Guha's latest goo

Ramachandra Guha writes in Project Syndicate- 

On 2 October, the world marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mohandas Karamchand ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi—the greatest Indian of modern times. In a New York Times op-ed for the occasion, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the most powerful living Indian, duly praised his country’s independence leader. Between recalling the admiration for Gandhi of Martin Luther King, Jr, Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and others, Modi saw fit to tout his own government’s commitment to sanitation and renewable energy.
That’s a lot of ground to cover. Yet for me, the commentary was most striking in what it didn’t say. There was not a word about the cause for which Gandhi lived—and sacrificed—his life: interfaith harmony.

Modi was praising Gandhi. That's why he didn't mention those areas where Gandhi failed completely- in particular the issue of Muslim separatism and ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims from areas where they were the majority. 

From the 1890s, when he was an organiser for a small community of diaspora Indians in South Africa, to his death in 1948, by which time he was the acknowledged ‘Father’ of a nation of over 300 million people, Gandhi worked to build unity and solidarity between Hindus and Muslims.

But he failed. That's why Pakistan came into existence and why millions of non-Muslims were killed, forcibly converted or were obliged to flee to India. 

While he was in South Africa, many of the meetings he organised to protest against discriminatory laws were held in mosques.

He had been brought to South Africa by a Muslim merchant. 

And when he returned to India, he fasted and embarked on several long pilgrimages to build trust between Hindus and Muslims.

But he failed again and again. Why? Muslims realized that his fight for 'Khilafat' was fraudulent. Furthermore, he didn't keep his promise of securing 'Swaraj' within 18 months. He could have easily have said 'look, the riots in Chauri Chaura, where policemen were killed, started as a protest against high meat prices. It is well known that I- and the vast majority of caste Hindus in Congress- don't eat meat. Thus we couldn't have been responsible for this. It has nothing to do with our struggle. We are fighting for Home Rule, not cheap meat.' It was because Gandhi withdrew the Non Cooperation Movement that Muslim support melted away from him.

Muslims were being perfectly rational in not trusting Gandhi and Congress. Why? The fact is, while Gandhi had been making a big fuss over the indigo agitation in Champaram, the anti-cow slaughter movement had completely terrorized the Muslims of Bihar. It was obvious that Hindu majority areas would tyrannize over Muslims. Power sharing arrangements were a sham. The moment the British left, these quotas would disappear. Indeed, that is exactly what happened.

Gandhi had fought the British, non-violently, for an independent and united India. In the end, he achieved independence but not unity.

Nonsense! It was the War which ruined Britain and forced it to give up its Empire. Had America decided to prop up the Raj, the outcome would have been very different. 

When the British finally gave up the subcontinent in August 1947, they partitioned it. Pakistan was explicitly created as a homeland for Muslims. But, owing to Gandhi’s efforts, India itself was established as a nondenominational state: the new constitution forbade discrimination on religious grounds; the Muslims who remained were to be treated as equal citizens.

This was mere eye-wash. The Constitution removed all the previous 'safeguards' and protections enjoyed by minorities- save those dealing with Hindu 'untouchables'. Muslims got short shrift in Independent India. Many were persecuted by the Custodian of Enemy (originally Evacuee) property and, like Rushdie's father, forced to emigrate to Pakistan.

Pakistan too had a 'non-discriminatory' Constitution and a Hindu (untouchable) Law Minister. But that Minister and many of his caste fellows were forced to flee to India a little while later. 

For the first two decades after independence, minority rights in India were carefully safeguarded, chiefly because of the determination of the country’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to prevent India from becoming a Hindu Pakistan.

Nonsense! Muslim representation in the Legislature and the Bureaucracy and the Army plummeted. Urdu lost its status and Hindi (not Gandhi's preferred Hindustani) was made the official language. Incidentally, Godse said Gandhi's preference for Hindustani was one of the reasons for his assassination. 

In more recent times, however, India’s large (and mostly poor) Muslim minority has come under increasing attack.

The biggest attacks occurred when Nehru was Prime Minister. Millions of Muslims fled India. 

This is partly because, after Nehru’s death, the ruling Congress Party shunned progressive Muslim voices in its efforts to cultivate the ulema (Muslim clergy) for votes.

The Uelma had opposed the creation of Pakistan. The progressives in the Communist party supported it, though some- like Sahir Ludhianvi- were forced to flee Pakistan because Communists were being jailed. 

But it’s also because the traditional opposition party, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has emphatically rejected Gandhi’s and Nehru’s vision of political and religious pluralism.

But Gandhi & Nehru had presided over the greatest setback ever experienced by Muslims in India. 

From the mid-1980s, the country was riven by a series of communal riots in which Hindu mobs taunted their Muslim compatriots with the slogan ‘Pakistan ya Babristan!’ (‘Go to Pakistan, or be sent to the graveyard!’)

The cretin means 'Kabristan'. The mid-80's, of course, were a period when Congress had a huge majority and the BJP only had a couple of seats. 

The bloodiest riot was in 2002, in Gujarat, where Modi was then serving as chief minister.

Muslims killed Hindus returning from a pilgrimage. They were then subjected to a massacre. Indian intelligence believed the thing was a Pakistani plot to hamper troop movements to the Rann of Kutch theater. That is why the Army was sent in with shoot to kill orders. Modi ended the politically instrumentalized cycle of communal rioting which had begun in 1969 and which was very much a part of the Congress Party's play book. Shah Rukh Khan's 'Raees' is based on the true story of a Muslim bootlegger who helps a Muslim Congress Minister to get guns and bombs from Pakistan to stage a terrorist incident in Surat with the aim of sparking off a riot.

The episode badly tarred Modi’s image, and even resulted in his being barred from entering the United States for a while.

Nonsense! Gujarati voters knew the truth and so they kept re-electing him based on his track-record. The US banned Modi because the Congress led Indian Govt. asked them to. However, the Indian Supreme Court gave Modi a clean chit.

But having rebranded himself as a Vikas Purush (Man of Development) and devised a platform promising inclusive growth, Modi was able to prevail in the 2014 general election.

Nonsense! Congress and the Left fell because they were corrupt and incompetent. Rahul Gandhi refused to put himself forward as a Prime Ministerial candidate. Thus Modi ran unopposed. 

That outcome led to another wave of hate crimes against Muslims, which Modi proved either unable or unwilling to prevent.

Nonsense! There has been no such wave. There were cow related lynchings before and after he came to power. There has been no increase. 

His first term in office yielded nothing for the economy, so he and the BJP contested the 2019 elections on a platform of jingoistic nationalism.

Rubbish! Modi was rewarded for punishing Pakistani aggression. It is not 'jingoistic' to punish your enemies when they attack you. 

Pakistan was depicted as the ‘enemy without’, and Indian Muslims and secular liberals as the ‘enemies within’.

By whom? People like Guha had been depicting Modi as a Hitler intent on genocide. They kept crying wolf but no wolf appeared. They are still at this silly game. Who are they hoping to fool? Whitey doesn't care about Muslims. This cretin is making Modi look good to an international audience.

Notwithstanding Modi’s public posturing in the pages of Western newspapers,

Modi wrote one article. Guha and Tharoor etc. publish thousands!

he and his party remain committed to the idea of a Hindu Rashtra: a state run for and by Hindus.

But that describes India since 1947- except for a brief period under Sonia.

There’s currently just one Muslim among the BJP’s 300-odd members of the Lok Sabha (the lower house of India’s parliament). Worse, senior BJP leaders routinely insult and intimidate Indian Muslims without provocation, demanding that they prove their ‘loyalty’ to the motherland.

But it is Congress which is allied with the Shiv Sena in Maharashtra!

It’s no accident that Modi failed to mention Hindu–Muslim harmony even when praising Gandhi.

Because Gandhi failed. Pakistan was created. Non-Muslims were killed or ethnically cleansed. 

His silence speaks for itself.

Then why write this stupid article? 

Meanwhile, on 1 October, Modi’s right-hand man, Amit Shah, the home minister and current BJP president, offered his own implicit message to India’s Muslims. ‘I today want to assure Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist and Christian refugees, you will not be forced to leave India by the Centre’, he said in a speech in Kolkata. ‘Don’t believe rumors’, he added. ‘We will bring a Citizenship Amendment Bill, which will ensure these people get Indian citizenship.’

What's wrong with that? It was the policy India followed under Nehru. Refugees were given citizenship. Some Muslims, however, were being forced out of India. 

Notably absent from Shah’s remarks was any reassurance for Muslim refugees, including those from Bangladesh, whom Shah previously referred to as ‘termites’.

There are no such refugees- only economic migrants as well as some terrorists.

The purpose of his speech was clear: Indian Muslims should be careful what they say, or they could find themselves stripped of citizenship and deported.

Nonsense! Those with an Indian mother tongue are in no danger. Why? Because it is obvious they must have learnt it in India. Only people speaking the Bangla dialect living in border areas are under threat of removal. But this was also the case since the early Eighties under the Assam accords. 

On 11 December, the bill amending the citizenship act passed the parliament, sparking massive demonstrations in Delhi and elsewhere.
As Gandhi’s biographer—and as an Indian citizen who is committed to pluralism—I am deeply worried about the escalating demonisation of my Muslim compatriots.

But Guha is not worried that he himself is making them insecure by telling stupid lies. I recall the answer given by an elderly Jewish lady to a Tory canvasser who told her that if Corbyn was elected British Jews would be unsafe. She told the guy to go fuck himself. Her father had fought the Black Shirts in Cable Street. The Jews beat up the Fascists. Oswald Moseley made himself ridiculous by whining about how the Yids would keep beating up his thugs.

Indian Muslims can't be terrorized by Guha's fairy tales. Still, there are campuses where kids are going to work themselves up into a lather over this and there are plenty of anti-social types who enjoy a spot of mayhem. 

The democratic, secular republic that Gandhi fought for is being transformed into a Hindu majoritarian state.

This transformation occurred in 1947. Muslims lost reserved seats. Majorities triumphed over minorities. If India did not ethnically cleanse Muslims to the same extent, it was because Muslims were poor and created profit for Hindus. 

Yet as a historian, I have no illusions about what we are witnessing. India, once an exception, is now converging towards the South Asian norm. Sri Lanka and Myanmar are both Buddhist majoritarian states, and their minority populations—Tamil Hindus and Rohingya Muslims, respectively—are treated as second-class citizens (and much worse). Likewise, Bangladesh and Pakistan are Muslim majoritarian states, where Hindus (and sometimes Christians) have historically been persecuted.

Guha, like some BJP fanatics, thinks India was a paradise for Muslims. They were cossetted by the State. I wish this were true. Sadly, the reverse is the case. Only in fields where competition is purely on the basis of talent, have Muslims come up. So, in Sports or Films or IT, we see Muslims doing well. Everywhere else, they are not second-class, but third-class citizens. Guha or me would face less difficulty finding a flat to rent in Ahmedabad than a Gujerati Muslim even though we speak an alien language. Indeed, there are cases of intermarriage between Tambrams and Gujerati Hindus and even Jains. The presumption of vegetarianism is a factor, but what it really comes down to is Religion.

As we enter a new decade, it is clear that Modi, Shah, and the BJP are committed to joining the club of ethno-nationalist states.

India has been an ethno-nationalist state since 1947. We objected to the Brits because they were 'mlecchas'. So we threw them out. Much good this did us. 

In pursuit of that end, they have decisively repudiated the legacy of Gandhi and Nehru, inaugurating a dark new chapter in the history of modern India.

Guha can't accept that Gandhi and Nehru could have done a deal with Jinnah in the mid-Thirties. They could have secured minority protection across the board. They didn't do so. In 1946, it became clear that Congress was not trusted by Muslims. Hindus voted for it overwhelmingly but Muslim votes went to the League. Maulana Azad was a lone voice warning against Congress's greed for total power. He was not heeded. The two darkest chapters in the history of India feature Nehru, or his daughter's, determination to wield absolute power. Mrs. Gandhi's experiment with Fascism was brief and was thoroughly undone. But Congress's history of fraud upon the Muslims continues to this day. Guha has given up on being any pretense of objective historiography in order to side with a bunch of corrupt, careerist, casteists presided over by a dynasty that is 'dying nasty'.