Arun Shourie on the Mitrokhin Archives OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Part-I

Standard Operating Procedure
The weekly organ of the CPI(M), People's Democracy, September 2005, declaims, ''The Mitrokhin balloon of lies has been well burst recently. The statement of the secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M), Anil Biswas on September 21 may well perhaps be the last nail on the coffin of the 'archival misdemeanour'. Anil Biswas told the media at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan that 'after having procured the so-called Mitrokhin archives and poring over it, we find no reference of the kind alleged or otherwise, to the late Promode Dasgupta'.''

There are just two short chapters in this book about India. On the very second page of the very first of these, we read, ''As KGB operations in India expanded during the 1950s and 1960s, the Centre (that is, the KGB headquarters in Moscow ) seems to have discovered the extent of IB's previous penetration of the CPI. According to a KGB report, an investigation into Promode Das Gupta, who became secretary of the Bengal Communist Party in 1959, concluded that he had been recruited by the IB in 1947 . Further significant IB penetrations were discovered in the Kerala and Madras parties...''

Did the ''poring over'' not reach even the second page? But this is standard procedure for Marxists — lie outright!

In the full confidence that no one will look up the original material.

The second, adopted this time round by the Congress too, is to just dismiss revelations. Extracts from The Mitrokhin Archive had but to appear in the press, and they, and their favoured commentators pronounced, ''No evidence...,'' ''Fiction...,'' ''An author in search of lies.'' And simultaneously, ''There is nothing new.... These things have been well known for long!'' Well known for long, but require new proof!

The third device also has been on display this time round: paste motives on all concerned. A favourite of Marxists, it has been deployed even by ''intelligence experts'' this time. One of them writes that the book has three aims. The first, he says, is ''To discredit the present Russian leadership.'' Presumably this is accomplished by indirection: as Putin is known to have been in the KGB, as it is well known that he has appointed his former colleagues from the KGB to vital posts across Russia, pointing to what the KGB used to be doing, tarnishes ''the present Russian leadership''. Second, our expert says, the purpose of the Mitrokhin account is ''to drive a wedge between the present leaderships of Russia and India .'' And, third, the British secret service has always been hostile to leaders of the Labour Party in the UK , this has been a plot to discredit the Labour Government and leaders of Britain.

Assume all this to be true, does it amount to a reason for India not to examine what the disclosures spell for our national security and governance? The fourth device is to smear whoever has brought out facts that are inconvenient. ''A former low-grade clerk of the KGB archives,'' they write about Mitrokhin, he was not the head of KGB archives. Assume that to be true: low-grade clerks are as useful sources of information as heads of departments! Mitrokhin was an incompetent officer, they say — if he had been any good at field work, he would not have been assigned to a backroom tending old records. But the point is whether, having been relegated to backrooms, he had access to thoe tell-tale records. Just one who ''stole'' those ''clandestinely obtained'' documents, they say. But does that suggest that the records he transcribed were genuine and valuable or does that establish that they were fakes?!

As it isn't just Vasili Mitrokhin who was involved in this project, the British professor, Christopher Andrew who collaborated in writing and editing the volumes also comes in for the standard treatment. The professor, we are told, ''was alleged to have been embedded in the intelligence agencies.'' He becomes ''the ever-obliging Christopher Andrew.'' The CPI(M) mouthpiece, People's Democracy, is even more elaborate: ''No wonder, these scions (those running the 'corporate media' here in India) have now picked up the Soviet defector's ramblings, which have been put together in a fashion in a book by an English author who is not only not known for his scholarship but also just not known in the academe as a practicing historian.'' That phrase is literally standard issue.

When ''Why?,'' does not work, ask, ''Why now?'' That is the standard device since Lenin's time! And this time too we have had it in full display: Mitrokhin defected in 1992, why is this book being released now, in 2005? demands one of these tele-Communists. In fact, the six cases full of notes that were brought over were examined threadbare for years, and the first volume was printed in 1999! But again, standard.

In truth, there never is a right time to talk the truth about them! Communist journals in India used to be full of glowing accounts about the industrial excellence of East Germany and Czechoslovakia, about the achievements of Ceausescu and his Romania, about the unequalled might of the Soviet Union; about how unemployment had been abolished, how ills that plagued capitalist societies — divorce, crime — were non-existent in Communist countries. If before 1989 you questioned the claims, you were denounced, ''Do you think one-third of humanity is wrong, and you alone are right?'' And after 1989, when the entire Soviet bloc collapsed?

True to form, this time also we read in the CPI(M)'s mouthpiece, People's Democracy, ''The principal reason why this cheap thriller (the phrase for the Mitrokhin record) is being played out in the corporate media now more than ever is not difficult to guess. The recent resurgence of the communists, socialists, and the Left across the globe has certainly made the imperialists press the panic button.... In India, the presence and growth of the CPI(M) has long since been a worry for the ruling classes and their friends and patrons out in the West. The corporate media has, as a willing handmaiden, been periodically albeit regularly feeding out stories maligning the Party and its leadership.''

Facts about Mitrokhin's records:
To gauge the worth of these denunciations, recall that Vasili Mitrokhin defected in 1992. Between 1992 and 1999, his notes were subjected to minute and most careful examination by various levels of the British Government. They scrutinized the information, they examined who to engage as co-author, they weighed how the material ought to be published. Questions such as these were considered by senior civil servants, intelligence agencies, by an interdepartmental committee, by Ministers, by two Prime Ministers. The way the material was handled was subsequently debated in the House of Commons and was examined threadbare by the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament. The Committee was tasked in October 1999 to examine whether it had been handled well. The Parliamentary Committee submitted a detailed report in June 2000. This report was debated extensively.

The first volume of the present work was published in 1999. No one in India made the kinds of allegations that are being hurled now. While we are being fed insinuations to belittle Mitrokhin; while we are being fed the line, for instance, that the entire project has been a conspiracy of British intelligence agencies to discredit British Labour Party leaders, this is what Jack Straw, then Home Secretary and currently the Foreign Secretary of the Labour Government - to tarnish whom we are being told this plot has been engineered — said about Mitrokhin. He told the House of Commons on 21 October, 1999,

''....I entirely endorse what the right hon. Gentleman says about Mr. Mitrokhin's courage. It required huge courage to do what he did. I do not doubt that a great many other people working in the KGB during that long period were pretty disgusted with the work that they were asked to engage in, but very few of them had the courage and tenacity to work, as Mr. Mitrokhin did, to record the huge amount of what was passing across his desk and then to make himself known to intelligence agents in Moscow and have himself and his family brought out at considerable risk. I pay tribute to his courage and acknowledge the benefits that the whole of the West has received as a result of his disclosures''

Similarly, the Parliamentary Committee observed, ''The Committee, during the course of the inquiry, had the opportunity to meet Vasili Mitrokhin. The Committee believes that he is a man of remarkable commitment and courage, who risked imprisonment or death in his determination that the truth should be told about the real nature of the KGB and their activities, which he believed were betraying the interests of his own country and people. He succeeded in this and we wish to record our admiration for his achievement....'' But in India, ''a former low-grade clerk,'' one who ''stole documents,'' one who was so incompetent that he had to be consigned to a backroom dusting archives....

Similarly, while in India the account has been dismissed as ''vague'', ''complete fabrication,'' ''fiction'', ''a spy thriller,'' Britain's Parliamentary Committee had this to say about the value of the material that Mitrokhin had brought over, and on which the Mitrokhin-Andrew volumes are based, ''We are aware that the Western intelligence communities are extremely grateful for Mr Mitrokhin's material, which has shown the degree to which the KGB influenced and penetrated official organizations. Historians also find The Mitrokhin Archive of tremendous value, as it gives a real insight into the KGB's work and the persecution of dissidents.''

But in India , to use Lenin's phrase, ''a shroud of angry words to cover inconvenient facts''! The one question we should be asking, is not being asked: Indian and British intelligence agencies have had close relations; was the material offered to us, as it was offered to other agencies? What did we do about it?

Instead, all sorts of red-herrings are being thrown in the way. Why was this unknown professor, why was this person who was ''alleged to have been embedded in intelligence agencies,'' why was he of all persons chosen as co-author? It just so happens that this question too was examined by the UK Parliamentary Committee. It concluded that in Professor Christopher Andrew of Cambridge University, just the right man had been chosen for the project. Andrews had previously worked on the Gordievsky books. He had been security cleared and had signed the Official Secrets Act, the Committee noted. ''The Committee regards Professor Andrews as a distinguished academic who has specialized in the espionage field,'' the report stated. ''He was a good choice to undertake this work.'' But in India....



Part-II
A society and state in denial In his justly famous memoir, Encounters with Lenin, (Oxford University press, 1968) Nikolay Vladislavovich Volsky, who wrote under the pen-name Valentinov, narrates what is for Communists the hadis in such matters. He recounts what Lenin said to him: ''Marxism is a monolith conception of the world, it does not toler ate dilution and vulgarisation by means of various insertions and additions. Plekhanov once said to me about a critic of Marxism (I've forgotten his name) 'First let's stick the convict's badge on him, and then after that we'll examine this case.' And I think we must stick the convict's badge, on anyone and everyone who tries to undermine Marxism, even if we don't go on to examine his case. That's how every sound revolutionary should react.''

As that is the operating procedure for the much lesser offence — that of mere ''dilution'' of the doctrine — you can imagine how much greater must be the zeal with which the ''convict's badge'' is stuck on one guilty of the much greater crime — the crime of revealing the truth about them.

In a word, we should see that the put-on derision with which Communists and the Congress spokesmen have been trying to bury Mitrokhin's records is just standard procedure, and not let it deflect us from the revelations. For there can be no doubt at all that, as far as India is concerned — our governance, our national security — Mitrokhin's records point to the gravest danger. Remember that the two brief chapters in this volume are but the distillation of trunk-loads of scrupulous notes taken down over twelve years. Even this briefest of brief accounts speaks of penetration by foreign agencies of departments of our Government, including intelligence agencies; of Mrs. Indira Gandhi's coterie; it speaks of the foreign agency's intervention in what we regard as our hallmark, our ''free and fair'' elections; it speaks of the confidence with which the agency maneuvered to build up preferred successors to Prime Ministers; it speaks of funding of Left parties, of trade unions, of the Congress itself; it speaks of how one of the prides of that period — Indo-Soviet trade — became such a handy channel for secret funds; it speaks of infiltration of our other hallmark, our ''free and fair'' media — it recounts the ease with which the KGB and the CIA were able to plant stories; it speaks of the ease with which, and the paltry sums for which the KGB was able to organize ''spontaneous demonstrations'' by Muslims....

Consider just a single paragraph from the chapter: ''Oleg Kalugin, who became head of FCD Directorate K (Counterintelligence) in 1973, remembers India as 'a model of KGB infiltration of a Third World Government': We had scores of sources throughout the Indian Government — in intelligence, counterintelligence, the Defence and Foreign Ministries, and the police.' In 1978, Directorate K, whose responsibilities included the penetration of foreign intelligence and security agencies, was running, through Line KR in the Indian residencies, over thirty agents — ten of whom were Indian intelligence officers. Kalugin recalls one occasion on which Andropov personally turned down an offer from an Indian minister to provide information in return for $ 50,000 on the grounds that the KGB was already well supplied with material from the Indian Foreign and Defence Ministries: 'It seemed like the entire country was for sale; the KGB — and the CIA — had deeply penetrated the Indian Government. After a while neither side entrusted sensitive information to the Indians, realising that their enemy would know all about it the next day.''

Even if we have become so immune to shame by now that we are not led to hang our heads on reading a passage such as this, at least we should consider what that kind of information implies for our national security. Moreover, as the KGB had such ingress into our governmental structures, agencies of other countries too would have had no greater difficulty in suborning persons and influencing policies and decisions. And can that surprise us? When every corporate house is able to plant stories, what difficulty would a foreign government face? And remember, that passage is about the state of affairs thirty years ago. Since then, there has been a precipitate deterioration in both the quality and integrity of persons in public life as well as in the civil service.

For none of the things that Mitrokhin records is the KGB is to blame. That agency was just doing its job for its country. The question is, what were we doing for our country? The question is, what are we to now do to protect our interest? Recall what the British Parliamentary Committee reported about the worth of Mitrokhin's disclosures, and how invaluable these had been to agencies of other countries to neutralise dangers those countries faced — ''Western intelligence communities are extremely grateful for Mr. Mitrokhin's material...,'' ''a case of exceptional counter-intelligence significance, not only illuminating past KGB activity against Western countries but also promising to nullify many of Russia's current assets''.... ''the most detailed and extensive pool of CI (counter-intelligence) ever received by the FBI''.... ''the biggest CI bonanza of the postwar period'' — contrast these acknowledgments, contrast the way agencies of other countries put the material to work, contrast all that with the resolute shutting of eyes in India.

Several lessons leap out from this episode. Notice first what the Communists, their megaphones and their current dependents would have been blaring had even one-thousandth of such disclosures come out about some organization or individual affiliated to the RSS. Two points arise from that contrast. First, is such penetration a threat to our national security if it relates to the RSS and not a threat when it relates to the Communists or the Congress? Second, where do the disclosures leave the high moral ground that the Left appropriates?

It is entirely true that just because someone is named by a foreign intelligence agency or agent, that does not establish him to have been a spy. But surely the right response would be to inquire, at least to find out whether British agencies had offered the information to us and we had failed to follow it up. Nor is this a one-off. Professor Patrick Moynihan was one of the most respected of American academics. He was appointed Ambassador to India during Mrs. Indira Gandhi's time. As Mrs. Gandhi's speeches about the ''foreign hand'' — that always meant the CIA — became incessant, Moynihan commenced an inquiry into what Americans had been doing. In his memoir of the period he wrote that he came across two occasions on which the CIA had provided funds to counter Communist candidates. He wrote, ''Both times the money was given to the Congress Party which had asked for it. Once it was given to Mrs. Gandhi herself, who was then a party official.'' His book was published in the US as well as in India . If what he had said was untrue, what could be a clearer occasion for a defamation case? But absolutely nothing of the kind was done. Just the standard operating procedure: denounce, smear, bury. When the Government so resolutely refuses to make any inquiries, whether the account is of Moynihan or Mitrokhin, what should one conclude?

In the case of the Communists, disclosures about their having received money are the least of the matter — and it does seem to me that the Mitrokhin figures are gross understatements, as if some few zeros have got left out. The figures of Indo-Soviet trade, the quantum of Indian purchases of Soviet arms, and what was said in those days of the sudden wealth of the private parties through whom the Soviets insisted these transactions be made, would suggest transfers of much, much larger amounts. But in their case, money is the least of the matter. Their entire outlook, their ''line'' has been foreign, it has been derived from, to use Mao's phrase, ''the dung-heap of textbooks written abroad.'' And, as has been documented time and again, from instructions received from abroad.

As a result, working for the interest of heir ''international movement'', specifically for the ''fortresses'' of that ''movement'' — the USSR, China — is in their very genes. They traduced Gandhiji and the freedom movement from 1939 for not taking advantage of Britain's difficulties — the war in Europe is just an ''Imperialist war'', they shouted; Gandhi is guilty of collaborating with the Imperialists by not launching a movement to liberate India when Britain was caught defending itself against Hitler. Hitler was, of course, on the side of history then as he had signed a non-aggression pact with Stalin.

Then they switched suddenly — the ''Imperialist war'' became ''People's war'', not because India 's interests had changed but because Hitler had attacked the Soviet Union. They now denounced Gandhi for launching the Quit India Movement! And there was no doubt about the reason: the Soviet Union is ''The Only Fatherland'' for us, they proudly announced in their resolutions, and, in accordance with this new ''assessment'', they entered into a secret understanding with the British Government in India to sabotage the Quit India Movement. In 1947, apart from the Muslim League, they were the only party that advocated the vivisection of India. When India became independent, they declared that India was in fact still under the tutelage of capitalist, Imperial powers, and so its Government must be overthrown.

In 1962, their thesis was that India is the aggressor, not China — which, by definition, could never launch aggression as it was a ''workers' State''. In 1975, they — they, we now see, at the goading of their KGB minders - were all for the Emergency. When China exploded its atomic bomb, they proclaimed it to be a great triumph — a fitting answer to the Imperialists, a decisive step that breaks the monopoly of Imperialist powers. When India went in for atomic weapons, they denounced it — a blow at world peace!

The Mitrokhin disclosures are particularly disturbing for them as they remind us once more, among other ''well known'' facts, of how they and their fellow-travelers, unable to work their Revolution, worked at securing the same goal by infiltration — of the Congress; a sort of ''Revolution-by-stealth''. This was the famous ''Kumarmangalam thesis'' that, as Mitrokhin reports, got such enthusiastic assistance from the KGB. But surely that is not just a reminder of what is past. The Communists have never been closer to attaining that goal as they are today — what with a supine Congress so completely at their mercy.

Nor is it just that the Congress is so completely at their mercy. As Swapan Dasgupta pointed out the other day, the danger is twice compounded — the Congress is completely dependent on the Communists, and the Communists are completely compromised. The Communists have been busy denouncing Mitrokhin's revelations. But as Dasgupta points out, there are several other caches that are coming to light. He draws attention to the fact that the private diaries of a former Soviet Ambassador to India, I. A. Benediktov can now be accessed on the Internet — at the website of the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson Centre, Washington, DC ( http://wilsoncentre.org) In these diaries, Benediktov records plaintive pleas of Bhupesh Gupta, Secretary, National Council of CPI, for funds. He records Gupta's plea that, with Ajoy Ghosh through whom the monies used to be received and disbursed, gone, Namboodripad should be allowed to be brought in to handle funds from the Soviets.

A little later, during China's invasion of India in 1962, Benediktov records Namboodripad's fevered appeals to the Soviets that they abandon their support for India, and the sycophantic gratitude Namboodripad expresses for an editorial that Pravda has carried that suggests a shift away from India. Namboodripad asks Benediktov to inform the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ''that the publication of this article and the advice of the CPSU contained in this letter of the CC CPSU, truly will help our party get out of the extremely difficult position it is now in. Before this, there were moments when we felt ourselves to be simply helpless, but now the party will be able to help this situation. We are grateful to the CC CPSU for this help. You can transmit this personally from me and from Comrade B Gupta.'' In a word, the Congress is completely in the hands of the Communists, and the Communists can be ''motivated'' by so many — those who gave them assistance and guidance, as well as those who may reveal what they got, and with how much gratitude they received it.

So, first of all we must see through their invective. As the Government is in their grip; as, given what Mitrokhin records about infiltration into Mrs. Indira Gandhi's circle, of its own accord the Government itself will not want to pursue the matter, inside Parliament and outside, citizens must put pressure on the Government to institute a full and public inquiry. It must be made to request the British Government for access to Mitrokhin's records, and it must be made to make public what those records reveal about India. But we do not have to go on waiting for the Government to do something in the matter. Papers of several senior Soviet officials are now in various archives. We should form teams of scholars on our own and scrutinize that heap of material for entries that pertain to India.

These are important steps, and they must be taken. But even they are but tiny ancillaries to the main debility we must overcome. The reaction in India, that is the non-reaction to The Mitrokhin Archive is but a symptom — of a state and society in denial. On every matter — what Pakistan was doing in Punjab; what it has been doing in Kashmir as well as its current stratagem to acquire it ''peacefully''; infiltration from Bangladesh; jihadi curricula; the threat Naxalites pose and their links in Bihar, in Andhra; the threat ULFA poses and its links in Assam; the militarization of Tibet, the modernization of Chinese defence forces and their deadly implications for India; the opportunity that the breakdown of governance in vast tracts like Bihar spells for the country's enemies — on each and every matter, our society and state just do not want to face the facts.

The media must see how it assists in this shutting of eyes. By the current ''your reaction journalism'' for one. Mitrokhin's volume is published. It goes to someone from the BJP, ''Sir, this new book by this Russian alleges..., what is your reaction? In brief.'' And then to a Communist, ''Sir, this new book by this Russian alleges..., what is your reaction?'' Both sides covered. Balanced story on air. End of matter. This is the condition that we have to reverse, and disclosures of the Mitrokhin kind are yet another occasion when we can commence to do so. On each of these questions, at each of these turns, induce readers, compel governments to face the facts, and thereby take steps that would save the country.

(Concluded)

Shilpa Shetty trumps Arunachal again

Arun Shourie: Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Every time China advances a claim, watch how our government — and media — react in feeble, confused, and contradictory ways, writes Arun Shourie

November 21, 2007: We were all at the weekly meeting of the BJP members of Parliament. L.K. Advani was presiding. Two of our colleagues represent Arunachal in the Lok Sabha — Tapir Gao and Kiren Rijiju. They drew attention to the fact that Chinese incursions into Arunachal were not just continuing — these were becoming more frequent and the Chinese soldiers were coming in deeper into our territory. They pointed to the statement of a senior official heading our force that is deployed on the border: the official had felt compelled to disclose in a public statement that there had been 146 incursions in just 2007. The MPs — who know the area well, who tour extensively across the state, to whom local inhabitants regularly and naturally bring information — said that the Chinese were now preventing locals from going up to regions where they had been taking their animals for grazing; that they were being supplied goods from Chinese shops...

They drew even sharper attention to an incident that had occurred just three weeks earlier. For as long as anyone could remember, there had been a statue of the Buddha — well inside Indian territory. Local inhabitants used to go up to it — pray, make their offerings. The local commander of the Chinese troops had told Indian soldiers that the statue must be removed. Our soldiers had pointed out that the statue was well within Indian territory, and so there was no question of removing it. The Chinese had come, and blown off the statue...

I raised my hand for permission to speak. It so happened that I was half-way through a book, Why Geography Matters, by the well-known geographer, Harm de Blij. Setting the stage, Blij points to the clues that one can get from maps, and why it is important to pay attention to them — especially when governments publish them. He recalls ‘a telling experience’ he had in 1990. A colleague of his, working then at the University of Baghdad, had sent him an official map that had been published by the Government of Iraq. The map showed Kuwait as the 13th province of Iraq. At a meeting in Washington, Blij had drawn the attention of the then chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives to the map and its implications. The gentleman had told Blij not to worry, the US Ambassador, he said, was on top of things... A few days had not passed, and Iraq had marched its armies into Kuwait... The first Gulf War...

But it was the passage that followed that was of urgent interest to us, and I sought Advani’s permission to read it. The passage is as follows — please do read it carefully:

‘Cartographic aggression takes several forms. Some overt, as in the case of Iraq, others more subtle. In 1993 I received a book titled Physical Geography of China, written by Zhao Sonqiao, published in 1986 in Beijing. On the frontispiece is a map of China. But that map, to the trained eye, looks a bit strange. Why? Because in the south, it takes from India virtually all of the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, plus a piece of the state of Assam. Now this book is not a political geography of China, nor is the matter of appropriated Indian territory ever discussed in it. China’s border is simply assumed to lie deep inside India, and the mountains and valleys thus claimed are discussed as though they are routinely a part of China. Make no mistake: such a map could not, in the 1980s at least, have been published without official approval. It should put not just India but the whole international community on notice of a latent trouble spot.’

BJP members of Parliament are acutely sensitive to national security issues. Here were two colleagues from the state testifying to what the Chinese were doing in Arunachal, and now here was a book that was warning about what was afoot — a book published far away, a book written by an author who had no interest in either running down China or upholding India’s position on anything. The effect was palpable. Advani said that the two MPs and I should attend the BJP press conference that afternoon, and draw the attention of the media to the facts. Advaniji said that, in addition to explaining the background, I should read out the passage too.

When Parliament is in session, the press conference is held every afternoon. The large room was packed with journalists. After Sushma Swaraj and Vijay Kumar Malhotra had dealt with events of the day, Tapir Gao and Kiren Rijiju narrated the facts. I set out the context — and read the foregoing passage.

I had hardly concluded that the usual clutch — pro-Congress, pro-Left — was up in arms. ‘When was the book published?’ one demanded. I couldn’t get the relevance of the question: what has the date of publication got to do with the warning that the author had penned, even more so with the facts that the MPs have set out? ‘No, no. As the book must have been available even during the NDA regime, what did your government do about the matter?’ I hadn’t looked up the date of publication. I did now. The edition I had in hand had been published in 2007! It records that the book was first published in 2005! The journalist subsided. In any case, I pointed out, trying to soften the deflation-by-date, the vital thing is not what the book says — the passage from the book just illustrates that, while others are concerned, we continue to sleep. The thing of vital consequence is what is happening on the ground, and this is what my colleagues here — who represent the area in Parliament — have just narrated.

‘But what did the NDA do about the incursions?’ another member of that clutch demanded. First, the head of the force at the border has spoken about the incursions that have taken place this year, in 2007, I pointed out. What could the NDA government have done about them? But assume that incursions were taking place then, and that the NDA government did nothing. Does that in any way become reason for not doing anything today? Please do have some mercy on our country, I said. Here is China claiming our territory; here it is, having begun that well-rehearsed series of steps which precede a grab. Are we going to divert ourselves from that reality by the usual ‘tu-tu, mein-mein, NDA vs UPA?’

‘No, Mr Shourie,’ — it was the pro-Left journalist — ‘but you have to acknowledge that there is no agreed international border between India and China. So...’ That is the Chinese position as articulated by your paper often, I said. It has not been the position of any Indian Government...

By now enough diversion had been created. The press conference was soon over. My Arunachal colleagues were, of course, disheartened — ‘If this is how much the national press cares...’ I was incensed. For years I have seen such clutches divert attention from life and death issues and been unable to do anything about it. Here was another painful instance.

Not only was the question at hand a matter of life and death for our country. It was one on which we had the most recent historical experience to keep us alert. When Acharya Kripalani, Ram Manohar Lohia, K.M. Munshi and others had first drawn attention to Chinese maps that showed vast swathes of Indian territory to be part of China, Panditji had replied that he had taken up the matter with the Chinese and they had said that these were old, colonial, faulty maps, and, as they had just gained independence, they had not had time to correct them. Later, these very maps were used to argue that the areas had always been part of China. Mao had then declared, Tibet is the palm of China, and the Himalayan kingdoms are the fingers of that palm... Did the journalists not remember any of this?

An anchor from a news channel phoned. I saw your press conference, he said. We have been following this story for many months. Can you please come to our studio?... No, I said, I really am very upset at what happened... But I give you my word, he said, we think this is an important issue, and we are going to follow it in the coming months also. I will send an OB-van to your house.

The van came. The late night news. The earpiece in my ear... All set. Delay — quite understandable: some new eruption in Nandigram... Eventually, the anchor and I are talking.

‘But are you sure about the facts or is the BJP indulging in its usual fear-politics?’ the anchor asks. But why don’t you ascertain them from the two MPs who represent the area? I respond. Better still, why don’t you send your own correspondents and photographers to the area? I inquire. We will, we will, I assure you. I was just making sure...

In any case, look at what the ambassador of China has himself said, I remarked. Remember, just days before Hu Jintao, the Chinese President, was to come to India, the ambassador declared, right here on Indian soil, that Arunachal is a part of China...

‘But maybe he was saying it for rhetorical effect,’ said the anchor.

Rhetorical effect? I skipped a heartbeat. Is the Chinese Ambassador also running after TRP ratings like the TV channels? Would an ambassador say such things just for effect? And that too the ambassador of China, of all countries? You mean an ambassador, you mean the ambassador of China of all countries would claim the territory of the country to which he is accredited, that he would lay claim to an entire state of that country for rhetorical effect? I asked. And remember, I pointed out, he repeated the claim in Chandigarh later. And look at the government of China — it has not distanced itself from the claim advanced by its ambassador. On the contrary, its ‘think-tanks’ have held ‘seminars’ in the wake of the ambassador’s statement. In this the ‘scholars’ and ‘diplomats’ and ‘strategic thinkers’ have declared to the man that Arunachal is ‘Chinese territory under India’s forcible occupation’; that it is ‘China’s Tawang region’; that it is ‘Southern Tibet’ which must be brought under the control of the Tibet Autonomous Region. And you call this rhetorical? That is just lunatic...

The anchor was off to the next item. ‘Be that as it may... Another controversy... Thank you, Mr Shourie. Always a pleasure talking to you. Moving now to a slightly less controversial story...’ ‘SHILPA SHETTY,’ he said, his voice rising, ‘has not been in the news since the famous Richard Gere kiss, but we have her back today. Here she is, SHILPA SHETTY...’

The sound on my earpiece cut. Shilpa Shetty had once again trumped poor Arunachal.

Both sets of exchanges — at the press conference as well as over the TV news channel — had been typical. In part, the problem is extreme, brazen partisanship — and this takes two forms. One is the premise of many: India can never really be in the right: you just have to see the play Musharraf’s devious formulae have got in many of our magazines — the presumption is that we are in the wrong in Kashmir, and so we are the ones who must bend, and go on bending till Pakistan expresses satisfaction. This premise is compounded in the case of many others by commitment: you can rely on several of our colleagues to see merit in China’s stance on everything. The second variant is domestic predilection: the BJP is evil incarnate; because the BJP has raised the issue, the issue itself must be trashed. That is how the mortal danger from Bangladeshi infiltrators has been shouted out. That is how the dual-faced, anti-national politics of many in Kashmir has been shouted out. That is how appeasement of narrow sections for votes is routinely shouted out. That is how what is happening in Arunachal is being shouted out.

And then there is what has become the nature of the media: the obsession with the sound bite on the one side and with the next ‘breaking news’ on the other. Issues like Kashmir, the nuclear deal, the way China is translating its economic strength into military might — these require more than a sound bite. The media has no time for that.

Similarly, to deal with China, to counter Pakistan’s proxy war, the country must sustain a policy for 20-30 years. And for that, you have to keep readers and viewers focused on that issue for decades at a time. But the media is fixated only on what it can project as ‘breaking news’ in this shift — what was ‘breaking news’ in the last shift is ‘old hat’ by this one.

Even more than partisanship, and the obsessions of the current media with the next ‘breaking news’, the problem is superciliousness — this has become the reigning ideology today. What we see every day in papers — that ‘Shilpa Shetty over Arunachal’ business — was brought home to me directly one day. We happened to meet while flying to Mumbai — the owner of one of the country’s foremost newspapers and I. I accosted him about what his paper was carrying on Kashmir — every allegation, every smear that any and every secessionist thug was spitting out at our country and our forces was being carried on the front pages of his paper as fact. Aren’t you reading the nonsense that your paper is printing on Kashmir? I asked. And I gave examples from the preceding few days. The entrepreneur listened. And then exclaimed: ‘Arun bhai, yehi to faraq hai aap mein aur hum mein. Aap abhi bhi hamara paper padhte ho!’ — ‘That is precisely the difference between you and us, Arun bhai. You still read our paper!’

That such a person no longer bothers to read his paper was just a pose. His real message was, ‘Kashmir, did you say? I am above such trifles...’

This weak-kneed government is a problem, of course: its nominal leaders have lifted helplessness to new heights. But the even graver problem now is that the one instrument by which it could be shaken up, the media, has become a problem of its own.

Make no mistake: China watches all this. It watches the feeble, confused, contradictory ways in which our government, and even more our society, reacts each time it advances a claim. And it pursues its policy:

• Claim;

• Repeat the claim;

• Go on repeating the claim;

• Grab;

• Hold;

• Let time pass.

And they will reconcile themselves to the new situation. Has the policy not succeeded in regard to Tibet? No Indian Prime Minister will dare mention the word ‘Tibet’ or ‘Taiwan’ — lest doing so offends China. But China will go on claiming what it wants — for reasons that we must understand!

But why think of Tibet and Taiwan? Has the six-step policy not succeeded in regard to Aksai Chin? In spite of the unanimous resolution that the Parliament passed at the time under Panditji, is there an Indian leader who will today demand that China hand back Aksai Chin? And do you think that when they deliberate over what they are to do in regard to Arunachal, the Chinese do not remember the success they have achieved in Aksai Chin?

The writer is a BJP MP in Rajya Sabha

“The Left distorts” (Interview with Arun Shourie)
Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: India Today
Date: November 23, 1998

Controversy and Arun Shourie are inseparable. He, has taken on
governments, politicians and corporate houses, championed
contentious causes and assumed the role of India's permanent
gadfly. After questioning the mythology centred on Babasaheb
Ambedkar and offending Dalit activists, Shourie has now targeted
Left historians. Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their
Line, Their Fraud (ASA, Rs 350), released last week, is a
characteristically robust attack on India's history
establishment. He has accused it of shoddy scholarship, wilful
distortion and even milking the exchequer He spoke to Deputy
Editor Swapan Dasgupta on his latest battle. Extracts:

Q: Let me start with a question you accuse communists of
constantly asking. Why now?
A: It is what the Gita calls a war unasked for. We should never
shirk work that has been brought upon us. Some magazines
published reports that the BJP Government had changed the
resolution of the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR)
by converting "rational" into "national". It was a concoction by
some CPI(M) members and I learnt from the ICHR staff that the
letter circulated to the newspapers was typed in the ICHR office.
A staff member told one of these so-called historians that it was
not true. He replied. "Who cares? Let it go." That was the
origin. And every newspaper just swallowed it. I contacted the
editors but none of them retracted the story. Even the story
carried by INDIA TODAY was about the eminent historians not
having accepted one penny as if there was a genuine other side to
it.

Q: So you believe that in this controversy there is no other
side?
A: Not yet. Not in the three limited matters which I have touched
upon in the book. Which are: the technology by which they acquire
these institutions and the uses to which they put it to; the
pickpocketing that they do; the complete and systematic
perversion of facts. I don't think there is another side.

Q: It's curious that it took a non-historian to question some of
these assumptions. Why hasn't this challenge come from within the
discipline of history?
A: There are too many establishments in India, the Indian
journalists service, the Indian intellectual service, the Indian
historians service. They capture institutions. There is a great
timidity in India in all intellectual circles. You want a
promotion in the history department, increase in research funds,
funds for travel, promotion, everything depends upon certificates
>from these persons. If you want to challenge the accepted
notions, you not only need a person who is outside the discipline
but one who is deaf to the reproaches of these persons.

Q: Your interventions in history have aroused claims and
counterclaims that you are waging a proxy. political war?
A: These are allegations. Have they found anything wrong with my
facts? When they quote a source, I look it up and I find it is
the opposite. Then they say that he did not look up the correct
one. Whatever they write is politics. So why are they so
surprised that an honest man may also write?

Q: Part of the problem in your view has been caused by shoddy
scholarship and shoddier journalism.
A: Yes. That, as well as slavish scholarship and journalism. One
and a half paras from Stalin's Short History of the CPSU(B). Just
look up any one the books of R.S. Sharma, Satish Chandra, Romila
Thapar or D. N. Jha. It is the slavish mentality, providing
examples that substantiate those one and half paras on
periodisation. Even the Soviet historians have liberated
themselves from those categories. We got stuck in the categories
of the 1920s and 1930s.

Q: But you haven't stopped at mere intellectual slavishness. You
have actually accused these "eminent historians” of milking the
state.
A: Yes. It is a pitiable milking by current standards-all for
just Rs 12,000 or Rs 6.5 lakh. But it is a gross misuse of
authority and position. If the NBT or NCERT send a proposal that
R.C. Majumdar's edited Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series on the
history of India should be translated into Indian languages,
these people would pass a resolution saying that it was not worth
translating into any Indian language. And lo and behold-they will
recommend their own works or that of EMS (Namboodiripad), the
great historian.

The deputy director of ICHR gives a project to Dr Paramatma
Saran, one of the great medievalists in India. He translates and
sends it to ICHR. After his death, the deputy director takes that
manuscript and gets a PhD for himself from Rajasthan University
without changing anything and publishes the book dedicated to
Nurul Hasan and thanking Irfan Habib who wrote a laudatory
foreword to it. In his office there is a picture of him
presenting his book to the then President Shankar Dayal Sharma,
another great scholar. So it's not just milking the state.

Some people in ICHR have told me that well known sociologist A.R.
Desai had been given a project to compile the history of the
trade union movement in India in 15 volumes. He completed the
task before he died. Then it mysteriously disappeared. The
current ICHR chairman has succeeded in tracing these manuscripts
inspite of non-cooperation. By doing so, he has deprived 15
people of their mock PhDs.

Q: None of these details have been seriously contested. But your
detractors sail they will not give you the pleasure of a de
defamation suit because you are beneath contempt?
A: Why aren't they replying through the newspapers. They are
always issuing statements, these six eminent historians, 10
leading intellectuals. They put on lofty airs because they have
no answers.

Q: How should people, governments and public spirited individuals
approach the question of teaching history in schools?
A: I feel that each time their books are recommended, mine should
be too. The students should see what great perversity they are
being made to swallow. There is no sufficient professional
scrutiny, no professional discourse on what has been published.
The same thing gets repeated. Nobody goes back to the sources.
Also, it is a bad idea for governments to get into the business
of preparing textbooks just as it is a bad idea to have
institutions like ICHR. It only leads to the patronage of
intellectuals. This is the bad legacy of Indian socialism.

Q: Will the book be of assistance to the BJP governments which
have also been accused of doctoring history?
A: Firstly I do not know what changes have been brought about by
them. I have asked them (Left historians) to show me those
textbooks which they think have been changed. But they haven't.
It can't be that you set one standard and any departure from that
stand is communal. The cure is that if someone perverts the next
set of history text books then they should also be subjected to
professional scrutiny

Q: Has the spirit of inquiry completely gone out of Indian
intellectuals?
A: Yes, I think so. By and large our work is very derivative in
most subjects. I find this in the case of many subjects. In
history it is slavishness to the verbiage of the 1920s and 1930s.
There is a lack of creativity even in activist movements in
India. When an issue became prominent in the West, five years
later you'll see it prominent in India like feminism, human
rights, big dams, child labour and child prostitution. We are so
blind that someone has to yank our eyelids open for us. I am
considered disreputable if I depart from the standards of
political correctness set by the establishment.

Q: Why does it fall on you to yank open the eyelids, whether it
is on Ambedkar, Ayodhya or ICHR?
A: First. I'm deaf, and secondly, I'm shameless. I am not looking
for a job and find it quite easy to survive without a job. Of
course, they will say he is not a historian, that it is part of a
political agenda. It starts with allegations and smear and will
not stop till they say facts are not as important as social
revolution. It doesn't affect me. I hope readers will see through
it.

The vital difference

Arun Shourie: Monday, December 31, 2007

In the Indic traditions — as opposed to the Middle Eastern traditions — reality is multilayered. Hence no description of it is final: tolerance follows as an article of faith.

So, the first lesson to bear in mind is that every tradition has in it the potential to become extremist. In this sense, our traditions are indeed similar to the Middle Eastern traditions. This similarity should be a warning to governments and parties that keep traducing Hindus, for instance, and pandering to Muslims and the rest just because the latter are aggressive. Everyone learns.

And yet there is a basic, foundational difference — one that points us to what is of inestimable value in Indic traditions; to the priceless pearl that we should preserve, the one that these heedless secularists and the rapacious aggressives do not realise they are pushing Hindus, Buddhists and others to discard. This basic difference is as follows.

When a tradition has the following elements, as each of the three Middle Eastern traditions has, as do the secular traditions of the West — Nazism, Marxism-Leninism — it will invariably be exclusivist, intolerant and aggressive, and it will invariably deploy all means — from propaganda to money to violence:

• Reality is simple;

• It has been revealed to one man;

• He has put it in one Book;

• That Book is inerrant as well as exhaustive: so that whatever is in it is true, that it is true for all time; and that whatever is not in it or is contrary to what is in it, is false or useless or worse;

• But the Book is difficult to understand; hence, you need a guide, an intermediary, a monitor: in a word, the Church, the ulema, or the Party;

• The Book covers, the intermediary must cover every aspect of life: there is no distinction between the private and the public sphere, between the Secular and the Religious, between the State and the Church. These doctrines are totalitarian — in both senses: they insist on governing the totality of life — the Roman Catholic Church’s minatory insistence against contraception, for instance, and the reams and reams of fatwas that deal with even more intimate matters; they are also totalitarian in the sense that what they prescribe on any aspect just must be obeyed;

• The test of piety is adherence to that Book and to the prescriptions of that intermediary — in every sphere of life;

• It is the duty of that intermediary, indeed of every believer to ensure that all come to accept and adhere to The Message — there is only one Message;

• As the Message is the ‘Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth,’ as there is no truth beside it, those who do not accept the Message are cussed; worse, they are thwarting the Will of Allah, or its equivalent — the march of History in Marxism-Leninism;

• Hence, it is the duty of every believer, and even more so of that intermediary to use all means to make them accept the Message, and if, even after being offered the opportunity to accept it, they refuse, to vanquish them all together.

When these elements are present, the tradition will have one singular objective: dominance. It will become an ideology of power, a dogma that rationalises everything in the pursuit of hegemony. The dogma will necessarily gravitate to, among other things, violence.

Contrast those elements with propositions that are central to the Indic traditions:

• Reality is multilayered complexity: both in the sense that there are layers within layers of it, and in the sense of each element mingling into others: the Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh refers to the latter as ‘inter-being’;

• It has not been revealed exclusively to one person: several have glimpsed it;

• They have put down approximate descriptions of that reality as well as hints of how to glimpse it in some books: these are travel guides;

• Perceiving that Truth is an overwhelming, incomparable experience; it is the one joy that lasts. This life gives each of us a unique opportunity to bathe in that effulgence. If we don’t, the loss will be ours — but that is about it: the Truth is not affected; the guides are not falsified;

• It is not just the Book or some singular great figure who can teach us; everything, every event, every relationship can be a teacher guiding us to glimpse the Truth — indeed, our object should be to make everything teach us. The essential points are three: different ways will suit different persons; second, the individual is the one who has to strive — as ‘an island unto himself’; third, the striving, the search is an inner-directed one. It has nothing to do with the state or power or dominance over nature or man;

• In pursuing this inner-directed search, indeed in leading one’s life, the test is not adherence to any of these travel guides, nor obedience to any intermediary, but darshan — the traveller’s own experience: do not mistake the finger pointing to the moon — that is, my teaching — for the moon, the reality, the Buddha counsels.

Every single element in these traditions guides and pulls the believer in the direction that is the exact opposite of the Middle Eastern traditions. Reality is multilayered, hence no description of it is final: tolerance follows as an article of faith. The search is to be an inner-directed one: where, then, is there a case for converting some dar ul harb into some dar ul Islam? The touchstone is not that I am adhering to what some book says or what some person, howsoever worthy, prescribed. The touchstone is my own experience. The consequence of even this single article is immense and radical. The Gita is set in a battlefield. At the end, Arjuna declares that all his doubts are settled. He goes into gory battle. Yet Gandhiji derived non-violence from it. The orthodox berated him. Where do you get the authority to advance such a notion, they demanded. Gandhiji’s answer? From here, his heart. What is written in this book, he says in Anashakti Yoga, is the result of thirty years’ unremitting effort to live the Gita in my life. When Mansur speaks to his experience, he is executed. Within Islam, the Sufis were a beleaguered sect . . .

Putting belief into practice

It is entirely possible, of course, to be earnest about one’s religious beliefs, practices, rituals and not turn to violence or to converting others through allurements or violence. Indeed, we can go further and say that in all traditions, the majority of people in their practice, in their day-to-day life are like each other: each of them has a hard enough time getting through her or his daily struggles to spare time and effort to forcing or even inducing others or even persuading others to his particular way. But when the religion insists that the object is to convert, to ‘harvest souls’ for Jesus, when it declares that all of dar ul harb must be converted into the dar ul Islam; when the religion is a doctrine of dominance, being earnest about one’s religion comes to include as an essential element that the believer assist in spreading that religion, and that he use all means to do so. If a believer does not do so, he is deficient in his belief.

That is why in the hadis, we find the Prophet repeatedly enumerating the boons that accrue to the martyr and his relatives from jihad, from killing and being killed in the cause of Islam. The pre-eminent rewards, of course, accrue to the one who joins in the fighting himself, the Prophet declares in scores of hadis. But even the one who does not do so directly, will be rewarded for every bit of assistance that he gives for the establishment, defence and spread of Islam, the Prophet declares. When a man keeps a horse for the purpose of jihad, ‘tying it with a long tether on a meadow or in a garden... whatever it eats from the area of the meadow or the garden where it is tied will be counted as good deeds for his benefit, and if it should break its rope and jump over one or two hillocks then all its dung and its footmarks will be written as good deeds for him; and if it passes by a river and drinks water from it even though he had no intention of watering it, even then he will get the rewards for its drinking.’ And again, even more generally, ‘If somebody keeps a horse in Allah’s Cause motivated by his belief in His Promise, then he will be rewarded on the Day of Resurrection for what the horse has eaten or drunk and for its dung and urine.’ [Sahih al-Bukhari, 52.44, 49, 105; similarly, Muwatta’ Imam Malik, 951, Mishkat al-Masabih, Book XVIII, Volume II, p. 822. The hadis compilations as well as books on shariah are filled with scores and scores of such exhortations and promises.]

By contrast ‘the one who died but did not fight in the way of Allah,’ the Prophet declares, ‘nor did he express any desire (or determination) for jihad, died the death of a hypocrite.’ [Sahih Muslim, 4696.] Again, the Prophet declares, ‘He who dies without having fought or having felt fighting (against the infidels) to be his duty will die guilty of a kind of hypocrisy.’ And yet again, ‘He who does not join the warlike expedition (jihad), or equip a warrior, or look well after a warrior’s family when he is away, will be smitten by Allah with a sudden calamity.’ Hence, commands the Prophet, ‘Use your property, your persons and your tongues in striving against the polytheists.’ [Sunan Abu Dawud, 2496-98.]

Such commands follow ineluctably from the propositions that I listed above. We shut this fact out by two blindfolds. We judge a faith by looking at ‘people like us’ — most of the ones we know are ‘persons like us’, they do not live by such commands, but it is precisely because they are ‘like us’ that they are in our social circle. Unfortunately, the outcome is determined, not by the millions who lead ordinary lives, lives like ours, but by microscopic minorities: to say, ‘But the majority of Muslims did not want Partition’ may be true but is little consolation — that did not save the country from being partitioned. Similarly, to say ‘But millions are living peacefully today, they have not the slightest intention of setting off for jihad’ is true but equally little consolation: the ones who take the propositions seriously and thereby heed the hadis, are the ones who are determining the direction that events are taking.

And the direction that Islam itself is taking. Once they enter the stage, the extremists come to set the standard of fidelity and piety within a community. The tradition metamorphoses in no time: look at the change that has swept Islam in Southeast Asia in just fifteen years.

Second, we often lull ourselves with the thought, ‘But so what if someone wears the scarf or burqa? If they want to send their children to madrasas, what business is it of ours?’ But there is a technology to all this. The ones steering a community make a point of starting with a completely innocuous demand, by inducing believers to adhere to a practice that does not inconvenience non-believers in any way. The headscarf, for instance, or the new piety-statement in lands as far apart as Egypt and Pakistan, the zebibah — the dark, calloused bump that registers on the forehead when it is repeatedly struck or rubbed on the ground during prayers. [For our own neighbourhood, observe the visitors from Pakistan; for Egypt, see, for instance, Michael Slackman, ‘Mark of piety as plain as a bump on the head,’ IHT, December 13, 2007.] Non-believers are not inconvenienced by such signs, and yet the practices go far. They become a device for making the adherent realise that she is not the same as the others, and to make her or him announce that she is not one of the others. Simultaneously, the marks drill into others that the adherents have come to look upon themselves as separate. When the non-believers in turn start treating them as separate, that they are doing so becomes a grievance. And thus another argument is acquired for transiting from separateness to separatism.

Hence, all who are apprehensive of a Hindu reaction should:

• Get to know the non-Indic traditions;

• Shed denial — from denial of what the basic texts of the non-Indic traditions say to denial of the demographic aggression in the Northeast;

• Most important of all, work to ensure a completely fair and an absolutely firm state; and an even-handed discourse.

For their part, the Hindus cannot recline back, confident that the reaction will take care of the current pressures. They too have much to do. In particular, they must

• Awaken to the fact that the danger does not come just from violence and money; it comes as much from the purposive use of the electoral system;

• And so, they must organise themselves for this challenge as much as for others;

• For this, they must vault over internal divisions, in particular the curse of caste;

• Be alert not just to assault by others, but also to perversions from within: the commercialisation of the tradition; its becoming a commerce with deities — ‘Please get me this contract, and I will . . .’; its becoming ostentatious religiosity; persons setting themselves up as the guardians of the tradition, and then using the perch for self-aggrandisement . . .

• Get to know the tradition; and live it.

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.

Arun Shourie Interview: Rediff.com

'There is not one instance, not one single, solitary instance in which Ambedkar participated in any activity connected with that struggle to free the country'

Arun Shourie's book 'Woshipping False Gods' The recent furore following the desecration of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar's statue in Bombay has largely been interpreted as the resurgence of the dalit movement in India. A phenomenon which first saw its genesis in the philosophy and personality of Dr B R Ambedkar 50 years ago.

In his latest book, Worshipping False Gods, Arun Shourie challenges Dr Ambedkar's contribution to Indian Independence. The book has already run into controversy and several dalit organisations in Maharashtra want it banned.

Ambedkar's public life begins in a sense from a public meeting held at the Damodar Hall in Bombay on March 9, 1924. The struggle for freeing the country from the British was by then in full swing. Swami Vivekananda's work, Sri Aurobindo's work, the Lokmanya's work had already stirred the country. Lokmanya Tilak had passed away in 1920. The leadership of the National Movement had fallen on Gandhiji. He had already led the country in the Champaran satyagraha, the Khilafat movement, in the satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act, against the killings in Jallianwala Bagh and the merciless repression in Punjab. This National Movement culminated in the country's Independence in 1947.

In a word, a quarter century of Ambedkar's public career overlapped with this struggle of the country to free itself from British rule. There is not one instance, not one single, solitary instance in which Ambedkar participated in any activity connected with that struggle to free the country. Quite the contrary--at every possible turn he opposed the campaigns of the National Movement, at every setback to the Movement he was among those cheering the failure.

Thus, while the years culminated in the country's Independence, in Ambedkar's case they culminated in his becoming a member of the Viceroy's Council, that is -- to use the current terms -- a Minister in the British Cabinet in India.

The writings of Ambedkar following the same pattern. The Maharashtra government has by now published 14 volumes of the speeches and writings of Ambedkar. These cover 9,996 pages. Volumes up to the 12th contain his speeches and writing up to 1946. These extend to 7,371 pages. You would be hard put to find one article, one speech, one passage in which Ambedkar can be seen even by inference to be arguing for India's Independence. Quite the contrary.

Pause for a minute and read the following:

All me to say that the British have a moral responsibility towards the scheduled castes. They may have moral responsibilities towards all minorities. But it can never transcend the moral responsibility which rests on them in respect of the untouchables. It is a pity how few Britishers are aware of it and how fewer are prepared to discharge it. British rule in India owes its very existence to the help rendered by the untouchables. Many Britishers think that India was conquered by the Clives, Hastings, Coots and so on. Nothing can be a greater mistake. India was conquered by an army of Indians and the Indians who formed the army were all untouchables. British rule in India would have been impossible if the untouchables had not helped the British to conquer India. Take the Battle of Plassey which laid the beginning of British rule or the battle of Kirkee which completed the conquest of India. In both these fateful battles the soldiers who fought for the British were all untouchables...

Who is pleading thus to whom? It is B R Ambedkar writing on 14 May 1946 to a member of the (British) Cabinet Mission, A V Alexander.

Nor was this a one-of slip, an arrangement crafted just for the occasion. Indeed, so long as the British were ruling over India, far from trying to hide such views, Ambedkar would lose no opportunity to advertise them, and to advertise what he had been doing to ensure that they came to prevail in practice. Among the faithful his book What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables is among the most admired and emulated of his writings. It was published in 1945, that is just two years or so before India became Independent.

As we shall see when we turn to Ambedkar's views on how harijans may be raised, it is an out and out regurgitation of the things that the British rulers and the missionaries wanted to be said, of the allegations and worse that they had been hurling at our civilisation and people. The book has been published officially by the education department of the government of Maharashtra, and is sold at a subsidised price! It constitutes Volume IX of the set Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches. It reproduces the speech Ambedkar made at the Round Table Conference -- a speech which served the designs of the British rulers to the dot, and for which, as we shall soon see, they were ever so grateful to Ambedkar for it became one of the principal devices for thwarting Gandhiji.

In the speech Ambedkar addresses the prime minister and says, "Prime minister, permit me to make one thing clear. The depressed classes are not anxious, they are not clamorous, they have not started any movement for claiming that there shall be an immediate transfer of power from the British to the Indian people.... Their position, to put it plainly, is that we are not anxious for transfer of power from the British to the Indian people.... Their position, to put it plainly, is that we are not anxious for transfer of political power...." But if the British were no longer strong enough to resist the forces which were clamouring for such transfer, Ambedkar declared, then his demand was that they make certain arrangements-- arrangements which we shall encounter repeatedly in his speeches and writings, the essential point about which was to tie down the new government of Independent India.

'Nationalist leaders were neither surprised that Ambedkar was on the platforms with Jinnah, nor had they any doubts about the inspiration behind these celebrations'

Ambedkar and his patrons were dealt a humiliating blow by the elections of 1937. There were a total of 1,585 seats in the 11 assemblies in 'British India'. Of these 777 were 'tied'-- in the sense that they were to be filled by communal or special representation from Chambers of Commerce, plantations, labour etc. Of the 808 'general' seats, the Congress, which Ambedkar, Jinnah and others denounced from the house tops, won 456. It secured absolute majorities in 5 assemblies -- those of Madras, United Provinces, Central Provinces, Bihar and Orissa. And was the largest single party in 4 others-- Bombay, Bengal, Assam and the NWFP.

From the point of view of Ambedkar and the British -- who had been holding him up to counter the Congress claim that it represented the harijans as much as any other section of Indian society -- worse was the fact that the Congress did extremely well in the seats which had been reserved for harijans. Thirty seats were reserved for harijans in Madras Presidency, the Congress contested 26 and won 26. In Bihar there were 24 reserved seats -- in 9 of these Congress candidates were returned unopposed; of the remaining 15 reserved seats, it contested 14, and won 14.

In Bombay of the 15 reserved seats, it secured 1 unopposed, contested 8 and won 5. In the United Provinces there were 20 reserved seats; two of its candidates were returned unopposed; it contested 17 seats and won 16. In Bengal of the 30 reserved seats, it contested 17 and won 6. In the Central Provinces of the 19 reserved seats, it contested 9 and won 5.

The lesson was there for all to see. Reporting to the Viceroy on the result in the Bombay Presidency, the Governor, Lord Brabourne wrote, "Dr Ambedkar's boast of winning, not only 15 seats which are reserved for the harijans, but also a good many more -- looks like being completely falsified, as I feared it would be."

The electorate, including the harijans, may have punctured his claims but there was always the possibility of reviving one's fortunes through politicking and maneuvers. Efforts of all these elements were focused on the objective of installing non-Congress ministries in Bombay and wherever else this was a possibility. Brabourne reported to the viceroy that Jamnadas Mehta, the finance minister "who is chief minister in all but name", was telling him that the ministry in Bombay would survive motions on the budget and may even get through the motion of no-confidence:

"His calculations are based on the fact that he expects to get the support of the bulk of the Muhammadans, the whole of Ambedkar's Scheduled Castes Party, and of half a dozen or so of those individuals who stood as Congressmen merely to get elected," he reported. But added, "I gather that he is in touch with Ambedkar, who is carrying on negotiations for him, but, as you will find from the next succeeding paragraph, it rather looks to me as if Ambedkar is playing a thoroughly double game, in which case Jamnadas Mehta's hopes are likely to be rudely shattered."

The governor went on to report that he had also had a long conversation with Jinnah, and that Jinnah had told him that, in the event of the ministry being defeated, the Muslim League would be prepared to form a ministry provided they could secure a majority of even two or three in the assembly. "He (that is, Jinnah) went on to say that Ambedkar and his party were prepared to back him in this," Brabourne reported, "and that he expected to get the support of ten or a dozen of the so-called Congress MLAs mentioned above.

He made it quite clear to me that they would not support the present ministry. The governor was sceptical about the claims and assurances of all of them. He wrote, "It is, of course, quite impossible to rely on anything that Jinnah tells me, and the only thing for me to do is to listen and keep silent. I obviously cannot tell Jamnadas Mehta what Jinnah told me, or vice versa, as both of them are hopelessly indiscreet. The only thing that is clear is that a vast amount of intrigue is going on behind the scenes, but, in the long run, I cannot see anything coming out of it at all, as none of these people trust each other round the corner. Were to hazard a guess, it would still be that the present ministry will be defeated on the budget proposals and the alternative will then lie between Congress or Section 93"-- the equivalent of our present-day governor's rule.

Congress ministries were formed. And in 1939 they resigned in view of the British government's refusal to state what it intended to do about Indian Independence after the War. Jinnah announced that the Muslim League would celebrate the resignations as 'Deliverance Day.' Guess who was at his side in these 'celebrations' addressing meetings from the same platforms? Ambedkar, of course.

Nationalist leaders were neither surprised that Ambedkar was on the platforms with Jinnah, nor had they any doubts about the inspiration behind these celebrations. Addressing the Congress Legislature Party in Bombay on 27 December, 1937, Sardar Patel noted, "We cannot forget how Sir Samuel Hoare set the Muslims against the Hindus when the unity conference was held at Allahabad. The British statesmen in order to win the sympathy of the world, now go on repeating that they are willing to give freedom to India, were India united.

The 'Day of Deliverance' was evidently calculated to make the world and particularly the British public believe that India was not united and that Hindus and Muslims were against each other. But when several sections of Muslims were found to oppose the 'Day of Deliverance', the proposed anti-Hindu demonstrations were converted into a Jinnah-Ambedkar-Byramji protest against the Congress ministries and the Congress high command..."

That rout in the election remained a thorn in the heart of Ambedkar for long. A large part of What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables which Ambedkar published in 1945 is a tortuous effort to explain that actually the Congress had not done well in the election, that in fact, while groups such as his which had opposed Congress had been mauled even in reserved constituencies, they had triumphed, and the Congress, in spite of the seats having gone to it, had actually been dealt a drubbing!

Though this is his central thesis, Ambedkar gives reasons upon reasons to explain why he and his kind have lost and why the Congress has won! One of the reasons he says is that the people in general believe that the Congress is fighting for the freedom of the country. This fight for freedom, Ambedkar says, "has been carried on mostly by Hindus." It is only once that the Mussalmans took part in it and that was during the short-lived Khilafat agitation. They soon got out of it, he says. The other communities, particularly the untouchables, never took part in it.

A few stray individuals may have joined it -- and they did so, Ambedkar declares, for personal gain. But the community as such has stood out. This is particularly noticeable in the last campaign of the "Fight For Freedom", which followed the 'Quit India Resolution' passed by the Congress in August 1942, Ambedkar says. And this too has not been just an oversight, in Ambedkar's reckoning it was a considered boycott. The Untouchables have stayed out of the Freedom Movement for good and strong reasons, he says again and again.

'Even though he had been heaping scorn at them for a quarter of a century, the Congress leaders put all that aside and invited him to join the government'

Independence came. For all the venom he had poured at Gandhiji and the Congress, Ambedkar was back in the Cabinet, this time Pandit Nehru's Cabinet of Independent India. How did he get there?

Ambedkar's own explanation was typical of the man: he had done nothing to seek a position in the new government, Ambedkar told Parliament later, it was the new prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru who had urged him to join the new government; the offer had come to him as a surprise, he said, he had been full of doubts, but in the end he had yielded to the call of duty and to the plea that he make his talents available to the new government -- that is how things had gone according to Ambedkar. Recall the pleas to Atlee, and set them against Ambedkar's reconstruction of the sequence in the speech he made in the Lok Sabha. It was 10 October 1951 and Ambedkar was explaining his resignation from the Cabinet of Panditji:

It is now 4 years, 1 month and 26 days since I was called by the prime minister to accept the office of the law minister in the Cabinet. The offer came as a great surprise to me. I was in the opposite camp and had already been condemned as unworthy of association when the interim government was formed in August 1946. I was left to speculate as to what could have happened to bring about this change in the attitude of the prime minister. I had my doubts. I did not know how I could carry on with those who had never been my friends. I had doubts as to whether I could, as a law member, maintain the standard of legal knowledge and acumen which had been maintained by those who had preceded me as law ministers of the government of India. But I kept my doubts at rest and accepted the offer of the prime minister on the ground that I should not deny my co-operation when it was asked for in the building up of our nation...

In a word, the reluctant expert who eventually yields to the implorings of others so as to help the poor country that needs his talents. Far from a word of gratitude for the fact that, even though he had been heaping scorn at them for a quarter of a century, even though he had been a most ardent member of the British government which had thrown them and kept them in jails for years, the Congress leaders had put all that aside and invited him to join the government, far from there being any word of gratitude, there was not a word even of appreciation, even of a mere acknowledgment at least for their sagacity, if not their magnanimity, in putting so much of the past -- of the past that was so recent, of the past that had been so bitter -- behind them. The new leaders had implored him to join the government as they had no alternative, so indispensable were the man's talents -- that was the implicit refrain.

The diary of Indrani Devi, the widow of Jagjivan Ram, records the exact opposite. In the entry entitled, Ambedkar ki sifaarish, she records,

And on this side Ambedkar had started coming over to our house. One day he (Ambedkar) told him to put in a word with Gandhiji to have him (Ambedkar) included in the Cabinet. Before talking to Gandhiji he (Jagjivan Ram) talked to Sardar Patel. Sardar Patel said, do what you think is appropriate. He (Jagjivan Ram) got into quite a quandary -- that Ambedkar had always opposed Gandhiji and the Congress, how could he now recommend his case to Gandhiji? Even so, given his large-heartedness, he pleaded with Gandhiji on behalf of Ambedkar, and told him that as he has surrendered in front of you please request Nehruji so that he may be taken into the first Cabinet.

In any event, either as a result of his lobbying or because Pandit Nehru requested him, Ambedkar joined the government. He broke with Nehru four years later and denounced the Congress and Nehru. He entered into an electoral alliance with the Socialists to oppose the Congress in the 1952 elections. His party was wiped out. There were a total of 489 seats in the Lok Sabha. Of these the Congress secured 364, that is almost three-quarters. Ambedkar's party got no seat in the Parliament, only one set in the Bombay assembly, and one in that of Hyderabad.

But presumably the inference to be drawn from this defeat too is the same. "It was a colossal failure, and Ambedkar fell like a rocket," writes his admiring biographer, Dhananjay Keer, about the election result. "It proved once again that there is no gratitude in politics. The nation which had conferred so much glory on him seemed now unwilling to show him gratitude..."

But I anticipate. For the moment we need bear in mind just a few facts.

'Ambedkar was one of the few politicians who supported the Muslim League demand for Pakistan'

Throughout the twenty-five years of his public life before the British left India, Ambedkar took positions which were ever so convenient for the British, throughout these twenty-five years he hurled pejoratives at the Congress, in particular Gandhiji. At every turn he put forward formulae and demands which enabled the British to counter the national movement for freedom. The British were fully aware of the use he was to them, and they were anxious to give him a hand so that he could become even more the exclusive leader of the scheduled castes.

We shall have occasion soon to see what happened at the Round Table Conference in 1931, and what happened in its wake: Gandhiji had to stake his very life to thwart the maneuver the British made -- in consultation with Ambedkar, and to his great acclaim -- to split Hindu society asunder. Gandhiji survived, but he was kept in jail, as were the other Congress leaders. Ambedkar, of course, was again on his way to England to attend yet another Round Table Conference. And as on the previous occasion, what he said and did was to the full satisfaction of the British rulers.

On 28 December 1932, the Secretary of State, Sir Samuel Hoare, was recounting the proceedings for the Viceroy. He wrote, "Ambedkar had behaved very well at the (Round Table) Conference, and I am most anxious to strengthen his hands in every possible way. Coming from a family whose members have almost always been in the (British) Army, he feels intensely that there are no Depressed Class units left. Could you not induce the Commander-in-Chief to give them at least a Company? Ambedkar tells me that the Depressed Class battalion did much better in the Afghan War than most of the other Indian battalions. In any case, I feel sure that at this juncture it would be a really valuable political act to make a move of this kind."

Next, Ambedkar argued long and vehemently that India must not be given Independence in the foreseeable future. We have already seen some of his urgings in this regard. Consider an example from another sphere. As is well known, apart from the Communists, Ambedkar was one of the few politicians who supported the Muslim League demand for Pakistan. One side of his argument was that Muslims cannot stay in a multi-religious society; the other side of his argument was that no one can stay with the Hindus either, by which he always meant "upper-caste exploiters".

That in brief was the thesis of his book, Thoughts on Pakistan. In private he was telling the British something quite different. He had been yearning to be included in the Viceroy's administration, and in mid-1940 it was presumed that, in view of what he had been saying and doing, his induction was just a matter of days.

But those were uncertain times and the calculations of the British were changing from day to day: they were at war with Hitler; they knew that opinion within the Congress was divided, some important elements were of the view that Britain should be supported even though they were not prepared to spell out what they would do about India after the war; so they had to keep in mind the possibility of strengthening this section within the Congress. They also knew that inducting a person like Ambedkar would offend the Congress as a whole no end.

At the last minute, therefore, the Viceroy had called Ambedkar and the other aspirant, M S Aney, and told them that he would have to put off the expansion of his Council for the time being. Not only that, in view of what he might have to do to win co-operation of the Congress, the Viceroy had had to tell Ambedkar that he could not bind himself or his successor about the future. Recounting his meeting with Ambedkar the Viceroy told the Secretary of State on 19 November 1940, in a communication marked "Private and Personal," "I was at pains to protect my successor and myself so far as he was concerned by making it clear that while if circumstances led me to invite him to work with me again, it would give me personal pleasure to have him as a colleague, I or my successor must be regarded as wholly uncommitted in the matter, and under no obligation of any sort."

The conversation had then turned to the demand for Pakistan. The Viceroy noted, "He (Ambedkar) was quite clear that Muslims proposed to hold to their demands for 50:50 and so gradually lay the foundation of Pakistan, and he was perfectly content himself, he said, with that state of things, and in favour of the Pakistan idea quite frankly because it meant the British would have to stay in India. He saw not the least prospect of our overcoming difficulties here by guarantees of any sort and (like most minorities) he has, I suspect, little interest in constitutional progress...."

Eventually, of course, the British had decided that they would just have to leave. Ambedkar then pleaded with them that they tie the new government by a Treaty. Then that they get his organisation a place in the new set up. Then he went and pleaded with Jagjivan Ram, the sort of man on whom he had poured scorn for decades.

But today that very Ambedkar is a Bharat Ratna!

'Ambedkar collaborated with the British to undermine Gandhiji'

All the facts which have been recounted above were well known fifty years ago. With the passing of the generation that fought for Independence, with the total abandonment of looking up the record, most of all with the rise of casteist politics, they have been erased from public awareness. And that erasure has led to the predictable result: schizophrenia.

To start with, those trading in Ambedkar's name and their apologists have sought to downplay the struggle for Independence: the freedom it brought is not "real", they insist. Exactly as that other group did which teamed up with the British at that crucial hour, 1942 -- the Communists. Indeed, as we shall see in the concluding part of the book, to justify Ambedkar's conduct his followers insist that British Rule was better.

Next, they have sought to exaggerate the hardship that Ambedkar had to put up with, to almost rub out the fact, for instance, that at every step -- for instance in his education -- he received fulsome help from persons belonging to the higher castes; by exaggerating the hardships the apologists seek to explain away Ambedkar's collaborating with the British, his hankering for office: these hardships were the sort that are commonplace in India -- one has only to recall the circumstances in which Swami Vivekananda matured, one has only to recall the starvation which stared him in the face, the calumny and humiliations he had to fight back; but in the case of one and each of our leaders the hardships became the crucible which steeled their resolve to rid our country of British rule; it is only in Ambedkar's case that his followers and apologists think that those hardships justify his collaborating with the British against the national movement.

And, of course, these persons have made a practice of denouncing and calumnising Mahatma Gandhi: Gandhiji was the great leader, even more so he was the great symbol of that struggle for Freedom; as Ambedkar collaborated with the British to undermine him, as for 25 years he heaped on the Mahatma calumnies which the British found so valuable, his apologists abuse and denigrate and belittle the Mahatma. In doing this they work out their own poisons -- poisons which, as we shall see, are the inescapable legacy of leaders who have not cast out the thorn of hatred before they come to wield influence.

Today the abuse he hurled at Gandhiji provides the precedent: the apologist's case, as Kanshi Ram said recently while explaining the venom his associate Mayawati had spewed at the Mahatma, is, "We are followers of Babasaheb, we only keep repeating what he used to say." They are at the same time serving their convenience: they have made Ambedkar's style, so to say, as also the facility with which he allied with those who were out to keep the country subjugated, the rationalisation for their own politics.

But the facts lurk in the closet. Lest they spill out and tarnish the icon they need for their politics, lest their politics be shown up for what it is -- a trade in the name of the dispossessed -- these followers of Ambedkar enforce their brand of history through verbal terrorism, and actual assault.

And intimidation works. Editors and others conclude, "Better leave bad enough alone."

Excerpted from Worshipping False Gods by Arun Shourie, ASA Publishers, 1997, Rs 450, with the author's permission. Those interested in obtaining a copy of the book can contact the distributor at Bilblia Impex Pvt Ltd, 2/18, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110001or bibimpex@giasdl01.vsnl.net.in