Bharat Rakshak

shiv wrote:Thanks for jogging my memory on this. In fact just a year earlier - in 1946 the Congress had rejected the May 16th plan of separate electorates which led to Jinnah organising the "Direct Action day" in August 1946 to support the June 16th plan for partition. That was just one year ahead of partition. Was Wavell's plan fairly mature then so Jinnah knew the approximate "shape" of future Pakistan?

Until the Princely states finished with their accession I suspect Jinnah did not know how moth eaten his Pakistan was to be.

shiv wrote:in 1946 the Congress had rejected the May 16th plan of separate electorates which led to Jinnah organising the "Direct Action day" in August 1946 to support the June 16th plan

shiv wrote:Until the Princely states finished with their accession I suspect Jinnah did not know how moth eaten his Pakistan was to be.

Airavat wrote:The Muslim League truly had no vision for Pakistan. Their whole obsession was with India and the position of Muslims in it. And Jinnah, for all his training as a lawyer, was really quite delusional. He was negotiating to bring Sikh and Hindu populations to live with Pakistan even as his follower's unleashed communal warfare on the existing non-Muslim populations in Bengal and Punjab!

In December 1946 Jinnah told Sardar Baldev Singh in London: "Baldev Singh, you see this match box. Even if Pakistan of this size is offered to me I will accept it, but it is here that I need your collaboration. If you persuade Sikhs to join hands with the Muslim League, we will have a glorious Pakistan, the gates of which will be near about Delhi, if not Delhi itself."

How did Jinnah imagine that the communal terrorism of the Muslim League would end? All the decades of communal propaganda by the AMU graduates, the hatred of Hinduisim and fears of Hindu-majority rule propagated by Muslim League volunteers throughout the length and breadth of India, and the terrorism and bloodshed unleashed by the Muslim National Guard.....how was all this supposed to come to an end? It hasn't to this day.

Friday, June 13, 2008
INTRODUCTION TO SINDHI REFLECTIONS
SINDHI REFLECTIONS

LATA JAGTIANI

INTRODUCTION


A little while and you will have forgotten everything:a little while and everything will have forgotten you... Marcus Aurelius

"Somebody should write about our Sindhi elders and their Partition experiences before we lose that history forever."

This is what many Sindhis were saying until last year. I wondered why nobody was writing a book on the experiences of Hindu Sindhis. The subject kept re-surfacing online. From Dr. Nargis Awatramani (USA) to Govind Jhangiani (U.K) from Arjan Daswani (Singapore) to Shewak Nandwani (Thailand), the question was practically a refrain. In Mumbai, it was me saying--Somebody, write the book before its too late! But there were no volunteers.

I began work. Now that I have collected true stories of Hindu Sindhis, do read the book and preserve it for generation next. This is a serious work of research, of historical significance for all Hindu Sindhis.

The journey through this book has been interesting, to say the least. Sometimes, to my surprise, I met total strangers who welcomed me warmly, at other times, with sadness I interviewed elders with multiple aeging troubles; and then, I met many who were too cynical to "waste their time" being interviewed for something which promised no monetary returns. Access to the rich and famous was often blocked off by over-zealous secretaries. One day I was shocked, another day delighted and on a third day, depressed, it was a real roller-coaster. I often asked myself why I should continue. I lost count of recorded interviews that became useless with one phone call. One 85-year old told me of all the mischief he had done, after the Partition. He became embarrassingly rich, divorced his wife, and sailed through life. I watched him agape, as he really walked into the sunset with a spring in his step, towards his girl friend and chauffeur-driven expensive car. I wrote the account out, and a week later, he said he would prefer to keep his life private.

I kept my focus on ordinary Hindu Sindhis and their experiences during the Partition. However, these 100 plus accounts and profiles are a very small number when one compares it with the 12, 25,000 Hindu Sindhis evacuated from their homes between 1947 and 1950. I am one of those who believe that big oak trees grow from small acorns, and I offer you my tiny, hopeful acorn of a book.

Subjected to communal cleansing in Sindh, with the tacit compliance of Jinnah's Muslim League, most Hindu Sindhis had only one option: leave. A friend told me the story of a Papadawaree (a lady who sells Papads door-to-door). She was a woman living in Sindh and had several children. Her teenaged daughter was sitting outside in the back of the house, sunning herself and wara paee sukaye (drying her wet hair.) Suddenly there were shouts, telling the woman to run, there were riots, and people were coming for them. Along with her several children, she ran to the station, practically with one chappal, and boarded a train leaving Sindh. However, it was only on the train that she noticed the absence of her teenaged daughter. It was already too late. What happened to the girl? For long, nobody knew. Then years later, she got news. A Muslim family had adopted the abandoned teenager, raised her to become a well-established doctor. A meeting was arranged between the daughter and the mother in Ulhasnagar. After the initial joy at the re-union, they parted and returned to their lives, the mother back to selling papads in India while her daughter healed the ill in Pakistan.

I read a story where a writer, Wali Ram, about one Viundri Tejomal from Hyderabad Sindh, who hid written a note in Sindhi and hidden it her cupboard before rushing away from home. The note read: Vundri Tejomal jo hee kabat jeko kholeendo, un khi pap lagando."(Opener of this Vundri Tejomal's cupboard will be sinning.) Who was she and what became of her during and after the Partition? This is a mystery. Inside the note it appears she expressed a desire to return home to take care of her personal belongings. She might had left her things behind, packed quickly and left the note behind.

Another family that was torn asunder was that of Maama Rupachand Mahtani, a close in-law who had another story. He wanted to cross over to India, but his wife didn't. She and their sons remained in Sindh while he crossed the border. His children went on to become highly qualified professionals, but weren't too keen on meeting with their father. In Mumbai, Maama Rupa's life was full of interesting twists and turns, he was an impish gypsy who spread his grin and jokes from Sindhi home to Sindhi home. He charmed ladies with poetical lines from Shakespeare alternating them with absolutely witty and wicked jokes. He had the Dev Anand debonair air about him and he was a hit with both sexes. He praised the cooking in his tobacco-laden voice, listened attentively to the men, and hugged children affectionately. He brought the house down everywhere. Once he admitted that he missed his family, in a moment of candour, before taking refuge behind his favourite line with a twinkle in his eye, "Sigh no more, man, sigh no more, women were deceivers ever!"

I believe Hindu Sindhis are a wonderful community of survivors. I have presented the journey of this brave and strong Hindu community, forced into poverty and terrorized out of home and hearth. These Sindhis stepped out of inhospitable barracks, wore brave smiles when they went in search of work in new, strange lands. Many had a zero balance after they left Sindh; today, it might be difficult to count the number of zeroes in most of their balance sheets. If the Sindhi community ever gets a listing on the New York Stock Exchange, it would surprise me if Warren Buffett isn't amongst its first investors. Sindhi Hindus are multi-baggers all right.

I would like to add that our elders left Sindh not out of cowardice but in fact, they chose wisdom over foolhardiness--they faced an unpleasant reality and did what was necessary for survival. Imagine a USA and UK where 75 percent of the population is Muslim and the government is Muslim as well. Even George Bush and Tony Blair would run for cover. How could 22 percent Hindus stand up to 75 percent Muslims? And then, matters were deteriorating by the day, with Hindus decreasing and Sunni Muslim numbers rising. When the mayhem began, survival was all everything.

Had Netaji Bose and Sardar Patel been at the helm of national affairs, to my mind, the Muslim League would have failed. The British played their divide-and-rule to the hilt, Jinnah played his, "We are different, we are Muslim" tune, Gandhiji undemocratically by-passed Patel to hand over power to Nehru, and the rest is history. Nehru told Sindhi journalists "Partition, yeh sab bakwas hai!" (Partition, this is all rubbish!), Gandhiji also stated that Partition would take place over his dead body. These remarks lulled Hindus into a dangerous
complacency. Finally, when things got ugly, Hindu Sindhis left.

The Sindhi Hindus paid the highest price. Gandhiji's idealism was expressed when he said, "Aap baithe raho aaram se!" (You stay in Sind, without fears!) In Bombay, Morarji Desai, wanted the refugees to stay on the outskirts of the city and not come into Bombay, treating Sindhis as pariahs or pollutants. Nehru, on his part, admitted he felt little for Sindhis, when he said, `I don't know Sindh. I don't feel attracted to it.'' In a letter he wrote,``The Sindhi people have their good qualities and I rather like them. But they are a curious mixture of the Muslim feudal classes and the Hindu bania class, neither very admirable, as classes go. Still they have push and energy and that is something to be thankful for. They seem to be singularly devoid of any artistic sense. And the colour they sport in their striped pajamas are a trial." If he had tears, Nehru wasn't prepared to waste them on Sindhi Hindus, as Dr. Choithram Gidwani, a Congress leader, discovered, to his dismay.

We went from being a prosperous community, to the new untouchables. There was a push from within--the Muslim League and the Mohajirs wanted us out, and there was a push from without—Indians found us, "chee"(yuck) and a needless burden. Hindu Sindhis were inconvenient on both sides of the border. Who can call the great Sadhu Vaswani a coward? Even a wise man of spiritual depth, had to leave Sindh along with Dada J.P. Vaswani. Can we entertain any doubts on this subject after reading their story?

Doors of Hindus were marked with a red cross, making Hindus sitting ducks for fortune-seekers. Hindus watched as armed bands of people roamed the streets, crying, "Hindu ko maro!"(Kill the Hindu!") All weapons had been surrendered to the government by law, so, self-defense was out. Muslims went to Hindu homes and business premises, with documents declaring them as "Intending Evacuees." They had to vacate since the authorities had chosen to assume they were "intending" to leave; therefore, they had no business to continue living there. Nobody knew on what fact the assumption was rooted, nobody knew who was next. Everything Hindu was up for grabs.

Many Sindhi Muslims protected their Hindu neighbours from attacks by Mohajirs; but there are also stray instances of those that gleefully occupied their homes. Sadly, their glee was short-lived since they soon had to surrender their gains to the Mohajirs. Sufis at heart, many Sindhi Muslims saw their neighbours depart with a tear in their eye.

Now where are the Sindhi Hindus? Rootless, we were now a community, which chose to blend, adapt, and wear masks. We succeeded, full marks to Sindhi Hindus. But, now that we have, why do we continue with those useless masks? Do we have to change our names and surnames? Are we flattered if somebody mistakes us for Punjabis or Parsees? What's wrong with us? If Narayan Murthy and Azim Premji can make it in the world with their difficult names, can't we do the same with ours? But we want to say to the world-- Look, look, I am like you, I am not a Sindhi. And so Harry (Hariram) cries over the shoulder of Sally (Sundari), "Sally, why do Sindhis lack culture?" Sally replies, "Charyo thyo aahen,( are you mad) naturally, it's all about money, Harry!"

One of the subjects of many discussions is the issue of the Sindhi script. I am grateful to Mr. Mangharam Sipahimalani who first educated me on this subject when I interviewed him. But, in a nutshell this is the reality of the script and its history. The original script of Sindhi was not one, but eight, Devnagri, Thattai, Khudabadi, Luhaniki, Memonki, Gurmukhi, Khojiki and Hatvaniki. At the time of Mahmud Ghaznu, Al Bruni found three scripts current in Sindh—all three were variations of Devnagri.

Later, when the British arrived they found the Pandits writing Sindhi in Devnagri. Traders were using the secret Hatvaniki, which has no vowels. The women men were using Gurmukhi and the government employees were using a form of Arabic script. British scholars felt that the Devnagri script would be right for Sindh. Government servants, many of whom were Hindus, favoured the Arabic script, since they did not know Devnagri. A debate went on with Capt. Burton favouring the Arabic script and Capt. Stack favouring Devnagri. Sir Bartle Frere, the Commissioner of Sindh, referred the matter to the Court of Directors of the British East India Company, which favoured Arabic on the ground that Muslim names could not be written in Devnagri. Sir Richard Burton, and local scholars Munshi Thanwardas and Mirza Sadiq Ali Beg evolved a 52-letter Sindhi alphabet. The Indian government recognizes both the Devnagiri and Arabic scripts.

Sindhi is an ancient language, with over seventy percent words in Sanskrit. Professor E. Trumpp in his monumental `Sindhi Alphabet and Grammar' (1812) writes: "Sindhi is a pure Sanskritical language, more free from foreign elements than any of the North Indian vernaculars." The Rev. Mr.G. Shirt of Hyderabad, one of the first Sindhi scholars, considered that the language is probably, so far as its grammatical construction is concerned, the purest daughter of Sanskrit. It has small sprinkling of Dravidian words, and has in later times received large accessions to its vocabulary from Arabic and Persian. Writes Dr. Annemarie Schimmel, Harvard professor of Islamics, and versatile linguist: "Since every word in Sindhi ends in a vowel, the sound is very musical." After understanding the background of the Sindhi script, one can only hope the controversy will be give a decent burial. Sindhi is our mother tongue, Devnagiri is our mother script.

Sindhi Reflections is divided into many equally important sections. Where more than one family member was involved, I have put them under one umbrella heading. All chapters has been edited. Photographs were included practically at the last minute.

If you are ashamed to be a Sindhi, I hope this book changes you. Do add your comments here or email your feedback

at [email protected],
at http://sindhireflect...ogspot.com/Lata Jagtiani

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have often wondered why the Sindhi voices are not heard when we talk of Partition.

Airavat wrote: According to Narendra Singh Sarila, the contours for partitioning India were drawn up much earlier by Viceroy Wavell in February 1946. The original document detailing the district-wise division in Punjab and Bengal is preserved in the Transfer of Power papers. Radcliffe fine tuned that demarcation at the level of tehsils and villages.

Once a Prince of Sarila: Of Palaces and Tiger Hunts, Of Nehrus and Mountbattens.


Autor: Graeme Smith, "A Short History of Secularism."
ISBN: 1845117077 | 2008 edition | PDF | 304 Pages | 5.64 MB

Princely India in the 1930s and 40s enjoyed a golden age which already seems immeasurably distant from the thriving, modern nation of today. These were halcyon days of bejewelled and eccentric Maharajas; life in marble palaces mirrored in lakes or in mighty stone fortresses on craggy hills; tiger hunts on elephant back and elephant hunts on horseback; and lavish house parties ringing with the sound of polo and music and laughter. As heir apparent to the central Indian kingdom of Sarila, Narendra Singh Sarila was born into the very heart of this society and his life offers a unique vista on a vanished world. The author enjoyed a wonderfully privileged childhood in what remained a traditional, feudal state even as the call for democratic change was being heard elsewhere on the subcontinent. This warm and unsentimental personal history beautifully evokes life at the end of the British Raj in vivid and colorful detail. But it also reveals how, despite their position, Singh and his family embraced the changes occasioned by Independence and adapted rapidly to its new demands.

Pakistan cried for outside help. To the rest of the British Commonwealth it addressed a plea for aid in ending violence. To the U.N. it proposed that six observers be sent to Pakistan and India. Pakistan's appeal made India shriek.

Cried Congress Party President Acharya Kripalani: "The real solution of the whole ill lies with Pakistan itself." In calling itself an Islamic state, he said, Pakistan had incited Moslems against Sikhs and Hindus, thus drawing reprisals upon Moslems in India. "[We must] base citizenship on a territorial basis and forget . . . that two-nation theory which started the whole vicious circle."

The venom of communal bitterness had been thickened by the record flare-up of an old frontier practice—the abduction of tens of thousands of women. From one train arriving at Amritsar last week, 150 young girls had been taken. In Bikaner State, an official estimated that Sikhs fleeing there from Pakistan had lost 40 of their women.

A mark of a gunshot on his left thigh, suffered in the tribal attack on Jammu and Kashmir 63 years ago on this day serves as a living memorabilia of the “Kabaili attack and the resultant bloodshed”.

Seated in his house in Nanak Nagar, retired Director of Agriculture and septuagenarian Suchwant Singh recalls how mothers fed “urine” to their children while hiding in caves to escape the tribals.“We were part of a caravan of refugees from Muzaffarabad, who lived on empty stomach for three days in caves. Mothers would give their urine to their thirsty young children, as there was constant fear of getting spotted by the tribals, if they moved out.”

Suchwant has a vivid memory of the arson, loot and carnage that was set off by the Kabailis from adjoining Waziristan backed by Pakistan forces. He lost his mother and a sister during the upheaval, besides many other close relatives in the tribal attack.

Once caught, his grandmother, who was fluent in Pashto, saved their lives and they took refuge at the house of a Sultan. Later, they remained captive in a Pakistan jail.

Finally, he reached India in the winter of 1948 and joined a refugee camp at Kachi Chawni, exactly where the Red Cross Bhawan stands today.

“There was restlessness among the people of our village, Kotli, that was the first border village with Pakistan. Maharaja had distributed country-made rifles among the people,” he recalls. He adds, “We were also apprehensive of some danger as the local Muslims, who were sympathetic towards us, had started impressing upon us to leave the place.”

“On October 21, my grandmother, fearing any eventuality, sent my elder brother and younger sister with my mother across the river. My father was in the British Indian Army at that time,” Suchwant said.

The next day they saw caravans of people rushing across the hanging bridge spanning the mighty Jhelum. “While I suffered the gunshot crossing the bridge, a rope got broken at the same time. My grandmother grabbed me and let go of the bundle of valuables in the river,” he said.

“We did not follow people heading towards Gardi. They reached Srinagar safely by the Jhelum valley road,” Suchwant added.

“On October 24, they were caught. People refused to convert their religion and started jumping into the Jhelum while the Kabailis opened fire on them. The waters on the banks of the river turned red with blood,” he continued.

“I and my grandmother were taken to the Sultan of Boi. The Sultan knew our elders, so he helped us trace my elder brother,” Suchwant recalled with wet eyes. He added, “I was told that when my mother was dying, she was praying for my life.”

ramana wrote:The dilemma of Partition is that while India has used the chance to modernize and leap into the 21st Century, the TSP has reverted to a pre-modern no progress version of ideology and has become a shackle with a millstone on India's legs.

Can some one cartoon this?

Anniversary of Kabaili Attack For honour’s sake, they killed their women
It is said that the honour of a woman is bigger than her life. And to preserve that ‘honour’, a horrifying slaying of nearly 45 women by their own relatives is still afresh in the minds of a few survivors, who fled Pakistan after the tribal attack on Jammu and Kashmir.
Harnam Kaur, 80, remembers the hair-raising details of the incident that took place this day 63 years ago, when her father, Daanmukh Singh, led a group of community men and killed their own mothers, daughters, sisters and wives so that the tribals could not violate their honour.
“We had been running since the intervening night of October 21 when the tribal attack (Kabaili attack) took place. I was 17-year-old then. I remember we were trapped in a forest with the tribals all set to capture us,” recalls Harnam, who refused to be photographed.

“Women were lined up and shot at by a group led by my father, the only person having a rifle. Many women, including my mother, died on the spot,” she said.

Jameet Singh, 75, a resident of Nanak Nagar, nodded in affirmation. “Yes, this happened,” he said.

Shuchwant Singh, another senior resident of the city, who was part of another group hidden nearby, endorsed the claims saying “Yes, the killing of our own women happened. I remember it.”

Miraculously, both of his teenage daughters, Kulwant Kaur and Harnam Kaur, in spite of being shot at, escaped death as they got buried under the pile of corpses. However, minutes later all men in the cavalcade were butchered by the Kabailis and both girls were captured.

“We used to live in Kotli before the attack. When my father and others fired at us. My sister and I were critically injured and we fell unconscious. I suffered a gunshot in the head while Kulwant was injured in the neck, besides she suffered sword cuts all over the body,” she said.

“Next day when we regained our senses, we were in the captivity of Kabailis. We were taken to a refugee camp in Muzaffarabad. Thereafter, we kept shuttling from one camp to another in Pakistan. One year thereon, we reached Jammu and our uncle discovered us,” she added.

However, every woman was not as lucky as they were. Many of them were forcibly abducted and married to people from other community. They were forced to change their religion and names and were now living in the PoK.

However, as they say blood is thicker than water, despite being separated by borders and religion, they share the same bond with their relatives settled in various parts of India.

Harbans Kaur, now Qasim Jaan, lost all her family members during the upheaval. Her cousin, Jameet Singh, who lives in Nanak Nagar, said, “I survived because I was in Srinagar at that time, but all my family members died. Thereafter, to meet my relatives, I had been to the PoK twice.” He added that his love for the birthplace did not subside over the years.

Balwant Kaur, now Jameela, is another cousin of Jameet Singh, who has been living in the PoK. “They keep on writing letters, besides making telephone calls,” said Jameet’s wife Harnam Kaur, who accompanied Jameet on his visits

brihaspati wrote:The Partition has to be explored with the one crucial question : why did Indian non-Muslim (or "self-proclaimed-secular") leadership who were supposed to be or expected to be statesmen - fail to anticipate the Islamist planned carnage?
...
The BIA was there and still the riots and Partition violence happened with non-Muslims suffering more.
...
In fact the whole British state machinery with its minority pure-Brit top-cats and overwhelming majority faithful Indian "underlings" was brutally effective when it came to ferreting out every last details of insurgent or planned insurgent activity and pre-empting them, and finishing them off in equally ruthless fashion. Nothing of the sort happened with Islamists.

Brig Rajinder encouraged refugees to face tribals, says survivor
“Do not go any further. Now, we have to to chase the Kabailis away.” This was the final words of Brig Rajinder Singh while encouraging panicky Muzaffarabad refugees to reach Srinagar, minutes before he was ambushed. It was the intervening night of October 26 and 27 in 1947.

A septuagenarian, Harbhajan Singh Teig, who lives in Nanak Nagar here, an area predominantly inhabited by refugees from the PoK, recalled that he was one of the refugees who were encouraged by the valiant Brigadier before he died fighting the raiders.

Harbhajan Singh, son of politician Sant Singh Teig, said, “The death-knell had already been sounded after Pakistan’s invasion and the fall of Muzaffarabad on October 22, 1947. Our home was in Hattian Dupatta, about 20 km from Muzaffrabad towards Kashmir. On the morning of October 23, we crossed the Jehlum and assembled in Gardi village.”

“Next day, horse riders brought the news that a caravan of nearly 1,000 people led by Sant Baldev Singh was murdered by the tribal attackers. They kept looting and butchering the people of Muzaffarabad city for two days,” Harbhajan said.

“At Chakothi, we had a halt. Brig Rajinder Singh, who was leading about 100 soldiers in seven trucks, reached there. He was brimming with confidence. He exhorted us to stay put and then went ahead to take on the Kabailis,” he said. He added that, “His words were taken well. Many youths led by Ishar Singh and Sant Singh set up a country-made canon and put up resistance to the Kabailies.”

“Half an hour later, nearly 15 soldiers came back in a truck. Its driver, Jaswant Singh, told us that most of the soldiers had either been killed or captured. Thereafter, they did not stop and hurried away,” Harbhajan said. He added, "On hearing the news, people started running in different directions. In the stampede. I got separated by my family and trekked up to Uri where I reunited with my family.”

“There was complete anarchy in Kashmir. The administrative set-up had collapsed. The Kabailis had blown up the Mahura Power Station and the city had plunged into darkness. Pakistan had stopped the supply of essential commodities, besides disrupting the postal and telecom services,” he said with a tremor in his voice as if he is living through his past.

Collecting himself, Harbhajan went on, “Fearing political ramifications, Kashmiri leaders did not allow even a single refugee family to stay in Kashmir. Kashmir was climate wise more suitable to us than Jammu.”

“When we came to Jammu, again we saw human corpses and skeletons strewn along Tawi,” he said. Again a shudder shook him up. But, the brave man that he is, he did not leave his narrative open-ended. He concluded saying, “Sikhs and Hindus were a minority over there, so they were killed and chased away. The same thing happened to the Muslims in Jammu.”

This month [March 1949], the Amir of Bahawalpur rounded out 25 years of rule with a lavish silver jubilee celebration in New Bagdad (pop. about 50,000). At dawn a 19-gun salute (since independence he has added two more to the 17 guns allotted by the British) thundered over the city, and the show was on. Through the streets of New Bagdad snaked a morning-long parade of elephants, camels, jeeps and ambulances. The Amir rode in a Rolls-Royce.

Pakistan's Governor General Khwaja Nazimuddin and Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan graciously wired congratulations and promoted the Amir to lieutenant general in Pakistan's army. It was the Amir's turn to be gracious. As a climax to his fabulous shindig, he announced the first popular reform in the state's history: a 25-member state assembly. The Amir would pick nine members, leaving 16 to be chosen by a complicated system of indirect election.

Last week, as Bahawalpur prepared for elections, Moslem Leaguers were skeptical. They complained that the Amir's police had ripped down the Pakistan national flag in one village, and in others were persecuting wearers of the Jinnah cap (a Persian lamb fez which serves as party badge). In Lahore, the Daily Pakistan Times sneered that the Amir's political reform was "meaningless," his jubilee show "grossly out of keeping with the needs of our people."

I am reading a book( Is it Arabic ) from the New York Times’ bestseller list called The Roots of Obama’s Rage by Dinesh D’Souza. As evident from his name the author is of Indian origin. I am still not finished with the book hence will reserve my final judgement until the end, yet it cannot be denied that the author or the tome do not harbour any malice against Obama. Reading between the lines and often perverting their meaning, D’Souza, while using Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, wants us to believe that the US president’s upbringing and worldview are to blame for the present mess we all are in. Why would he not say that for he is the one who tried his level best to ruin the prospects of the then presidential nominee Obama by dragging the issue of his impoverished half-brother George Obama’s hut into the media coverage of the campaign.
Of course it did not help that the country was under the BJP’s rule at that time. During the BJP’s time, an extremist monster was unleashed — that of racism. Consider this quote from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) bible, We or Our Nationhood Defined by M S Golwalkar: “To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here...a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.” What do you say to that, eh? So D’Souza’s belligerence is a product of the phenomenon of radicalisation taking place in his country. Today even the seculars in India are held hostage by the radicals and Muslims who do not marry in Hindu famI have been repeatedly asking myself why India is not ready to talk to Pakistan and why the Indian establishment appears so wary of the Obama administration. And also the moment I write a note even in praise of India I am inundated in minutes with hate mail from Indians. I think you will find some explanations in this piece. If Indians do not want to correct their direction, it is their lookout.

surinder wrote:
Point taken. The crucial point you say is worth repeating: the india post-independence has not made a radical departure or revolution, hence the mentaility, thinking, psychology and (as you say) how it creates power has remained the same. The INC had never ever fashioned itself as an inqilabi party, they merely wanted the gora faces replaced by bhoora faces.

The logical conclusion is that that the state will repeat what was tried and used by the British. This is all classic British technique, copied in earnest by the secular progressive government of INC.

This ultimately is a reminder of the state apparatus and its selective use. Your reminder is apt, people need to take care of their own security.

surinder wrote:Brihaspati & Darshhan,
The 1984 riots was only an example for me, not to bring back bad memories. The thing I find strange is the copy of the British techniques. One thing I failed to mention was that the Nov. 1984 rioters were not spontaneous common people doing the rioting because they loved IG so much, these were highly staged Police-assisted massacres. The INC painted them as "Hindu uprsising against the Sikhs" to demonstrate that the commoners loved IG so much. The social connections and coherence, though dented, soon recovered. Most Sikhs also realized that the state machinery was at work, not the "common Hindu man's spontaneous anger." Ultimately, the INC derived massive gains from such confrontation, Rajiv won by a landslide. It suited INC quite well, as a matter of fact. The resemblence and copying of British techniques is noteworthy.

brihaspati wrote: The city had known Sikh-Hindu collaboration for defense during Partition riots, and I would say that it still remains pretty strong - whatever the "ideological" colour!

each other in a common cause against the Brits in some cases. You know about how the "rani" was treated in Barddhaman. They would naturally have that most recent collaboration memory as the strongest one (or rather the hoped for and mostly mythical in reality common cause).

ramana wrote:The guy is an idiot. Dinesh D'Souza is US born and hard to the right Republican. He has nothing to do with India.

jambudvipa wrote:Bji,

each other in a common cause against the Brits in some cases. You know about how the "rani" was treated in Barddhaman. They would naturally have that most recent collaboration memory as the strongest one (or rather the hoped for and mostly mythical in reality common cause).

could you elaborate what is this incident refers to?