All of a sudden, following the hijacking drama, the Indian
intellectual class, especially in the media has discovered that India has become
a ‘soft state and target’ for Pakistan. Characteristically, these virtuosos
neither define what they mean by ‘softness’, nor acknowledge that this
softness is the result of their own unrelenting attack on national symbols and
its defenders in the name of another undefined entity — ‘Secularism’. Even
Kuldip Nayar, who until the other day never missed an opportunity to run to the
Wagah border to hold hands with fellow softheads from Pakistan has begun to
thunder about the outrage of Sri Jaswant Singh ‘escorting’ the terrorists on
the plane to Kandahar.
Leaving aside rank opportunists like Kuldip Nayar, there is no denying
that symbols of softness are everywhere around. In Gujrat, the Government finds
it necessary to ask the permission of some Christian ‘leaders’ to build a
Ram temple. Imagine the Hindus seeking permission from the agents of the Vatican
to build a temple in their own country! But even this is condemned by members of
the ‘secularist’ media, who later go on to accuse the Government of being
‘soft’. Then a Muslim mob in Bangalore goes and attacks a newspaper office
for publishing an article that supposedly insults the Prophet. This is shown to
be a hoax, only a pretext for launching a pre-planned attack on the office. To
make matters worse, the newspaper — the victim of the attack — apologizes to
the assailants! Failing to see the irony, the same paper criticizes the
government for softness.
But the fact remains that this softness has existed for several decades.
Pakistan has discovered it, and the enemies of the Indian nation and culture
have found it a convenient and profitable target. In order to cure this
crippling disease that affects the Indian body politic, one must diagnose the
causes. For this we must examine the history of the organization that dominated
the Indian establishment for the better part of the twentieth century — the
Congress party. If India became a soft state, it is mainly because it was
controlled by a soft party. No better evidence is needed of its softness than
the fact that it now pins its hopes survival on a a foreign woman of no
accomplishments or record of service to the country. So this party, which claims
to have fought for India’s freedom from foreign rule, is now begging a
foreigner to rule them! If this is not softness, what is?
To understand the cause of this illness, we must be prepared to look at
recent history and the personalities that dominated it without any illusions. As
Sri Aurobindo said: “We should be 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 tamasic
inertia, we already have too much.”
And the great historian Karl Popper expressed a similar idea when he
said: “If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of
deference to great men. Great men make great mistakes.” In other words,
Indians must get out of the habit of worshipping heroes and building personality
cults. The curse of Indian public life is the worship of personalities
uncritically. Nowhere is this more apparent that the mindless invocation of
Mahatma Gandhi as the 'Father of the Nation’ while ignoring the fact that he
was also the Father of Appeasement, which led the country to two disasters —
the Moplah Rebellion and the Partition. It is the same legacy that haunts India
in the form of the ‘soft state’, against which Pakistan — and anyone who
pleases — can launch attacks with impunity.
Gandhiji’s program of Muslim appeasement began early, as soon as he
took control of the Congress following Tilak’s death in 1920. He and the
Congress abandoned Tilak’s program for ‘Swaraj’, in favor of a course of
appeasement of Muslims. History books fail to mention the fact that the 1921
Nonviolent Non-cooperation Movement had no purpose beyond restoring the Sultan
of Turkey after his defeat in the First World War. It was even called the
Khilafat Non-cooperation Movement. Evidence suggests that the Ali Brothers —
the Maulanas Shaukat and Mohammed Ali — used Gandhi and the Congress in their
plan to replace the British rule with Khilafat Rule. They even invited the Emir
of Afghanistan to invade India in support of their Jihad. Mohammed Ali justified
this by saying: “If the Afghans invaded India to wage holy war, the Indian
Muhammadens are not only bound to join them but
also to fight the Hindus if they refuse to cooperate with them [Afghans].”
So we have it, straight from the horse’s mouth! It is not widely known
that Gandhi promised ‘Swaraj within the year’, to the Ali Brothers. What was
this Swaraj to be? Not a free nation but ‘Khilafat Rule’ — as Annie Besant
called it. Here is Gandhi: “To the Musalmans Swaraj means, as it must,
India’s ability to deal effectively with the Khilafat question. …I
would gladly ask for the postponement of the Swaraj activity if we could advance
the interests of the Khilafat.” And postpone he did — for nearly ten
years. It was not until 1929 that the Congress took up Swaraj again. Even this
was because revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh were beginning to steal the
thunder. Gandhi himself left no one doubt about his program of Muslim
appeasement: “As a man of truth, I honestly believe that Hindus should yield
up to the Mohammedans whatever the latter desire, and that they should rejoice
in so doing.
To
return to Gandhi’s (and Congress’s) support of the Ali Brothers’ Khilafat
Raj, there was no ‘Swaraj within the year’ as he had promised, but there was
the Moplah (Malabar) Rebellion — one of the most horrendous terrorist
movements of modern times. The Jihad was now let loose against innocent Hindus.
Sir C. Sankaran Nair, one of the eyewitnesses to the atrocities, wrote in his
book Gandhi and Anarchy:
“For sheer brutality on women, I do not remember anything in history to
match the Malabar (Moplah) Rebellion. …The atrocities committed, more
particularly on women are so horrible and unmentionable that I do not propose to
refer to them in this book." But Gandhi tried to absoLve the terrorists by
calling the Moplahs “God fearing,” who “are fighting for they consider as
religion, and in a manner they consider as religious.”
None of this is found in history books written in the years following
Independence, controlled by the Congress-secularist clique. What is relevant
here is that the Congress learnt nothing from this great catastrophe and
repeated it in 1947 leading to the greater catastrophe of the Partition. The
problem was again its addiction to appeasement putting Jinnah in the place of
the Ali Brothers. As Sri Aurobindo observed: “Instead of doing what was
necessary, the Congress is trying to flirt with Jinnah, and Jinnah simply thinks
that he has to obstinately stick to his terms to get them.” He had also
observed that Sardar Patel was the only strong man among the Congress leaders.
But it was the nation’s misfortune that during its crucial years, it was not
the strong Patel but the effete Nehru who led India down the slippery slope to
softness. To understand India’s present state, we must study its past without
any illusions. It is an object lesson in what George Santayana said: “A nation
that forgets its past is condemned to repeat it.”
I have no illusions that this article will please everyone. But fifty years is long enough a time for a nation to face the truth about its history. It is time that the ‘soft’ version of history put out by the Congress-secularist clique is replaced by a truthful one. For it is this poison that has turned India into a soft state. And Pakistan’s terrorism against India is simply a repeat of the Moplah Rebellion — and a hundred others — that the Congress and its secularist parasites want India to forget. It is for the people of India to decide where their nation’s interest lies: in having a strong state that can fight back evil forces or ‘Gandhian’ icons to worship — from the Mahatma to Sonia.