Macaulay lives on...

I'll start with a small tidbit from history which I am cocksure that you wouldn't have studied in your history classes.

Circa 1813 : India was ruled by the East India company. The first stone for the introduction of western education to Indians was laid. Sita Ram Goel in his book History of Hindu-Christian encounters explains the unfolding of events that led to the introduction of western education for Indians:

The renewal of East India Company’s Charter in 1813 had opened the Company’s dominions to Christian missionaries. It had also advised “introduction of useful knowledge and religious and moral improvement.” A controversy had been going on ever since regarding the system of education suitable for India. The Orientalists among the British rulers advocated retention of the traditional Indian system. They were afraid that imparting of Western knowledge to natives would encourage them to claim equality with white men and demand democratisation of the administration. The Anglicists, on the other hand, were convinced that knowledge of Western literature, philosophy and science would wean Hindus away from their “ancestral superstitions” and draw them closer to the religion and culture of the ruling race.

Christian missionaries were, by and large, with the Anglicists. One of them had written in 1822 that, through Western education, Hindus “now engaged in the degrading and polluting worship of idols shall be brought to the knowledge of true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.” Missionaries felt immensely strengthened when Alexander Duff, an ardent advocate of Western education, reached Calcutta in 1830.

Alexander Duff was convinced that “of all the systems of false religion ever fabricated by the perverse ingenuity of fallen men, Hinduism is surely the most stupendous” and that India was “the chief seat of Satan’s earthly dominion.” He studied for some time the effect which Western education was having on Hindu young men attending the Hindu College and similar institutions which had come up in Calcutta and elsewhere in Bengal since more than a decade before his arrival. He came to the definite conclusion that Western education would make the Hindus “perfect unbelievers in their own system” and “perfect believers in Christianity.” In an address delivered in 1835 to a General Church Assembly he proclaimed that knowledge of Western literature and science would “demolish the huge and hideous fabric of Hinduism” brick by brick till “the whole will be found to have crumbled into fragments.”

A Committee of Public Instruction had been set up by the Government for recommending a suitable system of education. Alexander Duff had been made a member of the Committee in 1834. Next year, T. B. Macaulay, a member of the Governor General’s Council, was appointed to preside over the Committee. He wrote a Minute on February 2, 1835, advocating Western education. There was a tie between the Anglicists and the Orientalists when the Minute came before the Committee on March 7. Macaulay used his casting vote and forced a decision. The Western system of education was adopted. In a letter written to his father in 1836, Macaulay predicated, “It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes of Bengal thirty years hence.”

Macaulay argued that providing education based on Sanskrit is of no use for India’s development, and batted instead for education based on English. He (in)famously envisioned creating “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”. [You can find the complete minute here] He correctly identified the strength of Indians was in their tradition, heritage and spirituality. Once you make them believe all that they valued are just a baggage of hogwash, you can easily rule them. As simple as that. In a way, you can call Macaulay a visionary because what he had envisaged did turn out to be true in the future.

I am not adding his one more cardinal sin of adding racial theories which were very prevalent in Europe during 19th century to the new curriculum. Thus applied racial theories to the Indian populace were initially used by colonialists to divide and sub-divide India. This was later used by evangelical missionaries and political parties to serve their own ends. The commie historians who were to rule Indian academics post-Independent India kept this repudiated, outdated theory intact and these hoax theories are peddled even to this day.This is a big story in itself. Let's keep it for some other day.

Who should write history? This is a very serious question that one should contemplate on. Some say history is written by the winners and conquerors. This is true even in case of India. Indian history is never written from an Indian perspective. It was always written with the invaders' perspective be it Moguls or the British. That's the sole reason that we are conditioned to see the invaders as heroes or liberators. So,our history books are full of invasions, wars and subjugation. These are just the products of colonial constructs which are peddled even to this day. Anyone who is a product of this kind of education can never admire the greatness of this nation. All that he can have is contempt for it and its past. People like Vivekananda or Aurobindo are just a few honorary exceptions to come out of the kind of western education introduced by Macaulay. Even people like them, discovered the greatness of India only because they chose to go beyond what was taught to them. Else, even their intellect and perception would have been crippled.

We can see this phenomenon clearly in this country : To be called as an intellectual, you should have an absolute disdain for its heritage and you should be able to debunk it. That's one of the criteria for being a 'progressive' in this nation. The more you debunk the tradition, the more intellectual you appear. Those people who debunk even the profound things of this culture have no problem in accepting absolute trumpery of predatory cultures and religions that have invaded India. This is just a small instance to show the triumph of Macaulay's education system.

So I readily agree when someone says 15th August 1947 is just an end of physical (or administrative) slavery but mental (or intellectual) slavery continues even to this day. I think it's high time that we broke the shackles of mental slavery and came clean.

My Books Review: May '12

1) Eminent Historians – This work of Arun Shourie is an eye-opener for all to the wrongdoings of the leftist historians of India from decimating the institutions of national importance to tampering the history. Arun Shourie’s style of writing is described to be based on rigorous analysis and meticulous research. You have all the reason to vouch for it once you’ve completed the book.

The gist of the book is given in these lines: “Tarnish every person, Institution, Period, Confidence...Ascribe tolerance, magnanimity to the intolerant...Portray the inclusive, Open tradition as the one out to swallow others, and the exclusivist, totalitarian ideology as the ideology of broad-mindedness, of peace, tolerance...Denounce as 'communal' anyone who demands proof...Blame victims for the consequence of the ideology of the oppressors...Suppress the role of comrades in aiding imperial rulers...Tarnish leaders, reformers who led the nationalist movement...All the while control institutions, hog patronage, exercise power, and have a good time...”! They have denied the idea of India, Hinduism and have shown ruthless invaders (who were actually religious fanatics) as emancipators, they have employed their intellectual faculties to whitewash the Islamic rule in India which was characterized by loot, violence and conversion all in large scale, they have hushed up all the facts of communists who played treacherous role in the freedom struggle with covertly allying with the British. They have belittled the ancient religion of India, used scorn profusely wherever they can to describe ancient India.   

            What the Marxist historians have made an institute like ICHR is given in detail by their partisanship and nepotism by taking Ayodhya issue as an example. A huge amount of public fund is misused by the eminent historians in the name of big projects which are never completed. Shourie gives various instances of tens of historians with many high sounding projects but are never completed. Their various techniques of falsifying history and countering the opinions of others are listed with solid examples.

            In 1989, West Bengal board of secondary education had issued instructions that “Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned”. The instruction was faithfully implemented and thus history was distorted. This is just an example. The Marxist or communists historians have been doing such mischievous acts for decades. It’s just that their nexus and network are so strong that they attract no trouble. 

“In regard to our religion, the trick is threefold. The textbooks denigrate religion, attributing to it the evils which it serves the progressives’ purpose of highlight. Second, in each of these instances the examples they give are linked by them to Hinduism. Third, among religions, Islam is always presented as the one, progressive, emancipatory religion. Of course, the final emancipation comes in the form of the soviet revolution of 1917! ”

            They have bequeathed the legacy of Macaulay’s education. What if Marx, Macaulay and Missionaries come together? How would their design be? Simple: “Make them ashamed of the things that they revere- their god, their scriptures, their language, Sanskrit; and make them hate the one group which has been charged with the task of continuing their religion and culture.” If we see the present day India, we have to admit their design has been greatly successful.

            The party line remains the same of the school: “There is no Hinduism, it is brahminism; brahminism equals intolerance and persecution – of Buddhists, Jains and of course the Shudras; Islam equals peace, equality, brotherhood, the ascent towards monotheism; the left, means equality, freedom and everything nice; revolution means the rule of workers and peasants!” dissecting many of their assertions and proving them false, Shourie writes “Each of these assertions is a blatant falsehood. But these historians, having, their control of institutions, set the standards of intellectual correctness, the one who questions the falsehoods, even though he does so by citing the writings of the best known Islamic historians of those very times, he is the one who is in the wrong.”

            To counter the fact that Muslims destroyed thousands of temples of Hindus, a lie of Hindus destroying Buddhist viharas is invented. ‘A lie repeated many times becomes a truth’ is standard technique used in the Marxist school of thought. The lie is completely exposed in the book by citing many works. Before the advent of Islam, Buddhism was the religion of Bactria, Parthis, Afghanistan, Gandhar. It was Islam which destroyed Buddhism in all these places.  

            The eminent historians take liberty in denigrating the Indian gods by saying like ‘Indra is amoral’, ‘Lord Krishna has rather questionable personal record’, ‘and Lord Shiva is just a development of phallic cults’. They assume Hindus could not have done anything worthwhile and original and develop their theses in those lines. According to them even true geniuses like Aryabhata, Varahamihira are unoriginal. Their contempt is reserved only for Hindu culture and Hindu culture alone.

            Engels propounded a theory according to which all the societies should pass through these stages: classless primitive society; slave economy, feudalism, capitalism, socialism and finally communism and he said it was a universal law that no country or society was an exception to this sequence. A few writings of Lenin say that all the spheres of the society like economic, spiritual, political, religious can be understood and analysed by having the aforesaid sequence of development in mind. So, our eminent historians of India who are well-versed with the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin have religiously tried to see our history through the lenses of class and class struggle.  This sometimes gets preposterous when they try to give explanation of concepts like Bhakti, karma and reincarnation through class, class struggle and oppression. But that’s how they are conditioned to see the entire society, history and in short the whole world. That’s why communism is sometimes called quasi-religious.

            In the next part Shourie contrasts the writings of Soviet historians and our own historians on Ancient India. He conclusively proves that soviet historians are more objective and loyal to true history than our own eminences.

            “These intellectuals have over years captured an array of institutions and professions. Through this dominion they have controlled public discourse in general. They have set the intellectual fashion; they have determined what is politically correct and what is not. The effects are all around us.” Though their number is not great, they have managed to occupy key positions in journalism, history, arts, theatre . They decide what book should be reviewed in their newspaper and who should review it needless to say the person who advocates their lines would be given such an opportunity. In this way they have hijacked the entire political discourse.

In the concluding remarks, Shourie proposes the way out, what needs to be done to control the damage that’s already been done and not to further that damage.

This is the first ever full scale book that I read of Arun Shourie. His style of writing is indeed a marriage of extensive research and rigorous analysis. It’s a highly recommended book which should be read by all who wishes to know the misdoings of our eminent historians, the techniques that they employ, the ramifications of their deeds and the way out.

2) Chitadanta - It’s a kannada novel written by K.N. Ganeshiah. It’s a suspense thriller which revolves around a murder but explores many historical incidents like Alexander’s invasion, Buddha’s tooth mystery etc. For further details go to 
http://blogesha.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/%E0%B2%9A%E0%B2%BF%E0%B2%A4%E0%B2%BE%E0%B2%A6%E0%B2%82%E0%B2%A4/

My Books Review: October '11

Negationism in India – The book starts with the explanation of the term ‘negationism’ in general. Negationism is a denial of historical facts, not the reinterpretation of the known facts. The original usage of the term lies in the denial of the Nazi genocide of the Jews and Gypsies in World War 2. Once the reader gets to know the meaning of negationism, the focus shifts to the Indian version of it which is more wide-spread than the former. 

Continued efforts are made to make the people of India to forget the persecution of Hindus by Muslims over six centuries. An excerpt from the book says “Since about 1920 an effort has been going on in India to rewrite history and to deny the millennium-long attack of Islam on Hinduism. Today, most politicians and English- writing intellectuals in India will go out of their way to condemn any public reference to this long and painful conflict in the strongest terms. They will go to any length to create the illusion of a history of communal amity between Hindus and Muslims.”

Then the author explains how negationism became official policy under congress rule. Great efforts happened to re-write Indian history in a large scale. Then explanation shifts to the distortion of history by Marxist historians and how the academia fell into the hands of Marxists and how they used it to rewrite history according to their ideologies. Many Marxist historians are analysed like: Romila Thapar, Bipin Chandra, Irfan Habib, Gyanendra Pandey etc. Negationism can’t happen without consistent support of the academia and the media. But now, negationists control most part of them. Therefore people seldom get to know the real facts.

In the later part of the book, the ideology of Islam & the character of Mohammed (the founder of Islam) are analyzed. It becomes clear from the argument that Mohammed had political ambitions than spiritual ones. The author demolishes the statement “Islam is good but some Muslims may be bad” but instead proves the opposite and shows how with following Quran and hadith strictly, no Muslim can be at peace with Non-Muslims ever.

This is a milestone book written by the Belgian author Koenraad Elst. Enormous amount of studies of various histories, religion, philosophies, politics, social structure have gone into the making of this book. The author has stayed steadfast to truth and not hesitated in touching a subject which is a ‘taboo’. I’d say this is a very essential book to understand how propaganda is created, how it is sustained for a long period of time by both outside forces and the inside ones and how it destabilizes the country. This is a scholarly work, a highly recommended read.

A fake historian can damage a nation for generations

Tarnish every person, Institution, Period, Confidence...
Ascribe tolerance, magnanimity to the intolerant... 
Portray the inclusive, Open tradition as the one out to swallow others, and the exclusivist, totalitarian ideology as the ideology of broad-mindedness, of peace, tolerance...
Denounce as 'communal' anyone who demands proof... 
Blame victims for the consequence of the ideology of the oppressors...
Suppress the role of comrades in aiding imperial rulers...
Tarnish leaders, reformers who led the nationalist movement...
All the while control institutions, hog patronage, exercise power, and have a good time...wrote Arun Shourie in the introduction to his book Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. Well, he was absolutely right in his observation about the history writers in India.

History writing in India is very difficult unlike history writing in say Europe. Writing of Indian history in a large scale happened at the time of the British. The Indian history writing is in near absolute control of the writers with Marxist ideology. The underlying tone of Marxist approach towards history can be summed as: ancient societies are primitive, all kinds of social evolutions are class struggle, and India absorbed great things from invaders rather than producing great things on its own. In Marxist version of history, Hindu society is always portrayed as regressive, many Islamic rulers (who were actually religious fanatics) are portrayed as tolerant, a great lie of Aryan-Dravidian division theory is invented to create divide amongst Indians, a great warrior-saint like Guru Tegh Bahadur is called a bandit, freedom fighters are called as terrorists (I clearly remember studying this), great patriots like Aurobindo Ghosh, Swami Vivekananda are touted communal.

Marxists never had scantest respect for the spiritual heritage of India which is actually its core strength. If it did not process that strength, it could never have attracted the greatest minds like Albert Einstein or Mark Twain. Students never study India’s contribution to the world in art, science, metallurgy or various other technologies. Students who receive this kind of education can never know the great heritage of India and they will grow devoid of pride in their country and some of them have contempt for it as well. All the ‘great’ historians that can be listed from the present day India like Romila Thapar, Irfan Habib, R.S.Sharma, Bipin Chandra are heavily inclined towards leftist ideologies. Anyone who tries to correct some gross errors is termed ‘communal’. The Marxist historians are doing such a great harm to the country that it can put Macaulay’s dream to shame!

When someone tries to mend these mistakes (as it happened when Murali Manohar Joshi was HRD minister and the attempt was a failure), and present history as it is, then there will be a big hue and cry of ‘saffronization’. When did saffron enter the scene! The lobby of Marxists is very strong that they will make such attempts to fail. They enjoy a strong patronage from the government and support from media as well. This is a hard nexus which may take many decades to break. It may be true that the history writing should not have hold of any ideologies but if an ideology is inevitable, let it be a nationalistic one rather than the putrid communist one.

You may build a magnanimous building. But if it is built on quick sand, the glory is transient. Sooner or later, the building has to fall & will fall. As the old saying goes: truth ultimately triumphs.