What more is needed to stoke reaction?

Arun Shourie: Saturday, December 29, 2007

The Task Force on Border Management, one of the four that were set up in the wake of the Kargil War, reported with alarm about the way madrassas had mushroomed along India’s borders. On the basis of information it received from intelligence agencies, it expressed grave concern at the amount of money these madrassas were receiving from foreign sources. It reported that large numbers were being ‘educated’ in these institutions in subjects that did not equip them at all for jobs — other than to become preachers and teachers producing the same type of incendiary unemployables. It expressed the gravest concern at the way the madrassas were reinforcing separateness in those attending them — through the curriculum, through the medium of instruction, through the entire orientation of learning: the latter, the Task Force pointed out, was entirely turned towards Arabia, towards the ‘golden ages’ of Islamic rule. It pointed to the consequences that were certain to flow from ‘the Talibanisation’ of the madrassas. [In spite of what the Task Forces themselves advised, namely that their reports be made public, the reports have been kept secret. Accordingly, I have summarised the observations of the Task Forces in some detail in Will the Iron Fence Save a Tree Hollowed by Termites? Defence imperatives beyond the military, ASA, Delhi, 2005.]

And what does the Sachar Committee recommend? ‘Recognition of the degrees from madrassas for eligibility in competitive examinations such as the civil services, banks, defence services and other such examinations’! It recommends that government use public funds to encourage formation of Muslim NGOs and their activities. It recommends that government provide financial and other support to occupations and areas in which Muslims predominate. It recommends that Muslims be in selection committees, interview panels and boards for public services.

It recommends that a higher proportion of Muslims be inducted in offices that deal with the public — ‘the teaching community, health workers, police personnel, bank employees and so on.’ It recommends ‘provision of ‘equivalence’ to madrassa certificates/degrees for subsequent admissions into institutions of higher level of education.’ It recommends that banks be required to collect and maintain information about their transactions — deposits, advances — separately for Muslims, and that they be required to submit this to the Reserve Bank of India! It recommends that advances be made to Muslims as part of the obligation imposed on banks to give advances to Priority Sectors. It recommends that government give banks incentives to open branches in Muslim concentration areas. It recommends that, instead of being required to report merely ‘Amount Outstanding’, banks be told to report ‘Sanctions or Disbursements to Minorities’. It recommends that financial institutions be required to set up separate funds for training Muslim entrepreneurs, that they be required to set up special micro-credit schemes for Muslims. It recommends that all districts more than a quarter of whose population is Muslim be brought into the prime minister’s 15-point programme.

‘There should be transparency in information about minorities in all activities,’ the Committee declares. ‘It should be made mandatory to publish/furnish information in a prescribed format once in three months and also to post the same on the website of the departments and state governments...’ It recommends that for each programme of government, data be maintained separately about the extent to which Muslims and other minorities are benefiting from it. But it is not enough to keep data separately. Separate schemes must be instituted. It recommends that special and separate Centrally Sponsored Schemes and Central Plan Schemes be launched for ‘minorities with an equitable provision for Muslims.’ It recommends special measures for the promotion and spread of Urdu. It recommends the adoption of ‘alternate admission criteria’ in universities and autonomous colleges: assessment of merit should not be assigned more than 60 per cent out of the total — the remaining 40 per cent should be assigned in accordance with the income of the household, the backwardness of the district, and the backwardness of the caste and occupation of the family. It recommends that grants by the University Grants Commission be linked to ‘the diversity of the student population.’ It recommends that pre-entry qualification for admission to ITIs be scaled down, that ‘eligibility for such programmes should also be extended to the madrassa educated children.’ It recommends that ‘high quality government schools should be set up in all areas of Muslim concentration.’ It recommends that resources and government land be made available for ‘common public spaces’ for adults of — its euphemism — ‘Socio-Religious Categories’ to ‘interact’.

It recommends that incentives to builders, private sector employers, educational institutions be linked to ‘diversity’ of the populations in their sites and enterprises. For this purpose it wants a ‘diversity index’ to be developed for each such activity.

It recommends changes in the way constituencies are delimited. It recommends that where Muslims are elected or selected in numbers less than adequate, ‘a carefully conceived ‘nomination’ procedure’ be worked out ‘to increase the participation of minorities at the grass roots.’

It notes that there already are the Human Rights Commission and the Minorities Commission ‘to look into complaints by the minorities with respect to state action.’ But these are not adequate as the Muslims still feel that they are not getting a fair share. The solution? Here is its recommendation, and a typical passage:

‘It is imperative that if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved,’ notice the touchstone — ‘if the minorities have certain perceptions of being aggrieved’ — ‘all efforts should be made by the state to find a mechanism by which these complaints could be attended to expeditiously. This mechanism should operate in a manner which gives full satisfaction to the minorities’, notice again the touchstone — not any external criterion, but ‘full satisfaction to the minorities’ — ‘that any denial of equal opportunities or bias or discrimination in dealing with them, either by a public functionary or any private individual, will immediately be attended to and redress given. Such a mechanism should be accessible to all individuals and institutions desirous to complain that they have received less favourable treatment from any employer or any person on the basis of his/her SRC [Socio-Religious Category] background and gender.’

The responsibility is entirely that of the other. The other must function to the full satisfaction of the Muslims. As long as the Muslims ‘have certain perceptions of being aggrieved,’ the other is at fault...

So that everyone is put on notice, so that everyone who is the other is forever put to straining himself to satisfy the Muslims, the Committee recommends that a National Data Bank be created and it be mandatory for all departments and agencies to supply information to it to document how their activities are impacting Muslims and other minorities. On top of all this, government should set up an Assessment and Monitoring Authority to evaluate the benefits that are accruing to the minorities from each programme and activity...

This is the programme that every secularist who is in government is demanding that the government implement forthwith. And every secularist outside — the ever-so-secular CPI(M), for instance — is scolding the government for not implementing swiftly enough. What splendid evolution! Not long ago, unless you saw a Muslim as a human being, and not as a Muslim, you were not secular. Now, if you see a Muslim as a human being and not as a Muslim, you are not secular!

Consequences

The first consequence is as inevitable as it is obvious: such pandering whets the appetite. Seeing that governments and parties are competing to pander to them, Muslims see that they are doing so only because their community is acting cohesively, as a vote bank. So, they act even more as a bank of votes.

For the same reason, a competition is ignited within the community: to prove that he is more devoted to the community than his rival, every would-be leader of the community demands more and more from governments and parties. When the concession he demanded has been made, he declares, ‘It is not being implemented’. And he has a ready diagnosis: because implementation, he declares, is in the hands of non-Muslims. Hence, unless Muslims officers are appointed in the financial institutions meant for Muslims... With demand following demand, with secularist upon secularist straining himself to urge the demands, the leader sets about looking for grievances that he can fan. When he can’t find them, he invents them...

Governments make the fatal mistake, or — as happened in the case of the British when they announced separate electorates for Muslims — they play the master-stroke: they proffer an advantage to the community which that community, Muslims in this case, can secure only by being separate — whether this be separate electorates in the case of Lord Minto or separate financial institutions in the case of Manmohan Singh.

The community in its turn begins to assess every proposal, every measure, howsoever secular it may be, against one touchstone alone: ‘What can we extract from this measure for Muslims as Muslims?’How current the description rings that Cantwell Smith gave in his book, Modern Islam in India, published in the 1940s, of the effect that the British stratagem of instituting separate electorates for Muslims had had on the Muslim mind. The separate electorates led Muslims, as they had been designed to lead them, he observed, ‘to vote communally, think communally, listen only to communal election speeches, judge the delegates communally, look for constitutional and other reforms only in terms of more relative communal power, and express their grievances communally.’ [Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India, Second Revised Edition, 1946, reprint, Usha Publications, New Delhi, 1979, p. 216]. Exactly the same consequence will follow from implementing the Sachar proposals — and the reason for that is simple: the essential point about the proposals is the same — that is, the Muslims can obtain them by being separate from the rest of the country.

The reaction cannot but set in. ‘As Muslims are being given all this because they have distanced themselves from the rest of us, why should we cling to them?’ the Hindus are bound to ask. ‘On the contrary, we should learn from them. Governments and political parties are pandering to Muslims because the latter have become a bank of votes. We should knit ourselves into a solid bloc also.’

Do you think they need a Pravin Togadia to tell them this? The genuflections of governments and parties write the lesson on the blackboard. And the abuse hurled by secularists drills it in: by the excellent work that Narendra Modi has done for development, he had already made himself the pre-eminent leader of Gujarat; by the abuse they have hurled at him, the secularists, in particular the media, have enlarged his canvas to the country.

Hindutva and radical Islam: Where the twain do meet

Arun Shourie: Friday, December 28, 2007

Every set of scriptures has in it enough to justify extreme, even violent reaction. The tectonic shift in the Hindu mind, that has been going on for 200 years, is being underestimated

Your Hindutva is no different from Islamic fundamentalism’ — a fashionable statement these days, one that immediately establishes the person’s secular credentials. It is, of course, false, as we shall see in a moment. But there is a grain of potential truth in it — something that does not put Hinduism at par with Islam, but one that should, instead, serve as a warning to all who keep pushing Hindus around. That grain is the fact that every tradition has in it, every set of scriptures has in it enough to justify extreme, even violent reaction. From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived non-violence and satyagraha, Lokmanya Tilak constructed the case for ferocious response, not excluding violence. From the very same Gita from which Gandhiji derived his ‘true law’, shatham pratyapi satyam, ‘Truth even to the wicked’, the Lokmanya derived his famous maxim, shatham prati shaathyam, ‘Wickedness to the wicked.’

In the great work, Gita Rahasya, that he wrote in the Mandalay prison, the Lokmanya invokes Sri Samartha, ‘Meet boldness with boldness; impertinence by impertinence must be met; villainy by villainy must be met.’ Large-heartedness towards those who are grasping? Forgiveness towards those who are cruel? ‘Even Prahlada, that highest of devotees of the Blessed Lord,’ the Lokmanya recalls, has said, ‘Therefore, my friend, wise men have everywhere mentioned exceptions to the principle of forgiveness.’ True, the ordinary rule is that one must not cause harm to others by doing such actions as, if done to oneself, would be harmful. But, the Mahabharata, Tilak says, ‘has made it clear that this rule should not be followed in a society, where there do not exist persons who follow the other religious principle, namely, others should not cause harm to us, which is the corollary from this first principle.’ The counsel of ‘equability’ of the Gita, he says, is bound up with two individuals; that is, it implies reciprocity. ‘Therefore, just as the principle of non-violence is not violated by killing an evil-doer, so also the principle of self-identification [of seeing the same, Eternal Self in all] or of non-enmity, which is observed by saints, is in no way affected by giving condign punishment to evil-doers.’ Does the Supreme Being not Himself declare that He takes incarnations from time to time to protect dharma and destroy evil-doers? Indeed, the one who hesitates to take the retaliatory action that is necessary assists the evil to do their work. ‘And the summary of the entire teaching of the Gita is that: even the most horrible warfare which may be carried on in these circumstances, with an equable frame of mind, is righteous and meritorious.’

Tilak invokes the advice of Bhisma, and then of Yudhisthira, ‘Religion and morality consist in behaving towards others in the same way as they behave towards us; one must behave deceitfully towards deceitful persons, and in a saintly way towards saintly persons.’ Of course, act in a saintly way in the first instance, the Lokmanya counsels. Try to dissuade the evil-doer through persuasion. ‘But if the evilness of the evil-doers is not circumvented by such saintly actions, or, if the counsel of peacefulness and propriety is not acceptable to such evil-doers, then according to the principle kantakenaiva kantakam (that is, “take out a thorn by a thorn”), it becomes necessary to take out by a needle, that is by an iron thorn, if not by an ordinary thorn, that thorn which will not come out with poultices, because under any circumstances, punishing evil-doers in the interests of general welfare, as was done by the Blessed Lord, is the first duty of saints from the point of view of Ethics.’ And the responsibility for the suffering that is caused thereby does not lie with the person who puts the evil out; it lies with the evil-doers. The Lord Himself says, Tilak recalls, ‘I give to them reward in the same manner and to the same extent that they worship Me.’ ‘In the same way,’ he says, ‘no one calls the Judge, who directs the execution of a criminal, the enemy of the criminal...’

Could the variance between two interpretations be greater than is the case between the Lokmanya’s Gita Rahasya and Gandhiji’s Anashakti Yoga? Yet both constructions are by great and devout Hindus. Are ordinary Hindus nailed to Gandhiji’s rendering? After all, at the end of the Gita, Arjuna does not go off to sit at one of our non-violent dharnas. He goes into blood-soaked battle.

The comforting mistake

The mistake is to assume that the sterner stance is something that has been fomented by this individual or that —in the case of Hindutva, by, say, Veer Savarkar — or by one organisation, say the RSS or the VHP. That is just a comforting mistake — the inference is that once that individual is calumnised, once that organisation is neutralised, ‘the problem’ will be over. Large numbers do not gravitate to this interpretation rather than that merely because an individual or an organisation has advanced it — after all, the interpretations that are available on the shelf far outnumber even the scriptures. They gravitate to the harsher rendering because events convince them that it alone will save them.

It is this tectonic shift in the Hindu mind, a shift that has been going on for 200 years, which is being underestimated. The thousand years of domination and savage oppression by rulers of other religions; domination and oppression which were exercised in the name of and for the glory of and for establishing the sway of those religions, evinced a variety of responses from the Hindus. Armed resistance for centuries... When at last such resistance became totally impossible, the revival of bhakti by the great poets... When public performance even of bhakti became perilous, sullen withdrawal, preserving the tradition by oneself, almost in secrecy: I remember being told in South Goa how families sustained their devotion by painting images of our gods and goddesses inside the tin trunks in which sheets and clothing were kept. The example of individuals: recall how the utter simplicity and manifest aura of Ramakrishna Paramhamsa negated the efforts of the missionaries, how his devotion to the image of the Goddess at Dakshineshwar restored respectability to the idolatry that the missionaries and others were traducing... The magnetism of Sri Aurobindo and Ramana Maharshi... Gandhiji’s incontestable greatness and the fact that it was so evidently rooted in his devotion to our religion...

Each of these stemmed much. But over the last 200 years the feeling has also swelled that, invaluable as these responses have been, they have not been enough. They did not prevent the country from being taken over. They did not shield the people from the cruelty of alien rulers. They did not prevent the conversion of millions. They did not prevent the tradition from being calumnised and being thrown on the defensive. They did not in the end save the country from being partitioned — from being partitioned in the name of religion...

There is a real vice here. The three great religions that originated in Palestine and Saudi Arabia — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have been exclusivist — each has insisted that it alone is true — and aggressive. The Indic religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism — have been inclusive, they have been indulgent of the claims of others. But how may the latter sort survive when it is confronted by one that aims at power, acquires it, and then uses it to enlarge its dominion? How is the Indic sort to survive when the other uses the sword as well as other resources — organised missionaries, money, the state — to proselytise and to convert? Nor is this question facing just the Hindus in India today. It is facing the adherents of Indic traditions wherever they are: look at the Hindus in Indonesia and Malaysia; look at the Buddhists in Tibet, now in Thailand too. It is because of this vice, and the realisation born from what had already come to pass that Swami Vivekananda, for instance, while asking the Hindus to retain their Hindu soul, exhorted them to acquire an ‘Islamic body’.

Instigating factors

We can be certain that his counsel will prevail, our secularists notwithstanding,

• The more aggressively the other religions proselytise — look at the fervour with which today the Tablighi Jamaat goes about conversion; look at the organised way in which the missionaries ‘harvest’ our souls;

• The more they use money to increase the harvest — whether it is Saudi money or that of Rome and the American churches;

• The more any of them uses violence to enlarge its sway;

• The more any of them allies itself with and uses the state — whether that of Saudi Arabia or Pakistan — for aggrandisement.

Nor is what others do from outside the only determinant. From within India, three factors in particular will make the acquiring of that Islamic body all the more certain:

• The more biased ‘secularist’ discourse is;

• The more political parties use non-Hindus — Muslims, for instance — as vote banks and the more that non-Hindu group comes to act as one — ‘strategic voting’ and all;

• The more the state of India bends to these exclusivist, aggressive traditions.

It has almost become routine to slight Hindu sentiments — our smart-set do not even notice the slights they administer. Recall the jibe of decades: ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. When, because of those very socialist policies that their kind had swallowed and imposed on the country, our growth was held down to 3-4 per cent, it was dubbed — with much glee — as ‘the Hindu rate of growth’. Today, we are growing at 9 per cent. And, if you are to believe the nonsense in Sachar’s report, the minorities are not growing at all. So, who is responsible for this higher rate of growth? The Hindus! How come no one calls this higher rate of growth ‘the Hindu rate of growth’? Simple: dubbing the low rate as the Hindu one established you to be secular; not acknowledging the higher one as the Hindu rate establishes you to be secular!

Or M.F. Husain. He is a kindly man, and a prodigiously productive artist. There is no warrant at all for disrupting all his exhibitions. I am on the point of sensibilities. His depictions of Hindu goddesses have been in the news: he has painted them in less than skimpy attire. I particularly remember one in which Sita is riding Hanuman’s stiffened tail — of course, she is scarcely clad, but that is the least of it: you need no imagination at all to see what she is rubbing up against that stiffened tail. Well, in the case of an artist, that is just inspiration, say the secularists. OK. The question that arises then is: How come in the seventy-five years Husain has been painting, he has not once felt inspired, not once, to paint the face of the Prophet? It doesn’t have to be in the style in which he has painted the Hindu goddesses. Why not the most beautiful, the most radiant and luminous face that he can imagine? How come he has never felt inspired to paint women revered in Islam, or in his own family, in the same style as the one that propelled his inspiration in regard to Hindu goddesses?

‘In painting the goddesses, he was just honouring them,’ a secular intellectual remarked at a discussion the other day. ‘It was his way of honouring them.’ Fine. It is indeed the case that one of the best ways we can honour someone is to put the one skill we have at the service of the person or deity. But how come that Husain never but never thought of honouring the Prophet by using the same priceless skill, that one ‘talent which is death to hide’?

‘Has Mr Shourie ever visited Khajuraho?,’ a member of the audience asked, the implication being that, as Hindu sculptors had depicted personages naked, what was wrong with Husain depicting the goddesses in the same style. Fine again. But surely, it is no one’s case that the ‘Khajuraho style’ must be confined to Hindu icons. Why has the artist, so skilled in deploying the Khajuraho motifs, never used them for icons of Islam? The reason why an artist desists from depicting the Prophet’s face is none of these convoluted disquisitions on style.

The reason is simplicity itself: he knows he will be thrashed, and his hands smashed.

Exactly the same holds for politics. How come no one objects when for years a Muslim politician keeps publishing maps of constituencies in which Muslims as Muslims can determine the outcome, and exhorting them to do so? When, not just an individual politician but entire political parties — from the Congress to the Left parties — stir Muslims up as a vote bank. When Muslims start behaving like a vote bank, you can be certain that someone will get the idea that Hindus too should be welded into a vote bank, and eventually they will get welded into one. Why is stoking Muslims ‘secular’ and stoking Hindus ‘communal’?

And yet perverted discourse, even the stratagems of political parties, are but preparation: they prepare the ground for capitulation by the state to groups that are aggressive. And in this the real lunacy is about to be launched, and, with that, the real reaction.

Objective Whitewash for Objective History (PART I of II) !

Arun Shourie

"This is an old charge which keeps surfacing now and then," wrote one of those "eminent historians", K. N. Panikkar, in an vituperative response to an article of mine -- the charge that close to two crores had been spent on the "Towards Freedom" project of the Indian Council of Historical Project, and little had been achieved. "About a year back Times of India carried a front page story on this. The historians had then clarified through a public statement published in several newspapers, that they have not drawn any money from the ICHR and that they worked for five years purely in an honorary capacity. When he [that is, me] gets the information from the ministry, if he does, that the editors have not taken any money, I would normally expect Shourie to tender a public apology. But given the intellectual honesty and cultural level reflected in his article, I do not think it would be forthcoming. The alternative of suing for defamation the likes of Shourie is below one's dignity. But I do expect at least the ministry to make a public statement on the factual position."

Strong stuff, and definitive, one would think. It turns out that on 17 July, 1998, in answer to a question tabled in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry stated that only one part of the project has been completed and published since the original volume of Dr. P. N. Chopra. This is the volume -- in three parts -- by Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta covering 1943-44. In answer to another question, the Ministry has reported that "After publication of the Volume he was paid an honorarium of Rs. 25,000 in September, 1997."

Dr. Partha Sarthi Gupta, in other words, is the one editor who has completed the work which he had undertaken. For that he has been paid Rs. 25,000. The others have not completed the work they had undertaken, they have therefore not been paid the Rs. 25,000 which are to be paid to them only when their volumes are completed and published. That is how they go about proclaiming themselves to be social workers -- we have been working in an honorary capacity, we have not taken a penny !

And as bits and pieces about the ICHR at last start trickling out, we learn that the "Towards Freedom" project isn't the only one on which large amounts have been spent and which has not been completed. There is an "Economic History of India Project." Rs. 1,955,000 have been spent on it. Nothing has been published as a result. Though, the Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that "according to the information furnished by the ICHR," two volumes of the project -- on Railways and Agriculture -- are "ready for the press".

The Ministry also told the Rajya Sabha that "Professor Bipin Chandra was sanctioned a sum of Rs. 75,000 during 1987-88 for the assignment entitled 'A History of the Indian National Congress'. A sum of Rs. 57,500 has been released to him till 23-6-1989. The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." In a word, spare readers this social-worker stance -- "doing all this in a strictly honorary capacity". It is as if Bipin Chandra were to go about saying, "See, I have not even taken the Rs. 17,500 which the ICHR still owes me." And do not miss that effort from the ICHR to help to the extent possible -- "The remaining balance of Rs. 17,500 is yet to be released because a formal manuscript in this regard is yet to be received." Does that mean that some "informal" manuscript has been received, or that no manuscript has been received?

As newspapers and magazines such as Outlook had done, Panikkar had concocted his conspiracy theory on the charge that the BJP Government had changed the word "Rational" into "National", and that it had suppressed three of the five objectives of the ICHR by changing the Memorandum of Association of the ICHR. I had reproduced relevant paragraphs from the Resolutions to show that the same wording had continued for at least twenty years. I had given the numbers and dates of the Resolutions. I had also reported that I had requested the Secretary of the Ministry to help ascertain the year since which the same wording had continued. And what was the response of this "eminent" historian who, as he said, writes signed articles in publications of the Communist Party "because I believe in the ideals it stands for"? "Even if Shourie's contention is true (unlike Shourie who is a BJP MP, a resident of Delhi elected from UP, I have no means to ascertain from the Ministry)..."

That is a much favoured stance: when caught peddling a lie, insinuate that the other fellow is privileged! And that as you are from the working masses, you cannot ascertain whether the facts he has stated are true. Therefore, what you stated must stand as fact -- Q.E.D. !

Exactly the same dodge was used a day or so later by another of these progressives. Manoj Raghuvanshi had invited K. M. Shrimali and me to discuss on Zee Television's Aap ki Adalat the charge that history was being rewritten in communal colours. Raghuvanshi read out what Outlook had reported -- that the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education had issued instructions in 1989 that "Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned."

Raghuvanshi asked Shrimali, whether this did not amount to distortion? True, that was a painful period of our history, Raghuvanshi said, but should it be erased from our history books? Would that be objective, rational history? Shrimali's response was the well-practised script : firstly, he did not know that such an instruction was ever issued; if it was issued, he said, he was against it; but one must see what the context was in which the instruction had been issued...

Concerned teachers in West Bengal have been so kind as to send me the circular relating to textbooks for class IX. Dated 28 April, 1989, it is issued by the West Bengal Secondary Board. It is in Bengali, and carries the number "Syl/89/1".

"All the West Bengal Government recognised secondary school Headmasters are being informed," it begins, "that in History textbooks recommended by this Board for Class IX the following amendments to the chapter on the medieval period have been decided after due discussions and review by experts." "

"The authors and publishers of Class IX History textbooks," it continues, "are being requested to incorporate the amendments if books published by them have these aushuddho [impurities, errors] in all subsequent editions, and paste a corrigendum in books which have already been published. A copy of the book with the corrigendum should be deposited with the Syllabus Office (74, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Road, Calcutta -- 16)." Signed,

"...Chattopadhyaya, Secretary."

The accompanying pages contain two columns : aushuddho -- impurity, or error -- and shuddho. One has just to glance through the changes to see the objective the progressives are trying to achieve through their "objective", "rational" approach to the writing of history. Here are some of the changes.

Book : Bharat Katha, prepared by the Burdwan Education Society, Teachers Enterprise, published by Sukhomoy Das....

*
Page 140 : Aushuddho -- "In Sindhudesh the Arabs did not describe Hindus as Kafir. They had banned cow-slaughter."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'They had banned cow-slaughter'."
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- "Fourthly, using force to destroy Hindu temples was also an expression of aggression. Fifthly, forcibly marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam before marriage was another way to propagate the fundamentalism of the ulema."
Shuddho : though the column reproduces the sentences only from "Fourthly....", the Board directs that the entire matter from "Secondly.... to ulema" be deleted.
*
Page 141 : Aushuddho -- The logical, philosophical, materialist Mutazilla disappeared. On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis...."
Shuddho -- "Delete, 'On the one hand, the fundamentalist thinking based on the Quran and the Hadis'...."

Book : Bharatvarsher Itihash, by Dr. Narendranath Bhattacharya, published by Chakravarty and Son...

*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "Sultan Mahmud used force for widespread murder, loot, destruction and conversion."
Shuddho -- "There was widespread loot and destruction by Mahmud." That is, no reference to killing, no reference to forcible conversions.
*
Page 89 : Aushuddho -- "He looted valuables worth 2 crore dirham from the Somnath temple and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni."
Shuddho -- "Delete 'and used the Shivling as a step leading up to the masjid in Ghazni.'"
*
Page 112 : Aushuddho -- "Hindu-Muslim relations of the medieval ages is a very sensitive issue. The non- believers had to embrace Islam or death."
Shuddho -- All matter on pages 112-13 to be deleted.
*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "According to Islamic law non-Muslims will have to choose between death and Islam. Only the Hanafis allow non-Muslims to pay jaziya in exchange for their lives."
Shuddho -- Rewrite this as follows : "By paying jaziya to Allauddin Khilji, Hindus could lead normal lives." Moreover, all the subsequent sentences "Qazi...", "Taimur's arrival in India..." to be deleted.

*
Page 113 : Aushuddho -- "Mahmud was a believer in the rule of Islam whose core was 'Either Islam or death'.
Shuddho -- Delete.

Book : Bharuter Itihash, by Shobhankar Chattopadhyaya, published by Narmada Publishers.

*
Page 181 : Aushuddho -- "To prevent Hindu women from being seen by Muslims, they were directed to remain indoors."
Shuddho -- Delete.

Book : Itihasher Kahini, by Nalini Bhushan Dasgupta, published by B. B. Kumar.

*
Page 132 : Aushuddho -- According to Todd [the famous chronicler of Rajasthan annals] the purpose behind Allauddin's Chittor expedition was to secure Rana Rattan Singh's beautiful wife, Padmini."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 154 : Aushuddho -- "As dictated by Islam, there were three options for non-Muslims : get yourself converted to Islam; pay jaziya; accept death. In an Islamic State non-Muslims had to accept one of these three options."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 161 : Aushuddho -- "The early Sultans were eager to expand the sway of Islam by forcibly converting Hindus into Islam."
Shuddho -- Delete.

Book : Bharuter Itihash, by P. Maiti, Sreedhar Prakashini.

*
Page 117 : Aushuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked the capital of Mewar, Chittorgarh, to get Padmini, the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh."
Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 139 : Ashuddho -- "There was a sense of aristocratic superiority in the purdah system. That is why upper-class Hindus adopted this system from upper-class Muslims. Another opinion has it that purdah came into practice to save Hindu women from Muslims. Most probably, purdah came into vogue because of both factors."
Shuddho -- delete.

The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on "Aurangzeb's policy on religion". Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule -- to spread the sway of Islam -- are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion -- an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one -- to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the Court, and that it is these things he banished. The only allusion to his having done anything in regard to Islam which is allowed to remain is that "By distancing himself from Akbar's policy of religious tolerance and policy of equal treatment, Aurangzeb caused damage to Mughal rule."

Book : Swadesho Shobhyota, by Dr. P. K. Basu and S. B. Ghatak, Abhinav Prakashan.

*
Page 126 : Ashuddho -- "Some people believe that Allauddin's Mewar expedition was to get hold of Padmini, the wife of Rana Rattan Singh." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 145 : Ashuddho -- "Apart from this, because Islam used extreme inhuman means to establish itself in India, this became an obstacle for the coming together of Indian and Islamic cultures." Shuddho -- Delete.

Book : Bharat Katha, by G. Bhattacharya, Bulbul Prakashan.

*
Page 40 : Ashuddho -- "Muslims used to take recourse to torture and inhuman means to force their religious beliefs and practices on Indians." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 41 : Ashuddho -- "The liberal, humane elements in Islam held out hope for oppressed Hindus." Shuddho -- The entire paragraph beginning with "the caste system among Hindus.... was attacked" is to be deleted. Instead write, "There was no place for casteism in Islam. Understandably, the influence of Islam created an awakening among Hindus against caste discrimination. Lower caste oppressed Hindus embraced Islam."
*
Page 77 : Ashuddho -- "His main task was to oppress non-believers, especially Hindus." Shuddho -- This and the preceding sentence to be deleted.

Book : Bharuter Itihash, by A. C. Roy, published by Prantik.

*
Page 102 : Ashuddho -- "There is an account that Allauddin attacked Chittor to get the beautiful wife of Rana Rattan Singh, Padmini." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Page 164 : Ashuddho -- "It was his commitment to Islam which made him a fundamentalist." Shuddho -- Delete.
*
Book : Bharut Kahini, by G. C. Rowchoudhury, published by A. K. Sarkar and Co.
*
Page 130 : Ashuddho -- "That is why he adopted the policy of converting Hindus to Islam -- so as to increase the number of Muslims. Those Hindus who refused to discard their religion were indiscriminately massacred by him or his generals." Shuddho -- Delete.

In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam !

Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of Kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.

Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the scream, "Communal rewriting of history."

But there isn't just whitewash of Islam. For after Islam came another great emancipatory ideology -- Marxism- Leninism.

The teachers furnish extracts from the textbook for Class V.

".... in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and in other East European countries, the workers and peasants are ruling the country after capturing power, whereas in U.S.A., England, France and Germany the owners of mills and factories are ruling the country."

".... after the Revolution in Russia the first exploitation-free society was established."

".... Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality...."

Thus, not just whitewash, there is hogwash too.

Calamities Come and Go, But Decision to Stay Remains

Arun Shourie
"Give me some time and we will get over all these troubles" that was the prime minister speaking during the Charar-e-Sharief debate in the Rajya Sabha.

But had he not had time since February when the mercenaries were spotted in the town? Indeed, having put the country through abject humiliation at Hazratbal in October 1993, had he not had a year and a half's time to prepare for the next siege? And in the Hazratbal case also, the first report about terrorists moving to usurp the place was given to the government in July.

The fact is that the prime minister does not plan to do anything with the time he gets -- it is just a figure of speech with him. "Leave it to me, I will make sure that not one guilty person gets away. I assure the House, from now on I will personally monitor the case on a daytoday basis" On the securities scam, Bofors, Ayodhya, the functioning of the Congress, the descent of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar into casteist gunda raj, the manner in which Channa Reddy was conducting himself, the way in which General K V Krishna Rao was not conducting himself, the paralysis in his own ministries, the running feud in the home ministry -- on everything he has stood up and chanted those words in the end.

The last time was when not having done anything to stop Chavan and Pilot from making a fool of the country, he took the Kashmir portfolio directly under his charge. The move was hailed: it is positive proof that he is serious about the matter now, we were told, you will see there will be decisive action now. In the months since he has had the portfolio, nothing has been done to organize even the department, let alone doing something about Kashmir. A single joint secretary is all that the government has working full time on the matter. And he, too, has not been attending office for sometime now as he has been down with typhoid.

Nevertheless, once again: "Leave it to me. Give me some time and we will get over all these troubles." But there are new traits, too, which have surfaced this time around. First, there is a new device: to claim that the particular thing was not done not out of neglect but because it was his policy not to do the thing!

For two and a half years the country has been without a defense minister. Suddenly the prime minister tells Jaswant Singh in the Lok Sabha that not having a defense minister has been a conscious decision of his. It is high time the defense portfolio was handled by the country's Prime Minister, he says. Is it because something is going on which is so secret that no one except he can be trusted with it? Is it that war is imminent? Is it his way of making sure that no Goldstar siphons off money in defense deals? No explanation, just "It is high time that... " Has he not constituted the Cabinet committee on political affairs too, asked my friend Jaswant Singh, because he has concluded that it is high time that the prime minister was his own CCPA?

It has been exactly the same with Charar-e-Sharief. Ever since the mercenaries and terrorists started congregating there in February, forces on the ground were waiting for a decision on what they should do. The mercenaries could have been easily plucked out when they were just a few. But no decision came. They brought in more of their associates. They transported arms and explosives and, as has now been seen, land mines in enormous quantities. The whole town knew of their buildup: witness the residents who left the town in their thousands. But no decision was taken. Eventually the army was asked to encircle the place. But that was all. They kept waiting for a decision as to what they should do. None came. In the event, they were reduced to being mere spectators, crows on a wall, till three hours after the mausoleum was burned down. "You can go in now." An exact replay of Ayodhya in that sense.

And whose responsibility was it to take that decision? Of the prime minister? That is Narasimha Rao. Of the defense minister? That is Narasimha Rao. Of the minister in charge of Kashmir affairs? That is Narasimha Rao. Of the minister in charge of RAW? That is Narasimha Rao. The minister in charge of IB? That, too, is Narasimha Rao. Of the only minister with whom Gen. Krishna Rao condescends to talk? But that, too, is Narasimha Rao.

And yet, he says that whatever has happened or not, whatever has been done or not is the responsibility of the state administration and the men on the spot.

It is this brazenness which is new, and of which I fear we shall see more in the coming months. "I am the Congress president and I shall decide what is to be done," he says, and that ends the matter. Development works are being speeded up in Kashmir, he says in the wake of the Charar being burned down. It is not just that that is a farce of a response, it is that it is a total falsehood. The entire local administration of the state has been on strike for more than two months now. They routinely refuse to carry out orders -- whether the order is to protect pilgrims on the Amarnath Yatra or it is to update the electoral rolls and yet the prime minister says, "Development works are being speeded up."

In the case of Hazratbal it is the same. The government abjectly surrendered. But the prime minister refers to it as having been such a success that the government decided to repeat the strategy in Charar-e-Sharief! The result is that the town has been burned down, the mausoleum is gone, the main mercenaries have escaped, the people are outraged, and the prime minister is fine-tuning words: the occurrence is better described as a partial failure of policy, he says, not a complete failure.

Not just brazenness, with the old cunning there is a new obstinacy.

The prime minister is palming off responsibility not just verbally, but in a deep sense. To avoid taking a decision he let both sides in his own government have their say on TADA. As the side advocating its abolition was more vociferous, in the end he went along with them. And now others must get a substitute though the country must live with the consequences.

Yet no one can do anything about the matter. The adjournment motions in parliament on Charar-e-Sharief were symptomatic. They have come and gone. The government's ways will not change one bit as a consequence. Even the opposition seemed to be just going through the motions: when it came time to vote only 186 of its 240 members of parliament were present.

Indeed, the discussion became a diversion. The question suddenly became a matter of one party versus the rest of which side deployed the better debating tactics.

Our situation is the one depicted in the experiment. Let ten sturdy men stand one behind the other facing a wall.

At the head of the column put a weakling. Each man puts his hands to the shoulders of the man in front, the man in front puts his hands to the wall. Everyone pushes. The strength of the ten counts for nothing; the pressure on the wall will be no greater than that weakling in front can put on it.

That is our situation. Cabinet ministers grumble, Congress MPs visit each other's houses and lament, opposition leaders protest, editorial writers declaim, the people are indignant but nothing happens for the man in charge just looks the other way.

At the same time, the people, especially pressmen, should not forget their own contribution. They help create the atmosphere in which such failures are certain.

Just go back to the days immediately after the government let the terrorists free at Hazratbal.

How much play the press gave to the secessionists-sponsored demand that the army be removed from the vicinity of the shrine. It was replaced. The Border Security Force set up checkpoints well outside the shrine. The press played up the demand that even these be removed.

Charar-e-Sharief has been the same story. If persons going in and out are searched the howl goes up "innocents being harassed." When as a consequence they are not searched and the place becomes a stockade of mercenaries the howl goes up, "How did the army let so many land mines and the rest get through?"

Worse, there is a certain glee in purveying any and every allegation so long as it puts our men in the wrong. For five days some of our papers in Delhi kept repeating the allegation of some resident of the town that he had seen a helicopter (at dead of night) fly over the mausoleum and sprinkle powder over it; the place had then been shelled to set it on fire. This allegation was carried under four to eight column headlines on page one. And on the sixth day on an inside page one of those very papers reported that there was no evidence for the allegation at all that the houses bore no marks of mortar shelling or even bullets.

Officers and jawans who are there are not there for their pleasure. They are risking their lives, many of them are sacrificing their lives so that our country may survive. They are already handicapped by the absence of policy. This broadcasting of allegations and concoctions cannot but cripple them.

That much must be clear even to those who broadcast the fabrications. But a certain perversity has entered large sections of which these pressmen are representative. They will be satiated only when the country actually breaks. See, we told you, they will proclaim, it could not survive...

Political Will Hunting

Arun Shourie

[Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie's Cariappa Memorial Lecture 2002, delivered in New Delhi on Saturday, argues for smart governance to secure strategic interests. A country that has ''atomic weapons'' but can't manage its finances will only be ''squeezed into submission'', he says. Exclusive extracts, in two parts.]

You couldn't have asked me to deliver this lecture because of my experience in Disinvestment! And I have no access to classified information on security affairs. Therefore, for myself alone, and based solely on my own study-much of it of the writings of experts like you!

And I do hope that what I say will not now trigger some more "Diary Items" -- that it is because the Defence Minister is speaking on Disinvestment that the Disinvestment Minister has chosen to speak on Defence!

A manuscript-already around 175 pages. By the time I revise it to shorten it-at least 250 pages! Today, I can list just a few conclusions -- I do regret having to excise the evidence that has led me to the conclusions: in part because the conclusions are the obvious ones, in part because the evidence is in many instances as delectable as it is telling. But such is the discipline of the Army that I must stick to the time limit.

A moment of substantial achievements, and several favourable turns-from the victory in Kargil to the turn of events after 9/11. But foreboding.

We often say, ''Anything is possible. What one needs is political will.'' In saying that we use the word ''will'' as if what matters is that the person at the top have the will to carry through a venture. That is of course true in a sense: at times an individual makes all the difference -- Gandhiji during the Independence Struggle, Sardar Patel in the integration of princely states. But the more enduring significance of the expression ''political will'' is not as the will of an individual. It is as the ability of a political system to deliver. That is what is being put in question every other day.

Defence forces are to a country what an iron railing put around it is to a tree: in the end, howsoever strong the railing, howsoever sturdy and well-polished it looks, it cannot protect a tree that has been hollowed by termites from within: the storm shall fell it. What is it that the Soviet armed forces could do which would make up for the sclerosis that the communist regime had imposed on the country? Could the missiles, the atomic arsenal compensate for the stagnation?

Correspondingly, think of Bihar. A population of 83 million, that is a population 30% larger than that of Britain, of Italy, a population equal to that of Germany, and an area 40% as extensive as Britain. In this vast area, over this huge population, governance has evaporated. If I were running the ISI, I wouldn't waste lives in Kashmir. I would just smuggle 20,000-30,000 AK-47s through Nepal into the state. The caste-riven people would begin killing each other, and all the forces the country could muster would get bogged down in restoring order.

Or take Pakistan and China. Only a policy conceived with the perspective of 20-30 years, only strategies actually implemented and that without wavering for 20-30 years can counter what is afoot. But if the horizon of the political class is the hulla of the day in the legislature, or the debating point that can be extracted from the headlines of the day, or the next bout of elections, how can any policy be sustained for 20-30 years?

For the same reasons, will the growing economic strength of China not get translated into military strength? And, will the growing economic distance between China and India not get translated into a greater distance between their capabilities at force projection and ours at warding off such projection?

Salvaging the system of governance is the imperative that all of us -- those in the defence forces, ex-servicemen, ordinary citizens-must attend to today. The armed forces are in fine fettle. We must get general governance up to their standards!

The Enemy Within

An implacable foe. No other identity other than ''not India'', the one whose destiny, whose religious mandate is to break India. True, there are many divisions in Pakistani society-even in regard to what is true Islam; but there is unanimity on two things-that Kashmir must be wrested, and on what must be done to India.

There is progressive Talibanisation of Pakistani society. The only recourse for Pakistan is to direct this explosive force on to external targets. It has waged a very successful strategy: over 61,000 have been killed, and yet the strategy has not provoked a retaliatory war. Quite the contrary, the strategy has worked wonders for the agencies and individuals who have directed it -- it has multiplied their importance, influence, personal wealth.

True, Pakistan has been isolated after 9/11: but it has also been able to extract postponement of dues totalling $ 12 billion, and additional aid, grants and write-offs of another $ 8 billion. But because opinion has turned against cross-border terrorism, will concentrate on fomenting internal fissures, taking advantage of internal mal- or non-governance. And it has been able to build the infrastructure for such disruption. That our agencies have been able to detect and smother 161 modules of the ISI etc. is a real achievement. But the number also indicates that ISI etc. have been able to set up these modules in the first place. Furthermore, 161 are reported to have been uncovered but some of the ones exist. Interrogations reveal that in ever so many instances, the agents were able to obtain ration cards and other papers to establish themselves as Indians-often by just paying paltry bribes of Rs. 2,000-4,000 .

Terrorism is everywhere: cells have been discovered in India, Southeast Asia, Europe. Sometimes it seems some believe that Al-Qaida is the only problem, that if it is dealt with, the problem is licked. But nomenclatures mean nothing: recall the ease with which groups that were outlawed in Pakistan just changed their names and have continued their operations. Al-Qaida is but one of the limbs of this octopus.

There are already sanctuaries for terrorists targeting India in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Arakan in Myanmar and within India. ISI moving systematically to use vacuums of this kind: madrasas along our borders. Just one example: in the district in Nepal that borders the Siliguri corridor there are 33 madrasas; 25 of these 33 have been established since 1980.

This is compounded by the rapid Islamisation of Bangladesh: a symptom is the ever-swelling Bishwa Ijtema at Tongi each year: this year about 40 lakh attended. After 1971, the Jamaat-e-Islami had lost practically all influence. As the years went by both the national parties began courting it, specially at election time. Now it is a part of the Government.

Chinese Whispers

China itself does not regard India as a rival, it benchmarks itself against the US. But it regards India as a potential nuisance in part because of India's size, and potential; even more so because of what it considers is th likelihood that India will become an instrument of the US for containing China. Hence the lemma that India is to be kept tied down in South Asia. A representative passage from a Chinese strategist: ''In the next century, to split China's western part, or more specifically, to split China's Tibetan region.... is probably the target of the Western world's geopolitical strategy. Having pushed Russia northward, creating a political barrier like Tibet or Xinjiang between China and the oil-producing countries in Central Asia conforms to the strategic interests of the West to control permanently the world's geographic and energy centre. This dovetails with India's political plot to create a Tibetan buffer zone between China and India. Currently, India is pulling out all the stops to convince the West that it is willing to play the vanguard for the West's effort to achieve this goal, under the prerequisite that the West will adopt an appeasement policy towards its nuclear option.''

For this purpose, ''murder with a borrowed knife'': arms aid to Pakistan, Chinese advances in Myanmar, the reorientation of Chinese strategic doctrine, and the consequent overhauling of the PLA. This has crystallised around three propositions: To ensure that in whatever they do, others -- in particular countries neighbouring China -- always bear in mind China's interests, and her likely reaction; to ensure that if a war is to be fought for defending China, it is not fought on China's soil; to acquire overwhelming capacity for ''local wars under high-technology conditions.''

This in turn requires that China build the capabilities to inflict on the adversary, at the very outset, such terrific losses-for instance, by crippling vital nodes of the victim -- at such lightning speed that the objective is achieved, the adversary is "taught a lesson", and allies are scared away from standing by the victim.

To implement this strategy:

*
Develop "magic weapons"-from those that will blind satellites to ones that will disorient the guidance systems of missiles; from ones that will disrupt power grids, civil aviation control systems, telecommunication and broadcasting networks; to chemical or gaseous agents that can disorient entire populations in an area.
*
Identify the "particular vulnerabilities", the "acupuncture points" of the victim.

Chinese strategic literature devotes much space and analysis to identifying such points for the US. It would be hazardous for us to assume that they would not be conducting similar analyses for India. And always remember the admonition to the Chinese of the Vice Commandant of the Academy of Military Sciences, Beijing, General Mi Zhenyu: ''For a relatively long time, it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. We must conceal our abilities and bide our time.'' Finally, of course, there is physical positioning: the acquisition in the South China Sea of Paracel Islands in 1974, Spratly Islands in 1988, Mischief Reef in 1995. Leasing of Coco Island in the Bay of Bengal... The bases in Tibet...

It is often said that the era when large armies would march across international borders is over. The proposition is true only where the armies are evenly matched. The Gulf War, the war in Afghanistan are recent reminders that if one side is manifestly the weaker one, forces will be hurled across borders also. To ensure that forces do not march across our borders, we must be adequately prepared to crush them if they do. But we also have to contend with what will arise from the preceding propositions: Local war under high technology conditions, using magic weapons "to win without fighting". The best way for doing so-watch as the enemy, through internecine quarrels and mis- or non-governance weakens himself; if necessary, give him a helping hand -- is by exacerbating these internal ruptures.

And, once in a while, "kill a chicken to frighten the monkey" -- not so much to acquire territory, but to break the morale of the adversary, ensure he stays out of your way. It does not take much imagination to infer the types of assaults on India that an enemy would find the least costly, the most effective, and therefore the most tempting:

*
Mass disruptions of the intertwined, integrated systems of a modernising military and economy that depend on ultra-modern modes of communication and command-power grids, stock markets, airport control towers, weapons guidance systems;
*
Funnel arms and funds to warring groups in areas like Bihar;
*
Funnel arms and funds, and give sanctuary to ''freedom fighters'' operating in vulnerable stretches-for instance, to the Kamtapur insurrectionists operating in the Siliguri corridor, to the Bodo Liberation Front and ULFA on the other side, to the various extortionist groups available in Manipur to block the national highways;
*
Orchestrate protracted, near-war to bleed the country -- of the kind Pakistan has waged in Punjab, Kashmir and elsewhere;
*
Suborn mafias, and through them execute Bombay-blasts type operations;
*
Engineer an occasional foray in an outlying, loosely or poorly administered area -- say, some stretch of the Northeast.

We thus have to be prepared for more than large forces crossing international boundaries. That will cost a lot. But that cost is the price of living in our times, in this neighbourhood.

Part II - Where the Buck Really Stops

Indian Express
October 29, 2002