Why Indians, not just Hindus must be ashamed of 'HIS'torian Ramachandra Guha

Published: Thursday, Jul 25,2013, 23:31 IST
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Hindus, Ramachandra Guha, guha articles and books

“A man is known by the Company he keeps.” In his latest article, yet again ridiculing Hinduism and its followers, Ramachandra Guha talks of a friend of his, who considers India’s victory over Eastern Pakistan (Modern Day Bangladesh) as a Hindu victory. Guha is a well known Stealth Propagandist, (Writer, thinker, Historian and INTELLECTUAL for some).  A stealth propagandist is a person who uses the mechanisms of media and communication to slyly communicate (Rather enforce) his fascist viewpoint by taking the Moral High ground. Guha often exploits this technique to good use in many of his articles/views. While I would focus on operating his article which appeared in one of the leading English dailies ironically known as ‘The Hindu’, I would also talk about some of his views which he presented in some his TV appearances or articles.

On Hindu Nationalism and 1971 victory : In this article, out of the blue Guha wants to teach Hindus, what they should be proud of. He talks about a prominent BJP leader, who had said that he was a Hindu Nationalist. What followed was an expected furore in the Media, which is after the blood of the same prominent leader since 2002 for various personal and professional reasons. What Guha fails to cover is why and how this originated. The leader claimed that he was a Hindu Nationalist, after he was asked a ‘yes/no’ question in an interview. Guha doesn’t want to understand that not every question would have answers which are grey. There are binary, black and white questions which exist too. If someone asks me, “Do you do charity work?” There are only 2 possible answers to this question. Ofcourse I will have to say ‘No’ since I don’t do charity. Does that make me a non charitable person? NO! I may/may not do charity for various reasons, but as per the question, it checks my contribution and not my intent. Problem with the likes of Guha is that they are of the view that a ‘Hindu Nationalist’ and an ‘Indian Nationalist’ are mutually exclusive. If you are a Hindu, you cannot be an Indian, which is a farce.

His 2nd gaffe surfaces, when he says that the pride associated with Hinduism, Hinduness (as he would like to call it) originates from the ‘Ram JanmaBhoomi movement’ of the late 1980s. Clearly Guha has forgotten of the long list of leaders who have contributed to this cause of restoring Hindu pride, way before this movement. Swami Vivekanand, Madan Mohan Malviya, Dayanand, Savarkar, SP Mookherjee to name a few. Guha expresses his concern over demolition of a 16th century which was built on the site, where it is believed was the birthplace of, Hindu God Ram (Guha uses the word mythical God Ram). Now whether Ram or Allah exists, is a matter of belief of those who have faith, and that is irrelevant here, because an atheist would say neither Ram exists nor Allah, a Muslim would say only Allah exists and a Hindu would say both exist. So the relevant question here is not whether Ram was mythical or Allah is mythical.

The relevant question is whether a temple existed on the site of the 16th century mosque or not. As per Archeological Survey of India findings, it did. (See the proof here). This was the reason, Allahabad High court decided to award a part of the land to Ram Janma Bhoomi committee. Clearly Guha fails to believe what the ASI believes or what the Allahabad High Court believes, forget what Hindus believe. So does it mean I endorse demolition of Babri Masjid? No, we live in a Civil Society were disputes are sorted by the Courts of Laws and not by taking Law into hands. I was equally appalled at the demolition of Masjid, as I would have been at the demolition of Ram Mandir, by the Mongol invader Babar. But does Guha feel the same way too? He never talks of the riots and bomb blasts which surfaced after the mosque demolition. He stays mum on Crores of Hindus who were butchered/raped/burnt alive in Bangladesh and Pakistan and no word on thousands of temples which got demolished in these countries, days within the demolition of Babri Masjid (Read the book – Lajja by Bangla writer Taslima Nasreen)

On Hindu in Intent and Content : There is no justification to demolition of Babri Masjid, very much like demolition of Ram Mandir or thousands of those temples which got demolished in Pak, Bangladesh and Kashmir. Guha calls this entire episode Hindu in content and intent. He calls the idea of building Ram Temple in the site (proved as per ASI and endorsed by the Allahabad High Court) to be wildly foolish. He goes on to say that country has more pressing problems such as health care, housing, food security, environmental safeguards and so on, therefore investing so much time, effort and energy on this issue is too foolish. I would dare Ramchandra Guha to answer the following questions then.

1. If this issue does not deserve so much political energy and human capital, why did he raise this issue out of nowhere? Why is it that his preaching must be applicable to others but not to him?

2. Can Mr. Guha provide any proof to his point that, not focusing on Ram Temple, would ensure that malnutrition figures come to 0 or atleast improve drastically, will it provide everyone an access to healthcare, education etc?

3. If Mr. Guha thinks that this issue is consuming too much energy, has he tried to convince the other parties involved in the case to gracefully accept the remarkable and harmonious decision of Allahabad High Court, which decided to give away 1 part each of the land to Ram Bhoomi, Muslim Waqf Board and a 3rd claimant of the land? Has he ever written anything to convince them like he is writing against the Ram Bhoomi?

4. Guha’s belief apart, there are billions of people who believe in God. Has he tried to convince people of other faiths to give up their respective places, which they consider to be holy, or is this magnanimous piece of advice only applicable for Hindus? Why should people practicing the oldest religion of the world, forget about their beliefs and focus on world affairs while others continue to ‘live’ their religion? Why is there holy place holy and the holy place of Hindus a wastage of time?

5. Finally, this country has witnessed an unfortunate number of demolitions of religious structures for Hindus and at times for Muslims too. The incident of Babri demolition which he claims to be ‘Hindu in intent and content’ resulted in a horrendous outcome for Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan as well as India. Millions of Hindus got butchered in these 3 countries, thousands of temples demolished. So what would be the ‘content and intent’ of this horrific aftermath as per Mr. Guha? Also can Mr. Guha enlighten us all with the ‘content and intent’ behind demolition of thousands of temples in Medieval and Modern Indian/World History. And can Mr. Guha point out to 1 single instance of a temple demolition which resulted in an outrage even 1/100th in magnitude of the outrage of the Babri Masjid Demolition?

On Epicentre of Radical Thinking : Guha, talks about reforms on Hinduism, its roots in Bengal and flag bearing in Maharashtra. The contribution of Swami Vivekanand, RajaRamohan Roy, has been phenomenal. He doesn’t talk anything of the Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayanand. The contribution of these great thinkers has been hushed there and Guha then talks of Gandhi, Ambedkar and the irreplaceable Nehru. Gandhiji’s contribution to Independence movement is great. Ambedkar too played a role in getting the social evils like ‘Untouchability’ out but calling Nehru a Hindu Reformer is blasphemous. Nehru was the originator of imposed Socialist regime and not a Reformist. Guha talks of Independence. He conveniently leaves out that division of 2 Nation theory was on the basis of Religion and that only 1 section had participated in the referendum to divide the country into 2 basis of religion, in an overwhelming majority. So while the Hindus from East and West Pakistan were chased to death, India had to be made a Hindu Nation, which Guha calls a mirror image of Pakistan. But Nehru was against it.

As per Guha, concept of Hindurashtra is same as Hindu Pakistan. Here in comes his ignorance of this religion. Adopting Hindurashtra would have been no different from adopting a Democratic Secular setup. Infact, Hinduism calls for, Vasudev Kutumbkam, which means the whole world, is a family. There is no intolerance towards other religions. Infact a Hindu can worship Gods of other religions and still be a Hindu, he can be an atheist and still be a Hindu, as Hinduism preaches multiple paths of attaining salvation, one of which is Good virtues and does not involve anykind of belief in God. (Read more of it in my previous Blog: An Ideal Worship). Hence being a Hindu is no different than being a Secular Indian and as per the definition, even Guha can be a Hindu, howsoever he may dislike it. Therefore to call a possible Hindu India, a mirror image of Islamic Pakistan is gigantic stupidity. There are no Fundamental tenets of Hinduism which one can fall back on to be called a Fundamentalist. It is highly flexible.

Coming to Nehru, the only thing Nehru did was discrimination based on Religion. Uniform Civil Law is a shining such example. The concept of Appeasement politics would have started somewhere there. His indecisiveness caused India a lot of damage through the Pak and China wars, but the main point of discussion here is how Nehru discriminated and framed laws on the basis of Religion. That was the origin of Divisive politics. Rules were made/not made for Indians. They were made for Hindus, Muslims, and Christians etc. So what Nehru did was suppress the values of Hinduism and kill it mercilessly. He had a pool of Socialist thinkers and intellectuals who were even ready to doctor History to ensure that a Hindu doesn’t feel proud to be a Hindu. Ramachandra Guha is an extension of that Fascist Intellectual Family.

Reforms are part of any civilized society. One should be proud of the fact that, people were made aware of evil practices like Sati, Untouchablity, and caste discrimination through the Reformers. Evolution leads to extension of Civilization but Disruption leads to Destruction. Nehru was the originator of the latter (accidentally if not intentionally). Here again, I would dare Guha to suggest reforms in other religions. There is enough filth in every religion which needs to be done away with, including Hinduism. While Hindus have got various Reformists, Guha remains mum on evil practices of other religions.

On his views on Modi-Rahul in Devil’s Advocate : Guha was recently interviewed by the normally obnoxious celebrity Journalist Karan Thapar on his show, ‘Devil’s Advocate’. I called him, a Stealth propagandist in the beginning of this Blog. Here is the reason why. On one section of interview, Guha argued that there are far too many better leaders than either Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi and that India deserves better leaders than these two. He establishes the credibility to be an unbiased leader by criticizing both the BJP as well as Congress. So far so good! Then he tries to argue that Rahul Gandhi despite not being capable enough does actually have good intentions. Later on he goes on to say that, again a friend reminds him that Rahul is 44, not a very good age to switch careers. Hence a person although not capable enough as per him, but having good intentions is justified for the top job because he is too old to switch careers. The same Guha goes on to say that Narendra Modi in his India Today Conclave speech was bullying, arrogant and authoritarian, just because Modi refused to answer a question which he had answered many times before. So a person’s wish to not give an opinion, in a way exercise his freedom of speech is dictatorial in Guha’s view but on the other hand, Rahul Gandhi, with Zero track record of governance was found endearing by the ‘Intellectual’. Read the Full interview here. Guha is also sympathetic to Rahul Gandhi who at the age of 44 can’t switch careers, but a 64 year old Modi can very much do?

On his article on Maoists : Guha wrote another piece of crap after the attack on Congress convoy in Chhattisgarh. He was justifying that Maoists attack was simply because the Adivasis were poor and driven by the need. Therefore Violence should not be used on the ‘poor innocent adivasis’ I would just ask him a set of questions.

1.  What about the Civilians, police and armed personnel who die to due to the Guerilla type warfare adopted by Maoists (There have been tens of thousands of casualties so far). Does he say that a Maoists blood is blood but those who are the victims of Maoists’ violence have no blood?

2. Guha stays in his luxurious flats/offices and asserts his comments on others. Why doesn’t he takes views of those are the ones affected? For instance, I was once travelling from Jasidih to Jhajha (A maoist belt in Bihar). Dozens of armed Maoists came to attack the train. The passengers were vigilant and shut down the doors of all the coaches. The Maoists could do no harm to the passengers, but they shot dead the driver and left. Does he know the feeling of a child, who doesn’t know if his father would return home or would be yet another scapegoat of Maoism violence?

3. Maoists themselves do a lot of atrocities on the Tribals and many tribals do not support them, hence on what basis, Ramachandra Guha confers them the representative of the Adivasis?

4. Maoists run parallel, administrative and legal institutions. They have extrajudicial courts, to decide the fate of those in Maoist influenced areas. Is it not dictatorial of a group of armed men to impose their rule on larger sections of the Adivasis?

5. We are born Gandhians, but the Cheek-Slap theory doesn’t work everywhere. If a Cow decides, not to attack a Lion, will the Lion also do the same? So by that logic, will Maoists give away their considerable power and administrative clout, just for the sake of peace? Is Guha trying to ‘guarantee’ that they will sacrifice everything and give up their inherent nature?

6. Guha justifies the Maoists by calling them need driven. So if a person who needs sex, is unable to get married, does he start raping women to satisfy his needs? Will Guha also justify his acts and sympathize with him?

On Social Media Youth : Yesterday, in a program in CNN-IBN, Guha was heard saying that he gets a lot of rebuttals and disagreement from the youth on Social Media. He expressed happiness that a random survey conducted by IBN-Hindu of which the sample size would be from a few hundred to a few thousand and the credibility of which is questionable, endorsed his views that Maoists and Terrorists should be dealt only by Non violent methods. Guha questions the Social Media Youth who choose to disregard his views. Guha terms the 10 million odd people active on Social Media as not a true representation of society. Well Guha himself is neither an elected representative nor someone nominated by the elected representatives and yet he claims to be the voice of the common man. The truth is, he is a self appointed intellectual and indirectly presents his fascist views as if they were from the people. He also tries to assert his views by smearing those who think against him. The fact is, the Social Media brigade is one of the most well informed sections of the society, hence their reactions/views are well assessed and well informed, unlike those who are brainwashed and conditioned to hold the same views as Fascists like Guha, a process which was started by Nehru.

Conditioning by Left Fascists – An interesting story of an elephant! A baby elephant calf was caught and chained in a zoo. The elephant was very wild and tried to break the shackles, Inorder to restrain the animal, the authorities tied it in thick chain of shackles. The calf tried to break the shackles, but it was too weak to break free. Any attempt to break the shackles would only result in the calf getting its legs more and more hurt, even bleeding. The calf got its lesson and gave up trying. After some years, it turned into a huge gigantic elephant. The authorities tied it in a thin iron string. It was only a matter of stroke, the elephant needed to break free but over the years, the elephant had learnt that, each attempt to break free, would only lead to it getting injured, hence it doesn’t try at all, although the reality is something else. This process is known as Conditioning of mind. Mind gets conditioned to a set of non existent beliefs.

Similarly the Left Fascists under Nehru have conditioned everyone’s minds in this country with their imposed views. It is too easy for people to break free, but their brain has been programmed to work in a specific way by these Fascists. This was all well until the advent of Social Media. Social Media has given voice to those individuals who have managed to break free from the shackles. This is what is making the likes of Fascist Intellectuals like Ramachandra Guha restless. The same reason why he or other ‘Liberal thinkers’ of Congress party like Shashi Tharoor, Manish Tewari, Digvijay Singh etc try to disparage the Social Media Youth, even to the extent of smearing them, not to be a representative of the Society, howsoever logical their reasoning is.

Just to make things clear, it is not that Youth in the Social Media want an all out violence against Terrorism/Maoism. It is just that these well informed people have seen that the only way to such violent insurgent movements is aggression. As I said earlier, if a Cow stops chasing Lion to death, the Lion wouldn’t return the favour; it would still hunt down and kill the Cow. It is in their very basic nature. So while Guha might enjoy all this drama from his Air Conditioned chambers, those who die are the ones who pay the price for this ill thinking of the likes of Guha. LTTE in Sri Lanka, Khalistani movement in Punjab, Baloch movement in Pakistan, Chechen movement in Russia, all of them have been under control only by coercive methods. Yes it leads to collateral damage which is unfortunate but unavoidable. Out in this world, it is your head or mine; not Guha’s. Hence it is easy for him to take the Moral High Ground, make crass statements and act like a Messiah by getting the seeming support of Brainwashed and Conditioned Common Masses but those who realize what the truth is will never fall in line with his Fascist way of thinking, including his children.

The Final Word : I had said initially, “A Man is known by the Company he keeps”. It is because I see it a habit in Mr. Guha’s articles or interviews, he wants to say something, but always uses this clause, “One friend of mine said this”. “A bhadrlok friend of mine suggested this etc”. Clearly his friends (real or imaginary, only Allah knows) think too much and suggests the mindset of Mr. Guha himself. My Guha should know that Hinduism has survived too many storms in the past 1000 years and he too shall pass. Hinduism will survive. It is only an irony that his parents named him Ramachandra Guha (yes after the name of the ‘mythical’ Hindu God) and not Rahim Ghauri or Rehman Ghazni, much to his dismay. Mr. Guha also insults Muslims of this country by dividing the lines between Hindus and Muslims in all his speeches and considering them a different species altogether and even within Hindus, considering them as Dalits, OBCs, and Brahmins etc 1st, Indian later. He himself despises the concept of Indianness by doing all these. Therefore, not just Hindus but the Indians must be ashamed of Ramachandra Guha.

Author : Suyash Bharadwaj | Follow the writer twitter.com/Suyash75
Disclaimer: The author is a commentator on issues of national interest. These are his personal views and do not necessarily reflect IBTL's opinion.

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