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Dr Manmohan Singh during his recent visit to England paid a handsome tribute to British Administration during the period of British rule in India. His visit coincided with the murderous attacks by Muslim extremists on different parts of London city resulting in great loss of life and property. The British Government has proved him right by taking stringent action against the terrorists without making any political distinction between `minority rights` and `majority rights`. The British Government has given a clear message that anything can be a matter of negotiation excepting anti-national and anti-social terrorism. The situation in India is both ghastly and tragic where the policemen on the spot are expected to lay down their lives for the country and the politicians in authority reserve the Divine Right to go to and fro with gay abandon like Mughal emperors, from multiple points of vacillation and oscillation for indefinite procrastination. Aldous Huxley in `Ends and Means` succinctly described this type of disastrous situation in another context: `The claims of national society have always, as a matter of brute fact, been identified with the claims of a ruling oligarchy.` The present state of anarchy in India is a direct political outcome of what can be called `The UPA Oligarchy`. In that wobbly system, oligarchy and anarchy are bound each to each with a `secular` fervour.

The time has come for a new Mahatma Gandhi to emerge on the national scene to launch a new national democratic movement, within the framework of existing law, called `QUIT UPA GOVERNMENT IN INDIA`. The UPA Government is wedded to the philosophy of minority fundamentalism in a manner which threatens the internal security of India. Sporadic or organised acts of violence by minorities, more precisely by the disgruntled militant Muslims, are viewed with `secular` compassion and consideration, treating them as minority rights.

The congress party during the last 50 years has used terms like `Fundamentalism` and `Secularism` like disposable condoms depending upon the political exigencies of the moment and the harsh realities of ground level partisan electoral politics in different States from time to time. I am not very sure whether any one in the Congress party knows the real difference between these two terms. Hindus have been noted for their tolerance and broadmindedness from times immemorial. It is the Congress Party which has given the message of minority fundamentalism and majority isolationalism under the mischievous umbrella of `secularism` which was cleverly introduced by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as a political talking point after independence and which was given legal sanctity by Indira Gandhi through the 42nd Amendment to the Indian Constitution.

The tragic fact of modern history is that the seeds of Government-sponsored fundamentalism in post-independent India were sown in an unintended manner by the great Mahatma Gandhi who, out of his deathless idealism and burning desire for uniting the Muslims and Hindus for reaching the goal of `Swaraj`, agreed to lead the Khilafat Movement (1919-1924). The Turkish Sultans had claimed to be the caliphs of the Muslim world for over four centuries. As long as the Mughal Empire had been in existence, the Muslims of India had not recognized their claim.

Tipu Sultan was the first Indian Muslim who, having been frustrated in his attempts to gain recognition from the Mughals, had turned to the Sultan of Turkey to establish a legal right to his throne. After the deportation of Bahadur Shah in 1858, when the Muslims of the Sub-continent had no sovereign ruler of their own, they began to see the necessity of recognizing the Sultan of Turkey as their caliph. The European powers had played a leading role in reducing the might of Turkey in Europe to Eastern Thrace, Constantinople and the straits in the Balkan Wars (1912-13). To seek revenge, the Turks decided to side with the Germans against the Allied Forces during World War I. The Indian Muslims supported this decision.

After World War I, the Ottoman Empire faced dismemberment. The Muslims of India had a strong feeling of identity with the world community of Islam. They had seen the decline in the political fortunes of Islam as the European powers conquered the Muslim lands one after the other. The general impression among the Muslims of India was that the Western powers were waging a war against Islam throughout the world in order to rob it of all its power and influence. The Ottoman Empire was the only Muslim power that had maintained a semblance of authority and the Muslims of India wanted to save the Islamic political power from extinction.

Under the leadership of the Ali Brothers, Maulana Muhammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali, the Muslims of South Asia launched the historic Khilafat Movement in 1919 to save the Ottoman Empire. Mahatma Gandhi stepped into the scene after Jalianwala Bagh and linked the larger issue of Swaraj with the Khilafat issue to associate Hindus with the Khilafat movement. The ensuing movement was the first countrywide popular movement. But unfortunately, while the Hindus of India inspired by the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi were willing to treat the Muslims as their equals, the Muslims right from 1921 wanted to be treated as `minorities`.

The British Government cleverly sensing the divide between the Hindus and the Muslims started encouraging the Muslims behind the scenes in a manner which went unnoticed even by the Congress stalwarts like Mahatma Gandhi and Motilal Nehru. Only a few practical men like Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Rajaji saw through the wicked game of the Muslims and the British in the aftermath of the Khilafat Movement.

Dr Hedgewar, one of the greatest sons of India, realised the great danger to national integrity arising from the British policy of colonial appeasement of the Muslims and the congress political ideology of meek appeasement of the Muslims after 1921. When the British Government announced the mischievous `Communal Award` in 1932 Dr Hedgewar gave a strong warning that the poison of separatism implanted in the body-politic would sooner or later result in the partition of the country. He thus clearly foresaw the tragedy of Indian partition which was to come after 15 years in 1947.

Dr Hedgewar was convinced that if the two-pronged attack of British domination and Muslim separatism had to be met, the only effective course was to awaken and organize the Hindu people and imbue them with an intense spirit of nationalism. It was only on the bedrock of such national strength that the British power could be humbled and the Muslims made to realise that their interests are better served by their merging in the main national stream rather than siding with the foreign masters. It is the realisation of this basic fact of our national life that formed the ideological base of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh.

As R C Majumdar, doyen of Bharatiya historians told a group of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh in Calcutta in 1960: `All the programmes of Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh have been visualised with a great aim and plan by its founder, the late Dr Hedgewar, for whom I have very high respect.

He started the work with a sublime view in mind - of imparting the true spirit of nationalism, and of making the nation self-reliant and powerful. He rightly and fearlessly declared that Hindus are the true nationals of this great country. Many feel ashamed to openly accept this fact, though at heart they feel its veracity. We must acknowledge boldly that it is Hindu history, Hindu culture, Hindu civilization that this country is proud of. When people speak of the great past and the great heritage of the country, I do not know why they should feel ashamed to declare that their past is the Hindu past and that the heritage they are talking about is the Hindu heritage.`

The views of Dr Hedgewar were no different from the following words of Annie Besant, a Catholic woman from Ireland who was also a great fighter for India`s freedom even before the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian national scene:

`The religion based on the Vedas, the `Sanathana Dharma` or Vaidhika Dharma, is the oldest of living religions, and stands unrivalled in the depth and splendour of its philosophy, while it yields to none in the purity of its ethical teachings and in the flexibility and varied adaptation of its rites and ceremonies. It is thus adapted to every human need, and there is nothing which any religion can add to its moulded perfection. The more it is studied, the more does it illuminate the intellect and satisfy the heart.`

As such, the essence of national freedom which Dr Hedgewar envisaged and which his successor Dr Golwalkar concretised and stabilized in a very large measure, lay in the redemption and revivifying of the eternal values of `Sanathana Dharma` and Hindu culture. Foreign slavery was like the eclipse over the sun of Hindu nation; and once that eclipse was removed, its inner brilliance would burst forth on the entire world.

                                                                                     Continued in part II........

V Sundaram IAS

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