VICHARAMALA no.16
Thoughts on issues of current interest [my comments - as an Indian citizen - within square brackets], including instances of some double standards of our public figures, especially in the construction of Indian identity (all those Macaulayan myths, and the hypocrisy that is Nehruvian secularism) - Krishen Kak

[V'mala 14 suggested we are our own worst enemies, and gave the example of Jayanti Natarajan and the Congress Party. Here is Nirmala Deshpande, professional Gandhian and popularly (but incorrectly?) believed to be a grand-daughter of the Mahatma.......]

Santa Cruz Sentinel, Sept 9, 2003
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2003/September/09/local/stories/02local.htm
[extracts from:]

"Indian activist takes Bush to task"
by David Scharfenberg

Watsonville - One of India's most prominent peace activists criticized the Bush administration here Monday for its response to the Hindu-Muslim violence that left more than 600 dead last year in the Indian state of Gujarat.

"The European Union sent a team to Gujarat to find the facts - unfortunately your government didn't do that," said Nirmala Deshpande, known as "the keeper of Gandhi's legacy."

Deshpande, 74, made the remarks in an interview after speaking about cooperation and nonviolence to 400 Mount Madonna School students, parents and staff.

The activist, who has also made stops in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco as part of a month-long swing across the country, came to Watsonville at the behest of school officials who met her during a trip to India last year.....

Deshpande, known to her followers as "Didi," rose to prominence under the tutelage of Vinoba Bhave, widely considered the heir to Mahatma Gandhi.

Deshpande made her name with more than 40 years of peace marches across India, that ended only five years ago when a knee injury slowed her.

In her formal remarks Monday, the diminutive Deshpande, dressed in a flowing, pink robe, urged students to pursue peace.

"Always say no to war, no to hate, no to division; yes to friendship, yes to peace, yes to love," she said.

On several occasions, Deshpande flashed a gentle sense of humor that sent ripples of laughter through the crowd. At one point, she argued that political leaders are always unhappy because they are constantly unsatisfied with the power they have.

"Do you want to be happy? Follow the path of Gandhi," she said. "If you want to become unhappy, then become president of the United States." ......

[Such irony! This professional Gandhian goes all the way to the USA to complain that the US President - who ordered war on Iraq - did not send a peace team to India, and was pleased that the Europeans - with all their record of slaughter - did. A Gandhian and a desh-pande inviting the videshis into India again!

She kowtows to the West, then recommends happiness is in following the path of Gandhi. Happiness for whom? Americans? Hindus? Muslims?

For Hindus, both Gandhian and Nehruvian secularism have the same objective - the ultimate extermination of the pagan. Only the method differs.

The Mahatma preferred the jhatka - his counsel to Hindus was "to fall victims to the knives of the Muslims like a cow into the mouth of a tiger to appease his hunger" (see D(ii) in http://esamskriti.com/html/inside.asp?cat=659&subcat=658&cname=hindustan_hamara3

The Pandit preferred the halal - as so successfully demonstrated in the slow "ethnic cleansing" of his own Kashmiri Pandit community from our homeland (see V'malas 6 & 15), and Nehruvian secularism's lipsmacking over biryani and bhaat-maccherjhol even as Hindus are exterminated in Pakistan and Bangladesh (from 25% in 1947 to 1% now and 35% in 1971 to 7% now, according to C.Alex Alexander, http://www.sulekha.com/column.asp?cid=305819). Read the scholarly "Religious Demography of India" by A.P.Joshi, M.D.Srinivas, J.K.Bajaj of the Centre for Policy Studies, Chennai.

Both the Pandit and the Mahatma wanted to disband the Indian Army:

"In The Memoirs of Major General AA Rudra, Maj Gen DK Palit tells us an incident concerning the first paper dealing with the threats to the security of newly-independent India and asking for directives on defence policy from Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. When Gen Sir Robert Lockhart, the first C-in-C of the Indian armed forces, approached him, the PM bristled, "Rubbish. Total rubbish. We don't need a defence plan. Our policy is non-violence. We foresee no military threats. Scrap the Army. The police are good enough to meet our security needs."

Sure enough, this was followed by the Pakistani invasion of 1948. According to Gen Rudra, it was this invasion that saved the Indian Army" and "Worse, can you imagine a situation where the COAS doesn't know how to galvanize his soldiers -- during a war?! In December 1947, a month after the 161st Infantry Brigade counterattacked Pakistani forces and a month before Gandhiji was shot, Gen Cariappa told him, "I cannot do my duty well by the country if I concentrate only on telling troops of non-violence, all the time subordinating their main task of preparing themselves efficiently to be good soldiers. So I ask you, please, to give me the 'Child's guide to knowledge' -- tell me, please, how I can put this over the spirit of non-violence to the troops, without endangering their sense of duty to train themselves well professionally as soldiers."..... Gandhiji's reply: "I am still groping in the dark for the answer. I will find it and give it to you some day." That surely must have made things easier for the General..." (Varsha Bhosle,"What was the Congress afraid of...?", rediff.com, May 19, 2003, http://us.rediff.com/news/2003/may/19varsha.htm)

Muslim slaughter of Hindus was defended by the Mahatma as being that by a "brave and god-fearing people who were fighting for what they consider as religion, and in a manner which they consider as religion" (BR Ambedkar, quoted by Arvind Lavakare). Indeed, the Mahatma said, "Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo even their existence" and Hindus "should not be afraid of death. After all, the killers will be none other than our Muslim brothers." (Arvind Lavakare, "Of Sabarmati secularism & non-violence", rediff.com, April 16, 2002, http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/apr/16arvind.htm)

Recall that the Pandit, who wanted our army scrapped, put in charge as defence minister someone who had its ordnance factories produce coffee percolators instead of guns. When China, in favour of whom the Pandit had surrendered the Indian opportunity of a UN Security Council permanent seat, attacked India the Pandit then abandoned Assam to its fate. He excused his disgraceful dereliction with his sobbing "My heart bleeds for the people of Assam".

I urge you to read the full Bhosle and Lavakere articles. Indians like Deshpande, for all their eminence, are in fact deshdrohis.]