Reading Archive

The communist and fellow-travelling press and platforms in this country are busy building up and defending India's Defence Minister, Mr. VK Krishna Menon, in the face of what the leftists describe as "an upsurge of rightist reaction". Krishna Menon himself struts about with an air of injured innocence, and frequently dons the mask of a much misunderstood martyr whose services to the nation have not been properly appreciated.

Some of the guidelines seem to be good. It is eminently desirable that 'the ancient period of Indian history cannot be referred to as the Hindu period and the medieval period as the Muslim period'. It follows, though it is not mentioned in the guidelines reported by the Indian Express, that the modern period of Indian history also will not be named as the British period. This scheme of periodization, however, was given up by most historians quite some time ago. One only wonders what the votaries of Islamic imperialism will do without a Muslim period of Indian history.

Comrade Radek, whom Stalin liquidated in the late 'thirties, was a Communist intellectual endowed with acid humour. He coined many jokes at the cost of the Communist Party and the Soviet State. One of these jokes which did the rounds in Moscow was as follows:

Why I Am Not a Muslim certainly deserves the epithet "courageous" with which R. J. Hoffmann introduces it in his Foreword, not so much because of its thesis that Islamic civilization often reached magnificent heights despite the religion of Islam, as because almost all the fundamental tenets of Islam are here scrutinized uncompromisingly. Moreover, Ibn Warraq's criticisms are no idiosyncrasies, but supported with very extensive references to scholarly works. His book is particularly valuable as a means of acquainting oneself with this scholarship.

In a letter dated August 20, 1993, Janata Dal MP Syed Shahabuddin has asked the Minister of State for Home, PM Sayeed, to ban the book Hindu View of Christianity and Islam by Ram Swarup (Voice of India, New Delhi 1992). It is not his first time: in 1988, Shahabuddin was instrumental in getting Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses banned. This time he has not been equally successful in getting the book swiftly banned, but judicial proceedings are under way to get it banned after all. As a European India-watcher, I leave it to Indian commentators to advise the public on how to react to this new onslaught on the freedom of publication, and will limit myself to some background analysis.

No newspaper or periodical worth its name in India will publish what I write in the lines that follow. Not because the subject matter is seditious or sacrilegious or obscene, or even controversial, but simply because it defies the Emergency imposed on this country by Muslim theologians and politicians backed by 'secularist' intellectuals and politicians and riotous Muslim mobs and plain terrorists.

So far, we have discussed (1) the significance of Hindu Society as the last of the ancient societies to survive the invasion of latter-day ideologies, and (2) the methods and means employed by these ideologies to finish Hindu society as well.

This article was written in 1981. Now the Soviet Union has disappeared from the scene and the Communist movement in India does not know whom to serve. But its hostility towards Hindu society and culture remains undiminished. It is quite on the cards that this mercenary outfit will be bought over, in due course, by some other power or powers hostile to positive Indian nationalism. A Communist cannot help being a traitor to his country and his people.

Now for the second residue of British rule, Macaulayism. The term derives from Thomas Babington Macaulay, a member of the Governor General’s Council in the 1830s. Earlier, the British Government of India had completed a survey of the indigenous system of education in the Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras. A debate was going on whether the indigenous system should be retained or a new system introduced. Macaulay was the chief advocate of a new system. This, he, expected, will produce a class of Indians brown of skin but English in taste and temperament. The expectation has been more than fulfilled.