Pseudo-secular mafia of Indian mass media

V SUNDARAM
newstodaynet.com

India has always been in the grip of Vicious Circle of Poverty for more than 200 years. Soon after our independence, we got into the grip of Vicious Circle of Poisonous Politicians drawn from a few selected families, with firmly established and inherited familial rights, from different parts of India. During the last 20 years we have got into the suffocating grip of a new cast iron Vicious Circle of the Pseudo Secular Mafia of Mass Media.

I am interested in giving a graphic description of an unnatural and artificial world of our own making in India, a celluloid world in which we have abused our wealth, our literacy, our technology, our unlimited opportunity in a land of natural plenty, to create a vicious pseudo- secular thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life. More than 800 millions of Hindus in India in absolute majority in terms of numbers have provided a convenient landscape and opportunity to the pseudo-secular mafia of mass media to create a bestial world of national self-hypnosis. The tragedy is that each of us individually provides the market and the demand for the illusions which flood our experience. The pseudo-secular mafia of self-seeking, soul-destroying and nation-decimating mass media have taken over the country as a whole for their crassly commercial purposes. Criminal invaders and conquerors like Lord Clive and Warren Hastings only molested the physical body of India in the 18th century. Pseudo-secular men in the mafia of mass media have nearly succeeded in destroying the soul of our nation today.

Most of us want and believe these illusions because we suffer from the malady of unabashed and extravagant expectations. The great American psychologist Maslow�the founding father of humanist psychology�coined a term called �The hierarchy of needs�. In India the mafia of mass media have let loose a catastrophe of what I call �The anarchy of greeds�. We expect too much of the world. Our expectations are unnaturally extravagant in the exact dictionary sense of the world�'going beyond the limits of human reason, decency, dignity, decorum and moderation'. They are disgustingly, devastatingly and explosively excessive.

When we try to take a look at our favourite newspaper at breakfast everyday, we are under the delusion that we have an inalienable right to expect�and even demand�that it should bring us momentous events that have taken place since the night before. Later when we get into a car and switch on the car radio as we drive to work, we expect �exciting news�, �thrilling news�, �sexually titillating news�, about events that have occurred ever since we saw the morning newspaper at breakfast time. We expect new heroes every season, a literary masterpiece or a world shaking novel every month, a dramatically spectacular event or a hair-raising episode every week, a rare extraordinary sensation every night. We expect anything and everything. We expect the contrary, the inconsistent, the incompatible and the impossible at the same time and place. We expect small and compact cars which are spacious. We want luxurious cars which are cheap and economical. We hope to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be made literate by crassly illiterate appeals for mass literacy.

We as a people range from animals to Gods. We pray for you and we prey on you. We are bears for punishment and brutes for revenge. We want to be Everyone, Everywhere, Everything. We are creatures of moods and modes. These ever shifting public moods and modes are being manipulated by the combined conglomeration of self-seeking and wicked men, firms, companies, corporations and institutions, constituting the Menacing Mafia of Mass Media in India, for untold commercial gain at the cost of public interest or national good.

On the cosmetic surface, it may appear that MAN in India, never before in our history, has been a master of his own fate and a captain of his soul as now. Yet never has he felt more deceived, duped, disappointed, dejected, depressed and devastated than at present.

The root of the tragedy is that we are ruled by the following two categories of revolution of ever-rising expectations:

a) Expectations of what the world holds : This cannot be described better than in the words of Daniel J Boorstin: �Of how much news there is, how many heroes there are, how often masterpieces are made, how exotic the nearby can be, how familiar the exotic has become. Of the closeness of places and the farness of places�.

b) Expectations of our power to shape the world: Daniel J Boorstin describes this dimension in these words: �Of our ability to create events when there are none, to make heroes when they don't exist, to be somewhere else when we haven't left home. Of our ability to make art forms suit our convenience, to transform a novel into a movie and vice-versa, to turn a symphony into mood conditioning. To fabricate national purposes when we lack them, to pursue these purposes after we have fabricated them. To invent our standards and then to respect them as if they had been revealed or discovered�.

We keep on enlarging the landscape of our extravagant expectations by constantly seeking, harbouring and nourishing them. Consequently we create the recurring demand for the ENDLESS ILLUSIONS with which we deceive ourselves with gusto and enthusiasm. And the grim sadness of it all is that with this never-ending procession of illusions, we handsomely pay others to make the images to deceive us.

The making of the illusions which flood our experience has become the most important business of India�indeed some of its most honest and most necessary and most respectable business. This aspect or quality pervades not only the business of advertising and public relations and political rhetoric, but also the entire gamut of the business environment as a whole. It is also equally applicable to all the activities which purport to inform and comfort and improve and educate and elevate us. We find that every move or effort to satisfy our extravagant expectations simply makes them more exotic and makes our illusions more attractive. The story of the making of our unfounded and unnecessary illusions�'the news behind the news'�has become the most appealing and exciting news of the world. In short we tyrannize and frustrate ourselves by constantly expecting more than what the world can give us or than what we can make of the world.

What is a 'Pseudo Event' artificially manufactured or created every second every day by the Mafia of Mass Media in India today? The common prefix �Pseudo� comes from the Greek word meaning false or intended to deceive. The very process of political and socio economic distorted development in India during the last 50 years has let loose certain inexorable and immutable forces which have made the continuous manufacture or creation of Pseudo Events not only possible but commercially viable, increasing the Supply of them and the Demand for them. All the time we expect our newspapers to be full of exciting and heart-throbbing news. If there is no news visible to the naked eye, or to the average citizen, we still expect it to be there for the enterprising and intrepid newsman. An energetic and successful newsman is one who can scoop out an explosive story, even if there is no earthquake or a Prime Minister's assassination or a National Civil War. Even if he cannot find a story, he must be able to make or invent one through contrived journalistic dialectics�by his subtle ability to ask tricky questions of public figures, by his uncanny ability to unearth something of surprising human interest from some mundane or common place event or what is known in the world of Mass Media by the cliché of 'the news behind the news'. Daniel J Boorstin has rightly observed �If all this fails, then an enterprising journalist must give us a think piece �an embroidering of well- known facts, or a speculation about startling things to come�. The power to make a reportable event is thus the power to create or make experience. I am reminded of Napoleon's apocryphal reply to his General, who had complained that field circumstances were unfavourable to a campaign proposed by Napoleon: �If ground level circumstances are unfavourable, then all I can tell you is that: 'Bah! I make my own circumstances'�. The newsmen in the world of mass media in India today have come close to fulfilling Napoleon's idle boast by acting as creators of pseudo events, knowing what news value is and to make news happen.

The media doesn't aim at reporting the news; it tries to create the news, imposing its view of the news upon everyone as the final truth. To sum up in the rapier-like words of David Frawley: �The Indian English media dictates against the government as if it should be the real political decision-making body in the country. (Because it is urged and influenced by other foreign agencies and academic institutions such as U Berkeley/U Columbia) It deems itself capable of taking the place of legal institutions as well, printing its allegations as truth even if these have never been entered into, much less proved in any court of law. It has vested itself with an almost religious authority to determine what is right and wrong, good and evil, and who in the country should be honoured or punished... This is called brainwashing under freedom�

During the last 20 years a larger and larger proportion of our experience, of what we read and see and hear every moment every day, has come to consist of pseudo-events artificially manufactured by the pseudo-secular mafia of Indian mass media. We expect more of them. We hunger and hanker after them and we are given more of them. They invade our souls and flood our consciousness. This ever rising tide of multiplication and proliferation of pseudo-events can be seen in the world of education, of consumption, and of personal relations. It is especially true of the sordid world of public affairs. Vivid image of propped up and false pseudo-events has come to overshadow the pale reality of solidly true or actual events. To quote the brilliant words of David Halberstam (1934-2007) one of the greatest Journalists of this century: �If you're a reporter, the easiest thing in the world is to get a story. The hardest thing is to verify. The old sins were about getting something wrong, that was a cardinal sin. The new sin is to be boring.�

National and international criminals in the world of mass media in India, fully backed by the transitory might of the Anti-Hindu UPA Government in New Delhi, excel in distorted or even totally false reporting on communally sensitive issues. This has become a well- entrenched characteristic of Indian Print Media and TV Journalism. The sad thing is that there is no self-corrective mechanism in place to protect the gullible and credible multitude against this endemic culture of planned, planted and plotted dissemination of disinformation. To quote the appropriate words of N Ananth Padmanabha in this context: �No reporter or columnist or editor ever gets fired or formally reprimanded or even just criticized by his peers for smearing Hindu nationalists. This way, a partisan economy with the truth has become a habit hard to relinquish. This logic of news reporting is considered some form of social engineering. The sense of chaos and insecurity is conveyed by media reports so that stable environment and harmony is never achieved in the minds of the larger society. This is one form of psychological operation done inside India for the last three decades. The news creates a notion of change, which reinforces the decay of the Hindu culture and brings out more on the light of Islamic/Urdu culture. By being very anti-Hindu the media and social scientists hope to reduce aggression of the so called 'majority' community over the minority community and bring balance even at the expense of the truth. This logic was pursued even when the Muslim terrorists in Kashmir were killing the minority Hindus and such news is usually kept low key�.

Every bastard pseudo event, conceived and produced and presented by the mass media in India tends to become ritualised, with a protocol and rigidity all its own. As each type of pseudo event acquires this rigidity, pressures arise to produce other, derivative, forms of pseudo event which are more fluid, more tantalising, and more interestingly intriguing, ambivalent and ambiguous. Let me cite some super spectacular pseudo-events and pseudo images created by the mafia of our mass media in recent years. The 'so called' genocide in Gujarat (mischievously divorced from the brutal killing of innocent and unarmedHindu women and children by Sonia Congress sponsored Muslim Terrorists and Criminals through the orchestrated mechanisations of mass media), encounter killings by the police in Gujarat, Sonia Gandhi being in the spiritual line of Mahatma Gandhi in the field of supreme self sacrifice and self-abnegation in relation to the post of Prime Minister and thus proclaiming for all time her passionate concern for upholding eternal verities, truly compassionate nature and world-embracing kindness of Afzal Guru 'wrongfully' sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India, the world shaking and universe transforming nature of the impotent silence of our surrogate Prime Minister, Rahul Gandhi as a formidable paragon of the virtues proclaimed by Jesus Christ and Mohammed the Prophet which augurs well for his certain future as the Prime Minister of India- such pseudo-events and pseudo images have been created by our English print and TV mass media in recent years with organized and calculated impudence and impunity.

All press conferences given by our Prime Minister, Chief Ministers and Cabinet Ministers and other political leaders are highly formalised pseudo-events to present powerful pseudo images. These press conferences have given birth to a renegade and infernal foster child called the "institutionalized leak". As the leak becomes formalized, more devices will appear. Though it originates from calculated outright deception, yet our mass media would present it as an essential part of "more news", to provide "more information", or to "improve public communication". In a planned manner this will be followed by "official denials" and "official disavowals". Thus any statement or non statement by anyone in the public eye can become the basis of generated or sponsored counter-statements or brash refusals to comment by others. Thus all these dramatized pseudo overtures, responses and reactions compound the ambiguity of the occasion which first brought them into being.

We should not fail to distinguish between these pseudo-events which flood and saturate our dead or deadened consciousness on the one hand and organized propaganda on the other. Though the two do have some characteristics in common, yet it should be understood that in many respects the pseudo-events are the opposite of propaganda. One of the classics of modern propaganda is Hitler's MEIN KAMPF. Hitler wrote: "Now the purpose of propaganda is not continually to produce interesting changes for a few blas/e little masters, but to convince; that means to convince the masses. The masses, however, with their inertia, always need a little time before they are ready even to notice a thing, and they will lend their memories only to the thousand fold repetition of the most simple ideas"

Propaganda as defined and prescribed by Hitler is information intentionally biased or distorted. Propaganda purely relies upon emotional appeal. On the other hand, a pseudo event is a vague and ambiguous truth. Propaganda is an appealing and exhilarating falsehood. Pseudo-events thrive on our honest desire and weakness to be informed, to have 'all the facts' and many times to have even more facts than there really are. Propaganda feeds on our craving to be inflamed. Pseudo-events appeal to our duty to be educated; propaganda appeals to our carnal passion and desire to be aroused. To sum up in the sublimely mathematical words of Daniel J Boorstin: �While propaganda substitutes opinion for facts, pseudo-events are synthetic facts which move people indirectly, by providing the 'factual' basis on which they are supposed to make up their minds. Propaganda moves them directly by making judgements for them�

In a perverted democracy like ours, more particularly the highly literate, wealthy, competitive people are being flooded by an avalanche of pseudo-events everyday. For most of us, lofty ideals like freedom of speech and of the press and of broadcasting, freedom of conscience, cultural freedom have all become part of the overriding freedom to create pseudo-events.

All political parties, all politicians, competing newsmen and competing news and mass media are boisterously participating in this dangerous and dastardly drama of creation of pseudo events. They try to outwit or out-distance or out-throw one another in offering exciting, titillating, and attractive �informative� accounts and images of the world. They assert their fundamental freedom to pseudo secularly speculate on the known facts, to bring new pseudo secular facts into being, to demand pseudo secular answers to their own mischievously conceived and politically contrived pseudo secular questions. They have succeeded in creating 'a viciously unfettered market place of pseudo-secular ideas' where we, the gullible millions, are confronted by callously placed and coolly planted pseudo events. This lurid drama has put us all in a speechless state and mood of bewilderment and transcendental conceptual confusion. We have been duped into becoming eager and willing accessories to the great hoaxes of the age created by the mafia of mass media in India.

Force without justice is tyrannical; justice without force is impotent. All the leading criminals in the mafia of mass media are advancing the solid pseudo secular cause of force without natural justice and the slippery cause of sham justice without force. All the three pillars of the State�the political executive, the legislature and the judiciary�are collective and willing participating in this nation soul-destroying drama.

Thus we have become a wretched nation of enslaved people, manipulated by a wicked press with biased bosses and unscrupulous politicians.

To conclude in the words of Daniel J Boorstin: �To discover our illusions by itself will not solve the problems of our world. But if we do not discover them, we will never discover or know our real problems. To dispel the ghosts which populate the world of our making will not give us the power to conquer the real enemies of the real world or to remake the real world. But it may help us discover that we cannot make the world in our image. It liberates us and sharpens our vision. It will clear away the fog so we can face the world we share with all mankind.�

In his classic work 'Public Opinion', published in 1922, Walter Lipman distinguished between 'the world outside and the pictures in our minds'. He defined a 'stereotype' as an over simplified pattern that helps us find meaning in the world. He said all of us carry stereotypes in our heads of large and varied classes of people like 'Englishmen', 'Germans', 'Negroes', 'Hindus', 'Parsis' etc. Lipman argued that the Stereotype satisfies our needs and helps us defend our prejudices. Stereotypes, extremely simple and easily grasped images of racial or national or religious groups are only another example of pseudo-events. Generally speaking they are akin to propaganda. For they simplify rather than complicate. Daniel J Boorstin sums it up clinchingly: 'Stereotypes narrow and limit experience in an emotionally satisfying way; but pseudo-events embroider and dramatize experience in an interesting way. This itself makes pseudo-events far more seductive; intellectually they are more defensible, more intricate, and more intriguing. To discover how the stereotype is made-to unmask the sources of propaganda-is to make the stereotype less believable. Information about the staging of a pseudo-event simply adds to its fascination'.

Today in India the flood of pseudo-events released by the organized mafia of mass media has made experience newly and satisfyingly elusive. In this new era in India today there is a surging and growing demand for NEWS as a crying primal need of the mind, like the hunger of the body. This mania for news is both a symptom and outcome of a revolution of rising expectations enlarged far beyond the capacity of the natural world to satisfy. This calls for a synthetic product. It has stirred an irrational and undiscriminating hunger for fancier, newer and more varied items. Stereotypes have always been and will never cease to be. Stereotypes serve only as an opiate. Pseudo events, on the other hand, whet our primordial appetites. They arouse our news hunger endlessly in the very act of satisfying it. What makes pseudo-events more exciting and thrilling than actual events? What makes pseudo-events overshadow spontaneous events? What are the characteristics of pseudo-events being let loose as guided missiles by the mafia of mass media in India today? The cardinal features of pseudo-events can be summed up as follows: a) Pseudo-events are more dramatic. The most classic example of a supersonic pseudo-event is the programme called "The Big Fight" being continuously organised and presented by NDTV. Controlled and doctored debate between carefully chosen and selected 'TV Para Troopers' can be made to look more suspenseful by reserving questions for a while to be popped up suddenly like an undermining operation to overwhelm the gullible public. b) Pseudo-events are easier to disseminate and to make vivid. The same participants are repeatedly selected for their perceived 'newsworthy' and 'dramatic' interest. c) Pseudo-events can be repeated at will, and thus their impression can be re-enforced. Pseudo-events let loose by the mass media serve as inebriating chewing gums of the mind, heart and soul of the people and the Nation.

d) Pseudo-events cost money to create. There is always a commercial interest in disseminating, magnifying, advertising and extolling them as events worth watching or worth believing. Therefore pseudo-events are advertised in advance and continue to run and rerun in order to get money's worth.

e) Pseudo-events are more sociable, conversable and more convenient to witness. Their occurrence is commercially planned for our convenience everyday.

f) Knowledge of pseudo-events-of what has been reported and staged, and how- becomes the test of being 'well informed'. The saddest part of the story is that pseudo-events have come to provide the ground of reliable and durable common discourse replacing the role played by the Great Books of the world for centuries!! g) Pseudo-events like malarial flies spawn other pseudo events in interminable and geometric progression. The new Gresham's Law of Indian public life is that counterfeit happenings manufactured by the pseudo-secular mafia of print and TV mass media are driving spontaneous happenings or events out of circulation. Once we have tasted the charm of pseudo-events, we are tempted to believe they are the only important events. Our own progress poisons the life-giving sources of our experiences. And the poison becomes so sweet that it spoils our appetite for plain fact

The anti-national role played by mass media in India became patently clear during the Vande Mataram controversy. Editors and publishers miserably failed to distinguish between objectivity and neutrality. While it is the sacred Dharma of editors to be objective, yet it imposes no obligation on them to be neutral in the battle between treasonable separatism and patriotic nationalism. To quote the appropriate words of Swapan Dasgupta: 'My own experience suggests that breaking the stultifying liberal consensus is a daily exercise in guerrilla warfare. In the aftermath of globalisation, the liberal consensus has veered round to a contrived expression of cosmopolitanism. Fond belief that competitive democracy would force publications to recognise the force of Hindu disquiet has turned out to be horribly misplaced. The term of the NDA Government, for example, saw yesterday's pro-Congress newspapers being feted and flattered by representatives of the very government whose formation they had so uncompromisingly resisted'. The two endemic diseases of mass media in India are:

a) The 'anti-Hindu' bias of both the print and electronic media.

b) Secularism in India has come to mean only an uncritical celebration of minority interests and a corresponding denigration of "Hindu" interests).

Indian politicians, as a class, have devised clever and devious. strategies to use media influence to their advantage and they range from harmless spin doctoring-which, in the Indian context, also means blatant intimidation-to plain bribery. These vicious political strategies have also been refined and adopted by corporate houses, leading to the emergence of a strange breed of so-called professionals-the public relations and communications experts whose sole job is to be the interface with the media.

Most of the pseudo-secular reporters in the world of mass media, despite their fine talk of objectivity, only mildly approach objectivity through the form in which they write their news in a soullessly technical style which requires them to be much dumber and more innocent than in fact they are. So they write in a bland uncritical and lifeless way which gives greater credence to the utterances of Cabinet Ministers, politicians and public officials, no matter how stupid or mindless those utterances are.

We had nationalist newspapers in different parts of India during the days of our struggle for freedom. They had their own clearly defined patriotic ideology and national vision. But alas! Today the media owners and editors view themselves as 'professionals' which only means working as paid prostitutes of either the Congress party or the Communist Party or some other regional Dravidian Party. Ideology has been overthrown by considerations of money, profit and commerce. Consequently the entire media have become aimless, , pointless, directionless and soulless. Everything held sacred before 1947 has become profane and everything considered as sacrilegious before 1947 has become psedo-secularly sacred in the mafia world of mass media in our country today. Consequently, the most disgraceful aspect of the English-Language Media is that it is guided, moulded and maneuvered by newspapers abroad like The Guardian of England and New York Times of USA.

To quote the inimitable words of Swapan Dasgupta once again: "Obviously, the liberal consensus means one thing in the United Kingdom and the United States and something quite different in India. Whereas in the anglophile world, the symbol of liberalism is multiculturalism, in India the liberal consensus has veered round to a slightly skewed version of secularism. If multiculturalism abjures the Anglo-Saxon and Christian heritage of the English-speaking world, secularism in India has come to mean an uncritical celebration of minority interests and a corresponding denigration of 'Hindu' interests."

A centralised and concentrated system of information in our democracy has come to pass. The mainstream media, despite their pious insistence that they never select their output for self-serving reasons, are very close to being absolute in their self-censorship on the subject. They are vigorously copious with reports of the dangers to our democracy of information control by Governments. But they are diplomatically silent on the dangers of private and cartel control. While Governments can be voted out of office, these cartels controlling mass media, through their stranglehold control of news and public information pose a serious threat to our infant democracy by postponing public awareness for dangerously long periods.

The mass media in India remains largely a Congress controlled propaganda machine. As the Congress has not been able to win elections, it has encouraged and promoted its media wing even more strongly to try to compensate for its political failures in the electoral arena. Yet as the Congress party itself has often failed, the media has taken to supporting other leftist groups inside and outside the country in the hope of gaining power. I can see the clear hand of western governments in manipulating the Congress party to do its work. This shows how the surrogate Manmohan Singh Indian government is being manipulated as a puppet of the western governments today as indeed it has been for a long time during the last 40 years.

What our country badly and sadly requires today cannot be put better than in the words of that unmatched journalist from USA called Joseph Pulitzer(1847 �1911) 'An able, disinterested, public spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalism of future generations.'

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
e-mail the writer at vsundaram@newstodaynet.com

When Bharat is not India

T R JAWAHAR

When India committed it-self to a secular dispensation, by a combination of constitutional dictum and political rhetoric, the understanding that the well-meaning majority imbibed was this: that those who followed other faiths are free to do so. Not for a moment would they have believed that meant dilution, denial and even destruction of their own cherished national culture and its symbols. The recent controversy over Vande Mataram is perhaps the last nail on their naive belief that secularism would be fair to their heritage.

Not just the national song, but its sacrifice on the altar of political expediency is also a century old. In his presidential address at an All-India Muslim League in 1908, Syed Ali Imam said: ?... when the most advanced province of India put forward the sectarian cry of 'Bande Mataram' as the national cry, and the sectarian Rakhibandhan as a national observance, my heart is filled with despair and disappointment; ... Has the experiment tried by Akbar and Aurangzeb failed again? ... do they expect the Musalmans of India to accept 'Bande Mataram' and the Sivaji celebration..?? This spirit of Syed Ali Imam, has manifested itself several times over in the last one hundred years, leading to a truncated Vande Mataram first and now its virtual obliteration from national glory by rampant politicking of protagonists and antogonists alike.

Rajendra Prasad, who was the President of the Constituent Assembly gave this assurance in 1950: ?...and the song 'Vande Mataram', which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honoured equally with Jana Gana Mana and shall have equal status with it ". Really? Rather, right from Mahatma Gandhi's days to the present Maino Gandhi's times, the secular bottomline is that Vande Mataram should not be imposed, and that singing it is voluntary. A proud and poignant gesture of secular deference, no doubt, though at the expense of the 'nationalness and the national status' of the national song; yet what has such indulgence elicited in return? Not similar secular reciprocity by way of singing the song just to warm the hearts of the 'bulk of Indians' who genuinely think of it as a patriotic national song and not a 'partisan' Hindu song; not even to render it as a mark of respect for the country's greatness that the song connotes. Insulting defiance, instead, in the form of alternative songs at the worst, or mere abstinence at best. Where does the problem lie, if a song that stirred multitudes and is still revered, is deemed taboo by a few? If the nation is absolute, so should nationalism be. Is it wrong to infer that those who are objecting to the symbolism of Vande Mataram are actually rejecting the nation itself? Or are those who think their culture is synonymous with their country deluding themselves?

So, not forcing Vande Mataram is deemed secularism. If we may ask, are the reasons touted by Imams from time immemorial for rejecting the song secular? From 1908, referred to above, to 2006, the mullah music has not changed a bit. The Shahi Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari of Delhi's Jama Masjid had this to say in a recent press conference: 'Vande Mataram is against Islamic beliefs and asking Muslims to sing it would amount to suppression of the community. When it comes to worship only Allahis is given that honour, not the motherland ...'. Though we know it is futile searching for secularism in these words, secularism, however, can certainly be stretched to accommodate them. Reason why the writ of such bigoted mullahs have consistently prevailed and their injunctions have always been heeded, as now, not just by the faithful but even their secular apologists. Given such a secular trend, it would probably be appropriate to check notes with the Imam if saluting the national flag would also be deemed anti-Islam and so unsecular and also on where the Constitution of India stands vis-a-vis the Shariat. Also if Aurangazeb or Chattrapathi Shivaji should be the national icon. And if by Independence, he means restoration of Mughal rule. The Imam would be more than forthcoming with his fatal fatwas! And like Vande Mataram, more, but mere, for sure, symbols of communal Bharat can be de-nationalised ...voluntarily! And after thus secularising Bharat, we can then export our irrepressible Imam to Germany and France, where faithless Muslims are 'foolishly' singing the national songs of those countries, praising the respective Fatherlands.

But there is another crowd of secular zealots that would leave even Imams with an inferiority complex. If a song entrenched in the national psyche as a salutation to our motherland, by rote or conviction, is now being wrenched out from our consciousnes and torn to shreds, the undiminished credit for this unholy 'vastrabaran', goes to some national dailies and self-styled historians, working in tandem. A journalistic worthy calls Vande Mataram just a souvenir, while a historian says the song is downright communal and has no place in secular India! Now, these intellecutals dare not try their intelligence and research on Islamic beliefs. For them India was born in 1947, a naked nation bereft of history, heritage and heroes. The mullahs are better --they believe India was launched by Babar in 1526. Of course, the pride of the rest of India in its ancientness is pure communal superstition and Vande mataram is its symbol!

Indeed, singing of Vande Mataram may not be the true test or the final measure of one's patriotism. But rejecting it on religious ground is most certainly jarring on national sensibilities. And the vehemence with which the nation is being belittled in the face of a global god is most disturbing. If notions of nationalism, national identity and national culture, howsoever flippant and superficial they may seem in these troubled and materialistic times, are declared subservient to trans-national idologies and predatory faiths, where does patriotism figure? Or should we ask the Imam to clarify that too?

To reject Vande Mataram is no treason

To reject Vande Mataram is no treason - I

V SUNDARAM

The Government of India have issued a directive to the State governments for recitation of Vande Mataram in educational institutions during a celebration on 7 September, 2006 to mark the National Song's centenary.

National song Vande Mataram is 'against Islamic beliefs' and asking Muslims to sing it would amount to 'suppression' of the community', Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari said on Sunday.

Addressing a press meet in Allahabad, Syed Ahmed Bukhari, who is also patron of the United Democratic Front, said: 'According to the tenets of Islam, one could love one's country and even lay down one's life for it if the circumstances so demand. But when it comes to worship only Allah is given that honour. A Muslim cannot worship his or her parents, motherland and even the Prophet though they are held in high esteem.

Ever since independence, all governments at the Centre and in the states have been suppressing Muslims. This proposal is yet another example. If somebody sings Vande Mataram voluntarily, I have no objections. But if people are forced to do so, it will meet with resistance.'

The simple question to be asked by the effete and ever obliging Islam- embracing UPA Government is whether Bukhari is above the sacred traditions of the land. If Bukhari is right, then Bala Gangathar Tilak, Sri Aurobindo and hundreds of great nationalist leaders who fought for our country's freedom were wrong. For all of them Vande Mataram meant India's freedom and India's freedom meant Vande Mataram. Millions of our countrymen marched against the British Raj with the song of Vande Mataram on their lips.

Zafaryab Jilani, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) has said, 'Reciting Vande Mataram is against the tenets of the shariat (islamic law). There are some lines in Vande Mataram which go against our religion. However, Muslims have no problem in reciting the National Anthem, Jana gana mana.' What are the national credentials of this patriotic Indian to sit in judgement on Vande Mataram? I have every right as a patriotic Hindu to ask this simple question though I will not ask the same question in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Iran or Iraq.

All India Muslim united Morcha vice-president M Asiddique has also denounced the move, saying, 'the recitation of Vande Mataram is against Islam and that the Muslims would under no circumstances allow their children to recite the song'.

Another AIMPLB member, Khalid Rashid Firangi Mahali, has aired similar views and demanded scrapping of the move.

The Centre has sought the Uttar Pradesh Government's help for the concluding function of the 'Vande Mataram' Centenary Celebrations', wherein the song will be sung in all schools, colleges and educational institutions on 7 September.

An official release issued in Lucknow on Saturday has said that a letter from Union Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh has been received by Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, seeking his help for successfully holding the function. Necessary directives according to the wishes of Arjun Singh for ensuring the recital of the song's first two stanzas at 11 am on 7 September have been issued to concerned officials, the release said.

Patriotism and loyalty are indivisible, inexorable, immutable and inalienable. The effete and ever Islam-embracing UPA Government does not subscribe to this view. A great Statesman said that when you are in doubt, take your lessons from your own national history. Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari, three Members of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board(AIMPLB), Zafaryab Jilani, Khalid Rashid, Firangi Mahali and India Muslim united Morcha vice-president M Asiddique are all behaving very much the same way as the Ali Brothers, Maulana Mohammed Ali and Maulana Shoukat Ali during the days of Khilafat Movement in 1921. The Ali Brothers had more than once affirmed their loyalty to the doctrine of PAN-ISLAMISM. Mohammed Ali in 1921 addressed a letter to Amanulla, the Amir of Afghanistan, inviting him to invade India. Unlike the anti National pseudo-neutral UPA Government today, the British Government reacted in an effective way by arresting the Ali Brothers. The following statement of Mohammed Ali before the Jury in the Sessions Court with regard to his stand vis-à-vis the Afghan invasion only confirmed his complicity:

'If His Majesty the Amir of Afghanistan is impelled by the same religious motive to contemplate Jehad against those who are in wrongful occupation of the Jazirutal-Arab and the holy places;' who aim at the weakening of Islam and deny to us the full freedom to advocate its cause,'then the clear law of Islam requires that no Mussalman should render any assistance against the Amir, and if the Jehad approaches his region every Mussalman must join the Mujahidin and assist them to the best of his or her power'.

When Mahatma Gandhi gave a call in 1921 for the burning of foreign cloth by calling it a religious duty of all Indians, all the great leaders like Rajaji, Motilal Nehru, C R Das and millions of our countrymen made bonfire of English cloth. However the 'patriotic' Mussalmans of the Khilafat Movement sent all the foreign clothes for the use of their Turkish brethren. It was the national Khilafat duty of India to die for Turkey but not vice versa!!

When Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal in 1905, his only political aim was to divide India and to create two nations ?? a Muslim Nation and a Hindu Nation. Anticipating the rise of the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, Lord Curzon wrote to Lord Brodrick in 1904: 'If we are weak enough to yield to their Swadeshi clamour now, we shall not be able to dismember or reduce Bengal again ; and you, will be cementing and solidifying on Eastern flank of India , a force almost formidable and certain to be a source of increasing trouble in the future'.

The seeds of future Pakistan were thus sown by Lord Curzon. In his book called Awakening of India, Ramsey Macdonald (later the British Prime Minister) written after his visit to India in 1910 wrote: 'The partition of Bengal was not merely a blunder : it was an indictable offence. By a division, which neither administrative convenience, nor historical tradition, nor ordinary sagacity could justify, Lord Curzon divided the Bengali-speaking people. Moreover, the Bengal partition was accompanied by a series of administrative and judicial acts which definitely ranged the government of India against the Hindu and taught him that our administration declined to do justice to him. Mohammedans proclaiming physical strike from the housetops were hardly cautioned : Hindus whispering their grievances were treated as criminals'..it is of the greatest political significance to note that the date afterwards given in the Alipore bomb trials as that when the murderous conspiracy commenced was the day when Lord Curzon did his worst act in India by partitioning Bengal.

Thus Lord Curzon converted the Hindus of Bengal into third class citizens by his scheme of Partition of Bengal. The Congress Government in India after independence has converted 850 millions of Hindus in majority in India into third class citizens?? dumb and impotent denizens through the twin swords of Pseudo-Secularism and Minority Right-ism. The cultural, religious and spiritual traditions, feelings, hopes, urges, aspirations and above all susceptibilities of 85% of the majority Hindus can be cast aside by a handful of Muslim Clerics in our hopelessly wretched land. This is indeed pseudo-secular democracy at its noblest, if not purest.

Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari, three Members of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), Zafaryab Jilani, Khalid Rashid, Firangi Mahali and India Muslim United Morcha Vice-President M Asiddique are all behaving very much the same way as the Ali Brothers, Maulana Mohammed Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali did during the days of Khilafat Movement in 1921.

These Muslim clerics today are dismissing great patriots like Bankim Chandra Chatterjee who composed the immortal Vande Mataram song, Swami Vivekananda, Shri.Aurobindo, Bipin Chandra Pal, C R Das, Surendranath Banerjee, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and others with contempt. All of them derive their spiritual inspiration from Maulana Mohammed Ali who paid this 'noble' (!!) tribute to Mahatma Gandhi in 1924 in Aligarh and Ajmer: 'However pure Mr. Gandhiji's character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion inferior to any Mussalman, even though he be without character'. An year later when he was questioned at a public meeting in Lucknow, the immortal and irreplaceable Maulana Mohammed Ali cheerfully accepted and even 'improved' (!!) upon his previous command performance by saying: Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mahatma Gandhi.

This great reward and tribute Mahatma Gandhi got from Maulana Mohammed Ali for having fully supported the Khilafat Movement by functioning as its Chairman. When the news came that Mohammed Ali and his brother Shaukat Ali were to be put behind bars on charges of treason, Mahatma Gandhi declared at Allahabad on May 10th 1921: I cannot understand why the Ali Brothers are going to be arrested as the rumour goes, and why am I to remain free. They have done nothing which I would not do. If they had sent a message to the Amir of Afghanistan, that if he came, no Indian, so long as I can help it, would help the government to drive him back.

To reject Vande Mataram is not treason? - II

The hypocrisy of intellectually and ideologically debauched Congressmen and the degenerate Congress party can be clearly seen in the disgraceful statement issued by the Party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi who has fully endorsed Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh's views to the effect that the direction issued by his Ministry to educational institutions on recitation of 'Vande Mataram' in educational institutions is not mandatory but 'voluntary in nature' and any community is free to recite it or not. Abhishek Singhvi has declared: 'Congress party and the country is proud of the national song 'Vande Mataram' which had electrified our freedom fighters and who made umpteen sacrifices....Even then if a community or group feels otherwise, they are free to recite it or not. We agree with the Union Minister Arjun Singh in this regard'.

In order to put an end to the controversy over a central directive for the recitation of the Vande Mataram song in schools on 7 September 2006, Arjun Singh said on Sunday while addressing a minority academic institution in Varanasi that it was not mandatory. According to him, the recitation of the song is aimed at paying tributes to freedom fighters and martyrs. Arjun Singh is talking in multiple voices. It is clear from his declared views that singing our sacred National Song of Vande Mataram is optional, voluntary and non-mandatory.

The problems we are facing from some of the leading anti-national Muslims today started with Gandhiji's unconditional support for the Khilafat Movement in 1920-21. Achyuth Patwardhan, one of the Socialist stalwarts in the Congress, has given a remarkably candid and self critical analysis of the Congress Party vis-a-vis Khilafat: 'It is, however, useful to recognise our share of this error of misdirection. To begin with, I am convinced that looking back upon the course of development of the freedom movement, THE 'HIMALAYAN ERROR' of Gandhiji's leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to the Khilafat Movement at the end of the World War I. This has proved to be a disastrous error which has brought in its wake a series of harmful consequences. On merits, it was a thoroughly reactionary step. The Khilafat was totally unworthy of support of the Progressive Muslims. Kemel Pasha established this solid fact by abolition of the Khilafat. The abolition of the Khilafat was widely welcomed by enlightened Muslim opinion the world over and Kemel was an undoubted hero of all young Muslims straining against Imperialist domination. But apart from the fact that Khilafat was an unworthy reactionary cause, Mahatma Gandhi had to align himself with a sectarian revivalist Muslim Leadership of clerics and maulvis. He was thus unwittingly responsible for jettisoning sane, secular, modernist leadership among the Muslims of India and foisting upon the Indian Muslims a theocratic orthodoxy of the Maulvis. Maulana Mohammed Ali's speeches read today appear strangely incoherent and out of tune with the spirit of secular political freedom. The Congress Movement which released the forces of religious liberalism and reform among the Hindus, and evoked a rational scientific outlook, placed the Muslims of India under the spell of orthodoxy and religious superstition by their support to the Khilafat leadership. Rationalist leaders like Jinnah were rebuffed by this attitude of Congress and Gandhi. This is the background of the psychological rift between Congress and the Muslim League'.

Dr Anne Besant another Congress President also spoke about the folly of the Congress Khilafat Policy when she said: 'Since the Khilafat agitation, things have changed and it has been one of the many injuries inflicted on India by the encouragement of the Khilafat crusade, that the inner Muslim feeling of hatred against 'unbelievers' has sprung up, naked and unashamed, as in years gone by'.

Gopalakrishna Gokhale, another stalwart Congress leader said: 'The seven crores of Muslims here have become more or less hostile to our national aspirations'.

Many great Hindu leaders of the time like Swami Shraddhananda were greatly perturbed by Mahatma Gandhi's blind and foolish support for violent Muslim intransigence. Men like Ali Brothers, with known Pan-Islamic loyalty, were repeatedly proclaiming on the public platform from 1921 to 24 that in the event of the British either out of sheer exhaustion or disgust, the integrity of India could be safeguarded only by the 'compassionate' Muslims with their spiritual belief in International brotherhood. For, they alone could secure the sympathy and support of their trustworthy co-religionists residing beyond the North-Western border. It was in accordance with this conviction and strategy that Muslim leaders including those in the Congress were clamouring for greater recruitment of the hilly people of North-Western Province to the Indian army. All the top ranking Hindu leaders of that time like C.R. Das, Lala Lajpat Rai and Surendranath Banerjee saw the mortal danger that lay ahead in this dastardly anti-national plan of the Muslims. Lala Lajpat Rai wrote a prophetic letter to C R Das in 1924: 'I am not afraid of seven crores of Muslims of Hindustan but I think the seven crores of Hindustan plus the armed marauders of Afghanistan, Central Asia, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Turkey will be irresistible. I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity or desirability of Hindu-Muslim Unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Quran and the Hadis? The Muslim leaders cannot override them. Are we then doomed? I hope not. I hope your learned mind and wise head will find some way out of this difficulty.'

A terrible and gruesome fallout of the disastrous Khilafat experiment of Mahatma Gandhi was the Moplah Rebellion in Malabar District in 1921. According to the Report of the ENQUIRY COMMITTEE OF SERVANTS OF INDIA SOCIETY, the number of Hindus murdered by Moplah Muslims was 1500, the number of Hindus forcibly converted 20,000 and the value of property looted about Rs three crore. When the national and local leaders appealed to the virulently anti-Hindu Moplah Muslims in the name of Mahatma Gandhi to follow the ways of peace and non-violence, they replied bluntly with Islamic fervour: 'GANDHI IS A KAFIR, HOW CAN HE BE OUR LEADER?' Dr Anne Besant declared: 'The Moplah Muslim marauders murdered and plundered abundantly, killed or drove away all Hindus who would not apostatize. Somewhere about 100,000 people were driven from their homes with nothing but the clothes they had on, stripped of everything'. She also accused all the Khilafat religious preachers for all this terrible atrocities. J Campbell, chief of the Intelligence Department, Government of India, held the Khilafat leaders squarely responsible for inciting racial hatred resulting in Moplah carnage.

Despite the known magnitude of atrocities committed by the Muslim marauders during Moplah rebellion, the Congress Working Committee passed the following resolution: 'Whilst, however, condemning violence on the part of the Moplahs, the Working Committee desires it to be known that evidence in its possession shows that provocation beyond endurance was given to the Moplahs and that the reports published by and on behalf of the Government have given a one-sided and highly exaggerated account of the wrongs done by the Moplahs'. The Congress resolution put the number of conversions at just three as against 20,000 arrived at by the Enquiry Committee of the Servants of India Society of which Rt Hon Srinivasa Shastri was the President at that time. The Congress Party today also lives and functions in a self-chosen cave of demented pseudo-secular delusion!!!

How did the Muslim Leaders of the time respond to these over generous gestures of Congress Working Committee and 'MAHA KAFIR' Mahatma Gandhi? Hakim Hajmal Khan, the Congress President of the 1921 Session at Ahemdabad, while presiding over the Khilafat Conference in the same town, came out with this brazen declaration, with Gandhiji and all other kafirs sitting by his side on the dias, about the glorious future awaiting the Pan-Islamic Empire: 'India on the one side and Asia Minor on the other are but two extreme links on a chain of future Islamic Federation, which are gradually but surely joining together all intermediate States in one great system'.

The eruption of Muslim communal frenzy in the form of Moplah uprising in Malabar and other riots all over the country played a key role in removing the blinkers from the eyes of many Hindu leaders in 1921. Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das (1870-1925), President of the Gaya session in 1922 declared with conviction: 'Hindu Muslim Unity has ceased to be a pious dream. It has now become an impossibility'.

Rabindranath Tagore and CR Das were great friends. In 1924, Tagore's genuine fears about the divided loyalty of Muslims appeared in Times of India (18-4-1924): 'A very important factor which is making it almost impossible for Hindu-Muslim unity to become an accomplished fact is that the Muslims cannot confine their patriotism to any one country. I had frankly asked many Muslims whether, in the event of any Mohammedan power invading India, they would stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common motherland, I was not satisfied with the reply I got from them. I can definitely state that such men as Mr.Mohammed Ali have declared that under no circumstances is it permissible for any Mohammden whatever be his country to stand against any Mohammadan'. Tagore was yet another superstitious KAFIR.

The Congress today is repeating the tragedy of Mahatma Gandhi and the political perfidy of the Congress Working Committee of 1921 by committing the same 'HIMALAYAN BLUNDER' of extending full support to compassionate and ever-gracious Muslims like Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari who are hell-bent on converting the whole of India into a Pan- Islamic Republic unlike the so-called 'secular' Jinnah who only wanted a few bits of India to be converted into Pakistan.

To reject Vande Mataram is not treason? - III

Dr Rajendra Prasad, while presiding over the Constituent Assembly on 24 January, 1950, made the following statement which was also adopted as the basis for the final decision on the issue:

'The composition consisting of words and music known as Jana Gana Mana is the National Anthem of India, subject to such alterations as the Government may authorise as occasion arises, and the song VANDE MATARAM, which has played a historic part in the struggle for Indian freedom, shall be honored equally with Jana Gana Mana and SHALL HAVE EQUAL STATUS WITH IT. (Applause) I hope this will satisfy members.' (Constituent Assembly of India, Vol. XII, 24-1-1950)

It will be clear from Dr Rajendra Prasad's declaration that Vande Mataram is equal in status to our National Anthem of Jana Gana Mana.. When he made this declaration on 24 January, 1950, all the Muslim Members of the Constituent Assembly including Maulana Abul Kalam Azad also gave their full approval to the proposal. It is not now open to anyone in India to question the constitutional or the legal status of this great National Song of Bankim Chandra Chaterjee. If they are given that freedom or latitude, that means they are questioning the Constitution of India. Petty and self-seeking men like Arjun Singh and Priyaranjan Dasmunsi dressed in brief authority today are creating a communal wedge between Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram only for sordid vote-bank and narrow political reasons. Their pernicious Anti-Majority political philosophy on this issue can be summed up in a laconic limerick:

Vande Mataram is not mandatory

Even Jana Gana Mana need not be involuntary

Vande Mataram can be secularly mandatory

Vande Mataram can be communally non-mandatory

In our official Non-Government

Sacred things often become sacrilegious

And sacrilegious things become sacred

Things sublime will be viewed as subversive

Things subversive will shine as jewels sublime

Pray don't dismiss us as dubiously dilatory

By temperament and training, we are suavely soaked in sophistry

We are not steeped in 'communal' stupidity

Is it not almost a pity?

Nobody understands our poor pseudo-secular ditty

That we often sing with Sonia-reverence alacrity

With such non-constitutional clarity

And with known and authentic Anti-Hindu acerbity!!

With total dedication to absolute communal minority!!!

Virulent controversy is now raging in the Lok Sabha over the recital of Vande Mataram and yesterday there was a pandemonium in the House. Arjun Singh made a great declaration that singing the Vande Mataram song is purely a voluntary affair. He can now add that respecting the National Flag is also a purely voluntary and private affair. He can also add that political chastity is communal and political prostitution is secular, constitutional and cosmopolitan. Another great national hero famed in modern song and legend called P.R.Dasmunsi, Parlimentary Affairs (Pseudo-Secular and Non-Communal and Non-Saffronised!!) made the historic declaration: 'The BJP does not even know the meaning of the Vande Mataram song. This song was composed even before the BJP was born and this was sung by the Indian National Congress. The BJP does not even know the meaning of this song. The BJP is only giving a communal colour to the issue to divide society'.

The BJP leader V K Malhotra has covered himself with glory by saying,' It is unfortunate that some people are objecting to the singing of Vande Mataram which is most condemnable. At the time of the centenary of the Vande Mataram song in September this year, singing of this song should be made compulsory and those who do not wish to do it, can leave the country', I am quite sure that many known anti-national and anti-Hindu quislings in the UPA Government will go to the extent of proposing the 'constitutional' withdrawal of citizenship rights from those 'communal' citizens who will dare to sing the Vande Mataram song with gusto and enthusiasm on 7 September 2006!! This dastardly proposal will be pushed to another pseudo-secular JPC of the Lok Sabha for its careful consideration! Nothing unfair is impossible and nothing fair is possible.

P R Dasmunsi may be 'voluntarily' ignorant of the fact that Vande Mataram (in Bangla: Bônde Matorom) is the National Song of India and that it was first written in 1876, nine years before the birth of the Indian National Congress in Bombay in December 1885. When it was composed, neither the Indian National Congress nor the BJP or for that matter any political party of today existed. This song was composed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee in a highly Sanskritized form of the Bengali language. The Vande Mataram a poem known for sublimity of thought dedicated to the glory of motherland was composed by late Shri Bankim Chandra Chatterjee on 7 November, 1876 at the Kantal Pada village of Bengal. This song was published in Bang Darshan magazine from 1880 to 1882. The song first appeared in his immortal novel Anandamatha, published in 1882 amid fears of a ban by British Raj. H V Sheshadri has rightly observed: 'It was a hymn of love of motherland sublimated into an ecstatic devotion to the DIVINE MOTHER-BHARAT. In that exalted vision was manifest the trinity of SARASWATHI (THE GODDESS OF KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURE), LAKSHMI (THE GODDESS OF BEAUTY AND WEALTH) AND DURGA (THE GODDESS OF STRENGTH AND ENERGY).' Vande Mataram became the national battle cry for freedom from British oppression during the freedom movement. In the hectic days of Swadeshi Movement following the Partition of Bengal by Lord Curzon in 1905, large rallies, fermenting initially in West Bengal, in the major metropolis of Calcutta (Kolkata), often worked themselves up into a pitch of high patriotic ferver by shouting the slogan 'Vande Mataram,' or 'Hail to the Mother(Land)!'. The British, fearful of the potential danger of an incited Indian populace, at one point banned the utterance of the motto in public forums and jailed many freedom fighters for disobeying the proscription. To this day, 'Vande Mataram' is seen as a national mantra describing the love of patriots for the Indian Nation. Rabindranath Tagore sang 'Vande Mataram' in 1896 at the Calcutta (Kolkata) Congress Session. It was the first political occasion when Vande Mataram was sung in chorus. Rabindranath Tagore also set Vande Mataram to music.

The Indian National Congress rehearsed Vande Mataram in 1901 under the guidance of Dakshanrajan Sen. Smt. Sarla Devi Chaudharani, niece of Rabindranath Tagore sang Vande Mataram at the Benares Congress Session in 1905 despite the ban on its singing by the British Government. Lala Lajpat Rai started a journal called VANDE MATARAM from Lahore in 1906.

To quote the appropriate words of R Pandya and Somkuwar : 'Vande Mataram had become an expression of nationalism for the patriots and revolutionaries who launched several movements and agitations against the oppressive British Rule drawing inspiration from the magic words of Vande Mataram song. In fact, Vande Mataram had become a symbol of India's freedom struggle. Great exponent of Indian classical music Pandit Vishnu Digambar Paluskar played an important role in popularizing Vande Mataram during the glorious days of our freedom movement. He began public recitation of Vande Mataram from Lahore and sung it at many places all over the country. His presentation of Vande Mataram was so charged with sublime emotions that it used to thrill the listeners and arouse feelings of nationalism among them making them feel proud of the mother nation'.

In 1905, the freedom movement had taken an organized shape and in the same year our national politics took a new turn with the announcement of Swadeshi Movement on 7 August, 1905 at Calcutta. The British divided Bengal on 16 October, 1905. Vande Mataram immediately became the people's song not only in Bengal but in the entire nation. Its soul-stirring words reverberated in the streets, schools and every part and portion of India. It quickly spread throughout India and was on the lips of millions. The founder of RASHTRIYA SWAYAM SEVAK SANGH DR. KESHAV BALIRAM HEDGEWAR WAS EXPELLED FROM HIS SCHOOL IN NAGPUR BECAUSE OF HIS ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN THE VANDE MATARAM AGITATION. LATER IN 1925, DR. HEDGEWAR FOUNDED THE RSS. The declaration of Swadeshi movement completed its 100 years on 7 August, 2005.

After 1915, it became an established and sacred tradition to begin every session of Indian National Congress with recitation of Vande Mataram song .Subhash Chandra Bose made Vande Mataram the song of his Indian National Army and it was regularly broadcast from his Singapore radio station from 1943 to 1945. The Cambridge History of India describes Vande Mataram as, 'the greatest and most enduring gift of the Swadeshi movement'. B N Pande in his 'A Book of India' writes, 'Vande Mataram, soon became the LA MARSEILLAISE of the nationalist movement throughout India.'

It is a known fact of history that Gandhiji often extolled the grandeur of the Vande Mataram song. At Comilla in 1927, he said that the song held up before one's mind the picture of the whole BHARAT?ONE AND INDIVISIBLE. H.V.Seshadri concludes: 'Vande Mataram??these two simple words had, indeed, wrought a miracle which even thousands of speeches and articles could not have achieved in several generations. It became the cry of the awakened and resurgent national soul'.

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also by warning. History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable. He alone reads history aright, who, observing how powerfully circumstances influence the feelings and opinions of men, how often vices pass into virtues, and paradoxes into axioms, learns to distinguish what is accidental and transitory in human nature from what is essential and immutable.

To reject Vande Mataram is not treason? - IV

When the Imam of Jamma Masjid and other Muslim clerics dismiss the sacred National Song of Vande mataram with Islamic contempt and conviction, with the full back-drop support of the UPA Government in New Delhi, we should not forget the fact that their spiritual and cultural progenitor was Maulana Mohammed Ali who was a front rank leader in the days of the Khillafat Movement immediately after World War I. He paid his Islamic tribute to Maha Kafir Mahatma Gandhi in these immortal and time-defying words (perhaps even qualifying himself for the posthumous award of Bharat Ratna today!!!): 'However pure Gandhiji's character may be, he must appear to me from the point of view of religion inferior to any Mussalman, even though he be without character'. Yes, according to my religion and creed, I do hold an adulterous and a fallen Mussalman to be better than Mahatma Gandhi'. All this he said in 1921.

Maulana Mohammed Ali who had thus politically stabbed 'Maha Kafir' Mahatma Gandhi in the back even in the days of the Khillafat Movement was given the supreme honour by the ever-nervous towards the Muslims Congress Party to preside over the Kakinada Session of the Congress in 1923. It was in that Session THAT THE FIRST BLOW WAS STRUCK AT THE NATIONAL ANTHEM OF VANDE MATARAM. During those years, the reputed singer and patriot Vishnu Digambar Paluskar of Maharashtra used to sway the inaugural session of Congress with his deep and resonant music of Vande Mataram song. However, when he came on the dais to sing at the Kakinada Session in 1923, he was stopped by the President Maulana Mohammed Ali. The Maulana exclaimed that singing of music was taboo in Islam and as such he would not permit it. The entire Assembly was stunned; everyone, including the top leaders and stalwarts adorning the dais like Mahatma Gandhi, Madan Mohan Malaviya, and others sat dumbstruck, unable to think of a proper reply or retort to the Congress President. Paluskar, however stuck to his post of duty. In a voice filled with righteous indignation he retorted to the Maulana: 'The Indian National Congress is not the monopoly of any one particular sect nor is this place a mosque, where singing could be prohibited. You have therefore no authority to prevent me from singing VANDE MATARAM. Moreover, if singing in this place is against your particular religion, HOW IS IT YOU COULD TOLERATE MUSIC IN YOUR PRESIDENTIAL PROCESSION?' The ever-benevolent Maulana of course had NO ANSWER to this challenging and legitimate question, but left the dais while Paluskar went through the singing of the glorious song to the joyous applause of the audience. The patriotic spirit of thousands of common men and women of India triumphed over the monotheistic intolerance of Maulana Mohammed Ali on the occasion. There were no Arjun Singhs or Dasmunsis to give him the succor of Constitutional protection on that occasion.

When the British Government proscribed the singing or chanting of Vande Mataram during the days of Swadeshi Movement in Bengal in 1905, the Congress party was not unnerved by it. It remained unruffled and stuck to the gun of singing this glorious song throughout the country and even adopting it as its National Anthem. Very unfortunately for the country and for the forces of selfless Indian Nationalism, the Congress Party started wavering in 1922 and started viewing Vande Mataram as an 'irritant' in the path of winning over Muslims. The Congress Party even adopted Mohammed Iqbal's SARE JAHAN SE ACCHA HINDUSTHAN HAMARA as the associate National Anthem JUST TO SATISFY THE MUSLIMS.

The next stage in the strenuous and tortured story of Vande Mataram was reached in 1937 when Congress Party formed the Government in seven Provinces. In keeping with its past tradition, the Congress Party began commencing the Assembly proceedings with VANDE MATARAM. The Muslim League, equally true to its tradition, quite like the Muslim clerics of today, declared a war against it. The League Members in the Assembly raised a storm of protest and staged walk-outs. The Congress Working Committee (CWC) was scheduled to meet in October 1937 at Calcutta. The Muslim League conducted its session earlier and denounced Congress-ruled States as 'HINDU STATES'. And the most weighty testimony it adduced was the singing of the VANDE MATARAM in PROVINCIAL Assemblies!!

The League condemned the Congress for imposing 'VANDE MATARAM AS THE NATIONAL ANTHEM UPON THE COUNTRY' and termed it as 'callous, positively anti-Islamic, IDOLATROUS IN ITS INSPIRATION AND IDEAS, and definitely SUBVERSIVE of the growth of GENUINE NATIONALISM in India'. The Muslim League further called upon 'MUSLIM MEMBERS OF VARIOUS LEGISLATURES AND PUBLIC BODIES IN THE COUNTRY NOT TO ASSOCIATE THEMSELVES IN ANY MANNER WITH THIS HIGHLY OBJECTIONABLE SONG'.

H V Sheshadri has brilliantly summed up the ideological surrender of the Congress party to the machinations of the Muslim League in 1937: 'When the Congress Working Committee (CWC) met a few days later, it was haunted by the spectre of the League's opposition and formulated ITS POLICY ON 'MINORITY RIGHTS'. If HINDU-MUSLIM unity??without which the British would not part with power??was to be achieved, the Muslims should not, AT ANY COST, be allowed to feel displeased. THEIR SENTIMENTS SHOULD NEVER BE INJURED, FOR WHATEVER REASON. ACCORDINGLY, THE CONGRESS DECIDED TO 'CUT OUT' THOSE PORTIONS OF VANDE MATARAM 'WHICH WERE LIKELY TO OFFEND THE MUSLIM SUCEPTIBILITIES as indicated in the League's resolution. ONLY THE FIRST TWO STANZAS OF THE ONG DEPICTING THE PHYSICAL PICTURE OF THE MOTHERLAND-WERE RETINED AND THE REST 'DROPPED'. Indeed, it was in those subsequent stanzas that the real essence of our nationalism and the spirit of the Freedom Struggle were enshrined. However, the Congress considered these stanzas as 'CONTAINING CERTAIN ALLUSIONS AND RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY WHICH MAY NOT BE IN KEEPING WITH THE IDEOLOGY OF OTHER RELIGIOUS GROUPS IN INDIA', and upheld 'THE VALIDITY OF OBJECTION RAISED BY MUSLIM FRIENDS TO CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SONG'. The Congress further gave its organizers 'FREEDOM TO SING ANY OTHER SONG OF AN UNOBECTIONABLE CHARACTER IN ADDITION TO, OR, IN THE PLACE OF VANDE MATARAM'. The last sentence clearly indicated that the Congress had even taken away the unique position of VANDE MATARAM as the NATIONAL ANTHEM and 'PLACED IT ON PAR WITH OTHER NATIONAL SONGS'.'

The Congress party laid the cultural and spiritual foundation for the communal partition of India on 15 August 947, by abjectly surrendering to the black-mailing tactics of the Muslim league in 1937 by tearing apart the Vande Mataram Song on communal grounds and raping Bharat Mata with pseudo-secular fervour and passion. This task begun in 1937 was completed by Nehru and Jinnah in 1947. Today the Imam of Jamma Masjid and the other Muslim Clerics are asking the Congress Party to give up even the so called 'secular portions' of Vande Mataram as identified by the Congress Party in 1937. Instead of making it clear to the Imam and his other clerics that the Constitution of India has given the status of a National Song to Vande Mataram, the Government of India is keeping itself boisterously busy by picking up petty quarrels with the BJP on he ground that they have no historical associations with it. At the same time they are pseudo-secularly and voluntarily ignorant of the solid fact hat Dr.Hedgewar, the founder of the RSS, was rusticated by the British authorities from the High School for singing the Vande Mataram Song. When Dasmunsi questions as to whether the BJP men have ever sung the Vande Mataram Song, I would like to ask him whether he is going to declare from a public platform that Sonia Gandhi's grand father sang the Vande Mataram song in the company of Rabindranath Tagore? Are not Muslim-nervous leaders like Dr Manmohan Singh, Arjun Singh, Dasmunsi and other outstanding leaders of the Congress Party acting like Master Craftsmen in dealing with the vital national issue of Vande Mataram Song? I am using the word Master Craftsmen deliberately for the known and simple reason that Craft is common to both Skill and Deceit!!!

Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad was treated like a brother by Maha Kafir Mahatma Gandhi. He was twice elected President; in Delhi in 1923 (Special Session) and Rangarh in 1940. He continued as Congress President till 1946. he also stabbed Mahatma Gandhi in the last week of 1945 when he gave a letter to Lord Pethick-Lawrence of the Cabinet Mission by agreeing to his proposal for the non-inclusion of a Nationalist Muslim of Congress in the interim Union Cabinet that was being formed at that time. It was an unauthorised letter and Gandhiji was shocked by it when he got a letter from Lord Pethick Lawrence confirming in writing Azad's letter to him on behalf of the Congress. When Gandhiji confronted Azad even when the letter from Lord Pethick Lawrence was on his table, Maulana Azad denied having sent a letter to Lord Pethick Lawrencec!!

Prime Minister John Howard of Australia last month called a meeting with 13 senior Muslim leaders to map out a joint approach to curbing extremism within the 300,000-strong Islamic community, and obtained pledges of loyalty to Australia. But he was criticized for excluding Muslims considered 'radical,' and yesterday's summit was called by the uninvited Islamic leaders.

Howard told the Muslims of Australia: ' If you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you....If you can't agree with parliamentary law, independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the opportunity to go to another country, which practices it, perhaps, then, that's a better option.'

Unlike the Muslim Clerics of India, the 'Radical' Muslims have pledged their loyalty to Australia'. On the contrary, our Pan-Islamic clerics are pledging their disloyalty to the sacred National Song of Vande Mataram!!! I hope that our learned Muslim Clerics will not issue a fatwa against the Australian Muslims for their declared loyalty to their duly constituted government.

Communalisation of 'Vande Mataram'- An Avoidable Controversy

by R.Upadhyay

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay composed Vande Mataram (Salute to Motherland) song in 1870 for his historic novel Anandmath. Later, this song became a vibrant chorus of the freedom movement and also a battle cry against the British power. The thundering slogan of 'Vande Mataram' thrilled the students and youth of the country irrespective of their religious faith till the Muslim League linked it with idolatry and called it an insult to Islam.

After independence despite objections raised by some Muslim leaders the constituent Assembly settled the issue and adopted Vande Nataram and Jana gana mana Adhinayak jaya he Bharat Bhagya Vidhata as National Song and National Anthem of India respectively on January 24, 1950. National leaders like Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Jawaharlal Nehru and others had fully endorsed this decision and since then both the songs got constitutional status. Any controversy over these two symbols of national unity and integrity is therefore an insult to the constitution.

Unfortunately the All India Muslim Personal Board (AIMPLB) raised a controversy over singing this song by the Muslim students on September 7, the concluding day of its centenary functions on the plea that it is un-Islamic. Its advice to the Muslim parents not to send their children to schools on that day and to abstain from singing it encouraged some of the Muslim clerics, who raised their voice against this song on the plea that Islam 'does not permit 'Sajda' (bowing down during Nawaz) to any one except Allah. Those who are equating singing of Vande Mataram with 'Sazda' are still carrying forward the legacy of Khalifa Shaikh Ahmad Sarhindi, (1564-1624), a sufi mystic saint of Naqshbandi order and a fanatical espouser of hard-line Islam, who had equated 'Sazda' with 'Kornis".

Historically, Sarhindi is known for rejecting the ‘heterodoxies’ of Akbar and turning it to orthodoxies. Being a fanatic interpreter of Islam he did not even offer ' Kornis' (respectful salute by bowing down) to the Mogul Emperor Jahangir on the plea that Sajda to any one except Allah was un-Islamic. Jahangir took such discourteous behaviour of Sarhindi as a challenge to his authority and accordingly ordered for his immediate arrest. Sarhindi was imprisoned in Gwalior jail and could be released after thirteen months, after much persuasion by the courtiers. However, the successive Mogul Emperors carried out the hardline Islam of by Sarhindi to nullify Akbar's ‘liberalism’.

Since the fall of Mogul Empire, Sarhindi's philosophy remained a major source of inspiration for all the movements for Islamic revivalism. His tomb at Sarhind in Patiala district of Punjab is still an object of veneration (Islamic Encyclopaedia, Vol. I, Page 297). It is sad that the present Government instead of taking action against the fanatics showing disrespect to the National Song succumbed to the pressure of the latter and made the singing of national song optional.

History of opposition to Vande Mataram song by Islamists dates back to late thirties of the last century, when the 'coalition talks' between All India Muslim League and the Indian National Congress failed after the massive victory of the latter. After forming its government the Congress in its various schemes of mass contact programmes and to accelerate the spirit of nationalist feelings as well as Hindu-Muslim unity issued instruction to all the educational institutions in the country for singing of Vande Mataram song. However, the Muslim League linked this song with idolatry and called its singing by Muslims as an insult to Islam. Jinnah strongly opposed the move of the Congress and criticised it as an attempt to Hinduise the Muslims. He made the issue of Vande Mataram another point of attack on Congress and accused it as a party for Hindus only. Since then the Muslim League took it as a point to wean away the Muslims from the Congress. Simultaneously, a group of Muslim students came out of All India Students Federation, met Jinnah and formed All India Muslim Students Federation (AIMSF) in 1937 with Mohammad Nauman as President and Mohammad Waseeque as Organising Secretary. AIMSF under the patronage of Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Mohammed Iqbal worked as an appendage of Muslim League. It launched an aggressive campaign against the alleged non-Islamic crests of Calcutta and Nagpur universities, the Vidya Mandir scheme in Central Province, the vibrant slogan of 'Vande Mataram' and the veneration shown to tri-colour flag of Congress. It criticised them as an insult to Islam.

The Working Committee of the AIMSF in its meeting on May 6, 1938 in Islamia College Lahore resolved among other resolutions: " This session strongly condemns the song of Vande Mataram which contradicts the philosophy of Muslim nationalism and further expresses its hate over the part played by the Lahore Students Union who made a lead show by writing Vande Mataram on the tickets during its meetings" ('The Punjab Muslim Students Fedration 1937-47 by Sarfaraz Hussain Mirza, 1991, page 78). The Meeting also resolved to read out the Iqbal's poem by replacing the word 'Hindi' with Muslim and 'Hindostan' with 'Sara Jahan' - "Muslim Hain Ham Watan Hain Sara Jahan Hamara" (Ibid.).

Criticising the Congress policy of alleged imposition of singing Vande Mataram on Muslim students Jinnah said, "What did the Congress do when it got power? With all its pretensions it straightway started with Vande Mataram. It is admitted that Vande Mataram is not a national song. Yet it is sung as such and thrust upon others. It is not only sung in their own gatherings, but Muslim children in government schools and Muslim schools are compelled to sing it" (Patna session of the League in 1938 - Quote from 'The Role of Muslim League in National Politics' by Deepak Pandey, 1991, page 63).

Khan Saheb Abdul Rehman Khan, MLA from Central Province in a rejoinder to the Government communiqué said, "it is not a single educational institution in the province where it is not sung as a prayer and a national song. It is difficult for the Muslim pupils to defy the wishes of their teachers and the majority of the pupils unless they wished to lead the life of discomfiture". Similarly, Tajuddin, the president of the Muslim League Jabalpur "asked the government if it were prepared to issue a circular to prevent compulsion of the singing of Vande Mataram"? (Times of India, July 6, 1938)

The Union Minister Arjun Singh initially issued a circular for singing of Vande Mataram in educational institutions as his party had issued in pre-partition days but changed his stand on being challenged. The Congress Government in 1938 did not succumb to the pressure of Muslim League but Arjun Singh’s favourable response to Tajuddin after sixty-eight years could not be for any reason other than for enhancing his own popularity.

In the backdrop of the separatist demand of pre-partition Muslim League, the present controversy over the national song as created by AIMPLB and other Islamic clergies is not only an affront to the constitution but also a danger signal for national unity and its integrity. Although a few Muslim leaders and clergies like Arif Beigh, Mukhtar Abbas Naqbi, Matin Ahmad, Maulana Wahiduddin and others have commendably raised their voices against this divisive design of the Islamists, in the absence of any aggressive and collective movement by the Muslim masses against the forces opposed to the singing of patriotic national song, their feeble voice remains only a wild cry. Unfortunately, most of the Muslim political leaders and intellectuals are found silent over the issue, which indirectly justifies the opposition to the national song.

The soft if not servile attitude of the UPA Government, Marxist dominated media, left-minded social activists and 'liberal' Muslim scholars towards the on going controversy has only strengthened the Muslim communalists. Insult to National Song is not only an insult to the nation but it is the replay of the same pre-partition divisive politics of All India Muslim League. It is high time for the members of parliament, State assemblies and other legislative institutions to rise above party politics and mobolise mass participation of the Muslim masses in the centenary celebration of this National Song in their respective constituencies. Similarly, the Muslim intellectuals should avail this opportunity for a collective movement to free their misguided co-religionists from the fanatic interpretation of Islam by their priestly class.

Hindu saints dismayed at opposition to 'Vande Mataram'

New Delhi, Aug 23 : Several Hindu saints have expressed dismay over a section of Muslims opposing to singing the Vande Mataram, India's national song.

Dayananda Saraswati, Swami Chidanand Saraswati and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and several other saints have also instructed all Hindu religious places and congregations to start singing the Vande Mataram, according to a press release issued by the Art of Living Foundation.

"Religious intolerance has to stop somewhere. Today, it's Vande Mataram, tomorrow it could be refusing to say 'Namaste' or seeking the removal of the saffron colour from the national flag. This will harm the composite culture and social fabric of India," the release quoted them as saying.

The song had come in for controversy in recent days with several Muslims, including the Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid, saying that the song was "against Islamic beliefs".

Their comments had come in the wake of a central government directive to states for recitation of 'Vande Mataram' in educational institutions during a celebration on September 7 to mark the national song's centenary.

The issue has also rocked the Parliament, which is currently in session.

In the release, the saints also urged the Prime Minister not to ignore Hindu religious leaders and interact with them as he often does with ulemas.

They also called upon Muslim intellectuals to condemn the attempt to insult the national song in the name of religion.

Vande Mataram: Arjun in line of fire

VHP flays Arjun Singh's stand on Vande Mataram

Allahabad (UP), Aug 22: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) today attacked Union HRD Minister Arjun Singh for his reported statement that singing the national song 'Vande Mataram' was not mandatory.

"The HRD Minister's latest statement is aimed clearly at his vote bank. By doing so, he has gone to the extent of violating the Constitution as Vande Mataram was granted the special status at a meeting of the Constituent Assembly," VHP international president Ashok Singhal told a press conference here.

Singhal also said the statement of Shahi Imam of Delhi Jama Masjid Syed Ahmed Bukhari's that the national song was against Islamic beliefs "smacks of an anti-national and separatist mindset." He questioned the rationale behind the opposition to Vande Mataram by Bukhari and other Muslim leaders.

"Vande Mataram does not aim to worship the country or the land. It is a song in which the country is given the status of one's mother and all its inhabitants are shown as her children," he said.

Singhal warned that by asking Muslims not to sing Vande Mataram, the leaders will "further isolate the community".

The VHP leader said he did not consider the entire Muslim community as supporters of terrorism.



Vande Mataram: Arjun in line of fire
[ 23 Aug, 2006 0032hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

NEW DELHI: Having got a pet 'nationalist' issue to attack the government with, opposition BJP on Tuesday stepped up its offensive against the UPA government on the Vande Mataram controversy in Parliament and plans to continue the campaign outside the House too.

The national song row rocked both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, with agitated BJP and Shiv Sena members accusing the government of trying to appease minority communities.

In both Houses, the BJP-Shiv Sena combine disrupted proceedings, forcing repeated adjournments. While RS was finally adjourned for the day amid uproarious scenes, Question Hour was disrupted in LS with opposition members chanting Vande Mataram .

Targetting HRD minister Arjun Singh on the issue, BJP even threatened legal action against him for 'insulting' the national song by declaring there was no compulsion on anybody to sing it on September 7.

"His statement is a crime. He should be booked for insulting the national song," BJP spokesman V K Malhotra said.

Singh was also accused of surrendering to anti-national forces for his remarks that schoolchildren would not be forced to sing Vande Mataram on September 7 to mark the centenary of its adoption, following refusal by some Muslim clerics to abide by a Central directive on the national song.

In the House, BJP and Sena members were unrelenting despite a categorical assertion by Singh that official notification to states on recitation of Vande Mataram on September 7 has not been changed.


Sing with me : Vande Mataram - disregard what antisocial anti-Indians say to make it optional
Preetam Sohani
Aug. 22, 2006

Jai Hind. Vande Mataram.

No it is not optional in my books.

No it is not optional for Hindutva movements.

Let sing again : Vande Mataram.

The Opposition BJP and Shiv Sena sought to raise the Vande Mataram issue during Question Hour in Rajya Sabha.

The movement has just started.

It is time for Indian nationalism. It is time for Hindutva grass root movements. It is time to treat all Indians equally but without damaging Indian ''parampara''- the tradition.

According to media reports, As soon as the House met for the day, Manohar Joshi sought to raise the issue but Chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat said the issue could be discussed after Question Hour.

"I don''t have any objection to the issue being discussed," he said even as BJP members joined Joshi in raising the matter.

Sushma Swaraj said the BJP would raise the issue during Zero Hour.


Vande Mataram rocks House
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2006 01:14:47 AM]

NEW DELHI: In what has become a habitual occurrence, yet another old and shoddy controversy took centre stage in Parliament on Tuesday.

While it was the issue of manipulating textbooks along ideological lines just a few days ago, this time the occasion was provided by the fracas surrounding the centenary celebrations of ‘Vande Mataram’.

The Parliament erupted with the Opposition, led by the BJP and Shiv Sena, stalling both Houses over what they, predictably, termed the “minority appeasement” policy of the government and HRD minister Arjun Singh.

They charged that Mr Singh had, in response to objections raised by a particular section of the minority community, waived the ministry’s directive of singing the national song in all schools and educational institutions on September 7.

The issue rocked Rajya Sabha, which was adjourned for the day over the issue, and also led to noisy scenes in the Lok Sabha. The government had relaxed the ministry’s directive — which had asked all educational institutions to sing the first two stanzas of the song--after it led to protests from a section of the Muslim clergy, which claimed that singing the song was against Islamic beliefs.

The Rajya Sabha, in fact, saw five adjournments on the issue. The NDA, supported by AIADMK and TDP members, did not allow the House to function after question hour in the morning, though some business was conducted later during the day amidst quite a din.

BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi raised the issue during Zero hour, saying some fundamentalists were resisting the national song on religious grounds. He added that Mr Singh’s statement (in which he had said that singing Vande Mataram on September 7 would be a voluntary act) had created confusion.

According to Mr Naqvi, the HRD minister had told a gathering of Ulemas that the whole thing was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s idea, and not his.

Mr Naqvi was joined by Shiva Sena leader Manohar Joshi who asked why the HRD minister had changed his stand. He then supplied his own ready-made answer: that it was due to Mr Singh’s “minority appeasement” policy. This statement created a furore with the Congress, SP, Left and RJD members accusing Mr Joshi of casting aspersions on the minorities.

They asked for his comments to be withdrawn and deleted from record, but chairman Bhairon Singh Shekhawat upheld the statements and allowed Mr Arjun Singh the right of response.

In his reply, Mr Singh read out a letter he had sent to state governments directing that “... as befitting a final, the first two stanzas of (Vande Mataram) should be sung simultaneously at all schools and colleges.”

Responding to charges that he had changed his stand Mr Singh asked: “Where is there a question of any change (in stance)?” He said the media had asked him if he had issued a “compulsory” directive, to which he had answered that the national song would be sung “collectively” and those who wanted to participate could do so.

Even after the minister’s reply Opposition members continued to stall the House, trooping into the well with cries of ‘Vande Mataram’ each time the House reassembled. To take matters further, they even took to greeting the Chair with ‘Vande Mataram’ instead of their customary ‘namastes’.

In the Lok Sabha, the issue disrupted question hour leading to two adjournments. Mr Singh, in the Lok Sabha, said his government had never said singing the song would be “compulsory”.

The Hindutva parties, BJP and the Shiv Sena, held that not singing the song was tantamount to “insulting” martyrs, and demanded that each citizen should show respect for the song.

Other opposition MPs took the hardline view that those 'who wanted to live in this country' should sing the song. In response to the Oppositions' tactic of stalling Parliament, the Congress charged the BJP with playing its usual communal politics.

The BJP, on its part, counter-accused the Congress and Mr Arjun Singh in particular, of succumbing to the demands of “Islamic fundamentalists”.

The Opposition to singing Vande Matarm was voiced by the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid, Syed Bhukhari. He had held that according to Islamic tenets, when it came to worship, only Allah could be given that honour. This line was echoed by some minority community MPs.

Indian Muslims are above the law!

8/3/2006 10:33:17 AM Amitabh Tripathi

On 27th of July reputed English daily Times of India published a story vicious campaign elaborating how in Muslim majority areas of western UP in general and Muradabad in particular are not cooperating with government agencies and non government agencies to combat disease of polio thanks to conspiracy theory floated by a Muslim in may 2005.

Times reports," The mischief started in May 2005 when an Urdu newspaper carried a highly inflammatory write up and things have never been the same again ever since.

The write up penned by one Monis Bushra Abidi and titled "These drops of poison" made its appearance on May 27, 2005. Portions of the cleverly written piece are being quoted in posters or whisper campaigns, warning Muslins against the government-sponsored drive and save their progenies from ruination."

According to government officials the most populated state has recorded 106 cases of polio this year a big jump in comparison to last year, which have only 26 cases of polio in state. Contribution of Muslim majority districts in this rise is significant which comprise Muradabad, Rampur, Jyotibafule nagar and Bijnauor with 69 cases of polio out of 106 cases.

This is not the first time when conspiracy theory has spread polio. Way back in May 2005 when some Indian Urdu newspaper published inflammatory articles regarding polio vaccination several other Muslim countries were also facing the brunt of conspiracy theory.

Eminent American writer and authority on Islamic subject Dr Daniel Pipes first time in 2005 revealed the source of this conspiracy theory. According to him" The theory's source seems to be a physician and the president of Nigeria's Supreme Council for Shari'a Law, Ibrahim Datti Ahmed, 68. Dr. Ahmed, an Islamist, accuses Americans of lacing the vaccine with an anti-fertility agent that sterilizes children (or, in an alternate theory, it infects them with AIDS) and considers them, according to John Murphy of the Baltimore Sun , "the worst criminals on Earth … Even Hitler was not as evil as that."

Times report is not first instance to prove how much respect Indian Muslims have for land of law but surprisingly it points allegiance of this community to pan-Islamic character. Law of land has some conditional approach for Indian Muslims thanks to their sacred personal law, which allows them not to follow principles of monogamy and produce more than 6 to 8 children with special blessings of Allah endangering other cultures to become minority in their own countries.

The story of Muslim defiance of law of land in India become part of debate in regime of late Rajiv Gandhi when one progressive judgment of supreme court in Shah bano case was overridden with amendment in constitution. But till today Muslim community has not shown any indication towards its moderation in personal law.

One year back in 2005 nation witnessed existence of medieval law in form of personal law and shariyat when Muslim women named Imrana was raped by her own father in law and instead of giving harsh punishment to accused Shariyat court said Imrana cannot stay with husband

In early months of 2006 another case of defiance of land of law by Muslim community came under light when Orissa unit of Jamiat- Ul -Ulama dared to challenge Supreme court not to intervene in matters of talaq after apex court ordered Orissa government to provide all security to Najama biwi and Sher Mohammad who want to live together after talaq.

These cases are examples of rigidity of Muslim community in India. India is the second most Muslim populated nation after Indonesia and this country has provided every privilege and facilities to this community to raise its index of development but Muslims in India has more adherences to Islamic values incompatible to modern society.

Muslims often complaint about their illiteracy and lack of education but they never react to those Muftis who issued fatwa to Muslim guardians to not send their children to those public schools where vande mataram is sung on every morning. How come Muslim children will be able to get good education when they boycott good institutes because of their religious taboo?


In spite of Islamic apologists repeated claim of peace loving and law abiding nature of their religion ground reality is completely different. Whenever Muslim allegiance for law of land come under test they failed it miserably . As per example in Bhiwandi where Muslims violently protested construction of Police station near masjid and graveyard.