VICHARAMALA no.24
These are 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 20 enunciated the Nehru-Gandhi Secular Creed, in which Mahatma Gandhi is our Secular God and Pandit Nehru His Prophet. V'malas 21-23 showed something of what lay at the basis of the Mahatma's secularism. This offering looks at the Pandit:]

The Pioneer, April 14, 2003
http://dailypioneer.com/archives2/default12.asp?
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[extracts from:]
"Nationalist extraordinary" by Balraj Madhok

Unlike Gandhi, Ambedk-ar had made a deep study of Islam, its ideology and methodology enshrined in the Quran, and Hadiths, and the Islamic history. He concluded that it was an exclusive, intolerant and monopolistic religion, in which there was no place for reason, freedom of thought and worship. He, therefore, ruled out embracing Islam and advised the same to his followers. He was opposed to casteism but was an admirer of humanistic Vedic thought and culture. He, therefore, did not want to get out of the broad "Commonwealth of Hinduism" which included all the sects and panths of Indo-Vedic origin. He ultimately embraced Buddhism which gave him full scope for mental, moral and spiritual growth through pursuit of Dhamma without being alienated from the broad stream of Hindu culture......

In the meantime, he wrote a book entitled Thoughts on Pakistan, giving his view point in regard to the communal problem, the role of the Muslim League and the Congress in complicating it, the character of the Islamic state of Pakistan and the plight of Hindus who were to be left behind after Partition. He also dwelt upon the lessons and logical corollaries of Partition and creation of Pakistan. On the basis of the theory and practice of Islam and Islamic state, he foretold that no non-Muslim will be able to live in peace with honour as an equal citizen in Pakistan. They would be either killed, converted to Islam or driven out of Pakistan sooner or later. He, therefore, suggested total exchange of Hindu and Muslim population left behind in Hindu India and Muslim India (Pakistan) in a planned way under the aegis of an international agency like the UNO.....

.......implications of the unilateral ceasefire ordered by Nehru on January 1, 1949, which had virtually divided the State on communal lines..........

Abdullah, whose horizon was confined to the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley, of which he wanted to be the absolute master, impressed upon Prime Minister Nehru that Muslim-majority Kashmir cannot fully trust a Hindu-dominated Central Government. He wanted that Kashmir should be given a special status and rights through incorporation of an article in the Constitution.

Instead of rebutting Abdullah's plea which was based on the same argument which Muslim League leaders had put forth in support of separation of Muslim-majority provinces from the rest of India, Nehru assured him that his demand would be accepted. He then asked Abdullah to meet Ambedkar and request him to draft a suitable article.

When Abdullah met Ambedkar, he gave him a patient hearing. After Abdullah had finished, Ambedkar told him: "You want India to defend Kashmir, feed its people, undertake its all round development and give Kashmiris equal rights all over the country; but you do not want the rest of India and Indians equal rights in Kashmir. I am the Law Minister of India. I cannot betray my country." With these words, he refused to draft the article Abdullah desired. Nehru never dared to talk to Ambedkar on this subject......

When asked about his experience of working with Nehru and the Congress, he told there were many good and honest men in the party and working with them was a pleasure. The real "villain", according to Ambedkar, was Nehru. He had overshadowed and downgraded the good and honest Congress leaders.

"Rewriting Indian History" by Francois Gautier (2003)
Today Nehru's legacy is still holding India in its iron grip.....Yet a few historians have seen through him. Nehru, writes Danielou, "was the perfect replica of a certain type of Englishman.....He despised non-anglicised Indians and had a very superficial and partial knowledge of India"' (pp.56-57).

[It is not just that his knowledge of India was superficial and partial. For someone who'd written the massive "Glimpses of World History", his understanding of global realpolitik was even more superficial and partial.

So, his admission about "our having lived in an unreal world" and, for what it is worth, US President JF Kennedy's assessment of him as the "worst Head of State" he'd ever met (CVG, "Reassessment of Nehru", The Hindu Book Review, Sept 9, 2003).

So, as Madhok points out, Nehru's unilateral declaration of the ceasefire - as a consequence of which we suffer an unremitting Pakistan-based jihad. So, his ego-driven panchsheel suffering us a humiliating defeat by China. Both truncated Bharat even further. Didn't Madhav Rao Scindia, on far less, publicly declare his mother a traitor? So, on considerably more, what is the Mahatma's chosen heir?

If, as The Hindu 15/8/1947 editorially noted, "We have achieved freedom; but at what cost! A country and a people that by every test are a unity have been arbitrarily divided. And the wound will take long to heal; for, as Mr. Nehru has sadly remarked, `division has taken place in the hearts of the people of India'", what underlay this division if not the Nehru-Gandhi Secular Creed? The rose that the Pandit always wore was red from the blood of the hundreds of thousands of Indians who died because of this Creed. How many more Indians need to die before we throw out this "unreal world" of the Nehruvian secularism?

Gautier's book is available from www.indiaresearchpress.com or through This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ]