ARTICLE: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is known in history, by and large as being a noble person. In fact the founding fathers of India were all noble individuals, Sans, Sardar Vallabhai Patel. Today, India has Narendra Modi who is evil and ugly, with his blowsy beard, just as much as his thoughts, attitude and behavior is. His entire cabinet represents an evil mind, that has the bellicose home minister Amit Shah, at its centre.
Gandhi, believed and practiced "ahimsa or ahsina", which is a Sanskrit word meaning "non-violence" or more appropriately "lacking the desire to kill"; it is an antonym for 'hinsa', which means, "violence to kill or hurt people". Gandhi's own explanation of ahinsa, which Shashi Tharoor, in his book, refers to as, " sounds frighteningly unrealistic", is: The willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful answer to insolent tyranny.... Disobedience to be "Civil" must be sincere, respectful, restrained, never defiant, and it must have no ill-will or hatred behind it". Only God knows, whether his words were mere blandishments or he truly believed that ahinsa is far greater than the power of hinsa.
In spite of Gandhi's prime facie favourable bent towards Muslims of India, the prelude year of independence, that is 1946, was rocked entirely by communal riots, from Kashmir to Patna, from Calcutta to Lahore. Being in the minority the Muslim community was the worst sufferer. The Sikhs were the next worst hit; they were with ridicule wooed by Congress, and ruthlessly abandoned by the British. Unfortunately, their natural allies were Muslims, but they went against them, for which they paid a price in 1984, under the guise of 'Operation Blue Star'.
This transition of India from a facade or real nobility to evil is the work of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (notoriously known as RSS) and in the last two plus decades it has only received impetus. RSS was founded by a Maharati doctor K. B. Hedgewar in 1925, as a cohesive body of Hindu youth, who he indoctrinated with the thought, "if the Hindus felt that in India there was no place for anyone except the Hindus, and if the non-Hindus especially Muslims, wished to live here, they had to live as the slaves of Hindus..."
The killing of Muslims was a regular norm even in undivided India. Communal riots were precipitated by RSS and its goons across the subcontinent. M.S. Golwalkar, the head of RSS, had opined, "The non-Hindu people, foreigners (Muslims) must cease to be so, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claim nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment - not even citizen's rights". Modi recently implemented this opinion through an act of parliament. Modi, as per Indian historian of repute Ramchandra Guha, is a hardline Hindutva ideologue, who has grown up in the unforgiving school of RSS.
Gandhi had once addressed an RSS meeting. He is reported to have been impressed by their discipline and organization. Nehru never gave such benefit of doubt to RSS; he is on record to have said to Sardar Patel that it is the RSS that have a great deal to do with the communal disturbances, across India. In just a week after a month of partition, as many as 137 mosques in Delhi were destroyed.
Gandhi, Patel and Modi are Gujaratis. It is such a historical irony that the same place produces, Gandhi, who apparently believed and practiced the concept of universal brotherhood of man; and Sardar Patel and Narendra Modi, both with evil minds. Anybody for Modi who is not a Hindu is worthy of elimination. Hence, today, every single neighbor of India has sour relations with it. Recently, the Chinese kicked them in their chest (literally); but India's belligerence towards neighbours is not easing.
Gandhi was seen standing nearest to the Ali brothers during the Khilafat Movement. Was Gandhi being true, is a nagging question. In a cabinet meeting, Winston Churchill told his members, " Gandhi should not be released on the account of a mere threat of fasting. We should be rid of a bad man and an enemy of the empire if he died". Churchill even suggested, "Gandhi should be bound hand and foot at the gates of Delhi, and let the viceroy sit on the back of a giant elephant and trample him into the dirt". Churchill had a very low opinion of Gandhi. Personally, after reading several biographies of Gandhi, this writer would never say that he was a saint among sinners, but he did show quite often glimpses of concern for respecting human life and values, at various stages of partition, especially post partition. But Modi is not his follower. He is a protege of Patel.
Modi is a hate-monger and a bigot. He blatantly continues to practically enforce across India, most so in the disputed territory of Kashmir, the genocide of Muslims and other minorities. The world conscience that sleeps-nay it rewards him with 184 of the 194 votes, for securing a seat in the Security Council of UN. And the Ummah, who formed a toothless OIC (Organisation of Islamic Conference), also voted for India; completely dis-regarding the mass murders, loot, plunder and rape of Kashmir and Kashmiris.
The Maharajas of Kashmir had always dreamed of an independent Kashmir, they failed a British attempt to make it its province back in 1891. Post-partition, the people of Kashmir have been seeking their right of self-determination for joining Pakistan. The UN resolutions on the subject have been thrown into the bin, by India and as an acknowledgment of this insult, India has been elected to the Security Council. What a travesty? Who would then stop India from the inhuman atrocities it commits in Kashmir against Muslims and against Christians and other minorities, in other parts of India? I believe the people of India, would sooner than later rise up to their age old adherence to 'ahinsa' and remove the band of Modi and his evil Cabinet, through the ballot. India is a geographically held country; there is no such thing as Indian nation, there never was, there never will be.
Ramchandra Guha, in his epic book, "India after Gandhi" writes, "He (Modi, CM of Gujarat) justified the violence on Muslims by pointing to the burning of the railway coach in Godhra, which he said, had set in motion a 'chain of action and reaction'. In truth, the reaction was many times that of original action. More than 2000 Muslims were killed, and at least fifty times that number rendered homeless..."
'Pogrom' means, "an organised massacre of a particular ethnic group". Guha says in post-partition India, there have been two pogroms; the first one directed at Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 and the second directed at Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. Both, he notes, took a generalized revenge on the minorities. The butchered Sikhs had nothing to do with Sikhs who killed Indira; the Muslims killed by Hindu mobs had no links with the Godhra incident. It is noteworthy comment from Guha, "The final similarity is the most telling, as well as perhaps the most depressing. Both parties and leaders reaped electoral rewards from the violence they had legitimatized". Rajiv and Modi gave supporting statements to violence. That was the year Gandhi's idea of ahinsa and India died forever. Today, it is replaced by "terror".
Gandhi died at the hands of Modi's undeclared hero, the Hindu fanatic - Nathuram Godse, who pounded bullets into his chest; just as Modi is piercing pellets into the eyes of the innocent Kashmiri boys and girls; men and women. Before Godse was hanged, he wrote a letter, saying he had nothing against Gandhi, but his (Gandhi's) preachings were always in favour of Muslims. I suspect Modi, too, will someday write a letter, from a cell, but its contents will be very different.
Modi should be tried in international courts for crimes against humanity. No apology from him should ever be accepted.
Kuldip Nayar, in his essay on Gandhi, ends it by remarking, "Gandhi's assassination by a Hindu fanatic has consecrated pluralism in India. Whenever there is tension between Hindus and Muslims, Gandhi's Martyrdom is recalled. He still guides us later with the help of his thoughts enshrined in the constitution". My reaction to these lines is, Oh! Really ? See, what's happening in Kashmir since August, 2019!
Modi has cremated ahinsa next to Gandhi's samadi. He has replaced it without resistance with 'hinsa'! If Gandhi's India, represented Ahinsa; Modi's India represents terror.
(The writer is a free lance contributor)
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
The writer is a senior banker & freelance contributor
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