Barry Nirmal
It is not fashionable these days to talk against M.K. Gandhi. But more and more people have started to realize that he was not as great a man as he is made out to be. True, the Western media laud him. The Indian media also laud him because for most of the sixty five or so years since independence India has been ruled by the Congress Party which was always controlled by the Nehru-Gandhi family. And M.K. Gandhi was the leader of Congress until he was killed by an assassin’s bullet in 1948. Gandhi and Jawahar Lal Nehru were the top leaders of Congress when India was partitioned in 1947 and India and Pakistan became independent from Britain. So, it is no wonder that the Indian media never criticized Gandhi.
But over the past decades, I have slowly been coming to the conclusion that Gandhi was not as great a man as he is made out to be. The Western press and Russia also laud him and his teachings of non-violence. But they never try to follow his teachings. The Western powers and Russia are always sharpening their sword. They are always acquiring newer weapons in their arsenal so as to dominate world affairs and maintain their position as great powers. Communist China never believed in non-violence and they never said a nice thing about Gandhi.
So, why does the West laud Gandhi? My guess is that Gandhi’s teachings of non-violence appeals to them because it is akin to Christ’s teaching of love and compassion. Also the West and Russia have no problem if the Indians follow Gandhi’s teachings as long as their own government refrains from it.
No doubt Gandhi’s teachings of non-violence has merit but only in religious arena, and that too only in certain situations. No sane person will condone mindless violence but there is just violence and there is unjust violence. Unjust violence must be opposed with violence.
I have had no beef with Gandhi if he was just a religious leader, even a high priest in the most famous Hindu temple, just like Sri Ramakrishna was. But the problem is that he was a political leader and a top one at that. When a political leader starts to preach non-violence, it spells disaster for the country.
And this is what happened with India. Because of his emphasis on non-violence, the Indian government headed by J. L. Nehru neglected the armed forces. India’s army was shabby and weak. This is why India got badly beaten during Indo-China war of 1962.
Only when India started to rebuild its armed forces, did good results started coming like India’s victory in the 1965 war with Pakistan and India’s success in creating Bangladesh. But during the war for the creation of Bangladesh, it was the Hindus who bore the brunt of the assault by the military regime of Pakistan. It has been reported that before the 1971 war, Hindus constituted around 30 percent of the population of East Pakistan, but now they are merely around nine percent in Bangladesh.
Gandhi also opposed Hindus whenever riots took place between Hindus and Muslims. His comments during Moplah and Bengal riots were disgusting.
The Malabar Rebellion (also known as the “Moplah Rebellion”, was an armed uprising in 1921 against British authority and High Caste Hindus in the Malabar region of Southern India by Mappila Muslims and the culmination of a series of Mappila revolts that recurred throughout the 19th century and early 20th century. The 1921 rebellion began as a reaction against a heavy-handed crackdown on the Khilafat Movement by the British authorities in Malabar. In this rebellion, large numbers of Hindus were killed or were converted into Islam.
Direct Action Day in 1946 also known as the Great Calcutta Killings, was a day of widespread riot and manslaughter between Hindus and Muslims in the city of Calcutta in the Bengal province of British India. The ‘Direct Action’ announced by the Muslim League Council to achieve the Muslim League’s demand for the creation of Pakistan (a separate country for Indian Muslims) resulted in the worst communal riots that British India had seen.
Just today I was reading a quote in which Gandhi speaks prior to the creation of Israel. He denounced the efforts for creation of Israel. He says that America and Britain were using Zionism to create Israel, which he considers wrong. He thinks that the Jews should have stayed in whichever country they lived in. He thinks that Palestinians are the native people of the region now inhabited by Jews in Israel and Arabs in West Bank and Gaza. He also advised Jews to use non-violence to achieve equality in Europe. The Jews were non-violent when Hitler started killing them, and this is why six million of them were killed during the Nazi regime.
Here I beg to differ with Gandhi. He probably forgot that the Jews had lived in Palestine and the lands that are now Arab countries, starting from the time even before Christ was born. And they lived in that region in peace and tranquility when Islam was born around 622. The Muslim armies drove the Jews out of their homes and they were forced to migrate to other lands such as Europe, India, and the Americas. So, for Gandhi to say that the Arabs are the rightful owners of the land that is called Palestine is a fallacy.
It is a testimony to the wisdom of the Jews that they did not listen to this false ‘Mahatma’ (Great Soul) and established their own country with force and with the help from USA and Britain. And Israel proudly proclaims that Israel is for Jews while the slogan ‘Hindustan for Hindus’ has not been accepted by the Hindus due to the erroneous and poisonous ideas preached by the Nehru- Gandhi regimes.
But my main beef against Gandhi is that his preaching of non-violence made Hinds weak and inert. His followers like Nehru and the successive Congress dominated governments ignored Hindu interests and always tried to appease the Muslim minority so as to secure their votes. Muslims were allowed to dominate Bollywood which is the main outlet for Indian culture. As a result, Hindus lost their pride in their religion and culture.
Only with the ascent of the BJP led by L. K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee did Hindus start to get their pride back. Now that Narendra Modi (NAMO) has become Prime Minister and his BJP has won overwhelming majority in the 2014 general elections, Hindu nationalism has started to gain upper hand.
The idea again put forward recently by RSS that Hindustan is a country of Hindus, is an excellent idea. As the father of Hindu nationalism Savarkar wrote, the land called India has been known as Hindustan from ancient times, from the time even before the birth of Islam. Earlier the people were called Sindhus (from the Sindhu river) which later became Hindus. So, this land called India or Bharat is really Hindustan which must remain a land for and of Hindus. The minorities may live in this land but they must respect Hindu culture and traditions.
It is my hope and prayer that Indian people will never again allow a character like Gandhi to dominate political life so that the Indian governments will always place great emphasis on armed forces and fight for democracy for the people and justice in international affairs. It is my hope that India will emerge as a great military power so that no country can dare to intimidate it.
My hopes and dreams for India are not in conflict with my status as an American. I would always like USA to remain the most powerful country in the world.
Barry Nirmal is a retired engineer and a member of Hindu Mahasabha of America (HMSA). You can reach out to him at barrynirmal@gmail.com.
SOURCE: Barry Nirmal via. publisher@worldhindunews.com
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