The Ferengi's Columns: A Western journalist opening his eyes to the true India 9788124107959

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Dedicated to “ Sri Sri ”

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The author wishes to express his gratitude to Sudheendra Kulkarni, one time editor of Blitz; to Mr. Narayanan, editor of the Hindustan Times, when it was still a versatile newspaper; and to Shekhar Gupta, editor of the Indian Express, who stuck by him in spite of a lot of internal resistance !

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Contents FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR ............................................................................. 7 1. AYODHYA ....................................................................................................... 9 THE SYMBOL OF AYODHYA ............................................................................. 9 THE BOMBAY BLASTS ................................................................................... 12 WHY AYODHYA ? .......................................................................................... 14 2. KASHMIR : A DEAD-END AND A SOLUTION .................................................. 17 THE SHADOW OF A HORSE ........................................................................... 17 THE KASHMIRI "FREEDOM" FIGHTERS .......................................................... 20 KASHMIR AND THE FOREIGN JOURNALISTS .................................................. 22 PAKISTAN AND KASHMIR .............................................................................. 25 3. THE CHRISTIANS : A MINORITY IN MORAL MAJORITY .................................. 27 THE CHRISTIAN STORY : A WARPED INDIAN MEDIA ...................................... 27 THE RIGHT WAY TO WELCOME THE POPE .................................................... 29 THE HINDU ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY ........................................................... 31 CHRIST AND THE NORTH-EAST ..................................................................... 33 THE "PERSECUTION" OF CHRISTIANS IN INDIA ............................................. 35 4. THE HINDUS : A MAJORITY IN MORAL MINORITY......................................... 39 POOR HINDUS ! ............................................................................................ 39 THE GREAT AMBITION OF HINDUISM ........................................................... 41 EDUCATION : WHAT THE HELL IS THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT ?.................... 44 " SEVA AND GOVERNMENT " ........................................................................ 47 ARE HINDUS COWARDS ? ............................................................................. 50 5. THE INDIAN MEDIA: AN HOSTILE FORCE ...................................................... 54 INDIAN JOURNALISTS ................................................................................... 54 THE INDIAN MEDIA AND GURUS .................................................................. 56 AN INDIAN SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM ........................................................... 57 HOW FOREIGN JOURNALISTS VIEW INDIA .................................................... 60 AN ANSWER TO SWISS JOURNALIST BERNARD IMHASLY .............................. 64 6. THE (UNFRIENDLY) NEIGHBOURS IN ASIA .................................................... 68 Pakistan ........................................................................................................ 68 THE "FRIENDLY" TALIBANS ........................................................................... 72 SRI LANKA ..................................................................................................... 75 4

The Great Japanese Hypocrisy ...................................................................... 77 7. THE WEST AND INDIA................................................................................... 80 AN OPEN LETTER TO THE US PRESIDENT ...................................................... 80 "THE TRUTH ABOUT INDO-FRENCH RELATIONS" .......................................... 82 THE SECRET BROTHERHOOD OF INDIA AND ISRAEL...................................... 84 RUSSIA AND INDIA : SHARING THE SAME FIGHT ........................................... 86 8. EXAMPLES NOT TO FOLLOW ........................................................................ 89 THE LESSONS OF EAST TIMOR FOR INDIA ..................................................... 89 " THE BLACK KARMA OF THE WEST IN KOSOVO " ......................................... 91 THE TERRIBLE FATE OF TIBET ........................................................................ 95 9. THE FALSE GODS .......................................................................................... 99 WAS MAHATMA A MISFIT?........................................................................... 99 RAMA RAO, AN ACTOR OR A CHIEF MINISTER ? ......................................... 101 EXPLODING THE MOTHER TERESA MYTH ................................................... 103 SONIA GANDHI AND THE GREAT ARYAN MYTH .......................................... 106 10. THE GREAT INDIAN MYTHS ...................................................................... 109 " DID BUDDHISM HARM INDIA ? " .............................................................. 109 "HINDI-CHINI BYE-BYE" ............................................................................... 111 THE GITA AND WAR .................................................................................... 114 CRICKET THE VAMPIRE ............................................................................... 116 11. THE ROT OF BOLLYWOOD ........................................................................ 118 REFUGEE, A SECULAR FILM ? ...................................................................... 118 MISSION KASHMIR ..................................................................................... 120 AN OPEN LETTER TO JAWAHARLAL NEHRU ................................................ 122 12. INDIA: EVERYTHING THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE ......................................... 126 VIP SECURITY AND KARMA (" or what the BJP manifesto forgot to say").... 126 " DELHI : THE SODOM AND GOMORH OF INDIA ? " .................................... 127 TOURISM IN INDIA AS SEEN BY A FOREIGN JOURNALIST ............................ 129 ONE BILLION INDIANS ? .............................................................................. 132 INDIA : AN ECOLOGICAL PRALAYA ?............................................................ 134 THE BIG SCAM OF NGOS ............................................................................. 136 13. THE HIDDEN TREASURES .......................................................................... 139 THE WONDERS OF PRANAYAMA ................................................................ 139 AYYAPPA..................................................................................................... 141 5

KALARIPAYAT.............................................................................................. 143 JALLIKATTU ................................................................................................. 146 14. THE RENAISSANCE OF INDIA .................................................................... 148 "NOSTRADAMUS AND THE BJP" ................................................................. 148 " SEVA AND GOVERNMENT " ...................................................................... 151 WESTERN SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY ........................................................ 153 INDIA’S ROLE IN THE THIRD MILLENIUM..................................................... 155

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FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR India, for a foreign journalist, is a vast, diverse, difficult and often contradictory country. Most foreign correspondents are posted here for three, or a maximum of five years. They often arrive here with unconscious prejudices and set ideas - since the West is generally totally ignorant of India - and are posted in Delhi, an arrogant city, de-centered compared to the rest of India, where they tend to hear the same stories, the same opinions in the Embassy cocktail circuit, or at journalists’ parties: "secularism, communalism, caste abuses, sati, Hindu fundamentalists", etc. As a result, western correspondents, however talented and well-meaning they are, not only rarely see the real India, but they often leave after four or five years with the same opinions with which they had arrived, having meanwhile fed their readers with near identical stories: "how Christian are persecuted in India, the rise of the ‘dangerous’ RSS, the Human Right Abuses of the army in Kashmir, or some side feature on Medha Patkar and the Narmada Dam". I was lucky: I came to India when I had just turned nineteen, an age where the mind has not yet settled in hard and frozen patterns. The moment I stepped in India, I sensed I had come "home" and felt immediately at ease with my brothers and sisters from the land of Bharat. I was also extremely privileged to spend the first eight formative years of my time in India in the Sri Aurobindo ashram of Pondichery, where I came in contact with Indians from all over the country and was able to meet the Mother, an extraordinary person, as well as read Sri Aurobindo, whose writings have had a deep influence on my life. Thus, I thought, in my arrogance, that I knew India. But when I began freelancing in the early eighties, I started with the same prejudices, set ideas than most of my fellow correspondents have: secularism is the best system for India, given the explosive mosaic of its ethnics races and religions; the Congress is the flag bearer of ‘secularism’; Gandhi is the ‘father’ of the nation; there are also Hindu ‘fundamentalists’; or Christian missionaries are doing ‘wonderful’ work in India. Once again, I was lucky. Instead of plunging straight into political India, where journalists, both Indian or foreign, quickly become cynical if not bitter - I did photographic features in the deep South: the extraordinary kalaripayat, the villages of Kerala, which is the ancestor of all great Asian martial arts in; the absolutely amazing Ayappa festival on the 7

border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala; Ayurveda, the most ancient medical system in the world still in practice; the exquisite Ayanars of Tanjore district. There, I discovered that the genius of India is in its villages and that the tradition of gentleness, tolerance, hospitality, is rooted in rural India (Mark Tully, in his own way, came to the same conclusion in the North) and not in the cities of India, where people have often lost touch with that inner reality. And when I entered the world of south Asian politics (in 1984, for Le Journal de Genève), I was ready to have my eyes opened. Thus slowly, as I came in contact first-hand with the political reality of India and South Asia, I realized that the Congress had actually stolen the merit of having achieved India’s independence from the real nationalists, Tilak, or Sri Aurobindo; that it had encouraged a criminal de-culturation of India at the hands of the Marxists; that the Mahatma Gandhi, however a great soul, he might have been, had, through his rigid non-violence, precipitated India’s partition; that India was fighting a lonely battle against Muslim fundamentalism which surrounds her; that the RSS is probably one of the most harmless outfits in Asia; that the Ayodhya mosque stood like an incongruous wart in the midst of a wholly Hindu town; or that generally India is terribly misunderstood in the West. These collections of articles, written mostly for Blitz, the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express, represent the story of my awakening to the true India or at least to what I feel is the true India, because no one, least of all a foreigner, can claim that he or she fully understands the wonder, the baffling diversity and the extraordinary unfolding truth that is India.

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1. AYODHYA Ayodhya marks my political awakening. It is there that for the first time I came in contact with this strange phenomenon of Indian politics (which repeats itself all over the world): that what appears true, may often turn out to be false or is at best a half-truth; and that which seems false, or politically not correct, often turns out to be a truth. Journalism has to be a first-hand experience; that is, the correspondent should be able to judge what he has been asked to report not through the prism of his atavism, set ideas and prejudices which he brings with him - but thanks to an inner intuition towards which he has constantly to aspire. Ayodhya is the perfect example of an untruth which has been taken as a universal truth by India and the whole world, because very few journalists cared to look beyond appearances.

THE SYMBOL OF AYODHYA

How many of those who have lambasted so many times the "Hindu fundamentalists" and lamented the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque as the "death of secularism in India", have been to Ayodhya and not Faizabad, mind you, which is Ayodhya's twin Muslim city ? When one arrived in Ayodhya before the destruction of the mosque, one was struck by the fact that it was a Hindu town "par excellence". More than Benares even, it is dotted everywhere with innumerable temples; it has all these old Hindus houses and this lovely river with its ghats which runs through the lower town. And then, forlorn on the top, there was this lone mosque with its two ugly domes, which looked so out of place and unused, that any one with a right sense -and that includes the Muslims- should have seen that it was not worth making an issue of. The destruction of the Babri Masjid still evokes such fiery reactions, that the importance of Ayodhya has been totally overlooked: Ayodhya is a symbol, through which two India’s are facing each other. And the outcome of their confrontation will shape the future of this country for generations to come. The first India wants to be secular and unite together through an egalitarian, democratic spirit all the minorities, ethnic groups, religions and people of the country. But the question is: what would be the binding element of this kind of India? Secularism, says the first side. But secularism has a different meaning for each one. For the British, it was a convenient way to divide and rule, by treating each Indian community on par, although some were in minority and others in majority, thereby planting the seeds of separatisms. For the Congress Party, it has always meant giving in to the Muslims' demands, because on 9

the one hand it assured itself of the Muslim vote and on the other, Congress leaders never could really make out if the allegiance of Indian Muslims first went to India and then to Islam - or vice-versa. And for India's intelligentsia, its writers, journalists, top bureaucrats, the majority of whom are Hindus, it means, apart from belittling its own religion and brothers, an India which would be a faithful copy of the West: liberal, modern, atheist, industrialized, intellectual and western-oriented. But the question is: what makes India unique? Certainly not its small elite which apes the West; there are millions of these western clones in the developing world who wear a tie, read the New York Times and swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries from doom. Nor its modern youth, whom you meet in Delhi's swank parties, who are full of the MTV culture, wear the latest Klein jeans and Lacoste T Shirts, and who in general are useless, fat, rich parasites, in a country which has so many talented youngsters who live in poverty. Not even its political, bureaucratic and judicial system; it's a copy of the British setup, which is not fully adapted to India's unique character and conditions. What then? The second India which is confronting the other through the Ayodhya issue is, of course, the India of the Hindus. When Imam Bhukari states that "we (the Mughals) gave everything to this country, its culture, its manners, its arts, and the Hindus by destroying the Babri Masjid showed how little gratitude they have", apart from making a pompous declaration, he proclaims exactly the opposite of the reality. Because the truth is that not only Hinduism is what makes India unique, so different from all the other nations of the world, but it is the single most important influence in Indian history. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, India’s Great Sage and Modern Age Avatar: "The inner principle of Hinduism, the most tolerant and receptive of all religious systems, is not sharply exclusive like the religious spirit of Christianity or Islam...it is the fulfillment of the highest tendencies of human civilisation and it will include in its sweep the most vital impulses of modern life.." And indeed, if you look at India today, you find that Hinduism has permeated, influenced, shaped, every part of this country, every religion, every culture. Be it the Christians who are like no other Catholics of the world, or Indian Muslims, who whatever they may say, are utterly different from their brothers in Saudi Arabia. But Hinduism is too narrow a word, it's a corruption of the original word "Indu", for true Hinduism is Dharma, India's infinite and eternal spiritual knowledge, which took shape into so many varied expressions throughout the ages, be it the Vedantas, Buddhism, or the Arya Samaj and which is today still very much alive in India, particularly in its rural masses, which after all constitute 80% of its population. And the words of the great Sage still echo in our ears: 10

"Each nation is a shakti or power of the evolving spirit in humanity and lives by the principle it embodies. India is the Bharata Shakti, the living energy of a great spiritual conceptionand fidelity to it is the very principle of her existence...But we must have a firm faith that India must rise and be great and that everything that happened, every difficulty, every reverse must help and further the end..." What one has to grasp is that the issue of Ayodhya only makes sense when the immense harm the Muslims did to India is not negated, as indeed it has been and still is today in the official History books in the West and sadly in India also. The Muslim jehad against Hindus, alas, continues even today, whether in Kashmir, where the last Hindus were made to flee in terror, or in Bangladesh and Pakistan, where the crowds still regularly go on rampage against Hindus and their temples (as told by a Bangladeshi Muslim herself, Talisma Nasreen). It is in this light, that it becomes extraordinary for an impartial observer to see today that when for once, the Hindus wanted to displace, not even to destroy, ONE mosque and rebuild the "temple", which they believe stood in this particular place, for one of their most cherished Gods, the one which is loved universally by all, men, women, children, THEY are treated as rabid fundamentalists. The great Mughals must be laughing all the way down their graves! What a reversal of situation! What a turnabout of history! And when the mosque was destroyed, it evoked such fiery reactions, such pompous, overblown, sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, atrocious, ridiculous, hypocrite and totally undeserved outrage, both within India and in the Western world (who should be the last one to give lessons to India), that the importance of Ayodhya as a symbol has been totally overlooked. The obvious trap is to think that the demolition of the mosque in Ayodhya is something to gloat about and that it is the duty of all good Hindus to see that other important mosques at Mathura, Vanarasi, or elsewhere, be also razed to the ground; or that all cities with a Muslim name be renamed with a Hindu one. This is not true Hinduism, which has always shown its tolerance and accepted in its fold other creeds and faiths. Indeed a true "Indu" India will be secular in the correct sense of the term: it will give freedom to each religion, each culture, so that it develops itself in the bosom of a Greater India, of which dharma, true spirituality, will be the cementing factor. Nevertheless, the destruction of the Babri Masjid, however unfortunate, has made its point: the occult Mughal hold over Hindu India has been broken and centuries of Hindu submission erased. Hindus have proved that they too can fight.

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THE BOMBAY BLASTS

When after centuries of having been at the receiving end, a handful of Hindus dared to destroy a mosque, however mistaken this gesture was, they were treated ruthlessly. The whole Indian media and political world went into a frenzy: 'Nazis, monsters, Hitlers'... The end of secularism, the doom of democracy, the seed of India's splitting'... Yet, the Hindu ‘fundamentalists’ did not kill a single soul. In fact, during its long history, Hinduism has been one of the most peaceful creeds in the world, never trying to impose itself upon others, accepting the reality of different beliefs, never trying to convert and submitting itself meekly to numerous invasions. But how come the Indian and western media kept so quiet after the Bombay blasts which were coldly and meticulously planned, killing more than 350 innocent souls, in one of the most horrifying terrorist bombings of this century? Not a word about the religion to which belong the perpetrators of this ghastly murders. Mum, silent are our wonderful intellectuals, who not so long ago raved and ranted about the threat of Hindu extremism. Our 'secular' politicians have also lost their tongue suddenly, mouthing only clichés about 'the wonderful communal spirit of Bombay'. But it's not only a conspiracy of silence, it's an attempt to deceive a whole nation. Because the facts are clear: the hand seems to be without doubt that of the Bombay underworld, whose majority is Muslim (who will ever explain to me why most of the smugglers in India are Muslims? Is It because their religion teaches them that there is nothing wrong in cheating a government which is non-Muslim, even though it is their own?) But the amount of explosives and the meticulous character of the operation show also the hand of the Pakistanis. After all, they're also Muslims and since they lost Bangladesh through (they think) the conniving of India, they are in a hurry to take their revenge: Kashmir and Punjab are part of their plan to get back at India. Yet, there is something incomplete there, something which can't help nagging you, as if you've missed something. For the Memon brothers should have fled straightway to Pakistan. But they did not. First they went to Dubai, then to Jeddah. And even though India did not request a formal extradition, word was quickly known, thanks to the loud mouth of Bombay police chief Samra, where the prime suspects of the Bombay bombings were hinding. And there was no way the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE could not have been aware of this, because their police are good, if not totalitarian: they must have known when the Memons entered the country and exactly where they were staying. It would have been a simple matter to stop them from leaving both the countries till an extradition was asked for. Yet they chose to let the Memons go and now the brothers have 12

gone into hiding in Pakistan and India will probably never see them again and solve the mystery of the Bombay blasts. Why did Dubai and Jeddah let them go? One has to understand the Arab psyche: By destroying the Ayodhya mosque, it is the whole Muslim world which secretly has felt insulted and humiliated. Furthermore, none of the Gulf countries have forgotten India's support to Iraq during the Gulf War. Is it possible then that it was decided to teach India a lesson? That Pakistan and 'some' other Muslim countries funded and planned, or at least knew in advance of the bombing attempts, of which Bombay was supposed to be only the first of a series? Is this a warning of the Muslim world to Hindu India? But who are the fundamentalists? Who are the murderers? Who are the Nazis? And what does the Congress do when its people are murdered, when the nation is threatened and all hands point an accusatory finger towards Muslim fundamentalists in India, killing their own brothers, with the obvious help of other Muslims from abroad? It keeps trying to throttle down the RSS, the VHP and the BJP, which have not bombed anybody and does not bother acting immediately upon the pointers India's intelligence agencies quickly gave them. Why did not the Indian government ask the United States to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Pakistan to hold the Memon brothers? The USA would have probably complied: it just suffered a similar ghastly bombing and is thus sympathetic to India's woes. India looks today like a humbled fool. It was kicked nicely in the 'arse' and all the world heard was a few worn-out statements about communal harmony and the usual 'foreign hand'. It is one thing to shoot unarmed kar-sevaks in Ayodhya, it is one thing to call its own religion, which is one of the greatest, most gentle, most tolerant creeds, the last living spiritualised religion in the world, ‘fundamental and rabid’ ; it is another thing to have the guts to call a spade a spade and stand up to an occult menace to one's own country: a covert attempt by universal Muslim fundamentalism to implode India and finish it once for all. Are Hindus cowards then? Are they forever going to take things lying down? Have centuries of Muslim conquests, rape, looting, forced conversion, razing of thousands of temples, imprinted so much on India's psyche, that they can only endlessly produce Vijay Amritraj’s: talented, nice, but unable to fight, to win, to defeat the opponent? But India has to stand up now. Its very existence is threatened: There are forces which are actively working to disintegrate her. The fact that these forces happen to be 13

Muslim, does not mean that they cannot be fought. Whoever taught India to always appease Muslims, whatever wrong they did, however much they demanded, even if it means the breaking up of India? Who instilled this terrible unconscious fear in Indians that Muslims should never be antagonised? Is it because there are 110 millions of them here ? But the Hindus are 800 million, theirs is an ancient culture which has been capable of sustaining numerous invasions, colonisations, blows, pitfalls. Theirs is one of the oldest and most wonderful civilisations of the world. COME ON INDIA: Don't listen to your intellectuals and your so-called secular politicians. If you do, they will lead you to doom, hasten the process of breaking up this wonderful country which once stretched from Cape Comorin to the Afghan frontiers. Or else they will make it into a faithful westernised copy. COME ON INDIA: Stand up and fight. There is no question of throwing out 110 million Muslims out of your country. They are part of your culture and your soul: They are only another element of the wonderful mosaic of Indian culture: They only have to be told clearly that their first loyalty is to India and then to Islam. And not vice versa. What is needed now is a firm hand, which has a clear vision of India's inner potential and past greatness and not coteries of politicians who are more interested in preserving their perks, than protecting their own country against a dangerous, concerted attack. COME ON INDIA: Stand up now, show the world your inner strength and resolve, use your dharma, draw force from the millions of tapasyas performed by your yogis, the courageous hearts of your women and the simple prayers of your people. Come on India, stand up and fight for the truth. WHY AYODHYA ?

AYODHYA, as we have seen earlier, is not a haphazard, crazy, meaningless event. It is a symbol through which two conceptions of India are facing each other, and the outcome of this confrontation will shape this country's future for generations to come. Ayodhya is also a sign of the pressure put upon India to remain faithful to her soul, to retain the essential of Dharma, true Hinduism; to avoid falling in the trap of total Westernization, which has already stifled so many collective souls in the developing world. Bombay, although it is an emblem of all that is efficient and cosmopolitan in this country, is also a symbol of all that is wrong: immense gap between the few very rich and the many extremely poor; slums, Bangladeshi immigrants’ infiltration, apparent irreversible westernization at the expense of 14

India's own inner genius; pollution and overpopulation. Thus, if Bombay burned, it is to be hoped that it did not burn in vain and that it will have learnt its lessons. The consequences of Ayodhya are thus far-reaching and they have shaken this nation to the core, as the riots in Bombay have shown. But it is not over: the Congress is still quavering from the Ayodhya tremors, trying to realign itself between the secular hardliners on one hand and those who advocate a more pro-Hindu stance on the other. And the BJP, thanks to the bungling of the Rao government, is now on the upswing and could very well be on the road to power. But instead of lamenting on the "death of secularism in India", the "mortal blow to our democracy", or "the shame of Bombay", as most intellectuals, politicians and the media have done recently, it would be more fruitful to do some honest, serious introspection, and see what the whole thing leads to. Because, ultimately, the Force of Evolution, whether individual or collective, always gives through events a hint of things to come, or points a finger at what is wrong in a particular set of circumstances. What are the roots of Ayodhya then? What is the core problem that led to the explosion? WHY AYODHYA? To put the problem in its barest equation - and it is always good to come back to the obvious - the Ayodhya confrontation is between a mosque, emblem of the Islamic faith, and a temple, symbol of the Hindu religion. So, ultimately, it has to do between the MuslimHindu divide. This we all know. But what is the root of this divide? The Muslim conquest in India started in the 7th century AD, and in the words of Sri Aurobindo "It took place at a time when the vitality of ancient Indian life and culture after 2,000 years of activity and creation was already exhausted or very near exhaustion and needed a breathing space to rejuvenate itself." Although Sri Aurobindo felt that "the vast mass of the Muslims in this country were and are Indians by race", he adds, "the real problem introduced by the Muslim conquest is the struggle between two civilisations, one ancient and indigenous, the other medieval and brought in from outside... That which has rendered the problem indissoluble is the attachment of each to a powerful religion, the one militant and aggressive, the other spiritually tolerant and flexible"... Sri Aurobindo thus always felt that the increasing antagonism between Hindus and Muslims was a game the Britishers played to divide India so as to rule her better: "...Then came the British empire In India which recast the whole country into artificial provinces made for its own convenience. British rule did not unite these people, but on the contrary, India was deliberately split on the basis of the two-nation theory into future Pakistan and Hindustan." 15

Ah, we are coming to Pakistan, at last. Because, after all, is not Pakistan, a million more times than Ayodhya, the symbol of the great Hindu-Muslim divide? Pakistanis seem to lose all common sense, when the subject of Ayodhya arises, or when it comes to Hinduism. It is because Pakistan is intimately linked to religion? Is it because Islam teaches that only its creed is true, that all other religions are practiced by infidels and that it is the duty of all good Muslims to convert, even by force - something which is then absolved by the Prophet. THUS THE PROBLEM OF AYODHYA MAY HAVE TO DO WITH ISLAM, NOT WITH MUSLIMS; WITH THEIR RELIGION - NOT WITH THE PAKISTANIS. Pakistan has never accepted the existence of a Hindu dominated India. Even the sophisticated Benazir Bhutto said, "Pakistan and India were never one country. They were only kept together by force, whether by Moghul or British rule". And indeed her answer is very symbolic of the flaw in Pakistan, because the problem of Pakistan with India is not a problem of Pakistanis against Indians, but a problem of Islam versus Hinduism. Hindus have recognised the reality of Islam, but alas, the opposite is not true. The hundreds of thousand of temples razed to the ground and the millions of Hindus ruthlessly slain by Muslim conquerors, are not only an historical evidence (however much it is denied by the so-called secularists), but a surviving reality today: its traumas have left in its wake terror and cowardice in the Hindu psyche; and a feeling of superiority in the Muslim soul. The atomic bomb, on which Pakistan is actively working, is the direct inheritor of Babar who destroyed Ayodhya, the modern equivalent of yesterday's Tippu's sword or Aurangzeb's scimitar. It is not so much, as Benazir says, "a deterrent against India's military conventional superiority or an answer to India's own nuclear capability", but the ultimate weapon which will have the force of a million Bombay blasts and will wipe for ever the affront of Ayodhya.

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2. KASHMIR : A DEAD-END AND A SOLUTION Nothing symbolizes better the absurdity of Partition than Kashmir. Nehru and Gandhi’s folly of accepting the division of the country on geographical-religion lines has come back to haunt India with a vengeance. For, Pakistan, apart from the fact that it was created and survives on its hatred of ‘Hindu’ India, has a point: if Nehru accepted that Muslim-dominated parts of India go to Pakistan, why not also the Valley of Kashmir, which is today in Muslim majority, thanks to decades of terror to induce the once strong Hindu community to flee ? Thus, Kashmir is a dead-end, because neither India nor Pakistan are going to let go, each for obvious reasons. Yet, the state of Kashmir can also be the springing-board for a trial run of a Confederation of South Asian Sates: there is no other solution for Pakistan and India than reuniting the two Kashmirs under a joint authority.

THE SHADOW OF A HORSE

Midnight, Manaspal Lake, North-West Kashmir. The powerful diesels of the 20 army lorries roar away, piercing the perfect silence of the night. Aboard, 400 men of the 22nd Jammu and Kashmir Rifles, one of India's elite divisions, in full battle dress: helmets, an AK47 rifle slung over the shoulder and two grenades tucked in the belt. Colonel Khanna, division commander, signals with his hand and the convoy starts ponderously into the night. Earlier we had met Colonel Khanna's officers, young, bright men, whose world centres around a field tent, the walls of which are adorned with pictures of wanted militants, and tallies of wounded and killed Hizbollah Mujahedins, a true soldier's trophy. Over a glass of beer, Colonel Khanna had shown us a map of Kashmir and pointed to a village near Wular Lake, called Banyar. "This village, he said, is known to be a safe haven for militants, as it is on the route from Kupwara at the Pak border, to Sopore. It has the uniqueness of being surrounded by water. So we will have to take two boats with us to cross the river. We shall walk the whole night and by morning we will have surrounded the entire village." Half an hour after having started from the base, the lorries stopped suddenly, all lights out. Silently the 400 men of the regiment climbed down and melted into the night. Then the lorries started again. "They will serve as a decoy for the militants’ watchdogs, who 17

seeing they are going in an opposite direction, will think that we are going to strike another village," whispered Khanna. It was a pitch-dark monsoon night. No lights, no torches, one could barely discern the man in front and sometimes soldiers would hold each other's shoulders not to get lost. The silence was total: not a murmur, not a sound of a rolling stone; only the hiss of the wind in the trees, carrying the smell of men to a faraway village, whose dogs started barking. But even their sounds slowly died away. Suddenly, a cantering horse, like a ghost appearing from nowhere, crossed us; and then it was gone, as in a dream. At first, the going was smooth enough on a dirt road, but all of a sudden we had to slither down on all fours to reach the swamp, where one had now to walk on a high narrow causeway surrounded by water on both sides. It started raining and a frog, followed by another, then another, then a hundred, a thousand, began tearing the silence of the night with their "croaaroaaak". From time to time the man in front would suddenly stop and the others behind would bump into him, as the soldiers carrying the heavy wooden boats were replaced by a new team. At 3.30 in the morning, the river we reached the village. The boats were lowered into the water without a ripple; and while exhausted men slept on the embankment, the tedious task of carrying a whole company in two boats went on smoothly. And as the first hint of a grey, dreary day, pointed at the horizon, the village of Banyar was totally surrounded. At 5.15, Lieutenant Tikku and a platoon of soldiers entered the village from its eastern side. "Militants are usually caught at daylight, he murmured, it is then that they start shooting. If we don't catch them at that moment, they go into hiding either in the houses or in the fields; and we have to flush them out." Shoulders hunched in the expectation of a grenade thrown from the first floor of a house, or the bullet of an unseen sniper, eyes darting right and left, fingers on the triggers of their AK-47s, the soldiers advanced on the village. It was a dreadful hamlet on the banks of the Jhelum River: dirty, unkempt, whose wooden and cement houses had an air of never having been finished. By 6 AM, not a soul had stirred from the shuttered houses, and it became clear that if the militants were there, they were not going to come out with guns blazing. An officer went to the mosque and asked on its loudspeakers that all men between 16 and 60 assemble in the school compound just outside the village. Already soldiers had encircled the meadow where a little windowless house which served as school stood. Machine guns were posted, even a mortar was set up. Slowly the villagers started filing out of the village. The older men were put on the right where they sat 18

stoically on their haunches; and the younger ones grouped on the left. After some time two men, whose faces were hooded by black cloth and their hand tied to a soldier, came in and were made to sit in the school, facing the glassless window. They were "cats" - militants who had been caught and who had agreed to inform on their brothers, in exchange for some future leniency. They were now at least 2,000 Kashmiris in the meadow. On a signal from the Colonel, young villagers were made to form a file. First they were searched by a soldier, then one by one they were presented by another soldier to the cats. One of the informers seemed unwilling or maybe indifferent; but the other had extraordinary eyes, which were constantly darting, from the face of the soldier, to the villager. The Kashmiris, some proud, looking spitefully towards the informers, others humble, eyes cast down in fear, filed past the cats. When the second informer would nod negatively the soldier would tap the shoulder of the villager, who relieved, would go back to sit on his haunches. But suddenly, as a mullah, well-dressed, apparently educated, looking boldly ahead, was brought forward, the cat raised his finger and whispered something in the ear of his watcher. The mullah was then led, protesting, to one corner and made to cover his face with his shawl. Four men were thus "recognised" by the second cat and kept apart.

Suddenly a shot was heard, followed by a burst of fire. Everybody rushed towards the place where the sound came from. There, in a field of mature maze, there was a path of crushed stalks, which led straight to two cowering militants, one of whom was wounded, surrounded by triumphant soldiers. Basir Ahmed Pare and Zakir Hussein had just crossed over, from Pakistan where they had gone for training and had halted overnight in the village thinking they were safe. But when they realised that the army had surrounded the village, they hid in the field with their two Kalashnikov and four grenades. Along with their weapons, coupons were also recovered from them, which they sold to the villagers to extort money, as well as the photo of their area commander. The men were then handed over to the military intelligence for what would probably be a long spell of rough interrogation. Exhausted, after a whole night walk, plus a full day in the heat. we wearily started for the base. On the trip back, a rider-less galloping horse (the same as in the night?) cast his shadow on our convoy. Was it the shadow of Kashmir?

19

THE KASHMIRI "FREEDOM" FIGHTERS

Western correspondents (and unfortunately sometimes Indian journalists) keep lionizing the Kashmiri "freedom fighters" and demonising the "brutal" Indian army. But nobody bothers to remember Kashmiris were almost entirely Hindus or Buddhists, before they were converted by the invading Muslims six centuries ago. True, today these Muslims in Kashmir have not only accepted as their own a religion which their ancestors had rejected, but they have also often taken-up the strident cry of Islam. Does any one remember too, that at the beginning of the century, there still were 25% Hindus in the Kashmir valley and that today the last 350.000 Kashmiri Pandits are refugees in their own land, they who originally inhabited the valley, at least 5000 years ago, a much bigger ethnic cleansing than the one of the Bosnian Muslims or the Albanians in Yugoslavia ? It's a common refrain today in most newspapers to say that since Independence, India alienated Kashmiris through years of wrong policies. But those who have been in close contact with Kashmir, even in its heydays of tourism, know for a fact that as a general rule, Kashmiris never liked India. There was only one thing that attached them to India, it was the marvellous financial gains and state bounties that they made out of tourism. Even those Kashmiris who are now settled in India make no bones about where their loyalty lies. Talk to them, specially if you are a Westerner, and after some time, they'll open their hearts to you; whether it is the owner of this Kashmir emporium in a five star hotel in Madras, or the proprietor of that famous travel agency in Delhi: suddenly, after all the polite talk, they burst out with their loathing of India and their hope to be attached to Pakistan. The Government of India has also often the illusion that ordinary Kashmiris are fed up with the militants after years of fighting, militants' abuses and the complete dry-up of tourism revenues. The army might come-up with some disgruntled girl, who has been raped by the militants and whom they parade to the Indian press; or some family, whose father and sons have been killed by the Hizbullah because they're informers, might be willing to mouth their pro-Indian stance; but these are individual cases. Indeed, if you meet the Kashmiris of today, from the lowly unemployed sikara boatman, to the retired High Court judge, you will find that they are all unanimous in their hatred of the Indian army and their support of the militants. Kashmiris will stick together - and their family system ensures that they will support each other in need. Nowadays Farook Abdullah wants us to believe that with a certain degree of autonomy, Kashmiris will be appeased. This may be true in most Indian states, who are 20

often rightly fed-up with Centre’s constant interference in their internal affairs, but basically, there is only one thing which Kashmiris are craving for and that is a plebiscite on whether they want to stay with India or secede...The answer in the Kashmir valley, would be a massive "no" to India (98%?). And as for Farook Abdullah, he would be quickly eliminated by the militants, who would immediately seize control of Kashmir and attach it to Pakistan. The Indian security forces in Kashmir are accused of all kind of atrocities. But this is war, not a tea party! If India decides to keep Kashmir, it has to do so according to the rules set by the militants: violence, death and treachery are the order of the day. And men are men: after having been ambushed repeatedly, after having seen their comrades die, after weeks and weeks of waiting in fear, one day, they just explode in a burst of outrage and excesses. Amnesty International chooses to highlight "the Indian atrocities" in Kashmir. But Amnesty which does otherwise wonderful work to keep track of political atrocities worldwide, can sometimes become a moralistic, somewhat pompous organisation, which in its comfortable offices in London, judges on governments and people, the majority of whom happen to be belonging to the Third World. Its insistence on being granted unlimited access to Kashmir is a one-sided affair. Did Amnesty bother at all about the support given by the CIA to the most fundamentalists Mujahidins group in Afghanistan and Pakistan, support which led to the bleeding of Afghanistan today and the Pakistani sponsoring of terrorism in India? (Without mentioning the fact that most of the Western countries which today sit in judgement of India, raped and colonised the Third World in the most shameless manner; and after all it happened not so long ago). And this leads to the next question: should then India surrender to international pressure and let Kashmiris decide their own fate ? Well it all depends on the Indian people's determination. Each nation has, or has had in the past, a separatist problem. Today, the Spanish have the Basques, the French the Corsicans, or the Turkish, the Kurds. Amnesty International will continue to lambaste India in its reports about human rights violations. But has Amnesty the right to decide what is right or wrong for each nation ? Sometimes double standards are adapted by the West. Yesterday it colonised the entire Third World. Today; the United States, under the guise of human rights, is constantly interfering in other's people's affairs, often by force. It uses the United Nations, as it does in Iraq, in Somalia and Yugoslavia and is getting away with it. Can Amnesty International, the United States and the United Nations decide today what is democratic and what they deem antidemocratic and use their military might to enforce their views? But this is the trend today and it is a very dangerous and fascistic trend. Will tomorrow the United Nations send 21

troops to Kashmir to enforce Pakistan's dreams? Furthermore, there is today another very dangerous habit, which is to fragment the world into small bits and parts, thus reverting to a kind of Middle Age status, whereas small nations were always warring each other on ethnic grounds. It is the West and particularly the United States' insistence to dismantle Communism at all costs, thus encouraging covertly and overtly the breaking up of Russia and Eastern Europe, which started this fashion. But this is a dangerous game and tomorrow Europe and indirectly the USA will pay the price for it: wars will bring instability and refugees to Europe and the United States might have to get involved militarily. Can India get herself dragged into this mire? Why should India which took so long to unite herself and saw at the departure of the British one third of its land given away to Pakistan, surrender Kashmir? The evolution of our earth tends towards UNITY, oneness, towards the breaking up of our terrible borders, the abolishing of passports, bureaucracies, no man's lands; not towards the building up of new borders, new customs barriers, new smaller nations. India cannot let herself be broken up in bits and parts just to satisfy the West's moralistic concerns, although it does have to improve upon its Human Rights record, particularly the police atrocities and the corruption. To preserve her Dharma, India has to remain united, ONE, and even conquer again whether by force or by peaceful means, what once was part of her South Asian body . For this she should not surrender Kashmir, it could be the beginning of the breaking up of India. KASHMIR AND THE FOREIGN JOURNALISTS

SRINAGAR, May 30, Election Day. It's a small Hindu temple on the banks of the river Jhelum, lost amongst the hundred and one mosques of Srinagar. Its entrance is heavily guarded by BSF forces and it is protected by sandbags on all sides, as it has been hit recently by a rocket fired by militants. Inside, a handful of Kashmiri Pandits are still trying to preserve this sacred place, where a natural lingam is said to have emerged 3000 years ago and where their forefathers have worshipped for 20 generations. "We were once 30,000 in this district of Srinagar," remembers Shyam, a Hindu priest, "but today we are only two hundred. All our brothers and sisters had to flee. Our houses were burnt, our women raped, our sons killed". Shyam and his friends offer us a cup of tea and some biscuits and we leave this temple which seems to be doomed, wondering why nobody ever reports about it. For we are the only western journalists to have visited this place today, as all our friends are busy elsewhere. The day before, the Government has had all the separatist 22

leaders put under house arrest, as a precautionary measure. But one of them, Yasin Malik, managed to slip away. His aides called the local stringers to warn them that he would surface on Election Day, near the Jamma Masjid. Thus, on May 30, a caravan of about 35 cars with eager, impatient, news-hungry journalists on board, blasts its way towards the mosque. And there, sure enough, at 10 a.m. Yasin Malik, looking more sickly than ever, appears with about three to four hundred Kashmiris. The loudspeakers of the mosque begin blaring slogans and as the BBC team arrives, the Kashmiris get hysterical, women wail, the men shout and gesticulate. Journalists are in ecstasy. The BBC cameraman zooms onto the crowd and the foreign photographers push each other to get a shot of Yasin Malik, who says something like: "This election will happen only over our dead bodies". Suddenly, the crowd, which up to now has kept within the mosque's compound, pours out through the gates and starts throwing stones at the BSF, which in turn has to lob tear gas and shoots in the air. Immediately, as if by magic, everyone vanishes. An Indian cameraman working for a foreign network, is obviously getting scared, and screams: "I have the BSFon film, shooting. I have them shooting; let's get out of here". And the 35 cars wind back full speed to the hotels, the journalists to file their story, the photographers to print their photos and the cameramen to edit their story. Everybody is happy, because as one European photographer puts it, "That was good, exciting stuff". The same night and the next day, BBC, CNN and other networks beamed world-wide stories of "widespread violence in Kashmir" and of "intimidation of voters" (which nobody actually saw on that day.) The BBC footage, which cleverly zoomed right all the time on the gesticulating Kashmiris makes it appear as if a few thousand demonstrators were there, when actually they were only a couple of hundred; and great use is made of the police firing their guns in the air. Ultimately, the truth must be said : we foreign journalists come to Kashmir to get our pound of flesh. Our stories cannot be good and complete unless we can harp on human rights in Kashmir, speak of torture, rape, custody killings and generally berate the bad Indian army, because this is what our Editors expect of us. Thus, most of us have already, at least subconsciously, decide in our mind to what we are going to say, even before setting foot in Kashmir. And the same can be said of most of the western diplomats who come to Kashmir on fact-finding missions for their government. Often, before they get down to write their reports, they have already decided what they are going to say. And even if they haven't, they ultimately will. The reason is simple, both journalists and diplomats depend on two sources for their reporting in Kashmir-the first are the stringers of Indian newspapers, who happen to be mostly Kashmiris. Publicly and in their writings, these 23

Kashmiri stringers have to be careful about what they say, but privately, specially in the presence of western journalists, whom they expect to share their feelings, they usually vent their hatred of India. And the second source are the taxi drivers of Srinagar, who are controlled by a handful of operators, who book hotels, get airline tickets confirmed, arrange meetings with separatist leaders, even with militants, or bring foreigners to houses where Kashmiri women have been supposedly raped and generally shape the mind of their proteges. Needless to say -and that is only fair - they have only one goal: to show the great sufferings of the Kashmiri people at the hands of the Indian "imperialists". Recently, the Number Two of a very important European Embassy based in Delhi, was in the house of one of these operators, and although he was a little embarrassed, upon being seen by two foreign correspondents, there was no doubt that his mind had already been made on what he was going to report. But the question is: are Indian journalists better? Well, sometimes they seem to want to outdo westerners in sensationalism, maybe to show that they are truly "secular". There is the case of this Indian newspaperman, whom we shall call 'N', working for a famous Human Rights agency based in Delhi, which is sponsored by German money. Like a little puppy, everyday during the elections in Srinagar, he would proudly show us, his 'home work', thinking it would please us: "BSF broke into a house of two Kashmiris and beat father and son," before faxing it to his office in Delhi. Good work. But why do none of these human rights organisations ever bother to meet these Pandits who courageously are staying behind to guard one of the rare Hindu temples still standing in Kashmir? True the Kashmiri Muslims have genuine grievances, the Congress once rigged elections in their State, toppled their elected government, bought their leaders. But the story is the same everywhere in India. In fact, Kashmir is and has always been a privileged and pampered place. Indians are not allowed to buy land in Kashmir, but Kashmiris, who are very good businessmen, have had no qualms about investing in India and setting up flourishing business all over the country. The Indian Government keeps pouring crores of rupees into Kashmir. But if these people really want their independence, shouldn't they be straightforward about it and stop using Indian money and utilising the Government of India's services to export their carpets? it is also true that the 36 per cent participation in elections does not seem quite realistic. But the situation in Kashmir has become very complex: you have the renegades who voted, the Kashmiri Pandits who voted by mail; then there are also those Kashmiris who genuinely wanted to vote, and others who voted out of fear either of the army, or of the renegades. And after all, this high percentage of voters 24

might be a sign that some of the people are getting fed-up with militancy. While India should definitely work on its human rights record in Kashmir and elsewhere, it should also ignore the moralising discourse of the West, which stinks of hypocrisy. Why should India feel guilty about retaining what has been hers for 5000 years? Kashmiris have only themselves to blame for their misery: you do not fight a counter insurgency movement with flowers and polite talk. It is hoped that these elections, however flawed they were, will herald a new reign of peace in the beautiful Valley and that Indian politicians will not repeat the same mistakes they committed earlier in Kashmir.

PAKISTAN AND KASHMIR

When it comes to Kashmir, Pakistan is not fighting, as all Pakistani politicians claim, "to help grant Kashmiris their right to self-determination", but to unite with a Muslim kin against the Hindu infidel. It is a common front against India. Yet, contrary to what many think, including the BJP, Kashmir may hold the key to India's reunification with Pakistan, whether by force or by mutual consent. For that is the crux of the problem: as long as Pakistan and India are divided there will be other Kashmirs, other Ayodhyas, other wars with Pakistan - nuclear maybe - and India will 'never be at peace with its own 'Muslim community, which is a permanent danger to herself. FOR INDIA AND PAKISTAN .ARE ONE. YET THEY ARE TWO DIFFERENT ENTITIES, EACH ONE WITH ITS OWN PERSONALITY Remember Sri Aurobindo's words in 1947, "The old communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent division of the country. It is hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled, or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible; possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. THE PARTITION OF THE COUNTRY MUST GO." But unfortunately, neither today's Congress, nor even the other political parties of India, without speaking of those of Pakistan, look upon this division as something that has to go. And Kashmir seems to have become the focus point for this hatred, a symbol of this division. And the situation in Kashmir is indeed hopeless; neither do the Kashmiris want to stay with India, nor does India want to surrender Kashmir, nor does Pakistan want to let go of its claim upon Kashmir. What then?

25

Let Pakistan and India sit down and work out a compromise which would start with a reunification of both Kashmirs, under a joint Indo-Pak control. This in turn would pave the way for an eventual reunification of India and Pakistan under a loose confederation, where each would keep its freedom, its religion and its own identities and culture. This is the way to evolution of the 21st century, this is the path India should tread. Then Ayodhya will only be a word in history books; then there will be no need to construct a mosque alongside a temple, or devise complicated and flimsy compromises that satisfy nobody in the end. Then there will be no more the Great Divide between Muslims and Hindus. Then even the Kashmir problem will get solved by itself. Then India will once again be the Greater India, Mother India, spiritual leader of the whole world. "THE PARTITION OF THE COUNTRY MUST GO"...

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3. THE CHRISTIANS : A MINORITY IN MORAL MAJORITY Many of us in the West ‘at least those born in the forties and early fifties’ grew-up hearing of the wonderful and ‘saintly’ work done by the "White" missionaries in far away and dangerous (that is jungle and snake-infested) countries, where lived "Savages", waiting to be converted to the civilizing influence of Christianity. The reality which I discovered in India was totally different: while there is no doubt that Christian missionaries have done a remarkable work in the fields of education and health, their prime purpose remains - even today - to convert the ‘heathen’ Hindus to the True God by any means. Christians constitute only 3% of the population of India, but they weld an enormous moral power, thanks in greater part to many of India’s intelligentsia who are educated in Christian schools and taught to look at their own culture in a derogatory manner. Nothing illustrates this better than the way the Indian Press went berserk after the Staines murder, while ignoring the crimes committed against the Hindus for centuries.

THE CHRISTIAN STORY : A WARPED INDIAN MEDIA

While there is no doubt that the ghastly murder of Graham Stewart Staines, the Australian missionary and his two innocent sons, should be universally condemned and that the culprits should be severely punished, the massive outcry it has evoked in the Indian Press, raises several important questions, which can only be answered by a Westerner, as any Indian who would dare utter the below statements would immediately be assimilated with the Sangh Parivar : Is the life of a White Man infinitely more important and dear to the Indian Media than the lives of a hundred Indians ? Or to put it differently : is the life of a Christian more sacred than the lives of many Hindus ? It would seem so. Because we all remember not so long ago, whether in Punjab or in Kashmir, how militants would stop buses and kill all the Hindus - men, women and children. It even happened recently, when a few of the last courageous Hindus to dare remain in Kashmir, were savagely slaughtered in a village, as were the labourers in Himachal Pradesh. Yet, very few voices were raised in the Indian Press condemning it - at least there never was such an outrage as provoked by the murder of Staines. When Hindus are killed in pogroms in Pakistan or Bangladesh (please read Taslima Nasreen’s book "Lajja"), we never witness in the Indian Media the like of the tear-jerking, posthumous "interview" of Mr Staines in Star 27

News. Does this really mean, as many of the early colonialists and missionaries thought, that the life of a hundred Hindus is not worth a tear ? This massive outcry on the "atrocities against the minorities" raises also doubts about the quality and integrity of Indian journalism. Take for instance the rape of the four nuns in Jhabua. Today the Indian Press (and the foreign correspondents - witness Tony Clifton’s piece in Newseek) are still reporting that it was a "religious" rape. Yet I went to Jhabua and met the four adorable nuns, who themselves admitted, along with their bishop George Anatil, that it had nothing to do with religion - it was the doing of a gang of Bhil tribals, known to perpetrate this kind of hateful acts on their own women. Yet today, the Indian Press, the Christian hierarchy and the politicians, continue to include the Jhabua rape in the list of the atrocities against the Christians. Take the Wayanad incident in Northern Kerala. It was reported that a priest and four women were beaten up and a Bible stolen by "fanatical" Hindus. A FIR was lodged, the communists took out processions all over Kerala to protest against the "atrocities" and the Press went gaga. Yet as an intrepid reporter from the Calicut office of the Indian Express found out, nobody was beaten up and the Bible was safe. Too late : the damage was done and it still is being made use of by the enemies of India. Finally, even if Dara Singh does belong to the Bajrang Dal, it is doubtful if the 100 others accused do. What is more probable, is that like in Wayanad, it is a case of converted tribals versus non-converted tribals, of pent-up jealousies, of old village feuds and land disputes. It is also an outcome of what - it should be said - are the aggressive methods of the Pentecost and seventh Adventists missionaries, known for their muscular ways of converting. And this raises the most important question : why does the Indian press always reflect a westernised point of view ? Why does India’s intellectual "elite", the majority of which happens to be Hindu, always come down so hard on their own culture, their own religion, their own brothers and sisters ? Is it because of an eternal feeling of inferiority, which itself is a legacy of British colonisation ? Is it because they considers Hindus to be inferior beings - remember the words of Claudius Buccchanan, a chaplain attached to the East India Company : "...Neither truth, nor honesty, honour, gratitude, nor charity, is to be found in the breast of a Hindoo"! Is it because the Indian Press is still deeply influenced by Marxist and communist thoughts planted by Nehruvianism, like it is in Kerala, where the communists have shamelessly and dangerously exploited the Christians issue for their own selfish purpose ?

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Whatever it is, the harm is done. Because even though it is not the truth which has been reported from Jhabua, from Wayanad or from the Keonjhar district in Orissa, it has been passed-off as the truth and it has been believed to be so by the masses. And the result is that it has split India a little more along religious and castes lines, as the communist and those who want to see India divided, diminished, humiliated, have always wished. How sad that such a beautiful country, with such a wonderful tradition of tolerance, spirituality and greatness, is slowly sinking into self-destruction’ And the best is that the Hindus - they who were colonised, beaten-up, converted by force or guile, their temples destroyed, their women raped, are blamed - and not those who raped, converted, destroyed, colonised’ And finally, Christianity has always striven on martyrdom, on being persecuted. It was so in Rome, it was so in Africa, it is so in India. Before the murder of Mr Staines, the Christian story was slowly dying; the culprits of the Jhabua rape would have been condemned and the Wayanad fraud exposed. In one stroke the burning of Graham Stewart Staines has revived the controversy and insured that it does not die for a long time.

THE RIGHT WAY TO WELCOME THE POPE

Numerous religious leaders have pointed out that it will be counterproductive for Hindus to protest the Pope’s coming to India - and that rather he should be welcomed in the traditional manner, as all saints have always been greeted in India: with a ‘Purna Kumba’, a pot of water, topped with a coconut, which symbolises the fullness of life. "We welcome him in the fullness and the confidence of a civilisation which is thousands of years old", says Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Revered founder of the Bangalore-based Art of Living. But at the same time, the Pope should help remove in the minds of Christians the idea that Hinduism is polytheism, because Hindus have always recognized the One from which all creation happened. Indeed, Hindus accept everything : many of them are even ready to put an altar for Jesus in every temple - but will the Church accommodate their Upanishads and Vedas ? It is very doubtful !Maybe then should the Pope publicly state that Hinduism is not satanic - as it is described in the latest pamphlet released by the US-based Southern Baptist Church - and acknowledge the fact that it has influenced many spiritual religions over the millenniums. It is also hoped that the Pope will ask catholic missionaries to put a brake on conversions of tribals and low caste Hindus, because if you honour and respect all other religions - as the Hindus do - the culture of conversion is not needed. But unfortunately 29

there is not yet been any sanction in Christianity to similarly respect opposite religions. If only the Pope could tell his missionaries just to do service in the remote areas and leave the tribals to their indigenous practises, there would not be any more problems ! It is also clear that the Christian community of India has overreacted in the past sixteen months, because Christianity has often alienated Indian Christians from the mainstream - it even sometimes gave Christians an unfortunate feeling of superiority over Hindus. They are afraid, or loath, for instance, to participate in anything that has a Hindu connotation; or they are made to change their names. And since they get alienated, a certain fear psychosis sets in. The Pope might remind Indians that Christianity brought education to them. But did you know for instance that there were125.000 medical institutes in Madras before the Europeans came ? In fact, Indians never lacked education - the latest archaeological and linguistic discoveries point out that the Western world owes much of its sciences and philosophy to ancient India - the Christians only brought British education to India, which often caused more damage by westernising many of India’s upper classes. But it is also true on the positive side, that Christianity is often service-oriented to the people and to some extent no caste system affects Christianity. Also, it takes more into prayer people who were so caught-up in religion rituals. As for the Pope’s probable announcement that he is speeding-up the process of beatifying Mother Theresa, it’s all drama ! What is the point of conferring sainthood on someone who is dead ! She did good things, she symbolised Service, but sainthood is a concept of the past, often used to highlight the "martyrdom" of a single enlightened (catholic) individual, pitted against a whole "heathen", or "pagan" community or nation. History books should in fact be rewritten to include the harsher consequences of Christianity in India. The Anglican missionaries, for instance, who arrived in India on the heels of the British, preyed on the Adivasis, the tribal people, whom they promptly proceeded to name as the "original" inhabitants of India, who were colonised by the ‘bad’ Brahmins, during the mythical Aryan invasion. "Was it not right, they said, to free them from the grip of their masters, who had enslaved them both socially and religiously"? Thus, they set the low castes against the mainstream of Hindu society and sowed the seeds of an explosive conflict, which was later exploited by power hungry Indian politicians. And remember the words of Swami Vivekananda, who nearly a century ago had cried in anguish at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago : "if we Hindus dig out all the dirt from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and throw it in you faces, it will be but a speck compared to what the missionaries have done to our religion and culture ". 30

Should then Hindus demand an apology from the Pope, or should they ‘tolerate’ his visit as they have tolerated the presence of Muslim and Europeans invaders so many times before ? "There is no question of ‘tolerating’ the Pope, smiles mischievously Sri Sri Ravi Shankar : tolerance has a negative connotation, as it implies that we tolerate something we don’t like... In fact we like everybody"’

THE HINDU ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY

The Pope is arriving in India on the 5th of November. Does he know that he may be stepping on a land from which Christianity originated ? Indeed, over the centuries, numerous historians and Sages have pointed out that not only Hinduism has had a predominant influence on Christianity, but that many of the Christian rites could be directly borrowed from Buddhist and Hindu India ! French historian Alain Danielou had noticed as early as 1950 "that a great number of events which surround the birth of Christ - as it is related in the Gospels - strangely remind us of buddhists and krishnaites legends". Danielou quotes as examples the structure of the Christian Church, which resembles that of the buddhist Chaitya; the rigorous asceticism of certain early Christian sects, which reminds one of the asceticism of Jain and Buddhist saints; the veneration of relics, the usage of holy water, which is an Indian practice, or the word "Amen", which comes from Hindu OM. Another historian, Belgium Konraad Elst, also remarks "that many early Christian saints, such as Hippolytus of Rome, possessed an intimate knowledge of Brahmanism". Elst even quotes the famous Saint Augustin who wrote: ‘ that we never cease to look towards India, where many things are proposed to our admiration’. Unfortunately, remarks American Indianist David Frawley, "from the 2d century onwards, Christians leaders decided to break away from the Hindu influence and show that Christianity ONLY started with the birth of Christ". Hence, many later saints began branding Brahmins as "heretics" and Saint Gregory set a future trend by publicly destroying the "pagan" idols of the Hindus. Great Indian Sages, such as Sri Aurobindo, or Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living, which is practised in more than 80 countries, have often remarked that the stories recounting how Jesus came to India to be initiated, are probably true. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar notes, for instance, that Jesus sometimes wore an orange robe, the Hindu symbol of renunciation in the world, which was not a usual practice in Judaism. "In the same way, he continues, the worshipping of the Virgin Mary in Catholicism is probably borrowed from 31

the Hindu cult of Devi". Bells too, which cannot be found today in synagogues, the surviving form of Judaism, are used in Church - and we all know their importance in Buddhism and Hinduism for thousands of years. There are many other similarities between Hinduism and Christianity : incense, sacred bread (Prasadam), the different altars around churches (which recall the manifold deities in their niches inside Hindu temples); reciting the rosary (japamala), the Christian Trinity (the ancient Santana Dharma: Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh), Christian processions, the sign of the cross (Anganyasa) etc’ In fact, Hinduism’s pervading influence seems to go much earlier than Christianity. American mathematician, A. Seindenberg, has for example shown that the Sulbasutras, the ancient Vedic science of mathematics, constitute the source of mathematics in the Antic world, from Babylon to Greece : ‘ the arithmetic equations of the Sulbasutras he writes, were used in the observation of the triangle by the Babylonians, as well as in the edification of Egyptian pyramids, in particular the funeral altar in form of pyramid known in the vedic world as smasana-cit (Seindenberg 1978: 329). In astronomy too, the "Indus" (from the valley of the Indus) have left a universal legacy, determining for instance the dates of solstices, as noted by 18th century French astronomer Jean-Sylvain Bailly : ‘ the movement of stars which was calculated by Hindus 4500 years ago, does not differ even by a minute from the tables which we are using today". And he concludes: "the Hindu systems of astronomy are much more ancient than those of the Egyptians - even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge ‘. There is also no doubt that the Greeks heavily borrowed from the "Indus". Danielou notes that the Greek cult of Dionysos, which later became Bacchus with the Romans, is a branch of Shivaism : ‘ Greeks spoke of India as the sacred territory of Dionysos and even historians of Alexander the Great identified the Indian Shiva with Dionysos and mention the dates and legends of the Puranas ‘. French philosopher and Le Monde journalist Jean-Paul Droit, recently wrote in his book "The Forgetfulness of India" that ‘ the Greeks loved so much Indian philosophy, that Demetrios Galianos had even translated the Bhagavad Gita ’. Many western and Christian historians have tried to nullify this Indian influence on Christian and ancient Greece, by saying that it is the West, through the Aryan invasion, and later the onslaught of Alexander the Great on India, which influenced Indian astronomy, mathematics, architecture, philosophy - and not vice versa. But new archaeological and linguistic discoveries such as the mapping of the ancient Saraswati river by satellites, or the decipherment of the Indus script, have proved not only that there never was an Aryan invasion and that there is a continuity from ancient Vedic civilisation to the Saraswati culture, but also that Indian History has been considerably post-dated by British, or Birtish32

related historians. The Vedas, for instance, which constitute the soul of present day Hinduism, have not been composed in 500 BC, as dear Max Mueller arbitrarily decided, but may go back to 7000 years Before Christ giving Hinduism plenty of time to influence Christianity and older civilisations which preceded it. Thus, instead of protesting the Pope’s visit, the VHP and other Hindu organisations should rather point out to him the close links which exist between Christianity and ancient India, which bind them into a secret brotherhood.

CHRIST AND THE NORTH-EAST

Jesus Christ was a great avatar of Love in the history of humanity and his message of compassion, charity, of caring for one and another, is even more relevant today, in this fast and merciless civilization of ours, than it was 20 centuries ago, when people were more simple and living closer to Nature. Indeed, there are Christians who today try quietly and unobtrusively to put into practise Christ’s precepts - and you can find missionaries in India, such as Father Ceyrac, a Jesuit, who has lived for more than 60 years in Chennai, tending to the poorest sections of this society, while respecting their culture (Father Ceyrac, who speaks fluently Tamil, often quotes from the Upanishads). Unfortunately, there has crept in the purity of the early Christianity an exclusiveness, a feeling of sole propriety over the Copyright of God. This exclusiveness, this feeling amongst Christians, that "we are the only true religion, all other gods are false gods", has had the most catastrophic and bloody consequences: millions have been killed in the name of Christ, entire civilizations, such as the Atzecs and Incas, have been wiped-out, in order "to bring them the word of Jesus" and Christians have even savagely murdered each other, whether in France or England. One would hope that this intolerance, this fanatical and militant drive to convert, forcibly or otherwise, pagans to the "true" God has ceased in this new millenium of "enlightenment". Unfortunately it is not so. For nearly three centuries, India has been the target of a massive conversion drive. It is even more so today, as Christianity is dwindling in the West ‘ there are less and less people going to Church and very few youth willing to become priests and nuns. The Church is thus looking for new converts in the Third World, particularly in India, where people have such an innate aspiration to spirituality. Indeed, the Pope has earmarked this new millenium as "the Evangelization of Asia". And it is in the North-East that this evangelization is meeting with the most success, because it is peopled with simple, poor and uneducated tribals, who make an easy target. 33

In Tripura, for instance, there were no Christians at independence, the maharaja of the state was a Hindu and there were innumerable temples all over the State. But from 1950, Christian missionaries (with Nehru’s blessings) went into the deep forests of Tripura and started converting the Kukis. Today, according to official figures, there are 120.000 Christians in Tripura, a 90% increase since 1991. The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1710 Christians in 1961, but 115000 today, as well as 700 churches! What to say of Mizoram and Nagaland, where the entire local population is Christian! The amount of money being by poured by Christians into the NorthEast is staggering: The Saint Paul’s school of Tripura, for instance, gets an 80 lakhs endowment per semester. Which Hindu school can match this ? No country in the world would allow this. France, for instance, has a full-blown Minister who is in charge of hunting down "sects". And by sects, it is meant anything which does not belong to the great Christian family, particularly if it has Hindu "pagan" overtones’ Isn’t it also strange that many of the North-East separatist movements, such as the Mizo or the Bodos, are not only Christian dominated, but also sometimes function with the covert backing of the missionaries? The Don Bosco schools, for example, which are everywhere in the North-East, are known by the Tripura Intelligence Bureau to sometimes harbor extremists at night. But the Tripura Marxist Government chooses to close its eyes, because in India, Communists are often walking ‘ for their own selfish purpose - hand in hand with Christians. Does the common man in India know that the nexus between the separatists and the Church is so strong in Tripura and Assam that temples are being demolished, that people are scared to practise poujas, except in strongholds such as Agartala, that Hindu social workers do not dare go in the interior ? On the other hand, every other day a new church springs-up in the North-East, every week a new Christian school is opened without facing the threat of any extremist attack. Is it the way of treating a country, which from early times, gave hospitality to Christians ‘ indeed, the first Christian community in the world, that of the Christian Syrians, was established in Kerala in the first century AD? It’s not only that conversion is an unethical custom, but also that it threatens a whole way of life, erasing centuries of tradition, customs, wisdom, teaching people to despise their own religion and look westwards to a culture which is alien to them, with disastrous results. Look how the biggest drug problems in India are found in the North East, or how Third World countries which have been totally christianized have lost all moorings and bearing and are drifting away without nationalism and self-pride. It is time that Indians 34

awoke to the threat of Christian conversions here. The argument (mostly put forward by "secular" thinkers) that Christians are only 3% in India and therefore cannot be a threat, is totally fallacious: the influence that Christians exercise in this country through their schools, hospitals and the enormous amount of money being poured in by western countries for the purpose of converting Hindus, is totally disproportionate. The message of Christ is one of Love, of respecting other’s cultures and creed - not of utilizing devious and unethical means for converting people. It is false that Jesus is the only true God. The Divine has manifested Himself throughout the ages under different names and identities, whether it is Christ, Buddha, Krishna or Mohamed. Let this be the motto of the 21st century. Then only will true spirituality emerge, beyond all religions and intolerances.

THE "PERSECUTION" OF CHRISTIANS IN INDIA

When Prime Minister Vajpayee was in the US in September, the National Association of Asian Christians in the US (whom nobody had heard about before), paid 50.000 $ to the New York Times to publish "an Open Letter to the Hon Atal Behari Vajpayee, Prime Minister of India". While "warmly welcoming the PM", the Naaic expressed deep concern about the "persecution" of Christians in India by "extremist" (meaning Hindu) groups, mentioning as examples "the priest, missionaries and church workers who have been murdered", the nuns "raped", and the potential enacting of conversion laws, which would "make "genuine" conversions illegal. The letter concluded by saying "that Christians in India today live in fear". The whole affair was an embarrassment (as it was intended to be) to Mr Vajpayee and the accompanying Indian delegation, which had come to prod American businessmen to invest in India, a peaceful, pro-Western and democratic country. I am born a Christian and I have had a strong Catholic education. I do believe that Christ was an incarnation of Pure Love and that His Presence still radiates in the world. But I have also lived for more than 30 years in India, I am married to an Indian, I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and I have evolved a love and an understanding of India, which few other foreign correspondents have, because they are never posted long enough to start getting a real feeling of this vast and often baffling country (nobody can claim to fully understand India). And this is what I have to say about the "persecution" of Christians in India.

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Firstly, it is necessary to bring about a little bit of a historical flashback, which very few foreign correspondents (and unfortunately also Indian journalists) care to do, which would make for a more balanced view of the problem’ If ever there was persecution, it was of the Hindus at the hands of Christians, who were actually welcomed in this country, as they have been welcomed in no other place in this Planet. Indeed, the first Christian community of the world, that of the Syrian Christians, was established in Kerala in the first century; they were able to live in peace and practice their religion freely, even imbibing some of the local Hindu customs, until the Jesuits came in the 16th century and told them it was "heathen" to have anything to do with the Hindus, thereby breaking the Syrian Church in two. When Vasco de Gama, landed in Kerala in 1498, he was generously received by Zamorin, the Hindu king of Calicut, who granted him the right to establish warehouses for commerce. But once again, Hindu tolerance was exploited and the Portuguese wanted more and more: in 1510, Alfonso de Albuquerque seized Goa, where he started a reign of terror, burning "heretics", crucifying Brahmins, using false theories to forcibly convert the lower castes, razing temples to build churches upon them and encouraging his soldiers to take Indian mistresses. Indeed, the Portuguese perpetrated here some of the worst atrocities ever committed in Asia by Christianity upon another religion. Ultimately, the Portuguese had to be kicked out of India, when all other colonisers had already left. Secondly, Christianity has always striven on the myth of persecution, which in turn bred "martyrs" and saints, indispensable to the propagation of Christianity. But it is little known, for instance, that the first "saints" of Christianity, "martyred" in Rome, a highly refined civilization, which had evolved a remarkable system of Gods and Goddesses, some of whom were derived from Hindu mythology via the Greeks, were actually killed (a normal practice in those days), while bullying peaceful Romans to embrace the "true" religion, in the same way that later Christian missionaries will browbeat "heathen" Hindus, adoring many Gods, into believing that Jesus was the only "true" God. Now to come to the recent cases of persecution of Christians in India at the hands of Hindu groups. Take the burning of churches in Andhra Pradesh a few months ago, for instance, which was supposed to have been committed by the "fanatic" RSS. It was proved later that it was actually the handiwork of Indian Muslims, at the behest of the ISI to foment hatred between Christians and Hindus. Yet the Indian Press which went wild at the time of the burnings, mostly kept quiet 36

when the true nature of the perpetrators was revealed. Now that Dara Singh has been caught, it has been shown that even if he does belong to the Bajrang Dal, it is doubtful if the 100 others accused do. What is more probable, is that like in many other "backward" places, it is a case of converted tribals versus non-converted tribals, of pent-up jealousies, of old village feuds and land disputes. It is also an outcome of what - it should be said - are the aggressive methods of the Pentecost and seventh Adventists missionaries, known for their muscular ways of converting. Thirdly, conversions in India by Christian missionaries of low caste Hindus and tribals are sometimes nothing short of fraudulent and shameful. American missionaries are investing huge amounts of money in India, which come from donation drives in the United States where gullible Americans think the dollars they are giving go towards uplifting "poor and uneducated Indians". It is common in Kerala, for instance, particularly in the poor coastal districts, to have "miracle boxes" put in local churches: the gullible villager writes out a paper mentioning his wish: a fishing boat, a loan for a pukka house, fees for the son’s schooling’ And lo, a few weeks later, the miracle happens ! And of course the whole family converts, making others in the village follow suit’ American missionaries (and their Government) would like us to believe that democracy includes the freedom to convert by any means. But France for example, a traditionally Christian country, has a Minister who is in charge of hunting down "sects". And by sects, it is meant anything that does not fall within the recognised family of Christianity ‘ even the Church of Scientology, favoured by some Hollywood stars such as Tom Cruise or John Travolta, is ruthlessly hounded. And look at what the Americans did to the Osho movement in Arizona, or how innocent children and women were burnt down by the FBI (with the assistance of the US army) in Waco Texas, because they belonged to a dangerous sect’ Did you know that the Christianity is dying in the West ? Not only church attendance is falling dramatically because spirituality has deserted it, but less and less youth find the vocation to become priests or nuns. And as a result, say in the rural parts of France, you will find only one priest for six or seven villages, whereas till the late seventies the smallest hamlet had its own parish priest. And where is Christianity finding new priests today ? In the Third World, of course ! And India, because of the innate impulsion of its people towards God, is a very fertile recruiting ground for the Church, particularly in Kerala and 37

Tamil Nadu. Hence the huge attention that India is getting from the United States, Australia, or England and the massive conversion drive going on today. It is sad that Indians, once converted, specially the priests and nuns, tend to turn against their own country and help in the conversion drive. There are very few "White" missionaries left in India and most of the conversions are done today by Indian priests. Last month, during the Bishop’s conference in Bangalore, it was restated by bishops and priests from all over India, that conversion is the FIRST priority of the Church here. But are the priests and Bishops aware that they would never find in any western country the same freedom to convert that they take for granted in India ? Do they know that in China they would be expelled, if not put into jail ? Do they realize that they have been honoured guests in this country for nearly two thousand years and that they are betraying those that gave them peace and freedom ? Hinduism, the religion of tolerance, the coming spirituality of this new millennium, has survived the unspeakable barbarism of wave after wave of Muslim invasions, the insidious onslaught of Western colonialism which has killed the spirit of so many Third World countries and the soul-stifling assault of Nehruvianism. But will it survive the present Christian offensive ? Many Hindu religious leaders feel that Christianity is a real threat today, as in numerous ways it is similar to Hinduism, from which Christ borrowed so many concepts (see Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s book: " Hinduism and Christianity").. It is thus necessary that Indian themselves become more aware of the danger their culture and unique civilisation is facing at the hands of missionaries sponsored by foreign money. It is also necessary that they stop listening to the Marxist- influenced English newspapers’ defense of the right of Christian missionaries to convert innocent Hindus. Conversion belongs to the times of colonialism. We have entered in the era of Unity, of coming together, of tolerance and accepting each other as we are ‘ not of converting in the name of one elusive "true" God.

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4. THE HINDUS : A MAJORITY IN MORAL MINORITY Here you have a huge majority of 850 million people, part of a culture which is thousands of years old. A culture which has proved over the ages its infinite tolerance towards other creeds and religions, giving refuge to all persecuted minorities in the world, whether Parsis, Syrian Christians, Jews, or Tibetans today. Yet Hindu-bashing has become a favourite pastime of the Press, both Indian and Foreign and when you find someone such as Murli Manohar Joshi who wants to Indianize Indian education, an aspiration which would be found natural in any country, he is run down by his own people. Thus one finds that Hindus are self-depreciating, tend to lack self-confidence and that they never raise their voices in protest against the discrimination which is practiced against them. In short, you have a huge physical majority in moral minority. Is it because they are cowards?

POOR HINDUS !

Hindus not only represent the overwhelming majority of the population of India, but they can also boast of one the oldest cultures of the world: Sanskrit is often thought as the mother of all languages; Hindu philosophy has played a very important role in both the fashioning of Greek mythology and Celtic lore (as demonstrated by French Indianist Guy Deleury) and these two traditions represent the foundation of all European culture. We are all aware that the zero concept originated from India, but who knows that the Egyptians used Hindu arithmetic concepts to build their pyramids, that Hindus probably inspired Pythagorean mathematics, or that French astronomers of the 18th century, such as JeanClaude Bailly, had remarked "that Hindu calculations of the position of the stars and of solar eclipses were so precise that we are still using them today"? Thus, you have a people, the Hindus, inheritors of an immense, noble and age-old culture, who represent the massive physical (85%), social, religious and cultural majority of the Asian superpower of the 21st century, India. And yet, one sometimes finds that the voice of Hindus is rarely heard in India, that they are respected neither in their own country, nor abroad; and that Hindus generally lack self-confidence. Could it be that Hindus are a psychological minority in India, whereas minorities, such as the Christians, which constitute only 3% of the total population, wield an enormous moral power in this country, thanks to the quality of their schools and hospitals and because of the pride they have in their own religion and moral standards ? 39

Look also at Europe :all European children, be them Italian or German, are broughtup on the values of Christianity and the greatness of Greek philosophy. It would be impossible, in France for instance, for the Muslim minority - immigrants from France’s excolonies such as Algeria or Morocco ‘ to impose their views and culture on the government. In fact, Muslim girls are not allowed to wear a veil when they go to French school: "you are in France, you have been given the French nationality, so behave like a French first and like a Muslim in second", they are told bluntly. Would that be possible in India? Would any Indian, except the much-maligned RSS, have the courage to ask Muslims to be Indians first and Muslim second? Or tell Catholics and Protestants that they have to revert to a more Indianized Christianity, such as the one that existed in Kerala before the arrival of the Portuguese Jesuits ? And see how stridently Muslims and Christians backed by most of the Media - react when the Human Resources Minister, Dr Joshi, wants to teach Indian children a little bit of the greatness of their culture ! Actually, it appears at times that there are two sets of standards used in India amongst journalists and intellectuals: one for the Christians or the Muslims; and one for the Hindus. If for example a Christian is killed, such as the ghastly murder of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons, the Indian and foreign press will spend weeks - if not months - in eulogizing Graham and making nazis of all Hindus held responsible for his murder; but if a few days later twenty laborers, as innocent as Staines’ two sons, are savagely assassinated by Kashmir separatists, it will only warrant a few lines in Indian newspapers, without any of the outraged comments which followed Staines’ murder. When the Ayodhya mosque was brought down, it was as if eternal shame had descended upon India: "death of secularism, Hindu fundamentalists have taken over the country, a Black Day in the history of our democracy", screamed the newspapers ad infinitum’ However unfortunate the Ayodhya episode was, nobody was killed there; but the terrible Bombay blasts which followed, orchestrated by Indian Muslims, with the active help of Pakistan and the silent approval of Saudi Arabia, which took the lives of hundreds of innocent Hindus, never warranted the kind of moral indignation which followed Ayodhya. Hindus in India are not only the object of contempt, but they are also chased from their own ancestral lands. There were one million of them in Kashmir in 1900 but only a few hundred today, the rest having been made to flee though terror. In Assam, Tripura, or Nagaland, Hindus are being outnumbered by Bangladeshi illegal immigrants and terrorized by pro-Christian separatist groups, such as the Bodos or the Mizos, while local governments often turn a blind eye. Their temples are being taken over, like in Karnataka, where soon a bill will bring more than 43,000 Hindu shrines, maths, and religious groups under the 40

control of a commissioner. Notice that this act does not apply to Christians and Muslims institutions and that the Indian Government is still sponsoring the Haj pilgrimage ! Hindus anyway take all this lying down, as they amply demonstrated during the hijack of the Kathmandu-Delhi Indian Airlines flight one year ago. Is this normal ? Look again westwards: Europeans will battle tooth and nail to defend what they consider their rights and territories, whether it is the Spanish fighting the Basques, the British going all the way to the Falkland islands to wrest away what should geographically belong to the Argentineans, or the Americans going to war against Iraq because their oil interests are threatened. Hindus should maybe become a little prouder of themselves: there is today so much talent in India, so many brains, that they don’t have to copy from the West. Hindu children regularly top their schools and universities in the US, Hindus are now the best programmers of this planet and are in demand all over the world and Hindu expatiates are amongst the richest people in UK, the US or Canada. Why can’t the majority of this marvelous, diverse, ancient and extraordinary country which is India, stop behaving as if it was a moral minority ? THE GREAT AMBITION OF HINDUISM

It requires another foreign correspondent to provide a counterpoint to Delhi-based American journalist John Eliott’s rather condescending article : ‘ can Hindus be ambitious ’ (Outlook, December 21, 1998), where he says that Hinduism is the main obstacle to India’s modernisation and liberalisation. Because, again, if an Indian had answered his attacks, he would have immediately been taxed of ‘ nationalist ’, or even accused of being a follower of the Sangh Parivhar. Let’s first start by what John Elliott gets right : For some mysterious reason, Hindus appear to be the most undisciplined, collectively selfish, and nationally uncaring community in India, so that it requires a Mother Theresa to look after their own underprivileged. In the same way, they do, as Mr Elliott points out, tend to extend cleanliness only to their own immediate surroundings: their homes, or their front porches, but neglect the rest. It is puzzling for instance how a people which has worshipped the Ganges for thousands of years, treats it with so little respect, dumping every day thousands of chemicals in its waters.

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True again, Hindus are a tolerant people. India for example, is probably the only country in the world where the Jews not only were not persecuted, but were also welcomed with open arms when they fled the destruction of Jerusalem and allowed to practise freely their religion. True also : this tolerance can often become misguided : Naxalites ought, for instance, to have long ago whipped in public Rahul Bajaj, who is responsible for polluting entire cities with his Tempos, in the name of his petty, selfish interests. But all the rest is wrong. Take John Elliott’s view of Hinduism for instance: Hinduism has never been a religion, but a way of life, allowing countless sects, philosophies, creeds, to develop in its fold, as long as they were faithful to the central core of its essence - santana dharma. Over the centuries, this way of life has subtly influenced even India’s invaders, be it Christians or Muslims, who are like no other Christians and Muslims in the world. Mr Elliott has also not bothered to study Hinduism in depth, when he says that ‘ basically (!!!) Hinduism teaches fatalistic acceptance ’. On the contrary, Hinduism admits for example that one can use violence if necessary: when one’s brothers, sisters, or country are in danger - this is the very message of Krishna to Arjuna in the Bhavagad Gita. It is Buddhism and Jainism which perverted that message and opened India to the first invasions of Alexander the Great and subsequently to the Muslim onslaughts. Later, it is Gandhi and his rigid and moralistic attitude of ahimsa, refusing even to fight Nazism, the most asuric force of our modern age, which paved the way for India’s splitting in two. ‘ Hindus lack ambition ’, accuses Mr Elliott ! But Indian civilisation not only had the loftiest of ambitions, but it also achieved extraordinary realisations, which were unparalleled in the world. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, India’s great revolutionary, philosopher, and Sage: ‘ It lived with a noble, ample and vigorous order and freedom; it developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries; it rose to the highest possible ideals of knowledge and culture, of arduous greatness and heroism, of kindness, philanthropy and human sympathy and oneness. It laid the inspired basis of wonderful spiritual philosophies; it examined the secret of external nature and discovered and lived the boundless and miraculous truths of the inner being; it fathomed self and understood and possessed the world.

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Debilitating and cruel caste system ? The caste system is the most misunderstood, the most vilified subject of Hindu society. Let us again listen to Sri Aurobindo: "Caste was originally an arrangement for the distribution of functions in society, just as much as class in Europe, but the principle on which this distribution was based was peculiar to India. A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving the spiritual and intellectual elevation of the race, and he had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the spiritual training which alone would qualify him for the task. So it was for the Vaishya whose function was to amass wealth for the race and the Shudra who discharged the humbler duties of service without which the other castes could not perform their share of labour for the common good". But, yes, Mr Elliott, there is no doubt that the institution of caste degenerated : ‘ It ceased to be determined by spiritual qualifications and thus lost most of its meaning. The spirit of caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to dominate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened the nation and helped to reduce us to our present condition ’. And of course, Mr Elliott has to feed us the mantra of foreign (and sadly Indian) journalists : the ‘ (Hindu) fundamentalists / Hindutva ’. But a bit of nationalism is indispensable for the well-being of a nation. Most of Europe’s culture is based on its Christian heritage and we the French are proud of our Greco-Roman tradition. Thus, India does need to regain a little of its self-pride, after having been trampled upon by so many invaders... and made fun by so many foreign correspondents! It is healthy sign that it is happening in some small measure today. Finally : has India failed, as Mr Elliott implies ? But is not the very fact that India still exists a miracle in itself? This nation survived ten centuries of one of the most terrible genocide ever perpetuated on a race in the name of religion, the soul-stifling British colonial rule and 40 years of "secular" socialism; and it is going to survive the perils of industrialisation and westernisation, because, whatever Mr Elliott and his pairs say, no country which has survived so much when all other great civilisations, such as Greece or Egypt, are only memories in dusty text books, can be snuffed out by the winds of liberalism. Thus, John Elliot’s malevolent vision of an India which will ‘ gradually be shaped by more materialistic forces, such as liberalisation and satellite TV ’, may never come true. Thank God ! That would be the end of this country’s uniqueness and genius - whatever its faults. 43

EDUCATION : WHAT THE HELL IS THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT ?

As a foreign journalist, one cannot understand all the frenzy and the excessive noise made about the Education Agenda of Murli Manohar Joshi : what is wrong in trying to ‘ Indianize, nationalize and spiritualize ’ education in India ? Mr Joshi's critics - and there have been many - have called it ‘a hidden Hindu agenda’. So What? With 850 millions souls, Hindus constitute the majority of this country. Why should Hindus then be ashamed of a ‘Hindu’ education? Traditionally and historically, Hinduism has always been the most tolerant of all religions, never trying to convert anybody, never sending its armies or missionaries to neighboring countries, to impose its religion and ways of life - not even by non-violence means, as the Buddhists did all over Asia. It should also be said that Hinduism is much more than a religion, IT'S A WAY OF LIFE, a universal spiritual outlook, which has allowed numerous sects, branches, and philosophies, to develop within its fold, as long as they were faithful to the central truth of Hinduism: DHARMA. It even recognises the truth and validity of other creeds - and it's perfectly normal for a Hindu to have pictures of Guru Govind, Christ, Buddha and Krishna in their homes. For are they not both avatars? And is that not true secularism (and not the opportunistic secularism of India's politicians, which has divided India along caste and religious lines)? Then why should Hindus not be proud of Hinduism? It has not only shaped the psyches of Hindus, but also of Indian Christians, Jains, Parsis, even Muslims, who are like no other Muslims in the world. And why should Indians be ashamed of their own civilisation whose greatness was foremost Hindu? Why should they refuse to have their children read the Vedas, which constitute one of the great fountains of spiritual wisdom, or the Bhagavad Gita, which contains all the secrets of eternal life? Or the Ramanaya and the Mahabharata, which teach the great values of human nature : courage, selflessness, spiritual endeavour, love of one's wife and neighbours... Are the French ashamed of their Greco-Roman inheritance? Not at all! On the contrary they even think that civilisation started only with the Greeks. Would you call the Germans or the Italians ‘nationalists’ because they have Christian Democrats Parties? Christianity is the founding stone of Western civilisation and nobody dares deny it. Clinton 44

goes to the mass and swears on the Bible and none finds anything to say. We French are brought-up listening to the values of Homer's ‘ Iliad ’, or Corneille's ‘ Le Cid ’. It is true that in France there has been a separation of the State and the Church; but that is because at one time the Church misused its massive political power and grabbed enormous amounts of land (like it did in India under the British). But no such thing ever happened in India. The much-maligned Brahmins never interfered in politics and today they are often a neglected lot. When they took over India, the British set upon establishing an intermediary race of Indians, whom they could entrust with their work at the middle level echelons and who could one day be convenient instruments to rule by proxy or semi-proxy. The tool to shape these ‘British clones’ was EDUCATION . In the words of Macaulay, the ‘ pope ’ of British schooling in India: ‘ We must at present do our best to form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellects ’. Macaulay had very little regard for Hindu culture and education : ‘ all the historical information which can be collected from all the books which have been written in the Sanskrit language, is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgement used at preparatory schools in England ’. Or: ‘ Hindus have a literature of small intrinsic value, hardly reconcilable with morality, full of monstrous superstitions ’... It seems today that India's Marxist and Muslim intelligentsia could not agree more with Macaulay or with Charles Grant (1746-1823), Chairman of the East India Company, who said : "we cannot avoid recognising in the people of Hindustan a race of men lamentably degenerate and base...governed by malevolent and licentious passions...and sunk in misery by their vices". And the dream of Macaulay has come true: nowadays, the greatest adversaries of the ‘Indianised and spiritualised education’ of Mr Joshi, are the descendants of these ‘ Brown Shahibs ’ : the ‘ secular ’ politicians, the journalists, the top bureaucrats, in fact the whole Westernised cream of India. And what is even more paradoxical, is that most of them are Hindus. It is they who upon getting independence, have denied India its true identity and borrowed blindly from the British education system, without trying to adapt it to the unique Indian mentality and psychology; and it is they who are refusing to accept ‘ an Indianisation, nationalisation and spirtualisation ’ of India's education system, which is totally western-oriented and is churning out machines learning by heart (Indian children must be amongst those having most homework in the world) boring academics which are 45

of little usefulness in life. And what India is getting from this education is a youth which apes the West : they go to Mac Donald's, thrive on MTV culture, wear the latest Klein jeans and Lacoste T Shirts, and in general are useless, rich parasites, in a country which has so many talented youngsters who live in poverty. They will grow-up like millions of other western clones in the developing world, who wear a tie, read the New York Times and swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries from doom. But then, what makes India unique? Take the proposal of Joshi to make Sanskrit compulsory in school. Great idea! Sanskrit is the Mother of all languages, so intricate, so subtle, so rich, that no other language can equal it today. And moreover, it could become the unifying language of India, apart from English, which is spoken only by a tiny minority. "Sanskrit ought still to have a future as the language of the learned and it will not be a good day for India when the ancient tongues cease entirely to be written or spoken", admonished 50 years ago Sri Aurobindo, India's great Sage and Seer . A dead language, you say! Impossible to revive? But that's what they argued about Hebrew. And did not the Jewish people, when they got back their land in 1948, revive their "dead" language, so that it is spoken today by ALL Jewish people and has become alive again?... The same thing ought to be done with Sanskrit, but as Sri Aurobindo points out: "it must get rid of the curse of the heavy pedantic style contracted by it in its decline, with the lumbering impossible compounds and the overweight of hair-splitting erudition". Let the scholars begin now to revive and modernise the Sanskrit language, it would be a sure sign of the dawning of the Renaissance of India. In a few years it should be taught as the second language in schools throughout the country, with the regional language as the first and English as the third. Then will India again have its own unifying language. The Ministers walked out when the Saraswati Vandanam was played. But why should anyone object to Saraswati, the Goddess of learning, She who bestowed so much Grace on India. In 1939, a disciple had said to Sri Aurobindo that: "there are some people who object to the singing of Vande Mataram as a national song; Sri Aurobindo had replied: "in that case Hindus should give up their culture". But the disciple had continued: "the argument is that the song speaks of Hindu gods, like Durga and that it is offensive to Muslims". Said Sri Aurobindo: “but it is not a religious song, it is a national song and the Durga spoken of is India as the Mother”. Why should not the Muslims accept it? In the Indian concept of 46

nationality, the Hindu view should be naturally there. if it cannot find a place, the Hindus may as well be asked to give-up their culture. The Hindus don't object to "Allah-Ho-Akbar". It is then obvious that Education in India has to be totally revamped. The kind of Westernised education which is standard in India, does have its place, because India wants to be on par with the rest of the world, and Indian youth should be able to deal confidently with the West: do business, talk, and relate to a universal world culture. But nevertheless, the first thing that Indian children should be taught IS THE GREATNESS OF THEIR OWN CULTURE. They should learn to revere the Vedas, they should be taught the genius of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana; they should be told that in this country everything has been done, that it was an unsurpassed civilisation, when the West was still mumbling its first words, that Indian civilisation reached dizzying heights, which have been since unsurpassed. But overall they should be taught early that India's greatness is her spirituality her world-wide wisdom. INDIA'S NEW EDUCATION HAS TO BE SPIRITUALISED; IT HAS TO BE AN INNER EDUCATION, WHICH TEACHES TO LOOK AT THINGS FROM THE INNER PRISM, NOT THROUGH THE WESTERN ARTIFICIAL LOOKING GLASS. India's Dharma, her eternal quest for truth, should be drilled in the child from an early age. And from this firm base, everything then can be taught -from the most modern forms of mathematics, to the latest scientific technologies. Finally we can only end by echoing the words of Sri Aurobindo who was India's most ardent revolutionary and an avatar, who foresaw Humanity's next stage of evolution : " Whoever wishes to cut of the nation from its past, is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present, is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thoughts in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best knowledge that the West can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance, so as to build up men and not machines".

" SEVA AND GOVERNMENT "

In ancient India, the concept of "Seva", of service to others, was very predominant. It was then felt that the very action of forgetting oneself and giving one’s work towards the welfare of one’s brothers and sisters, was one of the most powerful tools to the realisation 47

of the inner Self. Today, the tradition of Seva is being revived by many contemporary spiritual movements which are creating a new avatar for Hinduism. More than that, for the first time since independence, India has a Government which can boast quite a few Ministers, who are bringing back the practice of service to their country. That is to say, that they are not in power to fill their pockets, but put the betterment of "Mother India", before their own petty self-interests, or even those of their parties. One such politician is Dr Manohar Murali Joshi - and amongst all the NDA Ministers, he is the one who has been most targeted by the Press. Yet, Dr Joshi has a mission, an ideal - not for himself but for his own country. The first thing that Dr Joshi feels is that "Indians lack self- confidence", this very modern and western bend of mind which says: "we can do it" and drives people to go beyond themselves to reach their goals. And it is true: Indians are often self-depreciating and are always comparing their countries to western nations and their achievements. "Yet, says Dr Joshi, we should tell our children that modern computers would not work unless India had not invented the concept of the zero, or that high grade steel in ancient India was so good that Alexander the Great wanted it to fashion his own sword, or that rhinoplastic surgery was performed in Vedic times, long before it was known in Europe". Manohar Murali Joshi also believes that Indians lack "esprit de corps", the team spirit which makes a nation great. "Look at our hockey or crickets players, says Dr Joshi, they are great individually, but cannot perform well collectively on a steady basis". Dr Joshi could also have added that Indians are probably amongst the most undisciplined people in the world: they always break queues, drive without thinking one second about the other, clean meticulously their own front porch, but throw their garbage in the street, and have hoarded so much black money that if it would surface, it would make India one of the richest nations in the world. And here again, the key is to educate : "It has been stated that Hinduism, being too individualistic a religion, is responsible for this lack of collective spirit, argues Dr Joshi, but nothing is further from truth". And Murali Joshi to quote from Sri Aurobindo, India’s great avatar of the New Age: "Indian civilisation lived with a noble, ample and vigorous order and freedom; it developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries; it rose to the highest possible ideals of spiritual knowledge "... "It is the British, asserts Dr Joshi, who attacked and ridiculed Hinduism, which they rightly perceived as the main obstacle to their complete hold over India". And he could have further said that they also created "Macaulay’s children", Indians in body, but British in mind, whose descendants can still be found amongst Indian Intelligentsia! "Hinduism is 48

very community-oriented religion, contends Dr Joshi, as apart from the concept of seva, look how collective is our temple worship, with its bhajans, or how the old Panchayat system was democratic from the village all the way to the top (and not like today, where everything is decided in Delhi, with the villages having absolutely no say in anything). What about the environment, which is so degraded today : tigers are being killed at the rate of one day, says a recent report; every year an area the size of France is deforested in India; and the holy Ganges is so polluted that it is not even fit for bathing. Are not those who defecate in the Ganges, cut their own forests and kill tigers, mostly Hindus? "But on the contrary, replies Dr Joshi, the Scriptures tell us never to urinate in the Ganges, they enjoin us to plant trees at the time of festivities and not to kill animals. It is again the impact of ten centuries of colonisation which has made us forget this very Hindu respect of Nature". Finally, unless you educate Indian children about the greatness of their own civilisation, which taught the concept of seva, of collective discipline and respect for Nature’s bounties, there is no way that India is going to produce the leaps and bounds which she needs to become a superpower. You also have to rewrite Indian history, which basically has been crafted by British historians to further their claim of superiority on the "natives", using false evidence, such as the theory of the Aryan Invasion, which all recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries are proving as false. The history of the independence of India, which has been concocted by Congress historians to show the Congress in the best light, should be reviewed too and Indian children should be told about the untold horrors of ten centuries of Muslim invasions so that they can face their own history. And this is the task that Dr Joshi has set for himself in the true spirit of seva. Of course, "secular" historians and journalists, who often have such a Marxist-inspired vision of their country, will scream every time Mr Joshi makes a move towards "Indianisation" of what is basically a very bland copy of Western culture. But just think how seven years ago Dr Joshi had the guts to go and raise the national flag in Kashmir on 15th of August. Remember how he was reviled and ridiculed by the Indian Press? Today he would be hero "We can do it"

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ARE HINDUS COWARDS?

"Muslims are bullies and Hindus cowards", the Mahatma Gandhi once said. He was right at least about Hindus: there has been in the past 1400 years, since the first invasions started, very few Shivaji’s and Rajput princes to fight the bloody rule of the Moghuls, or hardly any Rani of Jhansi’s to stand against the humiliating colonial yoke of the British. If a nation’s soul is measured by the courage of its children, then India is definitely doomed: without the Sikhs, whose bravery is unparalleled in the more recent history of India, Hindus would have even lost additional land to the Muslim invaders and there would have been infinitely more massacres of Hindus by Muslims during the first weeks of Partition. Are Hindus more courageous since they have an independent nation (thanks - not to the non-violence of Gandhi but to the true nationalists, such as Sri Aurobindo and Tilak, who prepared the ground for the Mahatma at the beginning of the century)? Not at all! Because of Nehru’s absurd and naïve "hindi-chini-bhai-bhai" policy, the Indian army was shamefully routed in 1962 by the Chinese, a humiliation which rankles even today. Beijing is still able to hoodwink Indian politicians, by pretending it has good intentions, through the interviews the Chinese leaders very generously give to the Hindu newspaper (which should rightly be called the "anti-Hindu") and Frontline ("the mouthpiece in India for the Chinese communist party"), while quietly keeping on giving nuclear know-how to Pakistan, as well as the missiles to carry their atomic warheads to Indian cities, arm separatists groups in the north-east and continuing to claim Arunachal Pradesh or Sikkim. Everywhere in the world, Hindus are hounded, humiliated, routed, be it in Fiji where, once more, an elected democratic government was deposed in an armed coup, or in Pakistan and Bangladesh, where Muslims indulge in pogroms against Hindus every time they want to vent their hunger against India (read Taslima Nasreen’s book "Lalja"). In Kashmir, the land of yogis, where Hindu sadhus and sages have meditated for 5000 years, Hindus have been chased out of their ancestral home by death, terror and intimidation: there were 25% of Hindus at the beginning of the century in the Kashmir valley’ and hardly a handful today. And how did India start the new millennium? By surrendering as a lamb goes to the slaughterhouse to a handful of terrorists who took over flight IC 814 from Kathmandu to Delhi (Nepal is another small inconsequential country, which owes its culture to India, but keeps on indulging India’s enemies, whether Pakistan or China)! India had the opportunity to storm the plane when it landed in Amritsar, at a time when the militants had not been furnished with explosives and more guns by the Talibans, but it did nothing out of bureaucratic bungling and sheer incapability. And not only did this Hindu Government make 50

an ass of itself by calling the Talibans "friendly", whereas all along the Talibans only helped the terrorists, but also by its weak "Gandhian" attitude, it lost any credibility in a world, where Might is the only criteria, as the US proves us every day. And what happens when there is ONE man in India - whatever his faults, quirks, or excesses who dares to call a spade a spade, is not afraid of words and is ready to stand-up for his opinions? Not only, of course, he is attacked by Christians and Muslims, but he is also hounded by his own brothers and sisters, the "secular" Hindus, the Human Rights activists, the journalists, the judges, the police, the (Congress) politicians! Are Hindus so intent to show the world that not only they are cowards, but also idiots? This man, of course, is Bal Thakeray. When Bal Thakeray said, already many years ago, that there was no point in playing cricket against Pakistan, as long as Islamabad was sending militants to kill and maim into Indian territory, he was ridiculed by the secular press as fanatic and unsportive (and cricket is certainly not a gentleman’s game as the recent scandal has shown). But he was proved right, when during Kargil, India refused - for once - to play cricket with Pakistan. When he says too, that since fourteen centuries, Muslims always strike first against Hindus, he has another good point, for those who live in Indian cities which have important Muslim minorities, will tell you that every time there are Hindu-Muslims, it is the Muslims who start them, either by attacking the police, or by provoking the Hindus. And this is exactly what took place in Bombay, after the Ayodhya mosque was brought down by Hindu militants : Muslims, angry of the "terrible" affront done to Islam, started pelting the police with stones and burning shops; but unfortunately for the Muslims, who have made of riots an art (please read the passages of the Koran which deal with riots as part of jihad), they found that for once, the Hindus under the leadership of the Shiv Sena, retaliated blow for blow ‘ an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth ’ as the Israelis, who have been so long at the receiving end of Muslim bullying, say so well. It is not for us to condone violence: but how long can the Hindus be the butt of killings and persecution, be sacrificial lambs that meekly go to slaughter? For Gandhi was absolutely right: Muslims are bullies, they have bullied India and they continue to bully Hindu India, as Pakistan has demonstrated by receiving a well-meaning, but naïve Vajpayee at Lahore, while its soldiers were quietly invading the heights above Kargil; or as Musharraf shows, by giving gullible Indian journalists pep talk about how he wants peace with India, while Islamabad is still training and arming murderous jihadis for Kashmir. And what monstrous murder is Bal Thakeray accused of? What crime against humanity has he committed? He is guilty of having written two "inflammatory" editorials in 51

the Shiv Sena’s mouthpiece. Editorials ? Inflammatory ? But did Bal Thakeray ever kill anyone? Is the man going to be arrested for having "written" something? Are not the leaders of the Muslim organization which spearheaded the recent bombing of churches in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, to sow disharmony between Christians and Hindus, still scot-free, by pretending that they believe in secularism? Has Tiger Memom, who planted deadly bombs in Bombay in 1992, ever been caught and brought to court? Are not the Muslim organizations, which organized the bomb attacks in Coimbatore a few years back, still functioning under different names? Isn’t it true that in Kerala, every day a new mosque is built with money coming from the Gulf and that from these mosques and madrasas the mullahs preach openly violence and anti-Hinduism? We have to say it again: there are two standards in India - one for the Hindus; and one for the Muslims. Did the "fanatic" Hindus who brought down Ayodhya (and brought shame onto secular India, according to the Indian media) kill or even injure anyone in the process? No. But Muslims do not have such qualms. When Gandhi said they were bullies, he was being very nice or very polite. For forget about the millions of Hindus killed during the ten centuries of Muslim invasions, probably the worst Holocaust in world history; forget about the hundreds of thousands of Hindu temples razed to the ground, whose destruction - whatever our "secular" Hindus of today say - was carefully recorded by the Muslims themselves, because they were proud of it (see Aurangzeb’s own chronicles); forget about the millions of Hindus forcibly converted to Islam, and who sadly are now rallying under a banner, a language, a scripture which have nothing to do with their own ethos and culture (*). Yesterday and also today, when the Muslim world feels it has been slighted, in even a small measure by Hindus, these Infidels, who submitted meekly to Muslim rule for ten centuries, it retaliates a hundred fold ‘ this is the only way one intimidates cowards. After Ayodhya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (at least in a passive way by giving shelter for a while to Tiger Memon) with the help of Indian Muslims, planted bombs in the heart of Bombay and killed a thousand innocent human beings, most of them, once more, Hindus. Tomorrow, Pakistan might wage, with the blessing of the Muslim word, the ultimate jihad against India, which if necessary, will utilise the ultimate weapon, nuclear bombs. For has not the Koran said "'Choose not thy friends among the Infidels till they forsake their homes and the way of idolatry. If they return to paganism then take them whenever you find them and kill them" (Koran 98:51-9:5-4:89)? One would be tempted to say in conclusion: "Arise O Hindus, stop being cowards, remember that a nation requires Kshatriyas, warriors, to defend Knowledge, to protect one’s women and children, to guard one’s borders from the Enemy". 52

Do Indians need a Bal Thakeray to remind them of that simple truth? (*) This is no to say that all Muslims are fanatics; on the contrary, many of India’s Muslims are extremely gentle and their sense of hospitality unsurpassed. The same thing can be said about Pakistan: Pakistani politicians, for instance, are much more accessible than in India and Pakistan has its own identity, which cannot be wished away. No, the problem is not with Muslims, whether they are Indians or Pakistanis, the problem is with Islam, which teaches Indian Muslims from an early age, to look beyond their national identity to a country - the Mecca, in Saudi Arabia - which is not their country, to read a Scripture, the Koran, which is not written in their own language, to espouse a way of thinking, Islam, which is inimical to their own roots and indigenous culture. Indian Muslims, have to think of themselves first as Indians and secondly only as Muslims. Muslim soldiers fighting against Pakistan in Kargil, have shown the way.

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5. THE INDIAN MEDIA: AN HOSTILE FORCE Indian journalists must be held responsible in some degree for the slow progresses India has made in regaining her self-confidence, shattered by centuries of colonization. For Indian journalists are often the worst enemies of India and Indian culture, constantly harping at the negative sides of India, constantly ignoring the greatness of this country. They must also be the biggest Hindu-bashers in a nation where there are already so many Hindu bashers (Marxists, Muslims, Christians, politicians), having since Independence, made fun in the most belittling manner of Hindu culture. Finally, they must also be held to some extent responsible for the negative attitude that the western press has had since towards India. For towards whom but the Indian journalists will the newly arrived correspondent turn to understand this vast and difficult continent? INDIAN JOURNALISTS

Do Indian journalists suffer from an inferiority complex vis à vis the West ? Do they think theirs is a lesser democracy, afflicted with all the world's ills? Does India's media look down upon its own country? To a Westerner, it seems very much so. Indian journalists appear to enjoy India-bashing; nothing seems to find grace in their eyes: everything is rotten, the system, the government, the politicians, and the bureaucracy. Nothing works, nothing is possible, everything is bleak, worthless, hopeless. But the truth is that those Indian journalists who constantly negate India, are ashamed of their country. They always seem to compare their democracy to Western standards. Their parameters appear to be set by what the West thinks about India, by Amnesty International's comments on their nation. They want to apply to India the same norms which are used in the industrialised world. And extraordinarily, many of them ridicule what makes this country unique in the world, what no other nation in the word possesses: Dharma, true Hinduism; the knowledge passed down by thousands of sages, saints, yogis, sadhus of the Eternal Truth, that which gives a meaning to this otherwise senseless life and which the West has totally lost: the Wheel of Life, the endless rebirths and ultimately the evolutionary Ascension of man towards the Ultimate Truth.

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When the British invaded India, they quickly set upon trying to destroy what they perceived as paganism, but which was in reality India's many-sided perception of truth, Hinduism, the Sanatana Dharma of the Vedic sages. Fortunately for India, they never succeeded in their task, but they did manage to win over a small portion of India's elite population. These people, were made to feel ashamed of their own ways and thus tried to become more British than the Britishers, be it in their dress, in their thinking... or in their Hinduism-bashing and Indian journalists soon became the flag-bearers of this deIndianisation. Do not Indian journalists realise that by constantly belittling their own country and seeing it the way the West wants them to perceive it, they are handing over India to her enemies, those who wish her ill? Those who would like to see her humbled, broken, fragmented? Does the Indian media want to see their country go the way of Yugoslavia? Don't they realise that they are traitors to their own country, to its uniqueness, to its unparalleled greatness? That ultimately their India-bashing is a colonial leftover? An unconscious inferiority complex, which has been planted in the minds of their ancestors more than two centuries ago? They whipped up the Ayodhya controversy, forcing the Congress and the Muslim leadership to make a stand for the mosque, when actually this disused, ugly structure, in the midst of a wholly Hindu city had no relevance for anyone who has some common sense. It is they who labelled Hindus as Nazis fundamentalists, it is they who called Advani a Hitler ‘but do they have any knowledge of European history: Hitler killed in cold blood 6 million Jews and crores of other people! It is they who in the aftermath of the destruction shouted themselves hoarse over "the end of our secularism" or "the mortal blow to our democracy", forgetting in the heat of their self-righteousness that Ayodhya was a symbol. It is they who are still at it today, by portraying the Christian community in India as persecuted, when many of the incidents are the result of jealousies between converted and non-converted tribals, or are even engineered by Muslims and forgetting how much harm Christianity has done to this country for three centuries, converting by devious means, crucifying Brahmins in Goa, destroying temples in Pondichery’ True, the Indian Press should also be praised for its incredible diversity, for its inexhaustible reserve of talented writers, for its investigative journalism which makes sense when it helps uncover corruption, injustice, or political despotism. But again, it should learn to look at things NOT through the Western prism, but through the Indian looking glass, and 55

apply to India standards that are Her own and of which she has nothing to be ashamed, because they are unique in the world. THE INDIAN MEDIA AND GURUS

Westerners have often a deep suspicion of ‘Gurus’ and are wary of anything which has a "Hindu" flavour. It is true that gurus teaching in the West can be a mixed lot, and some of them might have brought a bad name to Hinduism; but is this a reason to clamp them all together under the same "fake" label ? Indian journalists unfortunately share sometimes the same resistance to gurus as their Western counterparts. And one can also understand their misgivings, given the problems there has been in India with certain gurus having political connections. But these are the exception to the rule. Why then brand all gurus as ‘Godmen’, a negative and slightly cynical term, as many Indian journalists do ? Or why always ask Gurus the same pointed and devious questions about their opinions on Ayodhya and "Hindutva" ? Isn’t it also strange that Indian journalists do not display the same aggressiveness towards Christian bishops or priests, whom they never call Godmen, but "Holy Father"? They also like to question "miraculous" powers of Indian Gurus, as it was done in a recent issue of India Today targeting Sai Baba. But is it less rational or Cartesian to think, as the Catholics do, that Mary conceived a child while remaining a virgin, or that Christ came back from the dead and ascended physically to heaven? Running down Hindu culture and Hindu Gurus is fine - but a huge majority of the Indian population which, let us remember, is 85% Hindu sees nothing wrong in this culture : ordinary Indians meditate every morning, do pujas, perform asanas, chant bhajans, or do pranayama. There is no sectarianism here, no fake mysticism, no pagan obscure rites. The irony is that this very spirituality on which Indian intellectuals tend to look down, is taking root in the West : more and more sportsmen, for instance, are using pranayama to enhance their performances; ordinary Americans are meditating by the millions; hata-yoga has long taken Europe by storm and has been copied by all kinds of gymnastics or aerobics’ Does India need the West to realize what an inconceivable spiritual inheritance it has in its hands ? A knowledge which once roamed the shores of the world, from Mesopotamia to Egypt, from Greece to Babylon, but which today has disappeared in a world peopled by intolerant churches?

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Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living, who has also been catalogued as a ‘Godman’ by the Deccan Herald, is doing his bit in propagating this wonderful knowledge, both in India, where it is under threat from globalization and westernization - and abroad, where materialism has often stifled the soul of so many countries. His disciples are promoting as much the revival of Sanskrit and Vedic knowledge, as an healthy ecological concern: plastic disposal in their ashram for instance, or trying to save the centenary trees which are in danger of being chopped down on the Kanakapura road as it is being widened. His numerous associations prove that he is not only a "guru of the rich", as he has been accused: his village schools, for instance, do so well that children have a 95% rate of success in exams; his Youth Training Program brings to India’s remotest hamlets in Karnataka or even in Naxalite infested Bihar, Housing, Hygiene, and Human values. His volunteers worked recently during 15 days with their own hands in a village near Allahabad to clear the garbage, clean the sewage infested roads and generally renovate the place. The Art of Living and the medically-tested Sudarshan Kriya are today taught everywhere: in Tihar jail, in corporate offices in Bangalore, or Bombay, in California detention centers, or in far-away Mongolia. It is part of the freedom in the Press to be able to criticize anything and anybody. And we must acknowledge that Indian journalists have often played a positive role by highlighting injustice or corruption in public life. But the spitefulness that they sometimes display towards the saints, sadhus and gurus of India seems a little bit unfair. For however much poverty there is in this country, however many problems it is facing, India’s gift to the world in the 21st century will be its spirituality, this eternal knowledge which alone She has preserved.

AN INDIAN SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM

In a year or so, a unique and revolutionary new INDIAN School of journalism, which will be Bangalore-based, is going to be inaugurated. In this school, students will not only be taught the complete art of journalism - how to develop a piece, the different styles of interviews, what is a by-line, the usefulness of a box etc. -, but they will also learn to look at India through an INDIAN perspective, to cast an eye on the world which will carry some of the knowledge and wisdom of a civilisation their own - which is five thousand years old.

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They will, for instance, be taught pranayama, the ancient and unique technique of breathing devised thousands of years ago by Indian sages, so that they know how to regulate their breath in time of stress and thus control their emotions; they will be taught the royal art of meditation, so that they can get their inspiration from a quiet, strong and silent mind; they will be taught asanas, so that their body is strong and resilient and can endure any physical situation, in peace or war; they will be taught a unique cleansing technique called the Sudarshan Kriya, which eliminates toxins and stresses from the mind and body; they will even be taught to sing and dance, so that there is joy and spontaneity in their life and not the dry, intellectual pompousness of the pipe-smoking, Oxford Englishspeaking journalist, or the chain-smoking pseudo-Marxist. In short, they will be taught the Art of Living. Sounds preposterous? But these methods should be applied to ALL aspects of education in India, from the kindergarten onwards, so that schools and universities do not churn out western clones, who have no idea about the greatness and the immense wealth of their own country, as its is often the case since Independence. And the FIRST thing which should be taught to all students, whether they are toddlers, or aspiring journalists, is that there exists a Knowledge - spiritual, occult, yogic - still alive in India, which has died all over the world, where only churches and dogmas survive, although this Knowledge was once prevalent in ancient civilisations - in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece etc. They should also understand that if this Knowledge is left to die in India, it will be gone forever from this world which will slowly drift towards pralaya. But at the moment, India is still living under Nehru’s legacy, who had chosen to turn its back on anything which had a spiritual connection and had espoused in its stead the Marxist Way of Life, which produced immense bureaucracy, corruption and the kind of politicians we see today. It also bred many generations of Indian intellectuals and journalists, who kept running down the greatness of their own country and aped anything that came from the West the good and the bad. Today still, many of India’s newspapers and magazines do not reflect a true Indian point of view, but constantly look at India through a Western Prism which contains none of the wisdom and Knowledge of ancient India and often plays in the hands of India’s foes. Take the Pope’s visit for instance. Instead of defending India’s point of view - as it would have been normal practice in any other country - by doing some background research on the atrocities committed by the Portuguese in Goa, or about the economic incentives which missionaries have used and are still using - to convert entire chunks of 58

North-East and Central India, most of the Indian press went on its usual VHP-RSS-Bhajrang Dal bashing. It is too easy to repeat ad infinitum that Christians in India are only 3% (a nearly ten years old census), for the influence which Christians exert in India is tremendous. Not only do they control the best schools (and hospitals), thus shaping the minds of India’s future elite, but on top of that, their sometimes alliance with Marxists make them redoubtable adversaries. Furthermore, very few newspapers and magazines chose to publish extracts of the Southern Baptist Church’s prayer books which call Hinduism "satanic" and say that "Hindus live in the darkness of their hearts, which no lamp can dispel". Christians in India have thus been able to take full advantage of this hatred of the Indian Press - which is mostly composed of Hindus against any organisation or individual who dares to defend Hindus and their softness for anybody who attacks Hindus. It is in this way that the Pope was able to come and lecture India on the "atrocities" committed against Indian Christians, without mentioning the much greater atrocities committed against the Hindus who had welcomed so whole heartedly Christians centuries ago. (Shameful also that the BJP, who not so long ago was the target of attacks by these very same journalists, chose to arrest its own people: the leaders of those groups who have the courage to stand-up for their own ideas. Does the Home Minister, Mr Advani remember when he was branded a "Nazi" by the Indian Press - and who stood by him then?’) This is not to say that Western journalism is better. On the contrary, there is today something perverted and near asuric about a journalism which misuses constantly the enormous power it has, because contemporary politicians always have an eye on public opinion and need journalists. As to foreign coverage of India, barring a few exceptions, it is often discriminatory, condescending, and there is a unanimity of views on everything from Mother Teresa to Sonia Gandhi, which makes it quite uninspiring. No wonder the average western man still thinks of India as a backward country of beggars and fakirs, the abode of the dying people of Mother Teresa. We, the foreign correspondents in South Asia are all guilty of compromising under pressure of our editors, who are still expecting from us a certain negative bias, an anti-Hindu tone’ So what is needed is a new generation of Indian journalists who will be proud of their country without being chauvinists, who will be brilliant without being superficial, who will take the best of the West, without being western clones, who will draw inspiration from the Knowledge alive in this country, without being bigots’ In brief they will be INDIAN journalists. This is what the Art of Living School of Journalism will teach them. 59

HOW FOREIGN JOURNALISTS VIEW INDIA

Foreign journalists (and photographers) are generally interested in three kinds of India: a) The macabre and the negative: the widows of Benares, the caste system as practised in Bihar, Mother Teresa’s place for the dying, kidneys’ traffic in Tamil Nadu, the slums of Calcutta, bride burning, etc. These subjects have their own truth and there does exist in India terrible slums, unacceptable exploitation of caste, dying people left unattended, or bride burning. But by harping only on these topics, the foreign press always presents a very negative image of India. Foreign writers have also tended to exploit that vein: Dominique Lapierre in his "City of Joy", which still is a world-wide best-seller and has been made into a film, has done incalculable damage to India, as it takes a little part of India - the Calcutta slums - and gives the impression to the western reader, who generally is totally ignorant of the realities of India, that it constitutes the whole. b) The folklore and the superfluous: maharajas, of whom Westerners are avid, although they are totally irrelevant to modern India; the palaces of Rajasthan, cherished by the such as Vogue magazine, who regularly sends there photographers and lanky models, who have no idea of India; festivals: Pushkar, the camel fair, Kumb-melas, dance performances in Khajurao’ all these have their own beauties, but they represent only a small part of this great and vast country. c) The politically correct. There must be at least three hundred foreign correspondents posted in Delhi, which should vouch for a variety of opinion. But if you give them a subject to write about - any subject - say Ayodhya, the RSS, fanatic Hindus, secularism, or Sonia Gandhi, and you will get two hundred and ninety eight articles which will say more or less the same thing, even if it is with different styles, different illustrations and various degrees of professionalism. This is not to say that there are no sincere western journalists who write serious stories which do homage to India’s greatness and immense culture; but they are usually the exception. And at the end, the result is more or less the same : a downgrading of India, a constant harping on "Hindu fundamentalism", on the "fanatical khaki-clad RSS members" or "the burning of Christians in India", conveniently forgetting to mention that Christians have found refuge in this country for 2000 years and have often taken advantage of this great Hindu 60

tolerance, witness the crucifying of heretic Hindus in Goa by the Portugese, or the huge conversion drive today by Pentacostists or Adventists, who have targeted India as a "pagan country to be brought to the true Word" (please check their Internet sites: htpp//www.bethany.com) These three kinds of reporting about India have been going on for fifty years and very few Indians have dared - or bothered - to complain. But the interesting question is WHY? Why this always harping on the negative, the folklore, or the politically correct? Why this uniformity of views and un-originality in the selection of subjects, in a country which is so ancient, whose civilisation is so diverse, so profound, so fascinating, that there are thousands of extraordinary topics, which could be exploited ? It seems to me there are two important factors, which are at play in every foreign correspondent. Firstly, a foreign correspondent before even being posted in Delhi, has already fixed ideas about India: prejudices, clichés, negative "à-prioris" etc. This is not to say that it is wilfully done, but it is just something which we pick-up unconsciously from the concepts on India floating in the West: Tintin’s stereotyped India - the good maharajas and the bad fakirs; Kipling’s jungle child ready to embrace the good of the Christian civilisation; or else it is the poverty, the dirtiness and the squalor of India which is always overemphasised in the West and which scares many of us, used to a clean disinfected (and soulless) world. More subtly even, we western journalists are influenced by what is said about India in the "serious" books of distinguished Indologists, who have got it all wrong : the supposed invasion of India by the Aryans (which, say more and more archaeologists and linguists, never happened); the great achievements of Moghol culture (which mostly borrowed from Hindu genius); the fanaticism of Hindu social and political movements (which were born in the early twenties after nearly thirteen centuries of horrendous persecutions by Muslim invaders and shameless European colonisation); the importance of being "secular" in Modern India and how Nehru was its great father (forgetting to say that secularism has been hijacked by the Congress for its own selfish purpose), etc. These "wise" historians have unfortunately a very strong hold on the image of India abroad and they give all the wrong ideas to foreign newspapers editors, who in turn expect a certain (Hindu fundamentalism) angle from the stories of their correspondents. The second factor is simple: India is a vast and complicated country, often contradictory, full of paradoxes, with many castes, religions, ethnic groups, political parties. 61

It is thus extremely baffling to the mind of the foreign correspondent freshly arrived from the United States, for example, where everything is black and white, good or bad (the evil Milosevic and the good Kosovars). Thus, naturally, the foreign correspondent will turn for advice and information to his counterpart : the Indian journalist, who is frequently witty, brilliant and well informed. And here lies the crux of the matter, because Indian journalists are often the worst enemies of their own country - they are more secular than the secular, more anti-Indian than its worst adversaries and often play in the hands of India’s foes (for instance the magazine Frontline should rightly be called the "Voice of China", as it often echoes the views of the Chinese communist party, which is profoundly inimical to India). Another important factor which enhances the uniformity of views amongst foreign correspondents, is that New Delhi has become a very superficial and arrogant city, geographically cut-off from the rest of India (does Delhi have any idea of what is happening in the South?); and there, the foreign correspondents always hear the same stories, whether in the Embassy cocktails, or at journalists’ parties. It would be nice to say that even though Indian journalism looks at its own country in a very negative manner, it is something which is self-generated and that its opinions are formed independently. But unfortunately, this debasing self-criticism, this eternal inferiority complex, this constantly looking at India through a western prism (take the magazine Outlook, for instance), was born at the beginning of this century, when the "moderates" of the Congress Party (which, nobody should forget, was founded by an Englishman, A.O. Hume - strange today that it is another foreigner, however deserving she may be, who is leader of the same party), tried to stifle the voices of the real nationalists : Sri Aurobindo, Tilak, or Bepin Chandra Pal, who already then, advocated the booting out of the English coloniser - if necessary by force. Thus when the first real cultural, social and political movements, which had at heart the defence of India's true heritage started taking shape, such as the much decried Hindu Mahasabha, which attempted to counterbalance the Muslim League's influence, or the even more maligned Rama Rajya Parishad, initiated by Swamy Karpatri, they were ridiculed by the Congress (read: the British pulling the strings of the Congress), who utilised to the hilt its English speaking press to present these Hindu parties as barbaric, fanatical, ridiculous and amplified the problems of untouchability, castes, or cow worshipping, to belittle these movements, which after all, were only trying to preserve India’s cultural and spiritual heritage. We have then come a full circle: we thought that the western press was negative about India, out of a personal bias, but we have found that it is influenced by the Indian press; we thought that the Indian press was negative about its own country, because of 62

some dark, sceptical, self-destructive streak in itself, but we found out that it was a tendency generated by the Congress, which in turn was manipulated by its British. All along the snake was biting its own tail! Fine ! But where do we start : is it the western press which must first change its views of India and thus influence the Indian media ? Or is it the Indian press which must be more lenient towards its own country and thus influence the western media? Fortunately, since a few years, there is a change in the Indian Press. Magazines such as India Today, for instance, show an effort to look at India in a different manner, to strike a distinct note than the usual self-denigration constantly hammered at by other publications. This is a positive sign - and there are more: the popularity of songs like Vande Mataram, which expressed India’s true aspiration and were literally relegated to play second fiddle by the Congress; the emergence of a Hindu nationalist party (another expression concocted by the West, which Indian journalists have blindly accepted), whatever its faults; or the new-found interest of the Indian Diaspora abroad for its mother country. We have got to change the image of India amongst industrialised nations, if only because India needs a lot of foreign investment. Who in the West wants to do business with a country with a backward image and associated with slums, Mother Teresa and bureaucratic inefficiency? The Western press is not playing its true role of information. But that should not be a problem - look at China: less than thirty years ago it was considered in the West as the "Red Devil", a feudal country, totally closed to the world. But then in 1971 Nixon went there and suddenly it became acceptable to do business in China; and today it even possesses in the West an image of a fast, forward, modern nation (although THE CHINESE killed a million Tibetans, gave Pakistan its nuclear technology and still claim part of Indian territory). Many of us are trying to change India’s image abroad: France for instance has seen the creation of an Indo-French forum under the guidance of Karan Singh and French ambassador Claude Blanchemaison to promote India’s interests there and attract French businessmen. But unless the Nehruvian legacy of bureaucracy and centralisation is discarded, unless India starts looking at herself differently, unless its people have a little more pride in being Indian, there is very little we can do. There is nothing wrong with a bit of nationalism, which any nation needs to have a minimum amount of self-respect. We French are proud of our Revolution, which changed the face of the world for ever; we are proud of Christianity, which gave us an island of sanity and learning during the dark and cruel Middle Ages; we are proud of our philosophers, such as Descartes, who taught us to look at things with a logical and clear 63

eye. And India herself has nothing to be ashamed off: hers is a great civilisation infinitely older than any civilisation in the West; and not only was it great but its inner genius has survived the genocide of Muslim invasions, a stifling colonisation by the British, and even Marxism, which incarnated itself in the minds of India’s intellectual elite and tried to kill the Hindu genius of the land of Bharat. Isn’t it then time to fulfil the prophecy of Sri Aurobindo, who wrote 70 years ago : "India of the ages is not dead nor has She spoken Her last creative word; She lives and has still something to do for Herself and the human peoples. And that which She must seek now to awake, is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorial Shakti recovering Her deepest self, lifting Her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and vaster form of Her Dharma. Then will we, foreign journalists, look at you differently. AN ANSWER TO SWISS JOURNALIST BERNARD IMHASLY

(who disagreed with the above piece and wrote a counter-article in Hindustan Times) My dear Bernard In your piece "Role of foreign correspondents", you disagree with me because I have written that most of the foreign correspondents’ interest in India is generally for "the macabre and the negative, the folklore, the superfluous, and the politically correct". I stand by that statement! And I am even surprised that you say that, "although it is true that much of (foreign) reporting on India is negative, India is hardly alone in being singled out by journalists"! Because the naked truth is that when it comes to Europe or the United States, Western journalists become singularly soft, blind and tolerant. Take the Gulf war for instance: we mostly printed what the American military propaganda machine gave us and thus presented a very one-sided picture of the whole conflict. Or nearer to us, look at Kosovo: the bias of the Western media there was so blatant,- that at moments it became laughable ! The BBC, particularly, only reported on the atrocities committed by the Serbs, and said very little of the centuries of Muslim genocide on the Serbs, or how the Bosnian 64

Muslims sided with the Nazis during the Second world war and butchered thousands of innocent Serbs. There is such a thing as Karma, my dear friend: you, who have been in India for quite some time, should know about it. Now compare this with the attitude of the BBC during the Kargil war. Most of us foreign correspondents know by now that the Pakistanis are training, arming and financing Kashmiri mujahidins. We also know that Pakistan is sponsoring international terrorism, whether in New York or in Sinkiang and is a closed ally of the Taliban, one of the most fundamentalist and dangerous forces in the world today. Yet, for the last 10 years, the BBC has kept on with the old refrain: "India SAYS that Pakistan is training Kashmiri militants, an accusation which Islamabad refutes". By insisting on mouthing this absurd statement, even during the Kargil war, when the whole Western intelligence knew that most of the militants manning the heights were Pakistani soldiers in civil, the BBC thought that it is practising impartial journalism. But who are they fooling? Everybody is aware of the strong Leftist bias of the BBC (nothing wrong in being Leftist, as long as you don’t pretend to be impartial), who has always defended Muslims separatists all over the planet, whether it is the Palestinians, the terrorists in Chechenya, or the Kashmiri militants. Unfortunately, the BBC has so much of a reputation in the world (and indeed their documentaries are first class), that it shapes the opinions of our editors in Paris or Bonn, who in turn put pressure on us to report on "Hindu fundamentalism", or the "poor persecuted Kashmiris". There is something perverted about this so-called impartiality - which means in effect that you report on both sides of the story, even if you perceive that one of the sides is quite true and the other entirely false. Journalism, Mr Imhasly, is about truth. Let us give the readers at least what we perceive as the truth, even if we are wrong - for who can say that he is able to grasp pure undiluted truth ? Journalism is also about idealism - and in extreme cases, when truth is in danger - journalists could even be compared to soldiers, who fight for what he or she perceives as right. In the old times, there were great journalists and writers made of that stuff: André Malraux, who fought against the fascist forces in Spain; or Saint Exupery, who insisted to fly against the Germans, even though he was above age. You say "that our trade is to inform, to make the readers aware of the dangers that life has in store". Would it be, my dear Bernard, that you have too high an idea about the profession of journalism ? Because without any doubt, journalists are playing one of the most baneful and dangerous roles at the end of the 20st century. We do not report on news, we MAKE them, and we even fabricate them when there is nothing to report about. We also manipulate world opinion as we want : when the West has a certain bias - say 65

against the Serbs - powerful medias like the BBC or CNN, are able to turn everybody against them. But when we DO like someone, even if it is for the wrong reasons, then we turn a blind eye, as we did in Russia, where the West was supporting that drunkard, empty and dangerous baboon of Yeltsin, who was the best bet of the United States to enfeeble Russia for decades. In India, the Western Press, the NGOs and the so called Human Rights Groups, are also able to manipulate Indian opinion in favour of secondary things, like the rights of homosexuals, or Child labour, which, whatever its terrible side, is a reality of this country that cannot be wished way. But they choose to ignore much more important issues, such as the killing of Hindus in Kashmir, or the terrible maiming and torturing of Lieutenant Ahuja by the Pakistanis, which has barely found mention in the Western Press and in reports of Human Right organisations. And remember : not only did we, the Western media, manage to kill Princess Diana, by constantly preying on her like vultures, for the monetary benefits we took out of it, but we succeeded even following her death (after exonerating ourselves by twisting the story) to still make money out of her, by turning Diana into a saint - which she was not. Shame on us. Finally, there is one thing I would like to add: it is true that I often said that the Indian Media has been the worst enemy of its own country, because in the last fifty years, it has been heavily influenced by forces (the communists, the Muslims, the Christian missionaries and partly the Congress, which needs these minorities to get re-elected) which are profoundly hostile to the Hindus, who constitute 85% of India. But since the nation realised that the flower of his youth was dying in selfless courage for the defence of Indian territory at Kargil, one can witness for the first time in the Press (and amongst popular opinion) a bit of nationalism, of being proud of one’s country, even if it sometimes borders on Jingoism and commercialism (the numerous Kargil Funds which have even sprouted even in "secular" magazines). And that, my dear Bernard, is a good and healthy sign, because a country needs to be proud of itself to bloom, and attain the zenith of its culture. And you the Swiss, are you not proud of your being a unique nation in Europe because of your "neutrality" and your prosperity (which it is being slowly found out, rests in greater part on the money stolen from dictators all over the world, or the misappropriated funds left by the Jews who died during the Second World war)? And I will say it again, even if you disagree: in spite of all its present faults, India is a great and ancient civilisation, which gave so much to the world and has still so much to give. By constantly perverting its image in our dispatches, by always harping on its negative sides, by debasing Hinduism, which constitutes the inherent genius of this country, we 66

show that we are bad journalists, that we are not able to go beyond the surface, beyond the clichés and the prejudices and the Untruth.

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6. THE (UNFRIENDLY) NEIGHBOURS IN ASIA India is surrounded mostly by unfriendly neighbours. We see either Islamic countries promoting a rabid anti-Hindu policy, such as Afghanistan or Pakistan; or small inconsequent nations such as Nepal, which owe so much to India, yet often harbor India’s enemies, as shown by the Indian Airlines hijack of December 1999. Further East, we find Japan, which has a sad hegemonic history, but was one of the most vociferous nations against India after Pokhran II. Pakistan

who was responsible for the Partition of India? Yes, the British used to the hilt the existing divide between Hindus and Muslims. Yes, the Congress was weak; it accepted what was forced down its throat by Jinnah and Mountbatten, even though many of its leaders, including Nehru, and a few moderate Muslims, disagreed with the principle of partition. It was also Gandhi's policy of non-violence and gratifying the fanatical Muslim minority, in the hope that it would see the light, which did tremendous harm to India and encouraged Jinnah to harden his demands. But ultimately, one has to go back to the roots, to the beginning of it all, in order to understand Partition. One has to travel back in history to get a clear overall picture. This is why memory is essential; this is why Holocausts should never be forgotten. For the Jinnah’s, the Zia ul-Hacq’s and today the Mushraraf’s are only the vehicles, the instruments, the avatars, the latest reincarnations of the medieval Muslims coming down to rape and loot and plunder the land of Bharat. They are the true sons of Mahmud Ghaznavi, of Muhammed Ghori, of Aurangzeb. They took up again the work left unfinished by the last Mughal two centuries earlier: 'Dar-ul-Islam', the House of Islam. The HinduMuslim question is an old one - but is it really a Muslim-Hindu question, or just plainly a Muslim obsession, their hatred of the Hindu pagans, their contempt for this polytheist religion? This obsession, this hate, is as old as the first invasion of India by the original Arabs in 650. After independence, nothing has changed: the sword of Allah is still as much ready to strike the Kafirs, the idolaters of many Gods. The Muslims invaded this country, conquered it, looted it, razed its temples, humiliated its Hindu leaders, killed its Brahmins, and converted its weaker sections. True, it was all done in the name of Allah and many of its chiefs were sincere in thinking they were doing their duty by hunting down the Infidel. 68

So how could they accept on 15th August 1947 to share power on an equal basis with those who were their slaves for thirteen centuries? "Either the sole power for ourselves, and our rule over the Hindus as it is our sovereign right, we the adorers of the one and only true God - Or we quit India and found our own nation, a Muslim nation, of the true faith, where we will live amongst ourselves". Thus there is no place for idolaters in this country, this great nation of Pakistan; they can at best be "tolerated" as second-class citizens. Hence the near total exodus of Hindus from Pakistan, whereas more than half the Muslim population in India, chose to stay, knowing full well that they would get the freedom to be and to practice their own religion. In passing, the Muslims took revenge on the Hindus -once more- and indulged in terrible massacres, which were followed by retaliations from Sikhs and hard core Hindus, the ultimate horror. Partition triggered one of the most terrible exoduses in the history of humanity. And this exodus has not ended: they still come by the lakhs every year from Bangladesh (it is estimated that there are today twelve million illegal Bangladeshis in India), fleeing poverty, flooding India with problems, when the country has already so many of her own. Some even say that they bring with them more fundamentalism, a Third Column, which one day could organise itself in a political, social and militant body. For Danielou, the division of India was on the human level as well as on the political one, a great mistake. "It added, he says, to the Middle East an unstable state (Pakistan) and burdened India which already had serious problems". And he adds: "India whose ancient borders stretched until Afghanistan, lost with the country of seven rivers (the Indus Valley), the historical centre of her civilisation. At a time when the Muslim invaders seemed to have lost some of their extremism and were ready to assimilate themselves to other populations of India, the European conquerors, before returning home, surrendered once more to Muslim fanaticism the cradle of Hindu civilisation." (Histoire de l'Inde, p.355) For Sri Aurobindo also, the division of India was a monstrosity: "India is free, but she has not achieved unity, only a fissured and broken freedom...The whole communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent political division of the country. It is to be hoped that the Congress and the Nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled, or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled; civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. The partition of the country 69

must go...For without it the destiny of India might be seriously impaired and frustrated. That must not be." (Message of Sri Aurobindo on the 15th of August 1947). Sri Aurobindo had long seen through the British and Jinnah's games and had warned the nation as early as the beginning of the century. His answer to a disciple on October 7, 1940 is very illustrative of the point:" Q. But now that our national consciousness is more developed, there is more chance of unity if the British don't bolster up Jinnah and his Muslim claims. A. Does Jinnah want unity?...What he wants is independence for Muslims and if possible rule over India. THAT IS THE OLD SPIRIT... But why is it expected that Muslims will be so accommodating?" Nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo thought that although the old spirit of the real warriors of Islam, the Muslim invaders, was still present, the majority of Indian Muslims were unconcerned: "The idea of two nationalities in India is only a new-fanged notion invented by Jinnah for his purposes and contrary to the facts. More than 90% of the Indian Muslims are descendants of converted Hindus and belong as much to the Indian nation as the Hindu themselves. Jinnah is himself a descendant of a Hindu named Jinahbahai... (India's Rebirth, p. 237) Sri Aurobindo also sought to dispel the widespread notion that the Muslims brought so much to India: "The Islamic culture hardly gave anything to the world which may be said of fundamental importance and typically its own Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from the others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn, but they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of Gnostics who lived in Persia and it is the logical outcome of that school of thought largely touched by the Vedanta... Islamic culture contributed the Indo-Saracenic architecture to Indian culture. I do not think it has done anything more in India of cultural value. It gave some new forms to art and poetry. Its political institutions were always semibarbaric. (p.189 India's Reb). How could Partition have been avoided? Sri Aurobindo had advocated firmness: "As for the Hindu-Muslim affair, I saw no reason why the greatness of India's past or her spirituality should be thrown into the waste paper basket in order to conciliate the Moslems who would not be conciliated at all by such a policy. What has created the Hindu70

Moslem split was not Swadeshi, but the acceptance of a communal principle by the Congress". (India's Rebirth, p. 189). History was going to show the accuracy of Sri Aurobindo's predictions: the Congress' obstinate pandering to Jinnah and his terms, proved to be disastrous and the partition of India was a blow from which the nation has not yet recovered. Ah, Pakistan, finally, everything reverts to Pakistan, whether you talk about Kashmir, Ayodhya, or Kargil. Everywhere the Indian Government says it sees the "Pakistani hand" behind it. It is a hostile hand, they add, active, militant, whose ultimate goal is the destruction of India. Is actually, Pakistan the continuing incarnation of those Muslim invaders who raped India from the middle of the 7th century onwards? Militant Hindus contend that nothing has changed: "their cry is still the same: "Dar-ul-Islam", the house of Islam. Yesterday they used scimitars, today they have the atomic bomb; but the purpose is identical, only the weapons have evolved: to conquer India, to finish what the Mughal Emperors were not able to achieve". To reason with Pakistan is useless, they conclude, "for once again they are only putting in practice what their religion teaches them every day that 'the Pagans shall burn forever in the fire of hell. They are the meanest of creatures'. Or 'Slay the infidels, wherever ye find them and take them captive and besiege them and prepare them for all kinds of ambush'. Or again: 'Choose not thy friends among the Infidels till they forsake their homes and the way of idolatry. If they return to paganism then take them whenever you find them and kill them'. All these quotations are taken from the Koran and are read everyday to the faithful by their mollahs.(Koran 98:51-9:5-4:89) Is Pakistan's war against India then a Muslim "jihad", the ultimate jihad against the Infidel, which if necessary will utilise the ultimate weapon, nuclear bombs? And as in the case of Ayodhya, the whole of Islam might side with Pakistan, for to their eyes India is still the Infidel, the Idolater, which the Koran asks them to slay. Says Belgium scholar Konraad Elst: "if tomorrow the Pakistani start the Prophet's first nuclear war against an Infidel country (India), a billion Muslims will feel compelled to side with this muhajid struggle and dissenters will be careful not to protest aloud." But then you also have to understand the Pakistani point of view: take Kashmir for instance. If one goes by the logic of Partition, then at least the Kashmir valley, which is in great majority Muslim, (and it should be emphasised that for long some of the Hindus Pandits in Kashmir exploited and dominated the Muslims -who are getting back at them today), should have reverted to Pakistan. It should be clear also that Pakistan never forgot the humiliating loss of Bangladesh at the hands of India, although India only helped Bangladesh to gain its freedom in the face of what the Bangladeshis say was Pakistani genocide. General Zia-ul-Hacq's emergence was a result of that humiliation and the whole 71

policy of proxy war by supporting the separatist movements in Punjab and Kashmir, was a way of getting back at India. And the same can be said about the nuclear bomb, for Pakistan has realised, after having lost three wars (four if you count Kargil), that both numerically and strategically, it can never beat India in a conventional conflict. It is also clear when one goes to Pakistan today, that the country has evolved a soul of its own, has its individual identity and that in fact it has been able to do better than India in many fields. Their politicians are more accessible than in India for instance; their bureaucrats more friendly; and PIA is definitely a better airline than Indian Airlines! Finally, can Pakistanis be accused of all ills that befall India? The Indian Press has become possessed of total paranoia when it comes to Pakistan and Kashmir, always pointing a finger at its neighbour. But many of India’s problems are of her own making Thus, Indians can cry themselves hoarse about Pakistani treachery and see the evil hand of Islamabad everywhere, even sometimes behind events where Pak is not involved. But then the Indian Government should only blame themselves, for have they not recognised at independence the geographical and political reality of Partition and have they not continued to do so up to now? Is there any political leader in India who dares say today that India and Pakistan are ONE? Is there any voice to proclaim the truth in a loud and clear voice, as Sri Aurobindo did in 1947: "But the old communal division into Hindu and Muslim seems to have hardened into the figure of a permanent division of the country. It is hoped that the Congress and the nation will not accept the settled fact as for ever settled, or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible; possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. THE PARTITION OF THE COUNTRY MUST GO"... India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are ONE. And as long as Partition remains, India will not be able to live in peace: Ayodhya, Kashmir, Kargil, Bangladeshi infiltration and a potential (nuclear?) war with Pakistan, are always possible. THE "FRIENDLY" TALIBANS

Poor India ! What a way to start the millennium. For ten centuries, this sacred land has been raped and plundered by Muslim invaders who came from Afghanistan and beyond. For ten centuries, Indians have been converted by force to Islam, their women raped, their children taken away as slaves, their men slaughtered. And India always took it meekly, as a lamb goes to the slaughter house - except for a lone Shivaji or two. 72

And when the Muslims invaders were spent, then came the European colonisers and they too took India for a penny, which surrendered itself like a humble servant to its arrogant master, bar for the fight of a few braves Sikhs. And when the Europeans were gone, Nehru and Gandhism made sure that India remained the goody-goody little boy that it always was, by clipping the wings of its army, so that when the Chinese treacherously swooped down from Tibet, it was a cakewalk, a humiliation which still rankles forty years later. Is it different today? No! Small neighbours of hardly any consequence, such as Nepal or Bangladesh, lend their territories to enemies of India, without New Delhi doing anything, in the spirit of the old Nehruvian "Good Neighbourhood" policy. For three decades, Pakistan, like a Ghazni of modern times, has been able to send its agents murder and loot into Indian Territory without the Government reacting, except to mouth a few empty threats. Hindus are still slaughtered in Kashmir, Pakistan or Bangladesh (see Taslima Nasreen’s book), the perpetrators knowing fully well that no retaliation will come from New Delhi. Yet, six months ago, during the battle of Kargil, the soldiers and officers of the Indian army proved that when they were given a free hand by the bureaucrats and politicians, they are amongst the best soldiers in the world, fighting in impossible conditions against an enemy better equipped and overlooking them. And for the first time in five hundred years, since the last great Hindu empire of Vijaynagar was razed by the Moghols, the Kshatriya Spirit was revived in India ‘ and once more, what the Bhagavad Gita had preached became alive : that violence is sometimes necessary to protect one’s children women and borders; that Knowledge has to be preserved by Might in the true spirit of ahimsa’ But look at what happened when these modern Barbarians took over flight IC 814: it is not the India of Arjuna, Shivaji, or the Rani of Jhansi who rose-up, but the meek India the India of Macaulay’s children, of Nehru and LK Gujral, the India who always goes to be slaughtered head down, the India who for fifteen centuries has been conquered and plundered with such an ease. Instead of giving a free rein to the army, the only body which has shown that it has the courage and leadership to stand-up to terrorism, it was left to the bureaucrats to bungle the Amritsar episode, the only chance India had to overpower five men armed with a lone pistol (before the Taliban furnished them with more weapons) and a few knives (and the NSG was caught napping after all these years of useless and arrogant VIP duties). And it was still in true Nehruvian spirit ( "we are all gentlemen") left to the 73

bureaucrats, these arrogant men who think that wearing a tie and speaking polished English make them superior, to negotiate with the terrorists, after having opened the "friendly Taliban" avenue. Friendly Talibans? Even the hapless Indian reading his newspaper with his morning tea ( and feeling humiliated once more), knows that since time immemorial, Afghanistan has been Bharat’s worst enemy. He knows that today, Taliban mujahidins are the ones who are inflicting heavy casualties on Indian soldiers by their bold and suicidal attacks on army headquarters in Srinagar. He instinctively knows that since Mohamed Ghazni nothing has changed: Hindus are still for the Afghans (and unfortunately for the Pakistanis too, who are converted Hindus) the Infidels against whom a merciless Jihad has to be fought until all are conquered or slaughtered. True, the odds against a military intervention were enormous: India’s jet fighters would have had to bypass Pakistan and fly over the Himalayan ranges or Iran; and a commando’s action would have put the lives of the passengers in great jeopardy. But such odds did not deter the Israelis 24 years ago from rescuing their nationals taken hostage by other Muslim terrorists in a country which was also hostile to Israel (the Uganda of infamous Idi Amin), nor the French two years ago to storm the Air France plane and killing the all the heavily armed Islamic hijackers. And the saddest thing is that the name "India" evokes no respect today in the world. Small countries, such as Indonesia or Saudi Arabia, can harbour deadly terrorists wanted by India; or bigger nations like Japan, a great war criminal hardly sixty years ago, give India moral lessons, because they all know that India takes things lying down. But look again at the Israelis: like the Indians, they were slaughtered for centuries and during the Second World War, six million of them went to Hitler’s gas chambers without even a whimper. But after the war, when the new State of Israel was founded, its leaders decided that enough was enough: henceforth it will be "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". Every time Arab terrorists struck their land, Israelis would retaliate ruthlessly; and every time the sacred land of Israel was threatened, its army would steal the initiative by invading the enemy’s territory. Today, Israel, a tiny nation surrounded by often hostile Arab countries, is feared and respected not only in the Middle East, but all over the world. The vacillating attitude of the Indian Government in giving political asylum to the Karmapa, again sent the wrong signals: is India really become a "soft" state? Are Indians actually "cowards", as Gandhi once said? Even Nehru granted immediately political asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959, recalls Claude Arpi in his remarquable book "The Fate of Tibet (Har Anand) ! China is a paper Tiger which growls a lot : but when it threatened Israel in 74

December to break diplomatic relations because the Dalai Lama was to meet the Speaker of the Knesset, the Speaker told them to go to hell and he met the Dalai Lama. The NEXT WEEK the Chinese signed a huge arm contract with Israel. India is a much bigger and powerful nation than Israel. It is an ancient civilization, which in spite of fifteen centuries of Muslim conquests and European colonialism, still carries within herself a Knowledge which once roamed the shores of ancient Mesopotamia or Egypt, but which has today disappeared from a world ruled by the dogmas and intolerance of it two monotheist religions. But who will protect this Knowledge from the modern Barbarians? Who will redeem India’s long battered honor? Who will stand-up to Islamic terrorism and Chinese bullying? Where is the Shivaji of modern India?

SRI LANKA

There seems to be little doubt that once upon a time, not that long ago, India and Sri Lanka were linked by a small strip of land, which can still be seen today from the air: Adam's Bridge. And this is how the first Tamils, those who settled in the North, came to Sri Lanka (are they the first inhabitants of Sri Lanka and not the Sinhalese? This is another question!). There is also no doubt -and the Sinhalese recognise it- that they (the Sinhalese) are originally Indians, although some say that they came from Gujrat, others from Bengal. Thus it can be established beyond doubt that Sri Lanka and India are one ethnically, although they differ in religion (but the same can be said within India). And throughout the ages, under one form or the other, Ceylon was under the influence of India. That is why, when the British conquered it in the late 18th century, they chose to attach it to their Indian empire. But when they left in 47, in their desire to see that India never dominates too heavily the subcontinent, they facilitated the creation of Pakistan and handed to Sri Lanka its freedom. And India and Sri Lanka seemed to part way for ever, as Tamils and Sinhalese were left to war with each other, until Rajiv sent the IKPF in 1988. One has to go back a long time to understand what decisive factors shaped the psyche of the island's two communities. And this decisive factor bears the names of two of the world greatest religions: Buddhism and Hinduism. The first one, Buddhism, is a gentle, peaceful creed that teaches non-violence and brotherhood, even to enemies. Unfortunately, Ceylon, often called the "isle of beauty", has always been too tempting a prey for sea-faring invaders. And indeed, successive colonisers, from Arabs to Africans, from Portuguese to Dutch and finally, British, preyed on the tiny, defenceless island. In the name of Buddhism and because, the Sinhalese are by nature a fun-loving, gentle people, not only 75

did they hardly resist these invasions, but often, many of their women, mingled freely with the foreign intruders. The result can clearly be seen today on the faces of many Sinhalese women folk, with their African-curled hair, or Arabic features. As a result, the Sinhalese slowly lost their sense of identity, their feeling of being a collective being, to the point that when the British came, they collaborated wholehearted with them and had to be handed back their independence on a platter, for want of a real freedom movement. Today, democracy and western institutions are just a flimsy cloak that the Sinhalese wear. Lurking underneath the pleasant, sometimes servile attitude towards Westerners, is a sense of hopelessness and a terrible violence. And in reality, since independence, Sinhalese politicians must have been some of the least farsighted of the entire subcontinent: nothing is made in Sri Lanka, everything has to be imported and only tea, tourism and Western grants help the country survive. On the other hand, Hinduism with its strict caste hierarchy, which in the old times forbade contact with outsiders, particularly sexual contact with foreigners, protected Sri Lankan Tamils from mingling with their invaders. Thus they preserved their identity, their racial purity and their culture. Sinhalese live an easier life in the South, which was always more fertile than the arid North. As a result, Tamils have often been better at studies and more hard- working, (although one should not generalise). This was quickly noticed by the British, who often gave Tamils preference for jobs and university grants, thus angering the Sinhalese, who after all were the majority community. It is this deep-rooted resentment of the Sinhalese towards the Tamil community which is in greater part the cause of the present troubles. When the British left, the Sinhalese quickly moved in to correct what they saw as an unbalance: they set on depriving the Tamils of most of the rights they had acquired under the British and proceeded to establish a Sinhalese-dominated Ceylon. And every time a Sinhalese politician tried to give the Tamils their just share of power, he quickly had to backtrack under Sinhalese resentment. For years, the Tamils bore the brunt of Sinhalese persecution. But one day, too much became too much and Tamil armed groups started springing up to defend their people. To cut short a long story, the LTTE finally emerged as the most ruthless and sole militant organisation. For those who remember the Tamil Tigers in their early years: young, bright, soft-spoken university students, there was no doubt that they had started with a genuine aspiration to secure their just rights. But violence breeds its own violence and today the Tigers have lost all sense of measure and restraint, eliminating ruthlessly all what they think stands in the way of their freedom. 76

Yet, in 1988, Rajiv Gandhi stepped in to mediate between the warring Sinhalese and Tamils. But the LTTE betrayed the hand that had fed it, because it wants total and unequivocal freedom and it saw India's move as thwarting it (that is the main reason for their murdering Rajiv Gandhi. If he had come back to power, as indeed he was sure to, he would have pressurized the Sinhalese to grant the Tamils a semi-autonomous region in the North-East). But that is another matter. India's thus got bogged down in a guerrilla war it did not want to fight, with one hand tied behind the back to avoid killing civilians; and ultimately it had to leave because of pressure at home and Mr Premadasa's distrust of Indians, which is unfortunately shared by many Sri Lankans. Today, Tamils have actually come one step nearer to freedom. The partition of Sri Lanka may be considered a "fait accompli". It might take some time, but ultimately, some Sinhalese leader will have to come to the conclusion that Sri Lanka's economy cannot be bled any more by this senseless war. What happens if one day the island's one million Tamil tea planters, (whose forefathers were "imported" from India by the British, another parting gift from dear Britannia), who up to now have kept away from the conflict, join hand with their North-East brothers? It would be the end of Sri Lanka. And how long can tourism, the island's other source of revenue, be promoted in the midst of strife? The LTTE have chosen for the moment to leave the tourists alone. But it would be enough that they kill a few, to scare away Sri Lanka’s main source of revenues. But even if the partition of Sri Lanka in two is granted by the Sinhalese, with the north-east portion for the Tamils, the island will remain a hotbed of uncertainty, a potential time bomb in South Asia.

The Great Japanese Hypocrisy

When Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh visited Japan in 1999, Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi urged India to sign the global nuclear test ban treaty, "so as to remove, he said, a lingering thorn in Indo-Japanese relations". What he implied was that Tokyo, one of India's main aid donors, will otherwise not resume all the loans and aids which it had cut off after India’s nuclear explosions in May 1998.

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Japan makes it out as if its rigid moral stand against India ‘ the harshest in the Industrialized World after Pokhran II ’ stems from the horrendous memories it has of the two nuclear bombs dropped in 1945 by the US Air Force on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Never again this monstrosity of man upon man", they say. And to illustrate their painful point, a ruin has been left standing in Hiroshima and periodical exhibitions are taken all over the world, showing the unbearable photos of what nuclear weapons do to humans beings and cities. Adversaries of nuclear armament within India, such as Prafulla Bidwai in his co-authored book "South Asia on a short fuse", also repeatedly use the Japanese example to proclaim : "see what kind of world we are giving to our children"... Yet, one has to go a little beyond appearances so as to take a fresh look at the real facts. Firstly, the Japanese are not as goody-goody as they would like us to believe. Right from the beginning of the century, Japan displayed a natural bend for expansionism and colonialism, acquiring for instance Formose, occupying Manchuria or Korea and massacring thousands of civilians in the Chinese city of Nanking, a genocide, which still stands out for its sheer unwarranted barbarism. The atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Second World War, where they sided with the Nazis against most of the Free World, are as horrendous if not more, than the effects of the two nuclear bombs dropped on them. In 1941, they attacked the United States by treachery in Pearl Harbor, destroying the entire US fleet and killing thousands of people. The Japanese were also known to be extremely cruel to their prisoners of war, starving and beheading many of them, or using "slave" prostitutes for the pleasure of their soldiers (many of whom were Korean women and are still alive today). The Japanese soldiers were fanatical to the point of absurdity - remember how the "kamikaze" pilots would throw their planes against American ships, taking their lives, along with many others? They were disciplined to the point of being robots of war: until recently, lone Japanese soldiers would still come out of hiding in remote jungles, forty or fifty years after the end of the war, because nobody had given them the order to surrender (and note that they were welcomed as heroes, not as nitwits. Indeed, many present Japanese politicians still consider that Japan did no wrong during the 2d World War). Furthermore, India seems to have forgotten that the Japanese invaded her borders 54 years ago and killed many in Assam. Quite a few historians believe that in 1945, after four painful years of war, Japanese morale was still so exalted and its high command had such a an inexhaustible reservoir of soldiers ready to die for their country, that that the two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortened the war by TWO years. It is true that they created unspeakable mayhem, killing 150.000 people in Hiroshima and 80.000 in Nagasaki, but they 78

probably saved four times that amount of lives and allowed the world to go back to peace and start reconstructing. We all know that there is no "good" nuclear bomb and that we have to move quickly towards a denuclearized world if we want lasting peace. But in the spirit of the Bhagavad Gita, force is sometimes "dharma", duty - when it is to defend one’s children or borders, or when it helps shorten wars. The two bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have sprung from that sense of dharma; and even India’s nuclear deterrent makes such sense, when one knows about China’s hegemonic ambitions and the ninety ballistic missiles it has placed in Tibet, most of them pointed towards Indian cities, or the "Islamic" Bomb in the hands of volatile Pakistan. Thus, in the light of Japan’s not-so-ancient violent past, it could be asked to the Japanese who they are to give moral lessons to India after Pokhran II? Because it is also obvious, for those who know contemporary Japan, that the old hegemonic spirit is not fully dead ‘ it has partly reincarnated itself in other fields and its expansionism might be waiting to manifest itself anew. Japan today has shown us, for instance, how business can be conducted as a war’ and also in a spirit of revenge for their humiliating defeat by the Americans. The ruthlessness of the Japanese can still be perceived in their over-competitive system of education, which leads many of their children to commit suicide. It is also said that Japanese tend sometimes to be racists: they particularly look down on colored races such as Indians! Militarily, their navy is beginning to flex its muscles and it may be only because they are forbidden to have nuclear weapons by the US, that they have not tried their hand at it (and why they vent their frustration on India for having done so!). Finally, compare Japanese bloody and war-like history with India’s. India’s armies never invaded other nations to colonize them; India has always been a land of tolerance, accepting in its fold all persecuted communities of the world, be it the Parsis from Iran, the Jews, or the Christians from Syria; and India never committed genocides on other communities, like the Japanese did on the Chinese. Finally, Japan should be a little more grateful to India from whom it got Buddhism, its martial arts (kalaripayat), or even the concept of the Samurais (kshatriya)!

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7. THE WEST AND INDIA The West, if it does not always show outright hostility to India, often displays aggressive ignorance ‘ the United States being the prime example ‘ although things are changing thanks to Clinton’s 1999 visit. France, a country which had a huge sympathy capital in India, has not exploited it because it is obsessed with China. On the friendly side, the countries are very few: there is Israel, which shares so much with India, yet has been ignored for decades to please the Arabs; or non-communist Russia, which is discovering anew that she and India are fighting a lonely battle against Muslim fundamentalism. AN OPEN LETTER TO THE US PRESIDENT

Dear Mr. Clinton, Next month, you will be arriving in India, an extraordinary, but baffling country to Westerners, because of its immense paradoxes and mystifying diversity. Yet, I am sure that your ambassador in India will have done his homework and briefed you suitably before your coming. Doubtlessly then, he will have told you that India is one of the oldest civilization in our history and that many of the wonders of humanity originated here: the concept of the zero for instance, plastic surgery, or ancient astronomy - and that its philosophy was so subtle, that it not only influenced the entire East, but that until Nietzsche, many western philosophers acknowledged India as one of their major inspirations. Today even, India is a land of a Living Spirituality, probably the last in a world which has been taken over by the two big monotheist religions and their aggressive dogmas. Unfortunately, instead of dwelling on the importance and symbolism of this visit ‘ no American President has in the last twenty years graced by his presence the largest democracy on this planet - your Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, keeps harping about Kashmir being the "short fuse" of South Asia. Mrs. Albright’s statement only highlights the United States’ ignorance about Kashmir, which until two decades ago was a model of Muslim-Hindu amity. Did you know, Mr. President, that Hindus and Muslims of Kashmir would often pray at the same shrines and that the Islam practiced in Kashmir was an open Islam, very close to ancient Sufism? But this was not to the taste of the hard-line Sunnis of Pakistan and Afghanistan - and they proceeded to radicalize the whole of Kashmir, 80

by unleashing a reign of terror, which in turn triggered the exodus of all Hindus from the valley of Kashmir: there were 500.000 of them at the beginning of the century and barely a few hundred today. Your ambassador would have doubtless told you too, Mr Clinton, that historically and geographically, Kashmir has always been part of India and that the calling of a referendum there would be a suicide for any Indian government, because the Muslim majority of the Valley would automatically vote for a union with Pakistan. That in turn, Mr President, would not only mean that Pakistan would have an immense strategic advantage on India, because of overlooking the Indian plains, but also that other Indian states, who are in a secessionist mood, might follow suit. Bear in mind also, Mr President, that Indians do not understand why the West is giving lessons to India about Kashmir, when England battled thousands of miles away from their home soil to keep the Falkland islands - which geographically belong more to the Argentineans than to the British - or as France uses its armed might to retain Corsica, an island which has mixed French and Italian roots, or when your own country intervenes militarily in parts of the globe where you feel your interests are endangered ! All right, we know: Pakistan is threatening a nuclear war - and it scares you. We do hope, however, Mr President, that you are going to call off their bluff by bypassing Islamabad on your way to India (he did not !). Not only because India is much more important country than Pakistan in terms of size, population and economic potential, but also because this country, in spite of all its faults, has been a democracy for more than fifty years. As you know, the same thing cannot be said about Pakistan, which has been under different military dictatorships for more than half its independence - as it is the case now. Your intelligence people must also have told you that not only Pakistan is sponsoring terrorism in India, but also all over the world even the Empire State Building bombings had a Pakistan connection. Your ambassador, who by now is very knowledgeable about South Asia, must also have told you that Pakistan and Afghanistan’s hatred for the Hindu pagans, their contempt for this polytheist religion, is as old and obsessive as during the first invasion of India by Arabs in 650. Pakistan lost the last four wars it initiated against India and if it is foolish enough to make first use of a nuclear weapon, it will be wiped-off this earth. Lastly Mr. Clinton, your ambassador must have informed you as well you that there is no such thing as "Hindu nationalists", or "Hindu fundamentalists", as the foreign press likes to label the party whose leader is today the Prime Minister of India. Because in the whole history of India, Hindus - who let me remind you are 800 millions today and constitute the overwhelming cultural and political majority of this country - have not only shown that they 81

are extremely tolerant, but Hinduism is probably the only religion in the world which never tried to convert others or conquer other countries to propagate their own religion. This historical tolerance of Hinduism is never taken into account by foreign correspondents covering India and even, unfortunately, by Indian journalists. Mr President, in the sixties, China was to the world a backward nation, the "Red Devil". Richard Nixon’s visit there in 1971, changed everything: today, it is a must for Industrialized nations to invest there, even if the returns are very poor and China is bound sooner or later to enter into grave political turmoil when the bloody hand of communism is withdrawn. Mr President you have a unique opportunity to do for India what Nixon did to China. By coming only to India and by giving this visit the importance it deserves, you will signal to the world that India is the next superpower of this century, the "other" democratic giant of Asia and that you, Bill Jefferson Clinton, was the first western leader to have had the vision of it. And History may just remember you for that. Yours sincerely, François Gautier/ correspondent South Asia Le Figaro

"THE TRUTH ABOUT INDO-FRENCH RELATIONS"

(Sleeping with the enemy) When it was learnt that the French were on the verge of handing over 8 Mirage fighter aircrafts and one Agosta submarine capable of delivering any missiles to Pakistan, George Fernandes, one of the few ministers who is not afraid to call a spade a spade (and is often right in what he says), expressed his surprise in an interview with Le Figaro and warned the French that supplying lethal weapons to a country known to sponsor international terrorism, at a time when India was fighting a bloody war which the Pakistanis had initiated, was not a thing to be done. "You have two countries, he said in substance, one Pakistan, a small nation in near economic bankruptcy, always on the verge of a military dictatorship, or of fundamentalist take over - and on the other hand you have India, a huge, pro-western, democratic country, with an enormous economic potential. France has to make a strategic choice and it should not be that difficult".

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And he was right! For in spite of the Indian media’s illusions about Indo-French friendship, India is not very high on France’s priories - the ill timing of the now postponed delivery shows it. It may also be that the right hand of the French Government does not always know what the left does (which means in this particular case, that the President, Mr Chirac, is Right Wing, while his Prime Minister, Mr Jospin, is a socialist - and both do not necessarily have the same foreign priorities) But France could also argue that they too, are not very high on India’s priorities. For it appears today that the BJP Government is ready to "sleep with the enemy" - the enemy being the United States. Indians have long had a ridiculous fascination for anything American (70% of students graduating from IIT, leave for the Us) - could it be now, that there is a warming-up of relations with Washington, that the Indian Government is ready to dump the French, who alone stood by India after Pokhran II, when it was ostracised by the whole world ? No doubt, Mr Clinton will charm the BJP leaders with a few smiles and a visit next year, so as to extract the maximum out of them: signing of the CTBT, freezing their missile program, stopping production of nuclear material, while making sure that India buys Boeings and not Airbuses. And the BJP, who all along said that it was not in favour of a unipolar world, will do exactly the opposite! Can’t the Indian Government take a few lessons from the Chinese and understand that you get much more respect from other nations by being firm and taking no s... from anybody, than by always wallowing like a true Third World country ? Yet, France is one of the few countries in the West which has affinities with India. While the average American does not even know where India is on a map, the French love Satyajit Ray, Indian food, music. There are also a few Frenchmen who understand the political and economic importance of India: Jacques Chirac, the French President, who studied Sanskrit when he was young, and knows that India is an ancient and cultured country; or Claude Blanchemaison, the French ambassador, who has tirelessy worked towards improving indo-french relations. Finally, The BJP would do well to remember the words of Swami Vivekananda : "In the East, India is the land which gave the world the invaluable concept of Karma or work as duty; and in the West, the central field of that work , the Karmakshetra is France."

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THE SECRET BROTHERHOOD OF INDIA AND ISRAEL

For 40 years, India did not have relations with Israel. Yet, India and Israel share so much in common and both can learn a lot from each other ! Hindus and Jews, far from being the persecutors of minorities, that the Marxist, Arab and INC lobby like to portray, have been persecuted for nearly two thousand years and have been the victims of the two worst genocides in the sad history of humanity : Hitler, in his monstrous quest for a "pure" Aryan race, murdered six millions Jews in his gas chambers during the Second World War; and Belgium historian Koenraad Elst estimates that between the year 1000 and 1525, eighty million Hindus died at the hands of Muslim invaders, probably the biggest holocaust in the whole history of our planet. Indians and Israelis of today also share in common an awesome problem with Muslim fundamentalists. And India should learn a lesson of two from the way Israel handles this problem, however much it is criticized by the western media. Unlike India, which since Independence has chosen to deal with this problem in the Gandhian spirit, that is by compromising most of the time with Islamic intransigence - if not giving in - Israel showed that toughness first, accompanied later by negotiations pays much more. Basically, the "land for money" concept is something that India should learn from: in 1967, Israel was threatened to be engulfed by its fanatic neighbors, so it stole the initiative by crushing them in a lightning six days war and kept some land which it used later as bargaining chips with Egypt and Syria. India is also surrounded by hostile Muslim countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and more and more Bangladesh. So far, India has followed the Nehruvian policy of Good Neighborhood : you give first, expecting that your neighborhood will reciprocate the gesture later. Unfortunately, history has shown that India mostly gets stabbed in the back for its generosity by small insignificant nations such as Bangladesh, which owes its freedom to the sacrifices of India’s soldiers and is more and more lending its territory to the ISI. If during the 1965 Indo-Pak war, India would have kept a chunk of the Pakistani territory it has conquered, or if during the Kargil war, it had carried on with its victorious momentum by seizing some of the Pakistan-held Kashmir, which could be used as a buffer zone, there would be probably today less cross-border terrorism. There is another area where India has a lot to learn from Israel, it is the VIP security. We all know how it has become here a status symbol, a constant hassle for the ordinary citizen, who has to wait endlessly in his car for the VIP motorcade to pass by, or in his plane for the Prime Minister of India to land. Mr Vajpayee must be the most protected leader in the world - and it is a very heavy-handed, unfriendly and ultimately inefficient protection. 84

But look at the Israelis: their Prime Minister moves around with only a few boyish looking men, in sneakers and civil dress and they don’t rough up onlookers or hassle innocent citizens. As for the recent hijack of the Indian Airline plane, again we have to look towards Israel, whose airline, EL Al, is the safest in the world, in spite of being the most threatened. But for them, no rude cops who hardly talk any English frisking you at airports, but civil and educated EL Al employees, who ask polite but pointed questions and unobtrusive security in the airports and aboard their aircrafts. Israelis have also shown that you should NEVER give in to terrorist demands and also that its commandos are the best 24 years ago, when an Air France airplane, carrying mostly Israelis, was hijacked by Arab terrorists and forced to land in faraway Uganda, which like the Taliban, were actually protecting the terrorists while pretending to help in the release of the passengers, Israel in one of the most daring rescue operation ever, sent its commandos flying in the dead of the night over half of the world, killed the terrorists, freed the passengers and brought them back to Israel with very little casualties. Unfortunately, India adopted a total opposite attitude during the hijack of IC 814, with the catastrophic result that we know: the terrorists released are today openly preaching in Pakistan a jihad unto death towards India. There is also another aspect from which India can learn a great deal from Israel and it is its language. In 1948, Israel regained part of it Holy land and Israelis, who had been scattered all over the world, came back to live in Israel. There was one problem though: they all spoke different languages and no tongue unified them except Yiddish, a bastard language spoken by the Jews of Eastern Europe. So the state of Israel set its scholars to revive Hebrew, Israel’s ancient language, which had fallen in decrepitude, so that today everybody speaks Hebrew and it has unified Israel like nothing else. India should invite some of these linguists and they should sit down with Sanskrit scholars and devise a way of simplifying and modernizing Sanskrit, which is the mother of all European tongues, a language so subtle and rich that it will energize and revitalize the whole Indian culture. And finally, Like Indians, Israel is one of those ‘elected people of God’, of whom Sri Aurobindo speaks in his book the "Hour of God", who have managed to keep their spirituality alive in spite of oppressions, invasions and genocides. That the Israelis turned their back on their avatar and crucified him, may account for their sufferings for two thousand years, as India went through these centuries of atoning for its ‘black karma’. But both, in their own ways, are becoming again powerful nations, vibrant with spirituality and vigour.

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RUSSIA AND INDIA : SHARING THE SAME FIGHT

Once more, the West is putting pressure on a nation Russia, in the present case which is trying to fight the scourge of Muslim fundamentalism, in some of its ex-republics, particularly in Chechnya. Once more, the western media are bombarding European countries and the United States, with images of refugees fleeing, of children and old men killed by blind bombardments, of women wailing in front of their dead men, thus setting up the public opinion and politicians against the "bad" Russians. Once more, we see the United States, the UN, the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, applying all kinds of pressure on Russia so that it stops its "genocide". And Russia being a weak nation and desperately needing international investment, might well give in the end and let Muslim fundamentalism take hold again in Chechnya and then spread elsewhere like a cancer - in Dagestan, for instance, an Islamic independent state, which has called for a jihad against Russia But what should be understood is that the pity that the Western world has for the sufferings of the poor civilians in Chechnya, however noble, is misplaced. Because not only separatisms are civilian movements - that is, their armies are dressed in civilian dresses but generally they get the covert or overt support of the local population from which they recruit their militants in the first instance. This is particularly striking in Kashmir, where whatever the Indian Government says 95% of the Muslim population of the Valley wishes independence from India, or merging with Pakistan. Indeed, the parallel between Kashmir and Chechnya is very much relevant, because both the Indian and Russian governments are waging a war against Muslim separatism; both are watching with growing horror as it spreads fast from Afghanistan to Kashmir, or Tajikistan; from Pakistan to Bangladesh, or Dagestan; and both are drawing flaks from Human Right agencies, the UN, or the United States for their heavy handed actions against "civilian" populations. But there is also such a thing as karma. In the Buddhist-Hindu sense, it means that an individual or a nation pays, many years or many centuries, later for atrocities or faults committed in past lives or ancient cycles; in the Western, or Cartesian sense, it means that an individual or a nation suffers logically at the hands of revengeful traditional adversaries, against whom it committed earlier wrongs. In this light, it is easier to understand and accept the sufferings of Muslim civilian populations, whether in Chechnya, Kashmir, or Yugoslavia, knowing that throughout the ages, Muslims were ruthless conquerors and have committed untold atrocities. Take for instance the recent agony of the Bosnian (and the Albanians) Muslims, at the hands of the Serbs, which again stirred so much western 86

opinion. But the Bosnian Muslims have themselves committed countless crimes against the Serbs for many centuries - and as late as during the Second World War - when they sided with the Nazis against the Allies. Thus during the recent conflict, they might have got back, in the Hindu meaning as well as the Western sense of karma, what they well deserved. Of all the western media’s putting pressure on nations which are fighting Muslim fundamentalism, the BBC, which prides itself in its unbiased reporting, has to be singled out for its partiality towards Muslim separatists from all over the world. For the BBC has two standards : one for the Muslims’ never mind that that they practice a ruthless religion which still teaches them that theirs is only one true God and another for the bad Hindus / Russians / Israelis. It chooses for instance to label Sheikh Abhas, the founder of the dreaded terrorist movement Hamas, a "spiritual leader", when he has ordered numerous bomb attacks against innocent civilians in Israel. But Hindus, whose history has been of tolerance and of welcoming all persecuted minorities, do not find grace in the eyes of the BBC : at best they are "Hindu nationalists", at worst, "Hindu fanatics". Never mind that they never planted bombs against Muslims, but only destroyed one single mosque without killing anybody in the process, when Muslims invaders have razed tens of thousands of temples in India throughout the centuries and slaughtered millions of Hindus. But is the West mad to put down countries like Yugoslavia or Russia, or India, which are its natural allies and to support nations which are its sworn enemies? Samuel Huntington in his famous book "The clash of civilisations", has predicted that in the 21st century there will be a clash between two civilisations: the West and Islam. Of course, the big question mark is China. Huntington wrote that China, for its own selfish purposes, will sometimes side with Islam against the West. It has already happened with Pakistan, to whom China not only gave the know-how to develop nuclear weapons, but also missiles to deliver them. But China has its own separatist problems in Sin kiang (which by the way are prodded by Pakistan), and many in India hope that it will bring China closer to India and dissuade her from helping Pakistan. Will it ? Some experts are not so sure: China views (and rightly so) India as its enemy number one; because it is the only country which has the numbers and the size (but not the will) to contain China’s hegemonic ambitions in Asia. And secondly, China still believes in the efficiency of the iron hand, whether to crush any dissent in Tibet, Tianamen Square, or Sin kiang Contrary to China, India is a bastion of democracy in Asia, and like Russia, it is fighting a lone battle against Muslim fundamentalism which surrounds her. And it deserves the support of the West’ which it is not getting. We have seen how the United States prefers to 87

give the benefit of the doubt to General Musharraf, even though Pakistan is the biggest supporter of Muslim fundamentalism in South Asia and Mushrarraf its champion.

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8. EXAMPLES NOT TO FOLLOW There are three countries which offer to India examples not to follow: East Timor, Yugoslavia and Tibet. East Timor showed how converted Christians provoke secession by alleging "persecution" and how the West has a very short memory. Pundits have predicted for decades the balkanisation of India, as it happened in Yugoslavia at the hands of Kosovo; so far it has not materialised, but if India allows Kashmir to go, who knows what might follow. And finally Tibet, because of it isolation and feudalism which it did not care to redress in time, paid also the price of its freedom THE LESSONS OF EAST TIMOR FOR INDIA

There are a few lessons which the "referendum" of East Timor, and its catastrophic consequences, have for India. 1) Colonialism is not over. The troubles in East Timor arose, not because Indonesians, or anti-independence East Timorese are more violent, or less democratic than any Europeans, but because when western colonialists - the Portuguese in this case - were there, they converted forcibly (or by means of economic enticement), large chunks of the island. And not only they converted a people to a religion totally alien to their culture and way of life, but also, like everywhere else in the Third World, they planted a seed of separatism : "yours is the only true religion and by embracing this true religion, you become superior, you are part of us, the Great White Man". And as a result, a few generations later, the erstwhile natives want to separate from the Infidel, they want to be independent, to secede, with the result we have seen in East Timor. The Karma of colonialism is not dead. 2) The West has a very short memory. Today the West sits in judgement on the "bad" Indonesians, or the wicked anti-independence East Timorese (read the non-Christians). But it forgets that for centuries - and till barely fifty years ago - it had shamefully colonised, exploited these colonies. Today the Prime Minister of Portugal has the effrontery to offer his country’s "good services" for the peaceful transition of East Timor to independence. But in the history of colonialism, the Portuguese rank first in terms of sheer brutality, rape, theft, murder, or conversions by force. In India, the Portuguese took full advantage of the tolerance of local Hindu kings of Kerala, grabbed land, killed people, converted innocent tribals. Later in Goa, they razed numerous temples to build churches, crucified Brahmins, forcibly married Indian girls to their soldiers... And on top of that, they had to be kicked out of India by force, as they refused to leave! 89

3) There is also hypocrisy. If Britain can battle thousands of miles away from home soil to keep the Falkland islands, which geographically belongs more to Argentina than England, if France fights to retain the island of Corsica in the face of repeated bombings and murders by separatists, if The United States can bomb out Iraq because it has oil interests in Kuwait, then why should Indonesia not retain East Timor, or India fight to keep Kashmir, which has been part of its empire for thousands of years? And no hypocrisy is greater than the one showed by the British, who divided to reign like no one else during their colonial rule - and left a mess everywhere. Today the BBC may pontificate about the violent ways of the IRA, the fanaticism of Muslim militias in East Timor, or "the brutal hand of the Indian army in Kashmir", but it conveniently forgets that it is England who converted a part of Ireland to Protestantism, so as to divide the beautiful island, or that from the very beginning of its rule in India, it pampered the Muslim minority and always implied that it would give it independence when it would leave India. Do not give a foothold to the U.S or the U.N. Of course, Pakistan and other Islamic countries - and eventually America, when it wants to pressurise India to toe its line on CTBT etc. - will exploit to the hilt the East Timor plebiscite, by saying it creates a good precedent and that Kashmir should follow suit. But the result is foregone: whatever the Governments of India’s illusions : like in East Timor, 96% of Kashmiris of the valley would vote for independence, which would immediately means appendage to Pakistan. But it is only because Indonesia went through a terrible economic crisis, that it became weak and had to give in to the dictates of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the UN, which are all controlled by the United States. And the condition for being bailed out economically was of course a referendum in East Timor. Today America prides itself in being the gendarme of the world and gives itself the right to bomb, kill, or imprison anybody it wants, regardless of international law. One also observes in the rest of the Western world a very dangerous moral belligerence, witness the cries for military intervention to implement independence in East Timor, by countries like Australia, who have the saddest of human right records in dealing with their own aborigines, or by this very arrogant and foolish man, Robin Cook, England’s Foreign Minister. 5) Thus, we need a multipolar world. Instead of falling in the arms of the US, just because they have condescended to say a few good words about India’s handling of Kargil (but immediately after, Clinton dealt India a slap for its "arrogant" nuclear doctrine), New Delhi should fight against the dangerous unipolar world which Washington is trying to impose upon us, and make strategic alliances with countries who have the same aspiration. Such a country is France; and India must now make some hard choices and select for instance Airbuses instead of Boeings for its national airlines and buy its military hardware 90

from France. The French government has also to show some commitment and should sell India nuclear plants, regardless of what the international community will say. 6) BE INDIAN FIRST. Minorities should be told that they are first Indian and then Christians, or Muslims - and not vice versa. In France, there was a big controversy when Muslim girls insisted to come to college with scarves on their heads; but the French government stood firm and they were thrown out: "you are French first and you should abide by the laws of France", they were told. Imagine if the Indian Government would for instance stop subsidising the Haj pilgrimage, because it does not subsidise any Hindu yatras, it would create such an outcry amongst all the secularists of the country! And this is the saddest thing : that many of India’s journalists, intellectuals, and officials, whether it is M.S. Gill, the Election Commissioner, or the President, are so one sided. Bal Thakeray was disfranchised because he appealed to the Hindus to vote for a Hindu, but when the Archbishop of Delhi, Alan de Lastic, more or less openly tells India’s 25 million Christians to vote for another Christian - Sonia Gandhi - everybody of course finds this "secular" and the Indian Press, who has hounded Thakeray all his life, just quotes Lastic’s letter without batting an eyelid. The recent murder of priest Arul Dass is another example of dishonest journalism. Dass was obviously killed by non-converted tribals, for reasons which will be later discovered. But instead of calming the tensions, Lastic and the Christian clergy have again accused the VHP, the RSS, or Dara Singh, who seems to have developed magical powers to crop up everywhere - and once more the whole Indian Press went up in flames about the "communal" murder. But when a BJP candidate in Kashmir was brutally murdered along with three innocent people, it made for three lines in newspapers. Does that mean that the Indian Press thinks it is perfectly normal for Muslims to kill BJP leaders? " THE BLACK KARMA OF THE WEST IN KOSOVO "

In 732 AD, French King Charles Martel stopped the Arab onslaught in Europe at Poitiers, 329 km south-west of Paris, the capital of France. Without this crushing victory, the whole of Europe would have become Muslim, with incalculable consequences for its culture, religion, history and future. As it is, the Arab world never got a strong foothold on the European continent, as it did in the African and Asian continents, except in two places: Spain in the 8th century; and much later, in part of the Balkans. But by the 13h century, Christian kings had retaken the whole of Spain and the

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country was able to develop around European lines, while assimilating the Arab influence, which gives it today this extraordinary eastern atmosphere, unique in Europe. Henceforth, there only remained in the hands of Islam parts the Balkans (of which Yugoslavia and Albania concentrated the maximum presence), as these were the closest to the Ottoman empire of today’s Turkey. Which means in effect, that the only real European Muslims (by Europe we mean today’s ECC), can be found in these two countries (because there are other "White" Muslims" - in Crimea, for instance). Serbia, a great nation, which embodies the best of the Slav spirit, had developed a wonderful empire, which culminated in the 14th century with Emperor Dulsan, whose kingdom reached till Greece. But in 1389, the Turks beat his armies in Kosovo (does that name strike anything ?) The Serbian empire, a bastion of Western and Christian culture in Eastern Europe, resisted, often alone, and was never washed out by the Muslim onslaught. Kings like Milos Obrenovic I, united the Serbs against the Turks and his son Michel Obrnovic II finally obtained the independence of Serbia in 1867. Thus, thanks to Charles Martlel’s victory in 732 and Serbian Kings like Obrnovic, Islam was never able to penetrate the European continent and Europe owes today its distinct Greco-Roman and Christian culture to these brave men. But unfortunately, the good work of Charles Martel and Milos Obrenivic has been rendered to naught by the Nato forces and the United States of America. Today we see the same thing happening in Russia which is waging a desperate battle against Muslim fundamentalism in Chechnya: the West is applying all kind of pressures so that it stops its military action, thus giving Muslim fundamentalism a chance to spread like a cancer. Once more, TVs all over the world are showing images of Chechen civilians being killed by blind bombardments, thus turning western opinion against the "evil Russians", committing genocide on the "good" Chechens. The Dalai lama often said that the present sufferings of the Tibetan people were due to a "black karma". When asked what was a black karma, he explained that like an individual, a nation commits during different cycles bad karma, evil actions - and that sooner or later, all those who have participated in these collective unholy acts, come back together, in the same place, at the same time, in the same country, to pay for their bad karma. 92

Viewing the Chechnya problem from this angle gives a totally different picture than the one portrayed by the West. For whatever can be said about the greatness of Islam - and there is no doubt that it fostered powerful civilisations and empires, whose refinements and achievements were unsurpassed in their days - the religion of Mohammed remains, even today, a militant and violent creed, which does not tolerate other religions and views all others as "kafirs", infidels. Hence the bloody jihads Muslims are still leading all over the world, even as the 21st century draws near: in Chechnya, of course, but also in Algeria or in Kashmir. The atrocities committed over the centuries by the Arabs and Muslim armies in what is known today as Yugoslavia, are numerous and well documented. There is actually, an interesting parallel to do with India, where Hindus, like the Serbs, resisted the Muslims invaders, in spite of the forced attempts at conversion, the rapes, the millions of people taken in slavery, the killing of men by the thousands. In the same way, during the second world war, many of the Muslim Croats and Albanians ganged up with the Nazis and killed thousands of innocent Serbs, many of whom had enrolled in the underground against the dark forces which Germany was then incarnating (how strange that fifty years later, a people who killed six million Jews, because they thought they were ‘ impure ’ , can play such an important role in Nato. On top of that, very few know that the Germans, still thirsty for domination in Europe, partly triggered the Yugoslav conflict, by being the first to recognise Croatia, where there are many Germans and which sided with nazi Germany. How short a memory Europe has!!!). No doubt, Milosevic is a manipulating and bloodthirsty leader, who went in for ethnic cleansing to solve the Kosovo problem; no doubt the Serbs have committed many atrocities in Kosovo, while Nato was bombing them out of their minds; no doubt the plight of the Kosovo refugees was sad (but it was highly publicised by the western media and used by Nato as a propaganda tool to justify the terrible bombing of the innocent Yugoslavians - and there are much more needy refugees in the world - about whom the US does not give a damn. ..) It is true also that Yeltsin may have been a corrupt vodka-soaked leader whom the United States supported, because it served their purpose to have a weak Russia, which will never challenge for years to come America’s hegemony (thus today, Putin, a "strong" leader, does not get the same support from the West). But from a Buddhist point of view, were not the Kosovars (and today the Chechens) paying for the long, bloody and terrible karma they exerted on Yugoslavia for hundreds of years? Or to put it in a more cartesian and down to earth mould, were not the Muslims getting back a fraction of what they had done to the Serbs?

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What the US and Otan have done in Yugoslavia is morally WRONG: it is thus bad karma for Europe to bear. It is morally wrong not to support Russia in its fight against Muslim fundamentalism in Chechenya. And one day - if the Dalai lama’s theory about black karma is right - they will have to pay for it. For what was the point of Charles Martel stopping the Arabs in 732 and Michel Obrnovic II defeating the kalifat, if today the West hands over on a gold platter a fully autonomous (and sooner or later fully independent whatever hypocrite noises the Otan makes about it) nation to the Muslims in Europe ? And make no mistake about it : one of the great traits of Islam - and also its biggest drawback is that a Muslim is a Muslim, wherever he is, whatever the colour of his skin (that is, he helps his kindred brothers and sisters - contrary to the Hindus, who have not yet learnt a little bit of Christian charity). The Kosovar Muslims might look reassuring and harmless to the eyes of the Otan (whom, if you noticed, never once pronounced the word ‘muslim’ during their war – it’s a bit like Indian newspapers saying ‘one community attacked another community’, when Muslims go on rampage against Hindus), even if it is beginning to show its true face, witness the recent massacre of Serb civilians. But if you scratch a little bit and give them some time, you will quickly realise that like any Muslims, they consider all other religions as "infidel" and that the jihad is still a sacred concept to them. Already, one can see that Saudi Arabia, which the United States considers as a ‘soft’ Muslim nation, but which actually sponsors international terrorism, is one of the biggest backers of the Kosovar people; already you can see the ruthlessness and ultimate motives of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has been armed by the western powers. Is the West mad then, that it has the never heard about the snake that bites the hand which feeds him? The Kosovo quagmire and its disastrous consequences will take decades to solve. Maybe Mr Xavier Solana, before embarking upon his ‘holy’ war on a traditionally prowestern, Christian, reasonably democratic nation, destroying bridges, factories, killing innocent beings, should have read the book of Samuel Huntington "The clash of civilisations". He would have seen that Hutington had correctly predicted that in the 21st century there will be a clash between two civilisations : the West and Islam (with China sometimes siding with Islam for self-interest purposes). This trend had already started in India, also a pro-western, highly democratic power, which is now battling in Kashmir the fundamentalist side of Islam, as incarnated by Pakistan, which in turn is helped by the Chinese, who gave it its nuclear bomb and ballistic missiles to carry it. By allowing an independent Kosovo, the West has made sure that the enemy is now in the heart of Europe.

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THE TERRIBLE FATE OF TIBET

Thousands of oil lamps are scintillating in the starry night of Dharamsala, in the Indian Himalayas at a height of 1800 metres. It is here that the Tibetan community in exile has taken refuge around its spiritual and temporal leader, the 14th Dalaï lama. And today Dharamsala is celebrating the anniversary of the founder of the ‘Yellow Hats’ the sect of which the Dalaï lama is the head: young monks in saffron robes are endlessly circling the temple, while chanting haunting Tibetan religious hymns; one can hear in the crisp Himalayan air the sound of trumpets blowing off in some far-off monastery, while nearby an old lama is beating Tibetan cymbals. Everywhere young children laughing, running, are lighting candles to celebrate the birth of their creed. At last, Tenzin Gyatso, Fourteenth Dalaï lama, Ocean of Joy, Prefect Lotus, All Compassion, and accessorily Nobel Laureate, appears at the top of the temple. The crowd of Tibetans below, some of whom have just arrived from Tibet, crossing illegally the Indian border at night, after days of arduous and dangerous walking, prostrate themselves, muttering their immense joy: they have reached their goal, they have seen the living God... But never has there been a darker hour in the history of the Tibetan people. Not only the Chinese, who invaded Tibet in 1959, erased most of Tibetan culture and religion in Tibet (see box), but the last living symbol of Tibetan aspiration of Tibetan freedom, the Dalaïlama is in grave danger. On the 28th January 1989, died the Panchen lama, second after the Dalaï lama, in the hierarchy of the Yellow hats. During his life, the Chinese tried - vainly - to control him and to make him speak against the Dalaï lama, and he spent several years in Chinese jails where he was tortured. Traditionally, the Tibetans have always believed that the souls of their great lamas quickly reincarnate themselves in the bodies of young boys, generally of a rural background - and it is thus that all the Dalai-lamas’ reincarnations, including the present one, have been discovered. But this time the Chinese decided to choose their own Panchen lama, so that they could manipulate him. Knowing that the Tibetan people would never accept a panchen lama which was not chosen according to the tradition, the Chinese Government nominated on the 17th July 1993, to find the reincarnation of the Panchen lama, a group of specialised monks, at the head of which they put Chadrel Rimpoche, whom they thought as anti-dalaï lama. The Rimpoche and his team short listed 25 young boys, who corresponded to the last indications left by the Panchen lama before dying (generally visions which are couched in poems and give some clues of the physical place where he is to be searched for). But unknown to the Chinese, Chadrel Rimpooche sent a list and the photos of those young boys to the Dalaï lama. And on the 95

14th May 95, taking the Chinese by complete surprise, the dalaï lama nominated one of those boys, Gedhun Choeki Nyima, as the 11th Panchen Lama. Furious, the Chinese had the Chadre Rimpoche and the young boy, plus his parents, arrested and taken to an unknown destination in China. Then they proceeded, after having accused the Dalaï lama to interfere in Tibet’s religious affairs, (a joke if there is one), to invoke an obscure sino-tibetan treaty of the 16th century, between the Manchus of the Qing dynasty and the 5th Dalaï lama, which gave the Chinese emperor power to choose the panchen lama. A hundred Tibetan lamas were forcefully flown to Beijing to give a semblance of religious assent to the whole thing and on the 8th December last, the name of Gyaltsen Norbu, one of the 24 other candidates (the Dalaï lama’s choice was omitted), was drawn from a Golden Urn, another ancient Chinese custom, as the ‘ true ’ Panchen lama. Funny, smiled the dalaï lama, in his retreat in Dharamsala, the boy’s parents are known to have been for years faithful members of the Tibetan Communist party, a rare thing in rural Tibet. But however the Dalaï lama may protest, he has absolutely no control, as all the recent reincarnations of the great lamas, even those he has chosen, such as the Karmapa, the third in the Tibetan hierarchy, are in Tibet, that is in Chinese hands and they will make sure that they will get thoroughly Chinese education. On top of that, 3 Tibetan trained by the Chinese secret police, were arrested last month by the Indian authorities, as they were trying to approach the Dalaï lama. If he ever was assassinated, it might well mean the end of Tibet. Q. You said once that Tibet is going through a ‘ black karma ’. What do you mean by that ? A. The sufferings that the Tibetan people are experiencing today at the hands of the Chinese, are due to a bad karma, bad actions committed in previous lives. But you have to understand that different persons can commit a bad karma at different times, in different places and under different nationalities. And done day by the Grace of God, all these persons find themselves together at the same time in the same place, under the same nationality and repay their karma together. This is what has happened in Tibet. Q. But you also said that this black karma can also be turned into a white karma... A. It is the people who are tortured, the people who are lying trampled on the ground, those who are shot, who are the ultimate winners. From a Buddhist view point, much depends on their motivation at the time of suffering: that is without hatred, without 96

desire of revenge, wanting to hurt the Chinese. Of course, the desire to reinstate truth, freedom, that is not wrong. Thus by suffering one whitens all negative karma as it is done now in Tibet. In the same way, one could say that the people who are torturing, trampling others on the ground, killing human beings, they are the losers, because one day, sooner or later, in this life or another one, they will have to pay for this suffering they are inflicting upon others. This is a mathematical and logical process, there is no question of sin or guiltiness here. Q. You mean that all innocent people who are suffering, is it because they have done some negative karma in the past? A. Yes of course, of course. We the Tibetans for instance, who happen to be on the receiving end of Chinese aggressiveness, are paying for our own carelessness: feudalism, or not opening to outside world for instance. Q. People who are now Tibet, all of them have committed negative karma? A. Yes, yes, of course. Q. But if you take an earthquake, so many innocent people are dying. Is it also black karma ? A. Yes of course. Q. So there is no injustice in the world? A. Oh, in different forms you have to face the suffering consequences of past mistakes in past lives or sometimes even in this life. But if our side bears well, with nonviolence, Chinese aggression, it may disappear quickly. Non-violence does not mean that Chinese aggression should not be considered as an injustice. It is therefore absolutely right to restore justice. Q. So the Chinese in turn are creating a black karma for them, which they’ll pay later? A. Yes, that’s right. That’s why there is more reason to feel compassion towards the aggressor! 97

Q. When will the black karma of Tibet become white karma? How much time do you have to suffer before you find back happiness and harmony? A. Now as I told you earlier, just washing negative karma does not mean creating virtuous karma. By suffering we erase negative consequences of negative karma, but that does not mean you create positive karma. For that we need a different effort. But the Tibetans are creating now a very powerful positive white karma now. They are patriotic not on the basis of winner and loser. We don’t enjoy our enemies suffering, we believe in compassion, in human values. And it is that compassion, that belief in human values, which the Chinese need and eventually we can help them. And with these motivations which are true patriotism, this is the way to promote virtuous karma. (The Dalaï lama laughs). Yours was a real philosophical question! Q. Speaking about virtuous karma is it white karma that because you have fled Tibet, the West has begun to discover through you Buddhism and people are discovering something different than materialism. A. Yes.

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9. THE FALSE GODS The Indian mind’s spontaneous tendency is that of bhakti, of worshipping ‘That’ which it feels is above himself. While it is a wonderful trait which has brought innocence and a freshness to the Indian psyche, it has been taken advantage in modern times by politicians, Christian missionaries and intellectuals. Mother Teresa, the Mahatma Gandhi, Rama Rao, or Sonia Gandhi, while they may have been outstanding personalities in their own right, have all, consciously or unconsciously exploited this innocence, whereas they did not always deserved the status of Gods or semi-Gods given to them.

WAS MAHATMA A MISFIT?

MAHATMA GANDHI was indeed a great soul, an extraordinary human being, and a man with tremendous appeal to the people. But, unfortunately, he may have been a misfit in India. Karma, or fate, or God, or whatever you want to call it, made a mistake when they sent him down to the land of Bharat. For at heart, Gandhi was a European, his ideals were a blend of Christianity raised to an exalted moral standard and a dose of liberalism "a la Tolstoy". The patterns and goals he put forward for India not only came to naught but also sometimes did great harm to a country, which unquestionably he loved immensely. Furthermore, even after his death, Gandhism, although it does not really have any relevance to Modern India, is still used shamelessly by all politicians and intellectuals to smoke screen their own ineffectiveness and to perpetuate them in power. To understand Gandhi properly, one has to put in perspective his aims, his goals, and examine the results today. What remains today in India of Gandhi's heritage? Spinning was a joke. "He made Charkha a religious article of faith and excluded all people from Congress membership who would not spin. How many even among his own followers believe in the gospel of Charkha? Such a tremendous waste of energy, just for the sake of a few annas is most unreasonable," wrote Sri Aurobindo in 1938. Does any Congress leader today still weave cotton? And has Gandhi's khadi policy of village handicrafts for India survived him? Nehru was the first to embark upon a massive Soviet-type heavy industrialization, resolutely turning his back on Gandhi's policy, although handicrafts in India do have their place. Nowhere does Gandhi's great Christian morality find more expression than in his attitude towards sex. In India sex has (was at least) always been put in its proper place, 99

neither suppressed, as in Victorian times, nor brought to its extreme perversion like in the West today. Gandhi's attitude towards sex was to remain ambivalent all his life, lying naked with young girls "to test his brahmacharya" while advocating abstinence for India's population control. But why impose on others what he practiced for himself? Did Gandhi think for a minute how millions of Indian women were expected to persuade their husbands to abstain from sex when they are fertile? And who will suffer abortions, pregnancy, and other ignominies? Again, India has totally turned its back on Gandhi's policy: today its birth control programme must be the most elaborate in the world For the entire world, Gandhi is synonymous with non-violence. Gandhi loved the Bhagavad Gita. But did he grasp its message? Did he understand that sometimes nonviolence does more harm than violence itself? That violence at times is Dharma, if it is done for defending one's country, or oneself, or one's mother, or sisters? Gandhi never seemed to have realized, for instance, the great danger that Nazism represented for humanity. A great Asuric wave had risen in Europe and threatened to engulf the world and it had to be fought - with violence. Calling Hitler "my beloved brother", a man who murdered six million Jews in cold-blood, just to prove the purity of his own race, is more than just innocence; it borders on criminal credulity. And did not Gandhi also advise the Jews not to react violently which is as good as letting them butchered? Gandhi did also great violence to his body, punishing it to blackmail others in doing his will, even if he thought it was for the greater good. And it may be asked, what remains of Gandhi's non-violence today? India has fought three wars with Pakistan, had to combat the Chinese, has the second biggest army in the world, and has to counter insurgency movements in Punjab, Assam and Kashmir... It must also be said that, whatever his saintliness, his extreme and somehow rigid romanticism did enormous harm to India. This romanticism has two names: Muslims and Untouchables. Ultimately Gandhi contributed to the partition of India by his obsession to always give in to the Muslims; by his obstinate refusal to see that the Muslims always started rioting (Hindus only retaliated); by his indulgence of Jinnah, going as far as proposing to make him the Prime Minister of India. As early as 1923, Sri Aurobindo had observed: "Hindu-Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of the Hindus, as every time the mildness of the Hindu has given way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself. Otherwise, we are lulled into a false sense of satisfaction that we have solved a difficult problem when in fact we have only shelved it"

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Gandhi's love of the Harijans, as he called them, was certainly very touching and sprang from the highest motivations, but it would have found a truer meaning in Europe where there are no castes, only classes. Glorifying the scavenger as a man of God makes good poetry, but little social meaning, even if the traditional conception that man is superior to others because he is born a Brahmin is not rational or justifiable. Wrote Sri Aurobindo: "a spiritual or cultural man of pariah birth is superior in the divine values to an unspiritual and worldly-minded or a crude and uncultured Brahmin." Once more Gandhi took the European element in the decrying of the caste system, forgetting the divine element behind. And unfortunately he sowed the seeds of future disorders and of a caste war in India, of which we see the effects only today. Gandhi must have died a broken man indeed. He saw India partitioned Hindus and Muslims fighting each other, and his ideals of Charkha, non-violence and Brahmacharya being flouted by the very men he brought up as his disciples. His heritage, however, is not dead, for it survives where it should have been in the first instance: in the West. His ideals have inspired countless figures, from Martin Luther King, to Albert Einstein to Nelson Mandela, the Dalai-lama or Attenborough, and continue to inspire many others. Gandhi's birth in India was an accident, for here there is nothing left of him except millions of statues and streets and saintly mouthing by politicians who don't apply the least bit of what Gandhi had taught so ardently. RAMA RAO, AN ACTOR OR A CHIEF MINISTER?

It’s a ramshackle studio on the outskirts of Hyderabad, with everywhere policemen, who are guarding all doors and gates. In the compound's courtyard, under a tent, a puja, complete with sacred fire, mantras and chantings, goes on, performed by about 30 brahmins, who are praying day after day, for the success of the film being shot within. Inside the main building, a forest of papier-mache has been created, with its trees, flowers, rocks, a sparkling cascade and even a solitary peacock on top of a small cardboard hill. And there, sitting in a corner, legs crossed, eyes closed, seemingly deep in meditation, hair tucked on top, garbed in an orange dhoti, bedecked with jewels all over the body, forehead smeared with ashes, is the honourable chief minister of Andhra .Pradesh himself, the legendary N.T. Rama Rao. NTR is filming the story of Vishwamitra, the Vedic king, who, after having challenged the sage Vishwamitra for the possession of his magic cow, undertakes a tapasaya of 12 years, momentarily interrupted by heaven's court dancer. Menaka. He finally becomes a Brahma rishi and thereafter works ceaselessly for the good of his people. 101

With an eye on the coming elections, NTR is working non-stop, even sometimes late into the night, so that the film can be released all over India, as the campaigning gains momentum. On the set, the Chief Minister does everything: directing, acting, casting, looking after the smallest details: the angle of the camera, the colour of the paint on the rocks, the intensity of the lighting.... In the film, Vishwamitra has a court around him: servants, relatives, admirers, diwans, soldiers. And so it seems, has in real life the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. By 11 a.m., every day, the studio is filled up with those who have managed to go through the different security checks. There are the ministers awaiting their guru's orders, Telugu Desam delegations from all over the state in search of a blessing, important people who are seeking some favour from the rishi of modern India, and simple folk who have come for a darshan. By 2 p.m. Rama Rao appears to notice that his ministers have been waiting for him for hours. With a peremptory wave of the finger, he calls his PRO, whose hands are literally shaking, while he reads to his master a statement to be released to the press on the resignation of the opposition MPs. The chief minister, his mind absorbed in his film, hardly listens, interrupting the poor man several times, to issue orders for the shooting of the next scene.... And indeed, everybody seems to be terrified of Rao, from the ministers to the soundman; and even his two sons (one acts as the cameraman, the other as a prop-man) appear to fear him. Finally, those who have come for interviews get their due: the men either go to NTR head bowed, hands joined as if praying, or touch his feet seeking his blessings; the women, blushing and nervous, stand by his side so that the official photographer can fix that immortal moment for posterity. Quickly the break is over and the CM dismisses everybody and resumes his shooting. But then, one may ask, when and how does he manage to look after the affairs of his state? "It's simple," says a bureaucrat, who, for very obvious reasons, wishes to remain anonymous. "The whole government is paralysed because nobody dares say anything to him: he is only told what he wishes to hear, he is only shown reports which praise him. No personal initiative survives as everybody is too scared to take a decision that would irk him.". And he could have added that there is no money left in the state's coffers, as it has all gone into the subsidy schemes for the poor: rice at Rs 2 a kilo (In the film, Vishwamitra, impatient with rice that takes six months to mature, creates his own hybrid that grows in a tree), or donations and free dhotis for the untouchables (Indra refuses untouchables access to heaven; So Vishwamitra creates his own heaven where Harijans can enjoy a quiet after-life!).

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Yet, it is obvious that Rama Rao is a man of power, with all its attributes: he sleeps only a few hours at night and is up at 3 a.m. (he actually calls his ministers before sunrise every day); he is able to stand on the set for hours at a stretch, when everybody is long exhausted; he sees everything, knows everybody, remembers everyone's name; and has the knack to use people and take fast decisions. And, according to some insiders, NTR believes he can become India's next prime minister, though he won't admit it publicly. Can he do it? Will the people give him the mandate? "But you don't understand," said a photographer from Eenadu, the largest Telugu daily in the state, ha has no doubt he can, because he thinks he is the reincarnation of Vishwamitra"... EXPLODING THE MOTHER TERESA MYTH

IT is quite extraordinary that the saintly icon which is Mother Teresa is being attacked by foreigners ‘in this particular case a film produced by Tariq Ali for Britain's Channel 4, for being "a friend of the despots and a religious bigot to boot" ’ and she is being defended by the cream of India's intelligentsia, be it Vir Sanghvi, Editor of Sunday magazine, who says: "Gosh he is so outrageous," or Sunita Sen, who gushes in India Today. "Bad faith, bad taste". But has not the film missed more relevant points, which could be summarized thus: 1) What does Mother Teresa really stand for? 2) Why do Indians defend her so ardently? Foremost one should say in defence of Mother Teresa that she certainly is doing saintly work. After all, there is no denying that it takes a Westerner to pick up dying people in the streets of Calcutta and raise abandoned orphans, a thankless task if there is one. Indians themselves, and particularly the Hindus, even though their religion has taught them compassion for 4,000 years, have become very callous towards their less fortunate brethren. The plague has recently shown the widening gap between the fortunate and the less than lucky. This said, one may wonder: What does Mother Teresa really stand for? Is caring for the dying and orphaned children her only goal? Well, if you have observed her carefully over the years, you will notice that she does not say much. She does speak against contraception and abortion, in a country of nearly one billion, where an ever growing population is spiking whatever little economic progress is made, where the masses make life more and more miserable, invading the cities, crowding their streets and polluting 103

the environment; where for 40 years the Indian government has directed a courageous and democratic birth control programme (this must be said, for China has achieved demographic control through autocratic means). What else does Mother Teresa say: she speaks of the dying in the streets of Calcutta, of course, of the poor of India left unattended, of the misery of the cities. Fair enough, but then it must be pointed out to her, that she projects to the whole world an image of India which is entirely negative: of poverty beyond humanity, of a society which abandons its children, of dying without dignity. OK, there is some truth in it. But then it may be asked again: does Mother Teresa ever attempt to counterbalance this negative image of India, of whom she is the vector, by a more positive one? After all she has lived here so long that she knows the country as well as any Indian, having even adopted Indian Nationality. Surety she can defend her own country? She could for example speak about India's infinite spirituality, her exquisite culture, the amazing gentleness of its people, the brilliance of its children... Unfortunately, Mother Teresa says nothing. For the truth is that she stands for the most orthodox Christian conservatism. There is no doubt that ultimately Mother Teresa's goal is utterly simple: to convert India to Christianity, the only true religion in her eyes. Did you notice that she has never once said a good word about Hinduism, which after all is the religion of 700 million people of the country she says she loves, and has been their religion for 6000 years. This is because deep inside her, Mother Teresa considers, as all good Christians do, particularly the conservative ones, Hinduism a pagan religion which adores a multitude of heathen gods and should be eliminated. For make no mistakes about it, there have been no changes about the Christians or Protestant designs on India since they arrived with the Portuguese and the British. Listen to what Lord Hastings, Governor General of India, had to say in 1813: "The Hindoo appears a being limited to mere animal functions.... with no higher intellect than a dog or a monkey"! Mother Teresa is much cleverer than Lord. Hastings. She knows that on the eve of the 21st century, it would look very bad if she would openly state her true opinion about Hinduism: so she bides her time. But ultimately is not charitable work, whatever its dedication, a roundabout manner to convert people? For without any doubt the people she saves from the streets will ultimately become Christians and if you ask those "elite" Indians who know her well, such as the photographer Raghu Rai, a great admirer of 104

her, she always comes out after some years with: "it's now time for you to embrace the true religion" (Rai politely declined). The second point then is: why does India's intelligentsia, the Vir Sanghvis and Sunita Sens, all of whom are born Hindus, defend her? These are intelligent, educated people, they must surely have some inkling of Mother Teresa's true purpose. Or do they? Do Sanghvi and Sen, or Naveen Chawla, Mother Teresa's ever admiring biographer; understand what Mother Teresa really stands for? That she is someone basically hostile to their culture, their religion, their way of life? Does Sanghvi know that Hindu society has always been the target of Christians since their coming here? Does he understand that he and a thousand of his peers, who belong to the intellectual elite of India and keep praising Mother Teresa, are doing harm to their country and opening it to its enemies? The Christian influence is very strong in India today: it shapes the minds of its young people, in a subtle way, through its schools, which many of the children of the rich attend. It moulds the thinking of the tribes it has converted, particularly in the North-East, where the missionaries have always covertly encouraged separatism (see the remarkable book "Indigenous Indians" by the Dutch Scholar Konrad Elst). But ultimately it must be concluded that the Indian intelligentsia who defend Mother Teresa and are constantly attacking Hinduism, as Sanghvi does, are a product of three centuries of English and Christian colonialism, which successfully created an Indian elite cut off from its roots and hostile to its own culture. Mother Teresa is an incarnation of Western post- colonialism and the Nobel Prize she got is their endorsement of her work, As for the Indian government's stand on Mother Teresa, it is like biting one's own tail and it seems quite stupid. Why make Mother Teresa a national figure when she represents today the worst publicity for India at a time when the country is trying to shed its image of poverty and backwardness? Surely Mother Teresa deserves praise for her work. But there are hundreds of other selfless, courageous individuals in India, who do not hog the limelight and go on with their service to the nation in true Christian humility. The deeds of Mother Teresa should be reviewed in their proper perspective. But then, when she dies, the Indian government will probably declare 7 days of mourning! For make no mistake about it, the wonder that is India, its great culture, its philosophy, its inner spiritual genius is today under mortal threat. It is attacked both from within by its minorities - of which the Christian lobby, although not the most visible, is essentially hostile - and in the process they may make allies with the Muslims, the other 105

monotheist religion, with whom they partake of the same hate for Hinduism- and from without, by hostile neighbours. And what will India become if the Mother Teresas of this world, helped unwittingly by Sanghvi and his peers have the last word? It will lose what makes Her unique on this earth, different from all others, above most of them and become another Westernised, Christianised, standardised society, having lost its soul along the way. Thank you Vir Sanghvi and Sunita Sen! SONIA GANDHI AND THE GREAT ARYAN MYTH

Everything has already been said about why Sonia Gandhi holds such a fascination for India: the fact that she belongs to the Nehru dynasty towards which the rural people have the bhakti tendency we were earlier talking about, and which the Congress propaganda machine has been exploiting full swing since independence, creating the impression in the minds of the simple villagers that the Nehru dynasty is akin to God. Or the eternal inferiority complex that a part of the Indian intelligentsia seems to be holding towards the West. This is particularly striking amongst a section of the Indian media, which always appears to look at India through a western prism and constantly worry how the foreign press views India, how the foreign countries - particularly the United States of America perceive India, what the Human Right agencies say about India. The fact that Sonia Gandhi seems to hold a great fascination for foreign correspondents based in India, even though she has no political qualifications, even though she has never given interviews to any of them, does not help either. But think what would happen if a Hindu would try in France or the USA the same "Empress" trick she is doing on India, he would be bashed-up by the local press. Nevertheless, most correspondents write sympathetically about her (while running down what they call the "Hindu nationalists"); one of them Jean Leclerc du Sablon from Le Figaro actually wrote in an editorial "that Sonia is going to bring a bit of morality in Indian politics" ! Is that a case colonial hangover.. But what has never been said is this: the White Skin of Sonia may also bewitch Indians because of the theory of the Aryan invasion, which is still taken as the foundation stone of the History of India. According to this theory, which was actually devised in the 18th and 19th century by British linguists and archaeologists, the first inhabitants of India were good-natured, peaceful, dark-skinned shepherds, called the Dravidians, who had founded what is called the Harappan - or Valley of the Indus civilisation. They were supposedly remarkable builders, witness the city of Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistani Sind, but had no culture to speak-off, no literature, no proper script even. Then, around 1500 B.C., India is said to have been invaded by tribes called the Aryans : white-skinned, nomadic 106

people, who originated somewhere in Western Russia and imposed upon the Dravidians the hateful caste system. To the Aryans, are attributed Sanskrit, the Vedic - or Hindu religion, India’s greatest spiritual texts, the Vedas, as well as a host of subsequent writings, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, etc. This was indeed a masterly stroke on the part of the British: thanks to the Aryan theory, they showed on the one hand that Indian civilisation was not that ancient and that it was posterior to the cultures which influenced the western world - Mesopotamia, Sumeria, or Babylon - and that whatever good things India had developed - Sanskrit, literature, or even its architecture, had been influenced by the West. Thus, Sanskrit, instead of being the mother of all Indo-European languages, became just a branch of their huge family; thus, the religion of Zarathustra is said to have influenced Hinduism, and not vice versa. And on the other hand, it divided India and pitted against each other the low caste dark-skinned Dravidians and the high caste light-skinned Aryans, a rift which is till enduring. But today, this theory is being challenged by two new discoveries, one archaeological and the other linguistic. Firstly, in the Rig Veda, the Ganges, India’s sacred river, is only mentioned once, but the mythic Saraswati is praised FIFTY times. For a long time, the Saraswati river was indeed considered a myth, until the American satellite Landstat was able to photograph and map the bed of this magnificent river, which was nearly fourteen kilometres wide and took its source in the Himalayas. Archaeologist Paul-Henri Francfort, who studied the Saraswati region at the beginning of the nineties, found out that the Saraswati had "disappeared", because around 2200 B.C., an immense drought reduced the whole region to aridity and famine. "Thus, he writes, most inhabitants moved away from the Saraswati to settle on the banks of the Indus and Sutlej rivers". According to official history, the Vedas were composed around 1500 BC, some even say 1200 BC. Yet, the Rig Veda, describes India as it was BEFORE the great drought which dried-up the Saraswati, which means in effect that the so-called Indus, or Harappan civilisation was a CONTINUATION of the Vedic epoch, which ended approximately when the Saraswati driedup. Recently, the famous Indus seals, discovered on the site of Mohenja Daro and Harappa, have been deciphered by Dr N. Rajaram, a mathematician who worked at one time for the NASA and Dr Jha, a distinguished linguist. In the biased light of the Aryan invasion theory, these seals were presumed to be written in a crude Harappan (read Dravidian) script, although they had never been convincingly deciphered. But Rajaram and Jha, using an ancient Vedic glossary, the Nighantu, were able to prove that the script is of 107

Sanskrit lineage and have so far deciphered 2000 seals. As the discovery of the Saraswati river, the decipherment of the Indus scripts also goes to prove that the Harappan Civilization, of which the seals are a product, belonged to the latter part of the Vedic Age and had close connections with Vedantic works like the Sutras and the Upanishads. Hence, it is becoming more and more clear that there never was an Aryan Invasion in India, a theory which was imposed upon the subcontinent by its colonisers and is today kept alive by Nehruvian historians (such as Romila Thapar), Christian missionaries (it is thus easy to convert the downtrodden tribals and Dravidians, by telling them that Hinduism was a religion thrust upon them by the hated "Brahmin" invaders) and the communists (who hate anything Hindu). But as long as India will not rewrite its history books and teach its children to be proud of its ancient and INDIGENOUS civilisation, there will be other Sonia Gandhi’s who will come and exploit India’s Secret Craving For The White.

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10. THE GREAT INDIAN MYTHS Since independence a few Great Indian Myths have done immeasurable harm to the country. Yet not only do they survive today, but they are often reborn under different avatars. One of these enduring myths concerns Ashoka the Great embracing Buddhism, and making it a State religion. Another of these other extremely pernicious myths is the Great Indo-Chinese friendship, which even the BJP today seems to sometimes believe in. The Mahatma Gandhi created the Myth of an inner war in the Gita and not an outer one. On the lower scale, we find the Great Cricket Myth, a game of gentlemen, where Indians naturally excel, although this myth has taken a bit of battering recently.

"DID BUDDHISM HARM INDIA?"

There is little doubt that Buddha came at a time where Hinduism had got bogged down in too much philosophical talk, rituals and casteism - it would need much later a Shankaracharya to give it again a new impetus - and Buddhism offered a simple way out of human misery to anybody, whatever their caste and social status. This may explain why Ashoka, whom historians love to call "the Great" embraced Buddhism after the battle of Kalinga, or why at the beginning of our era, the entire northern and eastern India was practicing Buddhism. Unfortunately, after Buddha's death, his followers and disciples gradually made of Buddhism a religion of rigid tenets, do's and don'ts, which not only diminished Buddhism’s popular appeal, but also may have harmed India. This harm has two facets: non-violence and Maya. Many Buddhists like to believe that Buddhism disappeared from India, because it was slowly "swallowed" back by Hinduism at the hands of the vengeful Brahmins, who had lost their principal source of income with the self-liberation methods of Buddha. But the truth could be entirely different. Hinduism of the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita always held "ahimsa" as one of its highest spiritual values, but at the same time understood that violence can sometimes be necessary to defend one's borders, women and children, in a word that Might has to protect Dharma. Which is why, until Buddhism made non-violence an uncompromising, inflexible dogma, India's borders were not only secure, but extended from Afghanistan to Kanyakumari. But when Ashoka embraced Buddhism, India's great protecting armour, which had worked for milleniums, had been breached.

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As the first Muslim invasions started submerging India in the seventh century, Hinduism was able to initially withstand the extremely violent onslaught of Islam, thanks to its tradition of Kshatriyas, the warriors; but contrary to what History books say, Buddhism was literally wiped-off the face of India in a few centuries, as it REFUSED to oppose any resistance. For the Muslim soldiers, Buddhists, who adored statues and did not believe in Allah, were as much Infidels as the Hindus, and they razed every single Buddhist temple (and also Jain, as the ruins below Fathepur Sikri have proved) they encountered, burnt all the precious libraries (Buddhist philosophy, particularly of the Shankya School, had shone like a beacon of light on the entire Western world much before Christ and was quoted till the late 19th century by western philosophers like Nietzche) and killed tens of thousands of monks, without encountering any resistance. This is why you cannot find a single trace of Buddhist structures today in India, save for a few stupas, which were too cumbersome to be destroyed. The second unfortunate legacy which Buddhism gave to India is Maya. "Everything is illusion, everything is misery, misery, misery, Buddhists said - and still say today - and the sooner you get out of it by attaining Nirvana, the better. Fine. But Hinduism had always taught that the Divine is concealed in all things, animate and inanimate and that every aspect of life has to be conquered by the Spirit: even the Asura is a fallen Angel, doing unknowingly God's work. Hence Hinduism had addressed itself to all aspects of life, from the Mundane, as brilliantly shown in Khajurao, to the subtle spiritual planes which stand one after the other above Mind. In contrast, Buddhism came and said: "Just leave Matter and take refuge in Buddha". And as result, because Buddhism has had a subtle influence on Hinduism, India started disdaining Her physical envelope, Her very body and material sheath, India's yogis started withdrawing more and more in their caves, its people neglecting their surroundings, its leaders forgetting about Beauty. And the result is there today for everybody to see: an ugly India, full of trash and refuse, with very little sense of aesthetics left; cities unplanned, polluted, crowded, hideous; a people who says it worships its Mighty Himalayas and Sacred Ganges, but which has allowed the former to be nearly completely deforested and the latter to be so polluted, that sometimes it is not even fit for bathing. And Indians cannot put all this on account of poverty, because its rich people are probably the most guilty, often not caring for anything and anybody beyond their own doorstep. It is true that Buddhism has nearly completely disappeared from the subcontinent, but its rigid spirit endures in subtle ways: Mahatma Gandhi was no doubt influenced by 110

Buddhist non-violence when he refused Churchill's proposal in 1943 for a Commonwealth status after the Second World War, if India collaborated with the Allies' efforts against Japan and Germany; or when he constantly gave-in to Muslim intransigence, thereby precipitating India's Partition. Today, we see that the enemies of a dharmic India often use Buddhism as a weapon, whether it is the much hyped Ambedkar, who advocated conversion of Dalits to Buddhism, as he himself showed, or Indian intellectuals such as Prafulla Bidwai, or Aundhati Roy, who borrow from Buddhist Thought to show why India should not have the atom bomb (and let itself wipe-out by Pakistan or China, who have no such qualms). We see also, in a country like Sri Lanka, a very militant Buddhism, chauvinistic in its promotion of Sinhalese interests and anti-Hindu in its persecution of Sri Lankan Tamils. We notice too that new avatars of Buddhism, such as the remarkable Vipassana movement of Shri Goenka, have not fully lost their anti-Hindu slant and are still proposing a very rigid non-violence. "HINDI-CHINI BYE-BYE"

For more than fifty years, China has managed to pretend that it was a friend of India, while covertly, or sometimes even overtly, doing everything to harm India’s interests. Remember how Mr Jaswant Singh came back all glowing from Beijing and announced "that the two sides would enter consultations on establishing a security mechanism". But a few hours later, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji slapped India in the face: while expressing a token "satisfaction at a new warming in Sino-Indian relations", he repeatedly kept silent on the proposed security cooperation. How is it that after five decades of bitter experience at the hands of the Chinese, of double talk, betrayal and contempt, India still gets hoodwinked by the Chinese? And on top of that, hasn’t Mr Singh proposed that India and China celebrate 50 years of friendship? Fifty years of friendship - is that a joke? Doesn’t Mr Singh know that China still occupies one third of Ladhak, which it took during the 62 war, still claims for herself the whole of Arunachal Pradesh and has not only furnished Pakistan with its missiles (via North Korea), but has given them the know-how to manufacture nuclear weapons? How can Mr Singh (who otherwise is a fine gentleman), say that China is not a security menace to India? Doesn’t he know also that according to the CIA, China has 111

transferred one third of its nuclear arsenal to Nagchuka, 250 kms away from Lhasa, a region full of huge caves, which the Chinese have linked together by an intricate underground network and where they have installed nearly one hundred Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, many of them pointed at Indian cities ? The reason for this is that the Chinese, who are probably among the most intelligent people in the world, have always understood that India is their number one economic, military and nuclear competitor in Asia (remember Beijing’s hysterical reaction after Pokhran II). Does Mr Jaswant Singh also know that the Chinese have killed 1,2 million Tibetans, that 6254 monasteries have been razed to the ground, that 60% of religious, historical and cultural archives have been destroyed and that one Tibetan out of ten is still in jail ? Today a quarter million Chinese troops are occupying Tibet and there are 7,5 million Chinese settlers for six million Tibetans - in fact, in many places such as the capital, Lhassa, Tibetans are outnumbered two to one... To understand this Indian obsession for hindi-chini bhai bhai, this crave for appeasing China, whatever the cost, one has to go back to Nehru, who had decided that India and China were the natural ‘socialist’ brothers of Asia. Nehru should have had second thoughts when China showed its true face in Tibet - but he chose to ignore the warning. In a brilliant book (Har-Anand), Tibet specialist Claude Arpi throws light for the first time on the TibetChina-India triangle and Nehru’s iniquitous role. Mr Arpi first recalls how shortly after Independence, the Indian Army Chief of Staff had drafted the first paper on the threats to India's security by China, along with recommendations for a clear defence policy. But when Nehru read the paper, he said : "Rubbish. Total Rubbish. We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats. Scrap the Army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs." We know the results of that remark: when the Chinese invaded India in 1962, the Indian army, thanks to Nehru’s blindness and appeasement policy, was totally unprepared and was so badly routed, that the psychological scars even show today. But the biggest blunder that Nehru did was to betray Tibet, a peaceful spiritualized nation. For Tibet had always been a natural buffer between the two Giants of Asia (in fact, the Dalai Lama’s repeated offer that Tibet becomes a denuclearized, demilitarised zone between India and China, makes total sense today and Indian leaders should have immediately adopted it). But unfortunately, if there is one thing which all political parties in India share, it is the policy of appeasing China in exchange for a non-interference of the Chinese in Kashmir. But what non-interference? It can be argued that not only China gave Pakistan many of the weapons that it is using - or will be using against India in the future but it also may be quite possible that Beijing knew in advance of Pakistan’s Kargil plan (in 112

fact Pakistan’s army Chief was in the Chinese capital at the beginning of hostilities). What Mr Jaswant Singh does not understand is that it is not China that has to appeased to contain Pakistan; but rather, ultimately, it should be Pakistan that has to be appeased (in the true sense of the term = making peace with) to contain China. Because everything - bar religion - unites India and Pakistan: customs, languages, culture, ethnic stock, history. Whereas India and China have very little in common except Nehru’s elusive dream of a socialist brotherhood. It should also be clear that as long as India does not stand-up up to its responsibility towards Tibet and continues to recognise China’s unjust suzerainty of it, there will be no peace in Asia. For China needs space and we have to wake-up to the fact that it has hegemonic aspirations: it got Tibet, it got Hong Kong, it got part of Ladhak; now it wants Taiwan, Arunachal Pradesh, the Spratly islands and what not! Fifty years ago, during the Korean war India’s great Sage, Sri Aurobindo, had seen clearly in the Chinese game: "the first move in the Chinese Communist plan of campaign is to dominate and take possession first of these northern parts and then of South East Asia as a preliminary to their manoeuvres with regard to the rest of the continent in passing Tibet as a gate opening to India". India should also understand that contrary to Indian political leaders, who keep making statements and not acting upon them, China keeps silent, but it ACTS - and then denies having acted with a straight face (like it denies the theft of nuclear secrets from the US). In fact, India should take a lesson or two from the Chinese communist leadership, which first decides upon a clear, one track policy (we will keep Tibet, by all means) - and follows it, regardless of what the world says ! It does not care about a goody-goody image, like India. The story of the Panchen lama is a perfect example of that: Beijing decided that one of the ways of getting rid of the Dalai lama was to provide an alternate source of spiritual leadership to the Tibetans - hence the choice of another Panchen lama, overriding the one chosen by the Dalai lama. Now after six years of indoctrination in Beijing, the counterfeit Panchen lama has surfaced again in Tibet - and its very presence there is further jeopardising the possibility of a free Tibet. What one does not understand is how the BJP, a party which wants to be different, who has always stressed before coming to power, that it sympathises with the Tibetan people’s aspiration to regain their independence, can follow the same old Congress policy of appeasement towards China ! One should be realistic and learn from Swami Rama Thirtha, a great sage of the beginning of the century :"The policy of appeasement is never 113

successful. It increases the demands of the bully and encourages his unreasonableness. He will never listen to you. On the contrary, he will further insult you, by heaping imaginary allegations on you and finding baseless aberrations". 100 years later, India has still not learnt that lesson: the need of the day is not "hindichini bhai-bhai", but "hindi-chini bye-bye". THE GITA AND WAR

The Mahatma Gandhi, as well as many scholars, have seen in Krishna’s discourse to Arjuna, when the latter throws down his bow and says: "I-will- not- fight", an exhortation not to a physical war, but to an inner war, against one’s own ego and weaknesses. While there is no doubt that the Bhagavad Gita is essentially a divine message of yoga that is of transforming one’s own nature while reaching towards the Absolute, it is also fundamental to understand that it uniquely reconciles war with the notion of duty, dharma. Since the beginning of times, war has been an integral part of man’s quest. Yet, it is the most misunderstood factor of our human history. And that is but natural, because, as writes Sri Aurobindo in his remarkable ‘Essays on the Gita’: "Man’s natural tendency is to worship Nature as love and life and beauty and good and to turn away from her grim mask of death". Thus, war has often baffled or even repelled man. We saw how Ashoka turned Buddhist after the battle of Kalinga, or in the previous century how some of the American youth refused to participate in the Vietnam war; and we are witnessing today massive protests against the atom bomb. Yet, what does the Gita say? That sometimes, when all other means have failed and it is necessary to protect one’s borders, wives, children and culture, war can become dharma. That war is a universal principle of our life, because as says Sri Aurobindo "it is evident that the actual life of man can make no real step forward without a struggle between what exists and lives and what seeks to exist". And that humanity periodically experiences in its history times in which great forces clash together for a huge destruction, and reconstruction, intellectual, social, moral, religious, political. The Gita also stresses that there exists a struggle between righteousness and unrighteousness, between the self-affirming law of Good and the forces that oppose its progression. Its message is therefore addressed to those whose duty in life is that of 114

protecting those who are at the mercy of the strong and the violent. "It is only a few religions, writes Sri Aurobindo, which has had the courage, like the Indian, to lift-up the image of the force that acts in the world in the figure not only of the beneficent Durga, but also of the terrible Kali in her blood-stained dance of destruction". And it is significant that this religion, Hinduism, which had this unflinching honesty and tremendous courage, has succeeded in creating a profound and widespread spirituality such as no other can parallel. Has India understood this great nationalist message of Gita? Yes and no. On the one hand you have had Rajputs, Mahrattas, and Sikhs; you have had a Shivaji, a Rani of Jhansi, or a Sri Aurobindo, who, let us remember, gave a call as early as 1906 for the eviction of the British by force if need be at a time when the Congress was not even considering Independence. But on the other hand, apart from these few heroes, the greater mass of India seems to have been for centuries the unresisting prey of invaders. Wave after wave of Muslims intruders were able to loot, rape, kill, raze temples and govern India, because Hindu chieftains kept betraying each other and no national uprising occurred against them; the British got India for a song, bled it dry (20 million Indians of famine died during British rule), because except for the Great (misguided) Mutiny, there was no wave of nationalism opposed to them until very late; we also saw above how in 1962 the Indian army was routed and humiliated by the Chinese, because Nehru had refused to heed the warnings posed by the Chinese. In December 99, we also witnessed how India reacted during the hijack of the IC flight from Kathmandu: instead of storming the plane when it was in Amritsar, India’s leaders got cowed down by the prospect of human casualties from their own side and surrendered to terrorism. But in the process India’s image and self-esteem suffered a lot and the liberated separatists are now spitting even more venom and terror. Why is this great nationalistic message of the Gita forgotten? There are two main factors. The first one, as we have already seen, is Buddhism and the second is the equally rigid non-violent philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. There is a lining in the sky, though: the Kargil war has shown that Hindu, Muslim and Christian soldiers can put their country above their religion and fight alongside each other. We see today a new wave of nationalism rising not only in India, but also amongst the very influential expatriate Indian community, particularly in the US. The nationalist message of the Gita is not only still relevant today, but it is essential for India’s survival in the face of so many threats: the "Islamic" Bomb of Pakistan, the hegemonic tendencies of China, or the globalization and westernization of India, which is another form of war. One would be tempted thus to address this message to this wonderful, diverse, and extraordinary country, which has survived so many threats during her eight thousand years history: ARISE AGAIN O INDIA AND REMEMBER KRISHNA’S 115

MESSAGE TO ARJUNA : TRUTH IS THE FOUNDATION OF REAL SPIRITUALITY AND COURAGE ITS SOUL. CRICKET THE VAMPIRE

Here is a game which is a colonial legacy of the British. It is meant to be played in a cool weather on a green English meadow with a few spectators who shout "jolly good" from time to time, while sipping lemonade. It is not a game meant for a tropical country where you stand for hours under a blistering sun with frenzied fans screaming their approval or displeasure. Cricket has become an obsession in India But above all, cricket has totally vampirized all the other sports in India. There is so much money that sponsors, televisions and even the Government has concentrated only on cricket at the expense of all the other sports. For the truth is that India is nowhere on the international area of sports and its standard is pathetic if not ridiculous in all sports except for another two British legacies: tennis and hockey. But look at China, in the early eighties it also could not compete in any discipline, bare table tennis, but in a span of thirty years, it has become a sports superpower in all areas, even in some where it had no natural ability, such as swimming. Why can’t India, the country which gave to the world hata-yoga, which has been copied the world over, or even pranayama which is now spreading like wildfire all over the planet, have a coherent and comprehensive program which would build world-class athletes in two decades? Because of cricket! And it is so unfair; athletes such as long distance runners will train in miserable conditions, get a pittance as sponsorship and often have to work full or part time in some obscure Government jobs. Compare this to cricketers who are often spoilt brats, who stay in five star hotels, get millions of rupees in sponsorship and advertisement, are often arrogant and. still manage to lose most of the time! The INDIAN Government should restrict the number of international matches played by Indian cricketers happening both within and outside India. This will ensure automatically that cricketers get less sponsorship and have to concentrate on home turf. And it should evolve a bold and clear plan for developing other sports, trying as much as possible to bypass bureaucracy who stifle and kill all the good plans (it would maybe make sense to privatize some of the areas such as training). The only will India become a superpower 116

ports. It has the manpower in sports and cricket takes its just place as just another sport where Indians excel. Luckily, the recent cricket scam, where it has been discovered that players of international repute ‘many of them Indians’ are in the habit of fixing matches, has put a bit of a damper on cricket madness. But it is not enough, as the game of cricket goes on, as if nothing happened. We need a Government with a clear vision of sports. Unfortunately, many of India’s leaders are too old to think about sports.

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11. THE ROT OF BOLLYWOOD It is no coincidence that Pakistan, in connivance with Indian Muslims and the covert approval of Saudi Arabia, chose Bombay to plant their deadly bombs after the destruction of the mosque of Ayodhya. For there has always been a strong connection between the Muslims of Bombay, with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, via the film industry (isn’t it, Mr Dilip Kumar?). We all know how Indian actors and actresses used to be invited at Dawood Ibrahim’s parties and today we have discovered how black ‘blood’ money is utilized to finance many of Bollywood mega-films. Thus, some of these films encourage terrorism and secession in subtle and not so subtle ways. We have chosen three such films: Refugee, Mission Kashmir and Maachis..

REFUGEE, A SECULAR FILM ?

Have you ever heard of a secular film? If there is such a thing, Refugee must be the one ! You have the hero, Abishek Bacchan, a selfless and courageous Indian Muslim, who has a Hindu guru, a very rare happening today for a Muslim; you have the Bangladeshi Muslim refugees, who are the real heroes of the film ‘ simple, good-natured folks who only want to live in peace in the land of their choice; you have the tough but good-hearted Indian BSF officer, who happens to be played by a Christian, Jacky Schroff; you have the nice Pakistani Ranger, acted by Sunil Shetty, a Hindu, as opposed to the bad Pakistani infiltrators’ But Refugee is also a bit of a devious film and whoever wrote the script knew very well what he was doing, as it takes advantage of the innocence of the average viewer to put across a few messages which are sometimes of a very doubtful nature. Firstly notice that the real villains of the film are not the Pakistani infiltrators after all, like those who infiltrated into Kargil in 99, you could term them as "patriotic", as they believe that their Scriptures preach a jihad unto India and that dying for that cause will take them straight to heaven. No, no, the real villain is the Hindu character, who in the very first scene of the film offers a passage to Pakistan to the hapless Bangladeshis. He is certainly not patriotic and is ready to betray anybody, including his own race for dirty money. And notice how he says "Ram-Ram", when he contacts the Bangladeshis an allusion to the kar-sevaks who brought down the Ayodhya mosque and maybe a hint that many worshippers of Ram could be crooks. And observe how this Hindu criminal is finally justly killed by a Christian and a 118

Muslim, a not so subtle indication that Muslims and Christians are united against the scheming Hindus. Refugee is also full of "symbols" which may look innocuous to the millions of naïve villagers who have already seen the film, but should not escape the eye of an attentive viewer. Have you remarked for instance how the Bangladeshis refugees prostrate themselves on the ground when they reach the stone which marks the Pakistan border? Is Pakistan then the Promised Land? Or have you noticed how the heroine, a Muslim, sights her lover from an abandoned Hindu temple during a night halt in the desert? It must be one of the very few left by the invading Muslims, who razed hundreds of thousands of Hindu temples, and are still at it today in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Then there is also the Sufi festival in Rajasthan, where both Muslims and Hindus pray together. Fine, but the scene is a bit misleading: it used to happen in the old times, as Hinduism has always accepted the divinity of other religions and a Hindu, even today, does not mind praying at a church or a mosque. It is true also that the Sufis, because of the influence of Advaita, had softened their brand of Islam. But Harzabal, the last real Sufi shrine in Kashmir was burnt down at the hands of Pakistani and Afghans mujahedins and the traditional Sunnis look down on that kind of mixing-up with Kafir Hindus. There is one symbol though, which makes a good point, even if it is not done in a very credible manner, it is when the child of the heroes is born on No Man’s land, with the help of Pakistani and Hindu improvised midwifes and under the benevolent guard of the BSF and Pakistani officers, who have forgotten their enmity. It is certainly true that Pakistan and Indians are brothers and sisters, as everything unites them: language, customs, culture, color of their skin, food habits, and music except their religion. It is also true that many visionaries, such as Sri Aurobindo, have always said that as long as Pakistan and India do not reunite, in whatever manner, there will be wars, and Kashmirs and atom bombs... But it will certainly not happen in a filmy manner such as depicted in Refugee. First Islam has to give-up its intolerant credo, accept the reality of India and stop sending its mujahedins in Kashmir. The rest will then follow naturally. It is also true that the film is quite brilliant: the photography of the Ran of Kutch is superb, Kareena Kapoor acts as if it’s her second nature, the music is enchanting enough and there is something very endearing about Abishek Bacchan. Nevertheless this cannot hide the fact that there is something very rotten about Hindi films nowadays. We know already how many of them were (and are still?) financed not only by black money, but also with blood money, which happens to be mostly in control of the Muslim underworld, both 119

in India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Dawood Ibrahim being the most known figure, but certainly not the only one; we know too now that there is a lot of extortion and blackmail going on inside the industry and crimes have been committed recently. But on top of that, Hindi cinema is going towards self-suicide: how long can you go on feeding the masses films that have hardly any script at all and which always cater to the dramatic side of the Indian ethos, however many beautifully choreographed songs and dances in more and more exotic locales they contain ? It is time that Hindi cinema does a little bit of introspective and that its actors, scriptwriters, musicians, choreographers, who are all talented people and often come from Muslim backgrounds, start thinking about creativity, originality and bringing to the masses a little more than escapism and a little bit of self-pride in their own country, as they did during the Kargil war. MISSION KASHMIR

Hindi cinema has a strange habit of oscillating between syrupy sentimentality and extreme gratuitous violence, the whole process being punctuated with endless songs and dances, which generally have nothing to do with the story. Mission Kashmir is no different except the film has a message: it endeavours to show us what went wrong in Kashmir and implicitly advocates a just solution for the Kashmris’ woes. The problem is that it got everything wrong. Firstly, the police in Kashmir do not perform commando operations, such as the one depicted in the film : this type of action is left to the reliable army, the BSF, playing second fiddle, and the police, not fully trusted, because of the presence of too many Kashmiris, performing the less sensitive type of services. Secondly, the raid on the houseboat where the militants are hiding, is today a very unlikely scenario, as the Dal Lake is one of the most patrolled spots in Kashmir. Thirdly, whatever Human Right Organizations say, the Indian Army, one of the most restrained armed bodies in the world, do not shoot unarmed women and children, except through accidental crossfire. The film plays a lot on the fact that Sanjay Dutt, a Kashmiri Muslim, is married to a Hindu. What better example of communal harmony could be found? Indeed, the movie seems to imply that there lies the ‘secular’ solution for Kashmir (in the end we see the symbolic sinking in the mire of the triple image of Jesus, the Koran and Laxmi). But what is the reality? Most Hindu women who have married Muslims (such as Sharmila Tagore), have converted to Islam, the reverse is rarely true. And what about the Hindus who lived peacefully with their Muslim brothers for centuries? There were one million of them in 120

1900. Today they all have been made to flee through terror and intimidation. And those few hundreds, who stayed behind, are still massacred episodically. Furthermore, there are no "evil" Kashmiri militants, as the film wants us to believe. If you see photos of Muslim separatists killed by the army or caught, you will notice that most of them are very young, poorly dressed, and often look scared. Jackie Schroff also makes a ridiculous caricature of the Pakistani militant who masterminded the burning of the Shar-e Sharif mosque, the last great Sufi shrine where Hindus and Muslims used to worship together (which is the scenario which the film should have copied - and not an hypothetical attempt to blast Harzatbal) Lastly, and this is a misconception which the film unfortunately shares with India’s politicians, it is a total folly to think that the Kashmiris of the Valley only want peace and are ready to become good Indian citizens, providing their just grievances are met. The truth is that at least 95% of Muslims in Kashmir, from the retired High Court Judge to the Shikkara boatman, wish to become part of Pakistan, as they feel that Islam will assure them of a better deal and protection. In fact, the problem is not with Muslims, which are as good human beings as Hindu or Christians, whether in Kashmir, UP, or Kerala, the problem is with a religion which is alien to India and teaches its devotees to look westwards towards the Mecca, in a language which is not Indian, towards a theology which is culturally alien to Indians and teach them to loathe anything which is not Muslim. As long as the Koran, which was written in Medieval Times for a medieval mentality, does not care to adapt itself to modern times and tone down some of its precepts, such as the injunction of jihad on Infidels, there will ====f that division, which most Indian political leaders have accepted as a permanent 'fait accompli'. But the mistake is to think that there exists a solution to Kashmir. There is NO solution: India rightly considers that Kashmir has been part of its territory since milleniums and will not let go of it.. It could signal the balkanisation of the country ; and Pakistan has a point when it says that in the (mad) logic of Partition, the Valley of Kashmir, which has a majority of Muslims, should have reverted to them. Everywhere in the world we see at an attempt at unity, not fragmentation: the two Germanies have reunited; so have the two Vietnams; and tomorrow the two Koreas will follow suit, in spite of strong ideological differences. So why not India and Pakistan? And are not Pakistan and India part of the same soul? Are not Pakistanis and Indians of the same colour, culture, ethnic stock? Have they not the same food habits, the same customs in many ways? In truth, you cannot really differentiate one Punjabi from the other Punjabi, or one Sindhi from the other Sindhi, except for his religion. So what if they worship two 121

different Gods, which are but two names for the same Infinite Reality... Why should Indian and Pakistan, two developing countries, go on spending billions and billions of dollars and even risk a nuclear holocaust? When this possibility will be accepted by both sides, half of the reunifying work will be over, Indian Muslims will feel at peace and the problem of Kashmir will solve itself naturally. AN OPEN LETTER TO JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

Dear Jawaharlal: yesterday went to see the film Maachis. I am sure that from up there you get free screenings and have no hassles of queuing, bombs scares and body searches, like us poor mortals! Thus, like me, you must have been able to appreciate the excellent photography of the film, which was shot in natural settings with a special attention for small details; the good acting: the hero does look like a handsome, wellmeaning, law abiding Sikh - at least for a time; and Tabu comes out as an endearing, courageous and beautiful terrorist - in - spite -of -herself. Respected Pandit-ji, even though I am a foreigner, I have lived a long time in your country and I have even married an Indian, a sadarni at that. Yet, there is something which deeply disturbed me in this film, for it implies clearly that Sikh separatism was born out of police brutality and not vice versa as it seems to have been the case. In fact the whole film seems to me to be a covert exercise in glorification and justification of terrorism. You just have to replace the hero by a Bodo lad, a Kashmiri terrorist, or even a Tamil separatist, and the trick is done: bye India. But isn’t the reality altogether different? Take Sikhism for instance, the indirect subject of this movie: "The Sikh Khalsa, writes Sri Aurobindo, India’s great revolutionary, poet, philosopher and Sage, was an astonishingly original and novel creation and its face was turned not to the past but to the future. Apart and singular in its theocratic head and democratic soul and structure, its profound spiritual being, the first attempt to combine the deepest elements of Islam and Vedanta, it was a premature drive towards an entrance into the third or spiritual stage of human society, but it could not create between the spirit and the external life the transmitting medium of a rich creative thought and culture. And thus hampered and deficient it began and ended with narrow local limits, achieved intensity but no power of expansion..." Unfortunately, the Sikhs, because they had to defend themselves against the terrible persecutions wrought by the Muslims, became a militant religion, adopting hawkish habits, which even in time of peace they kept. Thus, they also retained some of the more negative side of Islam: intolerance or feeling of persecution, 122

consequently cutting themselves from the mainstream spirit of Hindu tolerance and magnitude from which they anyway came, and where they might ultimately go back. Sikhism, particularly during your daughter’s tenure as Prime Minister of India, was on the defensive, or rather displayed and still does today in countries like Canada - an aggressive spirit of defence. Why? As Sri Aurobindo points out, Sikhism was an astonishing attempt at synthesising Islam and Hinduism, but because the conditions were not right, it faltered. And today, whatever the loveliness of Sikh rites, the incredible beauty of the Golden Temple and its wonderful atmosphere; Sikhism, like Zoroastrianism of the Parsi community, may be a stagnating religion - whereas Hinduism from which Sikhism sprang in greater part, is very much alive and remains the Dharma, the source of all religions in India. It may be this unconscious realisation by the Sikhs that their religion is being slowly absorbed back into Hinduism, which triggers their militancy and fundamentalism. And after all, what is fundamentalism, but going back to the fundamentals, the foundations? And Sikhism blossomed best when it was militant, when it fought the Muslims; therefore unconsciously, the separatists of the late seventies went back to that crease, to that glorious epoch to regain their identity. That is all what separatism is, a desperate attempt to regain Sikh identity in the face of the all-pervasive and subtle Hindu onslaught. The fact that the British had planted that seed of separatism and that later it was fuelled, financed and armed by Pakistan certainly did not help. But can the British, or Pakistan, or even Indira Gandhi be credited with having of FABRICATED Sikh separatism? Your unfortunate daughter was herself accused of having 'created' Bhrindhrawale and made thus responsible for the whole Punjab problem. This is going to extremes; she may have helped politically Bhrindhrawale and thought of using him later to counterbalance her opponents in Punjab. That's bad enough; but Bhrindhrawale's fanaticism and violence was his own, he was just an embodiment of Sikh militancy and frustration; if he had not been there, another Bhrindhrawale would have sprung-up, with or without your daughter’s help. The film implies also that Sikhs (and many other ‘secular’ Indians), have not forgiven your daughter for giving the order of storming the Golden Temple. History will judge. But think of it this way: would the French Government have tolerated that for months, Basque separatists, for instance, be holed up in the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, one of the holiest of all Christian shrines, with their weapons, issuing deaths warrants against politicians, and receiving journalists, as Bhrindhrawale did? Certainly not. These Basque militants would not have lasted three days in Notre Dame; the army would have been called - and although great care would have been taken that no harm be done to the wonderful 1000 year old cathedral, it would have been a fight to the finish. Remember also 123

what happened to the 350 militants who took over the Kaba in Mecca in 1989? Most of them were killed when the Saudi government sent its special forces against what is the most sacred place of worship in the world to all Muslims. It is a credit to Indira and the inherent Hindu tolerance that Bindhrawale and his followers were allowed to hole-up for so long in the Golden Temple. No democratic government in Europe or any Arab state would have allowed such a situation to continue. It was unfortunate that the Golden Temple got damaged and so many were killed during the assault; but as the Head of Government, your daughter took the correct decision. It was not her fault that the Sikhs allowed their most sacred place to become the shelter of men armed with weapons and with death in their hearts. You must have noticed pandit-ji that we also get a flashback in the film, showing us the riots against Sikhs after your daughter’s assassination. True, it was a ghastly and shameful moment of Indian history and the culprits should be punished. But is it not also shameful that many Sikhs rejoiced when Indira was murdered in such a cowardly way by her own Sikh bodyguards, men she had trusted, even though she had been told earlier to have all Sikhs removed from her personal security. To kill a woman lying on the ground with bullets generates a curse for any race that condones it. Today, Punjab seems to be on the mend, even though militancy is still there, even though there are still extremists. But what is asked of Sikhs today is that they break their silence and come out openly for India. Unfortunately, the Sikh community, although its majority cherish their country and are peace-loving, hard-working, good-natured people, never COLLECTIVELY condemned the murder of Mrs Gandhi, nor stated their desire to stay as part of the great Indian community. Perhaps this is the curse of the Sikhs. What made me saddest dear Jawaharlal is that when the film finished and the lights came on, I had the feeling that none of the spectators, even those amongst my own Indian family, found anything wrong with it. Like millions of others who have already seen it, they all trooped out feeling sorry for the poor innocent Sikhs portrayed in the movie and angry at the brutal policemen and the corrupt, power-hungry politicians. But policemen in India are no more brutal than their German counterpart, for instance; and even if Indian politicians may look apparently more openly corrupt than elsewhere, I am sorry to say, dear Mr Nehru, that your Congress party, which has ruled and shaped Indian politics for so many years, is greatly responsible for it. What is much more corrupted in my mind is your ‘secular’ legacy which allows a film like that to go unchallenged, at least on an intellectual plane. For if such a film had been made, say in Britain, showing how wrong it is to hang on to the Falkland islands, a tiny territory thousands of miles away from the British isles, or an 124

American film on the selfish interests which motivated the US during the Gulf war, and how thousands of innocent Iraqis still suffer today because of the embargo, you can be sure it would have triggered a public outcry. I know that you deeply loved your country and that you did your best to apply sincerely the ideals you held as most suitable to its problems, but ultimately the Marxistinspired secularism that you imposed on India, has done a tremendous harm, because it has perverted the perception of its citizens. What is wrong, like encouraging separatism in the name of secularism, appears here to be right. What is right, such as the requirement that all citizens of India, regardless of their religion or ethnic origin, observe the same laws, is deemed wrong, whereas in other countries in the world it seems perfectly logical. Today this so-called secularism has taken hold amongst the elite of India, those who fashion the minds of their countrymen, the bureaucrats, journalists, writers, artists, businessmen, film directors. Thus, Maachis is a true legacy of yours; as it tries to makes us believe, however artistically, in an untruth, a falsehood, a deception. Once more dear Jawaharlal, I apologise for having taken so much of your time and I hope you didn’t mind my putting across so forcefully my point of view.

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12. INDIA: EVERYTHING THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE India is also the opposite of whatever it should be: so much appears to have gone wrong in this country, everything has been perverted. And if we had to name the horror that is India, we would say: the VIP culture; Delhi an arrogant, superficial and polluted city; tourism where the foreigner is a cow to be milked by the Government; there are also much more than one billion human beings in India, whatever the Official census says; and finally, India might be going towards an ecological pralaya and nobody in this country gives a damn, certainly not the NGOs who are too busy making money out of India’s poverty. VIP SECURITY AND KARMA (" or what the BJP manifesto forgot to say")

The other day, at the ceremony marking the unveiling of the BJP’s election manifesto, we journalists were searched and hassled like never before. Forget about bringing in our cell phones - we were not even allowed to take in our electronic organisers, tiny little machines, which could not even hide a miniaturised bomb! Today, no leader in the world, even the President of the United Sates, is as protected as Mr Vajpayee. France, which has got its fair share of Islamic fundamentalism - there has been numerous deadly attacks against its railways, shopping plazas, airlines even, has learnt to cope with security in an efficient and discreet manner. President Chirac, for instance, does not move around with an army of rude and brutish security men; and one still remembers how Francois Mitterrand, the previous President, used to go out at night to his favourite restaurant with only two bodyguards. Everything has already been said about the hassles that VIP security has created in India : the status symbol it has become for people like Mulayam Singh, who are not particularly targeted by terrorists; how 70% of the Indian police is tied-up by VIP protection, instead of attending to the problems of its common citizens; how we all suffer at the hands of VIP’s, waiting endlessly in our cars, as the Honourable Sonia Gandhi passes by, or in planes, as the PM’s aircraft is landing; or of being rudely treated by these arrogant and useless Blacks Cats, who all of them should be sent to guard Kargil in winter, so they get a taste of what real security is about. And what about the habit of Indian Prime Ministers and Presidents of chartering a full jumbo jet from Air India for their travels abroad? And when a technical snag occurs, the PM finds it quite normal to requisition another one on the spot, throwing into disarray hundreds of passengers, including many foreigners, as Air India’s 126

planes have a round the clock schedule. Cannot the Prime Minister have his own plane, even if it is more modest than a Jumbo jet? India after all is a poor country. Yet we find no mention of the VIP problem in the BJP manifesto, although many of their leaders, such as Mr Advani, had personally vouched before coming to power, that their party will address itself to this syndrome, which it inherited from the Congress. But what has never been said is this: the BJP, although it has, in its eagerness to prove itself "secular", muted this aspect, prides itself to be a party which has Hindu roots, not in the narrow religious sense, but in the large tolerant tradition of "santana dharma", which has shaped the lives and psyches of all Indians, regardless of their race or religion. Then has not the BJP leadership read the Bhagavad Gita, the supreme work of spiritual revelation in the whole history of our human planet, which says nearly everything that needs to be known on the mysteries of human life : why death, why life, why suffering? Don’t they remember the gist of what Krishna tells Arjuna : "the body is just an envelope and the soul never dies, but is born and reborn again to complete its works". Does not Mr Vajpayee know that if he is to die tomorrow at the hands of an assassin, then it will be his karma, that it has been written somewhere in the book of Destiny and that there is nothing that any security in the world, however sophisticated can do about it ? Remember how Ronald Reagan, the most protected man in the world was shot; or how the LTTE always manages to get the Sinhalese and Tamil leaders it targets, although the Sri Lankan, being trained by the Israelis, have one of the best security in Asia ? However a good and wise leader Mr Vajpayee is, he is an old man - and India being such a vast and ancient country, there will always be other "vibhoutis" to replace him if he is assassinated. So why fear death? Does India always have to ape the West, when it has such deep knowledge in itself of the reality beyond the reality, of the occult truth behind the appearances? Does not the BJP understand that if it would address itself seriously to the problems of VIP security and tone it down DRASTICALLY, including around the Prime Minister, it would acquire the party tremendous goodwill from the people and as many votes as wining the Kargil war ?

"DELHI : THE SODOM AND GOMORH OF INDIA ?"

Of all the four metropolitan cities, Delhi is the most ancient and soulful, where one can feel at every corner that seven cities lie buried below the actual Delhi. In old Delhi, one has the impression of stepping back into history: burly Sikhs with their colourful turbans, Rajasthani women, their arms covered with bangles, venerable mullahs and their long 127

flowing white beards, Maharashtrians with their Gandhi caps, New Delhi is also one of the most striking capitals, with its wide and tree-shaded avenues, its numerous gardens, which make it the greenest city in India and one of the most stunning perspectives of the world, rising from the Indian "Arc de Triomphe", to the President’s palace, behind which the suns sets majestically in winter. Unfortunately, Delhi is also a city of blood and tears and its history is steeped in treason, murder and genocide. Who remembers today that Nadir Shah attacked Delhi in 1739 and that for one whole week, his soldiers massacred everybody, ransacked everything and razed the entire countryside, so that the survivors would have nothing to eat? On top of that, Delhi is also a colonial legacy: it is a city which is totally decentralised compared to the rest of India and bureaucrats sitting in Delhi have often little idea of the feelings, of say, the people of Tamil Nadu - and hence, their decisions are frequently flawed. Most politicians, even if they start with a little bit of idealism, are quickly engulfed by the despicable VIP power trip of Delhi: the bullet-proof white Ambassadors, the palatial bungalows, the peons, the luxurious - but meaningless Lok Sabha - and they quickly forget that they were elected by the people and for the people. Foreign embassies must be held too responsible for what is happening to Delhi : diplomats posted in India often know precious little of what is happening in this country, locked up that they are in the luxury ghetto of Shanti Path and Vasant Vihar, where they only meet between themselves. Being too highly paid, they have grossly inflated the rents in Delhi and some of them must still be thinking that they are living in colonial India, witness the Swedish embassy, which has an unwritten policy of hiring only Christians for their Indian staff, because "they feel more comfortable with them" (their application forms even have a mention asking if you are catholic or protestant). Is it the only embassy doing so? It is for Indian journalists to investigate. And even those embassies which also hire Hindus, grossly underpay them: 18.000 Rs is the average for a qualified full-time working Indian, whereas his ferengi colleague gets ten times this amount. Foreign correspondents often arrive here with prejudices and set ideas. And in Delhi, they also tend to gravitate in the embassy- journalist cocktail circuit, hearing the same old clichés about "secularism", "Hindu fundamentalism" etc. It would be wonderful if they could be enlightened by Indian journalists - unfortunately it is not always so : Indian journalism, in spite of a tremendous change in popular opinion, is still partly in the grip of the old nehruvian spirit. All this contributes to make of Delhi an arrogant and superficial city, where stress is so palpable, that you can feel it oozing in you the moment you get out of the plane. And it is 128

worsening day by day : unsmiling drivers are becoming more and more aggressive, horning with impatience; and Delhi youth shows a tendency to become totally westernised, flashing the symbols of India’s "nouveaux riches" - cell phones, Hyundai cars , and Gucci shoes - and they have absolutely no idea about their roots and the greatness of their own civilisation . Will Delhi become then the "Sodom and Gomorrah" of India, this ancient biblical city which was engulfed by fire, when its inhabitants turned their back on their dharma ? And indeed, in a case of a nuclear war with Pakistan or China, Delhi will be the first hit! Wake-up then Ô Delhi, remember thy bloody past, and mend thy ways ! Thus, the motto of the Government should be to decentralise at all costs, as everything is decided in Delhi and it has triggered separatism and regional angers. This decentralisation will also help alleviate the pollution of Delhi which is slowly killing both humans and nature. Foreign correspondents should be sent out of the capital: the real genius of India lies in its countryside, where people smile and still know the value of patience. TOURISM IN INDIA AS SEEN BY A FOREIGN JOURNALIST

Recent statistics show that India received only 1,2 million tourists since January, a drop of 40% compared to last year. Compare this to the 3,5 millions tourists who flocked to China during the same period ! The Indian Government is pointing a finger at the American sanctions imposed after India’s nuclear tests, but the reality is quite different. Take flying. I have often to shuttle between Madras and Delhi. A return ticket by Indian Airlines between these two cities costs more than 15500 Rs. But for that price, I can fly from Paris to New York, which is double the distance. Indian Airlines runs only two flights a day between New Delhi, the capital of a one billion nation, and Madras, five millions souls, the gateway to the South; and even these two flights are not always full (did you know that only 10% of Indian Airlines passengers actually pay their fare - the rest are bureaucrats, or executives of state and private companies; thus most of the money goes from the government to the government!). The French have one flight every half an hour between Paris, the capital, and Nice, their gateway to the South; and they are always full, because all kinds of incentives are offered: return fares, discounts on weekends, off-season fares.. Try to tell Indian Airlines that they should offer you a discount because you’re buying a return ticket and they’ll probably give you a dirty look!

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The funniest is that there is sometimes a 15 days waiting list to travel by train from Madras to Delhi (or the other way) in IInd class A/C sleeper, which costs Rs 3000 and takes 36 hours - that is when the train is not a few hours late, or is not hit from behind by another train, as it happened to me and my wife a few years ago. If Indian Airlines had the intelligence to offer their Chennai/Delhi tickets at 4000 Rs, people will gladly shell out another 1000 bucks, just to avoid the 36 hours business. And IA could easily fill up six Airbus 300 a day and make a handsome profit, instead of hiking-up the prices four times in five years. It is thus very sad that different governments, including the present one, have sabotaged the Tata proposal for a private airline, which would have given real competition to Indian Airlines which is the most staffed airline in the world (and Jet Airways, who are too glad to align their prices on them). After all, didn’t the Government steal Air India from the Tatas and turn a proud carrier into the laughing stock of the aeronautic world (like when Gujral had two 747s on hold, but cancelled nevertheless his meeting with the French President in Paris, because he was too busy trying to topple the BJP government in U.P with the infamous Bhandari...) . Take hotels. When Jacques Chirac, the French President came to visit India in January, he stayed at the Taj Bombay and we French journalists had to tag along. The price of a room in the new wing was more than 300 $, that is nearly 13.000 rupees. The room was nothing extraordinary to speak off, except the view of India Gate; but the sea there has become so dirty, with all kind of plastics floating around and there are hawkers galore, snakes charmer and other con-men, waiting to pounce on the poor tourist as soon as he dares step out of the hotel. The food at the Taj and other 5 Star Hotels can’t even compare with a one star restaurant in a minor French town. Yet the Taj (or the Oberoi) people make you feel as if they are doing you a favour by letting you stay with them. But for the same price one can stay in a much better hotel in Paris, or in Madrid, which will boast better cuisine and service. Take visas. In Sri Lanka, all foreigners are automatically handed a one month visa upon their landing at the airport, but not in India. One has to apply to sour faced, underpaid staffers at Indian embassies abroad - and forget about five year visas, even if you have been visiting India for 35 years, like Roger Anger, the famous French architect, who designed the international city of Auroville near Pondichery, and was recently refused one. Renewing your tourist visa, can also be a nightmare, although I have a friend of mine who recently bought it to an ‘ agent ’ in Nepal for 10.000 rupees and even got a genuine embassy receipt for it, which means that there must be some heavy racket going at the embassy. 130

Take banks. 30 years ago, it took half an hour to change 100 $ in the Pondichery State Bank of India. Today they may have computers, but it still takes half an hour! Being a resident of India and married to an Indian, I have an Indian Grindlays Credit Card, on top of my American Express and Visa international cards, as the Indian Government has a policy of milking tourists, instead of catering to their needs: one rate for Indians in rupees at hotels, or for paying air and railway tickets, one rate for foreigners in dollars, which needless to say is 40% more expensive. To cut a long story short, Grindlays, which charges outrageous interest rates for this card and debits you a 100 rupees for clearing cheques (yes you have read well : one hundred rupees !), cancelled my credit because I was six days late in paying my monthly instalment. My card was thus refused by Indian Airlines when I tried to pay my ticket from Bangalore to Chennai and I had to use my Visa card, which meant 40% extra! I am thinking to go to a Consumer’s Court... Take the Indian Tourism Department. When I was in Paris some time ago, I met the Director of Tourism there, a nice and courteous man. However he told that he spent most of his time showing Paris to Indian Ministers and their wives and that he had practically no budget to invite French journalists to India. And when journalists are actually invited by the Indian Government, it is usually the wrong ones, who instead of reporting on the positive aspects of this country, often dwell on its negative and more sensational side, such as Calcutta, poverty, Mother Teresa, etc., or on the ‘fanatic’ Hindus (like Christophe Jaffrelot, who just wrote ‘ the BJP and the compulsion of politics in India ’) because that is what foreigners want to hear. A few months ago I was thrown out of his office by the Gentleman who happens to be India’s Director of Tourism, because I dared to tell him exactly that. However, it may very well be that all these politicians who are stalling privatising of India’s airlines, these obscure bureaucrats who make absurd visas rules, the arrogant hoteliers, and bankers who are inflating prices, are all doing a great service to India. Because, tourism kills the soul of a country. We have seen it in Sri Lanka, in Thailand, or in Nepal. India is a vast country, thank God; and it lives for itself, within itself - Its festivals, its dances, its ways of life are not (yet) custom-tailored to please the ignorant and arrogant tourist.. As for myself, I am quite ready to suffer for the rest of my life at the hands of Indian Airlines, if it helps India keeps its soul which makes it such a unique country in the world.

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ONE BILLION INDIANS?

Officially India’s population crossed the one billion mark last week. It may be remembered that some UN agency had unilaterally declared that this landmark was reached last August. Of course, they made it very conveniently coincide with the 15th August. The story was fist taken-up by the New York Times - and of course the whole of the foreign correspondents’ corps, which is afflicted by what the French call "mouton, de Panurge" instinct - which means that the whole herd follows the herd leader; even if it jumps from the cliff - followed suit. And all the major European newspapers, including France’s Figaro (I was holidaying in Almora to the displeasure of my editor) Le Monde, and Libéraion did full page stories on how "India already poor and afflicted with debilitating problems (corruption, the ubiquitous caste system French love to talk about etc) had even more mouths to feed. The usual negative, superior-minded and condescending talk about India which sells so well abroad. I have read most of the stories published at that time. And I have read most of the stories published last week in Indian newspapers. All the reasons of why India’s population, have been paraded: the failure of India’s successive family programmes, the corruption and inertia of the bureaucracy, the backwardness of its people, the underprivileged condition of women in India (although Indian women must be amongst the most intelligent and resourceful in the world and had under ancient Hinduism unparalleled freedom) etc. But nobody and I repeat nobody bothered to mention that one of the reasons that India crossed so quickly the billion mark is that there is according to officially - but secret records compiled by governments which were non BJP, at least eighteen million (1,8 crore) Bangladeshis, most of them illegal but many of them having acquired fraudulent papers through fraudulent means - and even sometimes with the connivance of the local administration like in West Bengal where the communist government wants at all cost to protect his secularness. Did you know for instance that India shares 4096 kms of border with Bangladesh, this nation, which has no natural resources except jute, born out of the madness of partition ? I is an impossible border to guard: it cost one crore per km to guard (metalled roads so that patrols can quickly survey, barbed wire, miradors etc). There are 41 battalions of BSF, precious manpower, which is tied down along the Bangladeshi border. The famous fencing project has only manages to fence 788 kms out of 4000 and 1500 crores are spent every year on guarding the Bangladesh border. That Bangladeshi infiltrators come-up upto Bombay ort even Delhi where they form important communities which have voting power, 132

hence their wooing by politicians and the silence that different governments (even, the BJP, apart from the courageous Assam Governor, who was immediately branded a nationalist by the Press). And of course, even though the BSF managed to catch 60.000 illegal Bangladeshis last year very few Bangladeshis are ever sent back, as officially the Bangladesh government, which encourages it says that there is no illegal immigration to India. Is it over? Not at all Bangladesh may lose 20% of its land in the few years because of erosion and constant flooding. And where will these people which have no country go it may be asked? It would be nice to say that the process is reversing and that Hindus in Bangladesh are prospering . But it is the reverse which has happened: there were 28% Hindus in Bangladesh in 1941, 10.5 in 91 and less than 9% today, pogroms ,burning of temples after Ayodhya (see Taslima Nasreen’s book Lalja) have all ensured that Hindus flee Bangladesh. What is the solution to the illegal immigration of Bangladesh ? Or is true that it is not done in a bad will: most of these immigrants come to India in search of better salaries and conditions of life. It has been a process throughout history. Ultimately the Indian and Bangladeshi Government (which owes its freedom to India it often forgets) should reflect on the stupidity of partition. If there is cooperation between Bangladesh and India’s quotas for work permits can be issued with identity cars and proper census so as to control at least in some measures illegal immigration. There is another factor which has been kept under silence by the Press, both western and Indian: most of Hindus - even the poorest in today’s remote Tamil villages, which I know well - have understood that it is better to have children. Many women have operation after three or four children. The Christians of course, have been the first to embrace family planning in India, because they are amongst the best- educated, even though the Pope and Mother Teresa are so against abortion and family planning, in a country which cannot even feed probably a third of its population. The same thing cannot be said about Muslims of India, the great majority of which are poor. The Coran not only recommends having many children but it makes it a colonising policy so that eventually Muslims come to outnumber the original inhabitants. Thus muslims of village in Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, have six or seven children. Ofcourse if you dare say that in India or abroad, you are immediately accused of being anti-muslim or a hindu lover. But let me be clear: the refinement and hospitality of many Muslims in India is often unparalleled. The problem is not with the muslims as human beings, the problem is with their Scripture which was devised 1400 years ago for constituents and people which did not apply anymore and has never been revised and adapted for modern times. 133

So next time someone tells you that India’s population has reached the billion mark tell them: no there are 982 Indians and 18 million illegal Bangladeshis.

INDIA: AN ECOLOGICAL PRALAYA ?

We can understand that during the just collapsed WTO negotiations in Seattle, India wanted to delink child labour from trade issues. Because, although the West is right in pointing out that there is indeed a terrible exploitation of child labour India, by people who make shameful money out of them: beedie factories owners, carpet makers, cracker factories etc., at the same time, child labour is a reality of India, which cannot be wished away, as many poor families depend on the earnings of their children to survive. And it is anyway not for the West, which is itself disgracefully exploiting cheap labour in Third World countries, to give lessons to India. On the other hand, one is a little surprised to hear India’s Commerce protest against the West’s insistence to link trade with environmental safeguards and norms. It would be all right for the honourable Minister to ride on the high horse of offended honor if India’s ecology was in a good state. But the simple truth is that it is near the point of no return and no government, be it the Congress or the BJP, has ever given a hoot about India’s environment, except to pay some lip service. We have since seen for instance how the BJP made a political appointment out of the Ministry of Environment, showing how low India’s ecology is on its agenda. But did they think for a moment that the Ministry of Environment may be as important as the Defense Ministry, because two nuclear bombs dropped by Pakistan on India will not do as much harm as India as fifty years of greedy saw-mill owners in league with corrupt politicians and forest officers have done to India’s environment? Does the Commerce Minister Minister (who is otherwise very competent in his own field) know that by the middle of next century there will be no more forests cover left in India? That its population will have long crossed the billion mark and will overflow everywhere, stifling any progress, annihilating all efforts? That India's cities will be so polluted by their millions of cars that it will be impossible to breathe anymore? That India's rivers will be so poisoned by industries, that all living life will long have disappeared from it (and that there will be no drinking water left, except imported mineral water)? And that India will be littered with so much plastic (bags, bottles, buckets, etc.), that it will be materially impossible to ever get rid of them (indeed the land of Bharat should be renamed ‘ the civilisation of plastic ‘...) This is 21st century India for you. 134

Many experts have already pointed out that hardly 11% of India's classified forests have adequate density. In 1950, 1/3 of India's area was still forested; each year India loses through deforesting a territory bigger than France, which is nearly two million hectares. And of these, only 3% is protected... And even that 3% is in deep distress, because of population pressure, big dams (like the Narmada), and industries. The main culprits of the deforestation are the contractors, the ones with big money, particularly the saw mill owners and the Forest Department although it claims that it does selective tree felling, has absolutely no understanding of ecological balance. But without doubt, the greatest culprits of the massive deforestation, the dwindling of animal life, the thinning of underwater tables and the increasing desertification of India, are the politicians, in connivance with the contractors, who in turn bribe the forest officers, witness how Veerapan was able to plunder the forests of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka for ten years. The Konkan railway, the Narmada Dam, or the increase of the prawn farms, are all examples of these criminal wrongdoing. And unfortunately, bear for Maneka Gandhi, who was the only serious Environment Minister India ever had, there have never been as many harmful projects to ecology as lately. Fortunately, there is a growing ecological awareness in India, and movements led by Medha Patkar, Shri Baghuna, or the lawyer Mehta, who are doing wonderful work. But they often stand alone, because as long as the people of India will not be educated, their work is doom. But ultimately, is it fair to blame only the politicians, or even the British, who started the massive deforestation for their railways and killed hundreds of thousands of tigers? Is there not something else in the Indian psyche that is to blame? Where is the root of this massive unconcern for one's environment; this total disregard for beauty, whether it is the terrible ugliness of the cities in Punjab, or the appalling filthiness in Tamil Nadu?... And, maybe, for once, the Hindus are to blame. The Ganges seems to be the perfect illustration of a religion which enjoins a thousand purification rites and yet has allowed her own Mother earth to be defiled. Here is a river that Hindus have held most sacred for centuries, nay millenniums; to bathe in it is to purify oneself of all bad karma; to die here is to be reborn in Light. Yet what do all Hindus do with their sacred Ganges? They defecate in it; they throw in all their refuse; they let their dead float down the mighty river, AS IF THEY THOUGHT THAT THE SPIRITUAL PURITY OF THE WATER CAN NEVER BE OBLITERATED BY MATERIAL DIRTINESS. But ask any scientist what is the degree of pollution in the Ganges 135

today and he will also tell you that it is near the point of return. What will happen to India if it loses the Ganges, which is its very soul? So, Mr. Minister, for once, use the West, let them have their own way, however hypocrite and moralistic it is. Use them for the good of India, so that a little bit of ecological concern is drilled in this country, which allows its very body to go, wasted. Because we have already seen how India has been forced to adopt certain environmental measures just out of greed, when European countries refused for instance to accept any textile export which was not azo free, or leather which was not chemically poisoned. The West has grown an ecological consciousness and knowledge which India totally lacks and we should learn from them. THE BIG SCAM OF NGOS

You think that the most corrupt organizations in India belong to the Government? But you may be wrong, because some of the biggest scammers in this country could be the Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGOs, and it is all done in the name of the poor of India. In the old times, the leaders of NGOs used to be working in the field, dressed simply, lived in humble dwellings, and had minimal salaries, sufficient for their most essential needs. But nowadays, the new breed of NGOs you meet in Delhi, or Bombay, is smartly dressed in jeans, he or she usually comes from India’s upper elite class, carry the latest laptop and often travel around in a/c cars. These NGOs spend half of their time abroad, in London, Paris, or New York, doing smart presentations, with mesmerizing slides and Excel spread sheets, in front of gullible westerners, always ready to shed a tear for the poor "downtrodden Indians", so as to convince them to grant more funds. And what is usually all about? 70% of the time "woman empowerment" or "uplifting" the villagers. It is nowadays fashionable in India to always highlight the downtrodden condition of Indian women and their underprivileged place in Indian society. But no country in the world has granted such an important place to women in its spirituality and social ethos. And even today, behind all appearances - arranged marriages, submission to men, preference of male children in some rural areas (but girls are loved in India like nowhere in the world) - it can be safely said that very often, from the poorest to the richest classes, women control ‘even if behind the scenes’ a lot of the family affairs: the education of their 136

children (men in India are often "mama’s boys"), monetary concerns, and husbands often refer to them for important decisions. Countries such as France or the United States, who are often preaching India on "women’s rights" never had a woman as their top leader, whereas India had Indira Gandhi ruling with an iron hand for nearly twenty years; and proportionately they have less MPs than India, which is considering earmarking 33% of seats in Parliament for women, a revolution in human history! But this obsession of NGOs with women and village empowerment (usually they take one village and make it like a showcase, for the benefit of visiting donors from abroad) has completely eclipsed the burning issue that would require NGOs attention with the tremendous amount of funds they attract from abroad: afforestation, as there are hardly any forest worth the name left today in India. Take the Himalayas for instance, and a region like the lovely Kumaon hills. Less than forty years ago, people in Almora, and the ancient capital of the Kumaons, still remember the beautiful blue cedars forests. Today, there are no forests left around Almora - they were cut down in the early 70s by contractors from the plains with the full knowledge of the Government - except commercial pine forests, which impoverish the soil and do not hold it properly. Yet, there is terrible shortage of water in Almora, the climate has warmed-up considerably in the last twenty years and wood is fearfully expensive. There are literally hundreds of NGOs in the Kumaon hills, who are doing lots of women empowerment, lots of village uplifting, lots of weaving this and weaving that but absolutely no tree planting. Why? "Because the others do not do it", is the usual answer, when you ask some of the NGOs or :"because it is too hard work". But the beauty of the Kumaon hills around Almora is fast going: more and more hotels are coming up, cutting more trees, like near the Kassar Devi temple, above Almora, where Vivekananda is supposed to have meditated and which has been bought to make into a resort by a nonresident Muslim who is suspected to have links with Ibrahim Dawood. Most of the big NGOs are funded by Western countries; but what is not always known is that they often get the bulk of their budgets from big Christian organizations, such as Christian Aid, or Oxfam. There is no doubt that Christians are doing selfless work in India and that they still provide the best in health care and education (work which Hindus should do themselves). But it may so happen more in the case of American Protestants than European Catholics, who are more tolerant - that there is a slight catch, a string attached to the money donated, not only because there is always that western obsession with "woman empowerment" and the "exploited" low caste Indian (by the Brahmins, of course), but 137

often also, these charitable organizations have a downright bias against Hindus and even towards the BJP! Some of them even had posters advising people not to vote for the BJP in the last elections. Can you imagine an Indian NGO asking Indians settled in France not to vote for some pro-catholic party? They would be immediately kicked out! This is not to say that there are no selfless NGOs who are not fattening themselves on money meant for the poor. Some of them do bring drinking water to remote villages in the Himalayas, or like the Young India Group, teach villagers to stand for their own rights. But there has to be a shift away from empowerment, to fight the real burning issues which are affecting India such as afforestation and water collection (there is no Government policy for collecting the tremendous amounts of water India gets from monsoons, which would save millions of gallons of precious ground water which is fast depleting). And the Government, while leaving to NGOs the freedom of expression they already have, should make it mandatory that they have a certain percentage of their activities dedicated to these two areas.

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13. THE HIDDEN TREASURES If only India knew the treasure trove hidden in her midst! There is a knowledge here, which has been lost to the world; there is a spiritual fervour in this country, which is found nowhere in this degree on this planet; there is a diversity of cultural and social expression in India, which is unique in an increasingly unipolar world. We have chosen four stories to illustrate this point: pranayama the science of breathing; the astounding festival of Ayappa; kalaripayat, the ancestor of all great Asian martial arts; and the jallikatu festival in Madurai. Enjoy! THE WONDERS OF PRANAYAMA

The West is fast discovering the wonders of pranayama, the ancient art of breathing, which was devised in India more than 3000 years ago. "Our first act upon coming in this world is to breathe in, while emitting a cry and our last, is to breathe out, upon expiring. But in between, we completely forget to breathe", exclaims Rajshree Patel , an Indian woman teaching pranayama in the United States ! And it is true: not only do we all neglect breathing during our whole life - whereas it is the very basis of our existence - but have you never noticed how, we when are angry, our breath becomes so laboured; and how, we are in sorrow, or nervous about something, we hardly breathe at all? No wonder many of us end-up with heart attacks or with blood pressure problems! "Pranayama is such a simple and straightforward everyday practice - and you will derive so many benefits out of it", says Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a great Master of pranayama. Rajshree Patel couldn’t agree more! "These daily twenty minutes are so very precious, because they are going to set the pace for the day and give you the right rhythm which will carry you through all problems, tiredness and hassles for the next 24 hours". Pranayama is probably the best suited Indian yogic discipline for the West, because it is so down to earth, so scientific - there are no miracles, no levitation, no smoky mysticism and everything can be explained in a rational way. Pranayama, in Sanskrit, means breath - and in India, it is known that prana circulates in the whole body and that one breathes not only through the nose and mouth, of course, but through ANY part of the body, making thus prana flow everywhere. Thus, according to yogis, prana can revitalise all these parts of our body which do not receive enough energy and which, as a consequence, become weak and lose their vitality, like the eyes for 139

instance. "Pranayama is everywhere, explains Rajshree Patel : in the air which surrounds us, of course, but also in animals, in Nature, in the mineral world even". It is also found in food: "today, says Rajsree, one speaks of vitamins, proteins, calories - but one does not understand that it is actually the prana in the food which gives us energy; and the quality of this prana depends on the sort of food we are partaking". The first exercise of pranayama consists in observing your breath, in noticing, for instance, how it is fresh when it penetrates your nostrils and warmer when it comes out. Later, you might be able to feel how it does a U turn between your eyebrows before redescending towards the throat. And you will soon realise that when you are with your respiration, you simply ARE: neither in the past, nor in the future, but in the present moment - which is so precious - with your 100% concentration and abilities. The effects of pranayama have been studied for thousands of years and Indian teachers know exactly what results will this type of exercise have on you and what kind of routine you should do to improve that particular problem, or develop this certain faculty in you. But recently, modern science has also decided to apply its knowledge to pranayama. The National Institute of Neuroscience in Bangalore, one of the most reputed in Asia, has studied for the first time in the world, under the care of Professors Meti and Raju, assisted by the Chief of the psychiatric Service, Dr Venkatesha Murthy, and the effects of pranayama on 80 patients suffering from various psychological problems: depressions, anorexia, insomnia, obesity, alcoholism... To do so, half of the patients continued to receive a normal treatment: electroshocks, sedation, psychiatric help, while the other half was only made to practise pranayama two hours a day for three months. By using the P300 method (Positive Electrical Wave), to measure the reactions of the brain, through electrodes placed on different parts of the body (vertex of the skull, left lobe of the ear), the doctors were able to study in nano-volts, thirty milliseconds after the stimulation, the auditory and somatic reactions of the patients. They quickly noticed that the latent periods - that is the delay between the stimulus and the response of the subject - decrease considerably after the pranayama exercises and one also notes a slowing down of the breathing and the cardiac rhythm. After three months, the 40 patients having only practised pranayama, showed so much improvement that they were allowed to go home, while the forty others stayed on behind in the hospital. Last year Professor Metti and his team have shown the results of their experiments to an astonished World Meet of Psychiatry. 140

That indeed, is very scientific; but what about this: Indians believe, that thanks to pranayama, their yogis are not only capable of mastering their emotions, but also to have control over their body functions. Thus, if you go high in the Himalayas, you can see in winter numerous sadhus (wandering monks) who are bathing in icy torrents - and certain yogis are even supposed to be able to slow down their breathing to such a tiny thread, that one can think that they are dead ! In Europe, the film ‘ the Great Blue ’, has shown how pranayama can be used by sportsmen and sportswomen : remember how the hero does a series of breathing. Exercises known in India as Viloma , to store as much air as possible in his lungs, before breaking a world record in underwater diving without oxygen. And today, more and more sportsmen in the West are using pranayama to improve their performances. Not only are they thus able to considerably increase their lung capacity, says an Indian Master, but they can also free their mind of all tension and find the proper inner calmness to really achieve their best". And finally, did you know that quite a few American companies have included exercises of pranayama in the peps sessions of their executives?

AYYAPPA

It's in the Western Ghats of Kerala. As the night falls and you start driving up the mountain, you come upon thousands of cars, vans and buses, carefully parked on both sides of the road. Long queues of men dressed in black and blue are walking bare-feet, staff in hand, chanting something you cannot yet catch. And when you reach the top, there are a lakh of people milling around, looking up to the top of the mountain as if already in ecstasy - and all singing, over and again, the same words: "Om Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa." You thought that the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad with its five lakh people was a record, but you're wrong there: the Lord Ayyappa festival in Sabarimalai attracts 15 million people in a month and a half; and on the last three days, which are the most important and auspicious, there are around 800,000 devotees praying on the sacred mountain. The first thing that strikes you when you pass the Sabarimalai village is a board which says: "Women between ten and 50 years are strictly forbidden beyond this point." The truth is that Ayyappa disciples have to endure a 41-day tapasya before they can start on their pilgrimage; apart from fasting, eating only vegetarian food and abstinence from alcohol and smoking, strict refraining from any sexual relations, in deed or in thought, is 141

also enjoined. Hence, the black dress to warn women to stay away and the forbiddance of their presence on the mountain, although modem day feminists might disagree. Below, in the beautiful flowing river, thousands of men are bathing in the golden light of the early morning, purifying them of the sweat of the journey and shedding the last remnants of their worldly life. Then, after a preliminary puja in a temple at the foot of the sacred path, it is up the mountain, towards the 1,000-year-old abode of Lord Ayyappa. And thousands and thousands, all looking alike under the centenarian pine trees, climb towards God, carrying a small mysterious bundle carried on the head and chanting endlessly the sacred mantra: "Om Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa." Who is this Ayyappa who whips up so much fervour and devotion from these souls? The legend says that Manikanta, son of Shiva and a feminine form of Vishnu, was begotten to rid the earth of Asurin (female demon) Mahishi. He was found near a river by King Rajashekara and adopted by the royal couple. When Manikanta became adult, the queen, made jealous by her minister that her other natural son would not get the throne, sent him to the forest to get tiger's milk to cure a rare disease, thinking he would never come back alive. Manikanta went into the forest with his father's blessings, who to sustain him during his arduous journey, gave him a small bundle which contained a coconut, filled with ghee and rice (hence the bundle carried on the heads of all true Ayyappas). In the forest, he slew Mahishi and came back with an army of tigers. Seeing this, the queen and king understood his divinity, and fell on their knees, imploring him to take over the kingdom. But Manikanta, taking an arrow, shot it in the air: it fell on the sacred spot near Sabarimalai, which he chose as his abode and where his father is said to have constructed the ancestor of present day temple. Saying goodbye to all, he promised that every year he would appear to them as light (jyoti) and vanished into the mountains to become forever Lord Ayyappa. At last, the faithful arrive at the foot of the sacred 18 steps made of five different precious metals, which lead to the holy abode. After symbolically breaking their coconuts, they climb the stairs, rapture written on their face. And there, on top of the mountain, it's an incredible show: men ecstatic with joy, rolling themselves on the ground, or else dancing and throwing yellow and red powder on themselves, amidst the banging of the gongs, and the smoke of a million coconuts burning in a huge bonfire. Finally, on the last day of the pilgrimage comes the jyoti: as Manikanta had promised his father, the king, every year, on the same day, January 14, at the same hour, between 6.30 and 6.45 p.m., two white eagles 142

circle around the temple a few times, and then a light, like a fire, appears for two or three seconds on the mountain facing the abode. Then 500,000 throats shout the magic mantra: "Om Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa", making the whole mountain vibrate and shaking the soul of all men present. Numerous are those who have tried to discover the source and reason for the light: is it a trick or an illusion? Nobody ever found out. Then, as the men leave, the mountain is rendered unto peace and the wild animals. But in the dark forests, amidst the chanting of birds and the roaring of tigers, where the soul of Manikanta roams, one can still hear, as if whispered by the wind, the enchanting words: "Om Swamiye Saranam Ayyappa."

KALARIPAYAT

IN 522 A.D., an Indian Buddhist monk named Boddidharma, son of the king of Kancheepuram in Tamil Nadu, arrived at the court of the Chinese Emperor Liang Nuti, of the 6th dynasty. The Emperor granted him an audience and gave him travel documents to walk to the Kingdom of Wei (now Honan province), at the foot of the Han Shan-mountains, to a Buddhist monastery called the temple of Shaolin. Father and founder of Zen Buddhism (called C'han in China), Bodhidharma taught the Chinese monks Kalaripayat, a very ancient Indian martial art, so that they could defend themselves against the frequent attacks of bandits. In time, the monks became famous all over China as experts in bare-handed fighting, later known as the Shaolin boxing art. The Shaolin temple which has been handed back a few years ago by the communist Government to the C'han Buddhist monks, inheritors of Boddidharma's spiritual and martial teachings, by the present Chinese Government, is now opened to visitors. On one of its walls, a fresco can be seen, showing Indian dark-skinned monks, teaching their lighterskinned Chinese brothers the art of bare-handed fighting. On this painting are inscribed: "Tenjiku Naranokaku", which means: "the fighting techniques to train the body (which come) from India" ... Shaolin boxing and Chan Buddhism travelled from China to Japan, through the Ryukyu islands, landing in Okinawa to blossom in the art of the empty hand, or later Karate and then spread into the Japanese mainland as jiu-jiu-tsu, judo, Shorinji Kempo, etc. Listen to one of the greatest contemporary Masters of Karate, Master Masatoshi Nakayama, Director of the Japanese Karate Association, in the introduction to his book, "A Dynamic Karate": "When the Bodhidharma came to the Shaolin Temple, he taught the monks 143

physical and fighting methods to be able to bear the hard monastic life which he imposed on them. These methods became known as the Shaolin art and were later imported to Okinawa and blended to the local fighting techniques..."landing in Okinawa, where Kalaripayat blended with local fighting techniques and became the art of the "Empty Hand" or Karate. Kalaripayat, literally "the way of the battlefield, still survives in Kerala, where it is often dedicated to Mahakali. The Kalari grounds are usually situated near a temple, and the pupils, after having touched the feet of the master, saluted the ancestors and bowed down to the Goddess, begin the lesson. Kalari trainings have been codified for over 3000 years and nothing much has changed. The warming-up is essential and demands great suppleness. Each movement is repeated several times, facing north, east, south and west, till perfect loosening is achieved. The young pupils pass on to the handling of weapons, starting with the "Silambam", a short stick made of extremely hard wood, which in the olden times could effectively deal with swords. The blows are hard and the parade must be fast and precise, to avoid being hit on the fingers! They continue with the swords, heavy and dangerous, even though they are not sharpened any more, as they are used without guard or any kind of body protection; they whirl, jump and parry, in an impressive ballet. Young, fearless girls fight with enormous knives, bigger than their arms and the clash of irons is echoed in the ground. The session ends with the big canes, favourite weapons of the Buddhist traveller monks, which they used during their long journey towards China to scare away attackers. Kerala closed-up on the sea by the Deccan plateau, was essentially a land of forests and jungles. The fathers of Kalaripayat carefully watched the wild animals which peopled the forests. Thus they had the idea to fashion a piece of hard wood in the shape of an elephant tusk. The "Otta" is the most difficult Kalari weapon to handle, for one should not only know his opponent's weak body points to probe and poke at, but the parades are also extremely difficult, the Otta being only 40 cm long. There are not many horses in Kerala and the infantry men of ancient Kerala, worried about their safety, had devised a unique way of blending spear fighting and closed arm combat making them redoubtable warriors. The "Urimi" is the most extraordinary weapon of Kalari, unique in the world. This double-edged flexible sword which the old times masters use to wrap around the waist or keep coiled in one hand, to suddenly whip at the opponent and inflict mortal blows, is hardly used today in trainings, for it is much too dangerous. Only the Masters permit themselves a few sessions, for their own pleasure. Their preliminary movements look like a 144

ritualistic and powerful dance, agile and supple. The mock fights which follow are like a challenge to gravity and balance and the blood of hundreds of generations of warriors seem to course in their veins. When Boddidharma introduced Kalaripayat in China at the temple of Shaolin, he brought with him two essential things which would revolutionise forever the martial arts of Asia: "Wu-Te" or the notion of martial virtue, unknown to the Chinese and Japanese of that time, and "Marama Adi", the bare-handed combat techniques from Kerala. Nearly 3000 years ago, the first Masters of Kalari discovered 108 vital points of the body. 96 of them considered as minors, which cause when struck, violent pain or temporary paralysis and 12 leading to death. These vital points were later transcribed and catalogued on palm leaves and transmitted down from generation to generation. These writings are called "Marama Sutras" and describe in detail, the exact location of each point, the symptoms incurred by each blow and the reviving techniques needed to bring back an opponent to life. The few initiated who still practice these techniques, are also experts in "Suvasus", the combined science of all movements' of bare-handed fighting: locks, strangulations, kicks. The Katas of Karate bear a strong likeness to the "Suvasus" of Kalaripayat. The most difficult Kata to execute is called "Suparimpei", which in spoken language, is the reading of the Chinese characters meaning hundred an eight ! The 108 desires and human passions as defined by Boddidharma, the 108 vital points of the body of Kerala's Marama Finally, Marama Adi is also a medical science, using the knowledge of the 108 vital points of the body, to cure and relieve. Some historians think that it is at the origin of Chinese acupuncture, which appeared much later Unfortunately, as usual, India ignores the greatness hidden in her own bosom: Kalari is restricted to Kerala alone, it is mostly practised in villages and gets practically no help from the Indian Government. It is also ironic that an art which has influenced so many other martial arts of the world, is slowly being taken over by karate or kung-fu ! However, the world is beginning to take an interest in Kalari: the Japanese are coming more and more to India to study first-hand the ancestor of their martial arts, the BBC recently made a documentary film on Kalari and there have been a few books published abroad. Will that be enough to save Kalaripayat?

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JALLIKATTU

The winter monsoon in Tamil Nadu has been kind: green are the fields in the countryside near the ancient city of Madurai; and the rice fields ripple gently in the early dawn. The harvest is over: it too, has been good and bountiful. Now is the time for rejoicing, time for Pongal, the most popular of all South Indian religious festivals. The gratitude of the people goes first to this wonderful animal, the prime asset of all true south Indian farmers: the bull, Nandi, which has been revered and worshipped in India from Vedic times. In the early morning, the stately beasts are brought to the rivers, bathed and scrubbed. Their horns are painted in joyful hues; they are garlanded with jasmine and marigold and finally led to the temple where a priest performs a puja. Then the ritual cooking takes place in the temple courtyard or in an open field: in huge brass pots, as in ancient times, rice is boiled along with milk, ghee and jaggery; and when it spills over, a sign of prosperity, it has made into a delicious sweet, which, you may have guessed, is called Pongal.... Later in the morning, folk dances, which date back from centuries of Dravidian culture, are performed by both men and women in colourful costumes. On the fourth day of Pongal, in the late afternoon, the main event of the festival takes place: Jallikattu. Jallikattu is an ancient, traditional rural sport having to do with bulls. It is believed to be more than two thousand years old and is referred to several times in Sangam literature. This "bullfight" bears many resemblances to the one practised in Spain: it is considered a sport of valour, in which men pit their reflexes and skill against the bull's brute strength; some of the animals are specially prepared for that event; and the winners get a prize. But the similarity stops there, because in India the bull does not die and men, though they do sometimes get hurt, rarely get killed. Jallikattu literally means "the tying of the coin"; for in ancient times, a gold coin wrapped in a piece of cloth was fastened with coconut fibre around the horns of the bull. Tacklers hung to the hump of the bull with one hand and untied the knot to get at the prize with the other hand. And today, though the name Jallikattu still persists, no coins are tied anymore, but as a token, a piece of symbolic cloth is fastened around the horn. Every year, thousands of people coming from all over the Madurai district converge on the small village of Alaganur, dressed in their best. The main road of the village is sealed, with all side lanes 146

barricaded with the wheels of dismantled carts, so that the bulls are forced to have a straight run from one extremity to the other. Bamboo structures are erected on each side and are already so packed with people that some of them will later collapse. And suddenly, the crowd is everywhere; on trees, lamp-posts, or roofs. The air has a golden hue tainted with dust. Below, men are jolly with toddy and some of them stage mock fights with their lathis. The tacklers position themselves on each side of the mud walls and suddenly a small bull, terrified, eyes wide open in astonishment at seeing so many people, shoots through the crowd aiming for freedom, on the other side of the village. Braggarts slap him, pull his tail and a dozen men overpower the poor beast. The next one though, has a respectable size: and magically a passage opens for it amidst the thick crowd. It has courage and anger too, as a proper bull should have: at one time, furious of the noise, it stops suddenly in its tracks and faces the mob: everyone backs off respectfully and there is suddenly silence and fear; then slowly, it ambles off towards light. A daring man jumps on the next beast, grabs with one hand the right horn and the hump with the other; and so he rides, clinging desperately to the somersaulting animal for a predestined distance; then he becomes the hero, is carried triumphantly by his friends and the president of the jury throws him down a silk scarf. And this goes on and on the whole afternoon, as nearly a hundred bulls are let loose; some veer suddenly from their path and charge the masses; men fly in the air and a few even bleed profusely, but the crowd does not lose its good humour. Finally it’s over and so, on to next year, hoping that the monsoon will be again as good as this one...

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14. THE RENAISSANCE OF INDIA There is no doubt that under Prime Minister Vajpayee, India had entered her Golden Period, her second Renaissance. But will the BJP remain faithful to its original aspirations, or will it become "Congressized" as Nostradamus has predicted? Do Indians even know about their own civilization and how it influenced the whole world at one time? Unfortunately schools and universities' curriculums teach a very bland and westernized outlook on India and one man, Murali Manohar Joshi, is fighting a lonely battle so that Indian children can learn to be proud of their own countries. There has to be a Renaissance in all aspects of Indian Life, including in science, where once India was a leader, but today is just happy copying the West. Finally, will the mother of Melting Pots become the India of the Third Millennium?

"NOSTRADAMUS AND THE BJP"

Michel de Nostre-Dame, better known as Nostradamus (1503-1566), was a famous French astrologer whose predictions - which included the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, or the premature death of the previous Pope - have proved infallibly accurate. Last month, unpublished manuscripts of Nostrodamus have been discovered (and authentified) in an old trunk in the French city of Lyon. Curiously, there are two full pages, which deal at length with India, particularly with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the just concluded elections. We are giving here the first words in Latin, the language which he used, along with a rough translation in English . "Politicus Bharatus Janatus Indicus veni grandus est vingtus unus centurus Congressus oublium est " The Bharatiya Janata Party will come to dominate India in the 21st century, as the Congress, will slowly sink into oblivion. "Malheureusus, duo annum millenium trahisonus idealum est Congressus ressemblum, fautum adoptus est. Electionirium Blanca Madamus attaquum"... Unfortunately, to achieve power, the BJP may gradually forsake most of its idealism. In the 1999 elections for instance, (Nostradamus made here a prediction error : he said 148

duum millenium = 2000), instead of concentrating on real issues - water, sanitation, education - it will waste all its energies on attacking the White Lady (Sonia Gandhi, we suppose). "Surtoutnum idealus oublium Indianum magna Carta devenus est" But more than these basic issues, which any sincere politician should have at heart, it will not address the real burning changes which India needs to adopt so as to become again a Great Power. And Nostradamus goes on to enumerate these changes: "Congressus independantum Blancum copium est; necessarus changum indianus cumum facus est" As the Congress had heavily borrowed from the White Man (British ?) at Independence, it will become necessary to "Indianize" the nation so that it may manifest again its true unique soul. "Panchayatum villagum empruntus. Sanskritus introdum est. Historicum ecritum manus, daemonus est. Yogum, respirationnus introdum est" Give back the power to the villages in the form of Panchayat. Reintroduce Sanskrit as the national language. Rewrite Indian History, which had mostly been devised by White Masters. Revive ancient traditional systems such as pranayama, yoga, and incorporate them in the education system and everyday life. Change the Constitution so that democracy may not be perverted as it will be. Privatise the over-staffed Iron Bird (Indian Airlines ?), which has the most expensive fares in the world. "Malheureusus, secularus montrarus Congressus devenium est, corptionus introdus cancerus est..." Unhappily again, goes on to say Nostradamus, the BJP in its eagerness to prove itself secular (secularus is originally a Latin word), will tend to become like the Congress : corruption, bureaucracy, the VIP plague, the madness of subsidies and the hunger for power, may eat its inner core as a cancer. 149

"Americanus octopussus contentus summum est; jaunus manus menacus ignorum est, Gaullus manum oublius est. Aurobindus Ghosus Propehetus ignorum est" It will try to please the American octopus (?) at the cost of India’s integrity, will ignore the great danger of the Yellow Hand (China ?), it will forget that a reuniting with Pakistan is of utmost importance for the stability of the subcontinent, will shun the friendship of the Gauls (France ?) and will also disregard the words of its Great Prophet, Aurobindo Ghose.

And this is Nostradamus’ scoop - if we may say: "Politicus Bharatus Janatus interminum dividus duum et novus politicus formus" After some time, the Bharatiya Janata Party may split into two. Sincere idealists will form a parallel party which will have as its political platform many of the ideals which the BJP had forsaken. "Indianus pretus reformus est, Grandus nationus manum" India by that time will be ready for the Big Change and the new party will sweep away the polls and implement these reforms. "Sanskritus savantuus nationalum languus, decentralisum governmentus, aryanus theorum mortuum est, dharmum hinduus devenum. Christianum, Islamus influencum" Scholars will sit down to modernise and simplify Sanskrit; government will be decentralised; India will strive to form of a federation of SAARC countries; the theory of the Aryan invasion will be proved false and it will be shown that Indian civilisation is at least ten thousand years old and has influenced all great ancient civilisations and religions such as Christianity and even Islam. And finally : "Aurobindus Ghosus realisum est, Indianum Agus ancientus mortum non est".. And the prophecy of Sri Aurobindo will be fulfilled : "India of the ages is not dead nor has She spoken Her last creative word. And that which She must seek now to awake, is not 150

an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorial Shakti recovering Her deepest self, lifting Her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and vaster form of Her Dharma". P.S. Nostradamus had written a Post Script: "Post Scriptum : Politicus Bharatus Janatus minus votus, realisus stupidum est et changum exorcisus" As the BJP, in spite of its alliance getting overall majority (in 1999), will actually win less seats than in the previous election (because of it folly of forsaking its idealism and only attacking the White Lady), it may come to its senses and take-up again its original ideals, thus avoiding the Split. In this way, this semi-defeat may help to exorcise the demons of mediocrity. " SEVA AND GOVERNMENT "

In ancient India, the concept of "Seva", of service to others, was very predominant. It was then felt that the very action of forgetting oneself and giving one’s work towards the welfare of one’s brothers and sisters, was one of the most powerful tools to the realisation of the inner Self. Today, the tradition of Seva is being revived by many contemporary spiritual movements which are creating a new avatar for Hinduism. More than that, for the first time since independence, India has a Government which can boast quite a few Ministers, who are bringing back the practice of service to their country. That is to say, that they are not in power to fill their pockets, but put the betterment of "Mother India", before their own petty self-interests, or even those of their parties. One such politician is Dr Manohar Murali Joshi - and amongst all the NDA Ministers, he is the one who has been most targeted by the Press. Yet, Dr Joshi has a mission, an ideal - not for himself but for his own country. The first thing that Dr Joshi feels is that "Indians lack self- confidence", this very modern and western bend of mind which says: "we can do it" and drives people to go beyond themselves to reach their goals. And it is true : Indians are often self-depreciating and are always comparing their countries to western nations and their achievements. "Yet, says Dr Joshi, we should tell our children that modern computers would not work unless India had not invented the concept of the zero, or that high grade steel in ancient India was so good that Alexander the Great wanted it to fashion 151

his own sword, or that rhinoplastic surgery was performed in Vedic times, long before it was known in Europe". Manohar Murali Joshi also believes that Indians lack "esprit de corps", the team spirit which makes a nation great. "Look at our hockey or crickets players, says Dr Joshi, they are great individually, but cannot perform well collectively on a steady basis". Dr Joshi could also have added that Indians are probably amongst the most undisciplined people in the world: they always break queues, drive without thinking one second about the other, clean meticulously their own front porch, but throw their garbage in the street, and have hoarded so much black money that if it would surface, it would make India one of the richest nations in the world. And here again, the key is to educate : "It has been stated that Hinduism, being too individualistic a religion, is responsible for this lack of collective spirit, argues Dr Joshi, but nothing is further from truth". And Murali Joshi to quote from Sri Aurobindo, India’s great avatar of the New Age: "Indian civilisation lived with a noble, ample and vigorous order and freedom; it developed a great literature, sciences, arts, crafts, industries; it rose to the highest possible ideals of spiritual knowledge "... "It is the British, asserts Dr Joshi, who attacked and ridiculed Hinduism, which they rightly perceived as the main obstacle to their complete hold over India". And he could have added that they also created "Macaulay’s children", Indians in body, but British in mind, whose descendants can still be found amongst Indian Intelligentsia ! "Hinduism is very community-oriented religion, contends Dr Joshi, as apart from the concept of seva, look how collective is our temple worship, with its bhajans, or how the old Panchayat system was democratic from the village all the way to the top (and not like today, where everything is decided in Delhi, with the villages having absolutely no say in anything). What about the environment, which is so degraded today : tigers are being killed at the rate of one day, says a recent report; every year an area the size of France is deforested in India; and the holy Ganges is so polluted that it is not even fit for bathing. Are not those who defecate in the Ganges, cut their own forests and kill tigers, mostly Hindus ? "But on the contrary, replies Dr Joshi, the Scriptures tell us never to urinate in the Ganges, they enjoin us to plant trees at the time of festivities and not to kill animals. It is again the impact of ten centuries of colonisation which has made us forget this very Hindu respect of Nature". Finally, unless you educate Indian children about the greatness of their own civilisation, which taught the concept of seva, of collective discipline and respect for 152

Nature’s bounties, there is no way that India is going to produce the leaps and bounds which she needs to become a superpower. You also have to rewrite Indian history, which basically has been crafted by British historians to further their claim of superiority on the "natives", using false evidence, such as the theory of the Aryan Invasion, which all recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries are proving as false. The history of the independence of India, which has been concocted by Congress historians to show the Congress in the best light, should be reviewed too and Indian children should be told about the untold horrors of ten centuries of Muslim invasions so that they can face their own history. And this is the task that Dr Joshi has set for himself in the true spirit of seva. Of course, "secular" historians and journalists, who often have such a Marxist-inspired vision of their country, will scream every time Mr Joshi makes a move towards "Indianisation" of what is basically a very bland copy of Western culture. But just think how seven years ago Dr Joshi had the guts to go and raise the national flag in Kashmir on 15th of August. Remember how he was reviled and ridiculed by the Indian Press ? Today he would be hero "We can do it"

WESTERN SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY

Will Science and Spirituality ever meet ? This was the topic of a seminar at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology and Science in Bangalore. Indian scientists, one after the other, expounded, each more brilliantly than the other, on how reason, rigor, logic and the spirit of inquiry are the most important parameters of Scientific discovery. None of them, except for Abdul Kalam, made references to ancient Indian Science and all of them spoke of science from a Western point of view. It is true that Western Science, because of its immense material resources, has come to dominate the world. One needs nowadays billions of dollars for research - and India doesn't have them, nor can it remunerate honorably its scientists and engineers, hence many of India's top scientists have exported themselves to the West. But it may also true that Western Science, however brilliant, is like a blind man, because it dissociated itself from the Spirit as early as the 17th century. The first reason being that the Christian Church was extremely powerful in Europe, not only in religious affairs, but it also kept interfering in Government matters. On top of that, it was very rigid and backwards in scientific topics, believing until very late that the Earth was flat or that the world started in 4003 BC. And whoever disagreed with these views was burnt at the stake ! 153

The second reason is that many thinkers of the 17th century, particularly French philosophers such as Descartes or Pascal, had unilaterally decreed that the only valid scientific and philosophical tool of enquiry was Reason and Logic. A third factor came in the 20th century with the advent of Marxism and Communism, which felt that spirituality poisoned people’s minds and hence had to be eradicated. Was this divorce from the Spirit and Science beneficial to the West? Well, Western scientists have been able to devise the most sophisticated weapons to kill man; but man is still not capable of killing his own ego; soon the United States will send human beings to Jupiter, or Mars; but man today is not capable of reading his own mind! The truth is that the West, in spite of a huge prosperity based on its tremendous technological and scientific achievements, is becoming a sick society, where children go on rampage killing other children with weapons; where every other man and woman in the United States is under psychiatric treatment for depression or for insomnia, where out of five marriages, three end in divorce. . Nobody in the conference, except Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, who was a guest of honour, also bothered to ask this question: has Indian Science kept in touch with the Spirit? Well, if you look at Indian Science in the past, major discoveries, such as the position of the stars, the calculation of solar eclipses, or the concept of the zero, were made at the time when there was no instruments. How were they made? Because there always was in India a profound and everlasting quest for the spirit. It is in this manner that Buddha, was able to say, long before Einstein, that everything in our Universe is constituted of atoms, constantly changing, dying and being reborn at each moment. And this is the first theorem that any scientist should apply: "Know Thyself, Know Thy mind". Because If you know your own mind, then you can fathom all other minds; if you know one particle of the world, you know all the particles of the world. This is the truth that India has been practicing for millenniums. Finally, nobody in the symposium cared to mention that Western Science owes a lot to India. Pythagoras, the father of modern Algebra, was inspired by Indian mathematics; Egyptians built their pyramids by means of Indian arithmetic; 18th century French astronomers were using Hindu calculations of the positions of the stars and the solar eclipses. But unfortunately, Indian Science has today a very Westernized outlook, because what is taught in the universities and colleges might be the best of the scientific knowledge, but there is a lack of that connection with the spiritual, and hardly any mention of India's ancient tradition of scientific enquiry. This is all because Western colonization : the British 154

were able, through education, to impart upon the Indian intelligentsia, a certain Western bend of mind; on top of that, many of India’s top scientists have a strong connection with the West, as the ultimate achievement for them is to have a chair in a foreign university, where some of them brand India as a backward, fundamentalist country. Isn’t it so Mr Amartya Sen ?. But the real issue is: how can Indian Science re-link itself again with the spiritual? There is no question that the Spirit is very much present in India: everywhere you go, you find ashrams, yogis, sadhus, ordinary people practicing meditation or pranayama; the natural tendency here is to understand that beyond visible things, there are levels and levels of consciousness above us. There is also no question that Indian scientists have proved that they can compete with the best: there have been Indian Nobel laureates, there have been Indian geniuses like Ramanujan, who, with no sophisticated means, were able to devise stupendous mathematical theorems. But Indian science has to look again within and it has also to delve in its scientific past. The secrets of the Vedas, for instance, both spiritual and scientific, have never been fully deciphered; Sanskrit too, mother of all languages, who could become THE scientific language of India, has never been analyzed in a modern manner. And then, not only will Indian science regain its predominance, but it could show the West how to re-establish the spiritual link and unite at last Matter and Spirit.

INDIA’S ROLE IN THE THIRD MILLENIUM

Has Western civilisation reached the end of the road ? Each culture has its own uniqueness: the Greeks were great thinkers, the Indians unsurpassed spiritualists, the Egyptians superb occultists. The West's genius is undoubtedly materialism, its immense capacity to achieve material perfection and its great vitality. But materialism has its shortcomings and ultimately, because it blanked out spirituality, except in a superficial and ritual manner, it may bring in the decline of Western civilisation. The first signs of its weaknesses are already there for everyone to see: the collapse of communism, the erosion of capitalism with recession and unemployment and the on and off raging wars in Yugoslavia and the ex-USSR republics. That the United States still survives as a superpower, should not deceive anybody: often the core is weakened, decades before it becomes outwardly apparent. History does not happen in a few years. Materialism is doomed. India has just entered the third millennium. It matters not that it is a bit of an artificial date created by the West, who arbitrary decided that the year zero started with 155

the birth of Jesus Christ. India is entering the Third Millennium. And what can she wish for Herself? That she succeeds in her liberalization ? Overcomes the hurdles of westernization, which has killed the soul of so many so-called Third World countries? Or gets rid of the dreadful legacies Nehruvianism, which tried to destroy all which was holy and ancient in this country and embraced instead western concepts totally alien to India such as Marxism ? And if she does this, then at last, in spite of her huge problems, will India become a Super Power in the Third millennium. And at last, the West will take notice of her, as it did of China 30 years ago. But what more than China can India bring to the World? Democracy for sure, because India is certainly a much more democratic country than China. She has proved it in fifty years of strife, of fighting separatisms all over the nation, of a people mature enough to elect their leaders and send them back to their classroom when they felt that they did not do well. India has remained a democracy in spite of the huge bureaucratic babudom spawned by Nehruvianism and the corruption and an arrogant class of westernized civil servants. What else does she possess more than China ? India is also a bastion of pro-western, open-minded, English-speaking highly cultured people. Soon the West will realize that alone in Asia (with Russia), India is fighting a lone battle against a rising sea of Islam fundamentalism, whether in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, or Chechnya. No western nation could wish a friendlier country than India, whose elite dreams of sending their her sons and daughters to study in Harvard and always looks up at itself through a western prism, although this has not stopped the US from ignoring India all these fifty years. But there is something else, something infinitely more important which India can bring to the West. And it is NOT her democracy, which the West has anyway. Not even her standing-up to Muslim fundamentalism, or her westernize outlook: But her spirituality. India is a vast and ancient land, which alone has managed to keep within itself, by the stubborn of its people, who were battered by numerous invasions and by the silent tapasayas of her yogis hidden in her Himalayan caves or her dark and foreboding temples, the immaculate truth, the ultimate knowledge, the secret of our destiny. At at a time when the world has never been feeling so rotten, where mankind is erring on the road to evolution, at a time when man has forgotten the Why and How of his existence and all religions not only have failed, but have turned against their fellow men as Islam (and partially Christianity) show us today, India holds the key to man’s future.

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Today, from the tip of cape Comorin to Kashmir, you cannot go to a place in this country without finding some spiritual place, some sadhu practising a particular tapasaya, some course in meditation for householders. You have just to step out of the big cities, its five star hotels, its mad traffic, its hurried businessmen with their ties and briefcases and enter India’s country side, and you step again in India’s immortal Dharma, you can still feel the line of continuity of 7000 years of sages. This is the Wonder that IS India. And what do you think would happen if this ancient knowledge pranayama, hatayoga, meditation - still alive in India, was officially recognised by the Indian Government, by Indian themselves and UTILISED in every day life. What do you think would happen for instance if pranayama was systematically taught to sportsmen from the beginning of their training ? It would produce supermen; it would be difficult to beat Indian athletes, because through this marvellous technique they would have achieved perfect concentration. What would happen if Indian businessmen used too Pranayama ? It would double their capacity of work and endow them with enthusiasm for their task. Or if school children were taught at a very early age the combined techniques of pranayama, hata-yoga, meditation and Ayurveda ? It would maybe produce the next human species of our era, a race which is spiritualised in both mind and body. Unfortunately, for the moment, not only the Indian government does not recognise the Wonder that Was India, but it constantly denigrates these great techniques which are part of India’s heritage; the Christian and Muslim minorities reject them outright as part of the Hindu culture. And also modern Indians, whether businessmen, intellectuals, or bureaucrats, disdain this golden treasure of India. But fortunately for the planetary evolution, India’s yogis, gurus, teachers are going all around the world to spread this wonderful knowledge. Some are genuine ones, some are semi-fakes, some are total fakes. But it does not matter, because almost all of them carry abroad the message of yoga and are propagating India’s eternal dharma around the world slowly but surely and thanks to them, there are more and more people in the West who are interested in Indian sciences, who practise pranayama, hata-yoga, or meditation. It maybe even that India will have to realise its Wonder when the West will point its finger at it, as happened in a lesser way in Japan with its martial art techniques, Zen Buddhism, rock gardens and Bonzai art, when America took hold of them.

For we have lost the truth. we have lost the great sense, the meaning of our evolution, the meaning of why so much suffering, why dying, why getting born, why this earth, who are we, what is the soul, what is reincarnation, where is the ultimate truth 157

about the world, the universe... But India has kept this truth. India has preserved it through seven millennium of pitfalls, genocides and mistakes. And this may be India's gift to this planet during the next century: to restore to the world its true sense. to recharge humanity with the real meaning and spirit of life. India could become the spiritual leader of the world. For indeed, this is one of the most amazing paradoxes of today's world: here you have a country, India, which rates today as one of the poorest on this planet, which is disregarded by most Western nations (and many of its own people), as irrelevant, backward, too bureaucratic - and lately, as a hotbed of Hindu fundamentalism. Yet, India holds the key to the world's future. For India is the only nation which still preserves in the darkness of Her Himalayan caves, on the luminous ghats of Benares, in the hearts of her countless yogis, or even in the minds of her ordinary folk, the key to the planetary evolution, its future and its hope. This knowledge which once roamed the shores of the world from Egypt to China, is today lost everywhere. Europe has now entered a turbulent Age; it will take a long time before it unites in spite of the near uniformity of its races and religions. The West, in its thirst for materialism, does not know anymore where it stands and has lost this precious knowledge, which India still holds, alone in the world. The 21st century then, will be the era of the East; this is where the sun is going to rise again, after centuries of decadence and submission to Western colonialism; this is where the focus of the world is going to shift. And as when India used to shine her culture all over the Orient: Japan, Thailand, China, Burma, or Cambodia and influence their civilisations and religions for centuries to come, once more She will radiate: "India of the ages is not dead nor has She spoken Her last creative word; She lives and has still something to do for Herself and the human peoples. And that which She must seek now to awake, is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident's success and failure, but still the ancient immemorial Shakti recovering Her deepest self, lifting Her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and vaster form of Her Dharma. (Sri Aurobindo)

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BACK COVER India, for a western journalist, is a vast, diverse, difficult and often contradictory country. Most foreign correspondents are posted here for three, or a maximum of five years, too little a time to grasp the intricate subtleties of the subcontinent . As a result, western journalists, however talented and well-meaning they are, often leave with the same opinions with which they had arrived, having meanwhile fed their readers with near identical stories: "how Christians are persecuted in India, the rise of the ‘dangerous’ RSS, the Human Right Abuses of the army in Kashmir, or some side feature on Medha Patkar and the Narmada Dam". The author considers himself lucky: he came to India when he had just turned nineteen, an age where the mind has not yet settled in hard and frozen patterns and was able to discover this country through more than twenty years of reporting from Srinagar to Kanyakumari. These collections of articles, written for Blitz, the Hindustan Times and the Indian Express, represent the story of his awakening to what he feels is the true India, beyond the clichés and prejudices the West seems to have inherited from colonial times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

François Gautier, born in Paris in 1950, is a French journalist and writer, who was for eight years the political correspondent in India and South Asia for ‘ Le Figaro ’, France’s largest circulation newspaper. He is married to an Indian and has lived in India for the past 31 years. Francois, who presently writes the "Ferengi’s column in the Indian Express, shuttles between Delhi and the international city of Auroville near Pondichery.

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