to meet Sonia, a year later. Not that the state governors could go to their houses, offer apologies and have the formalities for help completed at the convenience of the families of the martyred .

No, it couldn’t be done. Neither the better, lightweight bulletproof jackets nor the better firepowered machines have been procured. Kasab is on the front pages daily like a masala providing Page 3 material. Policeman gave their lives so that a Kasab is caught alive but their colleagues find themselves in a no better environment to work.

The will to fight and defeat the enemy is dead. It’s the biggest casualty in this system. Washington’s convenience of dates to host a dinner for Manmohan Singh was more important than to observe the first anniversary of 26/11 at home and resolve decisively to annihilate the terror outfits through a non-partisan collective effort.

There is no security alert that could be trusted to thwart a repeat of 26/11. If in the last 12 months, there has been no attack; it’s not because the home minister had made the security arrangements foolproof, but perhaps the attackers have not yet decided.

While there is an all-round systemic failure, the tide of change is too dim and challenged. The king’s failings must make masses to take up the challenge to rejuvenate the public life and throw out the fossils, paving the way for a secured land and a responsive regime.

Just work to bring that moment with a candle for the 26/11 martyrs. That’s the only way to sincerely observe the first anniversary of the black day and to have it as the last incident

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Obama’s Chinese odyssey

The night before President Obama’s first Asian tour began, he was trying to comfort an America deeply in shock after Maj Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 American soldiers who were bound for Afghanistan. Yet, Obama’s nine-day tour, which took him to Tokyo, Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul, was marked more by economics than a consolidation of the Asian powers against terrorism. That’s how he is trying to assure Americans  — bringing back buoyancy to the US markets, reducing unemployment and making Asians buy more American goods rather overfilling American bazaars with Asian goods.

Hence, more than any other country China became the most significant stopover, and longest too — three nights and three days beginning Sunday evening, November 15. To make the Chinese receptive he refused a meeting with the Dalai Lama in Washington, and remained noncommittal whether he would raise issues of Tibet and human rights violations with his Chinese counterpart. Though an overcautious China provided all the reasons to Obama for a Tibet remark  when its foreign ministry spokesperson raised the issue via Abraham Lincoln , referring  to Obama — he is black, he admires Abraham Lincoln, so he, of all people, should sympathize with Beijing’s effort to prevent Tibet from seceding and sliding back into what it was before its liberation by Chinese troops: a feudalistic, slaveholding society headed by the Dalai Lama.

But Obama may not necessarily oblige Dalai supporters as he wants to project a different image of America — a suave , conciliatory nation that can be talked to. His message to China from Tokyo was warm and friendly, wanting to build strong ties and not taking the rise of China as a threat. And he introduced himself as a pacific president with such personal history that the audience in the Suntory hall of Tokyo gave him a standing ovation. He said: “I am an American president who was born in Hawaii and lived in Indonesia as a boy. My sister Maya was born in Jakarta and later married a Chinese-Canadian. My mother spent nearly a decade working in the villages of Southeast Asia, helping women buy a sewing machine or an education that might give them a foothold in the world economy.” “So,” he added, “the Pacific rim has helped shape my view of the world.”

America needs a supportive Chinese market and wants China to move towards a market-based value for its currency. So Obama’s meeting with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao would concentrate more on economic issues and yes, AfPak policy, which affects the regional power balance but won’t touch any controversial issues. As New York Times put it, he is clearly seeking to avoid alienating Beijing on the eve of his inaugural visit to China.

That’s a big morale booster to China specially it is engaged in a wordy duel with India on border issues that reached a ‘cold war’ level during the Dalai lama’s Arunachal visit. Hence a natural corollary to Obama’s China visit would be how it will affect India-China ties. Observers say the recent Chinese ‘war of words’ with India and Chinese government-run media’s xenophobic reactions and commentaries against Indian positions — reminding us not to forget 1962, can also be attributed  to the growing India-US closeness symbolized in the Bush era’s nuke deal. That has made China feel threatened by an India-US alignment. Hence the pressure on India has been building up. Another factor is the increasing US influence in Asia, which China has never liked.  China thinks that India, which had kept a genuine non-aligned relationship with Washington has now completely gone into the US camp after the nuke deal. Indira Gandhi’s regime and Vajpayee’s strong nationalist stand post-Pokaran 2 showed India independent.

No more now, is the Chinese perception. This has put India under a bigger strategic burden and complexity. We are not sure if the US will help us during a skirmish with our northern neighbour, as US-China ties would be more important to Washington than  help to Delhi. Obama’s Asian tour doesn’t seem to have taken India as an Asian power, and Obama would meet Indian Prime Minister and the President at Washington, and not in Delhi. Just before Obama left for China, the US administration refused to allow Indian intelligence officers to interrogate American national David Coleman Headley, arrested by the FBI on charges of plotting a major terror attack in India at the behest of Pakistan-based LeT, though India had given the FBI  permission to interrogate Kasab in Mumbai. The US will also put pressure on Indian leaders to sign the CTBT and accept the US position on carbon emissions. It has also not changed its ‘black list’ that bans trade in sensitive technology for some Indian companies, including a dozen key government entities like the Indian Space Research Organization. Though the US continues such trade with countries like North Korea, Pakistan and China that have a record of proliferation.

So a warmer confidence-building between the US and China may not necessarily mean an easing of the pressures on India. We will have to fight our battle on our shoulders alone.

That apart, a better US-China relationship would certainly be a development having its soothing effect on the region, as South Asia has increasingly seen geopolitical tensions rising on account of a bitter US-China rivalry and their efforts to curb each other’s influence. Pakistan, which receives charitable grants and military help from, amazingly, both the rival countries, is in a state of a multi-control towers with non-state players as much powerful as the state authority dependent on US doles. A closer US-China relationship is not seen changing the status quo. China is a hard bargainer and long back it began building up its case against what it terms ‘unfair’ policies of the US. Its state-controlled newspapers published public opinion polls showing public anger against Washington on economic matters. One of them said: “The unprecedented and increased trade protectionism measures the US has launched against China recently have triggered a strong fury of protest among the Chinese public. A recent survey conducted by huanqiu.com shows that more than 90 percent of web users believe the US is seriously ruining the principle of freedom of international trade.”

Ultimately it’s the Chinese strength and military power coupled with its strong economy that has seen world leaders recognize its might and seek its cooperation rather than get into conflict with it. Obama’s visit also underlines the same truth of diplomacy. As one American analyst succinctly tried to put the matrix of the US China relations, ‘the most important division will be between centers of order and centers or sources of disorder, it is vital to American interests that China remain a center of order. America needs to handle a rising China the way Britain handled a rising America, not a rising Germany.’

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RSS’s global vision- We don’t bomb the country that we adopt

We dont bomb the country we adopt

Mr. Tarun Vijay, a former editor of Panchjanya, the official publication of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is an old Hindu nationalist organisation, made a telling distinction between India and some of its neighbours at the last meeting of the Club.
Significantly, the meeting was held at the poolside of the Taj Mahal Hotel where the worst carnage by terrorists in India’s recent history was initiated just a year ago, on November 26, 2008.
Mr. Tarun Vijay said that over the last few centuries Indian scholars, saints and seers went to several countries in Asia carrying the message of love and compassion and of a caring and affectionate God. In return, those countries feted their guests, honoured them and adopted Sanskrit names for themselves and for their landmarks.
Not only were they proud of their heritage, they were often surprised by the modern-day Indians’ lack of knowledge about their glorious culture and heritage.
It was this respect for ancestry that had led to the new international airport in Bangkok (the biggest and most sophisticated in the world) being named Suvarnabhumi, a chaste Sanskrit term. In fact, the first visual to strike one on entering the premises was that of a 150-foot-long mural of sagar-manthan, or the mythical churning of the oceans.
Similarly, the present King of Thailand was known as Rama Navam (or Rama the Ninth). A brief chat with the Rajguru, the King’s teacher, revealed that the country followed the legacy of King Rama and that all kings were known after him.
The full name of the present King of Thailand was Bhumidol Adulyadej, also a Sanskrit name, and it was he who had christened Bangkok airport as Suvarnabhumi, showing that the Thais were proud of their heritage.


‘People in East Asia are often surprised that Indians are largely ignorant of their culture and heritage’

In complete contrast, said Mr. Tarun Vijay, the barbarians who attacked the city on 26/11 came armed with sophisticated weapons and other armaments to kill people – never mind that they did not know any one of the people whom they had come to kill, or the fact that among them were women, children and the aged, all of them unarmed and harmless, leading normal lives in their own country.
Mr. Tarun Vijay, who gave a talk on “Global mission of India”, was introduced by Tarjani Vakil who said that he was the Director of the Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Research Foundation, a centre for civilizational values and policy research and an ideological think-tank based on the nationalist school of thought at the headquarters of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in New Delhi.
A prolific writer both in English and Hindi, he had written over 2,000 articles and was a regular columnist for The Times of India, Dainik Jagran, Maharashtra Times and so on. He had launched a peace initiative between India and Pakistan along with the Daily Jung, a major newspaper in Pakistan. That initiative had been appreciated on both sides of the border.
And, as Nanik Rupani revealed later, it was Mr. Tarun Vijay who had put the ancient town of Ladakh on the tourist map by organising the “Sindhu Darshan” programme that had gone on to become a popular event. That one initiative had changed the entire economy of Ladakh.
Mr. Tarun Vijay started his talk by pointing out that it was a rishi from India who went to Cambodia 1,200 years ago, married a local and settled down there who gave the country a name, “Kamboj” (whence Cambodia), which later became a part of the Srivijaya Empire.
The biggest temple of Hindus was not in India but in Angkor Vat in Cambodia. Even after the advent of communism, Communist Cambodia remembered its Hindu and Indian heritage with respect and honour.
A UNESCO publication on that country showed how Indians who left the shores of their land established their global footprint on the basis of love, friendship and scholarship.
After referring to the naming of Bangkok airport as Suvarnabhumi by Thailand’s King Bhumidol Adulyadej, he said, “That is the footprint of your ancestors, a legacy of your forefathers who spread out and impressed the people with the power and the strength of knowledge and character, the two major aspects of the Indian footprint… That is the global vision of India, the global message of India even today”.
Mr. Tarun Vijay said that the third chief of the RSS, the late Prof. Rajendra Singh, who was the Head of the Department of Physics at Allahabad University, had said to him in the course of his last interview that he did not want to see India as a brutal military power or as a dehumanised, prosperous country. On the contrary, he wanted India to be known for its knowledge and character.
Speaking about his experiences in China where he is a Fellow of the Sichuan University, he said when he went to see the Leshan Buddha in Chengdu, he came across the largest Buddha sculpture in the world. It was about 250 feet tall and had been made from one solid rock – an entire mountain had been sculpted into a sitting Buddha.
And the very first statue visible on entering the campus was that of Samantabhadra, another Sanskrit name. When he asked about Samantabhadra, his interlocutors said it was surprising that he did not know about him.
The official accompanying him (in a China ruled by the Communist Party) then told him that Samantabhadra was a rishi from North India who crossed snow deserts and the Himalayas and survived to live in Chengdu some 950 years ago. He learned the Chinese language and started communicating with the King and the people.
Such was the influence of his brilliance, intellect and scholarship that everyone started believing in Buddha and he was able to inspire the people of Chengdu to build the Leshan Buddha sculpture.

“Even in the year 2009, it is the biggest Buddha sculpture in the world. And it was done by your ancestors, by those Indians who were brave and courageous and who never wanted to subjugate or colonise other people.
“They took dharma with them. They were not ashamed of their civilization, they were not ashamed of their past, of their glorious heroes and of the great men and women who loved their language; they translated the entire literature of China and East Asia into Sanskrit and from Sanskrit into their language.”
Mr. Tarun Vijay said the Rajguru of China was Kumarajiva whose father was from Sinkiang and mother from Kashmir. When he went there, the Han King of Beijing gave him the title, “Teacher of China”.
It was Kumarajiva who started the finest method of translating the classics from Sanskrit to Chinese and from Chinese to Sanskrit with a 17-tier arrangement. It started with literal translation, followed by the first step of checking; next, ensuring that the main spirit of the text was conveyed, and so on. It was only after 17 steps that the final text of the original text from Sanskrit into Chinese and from Chinese into Sanskrit was available.
Recently, when visiting the Indian Embassy in Beijing, he met a man called Vijay Choudhary, a small trader from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan. This man revealed that he employed 1,000 Chinese in his diamond-cutting factory in Kunming!
That was the distance that India had travelled – from Samantabhadra to Vijay Choudhary – and neither of them had used a gun to befriend the Chinese. Rather, they had won them over with the help of mutual respect and understanding.
The Chinese cared for Vijay Choudhary because he was bringing a lot of money into China and giving employment to the rural people there.
This case, too, represented the spirit of India whose teachers, professors, technologists and engineers were respected icons of knowledge, scholarship, integrity and character.
And there was also the story narrated by Mr. L.K. Advani of a Malaysian whom he had met in Kuala Lumpur. The man lived in New York where he had his office and establishment. But what was he doing in Kuala Lumpur?
He told Mr. Advani that he had to undergo a heart surgery. When he learnt that an Indian doctor in Kuala Lumpur was the best in the field, he had travelled from the USA to be operated by that Indian doctor in Malaysia.
“We don’t bomb the country that we adopt. That’s what everyone says about Indians. Everyone loves and accepts Indians. Even if an Indian is a British, German or American passport-holder, they trust him 100% – that he won’t bomb their land. He will work for the country, fight for the country and will never ditch it.
“That is your achievement, the blessings of your ancestors; and that’s the Indian footprint all over the world, that of character, honesty, integrity.”
Turning to Nanik Rupani, Mr. Tarun Vijay said it was worth pondering over that several leaders from all over the world happily came to India to accept awards presented by his Priyadarshini Academy. This was no mean achievement and an endorsement of brand India.
The speaker next referred to the aftermath of the “discovery” of America by Columbus who had actually set out in search of India. He could not find India but reached the land that was now called America.
“What happened after Columbus reached America? More than four crores of the original inhabitants of the land, who were known as American Indians, were brutalised, massacred. It was a holocaust. And the originator of that holocaust was Columbus.”
He had wanted to proselytise, to find gold, to grab land, to get slaves, to subjugate the people; to take over their land and to build his own buildings.
In comparison, the Taj Mahal Hotel was a symbol of the indomitable, invincible Indian spirit represented by the tricolour. For it was here that the mission of the barbarians who had attacked Bombay on 26/11 was defeated.

Would we respect Rama or celebrate Diwali had he played peacenik and allowed his wife to be taken away? asks Tarun Vijay

“Ask yourself, what kind of people must they have been (those who attacked Bombay on 26/11). Compare your civilization and the work done by your ancestors in the earlier years which gave you the Hindu civilization, the Indus civilization, which left imprints all over the globe, from Japan to Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Korea, Brazil, New Zealand. (You will find) respect and understanding for a different viewpoint.
“You will find a solid belief in pluralism, in democracy and diversity. We are not those who want everything to be uniformly same, who want all people speaking one language, reading one book, wearing the same attire. No, we love diversity.
“Let a million flowers with a million fragrances bloom; if there can be any such place in the world, then that is Hindustan. No other country can boast of this kind of legacy which is so supportive of pluralism, respecting different viewpoints. We never had a Galileo hanged for his beliefs.”
Taking a dig at the growing tribe of peaceniks, Mr. Tarun Vijay said Rama did not compromise with Ravana, telling him that he could take Janaki to Colombo. And he, as a pace-loving person, would return to Ayodhya where the people would be so happy that he had played peacenik and left his wife behind, that they would welcome him and celebrate his return as Diwali.
On the contrary, Rama cautioned Ravana and when the latter remained adamant, he vanquished Ravana. That was the legacy of India, that of not compromising with the wicked.
Narrating another experience, Mr. Tarun Vijay said that the renowned businessman and philanthropist, Mr. Bob Harilela, had told him that he never cared about India when he was a little boy. In fact, he hated the heat and the poverty that he saw when he came here at the age of 13.
But his mother told him that whatever he did and wherever he went, he would not be able to erase the fact that he was an Indian – it was “written” on his face. In course of time Mr. Harilela bought an apartment in Bombay and now his largest spend on charity was in India. He spent his vacations in India and had taught his children to respect their heritage.
The children would always remain Indian, but “not on the basis of a gun, or of gun powder” or colonisation.
“No one will remember a Gen. Dyer in India with respect, or even Queen Elizabeth. But Bhagat Singh, who was only 23 years old when he went to the gallows? Yes… This land has always respected those who have stood with their heritage, with their civilization, and those who have stood up at times of crisis to fight the enemy, to fight the barbarians so that peace, pluralism and democracy can be saved.”
On a visit to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, he saw that not a single shop in the markets had a portrait of Osama bin Laden because violence, extremism and uncivilized behaviour never won respect. History only remembered those who spread the message of love and compassion and it was such people who were respected down the ages.
Buddha was “still alive” in spite of the fact that his sculpture in Bamiyan had been bombed out by the Taliban.
“The global vision of India cannot be anything but to spread the message that the gun never achieves success or does any good for the people. It is the power of love, compassion and character that does so. And that’s what I have learned in my organisation, in the RSS.”
Finally, Mr. Tarun Vijay quoted a couplet by Akbar Allahabadi:
Tere lab pe hai Iraqo Shamo Misro Romo Cheen
Lekin apne hi watan ke naam se waqif nahin
Arre sabse pehle mard ban Hindustan ke wastey
Hind jag uthe to phir saare jahan ke wastey

(A loose translation: The names on your lips are those of Iraq, Egypt, Rome and China, but you don’t seem to be acquainted with the name of your own country; the first thing you need to do is to become a man for Hindustan, and once you rouse Hindustan, then become a man for the whole world.)

Answering questions, Mr. Tarun Vijay told Trilochan Sahney that he did not agree that India was always populated by invaders. In fact, even the theory of “the Aryan invasion of India” had been proved false, what with American scientists finding that the genes of the Aryans and the Dravids living in India since ancient times had a lot in common.
On the contrary, India had always given shelter to those refused shelter elsewhere and to every persecuted community in the world. No other country could boast of such a record.
But he agreed that Hindu society was fractured by the caste system. In this context the speaker quoted Swami Vivekananda who had said that the only ideal before Hindu society was the ideal of Guru Govind Singh.
Sitaram Shah pointed out that the word Hindu did not appear in any literature. Where had the word come from? Secondly, all that the speaker had said in praise of Hinduism was being maligned by the very people who were talking of Hinduism.
Mr. Tarun Vijay said that the word Hindu came from the Greeks. At that time Indians were called “Aryas”, “Vedics”, or “Sindhuputras” . But since the Greeks had difficulty pronouncing certain consonants, it so happened that Sindhus came to be called Hindus.
However, changing the name of a city or a land could not change the basic character of the people who inhabited that place.
“And the basic character of this land, beyond the Indus, is that they love nature, they don’t condemn it. When Bachendri Pal became the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, she did not set foot on it till she had placed vermillion and rice on it as a ritual offering, thanking the goddess mother for giving her the strength to reach the summit.
“On the other hand, Western mountaineers write that they ‘conquered’ Mount Everest; the word ‘conquered nature’ does not appear in the Indian language. This is the basic difference in the worldview of our people. We have respect for parents, for family values, for pluralism. That makes us different people. You may call them Hindus, Indians, Bharatiyas, whatever, it means the same thing,” Mr. Tarun Vijay added.
The vote of thanks was proposed by Nanik Rupani.

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Medieval trap

When the nation is facing grave threats from the Maoists and the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Islamist mad-heads, and discussing how to counter the Chinese arrogance, suddenly mullahs living in a frozen Arabian time zone have cried that they won’t sing “Vande Mataram”.

Are they concerned about the people? People whose lives they think they govern through some fatwas and scriptural instructions? Do they realize that hardly any educated Muslim with his head firmly positioned where it should be, listens to them leave aside “obeying” their dictates? Still they make some noises to get media attention and register their political presence.

What was the compulsive necessity for making such an announcement while the home minister was there to have a plateful of appeasement biryani in hope of garnering their votes for a 21st-century government?

One explanation that has come to us through Deoband observers is frighteningly pregnant with serious consequences to our already strained social fabric. The Congress wants to create another monster out of Muslim fanatics to further erode Mayawati’s vote bank and simultaneously distract public attention from its failure on the Maoist front and keep the public debate away from the price rise. These are the issues it couldn’t handle; hence, the distraction was immediately needed. And the way fanatics helped the British before India was vivisected, the maulvis have obliged the party in power. It’s advisable not to get trapped in this political lunacy, but then the media will be taking it up in a big way for certain unexplained reasons and there will be obvious reactions and diatribes from both sides to keep the issue alive.

Public memory shouldn’t be too thin. Remember how Bhindranwale was created, the statements about his “saintliness”, the permission to his brigands to roam free through Delhi’s roads brandishing AK-47s on top of buses. And then only too recently, Raj Thackeray was propped up to counter Shiv Sena-BJP’s growth in the Maratha land.

They forget that a Bhindranwale and a Raj results in self-defeat, a defeat for the national unity and collective goals of economic prosperity. The Deoband mullahs have never helped their community in making economic, social and educational progress. At any moment of a social crisis among Muslims, they have delayed any decision or taken a retrograde stand. The “shining” examples of their fossilized mentality were too visible during the Shah Bano case, Gudiya’s tragic story and equal right to Muslim women. They kept a studied silence when five lakh Hindus were driven out of their homes in the Kashmir valley, after announcements were blared out on the dreadful night of January 11,1989, asking Pandits to get out and leave behind their women. Jammu & Kashmir is the only Muslim-majority state in India and if Deoband is “concerned” about Islam’s peaceful, and humanitarian face, why should it not try to influence the terror groups operating in the name of their religion and in turn, as the maulvis say, bringing bad name to their great message of universal brotherhood?

But never will one find them engaging the “bad elements” and issuing a fatwa against their “anti-Islamic” action. All they would do is to irritate Hindus and punch the patriotic people belonging to all denominations with untimely and out of context pronouncements like the one they made while the “man with a mission” Chidambaram was in their midst.

They know very well that “Vande Mataram” is a song celestial for a patriotic Indian no matter to which stream of faith he belongs. It’s a song that inspired Bhagat Singh and Ashfakullah alike and is more popular with an electrifying affect than any other song. An A R Rahman refashioned it and offered a beautiful rendering of it with Bharat Bala making its universal appeal more thrilling. Millions of Indians, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and all denominations sing it with pride and confidence. It was the song which united India against the British repression that had caused the death of millions in Bengal creating an unnatural famine .The original song appears in the famous novel of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay named “Anand Math” which describes a revolution against the foreign yoke led by ochre-robed monks. The deity is Mother India, the song is in praise of the Mother and it’s accepted as a national song by the Constitution. No organization can be given an option to denounce or reject the icons representing the national ethos and the spirit of the freedom struggle. If they don’t belong to us, they don’t have a right to enjoy the fruits of a pluralist society, democracy and a Constitution that gives them more than their ilk offers to any non-Muslim anywhere. Instead of making an Indian identity stronger and helping their community to join the national mainstream endeavouring for a happy and progressive life, they are, at a time when an average Indian is more concerned about dal roti and security, more concerned about a song that was opposed in the same manner by Pakistan seekers pre-1947.

Then to which country these Deobandis and Jamiat’s big-mouths belong? What’s their problem?
It’s not the song they are opposing. The message is loud and clear that they don’t want to forge a sense of unity with the national life. They want to create a divide on the lines of a Muslim Indian and an Indian Muslim for political leverage. P Chidambaram is certainly not a scholar of Islamic theology that they invited him for a religious discourse. The home minister was there on a political mission. The home minister of India must have made them sing an Indian song rather than emboldening them to oppose it.

Their Arabian-night fever must be brought to an end with the firmness of a united Indian patriotism symbolized in our Constitution and the ever victorious tricolor.

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Why should our President receive the queen’s baton?

President Pratibha Patil is in London to receive a baton from Queen Elizabeth II on October 29. She has already received a tasteless joke from the duke of Windsor about Patels . And then the President is all ready to get  the dubious distinction of the first-ever head of state of a Commonwealth country  to receive the baton from the Queen Elizabeth. It’s a ‘baton’ that’s customarily given to the host country of the Commonwealth Games. The Commonwealth has 53 member states including Nauru, .. etc and none of them ever thought it prudent to be so obsessed with the colonial hangover that their head of the state would go and be a durbari in the former coloniser’s palace.

And our sportsmen like Kapil Dev gave a statement expressing a feel of pride for having found their names in the invite list to be in the queue and get introduced to a lady who hardly knows  about their land except that her predecessors once ruled them with a barbarity that is reminiscent of the dark ages (her knowledge about us won’t be better than that of the duke of fatigue and follies who slipped over the Patels) and she never expressed any regret or remorse over what the British did to us.

Any surprises on the Indian spinelessness?

We are a nation that produced a large number of rai bahadurs and sirs and rao sahebs while ‘crazy deewane’ were becoming Bhagat Singhs and Rajgurus and Sukhdevs. There were a large section of our Indians who thought it prudent to keep a silence on Jalianwala Bagh, honour the butcher Dyer even after the gruesome incident. It’s another matter that we had those Casablancas too who preferred gallows to knighthood.

Pratibha Patil  and Kapil Devs have joined the ranks of those who have no sense of history, leave aside a sense of pride in the sacrifices of revolutionaries who fought the British. We are the world’s greatest living democracy, much larger and with a better civilisational background and track record of humanity than the British. Why should a head of a democracy present herself before a queen, a symbol of a decaying, old tradition, which has lost all relevance to the contemporary values of civil society? Shouldn’t they be raising questions that why the lady occupying Buckingham Palace must remain the head of the Commonwealth? The most logical and contextually correct thing would be to have a head of a democratic sovereign as its chief and not a titular icon of a royalty that stinks with the blood of our revolutionaries and whose wealth is built on the loot of India?

Pratibha Patil hasn’t found time to visit Hussainiwala , the memorial to Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev. Or the Jalianwala Bagh. London seems to be more inviting to her. What a shame that India should send a large contingent of sportsmen along with her.

The first question that has to raised before the lethargic neo-rai sahebs is the logic of still clinging to the Commonwealth comity? What great achievement we envisage by spending more than $1.6 billion on organizing the Commonwealth Games, which were originally conceptualized to keep the British colonial legacy alive and still require the queen to distribute largesse and announce the beginning of the games as its head. Since its inception in the new garb in1952, there has not been anyone else except the queen to head the games and it’s incumbent upon the members, all former subjects of the empire, all who had been slaves of the queen, to go to London and receive the ‘baton’ from Her Majesty so that the games are launched formally.

Here are some gems of information taken from the official website of the games.

The Queen’s Baton Relay

The Relay traditionally begins at Buckingham Palace in London as a part of the city’s Commonwealth Day festivities. Her Majesty the Queen entrusts the baton to the first relay runner. At the Opening Ceremony of the Games, the final relay runner hands the baton back to her Majesty the Queen .

History

The Relay was introduced at the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Wales. Through the 1994 Games, the Relay only went through England and the host nation.

The history of The Games

In 1911, the ‘Festival of Empire’ was held in London to celebrate the coronation of King George V. As part of the festival, an Inter-Empire Championships was held in which teams from Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom competed in events such as boxing, wrestling, swimming and athletics.

From 1930 to 1950 the Games were known as the British Empire Games, then the British Empire and Commonwealth Games until 1962. From 1966 to 1974 they took on the title of British Commonwealth Games and from 1978 onwards they have been known as simply the Commonwealth Games. The Commonwealth Youth Games are also known as Friendly Games in the English speaking provinces of the Commonwealth.

In the baton relay, after the president receives the baton from the Queen, the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) chairman Suresh Kalamdi, and Olympic gold medallist and ace shooter Abhinav Bindra will then start the Queen’s Baton Relay,

The Queen’s Baton relay is one of the oldest traditions of Commonwealth Games since it was first done in the 1958 Games in Wales

Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 1994

The Baton was fashioned from sterling silver and was engraved with traditional symbols of the creative artists’ families and cultures, including a wolf, a raven and an eagle with a frog in its mouth.

Kuala Lumpur, 1998

Malaysia placed their own flavour on the Games, with the Queen’s Baton being carried into the stadium on an elephant. The baton was presented to Prince Edward by Malaysia’s first ever Commonwealth medal winner Koh Eng Tong, a gold medallist in weightlifting in 1950.

Manchester, 2002

The baton has special significance as it marks the Golden Jubilee of Her Majesty The Queen and was designed to symbolise the uniqueness of the individual and the common rhythm of humanity.

Opening ceremony traditions

•         From 1930 through 1950, the parade of nations was led by a single flag bearer carrying the Union Flag, symbolising Britain’s leading role in the British Empire.

•         Since 1958, there has been a relay of athletes carrying a baton from Buckingham Palace to the Opening Ceremony. This baton has within it the Queen’s Message of Greeting to the athletes.

•         All other nations march in English alphabetical order.

•         The military is more active in the Opening Ceremony than in the Olympic Games. This is to honour the British Military traditions of the Old Empire.

So we have a queen and her representatives to be honoured who hardly get a serious glance in their own country except when a scandal brings them to the front page of a tabloid, we have to follow the English, and run with a baton which has symbols we do not know why-“a wolf, a raven and an eagle with a frog in its mouth.” And then we have to honour the “British Military traditions of the Old Empire.” Because they killed our patriots? Someone must file an application under RTI to know how many millions have been allocated just to finalise the theme and the tamasha to start a function that would be a joke to the sacred memories of our freedom fighters.

Why can’t we spend half the money we are spending on the  Commonwealth Games for training and building better and permanent facilities to identify indigenous sports talent and prepare them for the next Olympics? Why can’t we have a commonwealth of the proud, patriotic sovereign countries which would make sure that they do everything in line with the honour and pride of their  language, customs, traditions and salute their patriots taking the baton from a freedom fighter who had fought the savagery of the British empire rather than go to London and bow before the British queen?

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A love story ‘murdered’ in Srinagar

Rajneesh was a small trader from Jammu often going on business trips to Srinagar. He fell in love with a girl and married her.

He wanted to be faithful to his beloved from Srinagar, who was beautiful and had unflinching trust in her life partner. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to have love bloom between Jammu and Srinagar. But it was more than that. The boy from Jammu was a Hindu and the girl from Srinagar, a Muslim. Ameena was her name and she changed her name to Anchal Sharma after marriage.

A month after the marriage the boy was picked up from his Jammu house by the Kashmir police and taken to Srinagar for “investigation”. The police never registered his name, Rajneesh Sharma, as the accused who is being taken to Srinagar, but instead named his brother Pawan Sharma in police records, to confuse and hide the real identity.

The smell of a plot was there the moment they took the boy hustled in a jeep and covered with a blanket.

The boy never returned home to celebrate his first Diwali with Anchal nee Ameena.

He was found dead hanging with an iron grill in his Srinagar cell. Police said he committed “suicide”. An inconsolable Anchal alleged that her parents bribed police to murder her beloved because he dared to marry a Muslim girl from the valley. Anchal’s father works in Srinagar’s police department, hence the influence was obvious.

This week Anchal would have been celebrating Diwali with her husband Rajneesh but for if this ultimate Taliban act. Surprisingly the incident, so brutal and tragic hasn’t found an echo in the elite human-rightist circles of Delhi and the self-righteous media which had taken up the Rizwan case of Kolkata at a greater war footing than it has shown regarding Chinese incursions.

Rajneesh’s “murder” in a police post in Srinagar wouldn’t have occurred if Rajneesh was a “Rizwan” and the girl had remained an Ameena.

The writerati, who declare love’s supremacy whenever the boy is someone else and the girl is a Hindu (the final test one has to pass to be declared secular in this land of self-flagellation) are maintaining a studied silence. None has spoken so far. None has tried to invoke the wrath of the Women’s Commission, none has bothered to take a delegation of women to Jammu in the name of secularism and its prophets. And none has found it a deserving case for a heated debate on the sparkling channels discussing who should win — love or the colour of your faith?

Why?

Because the girl was a Muslim turned Hindu and the boy, unfortunately happened to be Hindu. Because the culprit in this case is Srinagar, the reservoir of all that is sacred in secular pantheon and the boy belongs to the Hindu Jammu and hence anything that would demand a condemnation of the Taliban in Srinagar must be held back and forgotten?

The girl, Anchal nee Ameena, said sobbingly in Jammu that the Srinagar police tortured her husband just for his crime of marrying a Muslim girl. The mother of the girl knew about the affair but insisted the boy convert to Islam, which Rajneesh refused. Anchal says Rajneesh was tortured in the police custody putting pressure on him to convert and when he refused consistently, he was murdered. The Jammu papers have reported quoting the postmortem report that police tortured the boy in custody, broke his legs, crushed his knee, gave him electric shocks and peeled his nails before declaring his “suicide”. In cold blood.

In Srinagar. In a police post. He was married on August 21, “picked up” without an arrest warrant on September 29 and was found dead in police custody on October 4. Though a magisterial inquiry was ordered, no FIR was lodged till yesterday, that is, October 14, when a chief judicial magistrate in Jammu ordered an inquiry against 11 accused persons in Srinagar.

The Buddhists of Ladakh and the Hindus of Jammu have been complaining for long that Srinagar has become an alien land for them. It discriminates against them on the basis of religion. The Amarnath Shrine agitation is a recent pointer to what Srinagar does to its minorities. The forced exile of half a million Hindus from the valley is another example of the attitude that the only Muslim-majority state of India has exhibited towards non-Muslims. For a detailed factsheet regarding Srinagar’s blatant communal bias against Jammu, please see my column.

A couple of years before, the Buddhist Association of Ladakh gave a memorandum to the central government. A part of it said:

1. During 1992-99, 24 Buddhist girls from Leh district were converted to Islam and a majority of them were taken to Kargil and Srinagar.

2. Twelve villages with hamlets of Buddhists, comprising 651 families (numbering approximately 5,000) located at 40km to 60km from Kargil town were targeted for conversions. Till 2002, 72 boys and girls were converted to Islam, according to the survey conducted by the Ladakh Buddhist Association.

3. Muslims of Kargil are not allowing the LBA to repair and reconstruct a 40-year-old Gompa comprising three rooms and lying in a shambles.

4. Cremation of dead Buddhists is not allowed at Kargil and the body has to be moved at a remote Buddhist area.

5. No Buddhist sarai is allowed to be constructed at Kargil though there has been a demand for the last 35 years.

6. Kargil has 20% Buddhist population. Yet (a) only one Buddhist was appointed patwari out of 24 patwaris, the rest were all Muslims. (b) In 1998, 40 employees for Class IV were appointed in the education department; out of these only one was Buddhist, that too after his conversion to Islam.

Similar complaints, with proven statistics were given regarding discrimination against Buddhists in the area of Kashmir Administrative Services (KAS), admission to medical and engineering colleges and allocation of development funds received from the central government.

That’s Srinagar.

So who is going to help Anchal? She seems to be a courageous beloved of her “slain” husband and has been facing media crews with grit. She has refused an ex gratia grant by the state government and has demanded a CBI inquiry. The state leaders, who made a beeline to Shopian, have not bothered to say even a word of sympathy, leave aside visiting her.

Her only “crime”: she loved Rajneesh.

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Support Chidambaram’s war on Maoists

The brutal killings and beheading of security personnel and common citizens in Jharkhand and Maharashtra must make all Indians stand up in unison to defeat the Maoists. We must shun all our differences on such occasions. Home minister P Chidambaram must get full support in his war on the Maoists. Those who know and have been interacting with him can vouch he is willing to do another Siddhartha Shankar Ray in spite of a strong pro-Naxalite lobby in Delhi. He snubbed them on one occasion and in clear words termed Maoists as ‘cold blooded murderers’. Indians, performing their duties and living as law abiding citizens can’t be allowed to be beheaded by the beastly gun wielders who say they are secular revolutionaries. Till June this year, according to home ministry sources, 1,127 incidents of Maoist violence occurred in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra, Maharashtra, Orissa and Bihar. In these, 457 citizens were killed including a two-year-old. Two hundred of those killed were security personnel and 27 special police officers, the common citizens who offer their services to help the security network. Many were killed after being declared ‘police informers’. The Maoists have destroyed 172 schools, hospitals, roads, railway stations, police posts and similar public property in the above-mentioned period. In the last 10 years the figure of the killings by the Maoists has crossed five thousand. Their sources of funds and ammunition lie in the territories of India’s sworn enemies and their boys get training in jungle warfare too by the intelligence agencies of the neighbouring countries. So, those who act to destroy our social fabric and create insurgents, those who are our enemies are their friends.
See some of the news reports about their ‘acts of bravery’: (a) Last year hundreds of them took over a town in Bihar and freed nearly 400 inmates from a jail, including many supporters, (b)This year they stole 19 tonnes of explosives from a state mining operation in Chhattisgarh, and killed more than 50 people by setting off a landmine under a truck in February, (c) The home ministry says nearly 1,000 people died in Maoist-violence last year, while a senior police officer told Reuters there were more than 20,000 armed rebels backed by hundreds of thousands of supporters, and (d) According to villagers, (in Bihar) the victims were killed after they defied Maoists and refused to hand over their land to them.”They claim our land to be theirs and the incident took place at the disputed land site. They came at midnight. They caught all he people and shot at their heads from a close range,” said Jawahar Singh, a villager.

Still in Delhi, one may find a number of so-called intellectuals of the secular variety trying to raise support and a respectable space for them. They base their sympathies for the Maoists on two counts: they are working for the emancipation of the poor and the downtrodden, people who are voiceless against the repression of the state apparatus, and secondly their motive is secular, they want development for people’s progress and an equitable distribution of resources which the corrupt state machinery and political system doesn’t provide. Hence their fight is for the higher motives of public good, so state power must try to understand them and provide good infrastructure in the areas they are ‘active’. That alone will help people to appreciate the noble virtues of the government and they will stop helping the Maoists.

Nothing can be farther from the truth than these manufactured premises. It’s a sham apology for the murderous exploiters of the poor and downtrodden. They work in unison with the country’s enemies and hence are nothing but traitors and antinational insurgents. Nobody has any sympathy for the corrupt and lethargic policemen, politicians nor would any sane person support the lackadaisical speed of development and lack of infrastructure in the poorer, distanced pockets of rural India where the Naxalites thrive. The rich get richer and the poor get the election dates. Hospitals, schools, roads, an administration that delivers has remained a dream, still we are marching ahead and the resilience and individual brilliance of an Indian is making the nation move ahead. A lot remains to be done but is the beheading the only acceptable method to achieve that and to cleanse the system? Then how many heads must roll before the final heaven of the proletariat revolution materialises? It’s also false that the Maoists enjoy public support. Most of their cadres are drawn at gunpoint or compelled to join their ranks through threat. If the Maoists are so confident of massive public support why don’t they contest elections and make the ugly, corrupt politicians leave the space for the Red angels?

The security personnel may be as good or bad as are the pen-pushers of Delhi and Kolkata who provide intellectual shields to the murderers of Red Land. Francis, who was beheaded in Jharkhand or any other person in uniform, is also a victim of a rusted system. Policemen are ill equipped, poorly paid, asked to do difficult duty hours, and yet not given the respect they deserve. They come from lower or middle income group families, the men in white, the netajis, put tremendous pressure on them for political purposes, at the end they are held responsible for any mistake or failing to contain the lawbreakers while the politicians enjoy dinners with them in circuit houses as we saw in the last Lok Sabha elections when the same Maoist leaders were entertained by Congress leaders to ensure electoral victory in their areas of ‘influence’ in Andhra. The men in khaki are expected to protect the citizen. It’s a tall order for which they are never trained. The police and security set-up in India remains prisoner to a colonial vision. Prakash Singh, the renowned police officer, took up the issue and got orders from the Supreme Court too, but no state has shown any interest in implementing the orders. None in India has shown that he has a stake in reforming the police set up because the corrupt and rusted machinery serves vested interests. Reforming and making the men in khaki enjoy a certain degree of autonomy, better arms and modern training in guerrilla warfare and of course better salaries is on nobody’s agenda.

One has to have an intense hate and a ruthless violent mind to behead a person or to kill children.

Ruldu Ram (not the real name but the story is true), a tribal student from Chhattisgarh is the youngest child in his family. He has a younger brother and a sister. His father was a farmer, having a small piece of land in the remote part of Dantewara. For him the life remained a constant struggle, agriculture was not enough to provide for the family needs and he had to go for labour work, quite often. Still he was getting notices of demand from the local Maoist outfits: pay a thousand, or sometimes five thousand or part with your land. He was afraid but couldn’t do anything. Neither could he inform the police. The men in khaki were as unreliable. The news would soon reach the Naxalites and they would have him killed on charges of being a police informer. One day the Maoists, six of them, came to his house to demand money. He was simply unable to pay. His children and wife were all seeing him begging for his life. The Naxalites wanted money or instead asked him to join their ranks. They get new recruits like this, at the gun point. The father showed them his children and wife. Who will look after them if he goes to the jungle to take up guns for the red revolutionaries about whom he knew nothing? No idea why they are fighting, for whom and to serve what purpose. Angry Naxalite warriors beheaded him before the eyes of wailing children and a helpless wife.

This year, when the brother of Ruldu Ram’s slain father too refused Maoist’s demands, he was beheaded in his house.

Ruldu Ram is with us, a few friends who are helping children like him pursue studies and maybe he would become a police officer. His mother, with blank eyes, works in her village, often as a labourer and tries to ensure food and some education for Ruldu’s brother and sister. She has only one dream: to see children grow up and get married. She doesn’t know that her husband was slain for the cause of ‘the poor, downtrodden and proletariat’. Those who killed were ‘revolutionaries’ working to bring about a ‘change in the statecraft, which is anti-people, anti-development and anti everything that their philosophy, Maoism, another name for the Communism as was practiced by Stalin and Mao’, approves of. She is ignorant. She didn’t read Das capital.

There are more than 5,000 such stories. Stories of poor, ignorant, farmers and labourers, teachers and students, infants and school-going children. All of them were killed for a ‘revolution’. To bring about a change. They were either labeled police informers or were killed because they wore uniform. They were agents of the state. Hence deserved to be murdered.

And then these, the revolutionaries who killed small and petty farmers and villagers and recruited new members not through convincing them about the greatness of their ideology, but at gunpoint,’ join us or get killed’ had a number of influential dreamy eyed drawing room chocolate cheeked supporters who would discuss the poor at International addas of passionate debates and say how Naxalsim is directly connected to the lack of development and increasing corruption and anti-people policies of the government. They would say the gun wielders are not criminals, they have a dream for the emancipation of the common people, they want to serve the poor and the downtrodden and the farmers and the women.

Those providing a shield to the Maoist murderers should also be held as much responsible for the killings as are the Maoists.

Chidambaram has rightly refused to get into this ‘tackle Naxalism-Maoism through development’ trap. In a civil society, development, democracy and a strong sense of respecting pluralism can have no place for violence. We are suffering too much from the bloodshed of our own people — Islamic jihad is on one side and on the other side has emerged the threat of Maoism. Both are two faces of the same coin. Both must be dealt with an iron hand. Hence, Chidambaram needs India’s support crossing all barriers of parties and ideologies.

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ABVP meeting held at JNU on 19th

An important report about our meeting held at JNU on 19th.

ABVP celebrates Navratra in JNU-Tarun Vijay inaugurated the first day Manthan on nationalism

Those who fear demons have no right to worship Durga-

India’s nationality is Sanatan Dharma as was envisioned by Sri Aurobindo-says Tarun Vijay, noted thinker and Director, Dr. Mookerjee Foundation

From Santosh Pathak, JNU

A history of sorts was created at the JNU campus when Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad held a unique discussion on the first day of Navratra on the 19th September 2009 at Periyar hall in the JNU. The chief speaker was noted thinker and renowned journalist Shri Tarun Vijay who mesmerized the students with his invigorating speech on the cultural nationalism and the Dharma of student community in the task of national rejuvenation.

In a public meet of full house organized by ABVP (JNU unit), on a very auspicious occasion of the first day of ‘Navaratra’ Sri Tarun Vijay made the students of the university feel the fiery spark of Nationalism, establishing that every country has its own characteristics and civilisational moors. Along which it develops and prospers and for India it is non-other than the ‘cultural nationalism’.

In his over an hour long speech, he touched upon a number of references to bring out multilateral vigorous dimensions of Indian Nationalism. Quoting Sri Auribindo he said that ‘nationality of India lies in Sanatan Dharma’. India is not simply a conglomeration or compilation of rocks, rivers, buildings or roads but it is live Bhawani Bharati, Maa Durga, hence unlike other nations who call their birth-land as fatherland we relate ourselves with Bharat Bhumi as her children and proudly call it as Motherland.

He said that nationalism for us is not merely a political programme; contrarily it is a way of life, a Dharma for us, that has come from Vedic rishis. Nationalism is a creed, which we shall have to live. Bharat that is India remains our supreme God and we must live to justify our belonging to her.

He said that due to colonial mindset and hangover, historians have adopted the ill habit of maligning our own glorious history. The most notorious amongst such Indian heritage haters are the communists who have distorted the glorious past of the nation to suit their mentors abroad and prove their extra territorial loyalties. He said we celebrate Vijayadashmi because Ram had returned to Ayodhya after annihilation of the unrepentant wicked forces represented by Dashanan Ravan. He is not worshipped because he made a compromise with the evil. His stature id highest in our heart and soul because he never compromised even at the cost of a 14 years long Vanavas-exile and he organized peoples’ Shakti to end the cruel rule of the barbarians. The significance of ‘returning to Ayodhya’ leaving behind the attractions of the Golden and prosperous Lanka is to be understood in today’s circumstances when the lure of the lucre is deviating people from the hard path of ideological commitment.

He said that like Rama’s return to Ayodhya, all Indians will have to return to their Chiti, meaning the core values of Sanatan Dharma which ha s a universal mnessage of peace, mutual coexistence and a respect for the nature.

Through spiritually inspired nationalism and divinity of motherland we develop a close and affectionate relationship with nature. We are a civilization, which has never been an exploiter of nature. Our holy land Bharat whose religion is Bharatiyata has three pillars ‘Karuna, means compassion, Maitri means harmonious relationship, and kshama’, means being good to all except the wicked.While the Western culture is based on brutal state power and intolerance for the different view point. He exemplified it with, citing post Columbus massacres in America.

Explaining the basic principles of ‘Integral Humanism’ the core philosophy given by Pt. Deendayal Upadhyay, he said that all atrocities, sorrows and miseries that we face today is because we have alienated ourselves from social concerns and turned individualistic entities, which is a complete reversal of our philosophy of life, which is largely based on collective and communitarian mode of life.

Questioning the moral and ideological stand of communists, he said that their belief system has been of based on intolerance, resulting in inhuman killings,and unprecedented massacres from the regime of Stalin to Mao and Pol Pot. Their history has been a pathetic story of inhuman, barbaric actions in Russia, China, Cambodia and Vietnam. How can they justify the brutal killings of common poor people, teachers and young mothers in the name of any ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ or any kind of so called ideology of socialism. They have never been loyal to this great Indian nation. Over two hundred fifty of senior communist leaders were were charged with sedition and jailed in the aftermath of 1962’ war with China when China had attacked us while on the other hand RSS swyamsevaks were invited by the Pt. Nehru’s government to join the republic day parade in full RSS uniform as recognition of their patriotic services to the motherland. That’s the difference we must understand.

We are also the sons of Gurugovind Singh, Jhalkari Bai , Lakshami Bai and Shivaji, whose blood runs through our arteries and muscles of our arms and at any cost we can’t let our Nation look down from any foreign ideological invasion.Be a proud Indian citizen, going beyond the differences of religion, caste or creed and let the Bhagwa flutter over the defeat of the red terrorists.

The hall reverberated with the slogans of Vande Mataram and Bharat mata ki Jai and it was an unprecedented celebration of Indian values after a long time in JNU.

Shri Praveen garg, reader in Shradhananda College and President of Delhi state ABVP presided over the meeting. He said in his presidential address about how the ABVP took roots in the JNU and it’s the hard work and ideological commitment of the workers that has shown us the continous strenghthening to he unit in this campus.

Shri Rajesh Ranjan, President of the JNU unit of ABVP welcomed the students. After the programme all the students went to offer puja at the Durga Pandal, established in the campus after a long drawn battle with the so-called secularists.

Report by

Santosh Pathak, Vice President, ABVP, JNU.

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