Family legacy and the Varun effect

Tarun Vijay

Those who opposed the Ayodhya temple movement, wore silence over the plight of Kashmiri Hindus, damaged the Ram Sethu and denied Lord Rama ever existed, denied the violence at the Godhra railway station, and embraced the butchers of 1984, are collectively gunning at Varun Gandhi's political life.

Column after column by Padma Shris in the media have created an atmosphere where supporting Varun has become a sin. Why? The simple reason is that the farmhouse of Gandhi-Nehru politics has been broken and a scion of the family chose to speak out as his conscience directed.

More than what Varun said or didn't say, it is the hurt and bewilderment over the loss of a Gandhi to the saffron brigade that has made the media and anti-Hindutva politicos react with such venom and acid. He was not heard, not given a chance to present his case, nor did forensic experts examine the so-called proof in the form of a CD containing his speech.

Varun has suddenly dwarfed the media-supported Rahul.

Nobody has ever heard a dynasty member to say with understandable assertion that he or she is a Hindu. Rather, they have always tried to look differently at things. They banned Hindu organisations, imposed the Emergency, removed basic human rights, never willingly facilitated the Sikh massacre probe, rewarded hardened criminals, made alliance with those who were convicted for murder or were facing scandalous charges, had the Muslim League join the government after Partition. Yet, they are nice, decent, peace-loving, patriotic democrats who love to tell others: 'Go read the Gita.'

When Indian soldiers were fighting Pakistani marauders in 1947, we didn't have enough jeeps. So orders were placed with the British company and supply demanded immediately. Our high commissioner in London V K Krishna Menon, Pandit Nehru's blue-eyed boy, messed it up. The jeeps reached a year late.

That was the first scandal in independent India.

We lost Gilgit, Baltistan and Skardu. We lost Aksai Chin because the government in New Delhi didn't know the exact boundaries and so no patrolling was being done there.

In all we have lost 125,000 square km to the Pakistanis and Chinese during Congress rule.

Plus we had a bad dream called 1962.

At that time our ordnance factories were making coffee machines as Pandit Nehru openly argued against having a well-equipped large army for defence. 'Who is going to attack us?' he would ask.

And people still remember the mysterious death of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who simply wanted Kashmir to be a part of India like Bihar or Bengal and the permit system to enter the valley be abolished. Kashmir had two rulers then, its ruler was called Sadr e Riyasat or 'head of state', and it had a prime minister. Mookerjee's martyrdom compelled the Nehru government to remove the permit system and the two heads of state.

Then we had the Mundhra scandal, the Nagarwala case, the L N Mishra murder. The Jana Sangh's fast-emerging leader Deendayal Upadhyaya was murdered. A Congress leader canvassed openly against the official Presidential candidate and supported her own choice as independent nominee. The original Congress symbol was a pair of oxen. After the official Congress broke up, they got the hand as a temporary symbol till the case is finally settled. It would never be.

Provoked to write…

I am provoked to write this
-M.S.N. Menon , Organiser

Yes. When I’m told that Hindus “live in darkness” I’m provoked.

I’m a Hindu, not the usual one, for I took the trouble to make a special study of human civilisations and religious atrocities. Naturally, I see religions in a different light. Not the way the “faithful” see them.

Religions are full of lies and false claims.

The Jews claimed they were “the chosen people of God.” Where did this delusion take them? To the worst persecution known to man! They remain the object of the longest hate in human history.

Take Christianity. What is its claim and what is the reality? It claims to have civilised Europe. In fact, it destroyed one of the greatest civilisations of man—the Greek civilisation.

Vassili Vassilevsky, one of the most stimulating authors of Greece, says: “It took us inheritors of a joyous paganistic culture, a long time to internalise the notion of ‘guilt’.

Even today we do not wholly accept the idea that the body is the source of evil.” And yet Jesus had said that the “Kingdom of God is within you.” Then, who put the Devil inside the Christian to torment them? The Organised Church.

And it also destroyed the Roman empire. One of the first acts of the Christians (that of Emperor Theodisius), when they came to power in Rome, was to order the destruction of the most splendid library in the temple of Serapis.

Obviously, the Church had no desire for enlightenment. The Hindus pray for light daily.

The Church converted the pagan temples into tombs, says W.E.H. Lecky, “for the adoration of the bones of the basest and most depraved of men among the Christian monks.” (History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe”, Vol.II)

And a Christian mob stripped and cut into pieces a gifted, virtuous and beautiful lady in Alexandria. What was her crime? That she was the leader of the Neo-Platonists!

The Roman empire had produced some of the great men in history like poets Horace and Virgil, historians like Livy and Polybius, philosophers like Epictetus and Plotinus, orators like Cicero, lawgivers like Cato. What did Christianity produce in the 1500 years of its dominance over Europe? Not one man of greatness! And almost every great man who was born in Europe after the Renaissance was outside the Church.

And the Roman empire spread the Hellenistic civilisation in half the world. What has the Christian empire to show?

It is the claim of the church that it made a major contribution to the growth of morality in Europe. In fact, it made little contribution. It called Descartes, father of moral philosophy, an atheist!

The Church gave its blessings to both capitalism and imperialism. And later to colonialism. Secretary of State Amery (UK) says that an active empire and an inactive Church cannot go together.

The Church had a big hand in slave trade. If there was a conscience problem, it helped to ease it by saying that the black man was the son of the Devil.

Denouncing the trade in black men, Lord Palmerston says: “If all crimes committed from creation down to the present day were added together, they would not exceed, I am sure, the guilt of the diabolic slave trade.” In America Lincoln had to fight a civil war to outlaw the trade. The Church was behind the rebel southern States.

According to the Church, the dark races were not required in God’s scheme of things.

The genocide of the Incas, Mayas and others has no parallel in human history. They were more civilised than the Europeans. “By millions upon millions” says Draper “whole races and nations were remorselessly cut off.

The Bishop of Chiape affirmed that more than 15 million were terminated in his time. From Mexico and Peru, a civilisation that might have educated Europe, was crushed out.” (Intellectual Development of Europe, Vol. II)

On Galileo’s incarceration, Draper writes: “What a spectacle! This venerable man, the most illustrious of his age, forced by the threat of death to deny the facts…treated with remorseless severity during the remaining ten years of his life….” In the dungeon.

There is nothing in human history as diabolic as the Inquisition. It was created by the Popes to perfect the “art” of torture of the apostates. I can only think of the gas chambers of the Nazis, which did away with six million Jews.

“What strikes me most in considering medieval torture is not so much this diabolic barbarity, which is impossible to exaggerate, as the extraordinary variety and what may be termed the artistic skills they displayed”. (Lecky)

What else can one expect from a religion which had thought of eternal hell fire as a punishment for even small wrongs of men!

What about Islam? Space compels me to make it a short review. In his book “In the path of Mahatma Gandhi”, George Catlin, the American philosopher, asks: “What has Islam to offer to compare with the philosophy of Vedanta and the Upanishads?” So much for its “Superiority” claim!

Be that as it may, what is the record of Islam’s atrocities? “The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history,” says Will Durant, the American historian.

The Muslims do not want to be reminded of their past. But it is necessary, says S.Bashiruddin, former Vice Chancellor of Dr. Ambedkar Open University. (See his ‘Deen and Dharma”).

He says: “Through the present generation of Muslims is not responsible for what has been done centuries ago, an awareness of such a legacy can sensitize the Muslim opinion leaders…”

With such a record of their past, I would like to know from Christian and Muslim brothers, in which way they are “superior” to the Hindus.

Do not tell me that your religious texts do not permit these things. This is an easy explanation. I don’t take it.

Men are judged by what they do, not by what they believe or by what is written in their scripture.

The Secular Road to Hell

Ramananda Sengupta

Secularism.

I have always wondered how such a seemingly innocuous word has turned into such a politically loaded noun in India.

By definition, the word essentially means separating religion from matters of state.

‘WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens,’ goes the first line of the Preamble to our Constitution.

But hold on a second.

The original framers of our constitution did not put the word Secular there.

It was added by the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency, through the Constitution (42nd Amendment) Act, 1976, along with 58 other changes. The word ‘Socialist’ too was added, while ‘Unity of the nation’ was changed to ‘unity and integrity of the nation.’

Perhaps, just perhaps, it was well intentioned. But the road to Hell, they say, is paved with good intentions.

Also read: 'Secular' Muslims want Taslima back in Kolkata | Temple demolitions: Why is our govt mum?

After having inserted the word, however, the ‘secular’ Congress Party blocked all subsequent attempts to officially define it. And that has been the bane of our polity - and our nation - since then.

Because without a clear definition, secularism means nothing. Or rather, it means different things to different people.

For politicians, it means liberty to play vote bank games based on religion. In the same way that VP Singh, the 10th Prime Minister of India, brutally and callously divided the nation along caste lines for political mileage in 1990.

For religious leaders, it means liberty to exploit politicians for their own petty gains, in return for assuring them the vote of ‘their people.’

For the common man, it means confusion, chaos and often violence spawned by the viciously divisive ‘Us and Them’ philosophy promoted by our religious and political leaders.

Attempts were even made recently – on the basis of something called the High Level Committee for Preparation of Report on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India, better known as Rajinder Sachar Commission Report -- to introduce this division among the most secular institutions in the country, the Indian Army. Thankfully, the Army would have none of it.

But we haven’t heard the last of that yet; because reservation for minorities is seen as a sure way to get their vote.

This divide and rule policy that our politicians practice ensures that We the People of India, as the framers of our constitution so grandly described us, cannot agree even on things that are obviously good for us all. Like secularism as the dictionary defines it.

Instead, even as we proudly tout our so-called secular credentials, successive governments have clearly used religion for political gain.

But how can we be a secular state when we have separate laws based on religion?

How can we be a secular state when the government selectively funds pilgrimages and religious institutions?

How can we be a secular state when the government allows schools and colleges to have quotas based on religion, and actually tries to extend that to the corporate sector and even to the armed forces?

How can we be a secular state when politicians campaign on purely religious platforms, and win?

And most importantly, how can we be a secular state without clearly defining what it means?

Yes, we are certainly better off than some of our neighbours, like Pakistan and Bangladesh, and perhaps even Nepal, till recently known as the only Hindu kingdom.

Pakistan and Bangladesh (and a host of nations in the Persian Gulf and Africa) proudly declare Islam as their state religion, and make no pretence about being secular.

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Pakistan was born because Indian Muslims -- egged on by the devious departing British -- demanded a separate state for themselves. And despite separating from Pakistan in 1971, Islam is the state religion of Bangladesh too. Which explains why the non-Muslim population in both these nations is rapidly dwindling.

Our politicians, however, in order to prove that we are secular, and of course, in order to garner our votes, have gone to the other extreme, taking steps which can easily -- and in most cases correctly -- be construed as “minority appeasement.”

Things have reached such a pass that whoever uses that last phrase is immediately branded as ‘anti-secular’ and a right wing bigot.

Things have reached such a pass that some years ago, some Muslim men prevented firemen from rescuing a woman from a burning Kolkata tenement, saying it would be against their religion to let an unknown male touch her. The woman burned to death.

Instead of booking the men for murder, as any ‘secular’ state would have, however, the West Bengal government grandly declared that they would induct women fire fighters to assist in such cases.

This peculiar brand of secularism trumped free speech, also enshrined in our Constitution, when it came to Taslima Nasreen, a rather insipid but feisty writer who invoked the wrath of the mighty Maulanas of our Islamic neighbour, Bangladesh.

Her crime? To attest that “If any religion allows the persecution of the people of different faiths, if any religion keeps women in slavery, if any religion keeps people in ignorance, then I can't accept that religion.”

Taslima fled, and finally landed on Secular India’s shores. But not to be outdone, our very own Maulanas too started baying for her head. And we all know what happened since: Goodbye free speech. Hello secularism.

Many many moons ago, I came across an old school friend of mine whose family owns a large, upmarket tailoring shop in Kolkata. He was going to get married, he told me; for the third time.

“My Maulana has told us that being a democracy, we can turn India into a Muslim country purely on the basis of votes. And we will. Perhaps not today. But someday, our children will rule, for sure. Nothing can stop us,” he said matter of factly, before going on to explain how that would be a wonderful thing, where the rule of God and the rule of the land would be synchronised. A land where everyone could live without fear, and so on.

At that time, I had laughed out loud, saying that he obviously had not paid attention during our classes on “civics”, where we had learnt all about “unity in diversity” and the unflinchingly Secular ethos of our nation.

Today, I flinch when the word is mentioned.

Secularism should be made of sterner stuff.

Why am I proud of India?

Ramananda Sengupta

Before my posture stiffens and my heart fills with martial pride, as it does every Republic Day when I watch the parade on Delhi’s Rajpath, I thought I would take a quick stock of what it means for me to be an Indian.

My grandfather, the first Indian civil surgeon of pre-independence Dhaka, fled with his family to what is now Assam in early 1946, a year before a partitioned India gained formal independence.

His crime? He was a Hindu. The British were clearly going to leave India, and the leaders of the freedom struggle were fighting over what form the new country would take. Instigated by Jinnah and company, Muslim-dominated Dhaka was restive.

In July 1946, massive communal riots broke out in Calcutta, sparked by the Muslim League which was demanding a separate state based on religious grounds, and the Congress, which was trying to resist this demand. The unrest spread, and in October came the massacre at Noakhali, now in Bangladesh .

"The horror of the Noakhali outrage is unique in modern history in that it was not a simple case of turbulent members of the majority community (Muslims) killing off helpless members of the minority Hindu community, but was one whose chief aim was mass conversion, accompanied by loot, arson and wholesale devastation... No section of the Hindu community has been spared, the wealthier classes being dealt with more drastically. Abduction and outrage of Hindu women and forcible marriages were also resorted. The slogans used and the methods employed indicate that it was all part of a plan for the simultaneous establishment of Pakistan."

Wikipedia, quoting S. L. Ghosh of the A. B. Patrika. (which is confusing, given that two major Bengali newspapers at the time were Ananda Bazar Patrika and Amrita Bazar Patrika)

These riots were meant to, and did, convince the departing British that Hindus and Muslims could not live together in the country, and that the Muslims needed their own homeland based on religion.

Independence finally came with the religious bloodbath of Partition, whose scars still mark the subcontinent. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the other new nation, was broken up again with the birth of Bangladesh in 1971.

By the same author: The Secular Road to Hell

Today, India is in the news as the most powerful player in the subcontinent, and perhaps the second most powerful in terms of economic and military might in Asia.

Today, Pakistan and Bangladesh are in the news for being almost-failed states, yo-yoing between military and civilian rule, and for being the breeding grounds of jihadi terrorists seeking to establish Sharia law across the world.

Both share long borders with India.

Relations with Pakistan have been hostile since independence. Bangladesh, which attained independence with Indian assistance, is now happily reviving linkages with its erstwhile oppressor, Pakistan.

The Pakistan high commission in Dhaka is described as the “largest outpost” of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence, or ISI, by Indian diplomatic and strategic analysts. Over the past five years, an increasing number of terrorist strikes in India have been linked to Bangladesh, though Dhaka vehemently denies any such involvement.

Radical Islam and turbulent neighbours thus threaten India from the east and the west. (And, if you factor in the ISI’s increasing activity in Nepal and civil-war torn Sri Lanka, from the north and south as well.)

In essence, we are surrounded by tin-pot dictators and their ilk taking perpetual pot shots at us, sometimes with heavy weaponry, sometimes with policies of “a thousand cuts.”

Yet, despite having the third largest -- after Indonesia and Pakistan-- Muslim population in the world, very few Indian Muslims have been linked with the increasing number of terrorist acts being perpetuated in the name of Islam across the globe. Instead of examining the reasons for this, zealots on each side of the religious divide tend to marginalise it.

So it is no surprise that security agencies are nowadays increasingly warning about indigenous jihadi terrorist cells being activated. Poverty and perceived discrimination make it easier for the radical preachers to recruit suicide bombers and other killers in the name of religion, assert our social scientists. This in turn gives teeth to the government’s plans to grant further sops to the Muslim community, ignoring the fact that this can only widen and deepen the communal divide, not bridge it.

In my book, equality cannot be achieved on the basis of sops based on religious or ethnic grounds, simply because it fuels further expectations and dependency among those receiving it, and resentment among those being denied it. But obviously our government knows better.

As a nation, we are still high on the Corruption Index, and despite incredible progress in various spheres, a huge chunk of our population still goes to bed hungry. Naxals and radicals of all hues are increasingly capitalising on this immense disparity, so glaringly portrayed in the numerous pictures of the slums surrounding swank Mumbai high rises.

Yes, we have problems. Of poverty, of inequality. Of governance. Of pesky, unstable and jealous neighbours who fuel religious and ethnic strife in our land.

But we also have plenty to be proud of.

Unlike our neighbours, not once, and this includes the brief spell of Emergency Rule, did we ever have the military take over, or even try to, take over the nation. And at least on paper, We the People get a chance to elect our own leaders every five years or so.

Over the years, I have seen this nation grow in phenomenal leaps and bounds, particularly after the end of the Licence Raj.

I remember when people had to wait five or more years for a phone line. When those wanting an automobile were forced to choose between the Ambassador and the Fiat.

Today, I see vegetable sellers and even street sweepers with mobile handsets. Today, I see an Indian company bidding for, and buying iconic automobile brands like Jaguar and Land Rover.

Today, I see almost every nation in the world making a beeline for a resurgent and proud India, well on its way to take its place at the top table of world powers.

This despite all the seemingly insurmountable internal and external fault lines that permeate and plague the country. This despite all the cynical naysayers –some of them Indian-- who used to periodically write us off as a “basket case.”

Which is why it is important for us remember that our nation is far, far more than just its people, or its leaders.

Which is why each Republic Day, my chest swells with pride as I salute My India.

Jai Hind.

Why are Hindus angry?

Tarun Vijay

In Srinagar, a Muslim women’s organization – the Dukhtaran-e-Millat – vows to impose the strict Islamic code on women through violence and
declares that it is in the interests of women. The leader of this outfit, Asiyah Andrabi, was jailed several times for working against the nation and for being a conduit for money to jihadi groups who used that help to kill Hindus and create disaffection among people against India. The US State Department Report of 1995 held a Dukhtaran-e-Millat activist responsible for a parcel bomb blast at the BBC office in Srinagar in which one person was killed and two injured.

The DeM has recently been linked to certain money laundering cases. Andrabi was booked under POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) for receiving ISI money through hawala channels. Whenever she speaks against India, there is no emotion or any sense of regret.

She was never subjected to a narco test nor did the media feel anything bad about her. Instead, women's groups interviewed her, called her the “new face of Muslim feminism”, and glossy magazines splashed her interviews with a tinge of revolutionary romanticism.

For Indian seculars, the Srinagar crowd working against India brings added fizz, a thrill and a heroism that has to be “understood” rather than condemned. Serious academic columns are published saying that if they are so passionately and aggressively pursuing separatism, why shouldn't we give the Kashmir valley to them?

It’s only when a lady monk is killed in Kandhamal or arrested in Nashik and appears to be wearing saffron rather than green that expressions become stern, the law becomes the guiding force, narco tests are immediately ordered and before anything can be even remotely established, the person is pronounced guilty. No women’s organization comes out openly to say she is a woman and hence the police must protect her honour and religious obligations at all cost.

Her father says she is innocent. No one gives any importance to that statement.

She cooperates during the narco test and nothing incriminatory is proved. The police say she practices yoga, hence the narco test didn't work.

The bike, the RDX, the targets – nothing is proved. Yet, she is tortured in police custody.

The women's commission that swung into action when an item girl used it to get cheap publicity and hot assignments maintains a studied silence.

The Human Rights Commission remains unfazed and the red sirens of the Marxist class look the other way. They had been demanding a pardon for Afzal although the Supreme Court convicted him. But the issues involved were of secular nature; hence they had to speak.

Nobody still knows what Pragya actually did or didn't do. She has to be severely dealt with just because the colour she wears is not registered as secular in the government's registry of protection where rapists, extortionists and scandalous criminals get a cabinet berth and a murder accused jailbird becomes a chief minister for being on the correct side politically.

First they said an army officer used 60 kg of RDX to blow up the Samjhauta Express. Then the denial comes; no RDX was used, it was ammonium nitrate, oh no perhaps IEDs. Then the Mecca Masjid blasts are linked with Malegaon, then the Hyderabad police issue an official statement that nothing has been found to link the two. The motorbike, the disfigured numbers on the chassis, the absconding person, the real mastermind, the saffron terror guru ... Remember when the Kanchi Shankaracharya was arrested, what kind of charges were levelled against him? Rape, murder, financial fraud and womanizing. And women came foreword to issue statements about how they were “lured”. What happened afterwards? Even “nothing” won’t convey the nothingness of the entire plot.

But the damage to the great seat of Hindu reverence had been done.

Aspire and Assert

Tarun Vijay

Let the people take over the spirit of the Red Fort and declare from its ramparts: "Honourable leaders, having cheated us for the last six decades and made politics a business of scoundrels, for once give India her due in the form of a nation-centric polity beyond family lords and stinking mafiosi of castiests, extortionists and murderers."

India certainly deserves a better lot to be elected members of a parliament which saw shameful scenes last time when a nuclear deal was being pushed to win the vote.

It’s meaningless to boast of our most ancient civilization, culture and values if we see what we have today. Bragging about a past that has no bearing on our behaviour today is worse than running after a mirage. Only the insecure get into it. Even if you forget all the great leaders of the past and stop reading their memoirs and prescriptions for the nation’s ills but keep a straight spine to live for India’s better future with honesty and transparency that would suffice. We will surely build new leaders but for once please strive to free your beloved nation of those who have survived far too long on peoples' lethargy and inaction.

A Hindu nation never cared who wrote the Vedas, how they were revealed or conceived and who authored the Upanishads. The only element that made us survive the vicissitudes of history was the strength to live the ideals and values that were worth living for this nation called Bharat Varsha.

We have been electing representatives who hardly have an idea of the nation they are tasked to protect and help flower. They have no sense of history, a history of our people and civilization, and do not any idea why we had to go through too many assaults by foreigners and how we were able to resist them so valiantly for centuries. Yet why has speaking about it has become a matter of hesitation for the neo-scholarship? We insult retired decorated soldiers when they are forced to agitate for a mere uniformity in pensions and scales though the lawmakers increase their salaries astronomically at the fag end of the session. That’s our patriotism.

Elect India this time. People who would try sincerely to make for the lost years of development and raise the value of our citizenship. It must be a matter of great confidence and pride to be an Indian citizen. Leaders and the administration must look at our people with respect and love, which we lack completely today as the nation is still run on British laws and the colonial attitude. No police reforms, no electoral corrections, no administrative changes in the environment of governance. The same hateful arrogance is seen in the bureaucrats and ministers who get a chance to find a seat of power. The way an officer of Emergency fame and thoroughly partisan was chosen, and supported by a section of the media and politicians, to handle elections, ignoring the advice of a man of integrity, speaks volumes of the depths we have fallen to.

Bribing is a matter of routine, piling of files is a thumb rule, small measures of publicity like increasing Haj subsidy or providing Ganga Jal on Shivratri become great milestones of political achievements while primary schools, village health centres and energy and water resources management are left to the mercy of sidelined ministers. The "profitable" departments are coal, mining and rural development, which are less checked and monitored but have enough meat to enjoy. We have a media whose brilliance comes to the fore in trivialities like the Mangalore pub incidence and which is completely hooked to Washington-London mania. We forget that for India the Middle East, Asia and especially East Asia with China taking a natural prominence are the regions that weigh more than anything else.

East is our natural constituency of diplomacy which is nurtured by age-old affinities. Similarly, at home we ignore the northeast. More than English, we must emphasize on learning Japanese and Chinese. That’s the future, not the US. It’s no use saying Hindus were ever a proselytizing religion. Declare with a truly Indian confidence that this world would be a better place to live if it follows the Hindu way of life and send missionaries of Hinduism to make people appreciate the Vedic way of a happy and mutually respectful society. Be a proud missionary yourself and take some inspiration from the times when Asoka the great, who has given us our national motif, sent his son to spread the message of Dharma. Why hesitate now? But we have learnt to live with all wrongs like we lived calmly during the British colonial period. Only a handful, less than 5%, participated in the freedom struggle. That’s the bare bitter truth. Should we not wake up even now?

Should our personal egos and likings be a deciding factor, or in a critical time like this can we rise above them and decide?

I was at Allahabad University sometime ago to address a students’ convention and have a Q&A session that ran for more than two hours in the Deligacy campus. They all wanted change. Give us clean rivers, easily available drinking water (since the advent of the mineral-water bottle culture, which is neither mineral water nor safe ones, one quipped), get rid of illiterate priests and a mindset that feels ashamed at just and rightful Hindu assertions that teaching Vedas is considered a Hindu, and hence, a communal and discardable act. They were enamoured with the youth chant but wanted a leadership that has a spine. In the evening the octogenarian leader of Vishwa Hindu Parishad Shri Ashok Singhal invited me to join a discussion on the agenda for Arundhati-Vashishtha Trust he has created to disseminate the scientific and Indic civilisational knowledge among the people. When we were leaving he said: "It’s time to forget our internal differences for the sake of greater unity among Hindu nationalists." We will be sinning if driven by personal egos, we work to defeat our own ilk. An India led by an Indian nationalist whom we know would be preferable to one led by a lady of a foreign origin.

If that happens we will finally have a post-Nehruvian raj that is more connected with the soil and people's aspirations. Is it too much to ask to have cleaner and honest members of Parliament who would ensure better roads, bridges, primary schools, women’s empowerment and a scheduled caste-scheduled tribe upsurge that will take our nation miles ahead and unshackle us from the redundant ritualism and caste-based differences and atrocities.

Why can’t we have, unhesitatingly the best models of pilgrim centres and temple management that cater to the needs of the young and mobile and do not resist any new reform? Let us have a leadership with spine that will make India the strongest military power on earth without any apologies.

After all, we have a burden on our shoulders to keep India free from traitors and terrorists and defend borders with a few unfinished vows to be completed as directed by the unanimous resolutions of Parliament. The platform people, with one leg abroad and one in the stinking wealth in Swiss accounts can’t do that. Let a new Chanakya create a Chandra Gupta to uproot the denationalized politicians and give us hope.

Merely ritualizing the "pub bharo" to "Parliament bharo" drills is nothing but further moisturizing the filthy dustbin.

(Tarun Vijay is director of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation)