ANTI-BLACK AND ANTI-LOW CASTE RACIST AND HOMOSEXUAL GANDHI
10 Dark Facts About Mahatma Gandhi That Nobody Knows
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Gandhi is a Racist! - Dr. Ọbádélé Kambon (GMG+)
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India’s Missing Historians
Mihir Bose discusses the paradox that India, a land of history, has a surprisingly weak tradition of historiography.
Nehru 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).
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
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.
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 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?!
0
‘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
Nov 30th 2006 | Delhi and Deoband, Uttar Pradesh
| from the print edition
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 aboutReutersThat 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.
from the print edition | Asia
The Army: Missing Muslim India
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
by Siddharth Varadarajan
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 |
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Global Research Articles by Siddharth Varadarajan | ||||||
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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
Email
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.
"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.
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
AFP | 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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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.
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.
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.
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’.
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
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.
|
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’.
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.”
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
|
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
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
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 (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
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’.
Monday, December 17, 2012
About the author:Mike Adams (aka the "
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.
ReplyDeleteM.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