The Iron Man of India

Sardar (1993)

Director: Ketan Mehta

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240879/

Sardar Vallabhai Patel is said to be the best Prime Minister India never had. Dubbed the Iron Man of India, a title given to him by Mountbatten, some believe he might have led India along a different path if he had been chosen as the first Prime Minister instead of Nehru.

It was 1946. World War II had just ended, leaving England to tend its wounds. It faced a huge bill to pay and had lost its dominance on the world stage. The sun had finally set on the British Empire. The Anglo-Saxon cousins across the Atlantic, the Americans, had come out on top, as shown by the Conference in Yalta. Managing the colonies had become an expensive undertaking. England had to cut its losses and relinquish control over the colonies. 

With that background, India had just formed its interim government. The Congress Party had recently won the elections. They were preparing to select the first Prime Minister of independent India. 

Maulana Azad, at that time, was the President of the Congress Party. He had been its leader since 1940. No elections were held since 1940 after the Party announced the 'Quit India' movement, and as a result, most, if not all, of its senior leaders were behind bars. Gandhi, as the senior member who commands profound respect from his members, expressed his displeasure with a leader seeking reelection. Azad withdrew his nomination for reelection as the President. 

Fifteen regional and state Congress committees were tasked with nominating their candidates. Twelve of these nominated Patel. Nehru got none, and the remaining three committees chose not to nominate anyone. 

Surprisingly, Gandhi vetoed their decision. He requested that Patel withdraw his candidacy and suggested the Cambridge-educated, modern-looking Nehru to become the Party President and Patel to be his Deputy. Being a 'respectful lieutenant' and showing his respect for Gandhi, Patel obliged. 

Gandhi believed the modern, forward-thinking Nehru would be a better choice than the traditional-thinking Patel. However, insiders suggest that it was probably Gandhi's fear that Nehru might cause trouble if he was not selected. The Congress might split, and the British could use that as an excuse to delay self-rule. 

Being the compassionate man Gandhi was towards the Muslim plight, he thought Patel, as the Prime Minister of India, would be harsh against Muslims. 

 

Nehru became the Prime Minister with Patel as his Deputy and Home Minister during the tumultuous times of newly independent India. With Pakistan being the albatross around India's neck and Patel and Nehru disagreeing on everything about the handling of Kashmir, it is a surprise how the Indian machinery remained intact. 

King Hari Singh initially aimed to remain independent, like Nepal and Bhutan. When Pakistani agents infiltrated Kashmir, Hari Singh abdicated to Jammu. He consented to accession to India. Nehru, contrary to Patel's suggestion, called in the United Nations and advocated for a plebiscite. Patel had wanted the Indian Army to march in. The result of this approach led to repeated unrest, two subsequent wars, and the latest confrontation. 

Junagadh, a princely state with a Hindu majority and no shared border with Pakistan, had a Muslim ruler determined to join Pakistan. His subjects revolted against him, and he abdicated in favour of Pakistan. With India's support, Junagadh was integrated into the State of Gujarat. 

Another state, quite distant from Pakistan, that wished to join the dominion was the landlocked state of Hyderabad. It was surrounded by regions under India's control. The Nizam, once the wealthiest man in the world, also ruled over a Hindu majority. Using his immense wealth, he managed to procure arms from Europe through British arms dealers, pre-Partition. The Nizam had deployed a paramilitary group, the Razakars, led by Qasim Razvi, to terrorise Hindu peasants into submission. Meanwhile, the Communists were also attempting to benefit from the situation. Patel, citing Nehru's departure as an excuse, used the nation's machinery to launch police action to forcibly annexe Hyderabad into the union.

Nehru and Patel's differences were challenged by a series of resignation letters, but they were softened by Gandhi's persuasion. Gandhi's assassination compelled these two leaders to collaborate until Patel's death.

 

In recognition of his contributions to India's political integration, the Statue of Unity, the tallest statue in the world, was erected in Gujarat.

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Hey Ram!

Nine Hours to Rama (1963)

Director: Mark Robson

This movie is based on a novel of the same name written by Stanley Wolpert. Both the book and the film were banned in India when they came out. Nehru and his government at that time thought that the story created a human out of Godse, justified his crime and did not give enough dignity to Gandhi. This was even discussed at the Rajya Saba level.

Throughout our childhood, my sisters and I could not help but see an imposing statue of Gandhi in our living room. My mother had bought it from a Thaipusam fair to remind her kids to be a person who brings glory to family and nation. At that tender impressionable age, we took in all my mother's Gandhi stories of his tenacity and eloquence. We were reminded of his vow to his mother to stay vegetarian upon boarding the steamship to England, the land of beef eaters and gin. And staying true to his word, he allegedly stayed vegan, this Mahatma (great soul).

Alas, when we grew, one by one, the onion peeled skin by skin to reveal that perhaps the story is more layered than it was thought to be. Probably the one thing that Gandhi managed to do in this land with hundreds of languages, scripts and personalities is to be a unifying icon. Under the excellent strategy of 'divide and rule' by the tyrannical British, he led the nation under one banner for the first time. This process, however, was marred by many incidences that seemed to favour one particular set of social and selected leaders.

Gandhi seems to go all out to appease the Muslim minority in the eye of the majority. He helped to start the Khalifat movement in India in solidarity with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. He fasted whenever riots broke out without ever condemning the actions of rabble-rousers, especially when they involved Muslims. In retrospect, his non-violence stance of opposing is said to have delayed independence by decades. In the end, it was the stern rebuttal by the Indian National Army (INA) and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy that did the trick. By all accounts, Gandhi did not want India to be an independent nation. He wanted India to be a British Dominion, much like Australia and Canada, with the British monarch as the Head. The British, of course, were not keen to treat the brown-skinned subjects as equals.

Gandhi's actions (or inactions) are solely blamed for the Partition of the country and all its miseries and heartbreaks. Gandhi's extra-political activities also raised eyebrows. His experimentations with celibacy would be considered criminal in this age and time.

Still, my Amma thinks she had done the correct thing in that Thaipusam fair when she purchased that Gandhi statue. She still thinks it must have inspired us. By the by, she also bought a Nehru figurine to complement Gandhi. Of course, she does not know of Nehru's tryst, not with destiny, but also with Lady Edwina Mountbatten. Let her have her peace.

This 1963 Hollywood production narrates the nine hours that passed between Godse reaching Delhi railway station and Gandhi collapsing after a gunshot in the compounds of Birla House, sighing 'Hey Ram'. It used a predominantly brown-faced white cast with a smattering of local crew.

It took the liberty to fictionalise Godse. He turned against Gandhi after being rejected by the British Army for being a Brahmin. He blamed Gandhi for his father's and wife's death. They both died in racial riots. In real life, Godse never married. Here he was married off to a child bride, fell in love with a married socialite and engaged with prostitutes.


P.S. There is a 2022 Telegu film with the name Godse. It has nothing to do with Nathuram Godse and Gandhi's assassination. Here, a prosperous Indian American industrialist decides to pay back to the country he grew up. He decides to invest in India. He soon realises that the memorandums signed to start industries do not actually go towards the betterment of India but are circulated amongst the inner circles of politicians. Like Godse, who went against a system that carved up his Bharat Mata, in this film, Visvanath, goes on a crusade to expose the corrupt political system.

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Bose, the Father of India?

Bose or Gandhi - Who Got Her Freedom?
Author: Maj Gen (Dr) GD Bakshi SM, VSM (Rtd) (2019)

Viewers who have seen the good Major General in action during his interviews agree that he is pretty passionate about war. Hailing from a Pashtun Hindu family with a strong tradition in the military, there is no denying that he is a nationalist by every means. 

This book results from detailed research of recently declassified sensitive correspondence documents of the British Foreign Office. Many of the communications happened between the local British officers and their superiors in London. The critical decision-makers involved here are Field Marshall Sir Claude Auchinleck (Commander-in-Chief in India), Field Marshall Archibald Percival (Viceroy of India), Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State of India) and Lord Clement Attlee (Prime Minister). Included in the analysis were the many field reports from Provincial Governors to their bosses on their assessment of sentiments of the Indian crowd in the ground. 

From our history books, we came back with their idea that India's Independence was won unilaterally by the undying efforts of Gandhi and his band of politicians in the Congress Party. Slowly, as more and more truth surfaces, the world now realises that probably that narration was put up by the colonial masters. They wanted to portray an image of passing the baton to the natives on a platter with altruistic intentions.

Did Gandhi's satyagraha actually win India its Independence? This book vehemently disagrees. 

After India first resistance towards colonisation in the Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, the British moved on to attack Indians psychologically instead. They devised a 'divide and rule' strategy. They went on to dismantle the local ancient but advanced educational structure to brainwash Indians into thinking highly of the colonial master's way of life and education. 

With a tiny army, the British managed to keep the rest of Indian in check by appointing local sepoys and baboos to be at their beck and call to do their dirty job as well as maintain the master-slave arrangement. The loyalty of the native Indian sepoy to the British colonial enterprise is the bulwark of their occupation. It worked well until the call of self-rule came again in the early 20th century. Individual revolutionaries sprung here and there but were quickly curtailed by the British. The Congress Party demanded swaraj (self-rule) and later led passive resistance (satyagraha) towards this end. The British did not mind this. It was easier bulldozing unretaliating marches.

The Indians thought that the British would be moved to offer dominion status by volunteering in World War 1. The Indians later realised they were taken for a ride. Things were just getting worse. The call for self-rule grew louder. Even as late as 1942, when Clement Atlee was the War Minister, Britain agreed that Indian Independence was out of the question on both sides of British politics. Churchill and his band of pompous politicians had no intentions of honouring whatever promises they had given the Indians.

All India Forward Bloc, 
a faction within the Indian National Congress
in 1939, led by Subhas Chandra Bose.

It is a combination of loss of respect amongst the native, terrible post-war debts and the most important of all, the increase of post-WW2 nationalism in India.

Chandra Bose, who rose in the Congress Party to hold President's post in 1938, resigned following disagreements with Gandhi the next year. Bose had wanted to advocate force against the British, but Gandhi's manoeuvring of the Party ensured Bose could not.

Bose left to form a breakaway bloc to fight India's way to Independence. He made trips to the UK and specifically to Germany to form a pact with Hitler. Unfortunately, Bose found the Germans not so forthcoming. He received news that the Japanese could help. A dangerous trip via submarines took him to an audience with Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese military chieftains. In exile in Singapore, Bose formed a de-facto Indian government and created the Indian National Army from the captured British Indian Army personnel and thousands of ethnic Indian volunteers from Malaya and Singapore, including the first All-Women regiment named Jhansi Rani regiment in 1942.

Timing is all-important in military attacks. The Japanese invasion of the British forces at the India-Burma was done at the time when the Americans had moved in, and the Western front was somewhat under control in 1944. The INA fared poorly at Imphal and Kohima. 

Japanese PM with Subhas Chandra Bose Municipal Building (City Hall), Singapore. 6 July 1943.

What happened next plays the most crucial role in stirring nationalistic spirit amongst Indians that sent the British packing back to their cocoon. The decision of the British authorities to try the leaders of the captured INA leaders for treason against the Crown alerted the average Indian of double standardness. At a time of the suppression of information, this much-broadcasted trial in the iconic Red Fort in New Delhi just broadcasted to the whole of India of the sacrifice of a group of dedicated soldiers towards the nation's Independence and the injustice meted upon them. Even Gandhi hailed them as heroes.

The declassified documents just proved this fact. They cautioned the British officials of high tension arising amongst their subjects of that trial. 

The coup de grace must have been the mutiny by the officers of the Royal Indian Navy and soldiers of the British Indian Army. They openly defied the orders of their superiors. Due to mounting public pressure, charges were dropped, but they lost their pensions.

The British cut their losses, threw in the towel and fled the scene. Whilst the whole country was jubilant rejoicing around their bonfire, the British had their bonfire. They were burning up their highly classified documents before it got to the wrong side of history. 

Bose in Singapore.

History has made closet Anglophiles Gandhi

and Nehru as the heroes.

At the end of the day, it was not Gandhi's non-violence and gentle approach that had little to contribute towards Independence. It was, after all, in the end, good old fashioned violence and threat of more extensive brutality that sounded the death knell of the mighty British Raj.

Atlee, in 1956 was asked about Gandhi's role in the British's decision to quit India. He sarcastically smiled and said, "minimal!" He reiterated that the violence generated by the INA trials and its impact on the loyalty of the native Indians and the mutinies it created made them scamper in such a hurry.

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Religion a political tool!

Jinnah (1998)
Screenplay, direction: Jamil Dehlavi

This must be Pakistan's reply to Richard Attenborough's narration of the Father of India, Mahatma Gandhi. It was made, not by a Pakistani, but by a London-based British of Pakistani-French descent. The controversial Jamil Dehlavi, whose 1980 film 'The Blood of Hussain' earned the ire of the Pakistani government. As the name suggests, the storyline paralleled the events surrounding the historic Battle of Karbala, which is vital in the Shia tradition, not to the predominantly Sunni Pakistanis.

Even though this film fetes the founder, the Quaid-i-Azam, the great leader of Pakistan, it was never screened in Pakistan. Most depictions of Jinnah elsewhere are often of one who is cunning, conniving, humourless, and challenging to deal with. To be fair, this film tries as much as possible to paint a picture of a well-meaning, conscientious Jinnah. It, however, glaringly gives a blank about a few particular things about his background that questions his portrayal as a soldier of Islam in his quest to establish a brand new fully Islamic country to safeguard the welfare of Muslims in the subcontinent. Jinnah and his Muslim League Party feared that an independent India would mean injustice from the British Raj would be transferred to another heathen ruler, the Hindu Raj.

In a flashback sequence, the story is told in a flip-flop manner, as Jinnah is at the fabled heaven's gate and being interviewed by St Peter. St Peter's archival system faces a glitch; hence, Jinnah has to narrate in person his life events. St Peter walks through his life, literally, as Jinnah is asked whether he regrets all the things he did in his lifetime and whether he would do it all again with the wisdom of hindsight. With a few regrets to his family life and the people who perished during Partition, Jinnah's answer is yes.

Nowhere in the film was it hinted about Jinnah's origin. The fact that he was a Gujerati, not from Punjab, where central Pakistan was carved out. It also omitted that he was of Shia denomination. I suppose where he came and at that time, it did not matter. He also did not speak Urdu, the spoken language of the majority of Muslims in India.

Jinnah's grandparents were Gujarati Hindus who were converted by a Sufi. Jinnah himself was not a traditionalist. After getting married as his mother's pre-requisite before leaving to study in England, he was initially meant to study medicine. He turned mid-way to read law and turned out quite a force to be reckoned in the courts. In 1929, he was said to have successfully defended Sardar Patel in a funds misappropriation case. He stood in Bhagat Singh's and Bal Tilak's legal team in the right to speech trial. In his famous speech, he asked the court, "You want to prosecute them or persecute them?"

Jinnah with his sister and confidante Fatima

At one time in the movie, Jinnah is seen as a maverick Anglophile lawyer arguing in the British courts. A plea by a friend, poet-philosopher-politician Muhammad Iqbal, turned his attention to the Muslim plight in India. And he plunged head-on into his Two Nation strategy. What they conveniently omit is that Jinnah was not particularly religious. He lived the life of a wealthy English gentleman, openly ate pork, consumed whiskey, wore expensive European clothing items, and married a non-Muslim, a Farsi as his second wife. He was neither a great admirer of Muslim principles nor a frequenter of mosques.

Islam was a political tool to claim a new nation using victimhood of persecution by radical Hindu elements in India. Paradoxically, this same element assassinated Gandhi, a Hindu leader. The premise of this new country, Pakistan, was to offer its citizens equal rights, privileges, and obligations, irrespective of colour, caste, creed, or community. It promised citizens that religion had nothing to do with the state's business but merely a matter of personal faith. Obviously, this piped dream came crashing down only a year after the birth of this nation.

Richard Lintern as young Jinnah

When Jinnah succumbed to the illness (TB, disease of consumption as it was called then; it consumes your body), which was a tightly-guarded secret between Jinnah and his physician of the Zoroastrian faith, Dr Jal Patel, he left behind a trail of dictators who had set aside democracy principles and let religious zealots dictate how a country should be run. Jinnah led as a Governor-General, and his word was law. Liaqat Ali, who became his successor, decided to accept Islam as the official religion. This caused a frenzy. Many, including its law minister, Jogendra Nath Mandal, a Dalit Hindu, who was impressed with Jinnah's vision, fled for their lives, taking refuge in India. Pakistan went on to become an Islamic Republic in 1956 after a military coup.

Jinnah's second marriage to Rattanbhai (Ruttie) Petit needs mention. Jinnah was Ruttie's father's guest in his mansion for two years when he asked a 16-year-old Ruttie hand in marriage. The 24 years of age difference and the differing religion were hurdles, but it happened two years later when Ruttie was a major. Probably because of the age difference and the different priorities in life, she had clinical depression. It is said that she later succumbed to morphine overdose. Ironically, Jinnah's only daughter, Dina, married an Indian-born Farsi, against Jinnah's approval and was disowned by him.

A nation's fate is decided under a tree.

Even though this movie is supposed to give a human touch to the founder of a country often portrayed negatively, and as a villain, it never got approval for screening in cinemas. The detractors complain that it is wrong to cast an actor who is synonymous with playing horror and vampire films to represent an esteemed leader of a nation. It is not that he is of European descent. Christopher Lee, who assumed the role, actually did a fantastic portrayal of Jinnah and was the spitting image of Jinnah himself, as we see in pictures. Lee also regards his performance here as the best in his career.

A stellar performance by the cast but history, as they say, is muti-dimensional. The viewers have to accept the storytelling maturely. The almost unrecognisable and puffed-up Shashi Kapoor appears as the St Peter character.

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It is about self respect!

English Vinglish (2012)


The story reminds me of one of Gandhi's prophetic words. Be the change you want the world to be. Rather than demanding for the respect that you think you deserve and being all uptight about it, it makes more sense to earn it the hard but formidable old-fashioned way - you develop it and let the world decide whether you deserve that admiration.

Gone are the days when, by virtue of birth and social standing, one can garner unquestioned loyalty and esteem. In real life, the weaker ones in society are just trampled upon and ridiculed to falsely give the aggressors their own self-worth.

I think this quintessentially Indian message is subtly inserted into the story of a timid Bombay housewife who gets the opportunity to visit the Big Apple for her niece's wedding.

Doing all the chores that are expected of her as a mother, wife and a doting daughter-in-law, she ignores the abuses and ridicules hurled at her, in her face and behind her back, for her lack in proficiency in the English Language.

As fate has it, she lands in New York alone. An ugly incident at a café makes her secretly enrol in an English class. The rest of the film is her adventure with her classmates in a somewhat knock-off classroom of 'Mind Your Language' with a dedicated teacher in the vein of Mr Brown. Predictably, in the end, in the typical fashion of Bollywood, amidst the trials and tribulations with an Indian wedding in the backdrop, she impresses her family with self-confidence and an impromptu speech in English.

Sridevi, who is dubbed as the Indian Meryl Streep and the female Rajnikanth in Japan, makes a comeback to the silver screen after a 15-year hiatus in this morale-boosting flick. The rush to learn English, especially amongst girls, apparently skyrocketed after this film. This film was nominated for the Academy Award under the Best Foreign Language Film category.

In a scene in which the protagonist is hackled for her heavily accented pronunciation of the word 'jazz' which sounded like 'jhaaz', I was reminded of a moment with my daughter. Always a stickler for the idea that a foreign word should be pronounced like the native speakers do, she goes to great lengths to correct her family members' intonation. [Parmesson ~ paːmɪˈzan; Crème brûlée ~krɛM bruːˈleɪ]. In her mind, having more than one way to pronounce a word is a mortal sin.

The message in this offering can be a wake-up call to a certain population in this country who constantly wash dirty linen in public and blame all their social woes to their political leaders' action and inactions. We make the man we want to be. It may be easy for abled bodies like us to preach, but then, nothing in this world is nearly as impossible. People have climbed Everest with artificial limbs! Need I say more?

Memorable quote:

“When a man cooks, it’s an art. When a woman cooks, it’s just her duty.”

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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You can't chain my soul!

They say that you, an individual do make that count. That is what they tell us when election day comes. They persuade you not to waste that vote and that it is everybody's birthright to choose their leader. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, so you do your share of your bargain.

Cynics would reply them that a single swallow does not make up the whole summer. And that your single vote will never make the difference. That had never been a single incidence of an election decided by a single vote.

But wait, there is! A constituency in Rajasthan was indeed caught in such a predicament in a 2008 Elections. A Congress candidate secured 62,216 votes versus his BJP opponent who managed 62,215 votes. The recounting of the postal votes and later, all the votes, showed exactly the same results. That, in itself, demonstrated how accurate the counting was! Zero error rate.

The case later went to the courts when the loser accused the winner's second wife to have voted twice. The allegation took four long years to resolve. The BJP candidate was declared the winner, but he was not interested anymore. He had a better position at the Ministerial level.

That is what people must have thought when they made a beeline to the city centre today, 19th November 2016 - that they wanted to be the change that they wanted to see. Enough said that change starts with the man in the mirror. They held a peaceful demonstration despite the threats of unrest, water cannons and incarcerations that besieged them. They must have heeded to Gandhi's quotation, 'They can imprison me, but they cannot jail the whole country'.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/assembly-elections-2013/rajasthan-assembly-elections/Every-single-vote-counts-in-this-assembly-election/articleshow/26876261.cms

In the name of freedom

Freedom at Midnight
Authors: Larry Collins & Dominic Lapiere (1975)

Freedom, surviving the tests of time.

One look at the title, one might be forgiven to think that it might a draggy almost 600 paged slow account of the events leading to the lowering of the Union Jack and the subsequent hoisting in the full glory of the tri-coloured new flag with the emblem of Ashoka Chakra (Wheel of Righteousness). Luckily, it turns out to be one of the best accounts of the history of British India right down to the nitty-gritty account of little secrets of Indian now lost royalties. It is the result of three years of extensive research and numerous interviews.

Browsing through some of the comments online, we can see other people’s viewpoint on this book. Some lament that it is a one-sided Western view of the happenings in a helpless land of the natives. Most of the account of the event are through Louis Mountbatten’s written journals, letters and one-to-one interview with him by the authors. The authors are accused of making a saint out of whom they describe as a sex-crazed eccentric old politician. The dirty secrets of the former monarchs are laid out bare with hearsay evidence.

Be as it may, this informative book is an attention grabber. It tells about small little secrets that are quite ’new’ to me. The story, even though is supposed to be based on historical facts, is told in a narrative form rather than a descriptive one.

Every time, a colony attains independence from the British Empire, there would be bonfires, not one but two. One is started by merry making freedom fighters who cannot wait to lead the country in the direction they want and another by the Imperialist who cannot wait to erase any trace of their misdeeds and squandering of their treasures! In India, in the fire too went secrets and shreds of evidence of the power crazy and sex crazed treacherous monarchs of old India.

Mountbatten is pictured here as the last of the line of British greats trying to do something great to a nation that they should not rip apart in the first place. His job, at the time of appointment, is to give India her independence. The various dialogues with its deal seem to meet no compromise on the type of post-Independence India. The kings of Patiala, Hyderabad, Kashmir and others are scared that they might be penniless and powerless. The Muslims, under the leadership of Jinnah, insists on an Islamic state. Jinnah, even though portrays himself as the fighter for the Muslims, is pictured as a whisky-drinking, pork-eating Musalman only by name who does not grace the mosques. He has a well-kept secret; he was diagnosed with a disease that was as good as a death sentence at that time, tuberculosis. His days were numbered. Hence, the urgent push for a new nation - Pakistan (Punjab Province, Afghani frontier, Kashmir, Baluchistan, -stan).

Many arm-twisting manoeuvres led to the carving up the subcontinent. As for this tough job of breaking up families and agricultural lands, a judge, Cyril Radcliffe, who had never set foot in India, is summoned.

A significant portion of the book gives the account of the emotional and violent events of Partition. Brothers, only separated by the idea of the creator and their destiny senselessly kill each other to leave each other blind of their own absurdity. Many dreams, families and lives were shattered to prove the greatness of each other’s belief. Gandhi’s presence in Bengal, however, averted a major bloodbath that was expected there. His emotional blackmail tool was starving. Like a sulking child, he managed to get his way repeatedly by creating a hype about his abstinence from food, the last requesting for sparing of Muslim lives in India.

This gave the impression to the hardline Hindu supremacy groups that Gandhi is the cause of the division of the nation. Furthermore, he had planned for a march to Pakistan to plead for peace in Punjab, to spare for Muslim lives there.

The book gives a detailed description of the plotting, execution and subsequent investigation of Gandhi’s assassination in the garden of Birla House on the faithful Friday of 30th January 1948 by Nathuram Godse and his band of similar-minded Hindu anarchists.

I always wondered why India, the land that gave the world advances in astrology was given independence in an apparently inauspicious month of Aadi. Apparently, it was not their choosing. It turned out to be an arbitrary date plucked from thin air by Mountbatten. 15th was a lucky day for him as that was the day the Japanese surrendered in WW2. The Indian astrologers, initially unhappy with the choice of date, scrambled back to recalculate and rediscover indeed a window of subha murth (good times) around midnight of 15th August 1947. Technically, in the Indian calculation, the day breaks at dawn. So, India’s proclamation of Self Rule was made on 14th August 1947 night, by Indian standards, not 15th, like Pakistan’s.

This book was loaned to me by an 89-year-old man from Quetta, Baluchistan, which is now the hotbed of terrorist activities in Pakistan. This gentleman is an eyewitness to the actual events and lives to tell about his loss. He, being in the heat of things, during one of the man’s ugliest events, after living in harmony for generations, has unyielding opinions of the Partition. He religiously attends temple prayers on every Sunday, singing hymns of praises of the Divine Forces read from an Urdu script. The words look Arabic, but he sings in Sanskrit. Such was the blurring of cultures in India long ago.

P.S. The camaraderie among the people in the pre-Aurangzeb era can be imagined in the events happening after the passing of their first spiritual leader, Guru Nanak. He had such a following amongst the Muslims that both Muslims and Sikhs did their own ceremonies to send him off to the afterlife!

more pix

Einstein meets Tagore

http://asok22.wix.com/rifle-range-boy

Why I Killed Gandhi

http://www.sanskritimagazine.com/india/why-i-killed-gandhi/

By Sanskriti on February 2, 2014

Nathuram Godse’s Final Address to the Court

Nathuram Godse was arrested immediately after he assassinated Gandhiji, based on a F. I. R. filed by Nandlal Mehta at the Tughlak Road Police station at Delhi . The trial, which was held in camera, began on May 27, 1948 and concluded on February 10, 1949. He was sentenced to death. 

An appeal to the Punjab High Court, then in session at Simla, did not find favour and the sentence was upheld. The statement that you are about to read is the last made by Godse before the Court on the May 5, 1949.

Such was the power and eloquence of this statement that one of the judges, G. D. Khosla, later wrote, “I have, however, no doubt that had the audience of that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse’s appeal, they would have brought a verdict of ‘not Guilty’ by an overwhelming majority”

WHY I KILLED GANDHI

Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined RSS wing of anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession.

I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings of Ravana, Chanakiya, Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England , France , America and Russia . Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the molding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.

All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India , one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and programme, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan , my Motherland, and enable her to render true service to humanity as well.

Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them.. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day.

In fact, honour, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Rama killed Ravana in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjuna had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishma because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Rama, Krishna and Arjuna as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.

In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India . It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom they brought to them.

The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very good in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way.

Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and every thing; he was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is. Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible.

Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster. Gandhi’s pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India . It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India , Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani.. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma’s sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India . His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus.

From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi’s infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork. The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947.

Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls ‘freedom’ and ‘peaceful transfer of power’. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called ‘freedom won by them with sacrifice’ – whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country – which we consider a deity of worship – my mind was filled with direful anger.

One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan , there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.

Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will and proved to be powerless. Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honour, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan . People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building.

After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was unfairly favourable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.

I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preachings and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims. I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.