The Genesis of Patriotism in an Indian Individual

THE GENESIS OF PATRIOTISM IN AN INDIAN INDIVIDUAL

Arpita Chatterjee,

13^th June 2019,

New Delhi

I have just finished reading an interesting article by one of my favorite writers Dr. Richard Dawkins, it is titled “What does it mean to be genetically Jewish”. This article has finally pushed me to put my broken thoughts together on a similar topic.

On his way back to earth after fighting a war on the side of the gods, Maharaj Dilīp failed to notice the divine cow Kamdhenu on his way and passed without paying his respects to her. Thereby he incurred the anger of the cow, who cursed the king to go childless. To negate the ill-effects of the curse, the king was advised to worship the divine cow Nandini, who was the daughter of Kamdhenu, and thereby to earn her goodwill. The king faithfully served Nandini for twenty-one days. He slept where the cow slept, ate when the cow ate and washed the cow and took very good care of it. On the twenty-second day, when the cow was grazing in the field, a lion appeared suddenly and pounced to eat Nandini. The king tried to kill the lion but could not, because the lion happened to be a servant of Shiva and he cast a spell on King Dilip that made him motionless. The king wanted to protect the cow but could not do anything but speak. He begged the lion to remove the curse of her mother and the king very soon begat a son, who came to be called as Raghu (meaning ‘one who was learned in the Shahstras and who vanquished the enemies in war’). Dilip was a religious king which is why he was also known to be by his another name as Kshatvang, literally kshat (hundred) and Vang (sun god or sacrifice), as he had performed as many as a hundred yajnas. Until he did so, only Indra, the king of the gods, had earned that distinction. In a bid to prevent Dilip from equaling his record, Indra placed many hurdles in the path of the successful completion of the 100th Yajna, but Raghu, son of Dilīp, was able to prevail over the forces of Indra, and the Yajna was completed successfully. This bloodline at various points of time gave us kings like Mandhata, Harish Chandra, Sagar, Bhagirath, Dilīp, Raghu, Ajj, Dashrath and Ram.

This seemingly unrelated story embellished with fair bit of allegory is important in tracing back the roots of Indian gene pool and Indian wisdom of future continuity.  We, as a generation exist because of millions of such forefathers who knew the significance of continuity and community. Like Maharaj Dilip, they had rightly identified the threat of being childless as an ‘enemy’ or ‘challenge’, therefore had strived to diminish the same. The ‘enemy’ of the nation or tribe is specific to a period in time, and so is the yearning to defeat it. This aspiration to defeat the enemy of the tribe is what we call patriotism. It is a reactive sentiment. We may be in love with our countries, but the love articulates into expression only at the emergence of a challenge.

Coming back to the present day, our identities and opinions are hugely based on certain visible or invisible factors. What makes us love or hate our country? Who told us who we are? Who are we? Why is that compatriots of the same age group have different answers to same questions? What did my grandparents know more than me? Let’s start with a first person account. As Bengali children, we have been fed with our history of patriotism as a household ritual. The hangover of India’s Struggle for Independence against the British and most importantly Bengal’s humungous contribution to it, largely defines (and confines) our concept of patriotism. Bengalis are so fascinated by their hyper urban leadership into the struggle for independence that they have stopped looking into the time before the British came to India. On an average as a Bengali child while growing up, one would seldom find stories of Pre British India or Bengal. Even the older or parallel larger movements like The Bhakti movement (which was largely instrumental in recreation of the awareness of  Sanatan ideology had originated in South; and had been brought in Bengal in 1492 by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu) holds minor mention in a granny’s storytelling to the children of the house. Ironically, the other famous personalities like Lokenath Baba (1730- 1890); Ramakrishna Paramhansa (1836 – 1886) and most importantly Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) are hailed and worshipped in every Bengali household even today but unfortunately except a small percentage of the Bengali population, no one ever studies their work. Had the Bengali studied the work of Ramakrishna Paramhansa, he would have been drawn out of his confined virtual identity to an overwhelming admiration towards Vedanta and Sanatan. Of all things Ramakrishna Paramhansa and Swami Vivekananda were never flagbearers of Bengal or Bengalis alone. They were the leaders on the path of reclaiming the lost, larger and true place of Vedanta of which Bengal was just one offspring out of many.

Interestingly, India is home to more than fifty such larger ego groups along with a minimum of fifty subsets of each (sometimes the subsets or sub cultures may number in more than five hundred). Every community has a story like the Bengalis. The Marathas largely base their ego and identity by how their leader Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (1630 – 1680) had carved out the pride from the diminishing of Adilshahi Sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of Maratha Empire. Their eventual tightfisted wrist fight with the Mughals defines the idea of patriotism amongst Maharashtrians even today. It was this Maratha Empire which had realized the power of linguistic movements long before the ‘Mukti Juddho’ of East Pakistan. They had designated Marathi and Sanskrit in courts and administration and resisted Persian unlike the whole of North India then. During movement for independence of India, when the whole nation was roaring in one anti-British rhetoric, the reposition of the idea (of the enemies before and after the British) came from Maharashtra itself, “Hindus, do not waste your time fighting the British, save your energy to fight our internal enemies that are Muslims, Christians and Communists”, M. S. Golwalkar, Second Sarsanghchalak of the RSS.

We and our opinions are all results of layers of cumulative events that have happened in the universe till now, and so is our definition of Patriotism. Both the cases mentioned above are real cases of true patriotism. We have to understand that Patriotism is like paths to God, it can be as many as are there are seekers of the path. Hinduism is popularly known as epitome of Polytheism (unfortunately even among Hindus). The Vedanta clearly says the Brahmn being one and the paths of realizing this truth being infinite. So is Patriotism. The need of patriotism arises out of specific challenging situation (the enemy) and the magnitude of Patriotism is defined by the area of influence of the challenge. Patriotism at times could be for one’s own village or city or state, in a protest or retaliation towards some challenge imposed by the governing republic, nation or monarchy. It is not always pertaining to the whole nation. Germanic tribes continuously retaliated against the Romans (whom they considered outsiders), though Romans thought they were proposing law and order to the barbaric tribes. Not both the sides were patriots if you see. One was protecting their people, land, tradition, ancestral knowledge from the other. The other was imposing the same on others.

Coming back to being Indian children, we were impressed (actually amused) by the sacrifices of Bhagat Singh and Khudiram Bose. We immediately wanted to be the savior in our imaginary games. We saved the whole school with our bravery during our imaginary attacks. We grew up under the influence of the hangover of India’s struggle for Independence as the central idea of patriotism.

The world has walked across one hundred and sixty two years since the movement started formally in 1857. In these years, unlike the many machines that made our lives comfortable, there came newer faces (often in disguise) of the enemy as well. When we grow to become the youth of the nation, we seldom appreciate what we have. We often see the shortcomings and protest and swiftly become an unaware pawn of the kingdom of anti-matter famously called the Left. Ironically, it was born out of the challenges faced during the halcyon days of acute Capitalism in Europe. In the modern times, capitalism has changed faces, acclimatized itself and is not present in the recognizable face anywhere. In a failure to find it, the Left bored of lying idle, started opposing everything they found on the way, and hence lost ground across the world (almost). One major contribution of the Left even today is pushing people to be logical and read more (at least in theory). In this quest, the youth starts exploring knowledge, finds out that religion (also paganism) is not illogical always, rather conventional lifestyle (of the pagans) is the logical thread that made them survive till now. The youth who (basis the childhood stories) claims to be a patriot and has always ignored and hated the rituals of hanging mango leaves at the door of the house or blowing the conch-shell, one fine day meets someone who introduces him to a more logical ‘Modern Abrahamic Religion’ (Modern Abrahamics are those who acquired the vanilla base from the real Abrahamic-Religion like the Judaism; and topped it with unnecessary modifications to make a signature and started spreading the word of their made up God by killing people). So he is introduced the Modern Abrahamics. He is introduced to a new narrative that ‘his religion does not answer his questions’. Hence, he being a logical person should outgrow his outdated pagan religion. Right from the history of usury to the perils of caste system, he drinks everything to a point where he starts advocating that ‘the virgin mother’ and the ‘veiled female’ are epitome of logic. He observes his patriarchal house, society, nation and civilization every day and comes to truly believe that his religion is indeed opium (and that of the Modern Abrahamics are caffeine!). 

Further, while still seeking more knowledge to stand by his leftist principles, he happened to read books of his religion. Following the deep study he would conclude that ‘his’ religion is illogical (basically the preconceived notion with what the study started). What else does he get out of the study of Hinduism? Apart from a plethora of science and mathematics, he found Antiquity in his books and blood. Welcome to the ‘How old is your religion’ contest. Does antiquity matter? Notably, the stories of the Modern Abrahamics only end with Jesus and Muhammad, they start with an older period, rather the period of the earliest man, Adam. While the reason of emergence of both Christianity and Islam as stated by them is the poor practices of the then societies (the deterioration of the God’s world to a low life level as then). So what was the need of tying a thread to the earliest man, to draw lineage charts of bloodline from Adam to Jesus and Adam to Muhammad? Does Antiquity justify any ground? Darwin answers this by his theory of evolution which points out certain traits that helps (or helped) a species survive for long. Therefore, the one who survived has almost all the winning traits of evolutions. It is not too unscientific to draw a conclusion that the longest continuously surviving lifestyle must have practiced a winning lifestyle. Hence, Antiquity! But, if Modern Abrahamics were there since the time of Adam, what help did Jesus and Mohammad render? The youth who is reading all these, opens his eyes to the light in his religion. After this moment he ceases to be ignorant towards being a Hindu. The leftist youth ceases to exist from this moment. Like his religion, he decides to be appreciative of all religions and remain a logical Vedic Hindu. He is yet to open his eyes to the darkness of the enemy though.

In British India, the enemy (as chosen by majority) was the British. However, there was a certain small group of people as well who had an eye on some other enemy. During Independence (as Independence is not a day but a two year long period of mutually cooperated handovers based on lust for power) there appeared this group of philosophers who discovered the big void. These highly acclaimed (self) philosophers identified the void called ‘the common enemy’ in Post-British India, because without the ‘common enemy rhetoric’ there will be no issue to fight with, therefore no philosophical prudence could be established further. So the group of philosophers declared the Brahminical system to be the common enemy. No one told us that this Brahminical society is a child of the Vedic Religion. The Vedic society is one of the few which is the longest surviving lifestyles of the world, the civilization with the oldest manuscripts, the manuscripts with the earliest discoveries, the manuscripts with the earliest form of law and order. In retaliation to the forced mass conversions to Buddhism, the people of the era realized the need for religious awareness among masses and that they did not have to go out to other religions (that too off-springs of the Vedic religion only) to find answers. Why was this Brahminical system made to be the ‘common enemy’ by the Philosophers? Why not Islam or Christianity which looted India for a millennium and has been running churches (with mission) since AD 105 in Kerala? As I write the answer to this, my learned self in parallel is answering to my lost leftist youth.  There are two simple reasons.

Firstly, it is a war of and by the Modern Abrahamic Religions, in which they simultaneously fight with each other and with the rest of the world. They are running on some quest to conquer the world, they are chasing some imaginary brownie points by converting the whole world, etc. India on the other hand has its soul in Sanatan Dharm which has an infinite appetite for ways to God, hence always welcomed all Gods and associates with open arms. Ironically, the Modern Abrahamics attacked in infinite ways, they attacked and looted temples (temples were our centers of excellence for art, literature, science and lifestyle), set ablaze our indigenous educational centers, imposed heavy taxes on religious pilgrimages, incentivized conversions and mostly forced and killed to convert, also took the slow poison way by straightaway reaching out to the lowest class of people in the society and did the deal of equality like we do sales deals today both with individual and corporate clients. We fool them. The Modern Abrahamics use the Leftist face to launch itself everywhere, first they implode and finally explode. Left is the mouthpiece of the Enemies.

Secondly, the group of philosophers who were defining the ‘common enemy’ (irrespective of whichever religion they were of, whichever caste they belonged to) were not patriots. They were politicians looking for individual gains. Since they were the ones who always spoke about ‘nation’ and ‘national interest’, we goofed up in our understanding of the difference between the patriot and the politician; and the difference between ‘national interest’ and ‘patriotism’. Incidentally the philosophers always talked about classless society and equality– in short the Left (the same people who were bored of lying idle, started opposing everything they found on the way, and hence lost ground across the world). The Left cannot thrive until they oppose something, their opposition is their survival. Therefore, almost everything that they oppose is not wrong.

Nation for the Left is a political map of any country, for us it is more of a demographical map, the breathing embodiment of our culture and lifestyle. Left will always propose the idea of India being an unnatural country tying unrelated states together. This is the direct result of Left being literate yet uneducated (This has exactly been the hollow curriculum of our primary education since the British era, which is why we fail to ask the right questions). The academic curriculum that gives us degrees becomes obsolete after every century. Science, Mathematics, Geography and History progress and languages evolve.  It is the vastness, timelessness and versatility of the Vedas, Upanishads and the Sanskrit language that the current world is still ascending towards. One has to go deep into linguistic studies and atomic physics to come back and challenge the statement. Coming back to the point, if the rituals, food, cooking, clothing, deities, names and bedtime stories of the sub cultures are observed it will be evident that we are one. A simple evidence could be the prevalence of the Gotra (Chromosomes - The unbroken ancestral lines - both maternal and paternal) are instrumental in all forms of Yajna (including the Yajna of the Hindu marriage – which does not allow incest, marriage within same Gotras for reasons pertaining to Antiquity and hygienic procreation). They are the graphical coordinates of the identity of the present day human with respect to his ancestry and current date or era. The deeper you dive into any pagan culture of the world, easier you will find to understand the early man. Everyone who can make sense out of this are compatriots and are stakeholders of the Pagan Patriotism. An urban youth who might not as well want to go so deep, can at least take note of the facts like Ramakrishna Paramhansa, a Bengali was mentored in Adwaitya Vedanta by Totapuri, A Punjabi; Gandhari came from the present day Kandahar in Afghanistan and Hidimba was from Nagaland; Ramayan covers a vast area from Ayodhya to Lanka and thus gives an accurate account of different landscapes, mountains, river basins and forests.

M.N. Roy (1887-1954, was an Indian revolutionary, radical activist and political theorist, as well as a noted philosopher of the 20^th century) drew parallels to Diaspora Nationalism, or as Benedict Anderson terms it, ‘long-distance nationalism’, generally refers to nationalist feeling among a diaspora such as the Irish in the United States, Jews around the world after the expulsion from Jerusalem, the Lebanese in the Americas and Africa, or Armenians in Europe and the US. This form of nationalism acts as a phantom bedrock for people who want to experience a national connection, but who do not actually want to leave their diaspora community. Traditionally 'Diaspora' refers to a dispersal of a people from a (real or imagined) 'homeland' due to a cataclysmic disruption, such as war, famine, etc. New networks - new 'roots' - form along the 'routes' travelled by diasporic people, who are connected by a shared desire to return 'home'. In reality, the desire to return may be eschatological (i.e. end times orientation), or may not occur in any foreseeable future, but the longing for the lost homeland and the sense of difference from circumambient cultures in which Diasporic people live becomes an identity unto itself.

The fact (that the hollow Left is the mouthpiece of the Modern Abrahamics) has been instrumental in eating out the common man’s head over a long period (two millenniums almost), it has not only created a segment of people called ‘minority’, it has also divided the greater India into three different countries based on religion. Based on religion? What is India’s religion other than Sanatan? The religion of the minorities. Who are the minorities? The people whose Hindu ancestors were either forced by invaders to convert. Who are outsiders and invaders? The people whom India had welcomed as people of yet another path to God.

The youth (who is still reading and making contradicting conclusions) concludes at least one thing – His religion answers all his questions, rather more than what he could ever question. His religion is not a hasty work of one man, it is an accumulation of studies over centuries. His religion proposes and talks about a world of science where the west hasn’t reached even today. Lifestyle doesn’t evolve from rituals or superstitions. Rituals and superstitions are formed by centuries of observation and trend analysis. Since we have come too far from the origin of these rituals, we fail to understand the logic behind them. They are anything but blind faith. Someday in far future across several missing links, man will again make fun of the man who talks about flying vehicles. Sankhya school of philosophy says, time is cyclical, and that if you throw a stone in space and happen to live long enough and wait there, it will come back to you. Someday when the whole world will be using Air Conditioners for 24 hours, letting children play in the sun would be called a pagan practice. The youth of today, hence, comes closer to think that the word pagan might just be a credibility and not an abuse. Further he reads ‘Parodharma Bhayavaha’ in the Rigved which means practicing someone else’s Dharm in place of your own is dangerous for the society. Dharm in the Vedic sense meant duty and righteousness, not religion, duty which defined your Varn or class. This was implemented while Maharaj Chitragupt was interrogating Guru Dronacharya (post his death in the War of Kurukshetra in the Mahabharat). Chitragupt asked Dronacharya to explain as to why he had participated in the war. Being a teacher, he was not supposed to participate. Only Kshatriyas are supposed to go to war. Lifestyle is defined by the rules of a society, the rules play an important role in making the society cross-functional and robust. The Varn System divided the important functions of the society into four groups of people. What is a class or Varn in the Varn System? A group of people with similar responsibility. The entire running of a society was divided into four major responsibilities, which were respectively assigned to the entire population by dividing them into the respective four groups.

In the Mahabharat, Yudhishthir says that it is difficult to find out the cast of persons on account of the mixture of castes. Men beget offspring in all sorts of women. So conduct is the only determining feature of caste according to the sages. The four-fold order is designed for human evolution. There is nothing absolute about the case system which has changed its character in the process of history. Today it cannot be regarded as anything more than an insistence on a variety of ways in which the social purpose can be carried out. Functional groupings will never be out of date. As for marriages - they will happen among those who belong to more or less the same stage of cultural development. The present morbid condition of India broken into castes and sub-castes is opposed to the unity taught by the Vedas.

एकवणम इदम पवू _व वम आ]सद य_ुधि’ठर कम_या वशेसेन चतवु यम _$ति ठतम

According to the Mahabharata, the whole world was originally of one class but later it became divided into four divisions on account of the specific duties

Rishi Vishwamitra was a Kshatriya and his original name was Kaushik, later he became a Brahmin after attaining Brahmn Gyan

The Varn System gave the world one of the earliest organized, hygienic and healthy urban societies. No one had any problem with it until the Abrahamics came in with their mission to corrupt. Dronacharya was given a show cause notice for the simple reason that if all soldiers and rulers die in the war, the teachers should be alive to raise the next generation of warriors. Sattva, Rajas, Tamas are always infused by Nature into human beings in varied proportions, hence creating different characters complementing each other so that the societies function throughout time. We can draw parallels with myriad relations between the electrons and nuclei in atoms, which determines the unique character of elements.

Every child while growing up is fascinated by the world outside his home, and is eager to step out and be that sought after versatile global citizen whom the old honchos from his patriarchal society would envy. He goes out and conquers the world, learns new languages and body languages, eats new food, sings new songs, accepts everything with an open heart. This has its roots in his religion which he has inherited unknowingly from the smell of purity of his home, his mother’s cooking habits, his father’s obedience to rituals, the fact that no one ever told him that any other path to God was wrong (even atheism).

He comes to realize the truth the day he finds the Modern Abrahamics calling his people snake charmers, pagans and idol worshippers. He observes that the Vedas have all the answers. Why were the questions framed by the Abrahamics in the first place then? Why did they question the validity of this religion?  Out of insecurity and haste of achieving the mission or simply to get the youth converted?

He had not yet become what they call the Right Wing, he learnt the current statistics - the rate of conversion still happening at the speed of light, that too the most urban places of India.

                                                                                                                                      

To define Patriotism, it is important to define all that is not it (like the ‘philosophers’). Anything driven by greed, lust, and aggression is not for any larger good. We in the last known 5000 years have never invaded another country.  We were naturally there. The Modern Abrahamics like the philosophers had an objective, for which they needed operational execution, manpower and geographical spread; so they fed upon Jews, Yazidis, Kalash tribes, Parsis, African, Americans and us. It was not easy to know all these, until the youth had opened his eyes both to the light of Sanatan and that of the darkness of the enemies. The youth now knows he needs to be the Right Patriot. We don’t need to be the freedom fighters anymore because the British is long gone. When we say we are one of the longest continuously surviving group of people, it is important to understand how we came along till here and why it is not the same here on. Till just our grandparents’ generation we must have seen people extremely well versed with the knowledge of the Sanatan (which was just the lighter version, as the priests and other learned people knew far more). This is why we are left with the Hindu population whatever is there today. However, the current situation is not of only lack of knowledge, but (thanks to the enemies) it is of immense negativity in the knowledge about Sanatan. Now is an almost unprecedented age where we have the carriers but we don’t have the knowledge which is to be carried to the future generations. We need to learn from the Jews. It is a duty of utmost importance and honor. The challenge has to be contained on war footing by the Government or the Sangh (since parents are reluctant). Vedanta is every Hindu child’s birthright, it is our duty to impart knowledge to them. Secondly, the reluctant youth of the nation who is either leftist or apolitical and takes pride into being so, needs to understand his duty towards his bloodline. The youth distances itself from politics either because of reluctance or dignity. This has to be corrected immediately. This is an alarming situation. The youth has to understand that the leisure (of loving sports and earning corporate money) that he is living is like the comfort in his father’s house, and that sooner or later he will have to be the father of the house and provide for the generations younger to him. He is not just the son of the family, but also of the surname, the village, the ethnicity and the victims who died asking for a Hindu hand who could take a king like charge in the lost days. Patriotism is not just another hobby, it is the ultimate virtue and identity of men and women.

Today, we need the fore bearer of the Vedic Knowledge, the youth which can influence the children to read about us, the Hindus. The youth who can feel the pain of the Hindu families being beaten up killed, and their daughters being raped in a closed houses by the armies of the Muslim rulers across nine centuries. The youth who can feel the pain of the millions of people leaving their ancestral lands. The youth who can feel the pain of carving out the Muslim countries by dissecting the land which thrives on the sweat and blood of our forefathers. Our enemy is not a nation, neither the people for whom we stand is a nation. This time patriotism has to be separated from the idea of the nation; else, the word ‘nation’ has to stand up to the meaning of undivided Aryavart. Only then can we visualize what have we lost in the last two thousand years, we have to keep in mind the forefathers of the minorities were us. We need the patriot who would prevent from us being the last Hindu ancestors.

The meaning of Patriotism has to be dynamic, versatile and malleable like the river. It has to evolve every time with a higher level of newness and prudence than that of the enemies. Even the current form will become obsolete in future. A new Patriotism will be born. Do not ever disrespect the Indian Flag and the Independence Day as they are the memento of the patriotism of the then youth, but do not confine your patriotism to maps, flags, years or narratives.

                                     

Born in a devotional Brahmin family, I instinctively came to revere Hindu religion, Hindu history and Hindu culture. I had, therefore, been intensely proud of Hinduism as a whole. As I grew up I developed a tendency to free thinking unfettered by any superstitious allegiance to any isms, political or religious. That is why I worked actively for the eradication of untouchability and the caste system based on birth alone. I openly joined RSS wing of anti-caste movements and maintained that all Hindus were of equal status as to rights, social and religious and should be considered high or low on merit alone and not through the accident of birth in a particular caste or profession.

I used publicly to take part in organized anti-caste dinners in which thousands of Hindus, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, Chamars and Bhangis participated. We broke the caste rules and dined in the company of each other. I have read the speeches and writings of Ravana, Chanakya, Dadabhai Naoroji, Vivekanand, Gokhale, Tilak, along with the books of ancient and modern history of India and some prominent countries like England, France, America and Russia. Moreover I studied the tenets of Socialism and Marxism. But above all I studied very closely whatever Veer Savarkar and Gandhiji had written and spoken, as to my mind these two ideologies have contributed more to the molding of the thought and action of the Indian people during the last thirty years or so, than any other single factor has done.

All this reading and thinking led me to believe it was my first duty to serve Hindudom and Hindus both as a patriot and as a world citizen. To secure the freedom and to safeguard the just interests of some thirty crores (300 million) of Hindus would automatically constitute the freedom and the well-being of all India, one fifth of human race. This conviction led me naturally to devote myself to the Hindu Sanghtanist ideology and program, which alone, I came to believe, could win and preserve the national independence of Hindustan, my Motherland, and enable her to render true service to humanity as well.

Since the year 1920, that is, after the demise of Lokamanya Tilak, Gandhiji’s influence in the Congress first increased and then became supreme. His activities for public awakening were phenomenal in their intensity and were reinforced by the slogan of truth and non-violence which he paraded ostentatiously before the country. No sensible or enlightened person could object to those slogans. In fact there is nothing new or original in them.. They are implicit in every constitutional public movement. But it is nothing but a mere dream if you imagine that the bulk of mankind is, or can ever become, capable of scrupulous adherence to these lofty principles in its normal life from day to day.

In fact, honor, duty and love of one’s own kith and kin and country might often compel us to disregard non-violence and to use force. I could never conceive that an armed resistance to an aggression is unjust. I would consider it a religious and moral duty to resist and, if possible, to overpower such an enemy by use of force. [In the Ramayana] Ram killed Ravan in a tumultuous fight and relieved Sita.. [In the Mahabharata], Krishna killed Kansa to end his wickedness; and Arjun had to fight and slay quite a number of his friends and relations including the revered Bhishm because the latter was on the side of the aggressor. It is my firm belief that in dubbing Ram, Krishn and Arjun as guilty of violence, the Mahatma betrayed a total ignorance of the springs of human action.
In more recent history, it was the heroic fight put up by Chhatrapati Shivaji that first checked and eventually destroyed the Muslim tyranny in India. It was absolutely essentially for Shivaji to overpower and kill an aggressive Afzal Khan, failing which he would have lost his own life. In condemning history’s towering warriors like Shivaji, Rana Pratap and Guru Gobind Singh as misguided patriots, Gandhiji has merely exposed his self-conceit. He was, paradoxical as it may appear, a violent pacifist who brought untold calamities on the country in the name of truth and non-violence, while Rana Pratap, Shivaji and the Guru will remain enshrined in the hearts of their countrymen for ever for the freedom they brought to them.

The accumulating provocation of thirty-two years, culminating in his last pro-Muslim fast, at last goaded me to the conclusion that the existence of Gandhi should be brought to an end immediately. Gandhi had done very well in South Africa to uphold the rights and well-being of the Indian community there. But when he finally returned to India he developed a subjective mentality under which he alone was to be the final judge of what was right or wrong. If the country wanted his leadership, it had to accept his infallibility; if it did not, he would stand aloof from the Congress and carry on his own way.

Against such an attitude there can be no halfway house. Either Congress had to surrender its will to his and had to be content with playing second fiddle to all his eccentricity, whimsicality, metaphysics and primitive vision, or it had to carry on without him. He alone was the Judge of everyone and everything; he was the master brain guiding the civil disobedience movement; no other could know the technique of that movement. He alone knew when to begin and when to withdraw it. The movement might succeed or fail, it might bring untold disaster and political reverses but that could make no difference to the Mahatma’s infallibility. ‘A Satyagrahi can never fail’ was his formula for declaring his own infallibility and nobody except himself knew what a Satyagrahi is. Thus, the Mahatma became the judge and jury in his own cause. These childish insanities and obstinacies, coupled with a most severe austerity of life, ceaseless work and lofty character made Gandhi formidable and irresistible.

Many people thought that his politics were irrational but they had either to withdraw from the Congress or place their intelligence at his feet to do with as he liked. In a position of such absolute irresponsibility Gandhi was guilty of blunder after blunder, failure after failure, disaster after disaster. Gandhi’s pro-Muslim policy is blatantly in his perverse attitude on the question of the national language of India. It is quite obvious that Hindi has the most prior claim to be accepted as the premier language. In the beginning of his career in India, Gandhi gave a great impetus to Hindi but as he found that the Muslims did not like it, he became a champion of what is called Hindustani.. Everybody in India knows that there is no language called Hindustani; it has no grammar; it has no vocabulary. It is a mere dialect, it is spoken, but not written. It is a bastard tongue and cross-breed between Hindi and Urdu, and not even the Mahatma’s sophistry could make it popular. But in his desire to please the Muslims he insisted that Hindustani alone should be the national language of India. His blind followers, of course, supported him and the so-called hybrid language began to be used. The charm and purity of the Hindi language was to be prostituted to please the Muslims. All his experiments were at the expense of the Hindus.

From August 1946 onwards the private armies of the Muslim League began a massacre of the Hindus. The then Viceroy, Lord Wavell, though distressed at what was happening, would not use his powers under the Government of India Act of 1935 to prevent the rape, murder and arson. The Hindu blood began to flow from Bengal to Karachi with some retaliation by the Hindus. The Interim Government formed in September was sabotaged by its Muslim League members, right from its inception, but the more they became disloyal and treasonable to the government of which they were a part, the greater was Gandhi’s infatuation for them. Lord Wavell had to resign as he could not bring about a settlement and he was succeeded by Lord Mountbatten. King Log was followed by King Stork. The Congress which had boasted of its nationalism and socialism secretly accepted Pakistan literally at the point of the bayonet and abjectly surrendered to Jinnah. India was vivisected and one-third of the Indian Territory became foreign land to us from August 15, 1947.

Lord Mountbatten came to be described in Congress circles as the greatest Viceroy and Governor-General this country ever had. The official date for handing over power was fixed for June 30, 1948, but Mountbatten with his ruthless surgery gave us a gift of vivisected India ten months in advance. This is what Gandhi had achieved after thirty years of undisputed dictatorship and this is what Congress party calls ‘freedom’ and ‘peaceful transfer of power’. The Hindu-Muslim unity bubble was finally burst and a theocratic state was established with the consent of Nehru and his crowd and they have called ‘freedom won by them with sacrifice’ – whose sacrifice? When top leaders of Congress, with the consent of Gandhi, divided and tore the country – which we consider a deity of worship – my mind was filled with direful anger.

One of the conditions imposed by Gandhi for his breaking of the fast unto death related to the mosques in Delhi occupied by the Hindu refugees. But when Hindus in Pakistan were subjected to violent attacks he did not so much as utter a single word to protest and censure the Pakistan Government or the Muslims concerned. Gandhi was shrewd enough to know that while undertaking a fast unto death, had he imposed for its break some condition on the Muslims in Pakistan, there would have been found hardly any Muslims who could have shown some grief if the fast had ended in his death. It was for this reason that he purposely avoided imposing any condition on the Muslims. He was fully aware of from the experience that Jinnah was not at all perturbed or influenced by his fast and the Muslim League hardly attached any value to the inner voice of Gandhi.

Gandhi is being referred to as the Father of the Nation. But if that is so, he had failed his paternal duty inasmuch as he has acted very treacherously to the nation by his consenting to the partitioning of it. I stoutly maintain that Gandhi has failed in his duty. He has proved to be the Father of Pakistan. His inner-voice, his spiritual power and his doctrine of non-violence of which so much is made of, all crumbled before Jinnah’s iron will and proved to be powerless. Briefly speaking, I thought to myself and foresaw I shall be totally ruined, and the only thing I could expect from the people would be nothing but hatred and that I shall have lost all my honor, even more valuable than my life, if I were to kill Gandhiji. But at the same time I felt that the Indian politics in the absence of Gandhiji would surely be proved practical, able to retaliate, and would be powerful with armed forces. No doubt, my own future would be totally ruined, but the nation would be saved from the inroads of Pakistan. People may even call me and dub me as devoid of any sense or foolish, but the nation would be free to follow the course founded on the reason which I consider to be necessary for sound nation-building.

After having fully considered the question, I took the final decision in the matter, but I did not speak about it to anyone whatsoever. I took courage in both my hands and I did fire the shots at Gandhiji on 30th January 1948, on the prayer-grounds of Birla House. I do say that my shots were fired at the person whose policy and action had brought rack and ruin and destruction to millions of Hindus. There was no legal machinery by which such an offender could be brought to book and for this reason I fired those fatal shots. I bear no ill will towards anyone individually but I do say that I had no respect for the present government owing to their policy which was unfairly favorable towards the Muslims. But at the same time I could clearly see that the policy was entirely due to the presence of Gandhi.

I have to say with great regret that Prime Minister Nehru quite forgets that his preaching and deeds are at times at variances with each other when he talks about India as a secular state in season and out of season, because it is significant to note that Nehru has played a leading role in the establishment of the theocratic state of Pakistan, and his job was made easier by Gandhi’s persistent policy of appeasement towards the Muslims. I now stand before the court to accept the full share of my responsibility for what I have done and the judge would, of course, pass against me such orders of sentence as may be considered proper. But I would like to add that I do not desire any mercy to be shown to me, nor do I wish that anyone else should beg for mercy on my behalf. My confidence about the moral side of my action has not been shaken even by the criticism levelled against it on all sides. I have no doubt that honest writers of history will weigh my act and find the true value thereof some day in future.