the Western media, which covered the Mahakumbh at Prayagrajcould
only find the naked Sadhus and half-naked women, taking
the holy dip, of any photographic interest. Such is the perversion
of our educated elite and the so-called civilized Western media.
Rather than emphasizing the spirit of the event the so-called
literatti could only focus on such trivia, which to them, was
better news than the underlying eternal spirit of the great Sanatan
Dharma, the life-thread of the Hindus, who constitute 85 percent
of the population of this country. A lack of attachment to the symbols of our national honour
is a failing that afflicts a large part of our intelligentsia. No
institution is immune to this virus of cynicism. We as a people are proving ourselves to be a nation of
somnolent conscience that occasionally splutters, sleep walks
and then subsides into an unseemly slumber again. Such a
society has never produced a great leader or a nation. We are
not even aware of our duties, while we keep on demanding our
rights by all possible means. It is the Western mindset, which
emphasizes the rights at the expense of duty. Our scriptures and
culture teach just the opposite. For us action and duty is more
important than the right. That is the message of the Gita. Article
51 A of our Constitution lays down the singing of the National
Anthem as a fundamental duty. But strangely, in a reference to
the Supreme Court on this issue, the highest judicial authority of
the country decided that discretion is the better part of valour
and refused to give a substantive decision. Contrast this with the
spirit of Israelis who during the freedom struggle gladly climbed
the gallows and put the noose round the neck singing ”Hatikvah”.
Our freedom fighters too sang ”Vande Mataram”, while gladly
embracing death. While the Jews throughout their existence had to struggle
hard to retain or regain their Promised Land, the Hindus inherited
a sub-continental mass without any effort. It was a gift of nature’s
bounty and history. As history unfolded itself countless invaders,
ruthless marauders and soldiers of fortune and those in search
of a kingdom invaded our country and met unexpected success 286 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHART ER18 despite larger armies opposing them. This was due to the fa
that Hindus took the gift of nature and their land for granted
This is the fundamental difference of approach between Jews
and Hindus towards their land. The Hindus could never develop
the same attachment and zeal for their native soil as the Jews
the Mughals and finally the British all had a free run of our
country and the population stood a mute onlooker as the
aggressor established himself on our soil. Even today, we lack
that indestructible bond with our land. There are innumerable
cases, where our politicians have gifted our land away to our
neighbours for ephemeral gains. Starting from Beru Ban’ and Tis
Bigha in Bengal, they allowed vast territories to be occupied by
the Chinese by force in 1962. Subsequently, they gave back the
strategic battle gains like the Haji Pir Pass after the 1965 war to
Pakistan and finally the whole territory conquered in the west
during the 1971 war against them. Even at the birth of our
country, Nehru gave on a clean plate one-third of the state of
Jammu and Kashmir to the tribal invaders led by Pak Army
soldiers by calling for a premature cease-fire and referring the
case to the United Nations. Even today, there is an illegal infiltration of population and
enemy agents into the eastern states from Bangladesh and Nepal
abetted and aided by the ISI in Pakistan. This ingress continues
unabated leading to a total demographic change in the map of
Assam and the neighbouring states. In the United States, there
is a constant search of and surveillance on the illegal immigrants
and aliens and they are regularly detected, de-franchised, and
deported without much ado. But in our country, there is an
unending stream of illegal immigrants in North Eastern States
and West Bengal, which has not been stopped till today, thanks
to the politics of vote banks of our worthy-politicians. This lack
of attachment to the land endemic to our culture and an effete
leadership has persisted down the ages. Even the independence
that we got from the British in 1947 did not change this basic
impulse. This love of the land is the one single most important
lesson that we must learn from the Israelis. We as citizens of this CHAPTER 18 ^Hf FALL FKOM GRACE 287 sacred land owe it to ourselves, in spite of our politicians. India
is a free country, free to be intruded in and free to settle in.
There are few disabling provisions in our immigration laws, and
fewer still for the sanctity of our borders, and none whatsoever
in the enforcement of these. If this process of Open Door Policy-continues the
demographic pattern of the border states of West Bengal and
Assam will change drastically. In fact, Assam will become the
second Muslim majority state in India after Jammu and Kashmir. One Night, 15th/16th_Apjil, 2001, a force of 30 armoured
Army assisted Bangladesh Rifles to intrude in the territory
controlled by a post of 106 BSF Battalion at Pyrdiwah, Meghalaya,
on Indo-Bangladesh border. This operation was accompanied
by similar attacks at the villages of Boraibari and Mankachar. It
was a meticulously planned operation, launched by the Director
General of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR). Maj Gen Fazalur Rahman,
nick-named as the ’local Napoleon’, a hard- core Islamic
fundamentalist. While our mandarins at the Ministry of External
Affairs described him as acting without the permission of Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina, the fact strains credulity. To ease this
pressure, the B.S.F. troops at Golaibari village sent out a strong
patrol inside Bangladesh territory where a BDR force was waiting
for ambush. In the encircling operation 19 B.S.F. jawans were
captured and taken away to captivity. Local Bangladeshi villagers
also activily helped their troops while other villagers residing in
the Indian territory looked silently on. It was obvious to the
most naive that any Bangladesh Rifles operation could not be
assisted by the regular Army without the knowledge of the Army
High Command and the consent of the Prime Minister, Sixteen bodies of the captured B.S.F. jawans mutilated
beyond recognition, badly burnt with eyes gouged and carrying
brutal custodial injury marks were returned to our border forces
on 22nd April, 2001. They were spread-eagled and lied on
poles in public view as common criminals and their dead bodies
paraded as war trophies. It is incredible that our national
leadership was so puissant that instead of taking retaliatory m Hilary 288 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHAPTI ER18 action the Prime Minister on April 22, only expressed his deep
sense of ”hurt and anguish” over the barbaric torture of our
jawans in captivity and gave a clean chit to the Bangladesh
Government even before extracting a ’regret’ not to say ’apology’
from Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. There was no resolve to demand war reparations, the
compensation for the damage of village properties and the 15
valuable lives lost. The matter seems to have ended with the
Bangladesh Prime Minister promising to investigate the matter.
While all the national newspapers screamed for revenge and the
nation was seething with rage, imploring our leadership to act
and not to genuflect, against this act of barbarism, their response
its citizens and avenge the death of its soldiers has no right to
call itself a nation. The world has no respect for a sissy. A weak
nation can neither win diplomatic points and the respect of
nations, nor can have any true friends. The weak-kneed response
of our Government, to say the least, to this barbaric act is
shocking. If our aim was to ensure the political survival of Sheikh
Hasina, who is weak enough to fail in controlling the anti-Indian
elements in her territory, her continuation in power would be
of no political advantage to our country. It is better to have a
known enemy than a weak friend, who can neither be trusted
nor expected to address our legitimate concerns. We were fooled
by Pakistan at Shimla, and now we. were fooled again by
Bangladesh. The civilizational identity of Bangladesh as an. Islamic
country is not different from Pakistan. Despite our gift of freedom
for erstwhile East Pakistan with the blood of our jawans,
Bangladesh remains ungrateful. Soon after the surrender of Pak
forces in Dhaka on 16* December, 1971, I flew to Dhaka as
part of the vanguard of a Civil Affairs Team to the State capital
to revitalize the economy of the devastated country, restore its
rail, road, telecommunications, kick start its industry, rehabilitate
the refugees returning home and establish a semblance of effective
governance. But for all this hard work we put in, some times
frustrating, we got no thanks. Even before I flew out of Dhaka
back to Delhi on 26th February, 1972, there was a large section CHAPTER 18 THE FALL FROM GRACE 289 of Bangladesh, population, which was openly hostile to India
and our presence there. It has become worse over the years.
The rationale for the existence of Bangladesh or erstwhile East
Pakistan remains the same, as it is for Pakistan ”Two Nation”
theory and nationality based on religion. We should not fool
ourselves into the belief that Bangladesh is and will remain friendly
to us. There are already reports of incursion of Bangladesh into
our eastern borders, as is happening in the west in Jammu and
Kashmir, and from the north through Nepal, the ISI being the
principal instigator of this armed subversion. With the victory of Bangladesh National Party headed by
Begum Khalida Zia, things are going to get verse. Already there
were reports of minority bashing in Bangladesh and the leaders
of minority community had appealed to the Government to
ensure that they were allowed to celebrate Durga Puja in peace
and tranquillity without interference from criminals and
fundamentalists. Under the Muslim fundamentalists and the cheer leaders of
the new government, atrocities on Hindu minorities have
increased manifold. About 702335 hectares of land and 22835
Hindu homes have been forcibly confiscated and the occupants
rendered homeless. The common refrain of the BNP is ”Ekta
ekta Hindu Dhar, Hindu Dhare tiffin kar” i.e. catch the Hindus
and chew them. The future forebodes even worse. We have tried to stick to our premise to restrict our study
of the vast Indian history to only the special points of emphasis
where distortions have been deliberately slipped in by our socalled
eminent historians mentioned earlier. India woke up from
its slu-mber of slavery in the beginning of twentieth century and
through various stages of awakening of national conscience, and
struggle for freedom. India was lucky in its gift of outstanding
leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Lala
Ujpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, the father of the nation, Mahatma
Gandhi, Sardar Patel and to an extent Jawaharlal Nehru. Gandhiji
brought the freedom struggle out from drawing room discussions
to the average man tilling his field and the labourer at the
machine wheel. He did not preach, he acted. By this simple 290 INDIA AND ISRAEL CHART R18 gesture of being one of the masses, the masses became one with
him. Without going into platitudes and following the tortuous
movement of freedom struggle a few statements can be made
Gandhiji introduced non-violence to raise politics to a high moral
level. The Empire could not suppress or enslave those who
refused to be suppressed or accept slavery. Gandhi’s non cooperation
and non-violent movement was the praxis of this
thought. Needless to say the mighty British empire bucked before
disobedience movement. However, as true Indians, while we
acknowledge the greatness and the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi,
we should not forget what Lord Krishna had said in Gita, i.e. to
pick up arms against injustice and fight for Dharma against evil.
Gandhiji did not wish our country to be a nation of cowards,
he wanted us to be brave, Gandhiji’s methods may not succeed
in today’s world where our country is surrounded by hostile
neighbours and the law favours the mighty. We as a nation will
have to shed the inhibition of the past and don the mantle of
a strong nation. Our freedom obtained without much fight need
not put us into a state of complacency. We should pro-act
rather than react. In today’s battle against worldwide terrorism,
we need not be shy of using force and fight the terrorists with
the weapons and methods they use. Nurtured on the literature of Ramayan, a household sacred
book in all Hindu homes, our psyche has been moulded on the
character of Maryada Purushottam Ram. While we have
internlized his qualities of piety and forgiveness, we have ignored
his fight against evil and a determination to take up arms against
injustice. As a result, through centuries of slavery, rapine and
destruction of Hindu population we stood mute spectators and
offered a pacific response to injustice. The Jews, however, except
for the early part of their history, reacted differently and
aggressively. Like Hindus they too blamed their misfortune on
the wrath of the gods and their defeats as the wages of sin. But
this was for a short period when they learnt their lesson, and
thereafter there was no looking back and much later, the cult of
Gun Zionism emerged. But for the Hindus in their long history V ^”TpTER 18 THE FALL FROM GRACE 291 Of ten millennia the period of Muslim and British rule, lasting
nearly six and a half centuries was a period of unmitigated
disaster. We lost most of our battles and much worse our very
vitality and the capacity to stand up and fight. We_ forgot the
teachings of our Cod, Lord Krishna, who on the battlefield of
numbers. Sometimes the Indian side was larger. During the
process of habitation in Palestine Jewish migration increased
manifold. From a trickle it changed into a flood, and the British
were not long in imposing punitive measures. But they reckoned
without the Jewish spirit and their leader David Ben-Gurion.
During the first World War when the Jews were fighting on the
British side, and the restrictions on the number of migrants was
imposed through a White Paper, David Ben-Gurion gave his
clarion call, ”We shall fight the war as if there is no White Paper,
and we shall fight the White Paper as if there is no war”. Such
a leadership and a nation of doers need no one’s help to
endure and to prevail. The latest example of Jewish tenacity and
self-reliance came to light in the earthquake devastated Bhuj,
where ail the international rescue teams and medical personnel
were waiting for instructions and guidance from the local civil
authorities before commencing operations. The Jewish team of
doctors set about their task without delay. The fact that the Jews
have won almost half the number of Nobel Prizes in Medicine
is proof enough of their excellence in the Science of Medicine.
But here they achieved the miracle of reclaiming a marshy land
and established a hospital in tents offering immediate relief and
succor to the suffering and the wounded of Bhuj./ The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’(1844-1900)
came up with a novel but dangerous idea of a superman and
a master race, which shall dominate the world. The idea was
avidly picked up by Adolf Hitler, who decided to produce a
master race of German Aryans by systematically cleansing the
German society of the weak, the disabled, the infirm and the
slow witted. His target, however, was mainly the Jewish r» QHAPTER 18 THE FALL FROM GRACE 293 population. Unfortunately in India, we are unknowingly involved
jn a process of social engineering of the reverse order. Instead
of taking the hard road of education, empowerment,
development and conferring dignity on the under privileged and
the dalit masses, our leaders took a short cut, based entirely on
electoral considerations, by creating reservations in Government
and other professional jobs without’ regard to merit. This has
caused severe erosion in the level of merit and excellence in our
obtain an entry into the Guinness Book World of Records. With
so many parties babbling their shibboleths and competing for
public votes, it is a complete bedlam in a Tower of Babel, which
not only confuses the average citizen, but makes him cynical in
the exercise of his franchise. India’s present does not inspire. The all-pervasive corruption has reached such a level that a
convict can be elected a Chief Minister of a state as in Tamil
Nadu and another one charge-sheeted in fodder scam is aspiring
to be another one in the state of Bihar. It is about time that our
people rose against this loot and plunder of public money. How
fragile is the democratic edifice of our country? To say that our
electorate though illiterate is wise in their judgment at the ballot
box would amount to being economic with the truth. Most
elections are won through the use of money, criminal and muscle
power. The voters are mainly affected by local issues, personal
interests, caste considerations and fear. National issues seldom
enter their calculations. To quote Margaret Thatcher: ”There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and
women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to
something greater than themselves.” Democracy in our country
is a farce and mobocracy rules the roost. I have mentioned this w CHAPTER 18THE FALL FROM GRACE 295 aspect in my book on ’Nehru’, how mobs and crowds can be
sentimental, irrational and often wrong. The case in Tamilnadu
is one such example. The nation today needs a leader of resolve, who could put
the nation above ambition. Someone in the mould of George
Washington of whom Major General Francois Jeande Chastllur,
a member of French Academy and one of Europe’s leading
men of letters, wrote thus: ”Bravery without temerity, laborious without ambition,
generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous
without severity.... He had nothing to reproach him with”. Can we hope to get such a leader? The Future J