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Friday 29 November 2013

Behaviors of Anti-Nationals: A recent example


Congressi and AAPian are not only giving negative vote by clicking 'No' to Narendra Modi but they are giving positive vote by clicking 'Yes' to Miley Cirus of USA just to defeat Narendra Modi. See the following Figure:

 Congress and AAP are campaigning against Narendra Modi


You may also be interested for another report. Narendra Modi is only one from India who has been selected among 42 politician, celebrity, and other persons for TIME's 'Person of the Year' title. 

From the above instance, we should not be surprised that Muslims ruled India around 800 years and British ruled India around 200 years. Both of them invaded India and did tremendous amount of atrocities and loot for around 1,000 years, because of these kind of Anti-Nation people (Desh-Drohi). Still there is a section of people from outside India (Read Taliban documents) who yet aspire to rule and conquer India. They call India unfinished chapter because they failed to make India 100% Muslims even after ruling, doing atrocities and what not for around 800 years. When they see how people from India are divided in selfishness, they get tremendous motivation and energy to rule and dominate India.

In the recent past, for an instance, if you take Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar after independence, he was made defeated and lost deposit in election multiple times despite being most educated, visionary and patriotic at that time. It was so just because he was most qualified to become Prime Minister of India and was a great threat to Nehru, apart from Sardar Patel.

Afterward, Dr. Ambedkar was given a title "Bhim" for doing all scholarly work and raising voice against deprived, and Nehru was given a title "Pandit" as well as "Chacha (Uncle)" for doing all short of worthless acts for which India is still suffering.

This is one example of how Anti-Nationals gang have been functioning for so long and jeopardizing future of India miserably.

Wednesday 27 November 2013

How to speak and write postmodern

How to Speak and Write Postmodern
by Stephen Katz, Associate Professor, Sociology.
Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Here is a quick guide, then, to speaking and writing postmodern.
 
First, you need to remember that plainly expressed language is out of the question. It is too realist, modernist and obvious. Postmodern language requires that one uses play, parody and indeterminacy as critical techniques to point this out. Often this is quite a difficult requirement, so obscurity is a well-acknowledged substitute. For example, let’s imagine you want to say something like, “We should listen to the views of people outside of Western society in order to learn about the cultural biases that affect us”. This is honest but dull. Take  the word “views”. Postmodernspeak would change that to “voices”, or better, “vocalities”, or even better, “multivocalities”. Add an adjective like “intertextual”, and you’re covered. “People outside” is also too plain. How about “postcolonial others”? To speak postmodern properly one must master a bevy of biases besides the familiar racism, sexism, ageism, etc. For example, phallogocentricism (male-centredness combined with rationalistic forms of binary logic).

Finally “affect us” sounds like plaid pajamas. Use more obscure verbs and phrases, like “mediate our identities”. So, the final statement should say, “We should listen to the intertextual, multivocalities of postcolonial others outside of Western culture in order to learn about the phallogocentric biases that mediate our identities”. Now you’re talking postmodern!

Sometimes you might be in a hurry and won’t have the time to muster even the minimum number of postmodern synonyms and neologisms needed to avoid public disgrace. Remember, saying the wrong thing is acceptable if you say it the right way. This brings me to a second important strategy in speaking postmodern, which is to use as many suffixes, prefixes, hyphens, slashes, underlinings and anything else your computer (an absolute must to write postmodern) can dish out. You can make a quick reference chart to avoid time delays. Make three columns. In column A put your prefixes; post-, hyper-, pre-, de-, dis-, re-, ex-, and counter-. In column B go your suffixes and related endings; -ism, -itis, -iality, -ation, -itivity, and -tricity. In column C add a series of well-respected names that make for impressive adjectives or schools of thought, for example, Barthes (Barthesian), Foucault (Foucauldian, Foucauldianism), Derrida (Derridean, Derrideanism).

Now for the test. You want to say or write something like, “Contemporary buildings are alienating”. This is a good thought, but, of course, a non-starter. You wouldn’t even get offered a second round of crackers and cheese at a conference reception with such a line. In fact, after saying this, you might get asked to stay and clean up the crackers and cheese after the reception. Go to your three columns. First, the prefix. Pre- is useful, as is post-, or several prefixes at once is terrific. Rather than “contemporary building””, be creative. “The Pre/post/spatialities of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneity” is promising. You would have to drop the weak and dated term “alienating” with some well suffixed words from column B. How about “antisociality”, or be more postmodern and introduce ambiguity with the linked phrase, “antisociality/seductivity”.

Now, go to column C and grab a few names whose work everyone will agree is important and hardly anyone has had the time or the inclination to read. Continental European theorists are best when in doubt. I recommend the sociologist Jean Baudrillard since he has written a great deal of difficult material about postmodern space. Don’t forget to make some mention of gender. Finally, add a few smoothing out words to tie the whole garbled mess together and don’t forget to pack in the hyphens, slashes and parentheses. What do you get? “Pre/post/spacialities of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneity (re)commits us to an ambivalent recurrentiality of antisociality/seductivity, one enunciated in a de/gendered-Baudrillardian discourse of granulated subjectivity”. You should be able to hear a postindustrial pin drop on the retrocultural floor.

At some point someone may actually ask you what you’re talking about. This risk faces all those who would speak postmodern and must be carefully avoided. You must always give the questioner the impression that they have missed the point, and so send another verbose salvo of postmodernspeak in their direction as a “simplification” or “clarification” of your original statement. If that doesn’t work, you might be left with the terribly modernist thought of, “I don’t know”. Don’t worry, just say, “The instability of your question leaves me with several contradictorily layered responses whose interconnectivity cannot express the logocentric coherency you seek. I can only say that reality is more uneven and its (mis)representations more untrustworthy than we have time here to explore”. Any more questions? No, then pass the cheese and crackers.

Source: http://thepaperthinhymn.com/2010/01/26/how-to-speak-post-modernism/

‘A mole in Mumbai helped 26/11 attackers’

An interview with Ram Pradhan, former Union Home Secretary

Updated: November 27, 2013 02:17 IST 

Former Union Home Secretary Ram Pradhan had led the two-man inquiry into the administration’s response to the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai. Five years after the attack, he spoke to Priyanka Kakodkar and made a new revelation. He said that the R.D. Pradhan Committee had informed the then Home Minister P. Chidambaram about the possibility of a mole in Mumbai who had assisted in the terror attack. However, he does not know what action was taken on it. He also said the central intelligence agencies did not cooperate with the committee. Excerpts:
 
The Siege, a new book on 26/11 by two British journalists, made the claim that there was local support to the attack in the form of a mole in the Indian security establishment. Your comments on this.
 
There was no doubt in our mind when we prepared our report that Kasab and the other terrorists could not have executed this assault without local support. I have mentioned it in my communication with the State government. But more than that — and now I can say this for the first time — I had also brought it to the notice of the then Union Home Minister Mr. P. Chidambaram. I had given him a note on the reasons why we had come to the conclusion that there was a mole in Mumbai who was assisting the terrorists. We had given sufficient information and suggested this matter be pursued and the mole identified as soon as possible. I do not know what happened to that. But the fact is, now, it has come up in several publications including the evidence given by Headley. Headley himself was one of the moles, depending on other moles who were already there. This information is now available to everyone through newspapers and media channels. My question is why have we been tardy in identifying who was or who were the people who acted as moles? We had given this information within three months of the attack. 

Did you give any details on what kind of mole this was?
We had given certain information which could have helped to identify the mole. I would not say more than that because after five years, I cannot claim that I have all the information in my head. But I had given a note on this point. A short note of 15-20 lines, where all the information we had was handed over. 

Are you satisfied with the State government’s response to the recommendations in your report?
I am told that the Home Minister of Maharashtra has said our report has been implemented fully. My comment would be that it’s not a correct statement. What has or has not been implemented should be placed in front of the people. 

Did you get the cooperation you asked for while compiling the report?
Ours was not a commission of inquiry but an administrative one. We had no right to enforce attendance of officers to tender evidence. Despite that, all the officers from Maharashtra cooperated with us. But I must say with regret that the Central agencies did not cooperate for their own reasons. We had no input from the Central agencies despite our repeated requests. Also, we were given restrictive terms of reference. We could not really go beyond the State agencies. The IB and RAW and others were kept out of the purview possibly at the behest of the Central government. We were given three months’ time and wanted to complete the inquiry within that time. We didn’t want to bring out an academic report but we wanted to have a report which could be operational and quickly studied and implemented. 

You had recommended that CCTV footage from public locations should be accessed by the police to improve security. Are you satisfied with the response?
Our recommendation came from our study on what was done in the United States after 9/11. They installed CCTVs in public places and there was a sense of participation. We know we do not have the resources they do, so we had suggested installing CCTVs in places like railway stations and department stores. So, if an incident takes place, there is at least something to see. From what I read in the papers, what they have done is really not adequate. There are reasons like government procedures and the tendering system. But in a situation like this, it is up to seniors especially ministers to make sure public interest is given priority. 

Your report had been critical of the lack of ammunition and equipment provided to the Mumbai police. Do you feel this has improved?
We had pointed out that constables were getting to practise firing only once a year because of the lack of ammunition. They were carrying guns more like lathis. Bulletproof jackets were not really bulletproof. Even today, I read in the media that the situation is the same. If this is correct, then there has been negligence in these matters. 

Keywords: 26/11 anniversaryMumbai terror attacksR.D. Pradhan CommitteeThe Siege

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/a-mole-in-mumbai-helped-2611-attackers/article5394510.ece?homepage=true

Saturday 23 November 2013

Microwave Test – an eye opener

Below is a Science fair project presented by a girl in a secondary school in Sussex. In it she took filtered water and divided it into two parts.


The first part she heated to boiling in a pan on the stove, and the second part she heated to boiling in a microwave.

Then after cooling she used the water to water two identical plants to see if there would be any difference in the growth between the normal boiled water and the water boiled in a microwave.
She was thinking that the structure or energy of the water may be compromised by microwave.
As it turned out, even she was amazed at the difference, after the experiment which was repeated by her class mates a number of times and had the same result.


It has been known for some years that the problem with microwaved anything is not the radiation people used to worry about, it’s how it corrupts the DNA in the food so the body can not recognize it.
Microwaves don’t work different ways on different substances. Whatever you put into the microwave suffers the same destructive process. Microwaves agitate the molecules to move faster and faster. This movement causes friction which denatures the original make-up of the substance. It results in destroyed vitamins, minerals, proteins and generates the new stuff called radiolytic compounds, things that are not found in nature.

So the body wraps it in fat cells to protect itself from the dead food or it eliminates it fast. Think of all the Mothers heating up milk in these ‘Safe’ appliances. What about the nurse in Canada that warmed up blood for a transfusion patient and accidentally killed him when the blood went in dead. But the makers say it’s safe. But proof is in the pictures of living plants dying!!!
FORENSIC RESEARCH DOCUMENT
Prepared By: William P. Kopp
A. R. E. C. Research Operations
TO61-7R10/10-77F05
RELEASE PRIORITY: CLASS I ROO1a
Ten Reasons to dispose off your Microwave Oven
From the conclusions of the Swiss, Russian and German scientific clinical studies, we can no longer ignore the microwave oven sitting in our kitchens. Based on this research, one can conclude this article with the following:

1). Continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term – permanent – brain damage by ‘shorting out’ electrical impulses in the brain [de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue].

2). The human body cannot metabolize [break down] the unknown by-products created in microwaved food.

3). Male and female hormone production is shut down and/or altered by continually eating microwaved foods.

4). The effects of microwaved food by-products are residual [long term, permanent] within the human body.

5). Minerals, vitamins, and nutrients of all microwaved food is reduced or altered so that the human body gets little or no benefit, or the human body absorbs altered compounds that cannot be broken down.

6). The minerals in vegetables are altered into cancerous free radicals when cooked in microwave ovens.

7). Microwaved foods cause stomach and intestinal cancerous growths [tumours]. This may explain the rapidly increased rate of colon cancer in UK and America .

8). The prolonged eating of microwaved foods causes cancerous cells to increase in human blood.

9). Continual ingestion of microwaved food causes immune system deficiencies through lymph gland and blood serum alterations.

10). Eating microwaved food causes loss of memory, concentration, emotional instability, and a decrease of intelligence.

Source: http://usahitman.com/microwave-test/

A crusader turns collector

Devika Sequeira, Nov 12, Panaji:
 
Tehelka armtwisted Goa govt into funding its literary fest

After several preliminaries and high-power calls—some of them from Sonia Gandhi’s political adviser Ahmed Patel —''Tehelka'' publisher and chief operating officer Neena Tejpal met Chief Minister Digambar Kamat in Goa weeks ahead of ''Think 2011'', the magazine’s ‘festival of ideas’ that was held here from November 4 to 6.
''Neena Tejpal came with a few other people to meet me and asked us to associate with ''Think 2011'' DIGAMBAR KAMAT, Chief Minister of Goa“She came with a few other people to meet me and asked us to associate with the event. Since prominent people, including central ministers were coming, we agreed to help them,” Kamat told Deccan Herald on Saturday.

He denied there had been pressure from Delhi for him to support the festival,  which has been shadowed by a controversy, or that a deal had been struck for “Tehelka” to hold off an expose on illegal mining in Goa. “No, no, that’s not true at all,” he said.
Also present at the meeting with the “Tehelka” representatives were Chief Secretary Sanjay Srivastava, former tourism secretary D C Sahoo, Finance Secretary S Kumaraswamy, Director (tourism) Swapnil Naik and others.
                                      
Neena Tejpal, sister of “Tehelka” editor Tarun Tejpal, was business-like and downright arrogant with the Goa chief minister, leaving his aides quite stunned. “If Tarun was here, he would have asked for Rs 1.5 crore. How much are you willing to give?” she asked Kamat quite bluntly, a government source told Deccan Herald. The source expressed shock at Neena’s tone and tenor, considering she was talking to the chief minister of a state. An embarrassed Kamat asked his aides to see which departments could be tapped for funding the fest and the chief secretary finally came up with a figure of Rs 50 lakh for the magazine’s event.

“Tehelka”, which prides itself for its investigative and public interest journalism, has been accused by theatre personality Hartman De Souza of burying a report on mining in Goa by its former correspondent Raman Kirpal because of the negotiations with the Goa government on “Thinkfest”. Tejpal has strongly denied the charges.

But a government aide said after the meeting with Neena Tejpal there was a strong buzz in the secretariat that Kamat was keen to oblige the “Tehelka” people because they have some “explosive material” on him.

Source:  http://www.deccanherald.com/content/204473/a-crusader-turns-collector.html

Nehru and Indira recommended themselves for Bharat Ratna?

Capture

I sent this RTI query to Prime Ministers Office on 25th August 2013. Following were the questions..

1. What are the criteria and procedure for Bharat Ratna award
2. Does Prime Minister himself recommend Bharat Ratna awardee to the president.
3. (i)Who got Bharat Ratna in the year 1955 and 1971 respectively, (ii) who recommended their names to the then President of India, and what were the achievements of Bharat Ratna recipients.
4. Has the name of Mahatma Gandhi ever come up vis a vis Bharat Ratna award and if yes,why was it rejected.
5. Is there any law or rules which lays down the conditions and eligibility of recipients of Bharat Ratna award
Today (20th November 2013) I received RTI reply from PMO to question 2,3 and 4. They are as follows

2. Yes

3.  Pt Jawaharlal Nehru and Smt Indira Gandhi got Bharat Ratna in the year 1955 and 1971 respectively. (ii) information sought not available on record.

4. information sought not available on record.

Who recommends Bharat Ratna awardee to President ? PM. Who got it in 1955 and 1971 respectively ? Nehru and Indira. Who recommended their names ? Information sought not available on record.  Obviously it must be the then Prime Ministers who would have recommended the Bharat Ratna awardees. But then who were the prime ministers who recommended Bharat Ratna to Nehru and Indira ? Nehru and Indira themselves. What is more hilarious is that UPA Government does not know what were the achievements of Nehru and Indira that made them recommend themselves for Bharat Ratna?

Source:  http://nationalizer.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/nehru-and-indira-recommended-themselves-for-bharat-ratna/

Tuesday 12 November 2013

HOW BRITAIN SOUGHT TO THWART J&K’S ACCESSION TO INDIA

 

My last blog, based on a book in Malayalam, written by a 1947 IAS official, late Shri MKK Nair, has precipitated quite a controversy. There have been comments from the Congress Camp that Nair’s report about a clash between Nehru and Patel on the issue of armed action against the Nizam is all baseless. Fact is that even on sending the army into J&K following the attack on J&K by tribesmen and Pakistan in 1947, Nehru had similar reservations.

prem-shankar-jha
field-marshal-s-h-f-j-manekshawGoing through Rediff on The Net, I have come across a very interesting interview Sam Manekshaw, the first Field Marshal in the Indian Army had with Prem Shankar Jha. Manekshaw, in those early years of independence, was a colonel who was chosen to accompany V.P. Menon to Kashmir when V.P. was proceeding to that state to secure J & K’s Accession to India. Col. Manekshaw’s version as recorded by Prem Shankar Jha runs as follows :

At about 2.30 in the afternoon, General Sir Roy Bucher walked into my room and said, ‘Eh, you, go and pick up your toothbrush. You are going to Srinagar with V P Menon. The flight will take off at about 4 o’clock’. I said, ‘Why me, Sir?’

‘Because we are worried about the military situation. V P Menon is going there to get the accession from the Maharaja and Mahajan.’ I flew in with V P Menon in a Dakota. Wing Commander Dewan, who was then Squadron Leader Dewan, was also there. But his job did not have anything to do with assessing the military situation. He was sent by the Air Force because it was the Air Force which was flying us in.’

Since I was in the Directorate of Military Operations, and was responsible for current operations all over India, West Frontier, the Punjab, and elsewhere, I knew what the situation in Kashmir was. I knew that the tribesmen had come in - initially only the tribesmen - supported by the Pakistanis.

Fortunately for us, and for Kashmir, they were busy raiding, raping all along. In Baramulla they killed Colonel D O T Dykes. Dykes and I were of the same seniority. We did our first year’s attachment with the Royal Scots in Lahore, way back in 1934-5. Tom went to the Sikh regiment. I went to the Frontier Force regiment. We’d lost contact with each other. He’d become a lieutenant colonel. I’d become a full colonel.

Tom and his wife were holidaying in Baramulla when the tribesmen killed them.
The Maharaja’s forces were 50 per cent Muslim and 50 per cent Dogra.

The Muslim elements had revolted and joined the Pakistani forces. This was the broad military situation. The tribesmen were believed to be about 7 to 9 kilometers from Srinagar. I was sent in to get the precise military situation. The army knew that if we had to send soldiers, we would have to fly them in. Therefore, a few days before, we had made arrangements for aircraft and for soldiers to be ready.

mehar-chand-mahajan-copyhari-singh-copy 

But we couldn’t fly them in until the state of Kashmir had acceded to India. From the political side, Sardar Patel and V P Menon had been dealing with Mahajan and the Maharaja, and the idea was that V.P Menon would get the Accession, I would bring back the military appreciation and report to the government. The troops were already at the airport, ready to be flown in. Air Chief Marshall Elmhurst was the air chief and he had made arrangements for the aircraft from civil and military sources.

Anyway, we were flown in. We went to Srinagar. We went to the palace. I have never seen such disorganisation in my life. The Maharaja was running about from one room to the other. I have never seen so much jewellery in my life - pearl necklaces, ruby things, lying in one room; packing here, there, everywhere. There was a convoy of vehicles.

The Maharaja was coming out of one room, and going into another saying, ‘Alright, if India doesn’t help, I will go and join my troops and fight (it) out’.

I couldn’t restrain myself, and said, ‘That will raise their morale sir’. Eventually, I also got the military situation from everybody around us, asking what the hell was happening, and discovered that the tribesmen were about seven or nine kilometres from what was then that horrible little airfield.

V P Menon was in the meantime discussing with Mahajan and the Maharaja. Eventually the Maharaja signed the accession papers and we flew back in the Dakota late at night. There were no night facilities, and the people who were helping us to fly back, to light the airfield, were Sheikh Abdullah, Kasimsahib, Sadiqsahib, Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, D P Dhar with pine torches, and we flew back to Delhi. I can’t remember the exact time. It must have been 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the morning.

(On arriving at Delhi) the first thing I did was to go and report to Sir Roy Bucher. He said, ‘Eh, you, go and shave and clean up. There is a cabinet meeting at 9 o’clock. I will pick you up and take you there.’ So I went home, shaved, dressed, etc. and Roy Bucher picked me up, and we went to the cabinet meeting.

The cabinet meeting was presided by Mountbatten. There was Jawaharlal Nehru, there was Sardar Patel, there was Sardar Baldev Singh. There were other ministers whom I did not know and did not want to know, because I had nothing to do with them. Sardar Baldev Singh I knew because he was the minister for defence, and I knew Sardar Patel, because Patel would insist that V P Menon take me with him to the various states.

Almost every morning the Sardar would sent for V P, H M Patel and myself. While Maniben (Patel’s daughter and de facto secretary) would sit cross-legged with a Parker fountain pen taking notes, Patel would say, ‘V P, I want Baroda. Take him with you.’ I was the bogeyman. So I got to know the Sardar very well.

At the morning meeting he handed over the (Accession) thing. Mountbatten turned around and said, ‘come on Manekji (He called me Manekji instead of Manekshaw), what is the military situation?’ I gave him the military situation, and told him that unless we flew in troops immediately, we would have lost Srinagar, because going by road would take days, and once the tribesmen got to the airport and Srinagar, we couldn’t fly troops in. Everything was ready at the airport.

As usual Nehru talked about the United Nations, Russia, Africa, God almighty, everybody, until Sardar Patel lost his temper. He said, ‘Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away’. He (Nehru) said,’ Of course, I want Kashmir. Then he (Patel) said ‘Please give your orders’. And before he could say anything Sardar Patel turned to me and said, ‘You have got your orders’.

I walked out, and we started flying in troops at about 11 o’clock or 12 o’clock. I think it was the Sikh regiment under Ranjit Rai that was the first lot to be flown in. And then we continued flying troops in. That is all I know about what happened. Then all the fighting took place. I became a brigadier, and became director of military operations and also if you will see the first signal to be signed ordering the cease-fire on 1 January (1949) had been signed by Colonel Manekshaw on behalf of C-in-C India, General Sir Roy Bucher. That must be lying in the Military Operations Directorate.
 * * *
After my blogpost of November 5 was circulated a friend told me that I had misspelt the name of Gen. Bucher.  I corrected it by adding a footnote to my blog.

But shortly thereafter, I looked up at a website on Gen. Sir Roy Bucher and discovered in the write-up under his name that in the years 1946-47 as well as during the Indo-Pak war of 1947-48 it was Gen. Bucher who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army.

The Indo-Pak war of 1947 was a war in which Jammu and Kashmir state had been invaded by tribesmen as well as Pakistani soldiers, all led by army officials.  Gen. Bucher’s website says:

The Indo-Pak war of 1947-48 was unique in modern military history because it is the only war fought by two modern armies (belonging to two different countries), which were both commanded by British generals. The Commander-in-chief (C-in-C) of the Indian Army was General Sir Roy Bucher, and his Pakistani counterpart was General Douglas Gracey. All three services in India and Pakistan were commanded by British officers.

But by 1948, Nehru had come around to the conclusion that this was not an immediately feasible proposition. The C-in-C, General Bucher, advised him that militarily it was not possible to establish control over the entire territory of Jammu & Kashmir, with the British also supporting Pakistan.  Pakistan suspected the Maharaja wanted to accede to India and tried to pre-empt his decision by forcibly seizing the state.

A cabinet meeting was organised for September 12th to take a final decision. Among those who attended were Prime Minister Nehru, Home Minister Patel, Defence Minister Baldev Singh, Gopalaswamy Iyengar, General Bucher, Lt. Gen. (later Field Marshal and C-in-C, IA) K M Cariappa and Air Marshal Sir Thomas W. Elmhirst (C-in-C, IAF).

As the decision was being finalised, Gen. Bucher stood up and said, “Gentlemen, you have taken a decision in a difficult matter.  I must give you my warning. We are also committed in Kashmir.  We cannot say how long it will take so we will end up having two operations on our hands.  This is not advisable, so as your C-in-C I ask you not to start the operations.”  He further offered his resignation if his advice was not heeded.

There was a silence while a distressed and worried Nehru looked around.  Patel replied, “You may resign General Bucher, but the police action will start tomorrow.” An angry General Bucher stormed out, and coincidentally the next few days saw a rise in the Kashmir operations. 

bucherhandover
General Sir Roy Bucher and Lady Bucher with Shri C. Rajagopalachari
and Commander-in-Chief, General K.M. Cariappa at Rashtrapati Bhavan

India’s own first C-in-C in January 1949 was General Cariappa.  One of the things that greatly concerned the British at the closing stage of this war was that General Cariappa was taking initiatives that General Sir Roy Bucher could not control. The British did not want an Indo-Pak war. They were conscious that hostilities would break out and had issued secret orders to all British officers ‘to stand down’ in the event of a war. These officers were told they could resign their commission or function in an advisory capacity. 

The British clearly did not want the whole of Jammu & Kashmir to go to India. There was a widespread feeling in London that if India was in control of areas contiguous to Pakistan, the latter would not survive.

The top-secret cables exchanged between the British missions in India and Pakistan, and Whitehall, tell the true story. The C-in-C was receiving instructions from the British High Commission in New Delhi. Nehru had decided to strike at the bases of the raiders in Pakistan but Mountbatten opposed this.

L.K. ADVANI
New Delhi
November 7, 2013

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad on Jawaharlal Nehru

Freedom Fighter and Ex Congress man, Maulana Abul kalam Azad (it is his 125th birthday today), wrote that he regretted backing Nehru and opposing Sardar Patel for the top job.

Have a look at how he feels about Chacha Nehru
 
 

Monday 11 November 2013

INDIA’S BISMARCK: AN EXCELLENT BOOK

Organiser’s Deepavali issue published last week is a Special one on India’s Hundred Years of Cinema. The issue has prominently carried a longish interview with me. The journal’s Editor, Prafulla Ketkar, accompanied by his correspondent, Pramod Kumar, had recorded this interview a fortnight back. I notice that both the Telegraph as well as the Amrit Bazar Patrika have carried news items about my interview.

mj-akbarTwo years back when I published a compilation of blogposts I had written in the preceding two years I requested M.J. Akbar, one of India’s most outstanding journalists to write the Foreword. And he had responded to my request with an excellent write-up. The concluding paragraph of this four-page write-up read:

“This collection will not clarify every query about the career of Lal Krishna Advani, but it will certainly answer one. He has held two portfolios in a Union Government, once as minister of information and broadcasting under Morarji Desai, and twice as home minister under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. His mind was embedded in the home ministry, but his heart belonged to information and broadcasting.”

Actually, it was as I & B Minister that I had met Akbar for the first time, and that too in Pakistan.

In my memoirs titled My Country , My Life, I have recalled my first trip back to my birthplace, Karachi, where I spent the first twenty years of my life, thus:

“I was on my way back from Paris, where I had gone to attend a UNESCO Conference. It was a short trip, just two days, because the Parliament Session was about to commence. Oddly, it was cricket that took me to Karachi. For the first time, Doordarshan was covering an Indo-Pak test match and I was invited in my capacity as India’s I & B minister. I was naturally overjoyed. I wanted only two things from the visit: an opportunity to visit my house, and my school. It was really a delightful surprise to find Father Modestine, who was the principal of St. Patrick’s High School when I used to study there, and who had long since retired, personally present at the schoolgate to receive me. Incidentally, it was in Karachi in 1978 that I first met M.J. Akbar, an erudite Editor and author, whose friendship I have cherished since then. He was working for Sunday magazine those days and I recall that he covered my ‘homecoming’ in his report on the cricket match.”
* * *
copy-of-book-001M.J. Akbar has obviously been following these days my blogs relating to Sardar Patel.  It is he who pointed out to me that the name of the British General heading the Indian Army in 1947 had been misspelt. I added a footnote to the blog and had it corrected.  In the context of Nehru’s differences with Sardar Patel, he has commended to me an excellent book by Balraj Krishna, titled India’s Bismarck, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The book is sponsored by Sardar Patel Trust, Karamsad.  Karamsad is the birth place of Sardar Patel.

In today’s blog I propose to quote just one excerpt from this book which not only confirmed that Sardar Patel walked out of the Cabinet Committee meeting when harsh words were used against him, but also indicates that shortly thereafter, V.P. Menon also left the meeting.

The book, India’s Bismarck, records:

“In a democratic set-up, cabinet sanction was essential for Police Action. Patel faced a formidable task in overcoming Nehru’s reluctance. At one of the meetings of the defence committee, of which Nehru was the chairman, there was so much bitterness that Sardar Patel walked out. “Seeing his seat vacant,” V.P. Menon told a Rotary meeting in Bombay, “I too walked out five minutes later.” This seemed to have shaken Nehru out of his complacent mood, and mellowed his opposition. Later, at a meeting attended by the governor general (Rajagopalachari), the prime minister, the home minister (Patel), and secretary to the states ministry (Menon), “it was decided to order troops into Hyderabad”.

Patel had yet to face the Hamlet in Nehru. The British commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, General Roy Bucher, persuaded Nehru that “even at that late stage the campaign should be called off as militarily risky, and hazardous on grounds of internal security in the whole country”. About midnight on 12 September, after he had spoken to Nehru, Bucher attempted “a rare feat” in pulling Patel “out of bed at that hour” and advised him to at least postpone action for fear of air attacks on Bombay and Ahmedabad. Patel reminded Bucher “how London had suffered during the Great War, and coolly assured him that Ahmedabad and Bombay both could stand up to an attack if it came”.

Gen. Bucher, K.M. Munshi writes, “was hesitant throughout. He overestimated the capacity of the Hyderabad army, underestimated that of his own troops, and knew not the ability of the Sardar …to deal with the problems of internal law and order. Like most Englishmen, he was unable to realise that no price was too high to be paid for eliminating the Razakar menace which threatened the very existence of India”. In H.V.R. Iengar’s view, “the verdict of history will be that the Sardar was right” and a verdict with which Nehru wholeheartedly agreed later.

Indian troops marched into Hyderabad on 13 September. The campaign was named “Operation Polo”.  It lasted barely 108 hours!

In his monumental book, Integration of the Indian States, V.P. Menon, after describing Operation Polo at some length, concludes:

“On 17 September, Laik Ali (Prime Minister of the Nizam) and his cabinet tendered their resignations. The Nizam sent for K M Munshi (who had been under house arrest ever since the Police Action began) and informed him that he had given orders for his army to surrender; that he would be forming a new government; that Indian troops were free to go to Secunderabad and Bolarum, and that the Razakars would be banned. Munshi communicated this to the Government of India. Major-General Chaudhuri took charge as Military Governor on 18 September. The members of the Laik Ali ministry were placed under house arrest. Rizvi was arrested on 19 September.

There was not a single communal incident in the whole length and breadth of India throughout the time of the operation. There was universal jubilation at the swift and successful ending of the Hyderabad episode and messages of congratulation poured in to the Government of India from all parts of the country.”

TAILPIECE
I recall the pain of a day, way back around 1958, when our party lost in a Delhi corporation election. To help forget our sorrow, Atalji and I went and saw a movie at a theatre close to our party office, in Paharganj. That theatre was Imperial and the film we saw was the Raj Kapoor-Mala Sinha starre Phir Subha Hogi, based on Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The lyrics of the film were excellently written by Sahir Ludhianvi, and the words of one uplifting song went thus:

Wo subah kabhi to ayegi…
Jab dukh ke baadal pighlenge, jab sukh ka saagar chhalkega
Jab ambar jhoomke naachega, Jab dharti naghme gaayegi
Wo subah kabhi to ayegi

Thirty years later, in 1998, when Vajpayeeji became our Prime Minister, I recalled our poll defeat and affirmed, “Wo subah aayi hai, aur humhi usey laaye hain”.
By courtesy  Organiser (Deepavali Special issue)

L.K. Advani
New Delhi
November 11, 2013

For more: http://blog.lkadvani.in/blog-in-english/india%E2%80%99s-bismarck-an-excellent-book

Remembering Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Acharya JB Kripalani on their birth anniversary

Dear Friends,

Today we remember two extremely inspiring personalities who left an important mark in India’s history before and after Independence. We pay tributes to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Acharya JB Kripalani on their 125th birth anniversary. Born in the same year, both these men dedicated a lifetime in service of the nation.

Remembering Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Acharya JB Kripalani on their birth anniversary

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad needs no introduction. It was as if he was blessed with a revolutionary streak from a young age. In 1912 he started the paper Al-Hilal, which did not hesitate from attacking the colonial rulers. He occupied an important place in the Congress party under Mahatma Gandhi’s guidance, including as the President during the critical years of early and mid 1940s. He served as India’s first Education Minister and it was under his tenure that the first IIT was inaugurated in Kharagpur. Maulana Azad will also be remembered for his steadfast opposition to partition of India.

A man of deep principles and a commitment to serve the poorest of the poor, Acharya Kripalani embraced Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership during the Champaran Satyagraha and he too went on to occupy an important role in the organisation of the Congress. After Independence he left the Congress and went on to form the Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party, which later merged with the Socialist Party to form the Praja Socialist Party.

Acharya Kripalani created history when he moved the first ever no-confidence motion against the Government of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in 1963. The motion came in the backdrop of India’s humiliating defeat to China, which was attributed to the misplaced idealism and lack of preparedness on the part of our first Prime Minister and then Defence Minister Shri VK Krishna Menon. Infact, Acharya Kripalani was unsparingly critical of Krishna Menon on repeated occasions on the floor of the Lok Sabha. His spirited contest against Krishna Menon from North Bombay in 1962 as the joint candidate of all Opposition parties barring the Communists is still remembered. He became one of the staunchest critics of the Emergency as well. Acharya Kripalani became very closely associated with Gujarat Vidyapeeth, which was established by Gandhi ji.

Much has been made of our efforts to commemorate various historical figures, who have either been completely ignored or have not been adequately remembered in the history books.After reading this blog, youare again likely to see television studios and social media networks rife with comments like ‘What does Modi have in common with them’ or ‘But they were not in Modi’s party’ among other things.

Friends, this is exactly the mindset we need to change.

It is with deep anguish that I see how some of our friends have reduced stalwarts of the freedom struggle to mere partisan political leaders.There can be no greater disservice to our history than viewing these stalwarts through the narrow prism of political partisanship.

It is high time we realize that these are leaders who transcended barriers of caste, community, creed or party lines. Their ideals and legacy are not for any party but for the entire nation to get inspired.
What is equally worrying is tendency of “speculative history” where some celebrity historians have appropriated to themselves the authority to speculate what some historical figure would have said or done.

Take the case of the relations between Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Yes, it is a fact that both Maulana Azad and Sardar Patel differed on many issues. But, it is equally a fact that both were guided by their absolute love and devotion for India and both of them worked together on several occasions under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi.  After all, debate, discussion and disagreements are a part and parcel of a vibrant democracy. Our ancient texts believed that learning is a continuous process. Knowledge and understanding must evolve with time and must not remain frozen in the polemics of the past.

It is in this light that I want to share Maulana Azad’s thoughts on Sardar Patel, which were published in his work ‘India Wins Freedom.’ Maulana Azad describes not running again for Congress President as his first mistake. As for his second mistake he wrote:

“My second mistake was that when I decided not to stand myself, I did not support Sardar Patel. We differed on many issues but I am convinced thathe would have seen that the Cabinet Mission Plan was successfully implemented. He would have never committed the mistake of Jawaharlal which gave Mr. Jinnah an opportunity of sabotaging the Plan. I can never forgive myself when I think that if I had not committed these mistakes, perhaps the history of the last ten years would have been different.”

It is equally true that there are historical figures who have been erased from public memory just because they did not belong to a particular family. The history of India is the history or the struggle of countless men and women who devoted a lifetime to the clarion call of the Motherland.
Just because they did not belong to a particular family should we erase them from public memory or remember them less?

An online portal on Maulana Azad will be launched today by the Centre containing his digital archives. This is a welcome thing but one must also ask why they only paid lip service to his legacy all these decades? Should things like this not have come much earlier?

I will end by paying my richest tributes to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Acharya Kripalani with a prayer that we can create the India they and several other stalwarts of the freedom struggle dreamt of.


NarendraModi


For more: http://www.narendramodi.in/cm-blogs-on-birth-anniversary-of-maulana-abul-kalam-azad-and-acharya-jb-kripalani/

AAP just another front of the Congress party



 
Monday November 11, 2013, 05:53 PM

Be it Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Kashmir or the entire North East including Assam, creating and nurturing social groups with hate for the majority community has been Congress' strategy for long. The ideology of " hate for nationalist forces like BJP" also brings in a diverse bunch of congress-dummies such as BSP, SP, DMK, MIM, UDF, IUML and many such parties. 

The most unfortunate aspect of such a hate coalition is the hiring of Leftists to provide intellectual, ideological, communication and academic fire power needed to eliminate a nationalist party like BJP from the Indian political landscape. Their support system extends several foreign powers wanting to destroy the very idea of Indian nationalism. A Congress sponsored Stalin style leftist media and academic architecture is designed to unleash a vicious hate propaganda against BJP or any nationalist voice. Therefore, one sees such a hostile media manned by propagandists posing as self-styled journalists. 

The emergence of Aam Aadmi Party must be looked from the above perspective. Its functioning and control is pretty much Congress in style and substance. Appeasement of anti-BJP forces, propaganda support from Congress sponsored self-styled journalists, anchors and media houses, and - most importantly - use of dirty foreign money defines AAP as a catalyst for the making of an urban Naxalbari in Indian metros.

The AAP boss Arvind Kejriwal recently met Tauqeer Raza Khan, the controversial cleric who is charged with rioting cases. Arvind's support to such hardline elements as Khan suggests a Congress style of communal politics. AAP Cadres are mostly Student Federation of India (SFI) activists whose ideological affinity with Maoists is quite obvious. Intelligence experts must analyse commonalities between AAP and Naxals in Bengal's Naxalbari village way back in the sixties. Shocking similarities between both movements would emerge. Grossly anti-national in character, such forces land up becoming 'supari killers' for the Congress run hate coalition. In the days to come AAP would in fact become another dark ugly and violent face of congress party. 

The Congress party is sinking due to corruption, price rise and many issues, therefore it has created Aam Aadmi Party to cut its losses and proxy rule Delhi again by getting AAP to eat into BJP's victory. 

AAP's functioning for the Nehru Family is too very evident in Robert Vadra's case. The Secretary of Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee Mr Sunit Madhur runs Cicero Associates which looks after Aam Aadmi Party's propaganda. AAP has hired them for political consultancy as well. Even the AAP website is being designed and funded by Cicero Associates which has Sunit Mathur's control. 

Baring cosmetic gestures, Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravishankar and many have distanced themselves from AAP. The mobilization and support which AAP enjoyed in those days, simply fizzled out despite all out efforts by congress sponsored propaganda machines and the likes. The AAP is a congress creation to simply deflect voter attention from real issues and deceive the electorate . Delhi voters must not fall into this Congress trap called "Aam Aadmi Party" and set themselves into another era of violence, mayhem, poverty , corruption and lawlessness.

More on: http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/Chargesheet/entry/aap-just-another-front-of-the-congress-party

Saturday 9 November 2013

If Modi can't have SPG cover, so shouldn't the Gandhis

October 30, 2013 13:02 IST


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Vicky Nanjappa


There has been a raging debate over security cover for BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and the Sunday’s blasts in Patna have made this a talking point.

Even as Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde maintains that Modi doesn’t necessarily need Special Protection Group cover, he would need to answer why the government amended the SPG Act two years back to extend the security cover for Sonia and her family members.

That the Centre has resisted from deploying SPG cover for Modi, who has been on the top of the hit list of every terrorist outfit, has prompted some to believe that there could be politics at play here.
For starters, the SPG Act was brought into force after former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination. It states that SPG cover shall be given to prime ministers, former prime ministers and their near family members.

The Act further states that in the case of SPG cover is given to family members, the same shall cease to exist after the completion of 10 years.
The home ministry issued an order recently extending the SPG cover for Sonia Gandhi and her family for another 5 years.

This was done despite the Act clearly stating that the extension of an SPG cover can be granted only for a year and then onwards it needs to be reviewed periodically. However, the order regarding Sonia stated that the cover is being extended for another five years and the same had been extended to her son and daughter.

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Further, it also put Robert Vadra and his two children under Delhi Police commando security for another five years.

If one were to go by the rules, it is clear that the security cover under the SPG ought to have ended for the Congress president in 1999. She was accorded that security in 1989 as her late husband was a prime minister. However, the act was amended for her as it was felt that the threat perception was extremely high.

Former Chief of the Research and Analysis Wing, C D Sahay points out that there should be no politics where security is concerned.

“I was watching the preparations being made during the recent Rahul Gandhi rally at New Delhi. I saw Chief Minister Sheila Dixit personally inspecting the venue. I do not know if she inspected the venue in her capacity as a chief minister or as a party worker, but the fact was that the security was good and the even passed off without any glitch.
Now was there an inspection by the chief minister at Bihar?”

“While it may be expecting too much from a political opponent to inspect the venue, politics should never come into play when it comes to security. The local police had to comb the area and sanitise it and this ought to have been done irrespective of an intelligence alert of not,” Sahay points out.

More
According to security experts, even if any leader has Z plus security or is under the SPG, the state police is the one which has to do the combing operation of the venue where the leader is supposed to visit.

Both Z plus and SPG provide only body cover for the leader in question, but under no circumstance does it comb an area.

An Intelligence Bureau official, while speaking about the intelligence inputs regarding the Modi event in Patna, said: “If they want the central team to do the entire job then we need 2 lakh men on the job and if this is provided then we can collect intelligence at the village levels too. Now if the Centre decides to provide 2 lakh men and all of them are on the job, then it is the very same state government which will complain of being too intrusive.”

Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-if-modi-cant-have-spg-cover-so-shouldnt-the-gandhis/20131030.htm#1

NaMo tide is now unstoppable

Tavleen Singh 06 Nov 2013

NaMo tide is now unstoppable

When I saw our ‘secularist’ leaders gather together in Delhi last week for a conference to discuss communalism I was gripped with a disorienting sense of deja vue. Not again, I found myself saying with a silent groan, not these same old characters from long ago saying the same old things that they have been saying for such a long time without conviction and without any other motive than to try and form a Third Front once more as if to deliberately repeat history as farce.

Watching the likes of Deve Gowda, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Nitish Kumar, Sitaram Yechury, Prakash Karat and AB Bardhan stand on that stage and raise their arms up like schoolboys at some inter-school tournament made me conscious of the fact that all that had changed was that these gentlemen had aged since they last gathered together in the 1990s to form a Government headed by Deve Gowda. It was a shaky arrangement even then that would not have survived a single day without the support of the Congress and what these secularists are cooking once more is the same pulao or shall we call it khichdi?

Let me give you some context here. Ever since Narendra Modi started sweeping his way across the country gathering larger and larger crowds wherever he went panic buttons have started to be pressed in Congress headquarters. Until Modi’s rallies began the advisors of Sonia and Rahul Gandhi had convinced themselves that he was no more than a media myth that would begin to dissipate into the political wind as soon as he tried to build a base outside Gujarat. So when at that first rally in northern India in Jaipur he gathered vast crowds they comforted themselves with the thought that this was only because Rajasthan was a State in which there was a strong BJP base and Vasundhara Raje had spent eighty days on a yatra that had taken her through every district. Then, a few days later when huge crowds gathered to hear him in Rewari in Haryana, the first of the panic buttons got pressed and by the time he got to Kanpur and Patna there were so many panic buttons being pressed in Congress headquarters that it was hard to keep count of them.

It was then that realisation began to dawn that something was happening that could force the Congress out of power for the next five years and that this must be stopped at all costs. So it was that the ‘secularists’ were encouraged to band together in Delhi and raise the same tired old slogans and reiterate the same tired old political ideas that they have always spouted. The Congress has been in power long enough to know how to play every devious political game in the book and so it took them hardly any time at all to work out that if it was not going to be a Congress Government in Delhi then it would be best to have a secularist, Leftist Government because it would be as ineffectual as it was last time and this would make ordinary Indians long to have Congress and the Gandhi family back in power.

The secularists think exactly like Congress does and like most Congress socialists have paid no attention to the failure of their economic ideas in Eastern Europe, China and the former Soviet Union. They behave like people who have remained oblivious to the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, the introduction of a free market economy in China and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is as if the past two decades of history just passed them by unnoticed, as if the time warp they were in has remained secure in its cocoon of ignorance.

So at the communalism conference or the anti-communalism conference as they called it they talked of the rise of communal forces and ‘fascism’ as if the world had not changed at all. As if there was no Internet and Twitter and as if just the advent of Narendra Modi signalled the end of India as we know it, at least as they know it in the Delhi drawing rooms in which they spend most of their time. If that sounds strange to you who may believe that these worthy communists and secularists are humble people who live humbly in their desire to serve the poor then please seek an interview with them in Delhi and notice how they live. They may live in shabby fashion but they live in shabby fashion in bungalows whose market value runs into more than Rs 200 crores. The only private citizens who can afford to live in the bungalows of Lutyens’ Delhi are billionaires. Nothing has disturbed the ‘socialist’ life style of these secular Leftists since 1947 and they fear Modi because they think he threatens it.

He brings with him new slogans like ‘India First’ and new economic ideas that appear to have nothing to do with the kind of socialism they espouse so they are rightly terrified that if Modi does somehow make it to Delhi the world as they know it will come to an end. This is why it has become so urgent for them to come together in the name of secularism. This is easily done because their interests and Congress interests coincide where Modi is concerned. So will they succeed in taking us back to those times when the Government of India was led by regional leaders and namby-pamby socialists of the Inder Gujral genre? It does not seem that way but it is dangerous to make definite predictions in politics.

Modi fights a lonely battle because there are vast States like Uttar Pradesh in which the BJP barely exists as a political party any more. Under the aegis of Lal Krishna Advani, the BJP has spent the past ten years in Opposition turning itself into a bad Xerox of the Congress. For Modi to become Prime Minister he has to rely on a caboodle of so-called leaders who are as venal and ineffectual as those that sit today in the Government of India. Can he create new ideas of governance and a new dream for India with this lot? The secularists think not which is why their cries of fascism and communalism will get louder and louder as the general election draws near.

Source: http://www.niticentral.com/2013/11/06/namo-tide-is-now-unstoppable-154861.html 

Proof that Aam Aadmi Party is a Front of Congress, Survey is false

Proof that Aam Aadmi Party is a Front of Congress, Survey is false

For the past few months, we are being bombarded with a survey in which Aam Aadmi Party has claimed victory in Delhi elections. The survey was done by Yogendra Yadav, using an unknown agency called Cicero Associates & Consultants Private Limited. The numbers claimed in the survey were hard for any agency to achieve. They claimed that the survey was carried out between September 5 and October 5 among all 70 assembly constituencies, covering 1,750 polling booths and 34,425 respondents.

As a data scientist, I am quite aware that modern market research is a science and the results cannot differ much from other surveys done by reliable agencies like AC Neilson. Conducting more than 1,000 surveys in a day seemed to be a no mean feat.

The website of Cicero Associates, which was registered just on May 30, 2013, lists their address as A-166, First Floor, Defence Colony, New Delhi, Delhi, 110024. So the company did not have a public face before May 30, 2013. The snapshot of the page on that day by Archive.org lists a freshly hosted domain. I am quite familiar with Delhi and know that A-block of Defence Colony cannot house so many field agents to conduct a massive survey. So I decided to investigate.

Registrar of Companies data reveals that the authorised signatories of Cicero Associates are Sunit Kumar Madhur with the address of GA-34, Block GA, Pulpeladpur, New Delhi 110 044. The other Director is Dhananjay Joshi with the address of A-7/3 SFS Flats, Saket, New Delhi 110 017. An authorised signatory is the Karta Dharta of the company.

A simple Google Search reveals that A-166 First Floor, Defence Colony has the office of Langjobs, Interpreters India and other businesses. It certainly didn’t look like a market research entity.

Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee Site lists one of the Directors of Cicero, as a General Secretary - Shri Sunit Madhur, GA-34, Pul Pahladpur, Badarpur, New Delhi-110 044, 9311012007 as a General Secretary. His own twitter profile describes himself as: “Congress worker. Entrepreneur. Only the people who have to compromise& be pragmatic in their daily lives know the value of idealism and romanticism....”

A name and address like that is unique so both are the same set of people.

The other Director is a property dealer running a firm called Intouch Associates revealed from his profile at 99acres.com.

For Aam Aadmi Party, which is dead against Congress, it seems quite strange that it has to choose a dummy market research company, which is owned by a known Congressman to conduct a survey!
I think the real reason is that people can be quite lazy in removing the traces of truth from public data.
Aam Aadmi Party stands completely exposed. The survey surely has no element of truth.

One thing is proven that there is a hand of Congress in Aam Aadmi Party and their so-called survey. How much is the hand is hard for us to reveal at this stage but I am sure other journalists can take a cue.

Please note that a lot of information contained in the story is based upon public data. I am uploading screenshots of things that have been there at the time of printing the story. The others can always be removed in few days.

November 5th, 2013 @ 05:56pm

India Before the Coming of Islam


To say the Islamist is the Islamic adherent’s worst enemy may sound conspiratorial but it is both historically and theologically factual.

Multiple reliable historical evidence record that the spread of Islam out from the harsh temperates of Arabia into the Indian Subcontinent, to the domains of China, through Eastern and North Africa, into Europe all the way to the heartland of France; was a most overhauling, violent and uncompromising imperialist undertaking. Some of the Natives in these regions initially welcomed the intervention of Islamic rule, where they themselves were being oppressed by the tyranny of their own governments (for example in Spain). A vast many of Natives however vehemently resisted Islamic conquest. In North Africa for example, the Berbers were a thorn in the flesh of Islamic imperialists in Africa. They forced the Muslim Arabs to withdraw several times from the Maghreb. In putting up a most staunch resistance to Islamic creed, Ibn Khaldun recorded that the Berbers apostatised twelve times before Islamic rule could decisively be imposed on them. It is needless to assert the obvious that through the course of this conquest, Islamic ideology was instrumental to seditiously disarming Native institutions and weakening local ethnic ties among Berbers. Islamic imperialism was so thorough there that today, an overwhelming majority of Berbers no longer identify with their despised Native ancestral lineage nor do they consider themselves Berbers. The loyalty of majority Berbers are today invested in the Arabian Heartlands. The Berbers, now Arabian cultural slaves, are today called Arabs. Could this colonist outcome have been any different considering that it was the Arabs who were the first cultural ambassadors of Islam? Can Islamisation result in any other outcome but Arabisation?
Not only is Arabisation an inevitable outcome of the spread of fundamental Islam, but self-hate – hatred for one’s own (jahiliya) ancestral heritage – is a fundamental inevitability. The Islamic follower – the true convert to Islam – becomes tortured in mind and spirit until his homeland is purified by Islam. Quran 8:39 instructs Muslims to “fight the unbelievers until there is no more fitnah (disbelief) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone”. Thus the adherent views his un-purified homeland as a Dar al-Harb – a zone of perpetual warfare that stands in stark contrast to the idealised zone of peace that Allah calls all of mankind to. Where there is warfare against the unbeliever, slavery of the unbeliever is also permitted. To the East of Africa, in Sudan, the former Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi wrote to Mary Robinson, U.N High Commissioner for Human Rights (Section III: War Crimes – Mar 24, 1999), defending this dualistic outlook embedded in Islam. He said that:
“It is true that the NIF regime has not enacted a law to realise slavery in Sudan. But the traditional concept of jihad does allow slavery as a by-product (of jihad)… The traditional concept of jihad… is based upon a division of the world into two zones: one the zone of Peace, the other the zone of War. It requires initiating hostilities for religious purposes….”
To the South of the Sahara, Uthman Dan Fodio launched a jihad in his homeland to purify the practice of Islam there from being diluted with Animism. More recently in the 1990s, Algerian Islamist movements too took up arms and killed up to 200,000 of their own country men, in trying to stave Arabo-Islamic culture there from being sullied with their Berber African past. Africa is not a unique victim to this delirious intertwined legacy of Arabisation and Islamic imperialism. The Indian subcontinent since the advent of Islam there, witnessed the enslavement of Natives both physically and mentally, and in unprecedented heights! Prior to the invasion of Islamic conquerors and Muslim merchants, there was not a single slave market in India. Although slavery existed in India in mild forms, chattel slavery was established there by Islamic rulers. Under the sacred pretence of believing in the Muslim nationhood, Polytheist converts to Islam grew to see their homeland as a Dar al-Harb, a land of war that remained ever contemptible until purified religiously, culturally and politically! They equally went as far as demanding that their motherland be partitioned to create a separate homeland from that of the majority Polytheists. Pakistan, a country they aptly termed the “Land of the Pure” is till today riddled with a purification quest whose target has naturally shifted from purifying the land of Polytheists (of which there are now hardly any left), to a long-lasting pogrom against Shias. Regarding the persecution of Shias in Pakistan, Professor An-Na’im Author of Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Islam has repeatedly stated that Muslims are in fact happier in secular India than they are in the theocratic Pakistan which was specifically created for them. To this very day, the vestiges of pre-Islamic heritage around the world are being wiped out, in favour of institutionalising norms (language, dress sense, legalities) that were disseminated from Arabia. This mandate engineers inter-faith conflicts, genocides, mass displacements, and foreign intervention in the affairs of sovereign peoples. This is the practical implications of fundamental Islam.

Below is an excerpt from chapter VI of M. A. Khan’s stellar, factual and thoroughly researched book Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery. It records notable achievements of the Polytheist Indians prior to the coming of Islam. It also specifically details how the pre-Islamic Code of War differed from that which was introduced through Islamic rule.

©2013. Secular African Society. All Rights Reserved.

INDIA BEFORE THE COMING OF ISLAM

An advanced civilization

Prior to Muslim conquest, India was one of the world’s top civilizations with significant achievements—in science, mathematics, literature, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, architecture and so on—to its credit. Indian mathematicians conceived the mathematical concept of zero and founded the basics of algebra. The persianized Abbasid caliphs, inspired by the pre-Islamic Persian pursuit of knowledge,464 sent scholars and merchants to India for collecting documents and texts on science, mathematics, medicine and philosophy. According to Nehru, ‘In subjects, like medicine and mathematics, they learned much from India. Indian scholars and mathematicians came in large numbers to Baghdad. Many Arab students went to Takshashila in North India, which was still a great university, specializing in medicine.465

An Indian scholar brought two seminal mathematical works to Baghdad in 770. One was the Brahmasiddhanta (known to Arabs as Sindhind) of the great seventh-century Indian mathematician, Brahmagupta. It contained early ideas of algebra. In the ninth century, famous Muslim mathematician and astronomer Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi combined the Indian work with Greek geometry to found the mathematical system of algebra. Khwarizmi became known as the father of algebra. The term algorithm (or algorism), the technique of performing arithmetic calculations developed by al-Khwarizmi using Indian numerals, is the latinized version of his name. The second manuscript contained the revolutionary system of denoting number, including the concept of zero, unknown elsewhere. Muslim scholars used to call this Indian numbering system, “Indian (Hindi) numerals”; the Europeans later gave it the name, “Arabic numerals”.466 Although Muslims made significant contributions in these achievements, they often, in an act of self- gratification, claim all the credit for these plagiarized developments. Pre-Islamic India had a great tradition in creating magnificent and sensual sculptures, and building wondrous architectures. After the coming of Muslim invaders, Indian builders and craftsmen mixed Islamic ideas to their own, creating a new Indo-Islamic mosaic in the new building and architecture, which became integrated into the “heritage” of the self-declared Islamic civilization.

Alberuni (d. 1050) has recorded many of these ancient Indian achievements in his famous work, Indica, published in 1030. Arabic scholar Edward Sachau translated this book in 1880 and published under the title of Alberuni’s India (1910). Sachau writes: ‘To Alberuni, the Hindus were excellent philosophers, good mathematicians and astronomers.467 Alberuni summarizes Indian achievement in mathematics as follows:
They do not use the letter of their alphabet for numerical notation, as we use the Arabic letters in the order of Hebrew alphabet… The numerical signs which we use are derived from the finest forms of the Hindu signs…The Arabs, too, stop with the thousand, which is certainly the most correct and the most natural thing to do… Those, however, who go beyond the thousand in their numeral system, are the Hindus, at least in their arithmetical technical terms, which have been either freely invented or derived according to certain etymologies, whilst in others both methods are blended together. They extend the names of the orders of numbers until the eighteenth order for religious reasons, the mathematicians being assisted by the grammarians with all kinds of etymologies.468
According to Alberuni, Indian learning, such as the fables of Kalila and Dimna and books on medicine, including the famous Charaka, came to the Arab world, through either direct translation from Sanskrit into Arabic or through first translation into Persian, and then, from Persian into Arabic. Sachau also thinks that the influx of knowledge from India to Baghdad took place in two different phases of which, he writes:

As Sindh was under the actual rule of Khalif Mansur (753–74), there came embassies from that part of India to Baghdad, and among them scholars, who brought along with them two books, the Brahmasiddhanta of Brahmagupta, and his Khandakhadyaka (Arkanda). With the help of these pundits, Alfazari, perhaps also Yakub ibn Tarik, translated them. Both works have been largely used, and have exercised a great influence. It was on this occasion that the Arabs first became acquainted with a scientific system of astronomy. They learned from Brahmagupta earlier than from Ptolemy.469
Sachau adds that there was another influx of Hindu learning into the Arab world during the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786–808). The famous ministerial family of Barmak from Balkh, who had outwardly converted to Islam but never abandoned their ancestral crypto-Buddhist tradition after generations,
…sent scholars to India, there to study medicine and pharmacology. Besides, they engaged Hindu scholars to come to Baghdad, made them the chief physicians of their hospitals, and ordered them to translate from Sanskrit into Arabic books on medicine, pharmacology, toxicology, philosophy, astrology, and other subjects. Still in later centuries, Muslim scholars sometimes traveled for the same purposes as the emissaries of the Barmak, e.g. Almuwaffuk, not long before Alberuni’s time…470
Moreover, the Arabs also translated Indian works on many other subjects, including on snakes, poison, veterinary art, logic and philosophy, ethics, politics, and science of war. ‘Many Arab authors took up the subjects communicated to them by the Hindus and worked them out in original compositions, commentaries and extracts. A favorite subject of theirs was Indian mathematics, the knowledge of which became far spread by the publications of Alkindi and many others,’ adds Sachau.471

The eleventh-century Spanish Muslim scholar Said al-Andalusi—in his book, The Categories of Nations, on world science—acknowledges India very positively and describes it as a major center for science, mathematics and culture. The treatise recognizes India as the first nation to have cultivated science and praises Indians for their wisdom, ability in all the branches of knowledge and for making useful and rare inventions. It adds:
To their credit, the Indians have made great strides in the study of numbers and of geometry. They have acquired immense information and reached the zenith in their knowledge of the movements of the stars (astronomy) and the secrets of the skies (astrology) as well as other mathematical studies. After all that, they have surpassed all the other peoples in their knowledge of medical science and the strengths of various drugs, the characteristics of compounds and the peculiarities of substances (chemistry).472
Many early Islamic scholars (seventh–eighth century) left records of a vibrant and wealthy India, having many populous and prosperous cities (discussed below). Of the pre-Islamic civilization of India, notes Francis Watson:473
It is clear that India, at the time when Muslim invaders turned toward it (8th to 11th centuries), was the earth’s richest region for its wealth in precious and semi-precious stones, gold and silver, religion and culture, and its fine arts and letters. Tenth century Hindustan was also far more advanced than its contemporaries in the East and the West for its achievements in the realms of speculative philosophy and scientific theorizing, mathematics and knowledge of nature’s workings. Hindus of the early medieval period were unquestionably superior in more things than the Chinese, the Persians (including the Sassanians), the Romans and the Byzantines of the immediate proceeding centuries. The followers of Siva and Vishnu on this subcontinent had created for themselves a society more mentally evolved—joyous and prosperous too—than had been realized by the Jews, Christians, and Muslim monotheists of the time. Medieval India, until the Islamic invaders destroyed it, was history’s most richly imaginative culture and one of the five most advanced civilizations of all times.

Look at the Hindu art that Muslim iconoclasts severely damaged or destroyed. Ancient Hindu sculpture is vigorous and sensual in the highest degree—more fascinating than human figurative art created anywhere else on earth. (Only statues created by classical Greek artists are in the same class as Hindu temple sculpture). Ancient Hindu temple architecture is the most awe- inspiring, ornate and spell-binding architectural style found anywhere in the world. (The Gothic art of the cathedrals in France is the only other religious architecture that is comparable with the intricate architecture of Hindu temples). No artist of any historical civilization has ever revealed the same genius as ancient Hindustan’s artists and artisans.
The ancient Greeks undoubtedly had made greater contributions in science, medicine and philosophy than other ancient civilizations, but India was definitely a leading civilization in all spheres of intellectual achievements.

A tolerant and humane society

Apart from India’s intellectual and scientific achievements, Said al-Andalusi noted: ‘The Indians, as known to all nations for many centuries, are the metal (essence) of wisdom, the source of fairness and objectivity. They are peoples of sublime pensiveness, universal apologue…’ Indeed, India was not only a distinguished civilization in its achievements in science, literature, philosophy, arts, and architecture but also had distinguished itself from the invading Muslims in terms of its humanity, chivalry and ethical behavior. Prior to Islamic invasions, Hindu kings and princes of India used to engage in wars, like in any major civilization of the time, but such wars were relatively infrequent. Affirming this, Muslim traveler Merchant Sulaiman writes in his Salsilatut Tawarikh (851): ‘The Indians sometimes go to war for conquest, but the occasions are rare.’ Ibn Battutah, while traveling with Sultan Muhammad Tughlaq’s diplomatic convoy to the Chinese emperor, was surprised to observe that the Hindu rulers of Malabar showed great respect for each other’s territory and exercised restraint against warfare. In Malabar, he wrote, ‘there are twelve infidel sultans, some of them strong with armies numbering fifty thousand men, and others weak with armies of three thousand. Yet there is no discord whatever between them and the strong does not desire to seize the possessions of the weak.474 Muslim invaders had unfurled continuous warfare in India (and everywhere else) not only against the Hindus but amongst themselves; there were ceaseless revolts by Muslim generals, chiefs and princes all over India during their entire period of Islamic rule. Battutah’s astonishment is then quite understandable. Sulaiman adds that the Indian kings even did not maintain troops in regular pays. They used to be paid only when they were called in for fighting. Once the war is over, ‘They then come out (to civilian life), and maintain themselves without receiving anything from the king.’475

Indians used to observe high ethical conventions and behavior in times of both peace and war. Wars and battles were normally limited to the martial class, the kshatriyyas, of opposing parties, who used to clash mostly in open battle-fields. They used to follow a code of honor and sacrificing it for the sake of victory or material gain was deemed a shame worse than death. Even famous Muslim historian Al-Idrisi wrote that Hindus never departed from justice (discussed below). The religious teachers and priests and the non- combatants, particularly the women and children, were normally left unmolested in wars. Religious symbols and establishments—namely temples, churches and monasteries—and civilian habitations were generally not attacked, pillaged and plundered. War booty, a major divinely-sanctioned object of the Islamic holy war, was not a part of war and conquest in pre-Islamic India. The women of the defeated side were normally not captured or their chastity not violated, contrary to the practice in other contemporaneous civilizations—China and Greece, for example.

Merchant Sulaiman affirms some of these ethical conducts of Indian wars. He says: ‘When a king subdues a neighboring state, he places over it a man belonging to the family of the fallen prince, who carried on the government in the name of the conqueror. The inhabitants would not suffer it to be otherwise.476 The tenth-century Muslim chronicler, Abu Zaidu-l Hasan, wrote about the conquest of the kingdom of Kumar (Khmer) by the Maharaja of Zabaj (Srivijaya or Java).477 The young, haughty prince of Kumar had expressed his desire to conquer Zabaj and hearing this, the king of Zabaj attacked the Kumar kingdom. After the Maharaja seized the palace of Kumar and killed the prince, ‘He then made a proclamation assuring safety to everyone, and seated himself on the throne.’ He then addressed the wazir (chief minister) of Kumar that,
‘I know that you have borne yourself like a true minister; receive now the recompense of your conduct. I know that you have given good advice to your master if he would but have headed it. Seek out a man fit to occupy the throne, and seat him thereon instead of this foolish fellow.’ The Maharaja then returned immediately to his country, and neither he nor any of his men touched anything belonging to the king of Kumar.478
The ancient Greek traveler and historian Megasthenes (c. 350–290 BCE) recorded his observation of the peculiar traits of Indian warfare during his visit to India. Alain Danielou has summarized his observations as follows:

Whereas among other nations it is usual, in the contests of war, to ravage the soil and thus to reduce it to an uncultivated waste; among the Indians, on the contrary, by whom husbandmen are regarded as a class that is sacred and inviolable, the tillers of the soil, even when battle is raging in their neighborhood, are undisturbed by any sense of danger, for the combatants on either side in waging the conflict make carnage of each other, but allow those engaged in husbandry to remain quite unmolested. Besides, they never ravage an enemy’s land with fire, nor cut down its trees.479
Prof. Arthur Basham (d. 1986), the leading authority on ancient Indian culture and Oriental civilizations, writes about ancient Indian codes of war that ‘In all her history of warfare, Hindu India has few tales to tell of cities put to the sword or of the massacre of non-combatants. The ghastly sadism of the kings of Assyria, who flayed their captives alive, is completely without parallel in ancient India. To us the most striking feature of ancient Indian civilization is its humanity.’480 Hiuen Tsang, a seventh-century Buddhist pilgrim from China to Nalanda University, recorded that the country was little injured despite enough rivalries between the ruling princes of India. Faxian, a fourth-century Chinese pilgrim to India, marveled at the peace, prosperity, and high culture of Indians. Having grown up in war-torn China, says Linda Johnson, he was deeply impressed by a land whose leaders were more concerned with promoting commerce and religion than with slaughtering substantial portion of the population.481

Muslim code of war

It is evident from the discussion so far that the Islamic invaders of India brought a totally different code of war, based on the Quran and the Sunnah. Contemporary Muslim historians inform us that, as a general rule, they used to slay all enemy soldiers on the battlefield. After the victory, they often fell upon the civilian villages and towns often slaughtering the men of fighting age. They sacked and plundered the households for booty, and sometimes burned down the villages and towns. Of the civilian population, the Buddhist monks and priestly Brahmins, in whom the common people reposed their trust, became special targets for extermination. The centers of infidel religion and learning—namely Hindu and Jain temples, Buddhist monasteries, Sikh Gurdwaras and indigenous educational institutions—were their prime targets for desecration, destruction and plunder. The women and children were captured as slaves in large numbers. They kept the young and beautiful women captives as sex-slaves, others were engaged in household chores, and the rest were sold. The magnitude of the booty, the captives included, was a measure of the glory and success of military missions; this is reflected in their glorifying narratives by leading medieval Muslim historians. When large numbers of infidels were slain, Sultan Muhammad Ghauri, Qutbuddin Aibak and Emperor Babur et al. used to raise “victory-towers” with their heads to celebrate the achievement. Sultan Ahmad Shah Bahmani (1422–36) of the Deccan Sultanate attacked the Vijaynagar kingdom, in which records Ferishtah, ‘wherever he went he put to death men, women and children without mercy, contrary to the compact (not to molest civilians) made between his uncle and predecessor Mahomed Shah and the Rays of Beejanuggar. Whenever the number of slain amounted to twenty thousand, he halted three days and made a festival in celebration of the bloody event. He broke down also the idolatrous temples and destroyed the colleges of the Brahmins.’482 The Muslim invaders and rulers committed all these barbaric acts for the sake of Islamic holy war in the cause of Allah as commanded in the Quran and prophetic examples. The Prophet’s attack of the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza of Medina (627) or the Jews of Khaybar (628) and his manner of dealing with them served as an ideal example for emulation by later holy warriors of Islam.

The contrast between the Hindu and Islamic codes of war was clearly exhibited in Sultan Muhammad Ghauri’s attack on King Prithviraj Chauhan of Delhi and Ajmer (1191). Muhammad Ghauri was defeated and captured in his first attack. Despite his many brutal attacks on the northern borders of India, involving mass murder, enslavement, plunder and pillage, Prithviraj Chauhan forgave and honorably released the aggressor without inflicting any punishment or humiliation. Within a few months, Ghauri regrouped and attacked Prithviraj again defeating the chivalrous Hindu King.483 Muhammad Ghauri repaid Prithviraj’s earlier generosity by pulling out his eyes before killing him.484

Further evidence of the contrast between the Hindu and Muslim codes of war comes from Ferishtah’s narration of Deccan Sultan Muhammad Shah’s attack against King Krishna Ray of Vijaynagar kingdom in 1366. Muhammad Shah had vowed to slaughter 100,000 infidels in the attack and ‘the massacre of the unbelievers was renewed in so relentless a manner that pregnant women and children at the breast even did not escape the sword,’ records Ferishtah.485 The Muslim army in a treacherous surprise-attack put Krishna Ray on the flight and 10,000 of his soldiers were slain. Muhammad Shah’s ‘thirst for vengeance being still unsatisfied, he commanded the inhabitants of every place around Vijaynagar to be massacred,’ records Ferishtah.

Krishna Ray dispatched ambassadors to make peace, which Muhammad Shah refused. Thereupon, one of the Sultan’s favorite advisor reminded him that ‘he had only sworn to slaughter one hundred thousand Hindus, and not to destroy their race altogether.’ The sultan replied that ‘twice the number required by this vow might have been slain,’ yet he was neither willing to make peace nor spare the subjects.486 This means that nearly 200,000 people were slaughtered in this campaign. The ambassadors were, at length, able to conclude peace by paying a large sum of money on the spot and pleaded with the Sultan to let them speak. According to Ferishtah, ‘Being permitted to speak, they observed that no religion required the innocent to be punished for the crimes of the guilty (kings), more especially helpless women and children: if Krishn Ray had been in fault, the poor and feeble inhabitants had not been accessory to his errors. Mahomed Shah replied that decrees of Providence (i.e., from Allah such as in Quran 9:5 to slaughter the idolaters) had been ordered what had been done, and that he had no power to alter them.’ At length, the ambassadors were able to rouse a humane sense in Muhammad Shah, as adds Ferishtah, ‘(he) took an oath that he would not, hereafter, put to death a single enemy after a victory, and would bind his successors to observe the same line of conduct.’487 On the contrast between the Hindu and Islamic codes of war, John Jones observes: ‘It is a curious fact that the hideous and bloody monster of religious intolerance was hardly known in India until, first the followers of Mohammed and secondly, the disciples of the meek and lowly Jesus (i.e. Portuguese), began to invade the land.’488 Arthur Schopenhauer (d. 1860), one of the greatest nineteenth-century philosophers, narrates the sordid tale of the Islamic invasion of India as follows: ‘…the endless persecutions, the religious wars, that sanguinary frenzy of which the ancients (of India) had no conception! The destruction or disfigurement of the ancient temples and idols, a lamentable, mischievous and barbarous act still bears witness to the monotheistic fury… carried on from Mahmud, the Ghaznevid of cursed memory, down to Aurangzeb… We hear nothing of this kind in the case of the Hindoo.’489 English novelist Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), in likening the atrocious history of Islam with that of later Christianity, wrote in Ends and Means:
It is an extremely significant fact that, before the coming of the Mohammedans, there was virtually no persecution in India. The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who visited India in the first half of the seventh century and has left a circumstantial account of his 14 years in the country, makes it clear that Hindus and Buddhist lived side by side without any show of violence. Neither Hinduism nor Buddhism is disgraced by anything corresponding to the Inquisition; neither was ever guilty of such iniquities as the Albigensian crusade or such criminal lunacies as the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries.490
Indisputably, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism arose in India as a revolt against Hinduism. Although Hinduism had its shortcomings, these new religious off-shoots grew from the midst of the Hindu society without facing any persecution of the type Islam brought to India or meted out to its revolting heretics throughout Islam’s history. The Christian persecution and brutality caused death of millions of Pagans, Jews, heretics, apostates and witches in Europe, South America and India’s Goa. In Islam, Prophet Muhammad himself had ordered execution of critics and apostates of Islam, while the killing and torture of apostates and heretics have continued ever since to this day. It should be noted that Buddhism was a flourishing religion in Central and Southeast Asia and was quite vigorous in parts of India at the time of Islam’s birth. Islam has nearly extinguished this most humane and peaceful ancient religious creed from India. It extinguished Paganism from Arabia by the sword in the life-time of Muhammad. Zoroastrianism in Persia and Christianity in the Levant, Egypt, and Anatolia etc. have suffered near extinction caused by the violent exertions of Islam. It should be noted that, to escape the brutal persecution of Islam, tens of thousands of Zoroastrians (Persis) fled to India, where—welcomed by the Hindu society—they live as a peaceful and well-off community till today. However, they suffered Islamic persecution in India too, after the Muslim invaders later occupied India. Sultan Ibrahim, a Ghaznivid descendent of Sultan Mahmud, marched to India; and according to historian Nizamuddin Ahmad, the author of Tabakat-I Akbari,he conquered many towns and forts, and amongst them were a city exceedingly populous, inhabited by a tribe of Khurasani descent (Persis), whom Afrasiyah had expelled from their native country. It was completely reduced… he took away no less than 100,000 captives.491

Indian tolerance in the eyes of Muslim chroniclers

The humanity, tolerance and chivalry of Indians also caught the attention of Muslim historians. The Arab geographer Abu Zaid wrote of the rulers and people of Sarandib (Sri Lanka), an extension of Indian civilization, that in late ninth century, ‘There are numerous colonies of Jews in Sarandib, and people of other religions, especially Manicheans. The King allows each sect to follow its own religion.’492 Al-Masudi, a famous Muslim historian and traveler, writing in the early tenth century, describes the disposition of the most powerful Indian king, Balhara, toward Muslim settlers of his kingdom. He placed Balhara (Rashtrakuta dynasty, South India) in the same league of the world’s three greatest monarchs: the caliph of Baghdad, the emperors of China and Constantinople.493 On Balhara’s treatment of Muslims, noted al-Masudi: ‘Of all the kings of Sindh and India, there is no one who pays greater respect to the Musalmans than Balhara. In his Kingdom, Islam is honored and protected.’494 Al-Masudi’s description (916–17) of a large Muslim community near Bombay, created by Arabian and Iraqi pepper and spice traders who had settled there, is already noted. This Muslim community was ‘granted a degree of political autonomy by the local raja’ and they ‘intermarried considerably with the local population.’495 About the status of Muslims in Balhara’s kingdom, al-Istahkri wrote (c. 951): ‘It is a land of infidels, but there are Musalmans in its cities and none but the Musalmans rule them on the part of Balhara.’496

Ibn Haukal—renowned tenth-century Arab traveler and geographer and the author of famous treatise, Surat al-Ardh or The face of the Earth (977)—observed while traveling in the region between Cambay and Saimur that ‘The inhabitants were idolaters, but the Musalmans were treated with great consideration by the native princes. They were governed by the men of their own faith… They had erected their mosques in these infidel cities and were allowed to summon their congregations by the usual mode of proclaiming the time of prayer.’497 Al-Idrisi also gives a similar account of the treatment of Muslims in the territory of Balhara: ‘The town is frequented by large number of Musalman traders who go on business. They are honorably received by the king and his ministers and find protection and safety.’ Al-Idrisi continues: ‘The Indians are naturally inclined to justice, and never depart from it in their actions. Their good faith, honesty, and fidelity to their engagements are well known, and they are so famous for these qualities that people flock to their country from every side.’ He was further impressed by Indian’s “love of truth and horror of vice”.498 Even modern Muslim historian Habibullah states that ‘Muslims were treated by the Hindus with generosity and respect and allowed them freedom, even to govern themselves.’499

These ethical principles of Indians were rooted in its civilizational value system. King Ashoka seemed to have deviated from these principles in his ambition to become a great conqueror. However, he was left devastated by the casualties that occurred in the conquest of Kalinga, in which about 100,000 soldiers and commoners died. Subsequently, he became a great humanist and used to feel frightened by wars; he became an avowed anti-war activist. Killing the infidels in large numbers by Muslim conquerors was a common occurrence, generally glorified by Muslims at all levels—including by most of their greatest intellectuals.

Evidently, the Indian rulers showed generosity, humanity and chivalry toward Muslims, despite suffering terrible cruelty at the hands of ruthless Muslim invaders. This generosity and chivalry was demonstrated very early, when the Hindus revolted and ousted the Muslim rulers from Sindhan during the reign of Caliph Al-Mutasim (833–42). Despite suffering so much slaughter, destruction, pillage, enslavement and defilement of their temples over two centuries, the Hindus ‘respected the mosque, which the Musalmans of the town visited every Friday, for the purpose of the reading of usual offices and praying for the Khalif.’500

Tolerance & chivalry of Hindu rulers during the Muslim period

Indian rulers exercised the principle of Hindu tolerance, generosity and chivalry toward Muslims well into the last days of Islamic domination; by this time, Muslim invaders had inflicted terrible cruelty upon the Hindus and destruction of their religion for nearly a millennium in some parts. During the period of the Muslim rule in India, courageous Indian princes and commoners, revolting against the Muslim invaders, occasionally curved out Hindu kingdoms. Vijaynagar was one such Hindu kingdom (1336–1565) in South India (Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala). Constantly under attack by Muslim rulers, sometimes it exercised independence, and paid tribute to Muslim overlords at other times. Still, Vijaynagar rose to be one of the greatest empires in the world of the time. Abdur-Razzak of Herat, who came to Vijaynagar in 1443 as an envoy of the Mongol Khan of Central Asia, wrote, ‘‘The city is such that eyes has not seen nor ear heard of any place resembling it upon the whole earth.’’501 Paes, a Portuguese traveler, visiting Vijaynagar in 1522, found it ‘‘large as Rome and very beautiful to the sight’’; it was ‘‘the best-provided city in the world… for the state of the city is not like other cities, which often fails of supplies and provisions, for in this everything abounds.’’502 As goes the legend, it was ‘a kingdom so rich that pearls and rubies were sold in the market- place like grain,’ notes Naipaul.503 Razzak’s eyewitness account somewhat affirms this legend, saying: ‘The jewellers sell their rubies and pearls and diamonds and emeralds openly in the bazar.’504 In late 1564, four neighboring Muslim sultanates joined hands to destroy the great Hindu civilization of Vijaynagar that had lasted over 200 years. In a five-month seize, it was burnt to ashes in January 1565. English historian Robert Sewell noted of the destruction that ‘‘so splendid a city; teaming with a wealthy and industrious population in the full plentitude of prosperity… seized, pillaged and reduced to ruins, amid scenes of savage massacre and horrors begging description.’’505 On the massacre and pillage of the fleeing Hindus, notes Ferishtah, ‘the river was dyed red with their blood. It is computed by the best of authorities that above one hundred thousand infidels were slain during the action and in the pursuit. The plunder was so huge that every private man in the allied army became rich in gold, jewels, tents, arms, horses, and slaves…506

Let us return to the tolerance of the Vijaynagar kings. In order to fortify his army to stave off Muslim attacks, King Dev Raya II (1419–49), records Ferishtah, ‘gave orders to enlist Mussulmans (of his kingdom) in his service, allotting them estates, and erecting a mosque for their use in the city of Beejanuggar (Vijaynagar). He also commanded that no one should molest them in the exercise of their religion and moreover, he ordered a Koran to be placed before his throne on a rich desk, so that the faithful (Muslims) can perform their ceremony of obeisance in his presence without sinning against their laws.507 However, this tolerance and promotion of treacherous Muslims in the army eventually proved costly for Vijaynagar, the only standing Hindu civilization in India. By the mid-sixteenth century, Muslims had become a significant force in the army. When the confederate force of the surrounding sultanates attacked Vijaynagar in 1564–65, two large Muslim battalions, each having 70,000–80,000 soldiers, deserted King Ramraja. Because of these two Muslim commanders’ treachery, Ramraja fell into Muslim hands. Sultan Hussein Nizam Shah ordered his beheading immediately. This led to the collapse of Vijaynagar, noted Caesar Frederick, who visited the place two years later in 1567.508

It should, however, be acknowledged that some degree of intolerance had been sinking in Ramraja’s army. He had become very powerful and started capturing domains from the neighboring Muslim sultanates, threatening latter’s existence. In the course of incursions into Muslim domains, his forces started paying in the same coin as Muslims had been doing ever since they started attacking India in the 630s, and more importantly, against Vijaynagar over the previous 200 years. His forces started disrespecting mosques, offering Hindu prayers in them and even destroyed some; they even violated Muslim women in the 1558 attack of Ahmednagar, ruled by Hussein Nizam Shah, records Ferishtah.509 However, these sacrilegious acts, it appears, were not approved by the Hindu monarch. On one occasion, his Muslim soldiers sacrificed a cow—sacred to Hindus—in the Turukvada area in Vijaynagar offending the Hindus. Ramraja’s offended officers and nobles, including his own brother Tirumala, petitioned to him about the sacrilege. To be noted that even today a similar offence against Islam in a Muslim-majority country, say in Bangladesh or Pakistan, will incite Muslim mobs to violence, even probably bloodbath. Ramraja, however, refused to prohibit the sacrifice of cows by his Muslim soldiers, saying that, it will not be right to interfere in their religious practices and that he was only the master of the bodies of his soldiers, not of their souls.510

During the reign of fanatic Aurangzeb (d. 1707) toward the end of the Islamic domination in India, his Maratha opponent Shivaji was consolidating power and expanding his kingdom. When Shivaji started incursions into Mughal territories in the South, Aurangzeb, still a prince, wrote to his general Nasiri Khan and other officers to enter Shivaji’s territory from all sides for ‘wasting the villages, slaying the people without pity and plundering them to the extreme,’ records Qabil Khan in Adab-i-Alamgiri. They were further instructed to show no mercy in slaying and enslaving,511 an age-old Muslim practice. But Shivaji, a deeply religious man, never indulged in extreme cruelty and violence in kind. Even his inveterate critic Khafi Khan, in his Muntakhab-ul-Lubab, could not but admire Shivaji’s lofty ideals in saying: ‘But he (Shivaji) made it a rule that whenever his followers were plundering, they should not do harm to the mosques, the Book of God (Quran), or the women of anyone.’512

Shivaji put his words in actions too. Despite the fact that Muslim rulers used to enslave the Hindu women in tens of thousands and reduce them to sex-slavery, he abstained from such abhorrent practices even defying the temptation of very beautiful captive women. One of his officers had captured a beautiful Muslim girl in 1657 and presented her to Shivaji. Shivaji praised her as prettier than his own mother Jija Bai, honorably gave her dresses and ornaments, and sent her back to her people, escorted by 500 horsemen.513 Obviously, such acts of chivalry made Khafi Khan appreciate his hated enemy.

Shivaji also made good of his promise to respect the religious institutions and symbols of all, including Muslim’s. Despite the fact that, his opponent Aurangzeb destroyed thousands of Hindu temples— more than 200 in 1979 alone, Shivaji scrupulously refrained from defiling Muslim mosques, madrasas or shrines. Instead, he was very respectful of them. He particularly venerated the Sufis, and even provided them subsistence and build khanqah for them at this own cost. Notably, Baba Yakut of Keloshi was one such Sufi saint who had received Shivaji’s succor.514
Shivaji refrained from excessive bloodbath as well. While Muslim invaders and rulers quite commonly slaughtered the Hindus in tens of thousands—even tolerant and humane Akbar massacred 30,000 surrendered peasants in Chittor (1568), Shivaji never engaged in such cold-blooded mass-murder of his opponents captured in wars. When he attacked Surat in 1664, its Mughal governor Inayat Khan fled and the 500-strong Muslim army was taken prisoner. From his hiding place, Inayat Khan sent an envoy to negotiate peace, in the guise of which the envoy unsuccessfully fell upon Shivaji with a concealed dagger. Seeing the treachery and thinking that Shivaji was slain, his soldiers raised a cry to kill the Muslim prisoners. Shivaji stood up from the ground quickly and forbade any massacre. The enraged Shivaji, however, quenched his anger by putting four prisoners to death, amputated hands of twenty-four and spared the rest.515 Such vengeance was, however, rare for him; it was obviously highly restrained, even more restrained than that of the later British mercenaries.

In his administration, notes Jadunath Sarkar, he ‘brought peace and order to his country, assured the protection of women’s honor and the religion of all sects without distinction, extended the royal patronage to the truly pious men of all creeds (Muslims included), and presented equal opportunities to all his subjects by opening the public service to talent, irrespective of caste or creed.516 An illiterate and deeply religious orthodox Hindu—Shivaji’s even-handed, tolerant and just policy toward his heterogeneous mix of citizens, that included Muslims, was unthinkable in his days of Muslim-ruled India.

However, Shivaji engaged in raiding and plundering of the territory of his sworn Muslim enemies. Based in a part of India, in which ‘rice cultivation was impossible and wheat and barley grow in very small quantities,’ Shivaji had little choice. He told the Surat governor of Aurangzeb in this regard that ‘Your Emperor has forced me to keep an army for the defence of my people and country. That army must be paid for by his subjects.517 This justification will probably not stand for all of his raids. He was ambitious of establishing a native Hindu kingdom opposed to the persecuting, discriminatory foreign Muslim rulers; his raids were definitely aimed at achieving this goal, too. Nonetheless, whatever defects he had in his actions, he was no match for the plundering activities of his Muslim counterparts and the persecution, discrimination and humiliation the latter meted out to their non-Muslim subjects.

These examples, which come mainly from the writings of Muslim historians, clearly testify to the humane, chivalrous, tolerant and free nature of the Indian society, conspicuously different from what the Muslim invaders and rulers had brought in their trail. Many Muslim historians and non-Muslim observers in the late period of Muslim rule also affirmed this. In praise of Indians, Abul Fazl, the minister of Emperor Akbar, wrote: ‘‘The inhabitants of this land are religious, affectionate, hospitable, genial, and frank. They are fond of scientific pursuits, inclined to austerity of life, seekers after justice, contended, industrious, capable in affairs, loyal, truthful and constant…’’ In the Vijaynagar kingdom, noted Duarte Barbosa, ‘‘every man may come and go, and live according to his creed without suffering any annoyance, and without enquiring whether he is a Christian, Jew, Moor (Muslim) or Heathen. Great equity and justice is observed by all.’’ Mulla Badaoni, a relatively bigoted chronicler of Akbar’s court, failed to deny the freedom and tolerance that existed in Indian society as he wrote: ‘‘Hindustan is a nice place where everything is allowed, and no one cares for another (i.e., not interferes in others’ affairs) and people may go as they may.’’518

Coming to such a land of humanity, freedom and tolerance, the Muslim invaders committed utmost slaughter and cruelty; they killed tens of millions and enslaved a greater number. They destroyed temples in the thousands and looted and plundered India’s wealth in measures beyond imagination as recorded by contemporary Muslim historians with gloating joy. Kanhadde Prabandha, an Indian chronicler, leaves an eyewitness account of the activities of Islamic invaders (1456) as thus: ‘‘The conquering army burnt villages, devastated the land, plundered people’s wealth, took Brahmins and children and women of all classes captive, flogged with thongs of raw hide, carried a moving prison (of captives) with it, and converted the prisoners into obsequious Turks.’’519 Such barbarism Muslim invaders committed with the purpose of carrying out their religious duty. The orthodox Ulema as well as the Sufi divines often condemned the Muslim rulers for their failure to put a complete end to the filth of idolatry and unbelief in India. For example, Qazi Mughisuddin reminded Sultan Alauddin that ‘Hindus were deadliest foes of the true Prophet,’ who must be annihilated or subjected to worst degradation.520

The ruthless and relentless savagery and massacre of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains, committed by Muslim invaders and rulers in India, will surpass the massacre of South American heathens by the Spanish and Portuguese invaders. Of the estimated ninety million natives in the continental Latin America in 1492, only twelve million survived after a century.521 The overwhelming majority of these deaths resulted from European and African diseases—namely the “childhood diseases” like measles, diphtheria and whooping cough as well as smallpox, falciparum malaria and yellow fever—involuntarily brought by the colonists. The native people lacked acquired immunity to these foreign diseases, which caused huge numbers of death.

Within a century, most of the people of the lowland tropical regions were literally wiped out, while as high as 80 percent of the highland population of Andes and Middle America also died from these diseases.522 Nonetheless, the colonists also killed the Pagan natives, probably in the millions, often on religious grounds. The Europeans, too, did not have acquired immunity to falciparum malaria and yellow fever of African origin; they also died in large numbers from these diseases contracted from African slaves brought to the Americas.

Based on historical documentation and circumstantial evidence, Prof. KS Lal estimates that the population of India stood at about 200 million in 1000 and it dwindled to only 170 millions in 1500, in spite of the passage of five centuries.523 Between sixty and eighty million people died at the hands of Muslim invaders and rulers between 1000 and 1525, estimates Lal. The possibility of annihilation of such a large number of Indians by Muslim invaders and rulers may appear a suspect. However, in the war of independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the Pakistani army killed 1.5 to 3.0 million people in just nine months. It occurred in our modern age of flourishing journalism, but the world hardly took a notice of it. Moreover, a large number of the victims in this case were their co-religionists, the Muslims of East Pakistan. Hence, it is entirely possible that Muslim invaders and rulers, who came with the mission of extirpating idolatry from India, could easily have slaughtered as many as eighty million Indian infidels over a period of ten centuries in such a vast land.

References

464. Patronized by the pre-Islamic Sassanian kings of Persia, the great Nestorian learning centre of Jundhishpur had become a flourishing centre for translating the ancient works of Greek, Indian and other origin. Under king Khosro I (531–579), it had become a melting pot of Syrian, Persian and Indian scholars. Khosro I sent his own physician to India in search of medical books. These were then turned from Sanskrit into Pahlavi (Middle Persian), and many other scientific works were translated from Greek into Persian or Syriac.
465. Nehru (1989), p. 151 466. Eaton (2000), p. 29
467. Sachau, Preface, p. XXX
468. Ibid, p. 160–61
469. Ibid, p. XXXIII
470. Ibid, p. XXXIII-XXXIV
471. Ibid, p. XXXVI
472. al-Andalusi S (1991) Science in the Medieval World: Book of the Categories of Nations, Translated by Salem SI and Kumar A, University of Texas Press, Chapter 5.
473. Watson & Hiro, p. 96
474. Gibb, p. 232
475. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. I, p. 7
476. Ibid
477. The Southeast Asian kingdoms of Srivijaya, Java and Khmer were then an extension of the Indian civilization with a firmly rooted Hindu-Buddhist religious influence. The famous Muslim historian al-Masudi had met Zaidu-l Hasan in Basra in 916, reproduced this story in his Meadows of Gold.
478. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. I, p. 8–9
479. Danielou, p. 106
480. Basham AL (2000) The Wonder That Was India, South Asia Books, Columbia, p. 8–9 481. Johnson L (2001) Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hinduism, Alpha Books, New York, p. 38 482. Ferishtah, Vol. II, p. 248
483. Dutt, KG, The Modern Face of Ang Kshetra, Tribune India, 17October 1998
484. Prithviraj III, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prithviraj_Chauhan
485. Ferishtah, Vol. II, p. 195
486. Ibid, p. 196–97
487. Ibid, p. 197
488. Jones JP (1915) India – Its Life and Thought, The Macmillan Company, New York, p. 166
489. Saunders TB (1997) The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Book I : Wisdom of Life, De Young Press, p. 42–43
490. Swarup R (2000) On Hinduism Reviews and Reflections, Voice of India, p. 150–51 491. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. V, p. 559
492. Ibid, Vol. I, p. 10
493. Nehru (1989), p. 210
494. Ibid, p. 24
495. Eaton (1978), p. 13
496. Ibid, p. 27
497. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. I, p. 457
498. Ibid, p. 88
499. Sharma, p. 89
500. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. I, p. 450
501. Ibid, Vol. IV, p. 106
502. Nehru (1989), p. 258
503. Naipaul VS (1977) India: A Wounded Civilization, Alfred A Knopf Inc., New York, p. 5
504. Elliot & Dawson, Vol. IV, p. 107
505. Nehru (1989), p. 259
506. Ferishtah, Vol. III, p. 79
507. Ibid, p. 266
508. Majumdar RC ed. (1973) The Mughal Empire, in The History and Culture of the Indian People, Bombay, Vol. VII, p. 425
509. Ferishtah, Vol. III, p. 72,74
510. Journal of the Bombay Brach of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. XXII, p. 28
511. Sarkar J (1992) Shibaji and His Times, Orient Longham, Mumbai, p. 39
512. Ghosh SC (2000) The History of Education in Medieval India 1192-1757, Originals, New Delhi, p. 122
513. Sarkar, p. 43
514. Sarkar, p. 288; Ghosh, p. 122
515. Sarkar, p. 76
516. Ibid, p. 302
517. Ibid, p. 2,290
518. Lal (1994), p. 29
519. Goel SR (1996) Story of Islamic Imperialism in India, South Asia Books, Columbia (MO), p. 41–42
520. Lal (1999), p. 113
521. Elst, p. 8
522. Curtin PD (1993) The Tropical Atlantic of the Slave Trade, In M Adas ed., Islam & European Expansion, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, p. 172.
523. Lal (1973), p. 25–32

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