| An intellectual Kshatriy | |||
|
|
By: V Sundaram, IAS, Retd. April 14, 2006 Views expressed here are author’s own and not of this website. Full disclaimer is at the bottom. 
FeedbackAt a time when one of our sacred temples in the most ancient Hindu city of Varanasi has been bombed, I cannot help recalling the services of a great Field Marshal of Hinduism and Sanathana Dharma. Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003) was one of the most independent, objective, totally fearless front-rank Hindu thinkers in the second half of the 20th century. He was a great soldier who defended the time-honoured fortress of Hinduism and Sanathana Dharma with tremendous moral courage, verve and intellectual perspicacity against the attacks emanating from several monotheistic faiths like Islam and Christianity on the one hand and pseudo-secularists like Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and now Sonia Gandhi with her beloved communist apron springs on the other for nearly four decades. As a soldier for and defender of Hindu faith, he was indeed a rare combination of Drona-Arjuna-Karna. As an eminent thinker of modern India, he was the author of many books and publisher of many more. The books, written or published by him are now the single most important source of inspiration to the people of India in spite of successive Congress governments" vile attempts to suppress his endeavours from time to time. And today, it is the government of India which is weaker and the Indian masses much stronger, thanks to the mass Hindu-awakening created by Sita Ram Goel through his powerful writings. He sincerely believed that without courage there can be no truth and without truth there is no other virtue. Sita Ram Goel was a many-sided personality. He was a scholar, writer, publisher, harbinger, creator and mentor of a new school of Hindu thought grounded in Sanathana Dharma. It was David Frawley who described Sita Ram Goel as " an intellectual Kshatriya". Who is an intellectual Kshatriya? In this context we are indeed very fortunate because Sri Aurobindo Ghosh has already defined this term for us: "As intellectual Kshatriyas we should be absolutely unsparing in our attack on whatever obstructs the growth of the nation, and never be afraid to call a spade a spade. Excessive good nature will never do ... in serious politics. Respect of persons must always give way to truth and conscience... What India needs especially at this moment is aggressive virtues, the spirit of soaring idealism, bold creation, fearless resistance, courageous attack; of the passive inertia we already have too much." In an effete, corrupt, decadent, slavish, servile and hypocritical India created by the Congress party and its members dedicated to the philosophy of unbridled self-aggrandisement after our independence, Sita Ram Goel was an intellectual Kshatriya who shone like a pole star, exemplifying the qualities described by Sri Aurobindo Ghosh above. Born on 16 October, 1921, Sita Ram Goel finished his formal education with an MA in History in 1944 from the University of Delhi. As a student, he was a social activist, and did work for a Harijan Ashram in his village. During the Great Calcutta killing of 16 August 1946 that was organised by the Muslim League shortly before Partition of India, Goel, his wife and first son narrowly escaped death. Goel had strong Marxist leanings during his student days and was on the verge of joining the Communist Party of India in 1948. He later came under the influence of Ram Swarup (1920-1998) and lost his faith in communism. He turned against the ideology of communism in 1949 when he came to understand the plight of people living in communist Russia. After 1950, he committed himself to informing the Indian people of the real theory and practice of communism in Stalin"s Russia and Mao"s China. His carefully and objectively researched work during this time rightly earned him the reputation of being a formidable and unassailable activist. As regards the influence of Ram Swarup on his thinking, Sita Ram Goel has gratefully acknowledged his debt to him: "...It would have been in the fitness of things if Ram Swarup had been in our midst today, because whatever I have written and whatever I have to say today really comes from him. He gives me the seed ideas which sprout into my articles ... He gives me the framework of my thought. Only the language is mine. The language also would have been much better if it was his own. My language becomes sharp at times; it annoys people. He has a way of saying things in a firm but polite manner, which discipline I have never been able to acquire." Yet he spent his entire life pursuing and sharing a broad spectrum of knowledge on a variety of subjects. He was well versed in several languages and came to be respected as a scholar of literature, philosophy, religion, and sociology. By his own account, he drew his primary inspiration on all these subjects from Plato and Sri Aurobindo. Starting as a poet and a novelist, he later emerged as a commentator and critic on Christianity, Islam, and Communism in the Indian context. He published books in English and Hindi. He also translated George Orwell"s 1984, Three dialogues of Plato, Denis Kincaid"s book The Great Rebel about Shivaji and other books into Hindi. What inspired Sita Ram Goel to become a Hindu activist? He strongly felt that Hindu society was going through a crisis and that a Hindu renaissance was necessary. He wanted to do his part in bringing about this change. He was lucky to gain the confidence of and guidance from Ram Swarup, his close friend and advisor from his early days. Together, these two men wrote pamphlets that were forceful and strong, with titles like Hindu Society Under Siege, Defence of Hinduism and Perversion of India"s Political Parlance. Eventually they decided that, to do this kind of controversial work, they needed their own publication house. That was how the non-profit publishing house called Voice of India was started in 1981. To quote the appropriate words of N S Rajaram in this context: "Sri Goel has been as important a pioneering publisher as a scholar and writer. In fact I regard him as the foremost serious publisher in India whose work has led to the creation of the most important school of thought in the Indian humanities today, the Hindutva School in all its diversity. In this regard, his publishing house Voice of India has been more like a research centre and think-tank rather than a commercial house. While the Marxists and the anti-Hindu "secularists" are running for cover, desperately clinging to what is left of their perks and positions (their influence is all but gone), many of the positions advocated by Sri Goel are moving into the mainstream. He was 20 years ahead of his time. Sita Ram Goel"s great works include: India"s Secularism-New Name for National Subversion; Hindu Society Under Siege; Defence of Hindu Society; Hindu Temples - What happened to them Vol. I & II; Heroic Hindu resistance to Muslim invaders (636 AD to 1206 AD); Muslim Separatism - Causes and consequences; How I became a Hindu; Pseudo-secularism, Christian Missions and Hindu Resistance; History of Hindu-Christian Encounter and Story of Islamic Imperialism in India. Although both Sita Ram Goel and Ram Swarup have now passed away, the Voice of India is still quite active - dedicated exclusively to the promotion of issues important to the modern-day Renaissance of Hinduism, a cause for which Sita Ram Goel gladly and courageously dedicated his life. In his classic book Why I became a Hindu. Sita Ram Goel wrote with a heart heaving with great passion and emotion as follows: "I was born a Hindu. But I had ceased to be one by the time I came out of college at the age of 22. I had become a Marxist and a militant atheist. I had come to believe that Hindu scriptures should be burnt in a bonfire if India was to be saved. It was 15 years later that I could see this culmination as the explosion of an inflated ego. During those years of self- poisoning, I was sincerely convinced that I was engaged in a philosophical exploration of cosmic proportions. How my ego got inflated to a point where I could see nothing beyond my own morbid mental constructions, is no exceptional story. It happens to many of us mortals. What is relevant in my story is the seeking and the suffering and the struggle to break out of that spider"s web of my own weaving. I will fill in the filaments as I proceed. I wonder how this story will shape if I wait for another 20 years. But I am impelled to write it because in today"s India it is not sufficient to be a Hindu by birth. Hindu society and culture are under attack from several quarters. One has to be a convinced and conscious Hindu to meet and survive that attack. One has to find one"s roots in Sanathana Dharma. Like a saint, sage, and seer Sita Ram Goel (1921-2003) has written prophetically that the death of Hindu society is no longer an eventuality which cannot be envisaged. This great society is now besieged by the same dark and deadly forces which have overwhelmed and obliterated many ancient societies. Suffering from a loss of its elan, it has become a house divided within itself. And its beneficiaries no more seem to be interested in its survival because they have fallen victims to hostile propaganda. They have developed towards it an attitude of utter indifference, if not downright contempt. Let no Hindu worth his salt remain complacent. Hindu society is in mortal danger as never before. He expressed the view that Hindu society is the only significant society in the world today which presents a continuity of cultural existence, cultural consciousness and functioning since times immemorial. If there is a country which has the longest record of unbroken history, history in all its multi-faceted dimensions, undoubtedly it is Bharath Varsha. Though the Puranic literature states that this great land has been named after the great Bharatha, yet the Agamas, which are as authentic as the Vedas and which enable us to understand the true meaning and real import of the Vedas, define the term "Bharath" as "the land of the people, who take delight in basking under the direct rays of the primal source of light" verily, Bharath Varsha has been the land of true and undistorted wisdom, the wisdom that has its all-pervading, penetrating and deepening roots in all the branches of material and spiritual sciences. Bharath Varsha"s hoary past reaches back at least to 25,000 BC to 30,000 BC. Many societies known to history?East and West, North and South?have suffered a sudden shock and undergone a traumatic transformation on account of invasion and victory of latter-day ideologies like Christianity, Islam, Communism etc. The pre-Christian, pre-Islamic and pre-Communist cultural creations and artifacts of these societies are now to be seen only in libraries and museums, thanks to the exertions of historians and antiquarian scholars. Sita Ram Goel lamented in this context: "But Sanatana Dharma will surely suffer an eclipse and no more inform mankind at large with its message, if there is no Hindu society to sustain it". Again, there are many Hindus who are legitimately proud of Hindu art, architecture, sculpture, music, painting, dance, drama, literature, linguistics, lexicography, and so on. But they seldom take into account the fact that this great wealth of artistic, literary and scientific heritage, will die if Hindu society which created it is no more there to preserve, protect and perpetuate it. Sita Ram Goel was saddened by the fact that no organised and coordinated efforts have been made to present the ancient history of India against the background of authentic and trustworthy references and records made available by our Vedas, the Agamas, ancient Indian literature in Sanskrit and several other languages, Tamil Sangam Literature, Silpa Sastras and other related treatises. No scientific methodology has so far been evolved by Indian historians to analyse, interpret and present ancient Indian history in the light of our Vedic heritage going back to the dawn of history. Even today, the students of Indian history have to remain content with the texts of history by Western authors and foreign scholars. Sita Ram Goel felt that after our independence in 1947, the Congress party with its declared faith in pseudo-secularism has given a wrong twist to Indian history. To quote his own words: "It would be relevant to recall the history of Hindu society in order to put the record straight. For, there is very little in that record which invites indifference or contempt, and a good deal which deserves honour and homage. A word about misunderstandings first. At one time the dominant school of Western historians and their Indian disciples, for whom Hindu history commenced with Alexander"s invasion, presented this history as a series of successful foreign invasions to which Hindu India invariably succumbed. They even invented an Aryan invasion of India in the second millennium BC to round up their cherished image of this country as some sort of a free for all into which any adventurer could descend and dwell at will. The Aligarh school of historians have come out with the thesis that Hindu society being basically an oppressive and exploitative society since its very inception, the invaders did not have to mount much of an effort in order to break whatever resistance it could muster at any time. The minority of oppressors, we are told, retired into fortified towns and citadels, and the majority of oppressed masses came out in support of the invaders who were hailed as liberators. To crown it all, the Marxist historians, in their turn, have welcomed this Aligarh approach with open arms. Their materialist interpretation of history stands vindicated. They have extended the Aligarh thesis to mean that the invaders were not only liberators on the social and political plane but also great incentives to forces of production. These foreign invasions, we are informed, were thus so many steps out of economic stagnation and towards material and social progress". No purpose will be served by our crossing swords with the pseudo-stalwarts inspired by Mecca and Moscow. It has been seen again and again that whatever be the facts, their conclusions remain the same. Their conclusions remain the same because their motives are the same. The motives are to malign and misrepresent Hindu history in order to denigrate and destroy Hindu society and culture. Now many Indians too have joined the game. Till almost 1400 AD, Hindu culture was a revered culture throughout the civilissed world. Its seers and sages, its mystics and monks, its scholars and scientists, its missionaries and merchants took its message to the farthest corners of world-East Africa, Egypt and Ethiopia; Sumeria, Assyria, Babylonia, Chaldea and Iran; Burma, China, Japan, Korea and Mongolia; Indochina, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand; Pacific Islands, West Indies, Mexico, Peru and Columbia; Asia Minor, Central Asia, Greece and Rome. The history of more than hundred cultures and nations provides solid evidence of this hoary heritage in their religions and philosophies, languages and literatures, sciences and technologies, manners and mores. But the wheel of time turns. This triumphal course of Hindu history suffered a severe setback only with the advent of the Muslim invaders in the middle of the 7th Century AD. The Hindus were now faced with an adversary who was not only qualitatively superior in the art of warfare but also armed with an ideology which was altogether alien and uncompromisingly inimical to the basic premises of the Hindu weltanschaung. The war which the Hindus had to wage against this new adversary was ceaseless and long-drawn-out. But Hindu resistance did not cease for a day. The Rajputs, the Vijayanagar Empire, the Marathas, the Bundelas, the Jats and the Sikhs rose in fierce revolt, one after another, till the fabric of Muslim rule was destroyed and dispersed by the middle of the 18th Century. And the number of converts which Islam-considering its political power and intentions could win during its long spell of seven centuries was rather small. This victory of the Hindus over the Islamic hordes could not be consolidated due to the intervention of the British invader in the 18th Century who wielded not only an unprecedented superiority in the art of warfare but also a much subtler weapon of diplomacy. The Hindus were enslaved once again. The British also brought with them, in the form of Christianity, an ideology which too was altogether alien and intensely inimical to the basic tenets of the Hindu way of life. The struggle against the British invader was also not as prolonged as against the Muslim marauders. It is a matter of great pride for the Hindus that their struggle for freedom inspired similar struggles in many countries of Asia and Africa, and that the dawn of Indian independence in 1947 really heralded an era of independence for many other enslaved nations. Sita Ram Goel has come to the conclusion that the Muslim and British invasions of India, though defeated and dispersed, have yet managed to crystallise certain residues, psychological and intellectual, which a battered Hindu society is finding very difficult to digest even today. According to him these residues are now in active collusion and alliance with powerful international forces of Islam and Christianity, and are being aided and abetted on a scale by the Indian minorities which an impoverished Hindu Society cannot match. Though theses international forces are at logger-heads among themselves, yet these residues have managed to forge a united front which is holding Hindu society under siege. The danger is as much from within as from without. According to Sita Ram Goel, the Muslim invasion of India crystallised into one residue which we shall call as Islamism. The British invasion, on the other hand, resulted in two residues which we can name as Christianism and Macaulayism. After independence, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress have given us the residue of pseudo-secularism. The main slogan of pseudo-secularism is : "Love the minorities at any cost and hate the Hindus at all costs". Sita Ram Goel was a fearless intellectual fighter who dedicated his life to the terribly important task of representing the collective suffering of the Hindus in India, testifying to their travails, reasserting their enduring presence and reinforcing their collective memory going back to the dawn of history. Through his powerful writings for more than four decades, he succeeded in explicitly universalising the Hindu crisis in India, thereby giving a greater scope for all round the world to see and understand the Hindu predicament in India. In this context, I cannot help recalling the work done by him to make the people of India aware of the facts and issues relating to The Quran Petition which came up before the Calcutta High Court 21 years ago. Three heroic sons of India, namely Sri Chandmal Chopra, advocate of Calcutta High Court, Sri Hamangshu Kumar Chakraborthy and Sri Sital Singh filed an application in the Calcutta High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution of India on 29 March, 1985, praying for a Writ of Mandamus directing the State of West Bengal to declare each copy of the Quran, whether in the original Arabic or in its translation in any of the languages, as forfeited to the government. In their petition they had stated, among other things, the following reasons for moving the above petition: "In terms of Section 95 Cr P C read with Sections 153A and 295A I P C every copy of a book is liable to be forfeited to the government if the book contains words or sayings which promote, on ground of religion, disharmony, enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious communities or which outrage the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India or insult the religion or religious beliefs of that class of people. This is so whether the book is classic or epic, religious or temporal, old or new." "For example, the Quran incites violence by saying, "Believers! make war on the infidels who dwell around you. Let them find harshness in you" (Surah 9: ayat 123) or by saying, "Do not yield to the unbelievers, but fight them strenuously with this Koran" (Surah 25: ayat 52) or by saying, "If you do not fight He will punish you sternly and replace you by other men" (Surah 9: ayat 39) or by saying, "When the sacred months are over, slay the idol-worshippers, wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere for them" (Surah 9: ayat 5)". The judgment in this case was delivered by Justice Bimal Chandra Basak of the Calcutta High Court on 17 May 1985. He dismissed the petition. If we carefully go through the case records, we get a very clear idea of the politics and pseudo-secularism of injustice reigning supreme in India after our independence on 15 August, 1947. The application was first moved before Justice Khastgir J of the Calcutta High Court. The learned Judge entertained the petition, gave directions for notice to the contending parties. Thereafter perhaps on account of political pressure from the Congress government in New Delhi and the Marxist government in Calcutta, the learned Judge chose not to proceed in this matter, releasing this matter from her list. As was expected Justice Bimal Chandra Basak dismissed the petition. This judge was also suitably rewarded by the Congress government. All that I am worried about is that there seem to be effective competitors to the likes of Buta Singhs and Natwar Singhs even in the field of judiciary in India! On 18 June 1985, Chandmal Chopra filed an application in the Calcutta High Court for review of judgement dated 17 May 1985 given by Justice Bimal Chandra Basak. Aggrieved by some mistakes or errors apparent in the judgement dated 17 May "85, he gave a petition for review on the following grounds: 1. The findings in paragraph 28 of the judgment that the Quran is of divine origin and that the Quran has no earthly source, based as they are not on any evidence but on mere religious beliefs, are derogatory to the basic Constitutional principle of secularism and are therefore unconstitutional. 2. The finding given in paragraph 34 of the judgment that a court cannot sit in judgment on a holy book is unconstitutional. 3. A book, even if it be a book held sacred by any community living in India, loses protection of Sec 295 of the Indian Penal Code if its publication amounts to offences under Section 295-A of the Indian Penal Code and should have been held accordingly. 4. The finding given in paragraph 31 that the Quran does not insult other religions is not correct in view of the various sayings of the book already quoted in para six of the Writ application. 5. The finding given in paragraph 37 of the judgment that Sec 153A I P C has no application in this case is not correct as the various sayings of the Quran, already quoted in para five of the Writ application, do promote, on grounds of religion, disharmony or feeling of enmity, hatred and ill-will between different religious communities. Instead of going into the substantive merits of the fundamental issues raised in the case under review, Justice Bimal Chandra Basak of the Calcutta High Court peremptorily dismissed the review petition on 21 June, 1985 on the flimsiest technical ground of the time-barred nature of the review petition. I derive my inspiration to sit in judgement on the verdict of Justice Bimal Chandra Basak from the words of Lord Atkin in this context: "Justice is not a cloistered virtue; she must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men". After Justice Bimal Chandra Basak dismissed the famous Quran petition as also the review petition in June 1985, Sita Ram Goel compiled, edited and published a book entitled "The Calcutta Quran petition" in July 1986. This book states the truth about the dastardly nature of the vote-bank politics of pseudo-secularism in India based on romantic infatuation for the minorities and congenital political hatred for the helpless Hindus in majority. Soon after publication of the book in July 1986, Indra Sain Sharma, president of the Hindu Raksha Dal, Delhi, and Rajkumar Arya, secretary of the Hindu Raksha Dal, Delhi, were arrested under Sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code for publishing a poster which had cited 24 Ayats of the Quran under the caption, "Why riots take place in the country?" They had added the comment: "These Ayats command the believers (Musalmans) to fight against followers of other faiths" and that "so long as the Ayats are not removed from the Quran, riots in the country cannot be prevented". Unlike the hyper politically-inclined Judge of the Calcutta High Court Justice Z S Lohat, Metropolitan Magistrate of Delhi gave a landmark verdict discharging Rajkumar Arya and Indra Sain Sharma on 31 July, 1986. I give below the operative portion from his judgement: "It is found that the Ayats are reproduced in the same form as are translated in the said "Quran Majeed". In my opinion the writer by writing the above words has expressed his opinion or suggestion and at the most it can be branded as a fair criticism of what is contained in the holy book of Mohammedans".. With due regard to the holy book of "Quran Majeed", a close perusal of the Ayats shows that the same are harmful and teach hatred and are likely to create differences between Mohammedans on one hand and the remaining communities on the other. In view of the above discussion, I am therefore of the view that there is no prima facie case against the accused as offences alleged against the accused do not fall prima facie within the four corners of Sections 153-A/295-A of the Indian Penal Code and hence both of the accused are discharged". The pseudo-secular tragedy created by the Congress and the other part behind it is that Sections 95 Code of Criminal Procedure (CRPC) and Sections 153 A and 295 A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are meant to be used by every government only against the majority Hindus and not against the minority Muslims and Christians in India. The best way to protect the Hindus of India is to amend the CRPC and IPC, deleting these provisions. As an enlightened citizen, I am firmly of the view that the so-called "law" which prohibits Hindus from having a public discussion on the Quran, embodies a disability which was once imposed upon them at the point of the sword. The law courts cannot be helpful so long as that lawless law remains on the statute book. Its repeal is a task to be undertaken by an informed public opinion. India is a democracy in which the historical sword of Islam is not supposed to have any sway. Moreover, it has to be borne in mind that there is a court higher than the Calcutta High Court or the Supreme Court of India or the purely transitory pseudo-secular UPA anti-Hindu government in New Delhi. That is the court of human reason, of human values, of human conscience, of human aspiration for a purer and loftier life. The Quran should be taken up for review by that court. As an intellectual Sita Ram Goel fought relentlessly for upholding certain values: honesty, rigour of thought and conscience, and a sublime disdain for dogma. To conclude in the beautiful words of the "intellectual Kshatriya" Sita Ram Goel: "Islam in India is still suffering from the high fever of self-righteousness, though lately it has shifted its claim from the "only true religion" to the "only human brotherhood". Powered by petro-dollars, is it again dreaming of an empire in India? . Will Hindu society have to pay the price again?" V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.
Send your views to author Do you wish to reach our readers?
submit your guest column |
Previous articles by: |