Friday, August 21, 2009

Sardar Patel and RSS

Also Read Murder of Mahatma Gandhi: Truth

There is an ongoing debate in the country on who took initiative to Ban RSS after tragic murder of RSS.  Following is screen capture of one of most authoritative books (The Hindu nationalist movement and Indian politics: 1925 to the 1990s ...By Christophe Jaffrelot) which throws some light on this issue. More important is the reference list used by the author. 

If only Jaswant had spend even half the time he spend studying Jinnah to study his parent organisation of 30 years!!! Moreover, If you want to blame Patel for banning RSS then you should also credit him for unbanning RSS after all both these incidents occurred under his watch as home minister. In fact, After Gandhi’s murder, it would have been more difficulty to unban RSS than ban it. If Patel really wanted he could have finished of Nascent RSS.

Sardar Patel supported Hindu activist against Gandhi’s candidate for presidency of congress 

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Patel invites RSS to Merge with Congress and his belief that RSS is a patriotic organisation. And how he chides congress for trying to crush RSS

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How Patel didnot believe that RSS was not responsible for Murder of Gandhi and how Nehru pressurized him to act

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Nehru was Paranoid!

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How RSS was brutally repressed

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Congress passes resolution authorizing Swayamsewaks to be part of congress

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Its not first time a book is banned in India!

The seculars are raising a huge stink on Gujarat banning Jawant Singhs controversial book Jinnah — India, Partition, Independence. They see it as another instance of stifling independent views in Gujarat

However , what they forget is in 2006, The Da Vinci Code, which was not even banned in in Christian majority was either banned or suspended in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya and Punjab. None of them were ruled by BJP

Similarly congress government also banned James Laine's Shivaji: Hindu King in Muslim India fopr remarks that were deemed derogatory to the Maratha hero.

Also, Books which showed congress leaders and Nehru Family in bad light were also banned at different point of times.  The list includes Who Killed Gandhi by Lourenco De Sadvandor Banned: Dec 29, 1979  with the most famous ones being Nine Hours to Rama Banned: Sept 1, 1962, a fictionalised account of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination by Stanley Wolpert & Nehru, A Political Biography by Michael Edwards. Banned: Dec 13, 1975

Congress’s Dilemma

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Gujarat Ban of Jinnah: India-Partition Independence is an overreaction

Gujarat government had on Wednesday night banned Singh's controversial book on Jinnah alleging it is an attempt to defame the image of the country's first Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel by "questioning his patriotic spirit".

I fully agree with BJP’s decision to expel Jaswant Singh, he had crossed the laxman rekha. But banning the book is NOT ACCEPTABLE! 

I agree with what Jaswant Singh said

"The day we start banning books, we ban thinking.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

We Are All Hindus Now – Lets say OM

As per a recent surveys, conceptually Americans are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways they think about God, themselves, each other, and eternity.

On the question of GOD

The Rig Veda says: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another,  None is better than any other; all are equal. While conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of Americans believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing.

On the question of Resurrection.

Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever.

Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies.

So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975.

Was this really necessary!

REBEL WITH A CAUSE?

Former Indian foreign minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh, right, and Pakistan’s high commissioner to India, Shahid Malik, left, pose at the release of Singh’s book

Hindu Chini Bhai Bhai

The Beijing correspondent of The Hindu - Ananth Krishnan in his article Does Beijing Really Want To break Up India? has questioned the credibility of the article titled 'China Should Break Up The Indian Union', written by D.S.Rajan, of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. A detailed retort to Ananth Krishnan’s article was published by B. Raman in his article Not Lost In Translation. Interestingly, Ananth Krishnan has taken issue with Ramans retort and has said its libellous & irresponsible. You can read Ananth Krishnan’s justifications here

For the unaware, D.S.Rajan was part of team trained and developed by Government of India after 1962 chinese debacle and has spend more than 35 years monitoring writings in the Chinese language media. While, Ananth Krishnan belongs to Kasturi Ranga Iyengar family who owns “The Hindu” (just like N. Ram, his predecessor N. Ravi etc) and is the first member of the youngest generation of the family to join the business. Ananth Krishnan took over as Beijing correspondent of The Hindu after Pallavi Aiyar moved on as Brussels correspondent of Business Standard.

One should not be surprised by this coming from The Hindu whom World Press Review (Worldpress.org) lists  as a left-leaning independent newspaper. This political polarization towards left ideology is supposed to have taken place since N. Ram took over as editor-in-chief after N. Ravi and Malini Parthasarathy were removed as editor and executive editor of the paper in an overnight bloodless coup in 2003.

N Ram is a well known CPI(M) and Marxist sympathizer. He had served as the vice president of the Students Federation of India (SFI), the student wing of CPI(M). Ram's first wife Susan was an Irish woman who was for many years in charge of Oxford University press publications in India. After separating from Susan, he is now married to Mariam (Mariam Chandy), a Kerala Syrian Christian.

This is not first time when The Hindu has went against popular sentiment (& intelligence) to project and protect Leftist Ideology and China by extension. Even Hindus Readers' Editor K. Narayanan found fault with the Hindu’s coverage of Nandigram and Tibet. In a stinging analysis he reported

I compared the reporting of the events in other Indian newspapers (English) and also The Guardian and the New York Times with that in The Hindu from March 15 to 19 and could not but note the wide gap which led to the readers’ protests. (The angles given to the stories and their display are not to be questioned; that is editorial privilege). Overall, these points struck me as noteworthy:

1. Reliance on Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency. Its reports should have been balanced by inputs from other news agencies, but their use was scanty and selective. No doubt they too would have had their angles and biases but that would have been another side of the picture. Why was The Guardian, otherwise used extensively, ignored (except for an eyewitness account which was not very informative)?

2. The Hindu’s perceptive correspondent in Beijing, Pallavi Aiyar, made no contribution, except to report Prime Minister Wen’s press conference.

3. The statements of the Chinese Prime Minister and the Chinese envoy in Delhi were fully reported. The Dalai Lama’s were truncated versions. Many readers noted that his remark on “cultural genocide” was edited out.

4. The most surprising feature was the total absence of Tibet in the “Letters to the Editor column” — in which otherwise comments appear even as events are unfolding and continue for days. A few letters appeared after an article and an editorial were published and ceased abruptly.

The Hindu uses Xinhua news agency owned by the Government of China, and a mouthpiece of the Chinese government to fetch China related stories. Also, according to Friends of Tibet, N Ram is also the mastermind behind 'India-China Association of Journalists', an embassy-sponsored organisation specializing in arranging pleasure trips for Indian journalists. After one of his trips to Tibet, The cover story in  Frontline, written by N.  Ram, provided an extended and lavishly illustrated brief for the Chinese occupation of Tibet.  The Chinese, claims Ram, have brought hospitals, roads and schools to a previously deprived land.  He minimizes the attacks on Tibetan cultural institutions and religious beliefs that the Chinese have so demonstrably carried out. , he wrote with baited breath

Unprecedented economic growth, rises in living standards, education, infrastructure development, job creation, central government subsidies, and political policies implementing the autonomy mandated in the Chinese Constitution are transforming life, work, and mindsets, especially of the young, in sparsely populated Tibet. And the railway is making a big difference.

It is sad that “The Mahavishnu of Mount Road” has now become  “People’s Daily of China” or “Beijing’s Mouthpiece” depending upon you follow B. Raman or  Nitin Pai.

Chronic Attention Seekers

Jaswant singh

A person  lives in several circles which are not mutually exclusive. He/She may be a son/daughter, a mother/father, a citizen of nation, a responsible person in a society and may be even a leader of an outfit etc etc. Every circle has its marayada and responsibility.

One cannot be just responsible and respectful towards responsibility and maryada of one circle  forget others. He/she has to be a responsible son/daughter at the same time he has to be a responsible leader/citizen/father etc..

In Jaswants Singhs case, it he seems that he is more focused towards his role as a independent citizen of this nation but is forgetting his responsibilities as leader of a nationalistic political party whose survival depends on goodwill of common citizens who love this nation and cannot forget "painful" part of history for which the Pakistan founder was directly responsible.

He is acting like a chronic attention seeker. In these circumstances, I donot seem him very different from Rakhi Sawant. Only difference being one is material while other is more psychological.

Monday, August 17, 2009

There will be no secular tears for Rulda Singh!

Rulda Singh, head of Rashtriya Sikh Sangat, an affiliate of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)  image succumbed to his injuries in PGI.

Earlier, Babbar Khalsa Internationl (BKI) had claimed responsibility for the attack on him.

Had it been a a leader of some other minority group our secular media would have cried a river!