To Make the Deaf Hear- Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades, by Irfan Habib

 

Historian or a Police ‘Writer’?

The number of public intellectuals who pretend to write scholarly books, but launch into invective against the current ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, often from the Preface itself, are a legion. I have already reviewed books written by Graham Turner, David Hardiman, A.G. Noorani, Audrey Truschke, and Giles Tillotson. We can add to this list the name of Irfan Habib, academic, and historian of awesome repute.

Speaking of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, the author writes: The revolutionaries were feeling “the impact of the Bolshevik revolution more and more and this led to a widening of horizons in their outlook” (page xii). For the revolutionaries, “national liberation meant political freedom as well as end to economic exploitation. Their vision of nation building was qualitatively different from the mainstream Congress model and was far removed from the right reactionary programme of the present day BJP and its cohorts, who leave no opportunity to appropriate their martyrdom” (page xii).

By extension of the author’s arguments, the only individuals who ought to celebrate the life of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, are the Late A.B. Bardhan (I hope there are a few among the public who remember this grave, and humourless gentleman), and D. Raja of the Soviet-inspired Communist Party of India (CPI). This party is in such dire straits, that when Kanhaiya Kumar (the wunderkind from JNU) on the eve of the 2019 elections defected from the CPI to the Congress Party (after losing the 2014 elections as a CPI candidate from Begusarai), D. Raja famously said, “Kanhaiya Kumar has removed himself from the party”, thereby admitting that the CPI did not even have adequate party gendarme to depose members gone renegade. So what exactly does the author desire? That Bhagat Singh should be erased from public memory even as the CPI defaces itself?

The author should realize that, Bhagat Singh is remembered and celebrated across all ideological divides, because of his patriotism, his idealism, and his spirit of sacrifice, values that are eternal to the soul of a country. To quote Nehru:

“Bhagat Singh did not become popular because of his act of terrorism, but because he seemed to vindicate, for the moment, the honour of Lala Lajpat Rai, and through him of the nation. He became a symbol, the act was forgotten, the symbol remained, and within a few months each town and village of the Punjab, and to a lesser extent in the rest of northern India, resounded with his name.” (This passage is quoted twice in the book on pages 59, and 92 in a case of poor editing.)

(It might interest readers in Bangalore to know that on the road leading from the Mysore Lancers’ Haifa Memorial to R.T. Nagar, in a square on the edge of a low income colony, a statue of Bhagat Singh has been installed. The last time this Reviewer visited the site, the statue was enclosed in a glass/transparent plastic casing, to keep it clean of the bird droppings that blot other statues in the city. This site, situated so distant from Bhagat Singh’s native state of Punjab, is an offering of lasting gratitude of the citizens of India to their hero.)  

The other great short coming of this book are the citations. The author extensively cites the Police Files from the National Archives. In doing so, he fails in the elementary task of envisioning the revolutionary spirit. Instead he articulates the police version. Revolution is reimagined as a violation of ‘law and order’, and in the process, the historian is reduced to a ‘Writer’ in a colonial police station. Let me illustrate:

(1)   The assassination of Saunders, by Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev is termed as a “murder” on Pages 34, 76 and 91. See also Page 7 “for the murder of several hated British officers”.

(2)   “In a rather stormy meeting on September 21, 1929, the Gandhians were defeated and the executive committee of the Chittagong congress came under the control of persons sympathetic to terrorist methods” (emphasis added) (page 95).

(3)   Consider this sentence on Page 42: The [Naujawan Bharat] Sabha also had a definite political programme and soon these “social objects of the Sabha” became “merely a cloak for the dissemination of revolutionary ideas.” The quotes in this sentence come from the Police File! At least in this instance the police files unlike the authors own observations are more progressive, and do not talk of ‘terrorism’ or ‘murder’, but of ‘revolution’.

(4)   On page 87, the author once more writes: “During 1920-22 no major terrorist activities were planned.” (emphasis added)

Revolutionaries and Gandhi.

While Nehru and Bose, both prominent Congress members had tremendous sympathies for the revolutionaries, Gandhi was unrelenting in his opposition to the revolutionaries. While the revolutionaries halted their activities in the interest of the Non-Cooperation Movement, Gandhi did not reciprocate in acknowledging the contributions of the revolutionaries. Let us quote Gandhi:  “[a] revolutionary’s sacrifice, nobility and love are not only a waste of effort, but being ignorant and misguided, do and have done more harm to the country than any other activity. For, the revolutionaries have retarded the progress of the country” (page 88).

The Gandhi-Irwin pact led to the release of all political prisoners, except the revolutionaries. Gandhi actively kept the case of the revolutionaries outside the scope of his pact. In fact Gandhi appealed to the Viceroy for the expeditious hanging of the “boys” “before” the Karachi session of the Congress, “than after it” (page 70).

As a result Bhagat Singh and his associates were hanged on March 23, 1931. Gandhi arrived on March 25, 1931 for the Karachi session.

On page 83, the author narrates an entirely different version of this story. I quote:

“The Gandhi-Irwin pact was signed on March 5, 1931. As a result of this pact all political prisoners, except those accused of violent crimes, were released. But Gandhi had now realized that the executions will have an adverse effect on the Karachi session, due to begin in the end of March 1931. He therefore suggested to the Viceroy to postpone the executions till the session was over. But Irwin opposed the idea saying that postponement is beyond his power. ---”

While the repetition is itself a sign of poor editing, the two versions contradict one another, leaving the Reader wondering about the facts of the matter.

Indian Revolutionaries and their Overseas Counterparts.

While the idealism of the Indian revolutionaries was truly inspiring, in hindsight, there was a touching naiveté about their heroism. This feeling is amplified when viewed in the context of their youth. Bhagat Singh was just 23, when he was executed by the remorseless authorities of the colonial government. One cannot but be saddened by the turn of events, specially because they had been spectacularly ineffective in the pursuit of their aims. For instance:

(1)   At Muzzafarpur, Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chakki intended to assassinate a certain Kingsford, who had ordered young men to be flogged. Instead they threw a bomb at two innocent British ladies who were in the same coloured carriage as Mr. Kingsford, killing them.

(2)   In 1909, Madan Lal Dhingra assassinated Curzon Wyllie in London. Weeks before this, he had planned to assassinate Lord Curzon, and the former Lieut. Governor of East Bengal, a certain Fuller, but arrived late for the meeting that the two were to attend, and could not act. Some historians feel that he had indeed mistaken Curzon Wyllie for Lord Curzon, the latter, a much hated, and more deserving victim.

(3)   In December 1912, a bomb was thrown at Lord Hardinge, killing an Indian attendant.

(4)   An uprising of Indian soldiers was planned for 21^st February 1915, but the plan leaked and most of the revolutionaries involved were arrested.

(5)   In 1928, the revolutionaries intended to assassinate a certain James Scott, who had ordered the lathi-charge that killed Lala Lajpat Rai. Instead, in a case of mistaken identity, they killed Scott’s deputy, a certain John Saunders.

Compare this record with the assassinations carried out by the Anarchists in Europe.

(1)   Sadi Carnot, President of France, 1894.

(2)   Antonio Canovas, Prime Minister of Spain, 1897.

(3)   Empress Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary, 1898.

(4)   King Umberto of Italy, 1900.

(5)   William McKinley, President of the USA, 1901.

(6)   King Carlos I of Portugal, 1908.

(7)   Pyotr Stolylin, Prime Minister of the Russian Empire, 1911.

If only the Indian revolutionaries had been half as successful as their European counterparts, and assassinated a few Viceroys in succession, instead of expendable low level functionaries, the Empire would have been shaken by its roots. In the event, sadly, Gandhi for once, had been proved right in his judgment.

Conclusion.

To return to this book. The book is badly written, and poorly edited. What is worse, it is ill conceived. Given the awesome reputation that goes with this author’s name, I can only hope that this book is not reflective of his larger body of work. But I am not wasting my time to find the truth. Those who revel in abusing the political party incumbent in the current Government, can find adequate material free of charge in the popular press. They need not waste money buying this, or other companion books, that I have cited in the opening paragraph of this Review.   

Part IV (Concluded): The Blood Telegram by Gary J Bass

 

The Importance of being Yahya

It is not often remembered that the United States was knee deep in the morass that was the Vietnam War, at the same time as the genocide in East Pakistan. The trial of members of the US armed forces accused of the My Lai massacre ended on 29^th March 1971 bringing to public knowledge the horrors of the Vietnam War. Coming as it did after the stalemate of the Korean War with an estimated 2-3 million civilian deaths, the American public opinion was entirely opposed to America’s entry into another Asian war. Responding to public opinion, Nixon was anxious to end the Vietnam War. Instead of doing this honorably, admitting defeat and negotiating a cease fire, he entered into subterfuge.

North Vietnam was backed by Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the US. Initially, the American support was financial and military, but starting around 1965, America put its own boots on the ground, leading to an unprecedented escalation of the conflict. Nixon wanted to reach out to China, and persuade it to moderate its support to North Vietnam. At the same time, it was thought that a direct contact of the US with China would weaken the Soviet Union in the Cold War. China and the Soviet Union had already begun to have differences over the Soviet support to India in the 1962 and 1965 wars. China was also anxious to gain global acceptance and acquire a permanent membership of the Security Council. It decided to play ball with Nixon. Yahya, China’s poster boy in the subcontinent agreed to play the courier in person.

Yahya was not the only conduit to China, then available to the US. But the US chose Yahya over the others, cleverly sensing that given the deep trouble he found himself in, in his domestic politics, he would be most committed to render this service in exchange for American support (page 104). True to his promise, Yahya succeeds in arranging a meeting between Kissinger and Zhou Enlai. Kissinger on a visit to Pakistan, feigns illness, withdraws from public engagements, and secretly flies off to China for this meeting (pages 115-116). Once the meeting was over, and a direct China-US communication channel was established, Yahya’s utility in furthering US foreign policy had effectively ceased. But the US continued to prop up Yahya, to prove to their new ally China that the US was a firm and reliable partner for the long term (pages 174, 237). Given that all these developments took place it May-July 1971, the Hindus in East Pakistan paid a heavy price over the next six months, with Yahya continuing his selective genocide confident in the US’ support to his regime.

Interestingly, China viewed the East Pakistan problem as similar to the problems posed by Taiwan and Tibet to itself. China’s support to Pakistan was a direct consequence of this perception. China was also on the verge of its own cultural revolution (October 1971), the core of which was martial law and a strident denunciation of capitalism. To shake hands with the US in this atmosphere had its own challenges for China.

In the ultimate analysis, each country pursued cynically its self-interest, as “India chose the way of compassion” (page 190), hosted 10 million refugees on its soil, waged a war at its own expense, and on its own strength, and liberated East Pakistan without claiming any territory for itself, not even a buffer zone for the Hindu and Buddhist minority as was suggested in some quarters.

Closing Comments- A continuing selective genocide.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Today, fifty years after its founding, the people of Bangladesh have chosen to forget their founding father, Mujibur Rehman, having set fire to the museum and national monument to his memory. They have desecrated the statue of Rabindranath Tagore, the author of their national anthem. They have chosen to join hands with the state of Pakistan, and the army of Pakistan, their former tormentors. They have attempted to Arabize their language. They have once again embarked on the selective targeting of their Hindu population, a move if unchecked can once again lead to selective genocide. Is a war of liberation now possible? Can you liberate an already liberated country? Can you wait for a crisis to unfold and then react to it?

We can no longer close our eyes to the fact that the entire majority community in Bangladesh is radicalized. Denying this and attributing the current developments to a radical fringe is to delude ourselves until the next crisis should overtake us.

A calm and clearly thought out policy that prescribes pro-active sustained ameliorative action during the most normal of times can even now stave of crisis. The Citizens Amendment Act (CAA) is now in place. A special window ought to be opened to admit into Indian citizenship the religious minorities of Bangladesh, before they get hounded out in the next crisis. Beginning slowly and imperceptibly, this ‘bringing out’ must gather momentum with passing time. An infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims is already occurring at an alarming speed, with an estimated 10 million illegal migrants already within India and dispersed wherever politicians seek to establish a vote bank. While it is a herculean task to send such numbers back, it should be comparatively easier to bring the persecuted minorities of Bangladesh in. This latter population would integrate fully and help the growing Indian economy which is staring at a declining democratic dividend in the not so distant future (see Mukherjea and Rajahnsa, Behold the Leviathan).

The question is, can India stand up this challenge?

Part III: The Blood Telegram: India’s secret war in East Pakistan by Gary J. Bass

Presidential prejudice and an advisor’s chicanery

Richard Nixon had a visceral hatred of Indians and a deep disdain for the Hindu faith. His antipathy towards India originated from a mix of racism, and an inferiority complex. On his first visit to India, in 1953, as Vice President to Eisenhower, he found Nehru’s (India’s first Prime Minister) Queen’s English delivered with impeccable diction, and British accent, so distant from his own expletive-ridden Americanese, irritating. He felt that this brown washed man had no business to have a scholarly grasp of global history. He found Nehru’s non-alignment, coupled with fondness for the Soviet Union, a classic example of Hindu deceit. Nixon was not a man to forget easily his first impressions. In contrast, his visit to Pakistan, the cantonment at stately Rawalpindi, and his meeting with the smartly dressed, but distinctly less intelligent Generals was rewarding. Pakistan readily aligned itself with the United States joining eagerly the CENTO and SEATO treaties, providing bases for the US within Pakistani territory, wringing in return, military aid in the form of 640 tanks, artillery, a submarine, sundry ships, B-57 bombers, F-86 sabre jets, interceptors, helicopters, and C-130 transport planes. Pesky Nehru fumed at the mighty US, and irritated Nixon further (pages 3-4).

Kissinger was Nixon’s shadowy National Security Advisor, with a nebulous role, distinct from, and independent of, the Secretary of State, with direct and unlimited access to Presidential facetime, in brief- a buddy. Kissinger instinctively knew how make himself indispensable. Inflame the President’s prejudices, echo his views, and shield him from independent advice. Here are a few of Nixon’s views on India:

(1)   “I don’t like the Indians”- at the height of the Bengali crisis (page 5, 262).

(2)   “The Indians need- what they need really is a mass famine”, to which Kissinger responds, “They’re such bastards” (page 144). This is in the context of India having to deal with the refugee problem single handedly.

(3)   “Why don’t they [Indians] shoot them [refugees]?” This to the American Ambassador to India, Keating who had come to urge aid for India to care for the refugees (page 153).

(4)   “The Indians are a slippery treacherous people”. Kissinger the man of the hour adding, that the Indians are “insufferably arrogant”, and “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre!” This in the context of Kissinger’s visit to India, Pakistan, and his secret visit to China in the aftermath (page 177).  

(5)   The State Department which had always taken an independent stand on this matter had recommended that Nixon take a tough approach towards Yahya including asking him to make peace with Awami League and stop destroying Hindu villages (page 209). This ignited Nixon. His response: “Sick Bastards”, said Nixon of those in the State Department who had supported Archer Blood and his telegram (page 211).

(6)   “I want a public relations program developed to piss on the Indians” & “I want to piss on them for their responsibility”, “I want the Indians blamed for this ---- we can’t let these goddamn, sanctimonious Indians get away with this.” This rant is in the context of the 14 day war that India had begun to swiftly win (page 286-7).

(7)   Not to be outdone by his boss, Kissinger, in a theatre of the absurd, more than once compared Yahya to Abraham Lincoln. Apparently Yahya was waging a civil war like Abe to keep the country together! See page 209 for one such instance.

What was the end result of these confabulations between the President and his intrepid Advisor?

(1)   Nixon cut off all aid to India, including the miniscule USD 70 million granted for refugee relief. This included the cancellation of critical radar equipment promised to India in the wake of the 1962 war with China, to guard our northern border.

(2)   China was informed of the cancellation of the supply of the radar equipment to India, a surreptitious hint that they could attack India’s northern border once again if they so desired.

(3)   The President approved the illegal transfer of American airplanes to Pakistan from third parties such as Jordan, Iran, and Turkey to compensate for the American-supplied jets that Pakistan had lost to the Indian air attacks on both frontiers.

(4)   The President ordered the famous seventh fleet, led by the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal in a threatening gesture. This was flowed by HMS Eagle of the UK Navy.

While these actions did not delay the Indian victory, they gave the wrong impression to Yahya that the big powers, such as China and the US would directly intervene against India- an illusion that the Pakistan’s Eastern Command hemmed in by the Indian forces from all sides did not entertain. They asked for permission to surrender on December 10^th, 1971 which was denied.  Instead they surrendered on December 16^th after Yahya, authorized the Eastern Command to decide independently on the matter, i.e., after effectively throwing the Eastern Command to the wolves.   

Part II: The Blood Telegram: India’s secret war in East Pakistan by Gary J. Bass

‘A selective genocide’ of Hindus in East Pakistan

The Preamble. Subsequent to the election held on 7^th December, 1970, the inaugural session of the National Assembly of Pakistan was proposed to be held on 3^rd March 1971. Yahya, Bhutto, and the West Pakistani political elite baulked at the idea of handing over power to a party from East Pakistan, and postponed the inaugural session indefinitely. After unprecedented protests in East Pakistan, a new date was announced, 25^th March 1971. Yahya flew into Dacca on 15^th March for negotiations, with Bhutto joining them on 22^nd March. There was really nothing much to negotiate. Mujib had won the election and he was not going to throw away his victory. Seeing that the ‘negotiations’ were at a dead end, Yahya suddenly flew back to West Pakistan on 25^th March 1971, leaving behind certain crucial instructions to the army. The instructions were to be followed starting from the time his flight would be landing in Rawalpindi. The command of the Pakistani army in the East was in the hands of Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan.

What were these instructions and how were they carried out?

On the night of 25^th March, 1971,

“The Pakistani military had launched a devastating assault on the Bengalis. Truckloads of Pakistani troops drove through the city [Dacca] --- U.S.- supplied M-24 tanks led some of the troop columns. Throughout Dacca, people could hear the firing of rifles and machine guns. Windows rattled from the powerful explosions from mortars or heavy weapons. The night turned red from burning cars and buildings. It was only near daybreak that the gunfire slowed” (page 50).

In other words Yahya had ordered ‘a night of the long knives’ to purge East Pakistan of the Awami League and its supporters.

This much is unsurprising. Even the most sanitized histories of the period record these atrocities carried out by the Pakistani army against the unarmed citizens of East Pakistan. This was but the partial truth. The whole truth? It remained hidden for thirty years.

What was the whole truth?

It is a cliché that the world is a connected place. It indeed was, even before the era of the internet.

American embassies are expected to implement their Government’s policy in the host nation. American government response to the crisis brewing in Pakistan, was a bland restatement of the UN charter that does not permit any country to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. The US considered Pakistan’s war with the citizenry of East Pakistan as Pakistan’s internal matter. However, the American government had made a special provision for the embassies and consulates to communicate directly to the State Department in case the local situation in the host country required a realignment of US foreign policy. This was a provision that was seldom invoked by the professional diplomats, who were trained to be automatons of the US State Department.

Archer Kent Blood was the Consul General at the American consulate in Dacca. He was a dispassionate observer of the events taking place around him, and a fearless reporter. He communicated the developments in East Pakistan starting 25^th December 1971 to his superior in the American Embassy at Islamabad (Pakistan’s capital). This gentleman, Joseph S. Farland, was pro-West Pakistan, and aligned with Yahya. He did not forward any of these blood curdling communications to the US State Department.

Blood, then invoked the special provision to communicate news of what he called the ‘selective genocide’ of the Hindus by means of a telegram to the State Department- what has since become famous as The Blood Telegram, from which this book derives its title. These communications remained confidential, until they were declassified in 2001, after thirty years, in keeping with the American rules governing such matters. A vast amount of correspondence between the different arms of the US Government, the White House (President Richard Nixon), and the National Security Advisor (Henry Kissinger) saw the light of day.

The author Gary J. Bass has studied these documents in a detail that defies imagination (see the 150 pages of citations printed in closely spaced lines in a small font size). Collating the contents, with the Indian documents of the period obtained from the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), chiefly the P.N. Haksar (Advisor to the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi) papers and D. P. Dhar (India’s envoy to the Soviet Union) papers, the Author puts out a coherent and exhaustive history of the events. The true story, suppressed by all the players, Indian Government included, is revealed for the first time. The result is stunning.

(1)   The West Pakistani political elite ‘scorned Bengalis- even the Muslim majority- as weak and debased by too much exposure to Hindus among them” (Page 81). “The West Pakistani army seems bent on eliminating them [Hindus]; their rationale, by eliminating Hindus, Pakistan purifies itself, rids itself of ---anti-Islam elements” (page 82).

(2)   By removing the Hindus “Pakistan will have ridded itself of ten million undesirables --- and East Pakistan’s total population will have been reduced enough to return it once again to minority position, thereby allowing continued domination by the West” (page 82).

(3)   India would be forced to accept the fleeing Hindus into its fold, and such a population drive would disrupt normal life in India to Pakistan’s advantage.

These objectives drove an unprecedented assault on the Hindu population in East Pakistan. In old Dacca, an area comprising two dozen blocks, mainly Hindu residences, were razed. The Pakistani soldiers entered the Dacca University and fired at students and teachers residing there. “Some of the worst killings of civilians, according to students, took place at Jagannath Hall, the Hindu dormitory” (page 54). The Hindu faculty were selected and shot dead. In short, what was being perpetrated was a ‘selective genocide’.

 “There was, Archer Blood thought, no logic to this campaign of killings and expulsions of the Hindus, who numbered about ten million- about 13 percent of East Pakistan’s population. Later he would call it ‘criminally insane’. There was no military need for it. The Hindus were not the nucleus of any armed resistance. They were unarmed and dispersed around East Pakistan. – and were outliers in a Pakistani nation defined in Muslim terms” (page 82).

The response of the US Government? Blood was removed from his post in Dacca at April end, and transferred to an insignificant desk job in the State Department. However reports of the persecution of Hindus were continuously dispatched from Dacca even after Blood’s removal. And the exodus of refugees to India fleeing persecution had reached ‘biblical’ proportions (page 119).

“The first wave of refugees was made up of a great many Bengali Muslims, but as early as mid-April ---by official reckoning, as many as 90 percent of the refugees were Hindus. --- India secretly recorded that by middle of June, there were some 5,330,000 Hindus, as against 443,000 Muslims and 150,000 from other groups. Many Indian diplomats believed that the Hindus would be too afraid ever to go back” (page 121). The Indian Government kept these statistics secret, fearing that the truth would incense its citizenry and the parliament; the latter was already pressing the Government to go to war with Pakistan. 

Finally, “On May 22, after almost two months of targeted slaughter of the Hindus of East Pakistan, Farland [American ambassador in Islamabad, and a Yahya acolyte] finally gingerly raised these killings with Yahya, in a tense meeting at the President’s house in Karachi” (page 149). Farland had begun to feel qualms of his conscience. Yahya’s response? He replaced the fearsome Lt. Gen. Tikka Khan with Lt. Gen. A. A. K. Niazi.

By late June, an estimated 200,000, most of them Hindu Bengalis had been killed according to the information received by the US Government. Reference to the ‘selective genocide of the Hindus’ and “Hindus leaving because of specific persecution”, can be found in multiple citations throughout this book, from independent, and uninterested sources (see pages 152, 154, 202, 203, 208, 235, 236, 260).

The most incisive of these citations was from the CIA, which operated based on its own independent sources.

 “The CIA had a blunt explanation for this “incredible” migration: “many if not most of the Hindus fled for fear of their lives”. --- The Pakistan army, the CIA noted, seemed to have singled out Hindus as targets.

Although the CIA refrained from crying genocide, it did insist this was an ethnic campaign, with 80 percent- or possible even 90 percent- of the refugees being Hindus. So far, out of eight million refugees, over six million were Hindus, and many more might follow- ending perhaps only when East Pakistan had no more Hindus left” (page 236). 

By end June, everyone in the State Department, the Nixon administration including his Advisor Henry Kissinger were aware of this information (page 148).

But President Richard Nixon remained unmoved, although the genocide was being carried out American arms and American supplied ammunition, the supplies remained on-going even during the genocide.

The Blood Telegram: India’s Secret War in East Pakistan by Gary J Bass

 Part 1: The Birth of Bangladesh

A generational memory lasts about twenty years. Fifty three years after its birth, the current generation of adults, born twenty years after 1971, have at best a foggy memory of the events that led to the birth of Bangladesh. Let us first recapitulate those momentous events which led to the birth of a country.

But first, the birth of Pakistan. Pakistan, India’s invalid twin, was born out of Jinnah’s call for lebensraum (literally ‘living space’, metaphorically, a homeland) for the subcontinent’s Muslims. Therein lay the disease- an uncompromising sectarian constitution. After much negotiation two non-contiguous Muslim majority areas separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory, one towards the west (the current day Pakistan), and the other on the east (East Bengal, current day Bangladesh), were selected for the formation of Pakistan. On the eve of partition and independence, a mass, unorganized but incomplete exchange of populations took place, with Punjab and Bengal bearing the brunt. Hindus from East Bengal trudged westwards, and Muslims from West Bengal trudged eastwards. This mass migration took place in the midst of much violence fanned by the Muslim League. Despite this migration, at the time of independence, 24% of the population of East Pakistan (the erstwhile East Bengal) were Hindus. Among those who trudged eastwards were a significant number of Muslims from the Indian state of Bihar. In East Pakistan, they were referred to as Biharis, this term, in later years became a pejorative for the Urdu speaking non-Bengali population. 

What was wrong with Pakistan? While being united by their religion- this unity being expressed in their anti-Hindu sentiments, the two wings of Pakistan were divided in every other way possible. The West was dominated by the Urdu (and Punjabi)-speaking Punjabi Mussalmans, who felt that they were the original inheritors of Islamic sovereignty. Their strong sense of identity had its origin in the British theory of martial races, which considered Punjabi Muslims to be martial, and the Bengalis to be effeminate, and non-martial. There was something ironic about this theory, given that the most serious threats to British rule had arisen from the mutiny in the Bengal Army in 1857, and the twentieth century revolutionaries from Bengal! But this theory, reinforced the self-image of the West Pakistanis as the natural rulers of the new state of Pakistan. Consequently, from 1947-1971, Pakistani politics was dominated by individuals from the West, and there was almost continuous agitation in the East for equitable power sharing, distributive justice, and development. This state of unstable equilibrium could have in principle, continued indefinitely. However it was rudely interrupted when Gen. Yahya Khan, the then martial law ruler- who had seized power in 1969 after deposing Gen. Ayub Khan- who had himself seized power in 1958, and lost a disastrous war with India in 1965, decided to conduct elections on 7^th December 1970, with a view to hand over power to an elected civilian government. Yahya could have rigged the elections, and contrived a pre-determined result to keep power within the West Pakistani ruling elite. But he unwittingly permitted the very first free and fair election in Pakistan.

The result was a monumental disaster. As it happened, East Pakistan was more populous compared to West Pakistan, and consequently had a larger number of seats. In East Pakistan, the Awami League headed by the charismatic Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (father of the recently toppled Sheikh Hasina) swept the polls winning 167 out of the 169 seats. In the West, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) headed by Z. A. Bhutto won 86 out of the 144 seats. On the basis of the principle of parity, Mujibur Rehman-headed Awami League should have formed the government with the Bhutto-headed PPP in opposition. However Yahya and Bhutto refused to hand over power to a party, and a Prime Minister hailing from the East. The inauguration of the National Assembly (Pakistan’s Parliament) was indefinitely postponed, and confabulations began to deprive the Awami League of its election victory. When the Awami League did not relent, and negotiations hit a dead end, Yahya imprisoned Mujib, and unleashed a war of attrition against his own Bengali population in East Pakistan, leading to a massive influx of refugees into India. With the burden of this humanitarian relief becoming unbearable, India invaded East Pakistan to restore law and order there, and facilitate the return of the refugees to their own land. The Indian armed forces won a short (4^th-16^th December 1971), intense war and liberated Dacca (now Dhaka) in under twelve days, securing the surrender of over 97000 Pakistani soldiers, the largest surrender ever after the Second World War. The end of the war saw the birth of Bangladesh and the installation of the Awami League government under Sheikh Mujibur Rehman.

This is a brief sanitized version of the events that led to the birth of Bangladesh.

  

Savarkar and Hindutva- The Godse Connection by A. G. Noorani

 Partisan Polemics

The Hippocrates Oath obliges a doctor to tend to any patient who seeks care without discrimination. Lawyers operate under a similar ethic, which requires them to legally defend any person needing help without discrimination. By implication, a lawyer is trained to look at all sides of the law. The author of this brief book was an eminent lawyer, scholar, author and critic. He famously defended Sheikh Abdullah [grandfather of the incumbent Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir], the ‘Prime Minster’ of Jammu and Kashmir who was jailed by the Union Government for his support to insurgents.

In this slim book on Savarkar, Noorani had the opportunity to examine Savarkar from all angles of the law. To say the least, Savarkar is deified and reviled in equal measure by large sections of the population of different persuasions. A controversial figure, Savarkar is the ideal subject for a scholarly lawyer’s all-encompassing legal vision. Unfortunately, Noorani fails the lawyer’s ethic. He assumes the role of a Judge, and pronounces his judgment in the very first paragraph of the Preface!

“He [Savarkar] was engaged in a political enterprise, and used history in the service of his politics of hate.”

Having passed the judgment at the outset, he sets about presenting the supporting evidence. He fails the test of an intellectual, and thereby, sadly reduces himself to the level of a partisan polemicist. A preview to his approach is evident in the Dedication:

“TO THE VICTIMS OF THE POGROM IN GUJARAT 2002 AND TO THE MEDIA, PRINT AND ELECTRONIC, WHICH DID INDIA PROUD”

He is not unique in presenting this slanted, and one sided view of the second most gruesome carnage in India’s contemporary history. He joins other authors in this vilification of India. See, my reviews of Graham Turner’s Catching Up with Gandhi, and David Hardiman’s Gandhi in His Times and Ours. As pointed out elsewhere, these latter two gentlemen are foreigners, who have no love lost for India. But for an Indian author, who led a privileged, eminent public life, to vilify the country of his birth by resorting to half-truths is to be not very decent. This reflects not on the country but on the individual.

For one, the pogrom of Gujarat 2002, did not just begin on one pleasant morning out of nowhere. It followed the 27^th February 2002 incident, in which 58 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya were locked inside the compartment of a train and burnt to death by Muslim miscreants in Godhra. If Noorani was even-handed, the dedication to the book should have included these 58 innocent souls as well. In failing to acknowledge the killing of these innocent victims, and in including the entire media, he is inadvertently imputing his partisan perception to the Indian Media as well. I do not know how many in the Media will look upon this Dedication as a badge of honour.

I have called this the second most gruesome pogrom. Which is then the first most gruesome pogrom? This is undoubtedly the Anti-Sikh riots in which over 3000 Sikhs were killed by Congress sponsored goons in 1984, after the murder of Indira Gandhi. A Citizens Commission headed by Justice S. M. Sikri, former Chief Justice of India went on the ground to hold public hearings, and indicted 198 local Congress (I) (these days called the Indian National Congress of Rahul Gandhi) activists, 15 Congress leaders, and 143 Police Officials. The then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi famously said on the occasion that the earth shakes when a mighty tree falls.

If one goes further back in history to the 1948 assassination of the Mahatma by Godse, the Gujarat 2002 pogrom will be the third pogrom in independent India. For a person of Noorani’s generation, the first pogrom ever to take place in independent India is the selective ethnocide of Chitpavan Brahmins (the caste to which Godse belonged) following the Mahatma’s assassination. This was again at the behest of Congress politicians, and other sundry disciples of Gandhian non-violence! Nehru kept a Rajiv Gandhi-like silence on this episode (for more on this see Koenraad Elst, Gandhi and Godse). While in this book, Noorani castigates Savarkar, the alleged Mentor of Godse, did he feel compelled to write about Congress sponsored pogroms and its ideologues?

If you still want to read this book, go ahead. However there are several more biographies of Savarkar: sympathetic ones by Vaibhav Purandare, and a two volume work by Vikram Sampath. There is another titled Savarkar and the Making of Hindutva, by Janaki Bakhle of the University of California, Berkeley. Evidently Savarkar is of interest not only to journalists, and scholars in India, but overseas scholars as well.

Statutory Warning: These are bulky tomes on a humorless personality. In the interest of your mental health, you could read other books.

Savarkar, fearful hate preacher or not, his followers are well and truly entrenched in power, with no credible challengers in view. As a local smart Alec once said: Either the Congress Party rids itself of Gandhi (not the Mahatma) or the Nation will rid itself of the Congress!

 

 

Gandhi in His Time and Ours, by David Hardiman

 

Deceitful Means to Dishonest Ends

After the flood of multivolume hagiographies written by his followers abated, reasoned critiques of Gandhi’s failures by international scholars began to gain recognition. Of these, the works Koenraad Elst, Jad Adams, and Joseph Lelyveld stand out. As a response to this, in the early 2000s, many scholars, led by the redoubtable Rajmohan Gandhi (the Mahatma’s grandson) and Ramachandra Guha ploughed into Gandhiana once again to give currency to their hero, by writing voluminous tomes themselves, and sponsoring others to do the same. The objective? To reinstate Gandhi in the new millennium. The book under review is one such early effort, sponsored by Guha, published in 2003, predating Guha’s own books on Gandhi.

Post a twenty year hibernation on my book shelves, a decluttering exercise (some call it death cleaning) uncovered this book from the proverbial dung heap, and was honoured by my attention before being tossed away, not so much for the quality of its contents but for the dishonesty of the author. Let me explain.

 What is the politics of this author?

In the Preface (page xii), the author writes: “I took up the idea [of writing the current book] because I felt that Gandhi’s beliefs, practice and legacy were due for reassessment in the light of many disturbing developments that had occurred during the 1990s both in India and the world, and no more so than in Gandhi’s home region of Gujarat, where Hindu chauvinists carried out murderous attacks on Muslims in 1992. The events of 2002 in Gujarat- when the same elements launched a carefully planned pogrom against Muslims, and then months later swept the polls in the state elections through playing on fears of ‘Muslim terrorism’- have strongly reinforced my feelings in this respect.”

The above paragraph is misleading on many fronts. Let us recall the facts chronologically as they occurred.

(1)   On 6^th December 1992, a mob comprising Hindus (kar-sewaks in their self-image) demolished the disputed Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhumi structure in Ayodhya.

(2)   In 1992, there is no record of any communal riots in Gujarat.

(3)   Communal riots occurred in distant Mumbai in December 1992, and January 1993 in two phases. In the first phase starting 7^th December, the violence was at the instance of Muslims. The second phase of violence which occurred between 6^th and 20^th January was a “Hindu backlash to the killings of Hindu Mathadi workers by Muslim fanatics in Dongri area, stabbing of Hindus in Muslim majority areas, and burning of six Hindus, including a disabled girl in Radhabai Chawl” (Justice Srikrishna Commission Report as quoted in Wikipedia). In any such violence, it is not politic to count bodies of different communities, but in the context of the slanted comments of the author, it is necessary to point out that the dead included 575 Muslims, 275 Hindus and 50 others. It was clearly not a one-sided affair.

(4)   The author fails to mention the March 12, 1993 Bombay blasts which resulted in 257 deaths, and 1400 injuries. These blasts took place in majorly Hindu dominated areas, and places of commercial importance. In investigations into this event, over a hundred perpetrators, most of them Muslims associated with the Dawood Ibrahim gang (also called D-Company) have been convicted. Among those absconding are individuals proclaimed as terrorists by competent authorities both in India, and the USA.

(5)   The author also fails to mention the February 27, 2002 burning of a train in Godhra in which 58 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive on their way back from Ayodhya where they had gone on a pilgrimage. This was caused by Muslim miscreants (Islamic chauvinists or Islamic terrorism?). The 2002 Gujarat riots mentioned by the author were a reaction to this gory event, not a precursor to the State elections as suggested by him.

The events mentioned by the author, and those concealed by him are inalienable links within the same chain of events. Those events he enumerates would not have happened if those he conceals had not taken place. One expects that a writer whose subject happens to be the very ‘apostle of truth’, should at the very least be factual in his narration.

Who set this chain of events in motion?

This Reviewer would like the Readers to go back in time, and remind themselves that the whole chain of events leading up to those that distressed the author were set in motion by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of the ‘secular’ Congress Party, who had the locks of the disputed Ramjanmabhumi-Babri Masjid complex opened in February 1986, facilitating the Hindus to offer Puja to the idols of Ram Lalla. These locks had been in place since 1949. Rajiv Gandhi in 1989, on the eve of the general elections, also permitted the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to conduct the Shilanyas (foundation stone laying ceremony), the permission communicated by the then Home Minister Buta Singh, himself to the VHP leader, Ashok Singhal. By this single act, Rajiv Gandhi provided the impetus to a chain of events that eventually led to the consecration of the new Ram Temple in January 2024, an event seen by many ordinary Hindus as a moment of civilizational revival. What is Rajiv Gandhi then- a guardian of secularism in the mould of his grandfather Jawaharlal, or a closet Hindu chauvinist, an illicit progeny of the RSS?

The author should realize that Indian politics is complex, and does not fit into his ideological straight jacket.  It is difficult to believe that the author is unintelligent, or uninformed of the whole gamut of facts. He is more likely dishonest, and the book is intended to promote his partisan agenda.

What is the author’s agenda?

The author makes this quite clear in the very first paragraph of the Preface. He writes: “Political cultures- both democratic and authoritarian- have had a tendency to give rise to a populist demonising of people who are considered to be ‘different’ in one way or another. This may be directed against an external enemy, or it may be engaged within a society against minorities or those who lack social and political power. Often, though not necessarily, it is associated with a chauvinistic nationalism. Many examples may be cited, of which the case of Nazi Germany is only the most striking. In India, in Gandhi’s own time, Hindu extremists spouted a hate-filled bombast against Muslims and Christians, who were depicted as ‘traitors’ and ‘antinationalist’.” (Emphasis added)

One wonders how this conflation of Nazis with Hindu ideologues of the freedom movement, even if they could be called ‘extremists’, got past Guha’s editorial oversight. In an interview to Arthur J Pais (rediff.com, May 16, 2014), Guha says, “To call the BJP or its leaders fascist is historically untenable. We should be careful about using labels as ‘fascist’, ‘genocide’, etc which originated in historical contexts and epochs very different from contemporary India.” In other words Guha is saying that the wanton use of terms such as ‘fascism’ in unrelated political situations does a deep injustice to the victims of actual fascism. Nazi violence was so unique, so extreme, and carried out with such dispassionate mechanization (remember the gas chambers) as in a modern abattoir, that victims had no scope of either escape or redemption even after their destruction (for more on this see, Ashis Nandy Ed. Science, Hegemony and Violence). This kind of violence is without parallel in history.

If any link however tenuous should indeed be drawn between the events of 1930s-40s Europe and contemporaneous Indian history, it is between Hitler’s call for ‘lebensraum’ (living space for Germans), and Jinnah’s call for a ‘homeland’ for Muslims. The author is silent on this.

There is reason enough to toss this book aside. As someone said elsewhere about another book: It cannot lightly be laid aside, it has to be thrown away with great force.