This article has been co-authored by Saswati Sarkar, Shanmukh and Dikgaj
Introduction and Overview
The discourse in the media, both traditional and emerging such as social media, of the BJP-RSS ecosystem (base and visible faces) is rich with invectives against their latest whipping boy, the dreaded Urban Naxal. The “seminal pieces” rarely define the dreaded entity (e.g., [5]), such ambiguities are usually deemed invaluable to bracket every political and ideological opponent of BJP-RSS in that category and deprive them from access to the basic sustenance devices such as jobs or even fundamental liberties. To be fair, precision isn’t a vice that one can associate with the ideologues of current polity that definitions may be expected even when such exigencies do not exist. Loosely, it may however be gathered that the “Urban Naxals” are the visible faces of the leftist ecosystem. Under that presumption, we examine the root cause of conflict between the BJP-RSS and the Urban Naxals. The vociferous allegations hurled at the latter from the former is that they are anti-Hindu and anti-India. And both these allegations are fully founded in every sense of the term – be it in alignment with fundamentalist elements of Islam and Christianity, alignment with nations hostile to India such as Pakistan, China, in dire indifference to Hindu lives everywhere they are endangered eg, in Kashmir, North East, West UP, border districts of West Bengal, Kerala etc., ridiculing Hindu religious and cultural practices in contrast to veneration towards Muslim and Christian ones, support to each and every appeasement of Muslims, Christians. The truth of these allegations is so evident that documentation becomes superfluous. Thus the Urban Naxal bogey becomes invaluable to elicit sympathy at least in the BJP-RSS base and thereby electoral dividends through symbolic actions against them in election season. Yet, do these truths really constitute the root of their conflict with the Urban-Naxals?
Au contraire, extensive documentations reveal that the actions of the BJP-RSS Governments have shown bias against Hindus that is comparable to those of any other Government [6]. An organization’s choice of its icons reveals the values it cherishes, seeks to propagate and what it aspires to become. In a series of articles we will show that the Urban Naxals merely resemble icons of the BJP-RSS ecosystem in their anti-Hindu and anti-India positions and in their collaboration with foreign invaders.
We first briefly narrate the various anti-Hindu stances of two icons of BJP-RSS, Rajagopalachari and Patel, which reveal striking similarities with corresponding positions of then Urban-Naxals, the CPI. For example, Rajagopalachari is an eminent icon of the BJP-RSS ecosystem, the periodical that he had started has now been acquired by the ecosystem and serves as their flagship mouthpiece under the same name. Historical documentations reveal that Rajagopalachari’s position on crucial Hindu and national issues such as Partition, Quit India, Kashmir resembled those of the Communist Party of India. In 1942, when all the Congress [even Jawaharlal Nehru reluctantly] had acquiesced in the Quit India movement, Rajagopalachari rejected the movement, stating that the need was for a constructive engagement with the British rather than a direct fight [21]. In fact, Rajagopalachari wrote repeatedly to home Member, Sir Reginald Maxwell urging that the CPI leaders be released so that they could help him oppose the proposed Quit India resolution in the AICC meeting of August 8, 1942 p. 48, [19] CPI had actively sought to scuttle the Quit India movement as much as it could pp. 57-85, [19]. Rajagopalachari was willing to concede anything needed to the Muslim League to bring about a `National Government’ and proposed to the British, “Let the Viceroy invite League and Congress leaders to join his Council, with the War Cabinet in London retaining the right to prosecute the war from India. And let Jinnah nominate more members than Congress.’’ p. 102, [26]. Similarly, Rajagopalachari had been in favour of partition of India much before the CPI came out formally in support of Pakistan through the article titled “Pakistan and Indian National Unity’’ authored by Gangadhar Adhikari. On 22-24 March, 1940, the Muslim League passed the Lahore resolution which demanded the creation of Pakistan as a separate state for Indian Muslims. Rajagopalachari was in favour of partition at the same time. Specifically, on 17 April, 1940, G. D. Birla, who is another icon of the BJP-RSS base, wrote to Mahadev Desai, “When I was in Wardha, Bapu was in fact arguing against Rajaji who argued in favor of partition” p. 254, [24]. Medha M. Kudaisya who had written a biography of G. D. Birla after perusing his private papers, have documented how Rajagopalachari had closely collaborated with Birla in effecting partition: “The Rajaji Formula proposed in 1942 advocated that Congress accept the League’s Lahore resolution and its underlying principle of self-determination, including the separation of the Muslim majority provinces, as necessary. Birla threw his weight behind this formula. He implored Gandhi to seriously consider the merits of the formula and encourage Rajaji to have a dialogue with Jinnah. Birla frequently communicated to Rajaji the reactions of important politicians to his proposal. In November 1942, Rajagopalachari and Jinnah met to discuss the formula, and Birla closely followed the deliberations. Birla was also willing to finance Rajaji to lead a mission to England to lobby British politicians about his formula pp. 231-232, [25] Kudiaisya also notes, “Birla had informed Rajagopalachari that the liberals in England were in support of his formula’’ p. 248, [25] Rajagopalachari said that he was against “compelling people of a territorial unit to remain in the Indian Union against their declared and established will.’’, and argued that the Muslim League’s demand for separation of certain areas and the Muslim’s right of self-determination be accepted p. 248, [25]. In fact, more than a year before Muslim League formally demanded Pakistan through the Lahore resolution, G. D. Birla had written to Rajagopalachari, on 12-10-1938: ” You remember I had a discussion with you very seriously about the question of division of India into two units, namely Hindu India and Muslim India. I now find that the Muslim League also is wanting the same thing. …I had spoken to Bapu also in Delhi about this idea…. We dropped the discussion because Bapu said that the question at present did not arise. But I find happily that this has arisen and I think if we want to have a peaceful India, we must encourage this division and after that we will have no reservation of seats, no minority problem and no communal problem. I suggest that we allow Muslims to carry on propaganda in favour of this division without approving or disapproving of their demand. And when they make full commitment then alone we may accept the principle.” p. 228, [25] Rajagopalachari was on the same page as this cynical plan, as we learn from Kudaisya that “Birla and Rajagopalachari had shared similar views about the communal problem since the late 1930s. In the early 1940s too they frequently held discussions and Birla often found himself in agreement with Rajagopalachari on the communal question’’ p. 231, [25]. Anxious to respect the sentiments of the Muslims as Premier of Madras in 1937-39, Rajaji took various steps. For example, a film called The Drum was banned in Madras because Muslims in Bombay objected to it. He also banned a book written by a Hindu priest entitled Hinduism versus Islam. p. 101, [26] During the war, Rajagopalachari opined that major concessions should be made to the Muslim League for joint rule with the Congress. On 6 September 1940, Rajagopalachari had offered the position of the Prime Minister to the Muslim League. He stated on 6 September 1940 that, “Let me make a sporting offer. If HMG [His Majesty’s Government] will agree to a provisional national government being formed at once, I undertake to persuade my colleagues in the Congress to agree to the Muslim League being invited to nominate a Prime Minister and let him form the national government as he would consider best.’’ pp. 92-93, [26]. On 5 May 1942, Rajagopalachari reasoned that “The threat of Japan has precipitated matters – I want a national army for which I want a national front to secure a national government.’’ p. 96, [26]. Then, on 10, July 1944, Rajagopalachari had come up with a plan for a plebiscite in the Muslim majority districts of undivided India to carve out a Muslim state p. 168, [22]. He rebuked the `Hindu extremists’ who were fighting for a united India at the Nagpur University Convocation in 1944, stating, “And what is the heresy I am guilty of? I stand for a solution of the Muslim issue … Let us by all means prefer to let things remain unsolved rather than agree to anything dishonourable or tyrannical, but it is not dishonour or submission to tyranny to allow majorities in any area to be in more than subordinate charge of those areas, which is the offer we make to Mr. Jinnah and with which he is not satisfied.’’ p. 99, [26]. Going further, he elaborated, ``If the Mussalmaan community wants protection, the Hindus must give all that is demanded. Nor merely must we concede the substance, but also adopt the methods which the Mussalmaans feel must be adopted.’’ p. 99, [26]. Finally, the borders of India he envisaged are best summed up in his own words, “Ruling out coercion as one must, we cannot but consent to some plan by which the ascertained wish of the people in those areas must ultimately prevail. Even if the six provinces of Madras, Bombay, Bihar, UP, CP and Orissa decide to stay together, it will not be an insignificant union …’’ p. 105, [26]. Similarly, on the Kashmir issue, Rajagopalachari had demanded even greater autonomy than Nehru had conceded [23]. Goes without saying that the leftist ecosystem regularly champion the causes of the majority Muslim population of Kashmir and rarely, if ever, of the microscopic Hindu minority of Kashmir deprived of their home by the same majority.
Patel, when confronted with the horrors of the Moplah riot which left thousands of Hindus killed and lakhs displaced, supported the Moplahs indirectly blaming the Hindus, stating, “Hindu Muslim unity is yet like a tender plant. We have to nurture it extremely carefully over a long period, for our hearts are not as clean as they should be. We have got into the habit of suspecting each other, and efforts will be made to break this unity. But a golden opportunity lies in cementing such unity forever through the Khilafat.’’ p. 77, [26]. On the subject of partition, a game disastrous to the Hindus of Bengal, two separate claim maps were framed, the larger one called the `Congress Scheme’ and the smaller and more conservative called `Congress Plan’. It was the `Congress Plan’ map that was submitted as India’s claim, while in the press, the `Congress Scheme’ was shown as the claim that had been submitted. The difference between the `Congress Scheme’ and the `Congress Plan’ was the three entire districts of Jessore, Khulna and Chittagong Hill Tracts, along with a huge chunk of Nadia. On the other hand, to keep the Calcutta port functional, India claimed the Muslim majority Murshidabad and Maldah districts, giving up Hindu majority Khulna and the Buddhist majority Chittagong Hill Tracts. As Joya Chatterjee points out about the Congress Plan, “As the Congress Plan explained, ‘this territory . . . has been included in West Bengal for the
most compelling factor of essential necessity for requirements and preservation of the Port of Calcutta. The life of the Province of West Bengal is mostly dependent on Calcutta, and with the partition it will become wholly so dependent.’’’ p. 42, [30]. This double game, which allowed millions of Hindus to become abandoned to the non-existent mercies of the Islamists of [the then East] Pakistan, was also to ensure that the commercial interests were protected and had the full express approval of the High Command. To quote Joya Chatterjee once more verbatim, “Putting the Scheme and the Plan forward together had another huge advantage. It allowed the Bengal Congress to fool a gullible public into thinking that it had pressed for the larger Bengal which the Scheme envisaged, but had been frustrated by the Boundary Commission. It was no accident that Congress gave the Scheme extravagant publicity in the Hindu press (see map 1.4). Everyone, including the viceroy and the Congress high command, was acutely aware of how dangerous an issue the new borders were bound to be and of how important it was to distance themselves from Radcliffe’s Line.’’ pp. 38-39, [30]. It is important to remember that during the crucial years of 1945-1948, it was Patel who was all powerful in the Congress. Between 1945 and 1948 Birla played a critical role in formulating ideas about partition and clarifying them within the higher echelons of the Congress. Medha Kudaisiya writes, “Both the historians Sumit Sarkar and Markovits have suggested that business pressures played a not insignificant role behind the decision of the Congress leadership to accept partition. There is considerable evidence to suggest that Birla played a crucial role in this decision making process. In these years, it was Patel rather than Gandhi who was steering the Congress and it is hardly surprising that, despite Birla’s close attachment to Bapu, he increasingly looked to the Sardar for action. In a general sense, Birla also played an important role in advising the Congress leadership on economic issues. Indeed, during these years the Congress High command increasingly relied upon Birla for direction in the economic sphere. His centrality is illustrated by the crucial role he was to play in the division of assets and liabilities between India and Pakistan after independence.’’ p. 242, [25]. Similarly, on the subject of Jammu and Kashmir’s accession to India, it is recorded by VP Menon that during a visit to Jammu and Kashmir by the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten between June 18 and June 23, that “He [Lord Mountbatten] assured the Maharajah that, so long as he made up his mind to accede to one Dominion or the other before 15 August, no trouble would ensue, for whichever Dominion he acceded to would take the State firmly under its protection as part of its territory. He went so far as to tell the Maharajah that, if he acceded to Pakistan, India would not take it amiss and that he had a firm assurance on this from Sardar Patel himself. Lord Mountbatten went further to say that, in view of the composition of the population, it was particularly important to ascertain the wishes of the people.’’ p. 271, [29]. This was reflected further in the attitude of Patel towards Jammu and Kashmir, and India refused to sign even a Standstill Agreement till Sheikh Abdullah had been brought on board, during which, at least 60,000 Hindus [according to the notoriously pro-Pakistan Alastair Lamb] were expelled from Mirpur and Poonch by border raids by the Pakistanis p. 63, [30]. Further, it is recorded in the Sardar Patel correspondence that Mountbatten carried a message to Liaquat Ali Khan on 1 November 1947 that states “I told him that my Government were quite sincere in their offer of a plebiscite, and showed him the draft formula which would also cover Junagadh.’’ [27] Patel would also make a similar offer later of a plebiscite in Hyderabad in exchange for one in Jammu and Kashmir [28]. Finally, it must be pointed out that the supposed greatest success of Patel in Hyderabad protected the Razakars from reprisals after the large scale persecution they had inflicted on the Hindus of Hyderabad, while also allowing the greatest author of the tragedy, the principal minister of the Nizam, Mir Laiq Ali, to flee to Pakistan, escaping from an Indian prison in the trunk of a car.
In a series that starts with this piece, we show the eerie similarity between the stances of a somewhat more contemporary icon of the ecosystem, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, and a typical Urban Naxal, again on Hindu and national issues and on collusion with invaders. This only leads to the obvious conclusion that the conflict between the BJP-RSS and the Urban Naxals is not remotely ideological, its all about which set of brokers can grab state power and the associated perks. More generally, BJP-RSS and Urban Naxals are symptoms of a graver malaise that afflicts, nay forms the founding bedrock, of the Indian state – its anti-Hindu nature. We focus on BJP-RSS merely because it is the politically dominant formation today, and because of the Hindu cover that it assumes; but similar characteristics could have been established for Congress when it was just as dominant or even today. In fact, Rajagopalachari who is an icon of the BJP-RSS today had been a Congressman up to 1942, and in the highest echelons of the Congress power structure until he parted ways with Nehru in 1957; he was close to both Nehru and Patel for most of the time until the 1950s. Similarly, Vallabhbhai Patel, who had dominated the congress power structure until his death is another eminent icon of the BJP-RSS. Today’s Congress claims Jawaharlal Nehru, while both BJP and Congress revere Mohandas Gandhi. The only difference in the stances of the icons of today’s BJP and Congress, chosen among the lot present in pre-47 Congress is that the former is somewhat more pro-capitalism than the latter in their stated positions. This distinction is not germane to consideration of religious bias or collusion with invaders as both big business and Communists have repeatedly collaborated with foreign invaders and anti-Hindu forces. Thus, the story of Congress and BJP-RSS and that of the Indian state in general is that of shared icons, and by extension of shared values, or lack thereof; and of contest only in terms of who controls power. This is the narrative we hope to convince our readers of in this series by putting forth the ideological similarities between the two seeming extremes – the BJP-RSS through its icons and the Urban Naxals.
In the first piece of the series we show the shared anti-Hindu and anti-India traits of Nirad C. Chaudhuri, an icon of the BJP-RSS and the Urban-Naxals. But, first, in Section A we establish that Nirad C. Chaudhuri is indeed an icon of the BJP-RSS by documenting some of the many encomiums that the visible faces of the BJP-RSS ecosystem have showered on him. In Section B, we enumerate an in-exhaustive list of derisions that the said individual had expressed against the Hindus (Section B.1) and the Indians (Section (B.2), and describe his undivided loyalty to his fatherland, during the period that that fatherland, England, had invaded India (Section B.3). Needless to remind the readers, that the Urban Naxals are guilty of identical vices, with the difference being in the choice of the respective fatherlands – China/Russia instead of England.
Finally, note that Chaudhuri Sahib’s contempt for Indians may also be classified under that for Hindus, as the contempt is implicitly targeted against and derived from the activities of the Hindu section of the Indian populace. Although the racial element in his contempt is unmistakeable, but wherever it is explicit, it is directed against the indigenous Indians, both Hindu and Muslim, and explicitly omits those of foreign origin (Turkic, Central Asian, Persian, etc); note, the indigenous Muslim Indians are of Hindu origin. So the racial element is subjugated to the religious element, nonetheless, we classify the contempt as per his explicit usage. For obtaining his positions, we primarily rely on the approximately 1000 page long autobiography that Chaudhuri authored late in his life, Thy Hand, Great Anarch, as given both how voluminous the work is and the time of its creation, it is likely to present the final evolution of its creator’s worldview; though we periodically draw from his other works too.
Section A: Nirad C. Chaudhuri Chair of Urban Naxalism
Nirad C. Chaudhuri may justifiably be called an icon of the BJP-RSS ecosystem given the laudatory epithets showered on him by their eminences. We quote some of them:
Dr. Swapan Dasgupta is an ideologue [14] and one of the public faces of BJP in the main stream media, and is frequently introduced there as a right-leaning journalist. He was nominated to Rajya Sabha by the BJP government and was also decorated with Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian award, in 2015, during the BJP regime. He is a close friend of the current finance minister, and unofficial number-two in PM Modi’s cabinet, Mr. Arun Jaitley [12] (they have a long-standing friendship since their college-days [13]). Different pieces have described Dr. Dasgupta as a close associate of Mr. Jaitley [15], and as “not just a well-known columnist and BJP ideologue but is better known in party circles as a close friend of Jaitley’s’’ [14] . Dr. Dasgupta seems to be closely associated with the functioning of BJP in West Bengal, and was present in the BJP headquarters to welcome Mukul Roy, the second in command of Mamata Banerjee of TMC, when he moved over to BJP [3]. The exuberance he shows whenever Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s name is broached may well be characterized as hero-worship. Examples of his twitter exchanges follow:
Nirad C. Chaudhuri is not only a “proud Bengali, Hindu and Indian’’ but also a “towering intellectual’’ as far as Swapn Ji is concerned [2]. His writing is at times a derivative of his icon’s worldview, even when the icon remained (and by extension) he remained blissfully oblivious to facts (e.g., [2]); but then imitation is often the best form of flattery. Swapan Ji went to the extent of editing a birth-centenary volume celebrating the life and achievements of his icon [1], which might seem par for the course for a scholar, but by no means so for a budding politician.
Swapan Ji is one of the many ardent admirers of Nirad C. Chaudhuri in the BJP-RSS ecosystem. Kanchan Gupta is not far behind. He is a journalist by profession and a BJP-RSS ecosystem member possibly by vocation. His media career has been periodically interrupted as and when BJP-RSS got power in Delhi. In the Vajpayee era, he had become an important official at the PMO under the then all-powerful principal Secretary Brajesh Misra [4]; after BJP-RSS lost power, he ran Niti-central, a web-portal popularly referred as Modi-central; after BJP-RSS regained power he is often seen on Republic TV, a venture primarily funded by BJP MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar. In short, he has a long and continuing association with the BJP-RSS ecosystem. In an outburst of enthusiasm, he has let out that he had expected Modi Sarkar to endow a chair in honour of the Chaudhuri “Sahib’’, as Nirad C. Chaudhuri would be referred to in Delhi. We have jumped gun by suggesting the chair be designated as Nirad C. Chaudhuri chair of Urban-Naxalism; we hope to make our case in the subsequent sections.
Then again Sreemoy Talukdar, who comes across as a BJP-RSS sympathizer by persuasion, and had become a senior editor of a web-portal First Post about a year after BJP-RSS registered its spectacular win in 2014, considers Nirad C. Chaudhuri as one of two most brilliant writers the world has produced:
Last, but not the least, the publisher and chief digital officer of Swarajya Magazine, Amar Govindarajan, has recommended institution of an award in Chaudhuri Sahib’s name:
For the uninitiated, Swarajya Magazine’s positions are mostly supportive of those of BJP at the Centre and at different states. Three of the four members of its editorial advisory board can be described as follows: 1) a BJP nominated MP (Dr. Swapan Dasgupta), and (2) two high appointees of the BJP government at the centre, Manish Sabharwal, appointed as RBI Director, Dr. Surjit Bhalla, appointed as the member of the Economic Advisory Council. More often than not, its views appear to be those of an unofficial mouth-piece of various BJP governments.
Section B: The world view of Chaudhuri-Sahib, the icon of BJP-RSS
The BJP-RSS is quite fond of chaste Arabian, Persian or Urdu lingo, as can be seen through its choice of electoral signals, such as “Saaf Niyat, Sahi Vikas’’, its supreme leaders are often referred to by the honorium Saheb. Given how their icon Nirad C. Chaudhuri and his wife would be referred to as Chaudhuri Sahib and Chaudhuri Mem-Sahib by their servants in Delhi p. 928, [7], we would henceforth refer to him as Chaudhuri Sahib, too. We now summarize his world-view through excerpts from his 1000 page autobiography [7]. We apply the test of logic and factual soundness to his views, and not merely our prism of morality which may be subjective; naturally, we are able to do so only in the limited instances in which he had deigned to appeal to logic and facts rather than his usual abundance of rhetorics and opinions. In the process of this analysis, we elucidate what BJP-RSS understands by a “very proud Hindu and Indian’’ as their ideologue Swapan Ji sees the redoubtable Chaudhuri-Sahib as:
Section B.1: Chaudhuri-Sahib, the “very proud Hindu’’
The visible members of the leftist ecosystem, that is, those who are presumably referred to as “Urban Naxals’’ by the BJP-RSS ecosystem. often decry the “Brahminical Hinduism’’ and deride Hindus as “majoritarian’’. We hope that lesser mortals might be forgiven if they discover the same pejorative discourse in the golden wisdom below [7]:
Chaudhuri Sahib frequently refers to “Hindu xenophobia’’, their racism and their hatred for non-Hindus, and mostly shares his opinion with either no or anecdotal substantiation, which reveals his own prejudice against Hindus. In particular, the book rarely cites any source, primary or secondary.
- “By deposing the Sultan and abolishing the Caliphate Kemal destroyed the Pan-Islamic movement, and cut the ground from under the feet of the Indian champions of that Islamic institution. This was to have a profound effect on Muslim politics in India. Deprived of the support, psychological rather than practical, which they had found in the ecumenical order created by Islam, they became anxious about their position in India, felt isolated and therefore weak in relation to the Hindus who formed the majority of the population of India and who considered India as their country and nobody else’s. Of course, the Hindus regarded their group-consciousness as Indian nationalism, and the sense of Islamic identity as disloyalty to that nationalism’’ p. 39
- “No Hindu religious ormoral teaching embodied in any of its scripture asks a Hindu to fight temporal evils like injustices and oppression. Even the idea of social justice in the European sense is totally absent in Hinduism. This is due in the first instance to the organization of Hindu society in a rigid system of castes, and, secondly, to the doctrine of Karma, which makes the Hindu accept the condition in which he was born. Of course, there was also behind Hindu political thinking, so far as it was developed, the notion of a war of righteousness against unrighteousness, described as Dharma Yuddha. But that was an attempt to make Hindu militarism moral, and no people were more militaristic than the high-caste Hindus. Moreover, war too was fought by the powerless against those who had power. The powerless were not expected to resist anything or anybody at all’’ p. 44 Chaudhuri Sahib;s contentions here are in direct contravention of the Bhagwad Gita which was an exhortation to take up arms to fight injustice, it was then that a war is called Dharma-yuddha
- “..Hindu society was based on the same concept of racial superiority and practiced the same apartheid as the South African Whites…. Gandhi shared the Brahmanic Hindu feeling was that the Hindu was superior to all other human beings’’ p. 45
- Chaudhuri Sahib could not identify with the iconic Hindu ritual and festivity of the ethnicity he was born to. He wrote: “ it was the holiday season in Bengal, the autumn, the time of the great festival of the worship of Durga. But as I had given up Hindu religious observance long since, I did not miss the exhilaration of the festival’’ p. 388
- “Mahatma Gandhi’s nationalism was the new version of the xenophobia of the Hindu masses moralized by Vaishnavism and Christianity. It appealed to these masses, and, above all, to the Hindi-speaking masses of the Gangetic plain” p. 504
- “The really strong passion which fed Indian nationalism was the Hindu xenophobia, which was created by the Hindu way of life and shaped their attitude to all who were not Hindu. The Punjabi Hindu really acquired the Hindu attitude, and with that the Hindu hatred of non-Hindus…” p. 726
- “The transfer of the capital to Delhi made the British administration in India more and more dependent on this mindless body of men. That was very largely due to the revulsion of the local British from the Hindu mind, and they certainly had the subconscious motive of protecting themselves from this mind by coming to Delhi. They [local British] felt its [of Hindu mind] deviousness, its secretiveness, its slipperiness, its nimbleness, and were afraid of the loquacity which covered its workings. They did not realize that the Hindus had developed this pattern of behaviour through the ages, in order to deal with their foreign rulers – to get every worldly interest of theirs served by them without suffering for their undying hatred of all foreigners” p. 727
- “The Marathas were impelled by two motive forces: first, the negative xenophobia (especially Muslimophobia) of the Hindu, and, secondly, the mercenary motive of plunder and exaction” p. 859
- “Hindu militarism has compelled India to make enemies of the two countries with whom, more than any other, she ought to be friendly, Pakistan and China” p. 880
- “No Hindu praises a foreigner unless he serves his purpose’’ p. 883
- “English education, which had transformed the personality [of Hindus], had also brought European nationalism to India, and this, in the Gandhian era, became much more aggravated by being assimilated into the oldHindu megalomania and xenophobia” p. 919
Not surprising then that Chaudhuri Sahib would see multiple vices in Hindus:
- “The Hindus could always be devilishly cruel without any sense of guilt from their besotted superstition as the people of the West can now be from their degraded sensuality’’ p. 106
- “I certainly thought that throughout his mission and more especially after its failure, Cripps presented his case and point of view with great ability and dignity. But not so to the Indian leaders and the Indian press. He was accused of quibbling and shiftiness. This remains the view even of Indian historians of present times, because no Hindu can believe that anyone who disagrees with his view of things can be honest’’ p. 690
- “Although the Hindus are only clever, and generally speaking wanting in intelligence, at all events they have an uncanny perception of where power and the will to exercise it exist. When they scent that they do not bring their cleverness into play. By the Twenties the Hindus had perceived the British weakness, and no amount of effort to get round their cleverness would have availed anything. Even in New Delhi Hindu loquacity, shunned in private personal intercourse, got the better of British common sense and conscience in the Legislative Assembly. That was what created the antipathy to the Swarajyist members of the Assembly in Sir John Simon.’’ p. 728
- “The ineffectiveness (of the Mughals in the early years of the eighteenth century) was due primarily to the exhaustion of Muslim political power (both inside and outside India). But a secondary and not unimportant cause was “Indianisation” ; that is to say, installation of Hindus (particularly of the Bania class) and Indianised Muslims in positions where, instead of being subordinates, they could influence policy. The spirit of the administration was altered and the vigor gone with the decline of the Turkish and Persian elements’’ (The New English review, December 1946) p. 859
- “The Hindus, remaining true to their European origins, never condemned the urge to dominate ; on the contrary, they made it as legitimate in man as was the desire for spiritual repose’’ p. 959
It should be a sacrilege to demand evidences of the icon of the BJP-RSS ecosystem, we therefore take Chaudhuri Sahib at face value
Given the above, the following first-person quote of Chaudhuri Sahib would come as no surprise, “I felt flattered when she (an acquaintance) said that I was more a Christian like her than a Hindu” p. 688
Like most Sahibs, Chaudhuri Sahib reserves his most virulent hatred for the Hindu Sadhu (saint):
- “It must not be forgotten that the Hindu Sadhu is as much a seeker and lover of power as is a politician….his [Gandhi’s] love for power came from the more assertive Brahmanic side of Hinduism. In my book on Hinduism I have explained that Hindu spirituality is a quest for power“ p. 48
- “Gandhi was a typical Hindu Sadhu in his entire behavior: in his ostentatious airing of humility combined with overweening moral arrogance; in his skill in weaving a spider’s web of unctuous words of platitudinous moralizing; in his readiness to take money as an exercise of spiritual privilege; in his tyrannical urging of an unnatural asceticism on perfectly normal men; and not less in his attitudinizing and theatricality as a means of self-advertisement. All these were comprised within the privileges of a Hindu Sadhu: he could be unworldly without sacrificing egoism. Yet Gandhi’s saintliness, in all that the word stands for, was also real. He was a holy man, but of the special Hindu type’’ p. 49
Finally, in his concluding analysis, Chaudhuri Sahib blames the partition of India on the Hindus and Sikhs of Bengal and Punjab, referring to the votes of their elected representatives in 1947:
“Even so, the partition of India would not have become fact but for the incredible folly of the Hindus and the Sikhs of the two provinces (Punjab and Bengal). I am giving the details for Bengal only. In the first joint voting, partition was rejected. But, by the second, the members from the Hindu majority areas accepted it. The number of legislators who decided the matter was farcical. Only seventy-nine members voted, and of them fifty-eight voted for and twenty-one voted against partition. Thus the majority which brought it about was thirty-seven. All the Muslim members voted solidly against. I might repeat my lament that never was so much evil owing to so few. I heard later that Hindu members were flown to Calcutta by aeroplanes from distant parts of Bengal so that they might vote for partition. Kiran Shankar Ray, the leader of the Congress Party at the time, abstained from voting. Hindu youth of Calcutta went to set fire to his house. But as soon as the Bengalis realized the mistakes they had made, they completely repudiated their responsibility and began to blame the British, the Congress, Gandhi and Nehru for their misfortunes. Like all weak people they would not take the blame on themselves’’ pp. 834-835
What the BJP-RSS icon omits is that everywhere in India, particularly so in Bengal and Punjab, the Hindus and Sikhs had overwhelmingly voted against partition in 1946. At that time Congress had campaigned on the plank that it would subvert partition and Congress had won an overwhelming mandate in the seats comprising of predominantly Hindu electorate. The Muslim League had contested on the plank of creating Pakistan and had won overwhelmingly in seats reserved for the Muslims and where the electorate was predominantly Muslim pp. 558-560, [20]. It was only when the partition of India looked a certainty that the movements to partition provinces like Punjab and Bengal so that some of the Hindu majority areas could remain in India, started. Specifically, it was only in February 1947 that Shyama Prasad Mookerjee started a campaign to partition Bengal, into a Hindu-majority West Bengal and a Muslim-majority East Bengal, although the Mahasabha was still against Pakistan, or ‘vivisection’ of the fatherland p. 574, [20]. The above vote that Chaudhuri Sahib is referring to was a vote in 1947 for the partition of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, and never a vote for or against partition of India. If Punjab and Bengal were not to be partitioned, their electoral representatives would vote on whether the provinces would join India or Pakistan as a whole. And, given the Muslim majority among the representatives in both provinces, the outcome of such a vote could be guessed with reasonable certainty. Thus, the Hindu and Sikh representatives of the Punjab and Bengal voted for partition of their provinces, not those of India, and only so that a part of their provinces would remain in India. Thus, factually speaking Chaudhuri-Sahib has perpetrated a historical fraud, hardly a rare instance in his magnum opus either; but then he is an icon of the BJP-RSS, so he must be right.
Section B.2: Chaudhuri-Sahib, the “very proud Indian’’
Urban-Naxals, as we understand them, may rightly be termed anti-national for siding with several nations India has been in conflict with, such as Pakistan and China, on a range of issues, as also for supporting secessionist demands in Kashmir. They are not rooted in Indian soil with their entire ideological mooring stemming from either Russia or China. We now show that the icon of BJP-RSS, Chaudhuri Sahib, may be identically characterized, if we replace Pakistan, China with England, not to say that he has not sided with Pakistan and China during their conflicts with India. The urban Naxals have opposed the Indian Army during its missions that sought to protect India’s territorial integrity, and Chaudhuri Sahib has defamed the Indian resistance against the British, namely the Bengal revolutionaries and the Indian National Army, while they sought to liberate India from British colonial rule. We start with Chaudhuri Sahib’s support for Pakistan and China, and opposition to Kashmir’s accession to India, and subsequently move on to his never-ending enumeration of vices of Indians, his deracination and submission to foreign hegemony on unfounded grounds of common good.
Section B.2.1: Unknown Indian or an Unknown Pakistani?
Like the Urban Naxals, Chaudhuri Sahib morally equated the roles of the Congress and the Muslim League in partitioning India, and attributed partition to denial of Muslim identity by the Congress: “ The Muslim League was uncompromising in its demand for a sovereign state for the Muslims with a territory for them cut out of India. The Congress attitude was totally negative – to oppose every Muslim claim and compel the Muslims to surrender their Muslim identity’’ p. 807, [7], denying the innumerable concessions Congress extended for preservation of separate Muslim identity. Such concessions went to the extent of Congress adopting in 1937 only two stanzas of “Bande Mataram’’ the song that inspired Indian nationalism, as the national song, because Muslims held that rest offended their religious sentiments by attributing virtues of Indian Goddesses on the imagery of the nation viewed as a mother.
Chaudhuri Sahib has opposed the accession of Kashmir to India. He has criticized Mountbatten for supporting Nehru in his attempt to stop Pakistan’s acquisition of Kashmir: “His (Mountbatten’s) partisanship of the Congress, which was due to his infatuation for Nehru, was blatant, and it was shown most blatantly after independence when he actually supported Nehru over the Kashmir question. He collaborated in giving help to the Maharaja of Kashmir, which was to make the British dishonesty over the Princely States even worse. If in dividing British India the British Government was guilty of a wrong act of commission, in not dividing the Princely States between India and Pakistan they were guilty of a wrong act of omission. …The British Government could easily have divided the territory between the two succession States and by so doing prevented future misunderstanding. But their refusal to do so, combined with Lord Mountbatten’s complicity in the Kashmir affair, created a permanent sense of injury in Pakistan’’ p. 831, [7]
Again, like the Urban Naxals, he has been a strong supporter of the demand for plebiscite in Kashmir. Describing his experience as a commentator at the All India Radio, post independence, he has written: “Another case of conscience arose for me soon after, with the Kashmir affair. At first I saw nothing wrong in the military intervention of the new Government of India in favour of the Maharaja, because I was convinced that Pakistan was trying to force the issue by military force and was guilty of aggression. Although the decision of the new Congress Government to intervene was opposed to its declared principle that it did not recognize the right of the Indian princes to rule, I felt assured by the reservation that the help was given on condition that the people of Kashmir would be given the opportunity to declare their will through a plebiscite. But almost within days I discovered that there was no intention whatever to honour the pledge, and the assertion of Indian power in Kashmir was in effect a permanent annexation. Therefore, after writing a few commentaries, I refused to write any further on the Kashmir affair.’’ pp. 887-888, [7].
Chaudhuri Sahib also opposed Indians in other border disputes with Pakistan post 1947. For example, in Berubari, in West Bengal, there was a dispute initiated by Pakistan based on a very biased reading of the Radcliffe line, to grab more Indian territory. A series of lawsuits delayed and political movements ultimately stopped the transfer of Indian territory to Pakistan, in the 1950s, even though Nehru was quite willing to hand over Indian territory. Bengalis had successfully defended their land in Berubari from being handed over to East Pakistan. This disturbed Chaudhuri Sahib so much that he wrote in the Hindusthan Standard on 26/02/1968. “It is my conviction that Jawarhalal Nehru, if left to his own judgement, would have settled all the frontier disputes on a basis of give and take but was thoroughly frightened by the clamour over Berubari and had no further strength to get the loose ends tied up ” [9]. Not content with his fury over Indians successfully defending their lands and their livelihoods, he had the further effrontery to write, “It began with Duryadhana’s famous defiance ‘Not even as much land as can be covered by the point of a needle!’ when the Pandavas said that they would abandon their claim to a share of the kingdom and rest satisfied with five villages. The Hindus venerate the Mahabharata […] Anyone who has anything to do with landed property in India knows this. For a piece of land to be in a Hindu’s possession is virtually to be in mortmain. It will be regarded as inalienable.” ‘’ [9]. Half a century later, after the party that venerates Chaudhuri Sahib obtained full-majority in the Indian Parliament, in 2015, the territories in question were handed over to Bangladesh through the good offices of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. BJP-RSS fulfilled the vision of its icon.
He has also entirely blamed the Hindus and India for hostilities with Pakistan, China:
- “Hindu militarism has compelled India to make enemies of the two countries with whom, more than any other, she ought to be friendly, Pakistan and China” p. 880, [7]
- Quoting the doctoral thesis of Tamal Guha, “Nirad Chaudhuri, knowledgeable in international relations, wrote a couple of articles on Indo-Pak issues. In an article in The Statesman in 1954, he sought to dispel fears that the fledgling alliance between the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the United States of America would eventually work against India. His premise was that a purposive nation like the U. S. of A. would not tolerate any frittering away of her provisions to Pakistan as long as the threat from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics existed. Chaudhuri implied that the prevalent situation favoured India instead of Pakistan. It is noteworthy that his reassurance was based not on any confidence in Indian strength but on the estimation of American strength and Pakistani weakness. Moreover, Chaudhuri underestimated the deviousness of the Pakistani leadership who managed to hoodwink their American benefactors. It is well known that Pakistan diverted against India a substantial portion of the military aid that was received from the West. Another article by Nirad Chaudhuri on the Indo-Pak question was published in the same year in The Times of London. It tried to explain India’s discomfiture at USA-Pak proximity. Chaudhuri wrote that India was displeased because she wanted Pakistan to be isolated from the rest of the world. He alleged that India had a vested interest in enfeebling the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. He also suspected that India’s original plan might have been to invade her western neighbour but it could not be executed because of a pre-emptive intervention by western powers. However, Chaudhuri failed to substantiate his suspicion with verifiable facts and thus his allegation remained in the realms of conjecture ‘’ pp. 35-36, [8].
Section B.2.2: The innumerable vices of Indians
Chaudhuri Sahib has written
- “The talking Indian leaders exasperated all the Viceroys from Lord Reading to Lord Wavell, and even the mild Lord Irwin observed to Birkenhead that ‘to the Indian more than to most human beings there is apt to be a very wide gulf between words and thought.’ This was true generally. All Indians are in the habit of spreading the snare of words without ever being caught in their own nets’’ p. 264, [7]
- “Hatred had destroyed the capacity of all Indians to see any historical situation for what it really was’’ p. 55, [7]
- “A man from the West cannot believe that so much violence in language can go without some intention to act. Before the war of 1914-18 the Germans made exactly the same calculation. They expected insurrections to break out all over India as soon as Britain became involved in a war with Germany in Europe. But the people of India, if one considers their typical behavior, do not act in this fashion. They are capable of creating and nursing grievances and drawing satisfaction from self-pity indefinitely without going so far as a revolt. They never act until they believe action to be safe. The only insurrections in India since the Mutiny were the Punjab disturbances of 1919 and the more recent disturbances of 1942, and they both had as their motive power the conviction that through external circumstances British power in India had become so weakened that it could effectually be challenged. Even then by far the great majority of the Indian people held aloof’’ p. 802, [7]
- “But in 1945 no intuition was needed. The Indian people had seen sign of British weakness which was like the hoisting of the white flag. The British people had rejected Churchill, the most hated Englishman in India. He was, of course, hated for his opposition to self-government for Indians, but that had been amplified hundredfold by the war, in which he was seen as the savior of the British people, and therefore as the instrument of their mortification. They had expected his rejection at every motion of no confidence, and had been bitterly disappointed. Now he was thrown out. That was enough. The Indian people knew that so far as they were concerned they had men of straw to deal with. So, they gave full expression to their malevolence through the INA. No boldness is more insolent than the boldness of the coward who feels safe. Thus they challenged the British people over the very issue of defeat of the Germans and the Japanese by defending those Indians who had collaborated with them. I had passed through all the phases of the Indian Nationalist agitation from 1905 onwards, but never had I seen excitement and passion over the issue of political freedom which was greater than what I saw over the punishment of the officers of the INA. Indian nationalists were determined that whatever the British could do to tie German and Japanese war criminals, they would not be allowed to do anything to the Indian collaborators. That was to be their revenge for the British victory’’ pp. 794-795, [7]
- “The ineffectiveness [of the Mughals in the early years of the eighteenth century] was due primarily to the exhaustion of Muslim political power (both inside and outside India). But a secondary and not unimportant cause was “Indianisation” ; that is to say, installation of Hindus (particularly of the Bania class) and Indianised Muslims in positions where, instead of being subordinates, they could influence policy. The spirit of the administration was altered and the vigor gone with the decline of the Turkish and Persian elements’’ p. 859, [7], The New English Review, December, 1946
- “Summed up in its bare essentials, the political history of India shows the Aryan [who migrated to India from Europe], the Turk, the Turks-Mongol cum Persian as the only creators of political concepts and political orders in India up to the end of the seventeenth century, and after that the Anglo-Saxon takes their place. The rest have been only sterile imitators when they have either been given opportunities to exercise political functions by the decline of a particular foreign order, or have in their incompetent vanity and xenophobia sought to exercise them. In these intervals there have been seen in India only a futile pursuit of the political concepts of the preceding foreign rulers, inefficient manipulation of the political machinery left by them, and, above all, an egregious aping of their arrogance and airs’ ‘’ p. 860, [7] Thus, nothing original may be attributed to indigenous Indians.
Section B.3: The Only Fatherland
The Communists and Indian Naxals did not derive their ideological inspiration from Indian soil. Depending on the specific party in question, Russia or China would be their only fatherland.
The Indian Naxal political slogan of the sixties and the seventies was “Chiner chairman amader chairman’’ (the Chairman of China is our Chairman). Chaudhuri Sahib shares this space with them too, with appropriate substitution of Russia/China with England. The Communists and the Indian Naxals justified their deracination with the promise of an utopia – an egalitarian world order sans exploitation realized through world revolution – in other words, on the principle of a “common good’’. This is also what Chaudhuri Sahib does. And, in both cases, the promise is a delusion. The genocides conducted in their own domains and in their colonies by multiple Communist countries have by now thoroughly exposed the truth of the promised Communist heaven. But, the deception in Chaudhuri Sahib’s arguments may be lesser-known, though no less vile. We therefore focus on him.
First, like the Communists, the “Very Proud Indian’’ Chaudhuri Sahib rejected the principle of Indian nationalism, as such, like them, he has legitimate claim to being called an anti-nationals. In his own words, “[From 1930s onwards] I became more of an imperialist than a nationalist.’’ p. 775, [7], and “ the [Indian] nationalist movement [seeking to free India from British rule] was driven wholly by passion, and from 1920 by one single passion, which was wholly negative, viz. pure and simple hatred of British rule’’ p. 253, [7]. He calls Winston Churchill an “inflexible opponent of Indian nationalism”, and says he “had always been an admirer of Churchill” and “hung up a large portrait of him” in his sitting room p. 566, 573 He has described his emotions on hearing about the electoral loss of Churchill: “I heard the news on the 27th (July 1945) that Churchill had resigned and was to be succeeded by Attlee. I was shocked, because I could never imagine that the British people would so unceremoniously reject the man who had led them to victory from an almost hopeless situation’’ p. 755, [7]. It is no coincidence that Churchill had been the architect of the last famine perpetrated by the British, the Bengal famine of 1942-44 that claimed anywhere between two to four million Bengali casualties.
His first book, and a supposed masterpiece, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, has been dedicated thus: “ To the memory of the British Empire in India, which conferred subjecthood upon us, but withheld citizenship: to which yet everyone of us threw out the challenge “Civis Britannicus sum” [Citizen of Britannia I am] because all that was living within us was made, shaped, and quickened, by British rule’’, p. 18, [8]. Confronted with outrage of his compatriots, which some may consider legitimate, he later claimed to have been misunderstood. But, even going by his clarification issued 45 years later, he has credited the British rule for making, shaping and quickening all that was living within Indians, and therefore, within him:
“If anybody has an authority on the English language, then he would understand without delay that in such dedication, I have criticised British authorities in India, not praised them. I praised, even boasted about, our attitude because of which we could reconstruct European culture despite being under British rule who were against it. The proof of my logic is the Latin sentence in the dedication: Civis Brittanicus Sum. A little knowledge of Roman history would explain its significance without difficulty. One would realise that I have written these words in imitation of a quotation by Cicero. At that time, an aristocratic Roman named Verres was the ruler of Sicily. He was money-minded and depraved and used to torture Sicily’s inhabitants. Cicero invoked the Roman senate to judge him. Just as Burke had Warren Hastings impeached on matters of administration, Cicero did exactly the same for Sicily. He said Verres used to imprison people who would scream – Civis Romans Sum (I am a Roman citizen) . . . This was the dedication’s crime. Firstly, I indicted the British for not considering us their equals, and secondly, we imbibed occidental culture despite great resistance of the local British (Desh 15 Aug. 1996),’’ pp. 200-201, [8].
He further reinforced his personal sense of belonging with the British in the second volume of his autobiography: “There was, first, my historical view of the British rule in India, which I regarded as the best political regime which had ever been seen in India, in spite of its shortcomings and positive evils. Next, I had to reckon with my loyalty to English life and civilization and through that to the larger phenomenon of European culture, by both of which my own personality was formed. Last of all, there was my identification with British greatness, which was the natural result of the two previous factors’’ p. 27, [7]
Thus, in his own words, he traced his cultural roots, loyalty to England rather than in India, analogous to the urban Naxals tracing themselves to China or Russia. England was his only fatherland.
He was even opposed to the transfer of power from the British to the Indians: “I did not abandon the idea of a theoretical opposition to the idea of a transfer of power. This I thought I would present in a full-length book to be entitled The Real Indian Revolution. In it I would first set down what consequences a transfer of power per se was likely to have, then plead the case for a revolution, and finally argue that it could not come from any group of Indians, because of their moral and intellectual shortcomings….The needed Indian revolution could come only from a collaboration between those Indians who had still some idealism left in them and elements of Britain who would be enlightened enough to see the need for a revolution in Indian and offer their experience and ability in the political field to us’’ p. 396, [7]. In a remarkable inversion of morality in which colonials are deemed victims of the enslaved, he has written, “In my book, The Continent of Circe, which describes the deadly capacity of India to make swine of every race of humans coming to India, I have called the British in India her “worst victims” p. 783, [7]
He attributed the transfer of power to India to Hitler, and the scavenging tendencies of the Indian nationalist movement: “It is he (Hitler) who has destroyed British greatness. On the eve of the war he offered to guarantee the continuance of the British Empire for all time with the power of the Wehrmacht, and when the offer was not accepted he destroyed not only the British Empire but also British greatness at home. What Gandhi or the Indian nationalist movement did was only to take the hyena’s share of the lion)’s kill’’ p. 883, [7]
In 1946, while India was a British colony, he had argued for British domination of Indians for the “common good’’ of the latter, and that the urgent function of the British was to suppress the dissenting Indians, primarily the Bengalis. This ranks lower in the scale of obnoxious treason than that of the Indians’ who had supported China or Pakistan during India’s conflicts with those, because neither could or did colonize India for any duration of significance. But, stepping out of the prism of morality, we use our lens of documented facts. To start with, we reproduce how he justified his ideological moorings, appealing to excerpts from a chapter titled “My Faith in Empires’’ in [7], several parts of which he had published in an article in 1946: “The British Empire in India is no marginal fact of English history, no irrelevant frill, no sowing of wild oats by the exuberant youth of Britain, no dead, tumorous growth on an otherwise healthy polity, not even a preserve of British economic interests…it was and remains one of the central facts of universal history and the concrete evidence that the British people have discharged one of their primary roles in history. They could not disinterest themselves in it without abrogating their historical mission and eliminating themselves from one of the primary strands of human evolution” p. 775, [7]. He continued in the article, “There is no empire without a conglomeration of linguistically, racially, and culturally different nationalities and the hegemony of one of them over the rest. The heterogeneity and the domination are of the very essence of imperial relations. An empire is hierarchical. There may be in it, and has been, full or partial freedom for individuals or groups to rise from one level to another ; but this has not modified the stepped and stratified structure of the organization. An empire is not, inter-racially or internationally egalitarian. A true empire may confer citizenship on its subjects, but does not set them up in independent states.’’ pp. 776-777, [7].
He argued that “empires could be and were, so far as any human phenomenon can be, both moral and beneficial. The moral question which the imperialistic domination of one group of human beings over another raised was not different from the power of the state over individuals did….on the moral plane imperialism could be justified on the ground on which St. Thomas Aquinas justified the exercise of authority of all kinds, which he said was moral if it was for the subject’s good or the common good’’ p. 777, [7]. He argued in [7]: “I emphatically rejected the idea that empires were opposed to human dignity, because I held that it really sustained the dignity. I said that, while the fashionable modern democracies – the dictatorships being as democratic as parliamentary governments – got their opponents killed, history records that even autocratic emperors acted according to the idea of a commonwealth based on equity and freedom of speech, which, above all, cherished the freedom of the subject … The true antithesis was between imperialism and nationalism, which latter, if both were evil, is now seen to be the greater evil of the two. …..Imperialism, far from being the enemy of subject peoples, has always protected them. This was first shown by the creators of true imperialism, the Achaemenid Persians, and the British in India only continued in the same tradition. Let me give one example. On 17 May 1766, when British rule in Bengal had not even been consolidated, the Directors of the East India Company, supposed to be a body of rapacious traders, wrote to their agents in Calcutta:`It is now more immediately our interest and duty to protect and cherish the inhabitants, and to give no occasion to look on every Englishman as their natural enemy.’ This was written to explain their refusal to permit monopoly of certain trades to their factors in Bengal’’ pp. 778-779, [7]
He continued in [7], “..human communities which were left behind in the march of civilizations acquired a violent hatred of the forward movement. They threatened it with three weapons: inertia, malevolence, and self-pity. The have-nots of the world today are calling themselves the Third World and demanding charity on the strength of their inertia and self-pity. But this aspect of their behavior is passive whereas their malevolence is active. I became aware of the existence of this baleful passion through my experiences in Bengal.’’ pp. 779-780. So he had written in 1946, “In order to feel the full impact of the malevolence of the backward, you have to live among them. You have to see how you are hated by these have-nots for a little extra efficiency, extra power of thinking, extra ability to make life worth living; in short for a little extra quality in life. You have to register hourly mementos which tell you that as soon as they have the power to do so the Yahoos will fall upon you and tear you to pieces. You have to be steeped in the premonition of inevitable debasement’’ p. 780, [7]In 1946,he had described this animosity as ‘the rancor of the futureless’, and that “the urgent function of imperialism to defend civilization by suppressing this vile revolt’’ p. 780, [7]
The second volume of his autobiography is replete with the encomiums he showered on the “common good’’ the British rule had delivered to the Indians. As noted before, he had written, “There was, first, my historical view of the British rule in India, which I regarded as the best political regime which had ever been seen in India, in spite of its shortcomings and positive evils’’ p. 27, [7].He has also approvingly quoted Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, one time Law member of Viceroy’s Council: “Should the British Government abdicate its function, it would soon turn order into chaos. No country in the world is more orderly, more quiet, and more peaceful than British India as it is; but if the vigour of the Government should be relaxed, if it should lose its essential unity of purpose, and fall into hands either weak or unfaithful, chaos would come again like a flood’’ p. 35, [7] He has persistently blamed the Indians for not recognizing the merits of their slavery: “Even now it is not possible to make Indians believe that good came out of British rule. In 1976 I was giving a lecture at an American University on the significance of British rule in India. After it was over an Indian came up ant told me: ‘You have not said the most important thing: that India was the wealthiest country in the world before the British came, and was left the poorest by them’. Hatred had destroyed the capacity of all Indians to see any historical situation for what it really was’’ pp. 54-55, [7]
Let us now examine the state of the “common good’’, the “ historical situation for what it really was’’ that Chaudhuri Sahib is so grateful for, through the lens of documented history:
During the British rule from 1765 until 1947, it is estimated, depending on the sources, that anywhere between 4 and 6 crore people died due to famines. During the Bengal famine of 1770, it is estimated that one third of the province of Bengal died p. 39, [11]. Land tax income of the British during the famine doubled [16]. During the great Indian famine of 1876-78, in fact, the British Viceroy Lord Lytton denounced all attempts to regulate the price of grain or forbid export of foodgrains. To quote the historian Mike Davis, Lord Lytton “issued strict, `semi-theological’ orders that `there is to be no interference of any kind on the part of Government with the object of reducing the price of food,` and `in his letters home to the India Office and to politicians of both parties, he denounced `humanitarian hysterics’.’ `Let the British public foot the bill for its `cheap sentiment,’ if it wished to save life at a cost that would bankrupt India.’’ Lytton further justified the famines caused in India “in 1877 by arguing that the Indian population `has a tendency to increase more rapidly than the food it raises from the soil.’’’ [10] The historian RC Dutt conservatively estimated that the famines between 1875 and 1900 cost a total of fifteen million lives p. vi, [16]. And Madhusree Mukherjee has clearly documented how the British exacerbated the Bengal famine of 1942-43 [17], which cost anywhere between two and five million lives.
Indentured servitude, which replaced slavery in India under the British, transported lakhs of indentured workers to South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius, parts of the Carribean and South America and other places. The indentured workers were overworked and exploited and suffered a huge mortality rate as they worked in unhygienic conditions for long hours [18]. Mostly the rural poor, often lower castes, who had been unable to pay their taxes were compelled to sign away their lives as indentured labourers [18]. Other labourers, not covered formally under the indentured system, were transported to Burma, Sri Lanka, Malaya and other places too. For nearly a hundred years, this exploitation was continued, until it was abolished in 1920, as Indian nationalism and declining profits compelled the end of this system.
RC Dutt, in his seminal book on the Indian economic history has detailed how the British destroyed the Indian industries by imposing prohibitive tariffs and forcing the artisans to work for the Company controlled estates, and India was forced to be the supplier of raw materials for Britain. p. viii, [16]. He quotes the English historian HH Wilson, who stated that the British manufacturer “employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle a competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms.’’ p. viii, [16]. Dutt further points out that millions of Indian artisans lost their jobs as a result of this policy p. viii, [16]. Detailing the land tax on agriculture, Dutt points out how exploitative and exorbitant it is. In England, the land tax was between five and twenty percent of the rental. In Bengal, it was over ninety percent of the rental, while in northern India, it was over eighty percent. p. ix, [16]. The Land Tax in Bombay and Madras presidencies often amounted to the entire rent p. x, [16]. In 1764, the the total land tax collected was estimated at 8.175 lakh pounds in Bengal. In 1802, the British realised 26.80 lakh pounds on the same land p. ix, [16]. Bishop Heber, after travelling all over India, wrote in 1826, “No Native Prince demands the rent which we do.’’ p. ix, [16] Col. Briggs wrote in 1830, “A Land Tax like that which now exists in India professing to absorb the whole of the landlord’s rent, was never known under any government in Asia or Europe.’’ p. ix, [16] This shows the extent of the British exploitation.
As to the claim that following the tradition of the noble imperialists, the British had protected their Indian subjects, and granted them freedom of speech, we merely quote Chaudhuri Sahib, again from [7], if only to demonstrate not only that there was neither freedom to speak, nor think, nor read in the Raj, unless the contents would glorify the masters – and also to illustrate the consistency of the world’s most brilliant author, as adjudged by the BJP-RSS ecosystem. We show that Chaudhuri Sahib’s own writings reveal that the British launched a reign of terror under the guise of controlling terror. We do not even get to the actual torture meted out to those who resisted the British empire, but the suppression of rights of those merely suspected of doing so on the basis of what they read or who they knew socially. Quoting Chaudhuri Sahib:
- “In fact, the political police in Bengal entered in their black book as politically suspect any Bengali who was philanthropic, athletic, or public spirited, and even if studious. But they were not the’English people’. An essential distinction had to be made. One day I was present at a search in a Bengali house, and how the mind of the Indian police officers, as instructed by their great anti-terrorist chief, Sir Charles Teggart, worked. The inspectors had only laid by a number of books belonging to the young men in that house, and were making an inventory, when their chief, the Deputy Superintendent in the Intelligence Branch, entered. He sat down, asked a few questions, when his eyed suddenly fell on the books. He noticed one and taking it up said: “Are you taking this away?’’ When the subordinates showed some puzzlement, he explained: `You should note what books the young men read, because that shows the character of their mind and the direction of their thoughts. This does.’ The book was a life of Pilsudski, and the DSP said: `It shows a military bent. You should have noticed that.’ That sort of thing, of course, perfectly entitled us to regard the British rule in India as Satanic. But British rule as it was impersonally and historically was a wholly different thing.. ”pp. 103-104, [7]
- “But there was not much left to be done to suppress the revolutionary movement completely. This was almost completed by rounding up all suspected young men and their older leaders, and keeping them under detention without trial. The police had adopted the medical principle of prevention is better than cure. They depended on a new system of tracing the revolutionaries they had developed, which was to establish the personal connections of all known revolutionaries and arrest the whole network of terrorism. They threw their net fairly wide…. The police had plenty of informers from the same class as the revolutionaries, and one could hardly be sure who might not be an informer. The police noted their reports without naming them, only recording what Deponent No. X stated. The arrests were made on the strength of concurrent reports. The revolutionaries, too, by their indiscreet correspondences implicated many.’’ p. 312, [7] Note then that young men were arrested for the crime of personal connection to revolutionaries, based on reports of unnamed informants, and detained without trial. In his own account, the detenues numbered upwards of thousands: “ Thousands of young Bengalis had been arrested for their association with the revolutionary movement from 1930 to 1932, and detained without trial in various camps’’ p. 426, [7]
- After the Chittagong uprising [in 1930] the Hindus there were subjected to “collective fines, imposition of punitive police, and strict surveillance” p. 294, [7]. In other words, even those who may not have had anything to with the uprising had been persecuted.
- “A Muslim Inspector of Police named Ashanullah was shot dead (by revolutionaries on 30 August 1931 at Chittagong). At once the Muslims of the town rose in a body and began to attack Hindu houses and loot Hindu shops. This was allowed to go on by the administration, and when the Hindus went to the Magistrate and asked for protection they were jeeringly asked to go to the Congress. It was clearly a case of reprisals by the British at second hand, that is, by proxy. The already existing bitterness among the Hindus of Chittagong rose to a higher pitch. The Congress appointed an unofficial inquiry committee which reported severely against the district officials. The feeling against the British officials was shared by all Bengali Hindus’’ p. 304, [7]
Conclusion
The similarity between the Urban-Naxals and the icons of the BJP-RSS do not however end with the above. We shall continue with other major commonalities in future parts of the series, as also, if the icons of the BJP-RSS suffer from some vices not largely replicated in their Urban-Naxal brothers.
[1] “Nirad C. Chaudhuri, The First Hundred Years, A Celebration (1997)’’, edited by Swapan Dasgupta
[2] Swapan Dasgupta, “Indians are natural chameleons, Rajnathji’’, https://swapan-dasgupta.blogspot.com/2013/07/indians-are-natural-chameleons-rajnathji.html
[4] Saba Naqvi, “Mr. Indispensable?’’ https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/mr-indispensable/211659
[5] Urban Naxalism: Strategy And Modus Operandi – Part 1 https://swarajyamag.com/politics/urban-naxalism-strategy-and-modus-operandi-part-1
[7] Nirad C. Chaudhuri, “Thy Hand, Great Anarch !’’
[8] Tamal Guha, “ A Postcolonial Critique of Nirad C. Chaudhuri’s writings’’, Thesis Submitted for The Degree of Doctor of Philosphy in English, Under the Guidance of Prof. K. Sripad Bhat, Head, Department of English & Dean, Faculty of Languages and Literature, Department of English, Goa University, http://irgu.unigoa.ac.in/drs/bitstream/handle/unigoa/3685/guha_t_2009.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
[9] Nirad C Chaudhari, “Thinking Straight on the Rann of Kutch”, Hindusthan Standard, 26/02/1968
[11] Amartya Sen, “Poverty and Famines: An Essay an Entitlement and Deprivation’’, Oxford University Press, 1981
[13] https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/story/ties-that-bind/291379
[15] https://thewire.in/174542/gauri-lankesh-assassination-right-wing/
[16] Romesh Chandra Dutt, “The Economic History of India under the early British rule’’
[17] Madhusree Mukherjee, “Churchill’s Secret War’’
[19] Arun Shourie, “The Only Fatherland’’
[20] Leonard Gordon, “Brothers Against the Raj’’
[21] https://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/mag/2002/12/22/stories/2002122200650300.htm
[22] GS Chhabra, “Advanced Study in the History of Modern India’’, Vol. 3
[23] https://www.thehindu.com/thehindu/2002/11/08/stories/2002110800041000.htm
[24] G. D. Birla, “In the Shadow of the Mahatma’’
[25] Medha M. Kudaisiya, “The Life and Times of G. D. Birla’’
[26] Neerja Singh, “Patel, Prasad and Rajaji: The Myth of the Indian Right’’
[27] http://www.claudearpi.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/1947-11-03-Mountbatten-to-Nehru.pdf
[29] VP Menon, “Story of the Integration of the Indian States’’
[30] Joya Chatterjee, “The Spoils of Partition’’