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| Keeping faith in make-believe history | | | Khushwant Singh
The Aryans' role model is Adolf Hitler who purged Aryan Germany of semitic races by gassing millions of Jews and Gypsies while Germans of today regard Hitler as the devil-incarnate and are ashamed of him.
I was not aware that the Hindu Mahasabha and the RSS had set up a large number of schools across the country known as Saraswati Shishu Mandirs and Vidya Bharati Schools. The number of teachers employed by them runs into the thousands; the number of students into hundreds of thousands. They also have a publishing house to print their own text books. When I discovered what they teach in these schools, I was sorely disappointed. It is a make-believe historical fiction to boost our morale and foster suspicion and hatred against Indian-born minorities, notably Muslims and Christians, who don’t share a pride in our past.
Aryan myths
It is assumed that Bharat Varsha is co-terminous with Aryavarta: Dravidans, who were Indians before the Aryans came, are ignored. The Aryans’ role model is Adolf Hitler who purged Aryan Germany of semitic races by gassing millions of Jews and Gypsies while Germans of today regard Hitler as the devil-incarnate and are ashamed of him. RSS and Sena leaders hero-worship him. Buddhism and its great propagator, Emperor Ashoka, who preached Ahimsa (non-violence) were, according to them, unmitigated disasters as they robbed us of our martial qualities, made us cowardly and unable to resist marauding Muslim armies weilding swords in one hand and Koran in the other. Muslims were, according to K B Hegdewar, founder of the RSS “hissing Yavana snakes”.
A few examples from these text books are pertinent: Muslims’ greatest wish is to have a darshan of the black stone, shivalinga, installed in Mecca. The Qutub Minar of Delhi was built by Emperor Samudragupta and known as the Vishnu Stambha. (The fact that it is festooned with verses from the Koran is not mentioned.) It is asserted that the Babri Masjid was never a masjid because namaz was never performed in it. The present head of the RSS, K S Sudarshan made an outrageous statement in November 2001 in which he dismissed eminent historians as ‘anti-Hindu’ Euro-Indians. He claimed that “in ancient India we knew about nuclear energy and the sage Bharadwaja and Raja Bhoj not only described the construction of aeroplanes but also discussed details like what types of aeroplanes would fly and at what height.”
A significant outcome of the kind of history being taught in these schools is downgrading the role of Mahatma Gandhi in the freedom movement and exalting that of Veer Savarkar. Though Savarkar was acquitted on technical grounds of the charge of conspiracy to kill Gandhi, the Justice Kapur Commission later squarely implicated him as the man who inspired the foul deed. His portrait was installed in Parliament House during the rule of the BJP.
Before you accuse me of anti-RSS and BJP bias, take a look at a booklet RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi. It is compiled by three distinguished professors of history of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (Aditya Mukherjee, Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan). Finally, ask yourself, is this kind of brain-washing of young minds and filling them with hate good for the country? It will turn our sweet dreams of a hate-free Hindustan into a nightmare of vicious civil strife.
Angry neighbour
My next-door neighbour Reeta Devi Varma is a very angry person. She is a Hindu-Buddhist who worked with Mother Teresa for sometime after she quit her job as an Air India hostess. She continues her association with the Sisters of Charity in Guwahati and Delhi.
At one time among many of her callers was Navin Patnaik, currently Chief Minister of Orissa. Through her I met him a couple of times. I found him urbane, sophisticated and soft-spoken. I did not think he was cut out to be a politician or an administrator. He has evidently failed to stamp out anti-Christian violence perpetrated by a rabid section of Bajrang Dal. His police pay little heed to his orders and lets vandals burn churches and molest nuns. In short, he has proved to be an incompetent ruler. So Reeta Devi lost her cool and fired off an angry letter to him. It goes somewhat as follows: “Dear Navin: You might recall the days when you used to drop in on me. You might remember I gave you a Mother Teresa rosary because I thought you admired her and the work her Missionaries of Charity were doing. I am disappointed by your inability to put down goondagardi against Christians. I am ashamed of you.” |
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