Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Bhagat Singh- The Man who made the Deaf Hear!



On this very day (28th sept) nearly 104 yrs ago a most remarkable person came into being. Bhagat singh truly noblest of freedom fighters there is. He read too much for his age from marx,lenin,the gita to urdu poetry, was an atheist & possibly commited the most sacrilegeous of acts a sikh can do by shaving of his beard and cutting his hair for the sake of the revolutionary movement. Singh thoroughly deplored of “Gandhian pacifist Ideology” according to him it would all “
replace one set of exploiters with another
“ a very visionary statement indeed. We have been all too soft on every tom dick and harry utterly giving a whole different dimension to the famous sanskrit adage 'vasudhaiva kudumbakam' ,the Indian subservile mentality which has bowed down to every imperialist there is starting from the turks,arabs to the british has been successfully carried forward by the man termed 'Mahatma'. I for one only admire Gandhi like Hitler just for his charisma as a leader and his persona & conviction to convince more than 500 million people and make them dance to his utterly erroneous philosophies the core of which is called “Ahimsa”

Ahimsa-The misplaced notion
Ahimsa or non-violence supposedly originates from Hindu ideologies. But in Hinduism upon careful scrutiny Ahimsa only means non-violence to animals, other beings and importantly one's self thats right! Self Defense was completely allowed in hinduism and we see from mythology that war in terms of need and violence to restore order or in self defense was a Dharma. Abhimanyu who slained hundreds of soldeirs in the 'Chakra-vyug' was a martyr , Arjuna who was reluctant to wage battle against his brothers was reminded of his duty to restore order by Krishna,Krishna,rama waged battles against hordes of demons who came to destroy their cities.

There is just no reference just no reference which says Ahimsa needs to be practiced when one's family is enslaved or killed, when people(friends,neighbours) are plundered, women raped and children massacred,and draconion laws are imposed.This is precisely the connotation of Ahimsa given to us by Gandhi. He distorted the very Hindu essence of ahimsa into “Impotence”.Take this quote about Kurukshetra battlefield by Gandhi-
an allegory in which the battlefield is the soul and Arjuna, man's higher impulses struggling against evil
He misled hordes of his countrymen and proceeded to sacrifice thousands and thousands as pigs for slaughter to the british. Bhagat did not tolerate all of this he knew this whole notion of non-violence was a huge mistake and aptly took revenge when a veteran congress leader Lala Lajpat rai was brutally beaten to death in front of him . Bhagat wanted killing for justice,honor and self defense like any true Kshatriya warrior of ancient Hindu time.When he famously threw a bomb into the legislative assembly in 1929 it was to make “the deaf hear” in other words a desperate attempt to bring back all of the misled indians. Some heard it indeed and those that heard were the later revolutionaries who would join the INA of Netaji Bose as one organisation.Thats Why its safe to say Bhagat was the "foundation" of it all.

OK?!So who got us the freedom then?
It was certainly not Gandhi, the british did not fear the Indian National Congress it was too soft a body for them. British could still live with all the non-co-operation, hunger strikes, boycotts without any alarming damage but they feared the rising force of the INA which though was a relatively insignificant force under Bose had instilled deep fears in the mind of the British by its patriotic exploits in WWII in south east asia against the raj. According to Clement Attlee, the British Prime Minister, reflecting on the factors that guided the British decision to relinquish the Raj in India, is said to have cited the effects of the INA and Nethaji's activities on the British Indian Army and the Bombay Mutiny as being the most important. The INA was gaining widespread support among the British Indian Armymen and the british fearing a catastrophical mutiny cum backlash withdrew from the Raj. Only our History books give Gandhi and his entourage complete & undue credit forgetting the Real hero Subhash chandra bose.
Read Climax of Independence movement-INA
If you ask any person alive from the independence era in Malaysia, Burma or any part of malay peninsula they still believe that Bose single handedly got India her freedom! Where the facts swallowed up by the Congress & Muslim league for Political benefits? Congress which has an inherent “Soft core” ingrained from its 'false ahimsa' times has gone onto create and nurture pakistan,terrorism & corruption,bureaucracy in the name of governance.

Hunger strikes and Hazare:

Hunger strikes have become publicity grabbing stunts. Bhagat singh fasted for as much as 100 days in prison demanding decent amenities for Indian political prisoners on par with european prisoners breaking all the hunger strikes record then.In this age of democracy(supposedly) its highly impractical to fight corruption in RDB or "Indian" Kamal styles and I have no qualms about peaceful protests or hunger strikes taking its place. But the media's projection that Anna Hazare's culmination of fast as victory for India against corruption is worrying. This should be seen in the perspective of what it actually is, agreed the awareness the fast has generated against corruption is tremendous. It is still a long long way off from the Hoo haa the media is doing merely for its TRP ( am sure they ll move away into other things soon). There is serious misgivings on whether the Lokpal bill will first get implemented as strong as it is warranted and that will be the first step in a long arduous battle and India must focus on getting this done.

I prefer Sept 28 to Oct 2 and a trip to n Museum Khatkar kalia
is high on my agenda and not Porbandar nor Raj ghat.

I Leave on this note

Legend of Bhagat singh

Friday, January 28, 2011

Of History and Histrionics!


The title is my original attempt at mimicking Black adder season 3 nomenclatures (Sense and sensibility, Bride and prejudice etc) Cool eh? eh? But seriously the last coupla months have taken me several hundreds of years into the past providing starkling info i scarcely knew. The cholas trace their lineage back to shibi chakravarthy (the king who offered himself for the pigeon) who is called shembiyan(tamil), Its astonishing to see that Shibi is referenced broadly in the Mahabharatha and even in some parts of the Ramayana[POS,Wiki] .The Mahabharatha even has lot of mentions of Pandyas and cheras who along with the cholas fought for the pandavas. A pandya king was killed by Ashvathama[Wiki-Pandya kingdom]. The cholas(ironically means new kingdom) and Pandyas (old kingdom)have a very very long bloodline from Mahabharata time(dated several thousand bcs [SOI]) going till 13th-15th centuries!!!

We have just under 1-2 pages devoted to them in our history books. They are unfairly compared with their later counterparts like Chalukyas, Rashtrakuthas,Hoysalas and Vijayanagar kingdoms who hardly have a few hundred years of co-existence. One can easily proclaim that the cholas and pandyas are the longest running dynasties in the history of india(maybe world) alas a pity they have little sources devoted to talk about their history than the other great(in size yet shorter spanning) empires like Mauryas and Mughals. Here's a map of the Ashoka kingdom around 300 BC. Notice the only place left unconquered? Yes that’s right the unconquered zones by this Saamrat were the then ‘Tamizhakam’. he was on friendly terms with kingdoms in the South like Cholas, Pandya, Keralputra [Wiki] .The cholas were the first truly international conquerors from India it is in part thanks to their deed now Tamil is an official language in as far countries like Singapore,malaysia and the distinct south indian style seen in the world’s largest uninhabitated temple at Angkor wat is testament to that while Bali (Indonesia) is still miraculously a hindu state not to mention plenty of Hinduism seen in Thai,Myanmar culture as well (However it is to be noted that the cholas were not the pioneers of Hinduism in the southeast , its been there before Rajaraja I).

The romans knew about the pandyas and were trading with them from about 550BC [SOI, Wiki]. One is felt compelled to completely agree in the wake of all these evidences and more when Micheal Wood says Tamil is the last living classical language and Tamilnadu (Tamizhakam)the last surviving Classical Civilisation.

I got some ideas about the other debatable and often controversial topic of Aryans and Dravidians. The not so conclusive yet methodical,scientific and archeleogical uncovering at Turkmenistan shows of a possible Aryan invasion into India via Hindukush and the compelling evidences of the Ratha(chariots), vedic incantation sites buried and Soma drink (Available only in present day Afghanistan) from [SOI]presents a good theory .Woods goes on to show a DNA match in villages South of Madurai with the earliest African homosapiens which he believes is a sign of Nativity (Dravidians)[SOI I]. However though all this is somewhat in line with the DK, DMK’s ‘Dravidian’ existence, the evidence that lot of philosophies unique to Hinduism being found in several Thirukkurals and even in Puranaanooru’s sangam Literature is a contradiction [Thuglak,EB]. “யாதும் ஊரே, யாவரும் கேளிர்” is a classical case of misintepretation of the Hindu rebirth concept which led to the verse making its way into the 'World tamil classical song' penned by our very own CM. Right from Sangam literature to the time of Nayanmaars,Alwars and to Rajaraja chola's helm, Hinduism has been the integral driving force for tamil literature enriching the language and it will be utterly foolish to deny this obvious fact[Thuglak,EB].Now as opposed to the fanatical stance of the DMK against the influence of Sanskrit or “Vada mozhi” into the tamil proper vocabulary. The cholas and Pandya kings thought it was imperative to learn both the classical languages (Tamil and Sanskrit) and the “Grantha tamil script” enjoyed tremendous respect.However it really remains a great puzzle as to how “Classical” or pure tamil remains the only language without an iota of Sanskrit in it?!!!! The evolution of tamil needs to be better understood probably it will shed light on the Dravidian-Aryan theory.

I always thought “Aayiralthil oruvan” was a bad tribute to the timeless novel that [POS]is even as am writing this I have only read less than 50% of the epic but am convinced it has enough storyline to merit atleast a trilogy of the scale of LOTR to do some justice. I am just hopeful that Mani Ratnam’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ will be an effort to remember.

References/Glossary:

[SOI]- Story of India, BBC documentary by Micheal Woods.
[POS]-Ponniyin Selvan, Kalki Krishnamurthy
[EB]-Enge brahmanan, Jaya TV by Cho ramaswamy.