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NEHRU-EDWINA MOUNTBATTEN AND GANDHI-HERMANN KALLENBACH HOMOSEXUAL SEX AFFAIR

  ANTI-BLACK AND ANTI-LOW CASTE RACIST AND HOMOSEXUAL GANDHI

10 Dark Facts About Mahatma Gandhi That Nobody Knows

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In India, Mahatma Gandhi was basically the poster boy during independence. He was well known for his hunger strikes and non violence ways which helped him unite the country. Gandhiji played a big role in India's freedom struggle and there's no denying that. But not many people know about some of his best kept secrets. In Baba Saheb Ambedkar’s own words, “Gandhi Age is the Dark Age of India”. And trust me when I say this some of these facts will shock you. 
 
 Disclaimer: We don't intend to offend anyone. We have nothing but love for this country and it's freedom fighters. None of these facts are made by us. You can find all of these facts on the internet and links are given below. 
 
 
Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
 

 
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Gandhi is a Racist! - Dr. Ọbádélé Kambon (GMG+)

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Dr. Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon, a Professor in African Studies at the University of Ghana, chronicles the research and facts that led to the removal of the Statue of Mahatma Gandhi and shares his thoughts on Geo-political moves of India and China. Please Share this Video https://youtu.be/rM3X5-1fwXM #blisskingg #Gandhi
 

 

India’s Missing Historians

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Mihir Bose discusses the paradox that India, a land of history, has a surprisingly weak tradition of historiography.

Nehru with Pamela MountbattenNehru with Pamela MountbattenIndia, the land of contrasts, presents no greater contrast than this: in a land rich in history there is a dearth of native historians, particularly those willing to tackle big subjects. Few academic historians are ready to explain how modern India emerged. Nor do they write biographies of prominent Indians. Even scarcer are large format illustrated books of popular history.

Indian historians appear to worry that they might ruffle too many feathers, and there is every reason to sympathize with this fear. A couple of years ago, an American academic James Laine wrote a biography of Shivaji, the seventeenth-century Maratha king. Some modern-day Shivaji followers were so outraged by certain passages in the book, Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India, that the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute where Laine had carried out the research was attacked. Oxford University Press withdrew the book from India where it was banned.

The lack of historical writing has deep roots. Ancient Indians believed poets are not only more valuable than historians but better able to write history. Kalhana, author of Rajatarngini, a twelfth-century history of the kings of Kashmir, began his book by saying, ‘who but a poet can bring back the past in sweet composition, and what can make it intelligible if his art cannot?’ As R. C. Majumdar, doyen of Indian historians, lamented in Ancient India (1968), ‘One of the gravest defects of Indian culture, which defies rational explanation, is the aversion of Indians to writing history. They applied themselves to all conceivable branches of literature and excelled in many of them, but they never seriously took to the writing of history,’ with the result that ‘for a great deal of our knowledge of ancient Indian history we are indebted to foreigners’. So to write about ancient India today you have to consult Herodotus and the Greek writers who accompanied Alexander the Great’s campaign to India; Megasthenes, the Greek historian who in c. 300 bc was ambassador to the court of Chandragupta Maurya and collected material there for his work Indica; Ptolemy’s Geographia; and the Chinese travellers Faxian and Xuanzang.
The first history of India was written in the eleventh century by Alberuni, a Muslim scholar who accompanied Mahmud of Ghazni’s invasion of northwest India. The Muslim presence in India encouraged the recording of history and nearly all the great Mughal emperors from Babar, founder of the dynasty, left behind fascinating memoirs, something that their contemporary monarchs in the West did not emulate. Yet when it comes to evidence of what life was like in Mughal times the historian still has to turn to foreigners – as Abraham Eraly (an exception to the rule that Indians do not go in for big picture history books) discovered when he came to write The Mughal World (2007): ‘For everyday life in Mughal India, the only sources are the writings of foreign travellers, and I have used them extensively.’
It is understandable that Indians do not want to study the Raj. British historians do that well enough, and many Indians would rather forget what they see as a shameful episode in India’s past. But it does seem remarkable that the two most popular books to deal with the gaining of India’s independence are Freedom at Midnight (1997) by Dominique Lapierre, a Frenchman, and Larry Collins, an American, and Liberty or Death (1998) by Patrick French, who is British.
Indians have not even been keen to tell the story of the India that has emerged since 1947. A rare example of excellent narrative history is India After Gandhi (2007) by Ramachandra Guha. He complains he has had to struggle because there are no biographies of many of the leading politicians of the last sixty years, the only exceptions being Gandhi, Nehru (who himself had a taste for writing history, something he shared with his fellow Harrovian, Winston Churchill) and his daughter Indira. As for other Indians, if a foreigner does not write the biography it does not get written. A good example is The Man Who Knew Infinity (1991), the biography of the mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887–1920) by American Robert Kanigel. Indians honour Ramanujan: his face is on postage stamps. They just do not seem to feel his life needs to be recorded.
This has left huge gaps in historical study. Take the story of how India assumed its present political and geographical shape. The British had left behind a curious state, without a uniform civil or criminal code. A third of India was ruled by princes who enjoyed considerable internal autonomy. In 1947 the 500-odd princely states were given the right to either accept India or Pakistan or seek independence. The integration of these princely states into India – with one glaring exception, Kashmir – was achieved much more quickly, and with less violence, than the transformation of the American colonies into the modern United States. Yet, apart from a book written by V. P. Menon, the civil servant who masterminded the operation, there has been no historical study of this remarkable exercise in nation-making.
Unlike America, there is no simple narrative explaining the creation of the nation. India did not have a Yorktown where the British surrendered. Gandhi may be the Indian Washington and popular folklore may have it that he drove the British out, but the real story is more complicated. During the Second World War the British jailed nationalists like Gandhi and Nehru for demanding freedom, while many Communists supported the British war effort, seeing it as a fight to save the motherland of Communism, Russia. While some 2.8 million Indians volunteered to fight for the British, the largest such volunteer force of the war, many Indian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese joined the Indian National Army fighting against the British. In 1946, when the British put these men on trial, nationalist Indians rushed to their aid. But when India won its freedom, none were allowed back into the Indian Army.
Other aspects of post-Independence India await their historian. In the last sixty years India has seen the biggest experiment in positive discrimination anywhere in the world, by which members of the lower castes have jobs and educational places reserved for them. This hugely controversial subject is little examined by historians. Nor are there any histories to explain how the Indian army was kept out of politics when the Pakistani army, created by the same British masters, could not wait to leave the barracks to take over power.
The gap left by the absence of a clear freedom narrative has been filled by a persistent desire to prove that the Indian nation that emerged in 1947 was a truly secular state. It is understandable why Indians should want to assert this. Pakistan, a confessional state, was created on the basis that Muslims could not co-exist as a minority in a Hindu-dominated India. Looking back now, it is astonishing how many British officials supported the creation of this religious state, how pro-Muslim and anti-Hindu they were, and how contemptuous of the secular credentials of the Indian state.
Indian secularism led by Nehru took a curious turn. Almost any mention of religion was considered inappropriate, and the very word ‘communal’ was (and still is) used pejoratively of people who are biased in favour of either Hindus or Muslims – a usage that had its origins in the way the Raj allocated seats in representative assemblies by dividing Indian communities along religious and caste lines. By so completely ignoring the religious factor in India, India’s secular historians have left a back door open to be exploited by those keen to promote their own agenda about the religious divide in India.
This is underlined by the absence of a tradition of popular history writing in India. The wall between academic historians and popular historians seems as strong as the old Hindu divide between the higher castes and untouchables, bridged only by a very few, such as the businessman Gurcharan Das, who has written some fine popular books on Indian history. Such works are all the more important because, unlike in the west, there is a dearth of primary source materials. Often the best material on India is to be found in western libraries.
It is easy enough to laugh at the efforts of some so-called Indian historians – for example, P.N. Oak, who claimed in one book that the Taj Mahal built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan was really a Hindu palace, and in 1985 sought to prove that India once had an empire that included Britain. But more credible histories examining the effect of religion in India have generally been the work of foreigners, such as William Dalrymple’s splendid studies of Mughal India. Historians such as Ramachandra Guha and Pankaj Mishra – arguably the best Indian writer of non-fiction today – do seem ready to deal with this historical deficit, but even Guha found it necessary to preface his India after Gandhi with an apology labelling narrative history a ‘primitive technique’.
Guha is revealingly reluctant to discuss the personal lives of the politicians he is writing about. He does not tell us that Nehru had an affair with Lady Edwina Mountbatten but that ‘with both delicacy and truth [Edwina Mountbatten] can be referred to as his closest lady friend’. I cannot imagine a British historian being so coy. It means that Guha refrains from discussing whether Nehru’s policies  were influenced by his friendship with her husband, Lord Mountbatten – in particular, his disastrous policy towards China. And while Guha has found fascinating information, it is based on printed sources rather than interviews, even though many of the figures he writes about are still living.
Guha calls his section dealing with India since the 1990s ‘historically informed journalism’ rather than history, since the thirty-year rule for releasing official documents has not yet elapsed. Not many British writers would accept such a distinction. Indian historians have a horror of oral testimony. They need to overcome that, and be prepared to provide narrative histories, however ‘primitive’ the technique, if the story of India is not to be left to foreigners.
Mihir Bose is the BBC Sports Editor and also author of several books including Bollywood - A History (Tempus).

‘Give quota to Dalit Muslims, Christians’


Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday asked the UPA Government to provide reservation to pasmanda (OBC/ dalit) Muslims and Christians following recommendations of the Sachchar Committee and Ranganath Mishra Commission.
Nitish seemed to have differences with the BJP that opposed reservations to the two communities. Speaking at a meeting of All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz, Kumar said it was ludicrous for Union Ministers Lalu Prasad and Ramvilas Paswan to join the chorus on reservations to dalit Muslims and Christians. “The party (RJD) that came to power in Bihar on popular Muslim support ditched the community. I have worked towards a cohesive society but when I tried to give special attention to a section by making Mahadalit commission, a top Bihar leader (read Ramvilas Paswan) objects to the idea,” Nitish said.
AIPMM president and Rajya Sabha MP Ali Anwar told The Indian Express: “When reservation to pasmanda Muslims and Christians is part of the Congress manifesto, they should agree to it in principle first and later conduct a comprehensive survey to identify the beneficiaries.”


THE ECONOMIST

India's Muslims

Don't blame it on the scriptures

Why India's 150m Muslims are missing out on the country's rise


GEORGE BUSH likes to point out that India has a vast Muslim population—the world's second-largest after Indonesia—yet not a single al-Qaeda member. Even if this is true, it is far from the only measure of well-being. According to more conventional ones, India's Muslims are faring terribly. They are disproportionately likely to be in prison, unemployed, illiterate and poor. India's economy is growing fast, but the gap between Muslims and other religious groups is widening. Headlines refer to Muslims as the new dalits—the group, once known as “untouchables”, at the bottom of the Hindu-caste heap.

A lot to be grumpy aboutReuters
That Muslims are lagging has been known for a while. But discussing why, or what to do about it, has been taboo in a country proud of its peculiarly religious brand of secularism. Mohammad Hamid Ansari, chairman of the National Commission for Minorities, says that his organisation ritually files an annual report showing how poorly India's Muslims are doing. Each year it somehow gets lost on its way to parliament.
That is why what is known as the Sachar report, after the former chief justice who chaired a government-appointed committee to investigate the condition of India's Muslims, is creating so much heat. And why it was tabled in parliament only on November 30th, weeks after it was finished and presented to the prime minister.
India's non-Muslims sometimes suggest that the troubles of their neighbours in prayer hats are self-inflicted: obscurantist imams who equate education with the rote-learning of the hadith, sayings attributed to the Prophet; four-wived husbands with more children than they can feed; and a lack of drive to better themselves, perhaps brought on by a nagging feeling that they would rather be in Muslim Pakistan. None of this is true; the last accusation is particularly unfair.
Madrassas such as the Darul-Uloom in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh, which proudly boasts of a curriculum largely unchanged since 1866, hardly equip their students to face the future, but only 3% of Muslim children attend them. Nor is it clear that the rulings of the orthodox, on anything from the evils of television to matters of family law, are obeyed. On polygamy, the most recent study (which is 30 years old) suggests that Muslim men are less likely than members of India's other religions to have a harem. And hardly any Indian Muslims hanker after life in Pakistan.
The problems faced by Muslims are in fact more prosaic. Not enough of them have jobs and too few can read or write. This is not new. But according to Abusaleh Shariff, an economist who compiled much of the data in the Sachar report, there are two areas where the gap between Muslims and the rest has widened dramatically over the past ten years or so. He says that both literacy rates for Muslim girls and poverty rates among urban Muslims show something close to a worsening even in absolute terms.
Part of the explanation for this phenomenon lies in where India's Muslims live. First, they often occupy the old parts of big cities like Delhi, not the fast-growing new suburbs where wealth is created and spent. Or they live in the slums. As a result, measured by monthly expenditure, over 40% of Muslims living in cities fall into the poorest quintile of the population, compared with 22% of Hindus.
Second, despite large Muslim populations in southern and western states such as Kerala, there are far more Muslims in the north and east of the country, which is poorer and less well governed. That in turn has an effect on their schooling. In rural Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state and home to about one-fifth of its Muslims, only 30% of small towns have a primary school. For every kilometre a girl is from a school, her chances of attending it fall. In Kerala, where schooling is more plentiful, Muslim girls do well.
Poor schooling explains another of the report's findings, which is that Muslims fail to get jobs with the country's largest employer—the government. Some of this is plain discrimination, particularly where the more menial types of government work are concerned. But entry into the highest levels of government service is meritocratic, judged on exam papers written by anonymous students. The problem here is rather that too few Muslim students stay at school long enough to sit the exams.


Too easily appeased

For the government of Manmohan Singh, the findings of the report offer a temptation. Indian politicians are fond of using quotas for minorities in everything from jobs to education to secure their political support. With the approach of a state election in Uttar Pradesh, due in the next few months, this will become more and more attractive. This would give the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party yet another opportunity to accuse the government of pandering to minorities, especially Muslims. And the Supreme Court, which is so vigorous it sometimes seems to be running the country on its own, might object too, since India's constitution prohibits discrimination on religious grounds.
Many Muslims argue that they are better off helping themselves, rather than holding out for the government. In fact they often seem to fare worse where they have more political clout, which easily translates into unreliable token promises, for, say, an increase in the number of teachers literate in Urdu, the language of Indian Islam. The leaked figures on government jobs show that Muslims do better in Gujarat, scene of an anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002, than in Bihar, where governments depend on their votes.
“Muslims do well in education where the initiative rests with them,” says Mushirul Hasan, vice-chancellor of Jamia Milia Islamia University in Delhi. “Where they are dependent on government patronage they fare badly.” Muslim educational societies have begun to improve education in Kerala and the booming southern cities of Bengalooru (Bangalore) and Chennai (Madras). More are needed if Muslims are not to fall further behind as India prospers.

The Army: Missing Muslim India

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By Ali Ahmed

This article begins with a set of statistics and thereafter proceeds to discuss these. The Platinum Jubilee issue of the magazine of the Indian Military Academy, published in 2007, has some revealing tidbits of information. From the lists of various officer alumni who have done the Academy proud, it is obvious that Muslims are few and far between. Only six Muslim officers, who have passed out of the IMA, have made the supreme sacrifice for the country since the 1971 War. Only one, late Captain Haneefuddin of Kargil fame, has been awarded a higher gallan-try medal, a Vir Chakra, ever since then. Only one Muslim Gentleman Cadet has won the Academy’s Sword of Honour post-independence, with the award being won way back in 1973.

These achievements appear somewhat meagre in the light of the Indian Muslims forming the country’s largest minority numbering over 175 million. It naturally raises the question: Why?
An answer can seen in a further set of statistics gleaned from the biannual magazines of the Indian Military Academy, published at the end of the Spring and the Autumn terms respectively. In the magazines a one-line pen-portrait is given of each Gentleman Cadet (GC) passing out, below the course photo of each company (equivalent of a House in schools). From the two magazine issues in 2005, it is evident that only eight Muslims passed out of the portals of the institution to become commissioned officers. In the Spring Term 2006, there were eight Muslims commissioned. In the Spring Term 2007, nine Muslims took the ‘Antim Pag’ or ‘Last Step’ as GCs but their first step as commissioned officers out of the 555 taking commission that term. The following Spring Term, 11 Muslim GCs passed out of 611. In the Autumn Term 2011, the latest one for which the magazine is available, 14 Muslims passed out. However, this last figure includes those from friendly foreign countries such as Afghanistan, the numbers for which have gone up since the strategic agreement with that country.

In other words, of the six magazines perused for ascertaining the numbers of Muslims gaining the officer commission from the IMA, 45 have made the grade. Assuming some were from foreign countries, less than 40 Indian Muslims have made it over two-and-a-half years into the Army from the IMA, that commissions more than 1200 officers a year. This compares somewhat poorly with the civil services yearly list on which 30 Muslims figured this year amongst about 900 who ‘made it’. Admittedly, there are other routes for officer commission these days into the Army, such as through the Officers Training Academy and through the Technical Officer 12th class entry stream. This means that the numbers making it into the Army are marginally higher and must be viewed against the total getting commissioned in a year, which a back-of-the-envelope calculation puts at 1800 plus a year.

Clearly, the overall number can only be as abysmal as the statistics accessed here reveal. While reckonings elsewhere place the percentage of Muslims at three per cent of the overall total of Muslims in the Army, the statistics in regard to officer numbers have been uninformed guesses at best. It is perhaps for the first time here that a figure of about 1.1 per cent of officer commissions being of Indian Muslims has been arrived at. The numbers of Muslim women officers can easily be imagined, with the OTA magazine being the right place to look for exact numbers in the absence of the government owing up to a problem.


The absence of information suggests that the statistics that are no doubt known to the government are somewhat embarrassing to reveal from the point of view of India’s and its Army’s secular credentials. It is no wonder then that a former Chief, General J.J. Singh, had put his foot down in revealing the details of Muslim representation in the Army when approached by the Sachar Committee for its report. The laconic answer given then was that the Army, being a secular institution, does not maintain such records. This explanation begged the question of how the mortal remains of dead soldiers were to be disposed-off in a war if the community to which a dead soldier belonged was not known?!

The intake being so limited into the commissioned ranks, it is no wonder then that the martial achievements of Muslim officers can be covered in less than a paragraph as in the first paragraph here. The Autumn Term 2011 issue can be mined for more telling statistics. For instance, not a single Muslim name occurs in the list of names below the group photos of the Academy faculty, the administrative staff, the training team and, worse, even the academic department. This is the same case in the Spring Term 2008. Among the non-officer instructor staff in the drill, physical training, weapons training and equitation sections, there are nine Muslim instructors. Incidentally, even at this non-officer level there are no Muslims in the consequential Training section. The relative absence of Muslims is of a piece with the fact given in the Platinum Number that the IMA has had only one Muslim Commandant and one Muslim Subedar Major post-independence. (For the record the National Defence Academy, a feeder institution to the IMA, has had two Muslim Commandants.)

While the numbers are few, the performance of Muslims at the Academy is also revealing. All six magazines carry photos and write-ups of the 34 top GC appointments, no doubt as incentive. Of the 136 appointments scanned only one was Muslim. Beginning with this leadership deficit, it is easy to reckon as to why there were no officer instructors in the two terms examined, 2008 and 2011. Not tenanting such prestigious appointments early on, the problem persists with very few making it to the higher ranks. This is accentuated by the steep pyramidal structure that the Army has. In other words, there is a cascading effect of the deficit of Muslim youth making it to the Indian Military Academy and beyond. The Army’s stock answer to this can be anticipated. The Army merely selects from those self-selecting to it as a profession. The onus is on India’s various communities to offer up their best youth for the noble profession of arms. This could easily have been accepted but for two facts. One is that General V.K. Singh’s exertions over the past year suggest that ‘community’ is a consequential factor, at least in the higher ranks. The second is that, given this under-representation, it is clear that this is compensated by over-representation of some other communities. What are the effects of such under/over-representation?

In case the answer to this question is found to be negative and consequential, then there is a case for correction. This is a controversial point to make since it is suggestive of affirmative action. This is not how this article recommends corrective action. But, first, it is necessary to ascertain whether a diverse country such as India is better off with its Army reflecting its diversity. The reflexive answer of a traditionalist would be, ‘Why fix what ain’t broke?’ In other words, if the Army is working as an apolitical and secular organisation, there is no need to tinker with it. The answer offered here is an impressionistic one to the contrary. It is that the internal health of the Army does not give ground for comp-lacence. The Army officer corps is from the lower middle class and confined geographically to North India and more narrowly to a certain set of communities traditionally advantaged by the recruitment patterns over at least a century-and-a-half. The officer corps will therefore reflect the opinions and attitudes of the social class to which it belongs. It is no secret that there has been a churning in Indian society over the past two decades, brought about by liberalisation and the ascendance of cultural nationalism. This influence has been in the face of the Army’s involvement in counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism in J&K. While, as is the wont of armies universally, the Indian Army can be expected to exhibit a conservative-realist bias, this is accentuated by the social origin of the officer class. The discourse in this social space has the Muslim ‘Other’ taking on greater dimensions, the proportions of which have been enhanced by the global security discourse centred on Muslim extremism. A terror-based ‘inside-outside’ linkage between the Muslim Indian and Pakistani intelligence, sought to be established by the media and some political formations, has greater play than otherwise would be the case. A content analysis of in-service publications can prove this to an extent. (That is not gone in here for want of space.) The absence of Muslims from an officer’s social space as colleagues and peers does little to dispel misinterpretations. The problem that occurs is in the perception of the social class in which the officer corps is anchored being elevated to the institutional threat perception and at one remove that of the state.

The disadvantage for under-represented communities is that they are unable to take advantage of the expansion in the security sector, incidentally the only sector growing in neoliberal climes. The Sixth Ppay Commission bonanza thus gets channelled narrowly to those advantaged, reinforcing the inequity. Given that Muslims have been shown up as under-represented here and knowing that most are from the equivalent of backward classes, it can be surmised that the problem afflicts the backward classes in general as well as SC/STs, given that the military does not have reservations (and rightly so). This means that the only government sector that is expanding caters for a certain section of society. (The Army has expanded by two divisions over the past three years and is set to add 86,000 men as part of a mountain strike corps over the next five year plan.) Continuing with the present intake pattern can deepen divides.

It is therefore with a view to correcting this perceptual and attitudinal bias that it is recommended here that the telling statistic of a mere one-to-two per cent of officers being Muslim be taken seriously by both the state and Muslim community. As a first step, the pattern of intake must be ascertained in-house to find out if what is surmised here carries water. Its implications, as discussed, can also be thought through. The Army, if the reasoning given in the previous paragraph is persuasive, must for its own reasons carry out a campaign to make itself attractive to a whole host of communities that are under-represented. These include those from the North-East and South India, leave alone Muslims. Civil-military liaison conferences in these States must be geared to energising the State administration to take corrective measures. This could include establishing Sainik Schools, increasing the representativeness of Sainik and Military school intake etc.

Additionally, communities, such as India’s various Muslim communities across the country, can rig up swotting classes to help its youth qualify and clear the induction hurdles. This is how States over-represented in the officer cadre prepare the youth. The Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia and the Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim Universities, coincidentally being military men, can guide the community’s reaction. Affirmative action is not being suggested here, only targeted advertisement campaigns being followed up suitably by state and civil society action.

[Ali Ahmad, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor, Nelson Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.]

(Courtesy: Mainstream, VOL L No 27, June 23, 2012)



Coming to terms with India's missing Muslims

Global Research, November 5, 2006







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The reality of exclusion and discrimination can no longer be denied. But the remedy requires political courage on the part of the Manmohan Singh Government and wisdom on the part of those claiming to speak for Muslims.


WHEN THE Justice Rajinder Sachar committee submits its report on the socio-economic status of Muslims, the full extent of the community's exclusion will be obvious to all. Especially those who have made political careers out of the canard that Muslims in India enjoy special privileges and have been "appeased."

Based on the data leaked so far, it is evident there are entry barriers Muslims — who account for around 15 per cent of India's population — are unable to cross in virtually all walks of life. From the administration and the police to the judiciary and the private sector, the invisible hands of prejudice, economic and educational inequality seem to have frozen the `quota' for Muslims at three to five per cent. Thanks to a hysterical campaign run by the Bharatiya Janata Party and some media houses, the Sachar committee was denied data on the presence of Muslims in the armed forces. But even there it is apparent that the three per cent formula applies.

This gross under-presence of Muslims in virtually every sector is presaged by substantial inequalities in education. Muslim enrolment and retention rates at the primary and secondary levels are lower than the national average and this further magnifies existing inequalities at the college level as well as in the labour market. For virtually every socio-economic marker of well being, the Muslim is well below the national norm — not to speak of the level commensurate with her or his share of the national population — and the evidence suggests these inequalities are not decreasing over time.

This bleak statistical picture is rendered drearier still by new trends visible in many cities. Muslims, for example, find it extremely difficult to rent and buy property outside of "Muslim areas" in some metros. Apart from several journalists, I even know of one former Muslim Union Minister in Delhi whose Hindu colleagues had to intercede to find him a flat. In Mumbai, the situation is perhaps worse. Many Muslim businessmen have problems accessing credit, besides having to run the gamut of uncooperative officials who look upon them with suspicion at every turn. Even in politics, as Iqbal A. Ansari's recent book, Political Representation of Muslims in India, 1952-2004, has shown, Muslims have consistently been under-represented in the Lok Sabha and all State Assemblies since Independence except Kerala. Only half as many Muslim MPs and MLAs get elected as one might expect based on their population share. In the absence of our political parties throwing up a large enough number of Muslim elected representatives, clerics and obscurantists are only too willing to step into the breach.

The `war on terrorism' has added a new layer to this already intolerable situation as policemen across the country give free vent to their ignorance and religious prejudice. The tendency of law enforcement agencies to target Muslims during incidents of communal violence is well known. The complicity of the police in the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 was reprehensible but not so different from what the country witnessed at other times in other places. As for legal redress, neither government nor judiciary shows any sense of urgency. Terrorist crimes such as the Mumbai blasts are prosecuted energetically and this is a good thing. But no one is able to explain what happened to the cases stemming from the killing of Muslims in Mumbai in 1992 and 1993 nor why the Srikrishna Commission recommendations against erring policemen remain unimplemented.

The media are a corrective but only to a limited extent. If one section has sought to highlight the plight of Indian Muslims, another section is constantly ready to inflame prejudice by staging debates on irrelevant issues, giving undue prominence to ridiculous statements by unrepresentative `Muslim leaders' or broadcasting marital disputes within Muslim families (as one channel did last week) as proof of `Muslim backwardness.'

In the U.S., the old journalistic adage was `Jews is News'. In India, it seems, anything that shows Muslims as ignorant or fanatical helps propel TRP ratings, while rational comment is frowned upon as unhelpful. A Muslim MP was asked recently to take part in a TV debate on whether there should be reservation for Muslims. He agreed, but added that he would argue against it. The channel's reporter then tried convincing him that "surely your community needs reservation." When he didn't agree, the channel lost interest in putting him on air. One studio guest recently advised Muslims to shed their `persecution complex' and to not forget that theirs were the "hands that built the Taj Mahal." Though no one would dare accuse Dalits of "doing nothing" to uplift themselves, Muslims are blamed for their poverty and poor education. They are gratuitously advised to study hard, as if the problem of lack of schools, delinquent teachers, inadequate books, and poverty can be remedied by will power alone.

The reservation trap

It is against the backdrop of this highly vitiated atmosphere that the Manmohan Singh Government must formulate a response to the Sachar committee's findings. The reality of systemic inequality cannot be wished away and the Government must find the political courage to confront this situation head on. So serious are the implications of Muslim marginalisation that the Congress must open a channel of communication with other parties, including the BJP, to evolve a consensus on the necessity for urgent corrective measures.

Among the remedial measures to be considered, the least helpful in substantive as well as political terms will be reservation. Whatever they do, Muslim leaders and those who claim to speak in favour of Muslims, must avoid the trap that the demand for reservation is. Sixty years of affirmative action have led to some improvements for Dalits and Tribals but it is clear that the country and its rulers have used the sop of reservation as an excuse to do nothing about the persistent, underlying causes of caste-based inequality.

It is now universally recognised that the pursuit of "equality of outcomes" and "equality of opportunity" must go hand in hand. Even equality of opportunity has a formal and a substantive aspect. `Formal' equality means ending discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or gender. `Substantive' equality means overcoming the barriers (or benefits) children of equal native talent inherit from their parents so that none is advantaged or disadvantaged by birth. The India state pays lip service to the idea of equality of outcomes (through quotas) but completely ignores the necessity of crafting expenditure policies that can provide equality of opportunity. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the field of education where the increased notional access of Dalits and Tribals to university is undercut by high dropout rates and underperformance at the school level.

In a 2000 paper, Julian Betts and John Roemer model the amount of differential expenditure the United States government would have to make to provide equality of opportunity to its citizens. In a typology where they define four categories of males based on whether they are White or Black and whether their parents have `High' or `Low' education levels, Betts and Roemer conclude that the `equality of opportunity' expenditure on education must be nine times higher for members of the `Low Black' group than the `High Whites'. They also found that the `High Black,' `Low Black,' and `Low White' groups must all receive more than their per capita share of educational resources if equality of opportunity were to be guaranteed.

Both in the U.S. and in India today, the actual allocation of educational resources is regressive in that those who are affluent and socially privileged corner a greater share of social allocations for education than their relative size in the population. In reality, then, existing affirmative action — or reservation — is for the privileged and the goal of public policy has to be to reverse that by using the target of public expenditure. An important finding in Betts and Roemer's work is that economic targeting alone won't alter the relative distribution of income across cohorts. The targeting has to be aimed at the discriminated or excluded cohort.

In India, the first task of the government must be to guarantee formal equality of opportunity by dealing firmly with discrimination in the labour, housing and credit markets as well as educational system. Without instituting a system of reservation — which would generate more political heat than tangible benefit for Muslims — the Government must send out a clear and unambiguous message that the social cohesiveness and future growth prospects of the country require government departments and private firms to encourage the recruitment of Muslims. But in order to generate substantive equality of opportunity and uproot inequality and exclusion from their roots, the government has to guarantee better access to education at every level for Muslims, Dalits, Tribals, and OBCs.

All of this is only a first approximation and much more will need to be done. What is important, however, is that we recognise both the reality of Muslim exclusion and the urgent need to do something about it.

Siddharth Varadarajan is Associate Editor of The Hindu

 Global Research Articles by Siddharth Varadarajan 

THE GUARDIAN

Indian state bans Gandhi book after reviews hint at gay relationship

Gujarat votes unanimously to ban book, as its author Joseph Lelyveld dismisses claim it suggests Indian leader was bisexual
  • guardian.co.uk,
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi. Politicians have called for Lelyveld's book to be banned nationwide. Photograph: James A Mills/AP
A state in western India has banned Pulitzer-prize-winning Joseph Lelyveld's new book about Mahatma Gandhi after reviews said it hints that the father of India's independence had a homosexual relationship.
More bans have been proposed in India, where homosexuality was illegal until 2009 and still carries social stigma.

Gujarat's state assembly voted unanimously on Wednesday to ban Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India.

The furore was sparked by local media reports, based on early reviews in the US and UK, some of which emphasised passages in the book that suggested Gandhi had an intimate relationship with a German man named
Hermann Kallenbach.

The book has not yet been released in India.

Lelyveld has said his work was taken out of context. "I do not allege that Gandhi is a racist or bisexual in Great Soul," he told the Times of India. "The word 'bisexual' nowhere appears in the book."

However, several reviews of Great Soul detailed its sections on Gandhi's relationship with Kallenbach.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal,
Andrew Roberts said the only portrait on the mantelpiece opposite Gandhi's bed was of Kallenbach.

"How completely you have taken possession of my body," reads one widely quoted letter from Gandhi to Kallenbach. "This is slavery with a vengeance."

Britain's Daily Mail ran an article under the headline: "Gandhi 'left his wife to live with a male lover' new book claims".

The Mumbai Mirror on Tuesday ran a front-page story under the headline: "Book claims German man was Gandhi's secret love", which quoted the same passages as Roberts.

Sudhir Kakar, a psychoanalyst who has written about Gandhi's sexuality and reviewed some of his correspondence with Kallenbach, said he did not believe the two men were lovers. "It is quite a wrong interpretation," he said.

Gandhi's great goals were non-violence, celibacy and truth, he said.

"The Hindu idea is that sexuality has this elemental energy which gets dissipated," Kakar said. "If it can be sublimated and contained it can give you spiritual power. Gandhi felt his political power really came from his celibacy, from his spiritual power."

He said Gandhi often filled his letters, including those to female associates, with strong love language, but that did not lead to physical intimacy.

"Nothing happened," he said. "He is telling his feelings, but they are platonic. They are not put into action. That would have been terrible for him."

Politicians in the state of Maharashtra, home to India's financial capital, Mumbai, have also called for a ban on the book and, along with Gujarat's chief minister, Narendra Modi, have asked the central government to ban publication nationwide.

Modi said Lelyveld should apologise publicly for "hurting the sentiments of millions of people".

"It has become a fashion to tarnish the image of great Indian leaders for self-publicity and the sale of books," said Sanjay Dutt, spokesman for the ruling Congress party in Maharashtra. "The government should invoke a law to severely punish anyone who tarnishes the image of the father of the nation."

Ranjit Hoskote, a writer and general secretary of Pen India, which fights for free expression, condemned the ban and said the local media had misconstrued both Lelyveld's intentions and the nature of Gandhi's relationship with Kallenbach.

"You can't cite a worse example of third-hand reportage and comment," he said. "How can you ban a book you haven't read?"

He said Gandhi's correspondence with Kallenbach has been available in library archives for decades.

"There's no secret. There is no scandal," he said.


US author fights back in Gandhi ‘gay lover’ row
| 29th March, 2011
0



In this photograph taken on July 24, 1931 Gandhi, known as the Mahatma (1869-1948), poses in New Dehli. — Photo by AFP/File


NEW DELHI: An American author on Tuesday angrily dismissed claims his new book on Mahatma Gandhi alleged that India’s independence leader was a racist bisexual who left his wife for a bodybuilder.


Indian newspapers were outraged by reviews in the United States and Britain of Joseph Lelyveld’s biography that focused on Gandhi’s relationship with German-Jewish architect and amateur bodybuilder Hermann Kallenbach.

Gandhi lived with Kallenbach in Johannesburg for about two years from 1907 before leaving South Africa to return to India in 1914.

“How completely you have taken possession of my body,”Gandhi was quoted as saying in a letter to Kallenbach. “This is slavery with a vengeance.”

The British Daily Mail ran the headline “Gandhi left his wife to live with a male lover, new book claims,” while the Daily Telegraph review said he had “held racist views against South African blacks.” But Lelyveld, a former executive editor of the New York Times, said that ‘Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India’ had been grossly distorted by the press coverage.

“I do not allege that Gandhi is racist or bisexual,” he said in a statement issued through his publisher Alfred A. Knopf. “The word ‘bisexual’ nowhere appears in the book. The word ‘racist’ is used once to characterise comments by Gandhi early in his stay in South Africa… the chapter in no way concludes that he was a racist or offers any suggestion of it.”

The Wall Street Journal said Lelyveld’s book depicted Gandhi — who is revered as the father of independent India and an icon of non-violent protest — as “a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist.” “Mr Lelyveld makes abundantly clear… the love of his life was a German-Jewish architect and bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach,” the Journal review said.

It quoted a letter Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach saying “your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom.” The book also details how Gandhi said cotton wool and Vaseline were “a constant reminder” of Kallenbach — a reference the author believes might relate to enemas that Gandhi gave himself.
Gandhi experts and his relatives in India, where the book has not yet been released, attacked the accusations about Gandhi’s love life.

“These western writers have a morbid fascination for Gandhi’s sexuality,” his great-grandson Tushar Gandhi told the Delhi-based Mail Today. “It only helps them sell their books. It is always open season with Gandhi.”
Jad Adams, who wrote a book last year that itself caused a storm for examining how Gandhi bathed with nubile young women and often shared a bed with one or more of his female followers, rejected any suggestion that Gandhi was gay.

“If Gandhi committed acts of homosexuality, there would be ample evidence, either justifying them or expressing shame,” he said, adding Gandhi used the word “love” often in letters and speech.

Adams said that he believed Kallenbach was homosexual and strongly attracted to Gandhi, but that the future independence leader, who had four children with his wife Kasturba, did not reciprocate.
Tara Bhattacharjee, Gandhi’s granddaughter and chair of the Kasturba Gandhi National Memorial Trust, said any attempt “to discredit the man who gave us the gift of non-violence because of his friendships is just small-minded.”

The book will go on sale in the United States on Tuesday. Bookshops in India said they did not know whether the book would be made available for sale in the country.

Gandhi's letters to his gay lover Hermann Kallenbach bought by Indian govt

Updated: 14 Jul 2012
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Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach
Lovers? Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach sit either side of a female companion. The Indian government has bought a collection of letters between the two men days before they were to be auctioned
 
Almost auctioned: The documents previously belonged to relatives of Kallenbach, a German-born Jewish architect who met Gandhi in South Africa in 1904 and was impressed by his ideas
A year after a controversial biography of Mahatma Gandhi claimed he was bisexual and left his wife to live with a German-Jewish bodybuilder, the Indian government has bought a collection of letters between the two men days before they were to be auctioned.

India paid around £700,000 (60million rupees) for the papers, which cover Gandhi's time in South Africa, his return to India and his contentious relationship with his family.

The auction was to be held at Sotheby's in London on Tuesday but was called off at the last minute.
The documents will now be placed with the National Archives of India in New Delhi.

They previously belonged to relatives of Hermann Kallenbach, a German-born Jewish architect who met Gandhi in South Africa in 1904 and was impressed by his ideas.

Last year, a Gandhi biography by author Joseph Lelyveld called Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India detailed the extent of his relationship with Kallenbach.

It claimed that the leader of the Indian independence movement was deeply in love with Kallenbach.

Mr Lelyveld denied that his book said Gandhi was bisexual. But Gandhi's home state of Gujarat banned it as an 'insult' to the father of the nation.

Most of the correspondence, which spans five decades from 1905 to 1945, is from family, friends and followers of Gandhi, but there are also 13 letters written by him to Kallenbach.

They reference Gandhi's early political campaigns and the illness of his wife Kasturba.

He wrote in one letter: 'I no longer want to be angry with her so she is sweet... She had a few grapes today but she is suffering again. It seems to be me she is gradually sinking.'

In another, written before his return to India from South Africa, Gandhi wrote: 'I do all my writing squatting on the ground and eat invariably with my fingers. I don't want to look awkward in India.'

Indian historian Ramchandra Guha discovered the letters at the home of Kallenbach's grand-niece, Isa Sarid.
Gandhi and Kallenbach became constant companions after they met in Johannesburg in 1904.

Among the most illuminating of the documents are dozens of letters written by Gandhi's sons which provide details of his life in India, particularly in the period immediately after his return, when he lived in relative obscurity.

'Father is becoming more and more awful,' read one incomplete letter probably written by Harilal, his eldest son.

'It would not be strange if a time may come one of these days when either those who are living with Father might have to go or he might leave us all not being able to stand our life.'

India has in the past complained bitterly about private auctions of Gandhi's belongings, saying they insulted the memory of a man who rejected material wealth.

A senior official at the ministry of culture in New Delhi said: 'These papers are of huge importance to India to carry out research on the Gandhian view on various things, that is why we decided to purchase them.'

Sotheby's had put a pre-sale estimate of between £500,000 and £700,000 on the collection.

But the sale was pulled after Indian authorities agreed to purchase the entire archive for around £700,000 (60million rupees).

Sotheby's said in a statement: 'The Gandhi-Kallenbach archive... has been sold in a private transaction to the Indian government.'

Mr Lelyvel's book caused much controversy when it was published last year.
According to the book, Gandhi allegedly told Kallenbach: ‘How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance.’

Kallenbach was born in Germany but emigrated to South Africa where he became a wealthy architect.

Gandhi was working there and Kallenbach became one of his closest disciples.


The pair lived together for two years in a house Kallenbach built in South Africa and pledged to give one another ‘more love, and yet more love... such love as they hope the world has not yet seen'.

At the age of 13 Gandhi had been married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji, but after four children together they split in 1908 so he could be with Kallenbach, the book says.

At one point he wrote to the German:
‘Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom. The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed.’

Although it is not clear why, Gandhi wrote that vaseline and cotton wool were a ‘constant reminder’ of Kallenbach.

He nicknamed himself ‘Upper House’ and his lover ‘Lower House’ and he vowed to make Kallenbach promise not to ‘look lustfully upon any woman’.

'I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women,’ he later told him.

They were separated in 1914 when Gandhi went back to India –
Kallenbach was not allowed into India because of the First World War, after which they stayed in touch by letter.

As late as 1933 he wrote a letter telling of his unending desire and branding his ex-wife ‘the most venomous woman I have met’.
 
SOURCE: Daily Mail


HOMOSEXUAL AND BISEXUAL MEN OF IMPORTANCE

Wednesday, August 31, 2011


Hermann Kallenbach, Gandhi's Gay Lover
















Bodybuilder pal Kallenbach, on front row with hat on his knee, is seated next to Gandhi in a photo taken at a political reception in Durban, South Africa.



Hermann Kallenbach (1871–1945) was a South African architect who was best known for his close association with Mahatma Gandhi (Gandhi’s name was Mohandas – Mahatma is an honorific title). Kallenbach was a German-Jewish bodybuilder who moved to South Africa in 1896. He met Gandhi (who was then working as a lawyer in South Africa) in 1904 in a vegetarian restaurant and soon thereafter became the love of his life. In fact, Gandhi left his wife for Kallenbach in 1908.

Two years later Kallenbach, a rich man, donated to Gandhi a thousand acre farm near Johannesburg. The property was used to run Gandhi's famous "Tolstoy Farm" that housed the families of satyagrahis (those who countered evil by non-violent means). Abandoning the life of a wealthy, sport-loving bachelor, Kallenbach adopted a simple lifestyle, vegetarian diet and the equality politics of Gandhi. In Gandhi’s autobiography he frequently referred to Kallenbach as his “soulmate,” a euphemism if ever there were one. Gandhi’s personal life was rife with hypocrisy.

Gandhi wrote to Kallenbach that Kallenbach’s was the “only” portrait in his bedroom, and that he placed it prominently opposite the bed. “You have completely taken possession of my body,” Gandhi wrote in a letter. He made Kallenbach promise not to look lustfully upon any woman, and the two pledged undying love to each other “as the world has not yet seen.”    

Gandhi required members of his ashram to be celibate, even married couples. Gandhi said: 'I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women." He bragged that he was capable of “lying naked with naked women, however beautiful they may be, without being in any manner whatsoever sexually excited.”Gandhi also endeavored to bring his "feminine" side to the surface and extolled androgeny.

Right. So that explains it.

When Gandhi returned to India in 1915, Kallenbach was unable to get permission to travel to India, since England and Germany were at war. Even so, Gandhi never gave up hoping to get him back into his arms. Decades later Gandhi continued to write impassioned letters to Kallenbach, stating that “you are always before my mind’s eye.” Kallenbach reunited with Gandhi in 1936, when at last he was allowed to travel to India. He lived with Gandhi for weeks on end, and when Kallenbach became ill, Gandhi personally nursed him back to health.

Gandhi’s pet name for Kallenbach was “lower house” (to Gandhi’s “upper house”), and he signed each letter to Kallenbach with undying love.

Sounds like a “soulmate” to me.

The above details are revealed in Joseph Lelyveld’s new book about Gandhi: “Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle with India.” Knopf. 425 pages.


Indian government spends £700,000 to buy letters which 'prove national hero Gandhi was gay'

  • Letters between Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach are said to shed light on their 'loving relationship'
  • They are among archive of documents which cover Gandhi's time in South Africa, his return to India and his contentious relationship with his family
  • Papers were due to have been auctioned at Sotheby's in London this week
By Graham Smith
|
A year after a controversial biography of Mahatma Gandhi claimed he was bisexual and left his wife to live with a German-Jewish bodybuilder, the Indian government has bought a collection of letters between the two men days before they were to be auctioned.
India paid around £700,000 (60million rupees) for the papers, which cover Gandhi's time in South Africa, his return to India and his contentious relationship with his family.
The auction was to be held at Sotheby's in London on Tuesday but was called off at the last minute.

Lovers? Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach sit either side of a female companion. The Indian government has bought a collection of letters between the two men days before they were to be auctioned
Lovers? Mahatma Gandhi and Hermann Kallenbach sit either side of a female companion. The Indian government has bought a collection of letters between the two men days before they were to be auctioned

The documents will now be placed with the National Archives of India in New Delhi.
They previously belonged to relatives of Hermann Kallenbach, a German-born Jewish architect who met Gandhi in South Africa in 1904 and was impressed by his ideas.
Last year, a Gandhi biography by author Joseph Lelyveld called Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India detailed the extent of his relationship with Kallenbach.
It claimed that the leader of the Indian independence movement was deeply in love with Kallenbach.
Mr Lelyveld denied that his book said Gandhi was bisexual. But Gandhi's home state of Gujarat banned it as an 'insult' to the father of the nation.
Most of the correspondence, which spans five decades from 1905 to 1945, is from family, friends and followers of Gandhi, but there are also 13 letters written by him to Kallenbach.
They reference Gandhi's early political campaigns and the illness of his wife Kasturba.
He wrote in one letter: 'I no longer want to be angry with her so she is sweet... She had a few grapes today but she is suffering again. It seems to be me she is gradually sinking.'
In another, written before his return to India from South Africa, Gandhi wrote: 'I do all my writing squatting on the ground and eat invariably with my fingers. I don't want to look awkward in India.'
Indian historian Ramchandra Guha discovered the letters at the home of Kallenbach's grand-niece, Isa Sarid.


Almost auctioned: The documents previously belonged to relatives of Kallenbach, a German-born Jewish architect who met Gandhi in South Africa in 1904 and was impressed by his ideas
Almost auctioned: The documents previously belonged to relatives of Kallenbach, a German-born Jewish architect who met Gandhi in South Africa in 1904 and was impressed by his ideas

Gandhi and Kallenbach became constant companions after they met in Johannesburg in 1904.

Among the most illuminating of the documents are dozens of letters written by Gandhi's sons which provide details of his life in India, particularly in the period immediately after his return, when he lived in relative obscurity.

'Father is becoming more and more awful,' read one incomplete letter probably written by Harilal, his eldest son.

'It would not be strange if a time may come one of these days when either those who are living with Father might have to go or he might leave us all not being able to stand our life.'

India has in the past complained bitterly about private auctions of Gandhi's belongings, saying they insulted the memory of a man who rejected material wealth.
A senior official at the ministry of culture in New Delhi said: 'These papers are of huge importance to India to carry out research on the Gandhian view on various things, that is why we decided to purchase them.'

Sotheby's had put a pre-sale estimate of between £500,000 and £700,000 on the collection.

But the sale was pulled after Indian authorities agreed to purchase the entire archive for around £700,000 (60million rupees).

Sotheby's said in a statement: 'The Gandhi-Kallenbach archive... has been sold in a private transaction to the Indian government.'

Mr Lelyvel's book caused much controversy when it was published last year.

Gandhi and Kallenbach (middle row, centre) pose for a picture at Tolstoy Farm, South Africa in 1910. They became constant companions after they met in Johannesburg in 1904
Gandhi and Kallenbach (middle row, centre) pose for a picture at Tolstoy Farm, South Africa in 1910. They became constant companions after they met in Johannesburg in 1904

Mahatma Gandhi speaks in New Delhi
Great Soul - Joseph Lelyveld book on Gandhi
Gandhi (left) and Kallenbach lived together for two years in a house in South Africa. Joseph Lelyveld's controversial biography Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi And His Struggle With India (right) was published last year

According to the book, Gandhi allegedly told Kallenbach: ‘How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance.’

Kallenbach was born in Germany but emigrated to South Africa where he became a wealthy architect. 

Gandhi was working there and Kallenbach became one of his closest disciples.
The pair lived together for two years in a house Kallenbach built in South Africa and pledged to give one another ‘more love, and yet more love... such love as they hope the world has not yet seen'.

At the age of 13 Gandhi had been married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji, but after four children together they split in 1908 so he could be with Kallenbach, the book says.
At one point he wrote to the German: ‘Your portrait (the only one) stands on my mantelpiece in my bedroom. The mantelpiece is opposite to the bed.’

Although it is not clear why, Gandhi wrote that vaseline and cotton wool were a ‘constant reminder’ of Kallenbach.

He nicknamed himself ‘Upper House’ and his lover ‘Lower House’ and he vowed to make Kallenbach promise not to ‘look lustfully upon any woman’.

'I cannot imagine a thing as ugly as the intercourse of men and women,’ he later told him.

They were separated in 1914 when Gandhi went back to India – Kallenbach was not allowed into India because of the First World War, after which they stayed in touch by letter.

As late as 1933 he wrote a letter telling of his unending desire and branding his ex-wife ‘the most venomous woman I have met’.


HEAVILY WESTERNISED INDIA

5-Year-Old Girl Brutally Raped, Family Bribed to Keep Quiet

5-Year-Old Girl Brutally Raped, Family Bribed to Keep Quiet
Most 5-year-old girls spend their time playing make-believe and running around outside. Many have graduated to shoes with laces, but most cannot even tie their shoes yet.
A girl at 5-years-old is just that – a young, innocent, carefree, playful girl.
Now imagine that instead of spending the afternoon playing as she would on any other day, this day a 5-year-old girl is abducted by a 22-year-old man and brutally raped for 40 hours. The young girl was found in the man’s apartment three days later and rushed to the hospital where candle pieces and a small bottle were removed from her genitals.

It actually makes me sick to even think about it in detail, but such is the reality of a young girl in India. The attack took place in New Delhi where just a few months ago a 23-year-old girl was gang raped and brutally beaten by 6 men in the back of a bus; she eventually died after receiving treatment.
Luckily this young girl is in stable condition physically, but I imagine this incident will be a lifelong struggle for her and her family. To make matters worse, when speaking to police about the attack the young girl’s father was offered money to keep quite.

When a 5-year-old girl is raped, you do not keep quite. You demand justice for your child just like these parents have done.

After learning about the brutal rape Prime Minister Manmohan Singh issued a statement saying the following:

“The Prime Minister has been deeply disturbed to hear news of the shameful incident in which a 5-year-old child in Delhi was sexually abused and is now fighting for her life in hospital…The Prime Minister has once again reiterated the need for society to look deep within and work to root out the evil of rape and other such crimes from our midst.”

According to the Asian Center for Human Rights, 48,338 child rape cases were reported in India from 2001 – 2011. Given the number of cases that go unreported, this figure is likely much higher. This is horrifying, especially when you consider that in this case the police – those meant to protect you – tried to bribe the family into staying quiet.

Luckily, there are many who are not staying quiet. Over the weekend hundreds of people protested outside police headquarters demanding that the government ensure the safety of all women and girls in New Delhi and that the police be held accountable for bribing and dismissing the parents concerns about their missing daughter.

It is not time to be quiet – not at all. It’s time to shout and demand justice for this young girl and for every young girl at risk in New Delhi and throughout India.

Related from Care2:
Gang Rapes Incite Debate Over Women’s Safety in India
India’s Rape Epidemic Reflects a Deeper, Darker Problem
What the International Community Can Do to Support the Protest Against the Delhi Gang Rape

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/5-year-old-girl-brutally-raped-family-bribed-to-keep-quiet.html#ixzz2RNw5FHgp
 GANDHI BRITISH AGENT OR PATSY!

From Muhammad al-Massari


IndiaToday.in  New Delhi, March 10, 2015 | UPDATED 11:37 IST
 
  Press Council chairman Justice Markandey
                          Katju






Press Council chairman Justice Markandey KatjuPress Council chairman Justice Markandey Katju on Tuesday stirred another controversy by calling Mahatma Gandhi a British agent in his latest blog post.
"I submit that Gandhi was objectively a British agent who did great harm to India," he wrote. 

Katju said Gandhi did great harm to India by injecting religion into politics.
"By constantly injecting religion into politics continuously for several decades, Gandhi furthered the British policy of divide and rule," Katju said in his blog.
"He advocated self sufficient village communities, though everybody knows that these communities were totally casteist and in the grip of landlords and money lenders. Gandhi was against industrialization, and preached handspinning by charkha and other such reactionary nonsense. Similarly, his ' trusteeship ' theory was all nonsense, and an act of deceiving the people," he added.

Here is the full text:
Gandhi---A British Agent
This post is bound to draw a lot of flak at me, but that does not matter as I am not a popularity seeker I have often said things knowing that initially that will make me very unpopular, and I will be vilified and denounced by many. Nevertheless I say such things as I believe they must be said in my country's interest.

I submit that Gandhi was objectively a British agent who did great harm to India. 

These are my reasons for saying this:
1. India has tremendous diversity, so many religions, castes, races, languages, etc (see my article ' What is India ?' on my blog justicekatju.blogspot.in). Realizing this the British policy was of divide and rule (see online ' History in the Service of Imperialism ', which is a speech delivered by Prof. B.N. Pande in the Rajya Sabha).

By constantly injecting religion into politics continuously for several decades, Gandhi furthered the British policy of divide and rule.

If we read Gandhi's public speeches and writings (e.g. in his newspapers 'Young India', ' Harijan ', etc) we find that ever since Gandhi came to India from South Africa in 1915 or so till his death in 1948, in almost every speech or article he would emphasize Hindu religious ideas e.g. Ramrajya, Go Raksha (cow protection), brahmacharya (celibacy), varnashram dharma (caste system), etc (see Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi). 

Thus Gandhi wrote in ' Young India ' on 10.6.1921 " I am a Sanatani Hindu. I believe in the varnashram dharma. I believe in protection of the cow ". In his public meetings the Hindu bhajan ' Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram ' would be loudly sung.

Now Indians are a religious people, and they were even more religious in the first half of the 20th century. A sadhu or swamiji may preach such ideas to his followers in his ashram, but when they are preached day in and day out by a political leader, what effect will these speeches and writings have on an orthodox Muslim mind ? It would surely drive him towards a Muslim organization like the Muslim League, and so it did. Was this not serving the British policy of divide and rule ? By constantly injecting religion into politics for several decades, was Gandhi not objectively acting as a British agent ? 

2. In India a revolutionary movement against British rule had started in the early 20th century under the Anushilan Samiti, Jugantar, and revolutionaries like Surya Sen, Ramprasad Bismil ( who wrote the song ' Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ab hamare dil mein hai ), Chandrashekhar Azad, Ashfaqulla, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, etc ( who were all hanged by the British ). Gandhi successfully diverted the freedom struggle from this revolutionary direction to a harmless nonsensical channel called Satyagrah. This also served British interests.

3. Gandhi's economic ideas were thoroughly reactionary. He advocated self sufficient village communities, though everybody knows that these communities were totally casteist and in the grip of landlords and money lenders..Gandhi was against industrialization, and preached handspinning by charkha and other such reactionary nonsense. Similarly, his ' trusteeship ' theory was all nonsense, and an act of deceiving the people

Some people praise Gandhi's bravery in going to Noakhali, etc to douse the communal violence at the time of Partition. But the question is why did he help setting the house on fire in the first place by preaching religious ideas in public political meetings for several decades, which were bound to divide the Indian people on religious lines? First you set the house on fire, and then you do the drama of trying to douse the flames.



Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/katju-mahatma-gandhi-british-agent-press-council-blog-post/1/422977.html



The version popularized by Vishnu Digambar Paluskar and the Gandhian movement:

Hindi
रघुपति राघव राजाराम,
पतित पावन सीताराम
सीताराम सीताराम,
भज प्यारे तू सीताराम
ईश्वर अल्लाह तेरो नाम,
सब को सन्मति दे भगवान


raghupati rāghav rājārām,
patit pāvan sītārām
sītārām, jai sītārām,
bhaj tū pyāre sītārām
īśvar allāh tero nām,
sab ko sanmati de bhagavān

Chief of the house of Raghu, Lord Rama,

Uplifters of those who have fallen, Sita and Rama,[4]

Sita and Rama, Sita and Rama,

O beloved, praise Sita and Rama,

Ishwar (God)  and Allah are your names,[5]

Bless everyone with real wisdom, Lord.

Le Dalaï Lama, un imposteur aux fréquentations très douteuses.

Résistance

François Asselineau déconne! 
 Cette diabolisation d'Hitler est inacceptable!
Published on 30 Jul 2013
L'UPR est après seulement 7 ans d'existence, l'un des plus gros partis politique de France (en terme d'adhérents). Si vous n'en avez toujours pas entendu parler, c'est normal; nos idées dérangent tellement que les médias n'osent pas nous présenter.

Nous sommes déjà plusieurs milliers d'adhérents et sympathisants qui avons décidé de dire NON à la dictature euro-atlantiste qui nous entraîne vers la misère et des guerres permanentes qui ont déjà tué plusieurs millions d'innocents.

Parce-que l'heure est grave, nous ne pouvons plus nous permettre de nous chamailler pour des futilités. Nous devons mettre de côté nos différences dans le seul objectif de sauver la France d'une disparition pur et simple.

Que vous soyez de droite, de gauche ou apolitique rejoignez la résistance et rentrez dans l'histoire.

L'union du peuple français pour sortir de l'UE, de l'euro et de l'OTAN.


Site de l'UPR: http://goo.gl/JhQB9n

Compte Youtube de l'UPR: http://goo.gl/0hvpID

Visionnez les EXCELLENTES conférence de François Asselineau: http://goo.gl/8SEFjU

Resistance and Community

"Education does not just mean textbooks and traditional schooling, but rather anything that raises awareness, including spoken word, poetry and art." Malcolm Shabazz



On Tuesday 19th June 2012, the 14th Dalai Lama visited the University of Westminster to deliver a lecture on Tibetan Values and Democracy. Having been a naïve supporter of the Dalai Lama in the past, easily impressed by his quotes on compassion and not really having analysed his viewpoints on freedom and democracy, today’s lecture was an eye-opener to the reality of the Dalai Lama’s perspective.


 



































A comment I had come across previously in the Morning Star by the Dalai Lama was

Among Tibetan refugees we are always saying to ourselves that we must learn the Jewish secret to keep up our traditions, in some cases under hostile circumstances,” followed by ‘Tibetans and Israeli’s want to live in peace.’ 

 I wanted confirmation whether this suggested the Dalai Lama to be an Israeli sympathiser. Israel is a blatant poison to humanity whilst it is allowed to exercise its fascist Zionist ideology and breach Palestinians human rights. Given the opportunity by my lecturer Dr Dibyesh Anand, I questioned the Dalai Lama on his views on the Palestinian struggle; grateful for not being silenced in a room filled with a few hundred people including diplomats and media, on an issue mainstream media intentionally fails to cover.

His Holiness, around the time Tibetans lost their rights when they were occupied by China, another nation faced a similar tragedy, the Palestinians. The Israeli occupation of Palestine continues with full support from the United States and the American Israeli Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Millions of indigenous Palestinians have been made refugees on their own land and have lost the right to return to their homeland. We sometimes read your statements sympathetic to Israel but not on the suffering of the Palestinians. Could you please enlighten us with your view on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians under illegal Israeli occupation?

The Dalai Lama responded along the lines of “I’ve been to Israel a few times. On hearing the Jewish viewpoint, it still looks sort of sub-reasons from  thousands of years old they have certain rights in their place. They themselves in ancient times they became refugees thousands of years ago in different countries. Then on the same occasion, I met some groups of Palestinians and I heard their sort of complaint and they also want rights that the place belongs to them, so it is difficult to judge. The best way is, no matter who they are they should live together and help each other. I’m very much impressed that in Jerusalem where the Jewish community there, their land is much greener and they use every technique, water, trees and grass is much greener. Whereas on the Palestinian side it still remains dry like the desert. It is better to live together and use the Jewish communities skills and in the mean time live together. On my second visit to Tel Aviv, I met a small group of Palestinians and Jewish together, a small group trying to make a bridge and harmony so that is the only way. I think among Israeli’s a number of them are against the government hard line and policy. I know nobel prize Shimon Peres, I think he is very much committed about genuine peace. Sometimes the government is difficult but then the people there show more interaction. In India also, my friends who have some close connections with some Pakistani’s , that is very important. I think after all if both sides stand firm, sooner or later there will be some clash and that will not solve the problem. More clash, sooner or later a clash will not sort the problem but will further any reconciliation. Palestine is an older issue than the Tibetan issue but violence is still involved. It is very sad.”

Dalai Lama showed some encouragement towards a one state solution but the latter comments were very disappointing and disheartening coming from a man who is respected for being ‘compassionate.’ The Dalai Lama holds a neutral view with no real political stance and dismissed the question around the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians but commented on violence, from whom? To be a friend of Israel and not criticize Zionism and what it stands for, to legitimize an illegal occupier and to encourage Palestinians with Israeli identity to normalise and not resist against the crimes against humanity by ignoring the fact Palestinians on the other side of the apartheid wall have no human rights, no freedom of movement, their land being colonised and being dehumanised daily whilst facing Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, to not oppose Israel and demonstrate oneself to be a leader of compassion whilst championing the injustices against Tibetans, is as hypocritical as the Western states the Dalai Lama seeks to sugar coat and gain support from whilst exposing the state crimes of China alone. To defend Shimon Peres who is a warmonger and persecutor of an entire nation and responsible for the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, responsible for children killed by white phosphorous dropping on their homes in Gaza, responsible for thousands of Palestinians being held in Israeli prison inhumanely in administrative detention without trial, is abominable.

Anyone who is genuinely compassionate can recognise injustice without being obliged to smile and play the violin to it but to have the courage to stand against it, regardless of the lack of support one may receive. Which compassionate individual would join hands with an oppressor spilling the blood of a nation in order to free their people whose blood is also being spilt by a different oppressor? Is the Dalai Lama placing more value on the rights of Tibetans over other oppressed occupied nations? Dalai Lama plays into the hands of Western powers, supportive of states and leaders who are warmongers in different countries which champion imperialism and colonialism. He encouraged 1.3 million Chinese people to know the reality of their state and regarded censorship as being immoral. He praised the Indian government which was contradictory considering they are responsible for the occupation in Kashmir. He admired India for their ‘religious tolerance’, failing to recall the massacre of thousands in Gujarat less than ten years ago. Compassion should allow every occupied nation to unite and confront their oppressors, recognising which nations are the oppressors and which nation is the oppressed which Dalai Lama failed to do so. To stand side by side with the oppressor who slaughters nations but to only comment negatively on the oppressor of your people, does not define compassion but obligation and responsibility. It was already difficult to stomach Barack Obama issuing the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Shimon Peres, but the Dalai Lama praising him metres away from me was even more painful.  Anyone who is legitimately chauffeured around the world to champion the rights of their occupied nation, the agenda and interests of those who support these individuals needs to be scrutinised.

I do not believe the Dalai Lama represents the will or determination of Tibetans who are notorious for carrying out self-immolation in desperation for their rights. Any oppressed nation or representative would be inspired by the non-violent resistance for rights to self-determination and dignity carried out by the Palestinians against the illegal occupation. Dalai Lama himself said the Tibetans want him as a leader but whether they want to listen to him is a different story.

Article by Shareefa Panchbhaya

 



Gandhi

Gandhi advocated the right to bear arms; use of 'violence' to defend innocents against bullying, oppression

Monday, December 17, 2012
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)
Tags: Gandhi, nonviolence, right to bear arms


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(NaturalNews) Gandhi is known around the world as the master of "nonviolence." And yet, in the face of being threatened with bullying attacks, even Gandhi directly advocated the use of violence in the defense of the innocent. Had Gandhi been alive today and witnessed the senseless loss of life at Sandy Hook Elementary school, he would have advocated arming the principal and giving her a chance to protect innocent lives through the use of defensive violent action.

Don't believe me? Read his own words...

"I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence," Gandhi wrote in his famous work, Doctrine of the Sword.

He continues:

...When my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence.

Gandhi advocated "training in arms" to defend liberty

Gandhi also advocated justified violence over the "cowardice" of submission. Again, this is in his own words:

...Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor. - M.K. Gandhi, The Doctrine of the Sword.

Gandhi also explains that someone who cannot use violence to defend themselves or their family is a helpless coward and a "worm."

In his own words from the text Between Cowardice And Violence

...He who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully ...

[When violence] is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission.

In his own words, Gandhi advocated facing danger with measured violence (i.e. shooting back)

Also from Gandhi's text Between Cowardice And Violence

...A man who, when faced by danger, behaves like a mouse, is rightly called a coward.

Not knowing the stuff of which nonviolence is made, many have honestly believed that running away from danger every time was a virtue compared to offering resistance, especially when it was fraught with danger to one's life. As a teacher of nonviolence I must, so far as it is possible for me, guard against such an unmanly belief.

Self-defence ... is the only honourable course where there is unreadiness for self-immolation.


You got that? Even Gandshi advocated self defense, even if it involved acts of violence. This is why, if Gandhi were alive today, he would have advocated arming school principals to defend innocent life (the children) against psychopathic killers.

Obama wants Americans to be cowards; Gandhi wanted people to act with courage

President Obama, of course, wants to disarm all Americans and turn them into cowards... "sheeple" with no ability to defend themselves against psychopathic killers or a tyrannical government like the one Gandhi faced.

Gandhi openly advocated the opposite: Arming the citizens in the defense of the innocent.

Gandhi, it turns out, was pro Second Amendment and openly believed in the right of citizens to arm themselves in their defense against violence and oppression.

Note: Credit for the research on this article goes to David Rainoshek of www.RevolutionaryWebinars.com

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About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "Health Ranger") is the founding editor of NaturalNews.com, the internet's No. 1 natural health news website, now reaching 7 million unique readers a month.

In late 2013, Adams launched the Natural News Forensic Food Lab, where he conducts atomic spectroscopy research into food contaminants using high-end ICP-MS instrumentation. With this research, Adams has made numerous food safety breakthroughs such as revealing rice protein products imported from Asia to be contaminated with toxic heavy metals like lead, cadmium and tungsten. Adams was the first food science researcher to document high levels of tungsten in superfoods. He also discovered over 11 ppm lead in imported mangosteen powder, and led an industry-wide voluntary agreement to limit heavy metals in rice protein products to low levels by July 1, 2015.

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 Between Cowardice And Violence

I WOULD risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of a whole race.

Violence the Choice
I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence... I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.
But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier...But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature....
But I do not believe India to be helpless....I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature....Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
We do want to drive out the beast in the man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him. And in the process of finding his own status, the beast in him is bound now and again to put up his ugly appearance.
The world is not entirely governed by logic. Life itself involves some kind of violence and we have to choose the path of least violence.

No Cowardice
I want both the Hindus and Mussalmans to cultivate the cool courage to die without killing. But if one has not that courage, I want him to cultivate the art of killing and being killed rather than, in a cowardly manner, flee from danger. For the latter, in spite of his flight, does commit mental himsa. He flees because he has not the courage to be killed in the act of killing.
My method of nonviolence can never lead toloss of strength, but it alone will make it possible, if the nation wills it, to offer disciplined and concerted violence in time of danger.
My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. It has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day non-violent, but there is none for a coward. I have, therefore, said more than once....that, if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by the force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting.
No matter how weak a person is in body, if it is a shame to flee, he will stand his ground and die at his post. This would be nonviolence and bravery. No matter how weak he is, he will use what strength he has in inflicting injury on his opponent, and die in the attempt. This is bravery, but not nonviolence. If, when his duty is to face danger, he flees, it is cowardice. In the first case, the man will have love or charity in him. In the second and third cases, there would be a dislike or distrust and fear.
My nonviolence does admit of people, who cannot or will not be nonviolent, holding and making effective use of arms. Let me repeat for the thousandth time that nonviolence is of the strongest, not of the weak.
To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one's faith in man and God, even one's own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith.

Self-defence by Violence
I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully.
The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips, converted the hearts of their violent opponents.
Nonviolence cannot be taught to a person who fears to die and has no power of resistance. A helpless mouse is not nonviolent because he is always eaten by pussy. He would gladly eat the murderess if he could, but he ever tries to flee from her. We do not call him a coward, because he is made by nature to behave no better than he does.
But a man who, when faced by danger, behaves like a mouse, is rightly called a coward. He harbors violence and hatred in his heart and would kill his enemy if he could without hurting himself. He is a stranger to nonviolence. All sermonizing on it will be lost on him. Bravery is foreign to his nature. Before he can understand nonviolence, he has to be taught to stand his ground and even suffer death, in the attempt to defend himself against the aggressor who bids fair to overwhelm him. To do otherwise would be to confirm his cowardice and take him further away from nonviolence.
Whilst I may not actually help anyone to retaliate, I must not let a coward seek shelter behind nonviolence so-called. Not knowing the stuff of which nonviolence is made, many have honestly believed that running away from danger every time was a virtue compared to offering resistance, especially when it was fraught with danger to one's life. As a teacher of nonviolence I must, so far as it is possible for me, guard against such an unmanly belief.
Self-defence....is the only honourable course where there is unreadiness for self-immolation.
Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defence or for the defence of the defenceless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right.
Source: The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi

 India: Village elders who sentenced sisters to be raped as punishment face arrest

India protests against rape
Indian police are considering arresting the men who ordered that two sisters be raped to atone for their brother having a relationship with a married woman from a higher caste. The punishment was ordered by the council of a farming village of Sankrot, which is home to around 200 people in Uttar Pradesh and around 30 miles from New Delhi.

India's Supreme Court ruled that the village councils, known as 'panchayats' are illegal. The court described them as "kangaroo courts" but they continue to function in remote parts of the country.
On 30 July, the unelected all-male village council ordered that the two women be raped, have their faces blackened and paraded naked as punishment for the actions of their brother, according to Amnesty International. Meenakshi Kumari, 23, and her 15-year-old sister fled their home after it was ransacked.


The charity condemned the "disgusting" ruling as celebrities supported the petition, which has so far garnered 125,000 signatures. Rachel Alcock, Amnesty UK's Urgent Action Coordinator, said: "Rape is a revolting crime, not a punishment. It's no wonder this disgusting 'sentence' has provoked global outrage."
"These Khap courts routinely order vile sexually violent punishments against women. India's Supreme Court has rightly declared such orders illegal. The government of Uttar Pradesh has an urgent duty to keep this family safe," said Alcock. "There must also be a proper, independent investigation into these barbaric and illegal orders which apparently continue to be issued by the khap panchayat courts."

Queen guitarist Brian May added his condemnation, tweeting: "Unbelievable. How do we combat the mountain of evil in our world? Step by step, stone by stone, day by day."

Author and atheist Richard Dawkins also joined in the protest. He wrote on the social media site: "Indian sisters to be raped as 'punishment' for brother eloping. This time it really truly IS nothing to do with Islam." He added: "They're female: property of their brother. Raping them's punishment for his stealing another man's female property."

Related Articles



Village elders who sentenced two sisters to be raped face arrest after 100,000 sign petition against them 

  • An all-male village council known as 'panchayat' ordered them to be raped
  • It was punishment for their brother beginning relationship with a married woman of 'higher social caste'
  • Family is worried for woman who is thought to be pregnant with his child
  • Their home was ransacked after they fled Sankrot in Uttar Pradesh district
Village elders who sentenced two sisters to be raped are facing arrest as a petition calling for a criminal case to be opened against them neared 100,000 signatures last night.
A council of men in India ruled the sisters – one of whom is only 15 – would be raped as punishment after their brother started a relationship with a married woman from a higher social caste. 
The punishment was ordered in the impoverished farming village of Sankrot in Baghpat district, Uttar Pradesh, around 30 miles north of New Delhi. It is home to 200 people.
Village elders who sentenced two sisters to be raped in Uttar Pradesh (file photo) are now facing arrest
Village elders who sentenced two sisters to be raped in Uttar Pradesh (file photo) are now facing arrest
India’s Supreme Court has ruled that these village councils – known as panchayats – are illegal but they continue to operate across India.
On 30 July, an unelected all-male village council known as a 'panchayat' ordered that they be raped and paraded naked as punishment for the actions of their brother, according to Amnesty International.

The family home was ransacked shortly after they fled the village for safety in May.
Another one of the girls' brothers said members of the 'Jat' caste are powerful members of the village council and their decision is 'final'.
They are also worried about the safety of the Jat woman, who is now thought to be pregnant with the brother’s child.

A petition calling for a criminal case to be opened against the all-male council gained over 100,000 signatures (file photo of protest against the rape of a female passenger in December 2014)
A petition calling for a criminal case to be opened against the all-male council gained over 100,000 signatures (file photo of protest against the rape of a female passenger in December 2014)

1 comment:

  1. J'avais jadis objecté à ce qu'on usât du modèle de M.K. Gandhi pour parler de la non violence ou Ahimsa, un mythe (arme) inventé par les Européens. Dans son contexte religieux d'origine, Ahimsa veut tout simplement dire ne pas blesser ou causer du mal à autrui! Mais, le Bhagavad Gita, un extrait du Mahabharata, vient nous apporter la preuve que le concept européen de la non-violence, et, surtout celle imputée à Gandhi n'est qu'une fumisterie. Il est donc de mon devoir de le rappeler de nouveau, ici, même si les gens s'en fichent. Et, même si je ne considère pas Gandhi comme un être aussi dégénéré que Michael King alias Dr Martin Luther King, il n'est pas ce que les médias et les historiens pervers ont écrit de lui.

    M.K. Gandhi fut certes l'Apôtre de la non violence, mais il préconisa aussi la violence légitime si la non-violence ne devait pas triompher.

    1. Il avait clairement dit que s'il faut choisir entre la lâcheté et la violence, il opterait pour la violence.

    2. Gandhi faillit perdre la vie quand il fut attaqué en 1908. Son fils aîné lui demanda que s'il avait été présent lors de cette attaque, s'il devait donc fuir en le laissant mourir ou s'il devait le défendre physiquement. Gandhi lui répondit qu'il était de son devoir de le défendre même en usant de la violence.

    3. Il préconisa l'entraînement en armes pour ceux qui croient en cette méthode de violence. Il avait dit préférer voir l'Inde recourir aux armes dans le but de défendre son honneur au lieu de devenir lâchement le témoin de son propre déshonneur.
    - M.K. Gandhi, The Doctrine of the Sword. (La Doctrine de l'Épée)

    4. Gandhi avait dit que celui qui ne peut se protéger ou protéger les membres de sa famille les plus proches et les plus chers par la non-violence peut et doit le faire en utilisant la violence contre l'oppresseur. Que celui qui ne peut faire ni l'un ni l'autre est un fardeau. Il ne peut donc être chef de famille, dit-il. Il doit soit se cacher, et se contenter de vivre son impuissance pour l'éternité, et, être prêt à se ramper tel un ver de terre aux ordres d'un tyran.
    Gandhi ajouta que quand la violence est proposée en matière de légitime défense de la personne sans défense, c'est un acte de bravoure de loin meilleur qu'une lâche soumission.

    5. Dans ce même texte, Gandhi qualifia l'homme qui fuit le danger de lâche. Et, que, ne sachant pas de quoi était faite la non-violence, beaucoup ont cru que fuir le danger systématique était une vertu comparée à une posture de résistant, plus spécialement quand il y a danger de mort. Gandhi ajouta qu'en qualité d'enseignant de la non-violence, il devait prévenir ses disciples contre cette croyance indigne d'un homme.

    6. La légitime défense... est l'unique recours honorable là où il n'y a pas le désir d'auto-immolation (suicide), nous dit Gandhi.
    "Entre la lâcheté et la Violence" - Between Cowardice And Violence,

    7. Rajmohun Gandhi, le petit-fils de Gandhi, confirma la préférence de son grand-père de la violence dans de tels cas, dans son livre: The Good Boatman, 1997.

    BAFS

    ReplyDelete