Author: Varsha Bhosle
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: September 9, 2002
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/sep/09varsha.htm
On Friday, September 6, The All
India Christian Council accused the National Commission for Minorities
of adopting "double standards," demanded that it ban the RSS' Ghar Wapsi
programme in tribal areas, and slammed Vice-Chairman Tarlochan Singh for
demanding that missionaries halt their conversion activities amongst Sikhs.
According to the council, "tribals belonging to Christian and other faiths
are being forcibly converted into a militant brand of religion followed
by organisations such as VHP. The move is designed to divide the tribals
along religious communal lines and to create friction amongst them. In
Gujarat, this directly led to large-scale violence against Muslims in tribal
areas."
It's amusing to see how the council
gets a bee up its duct when the converted tribals revert to their original
way -- which way is debated not only by evangelists, but also brainwashed
Hindus. The missionary panic is palpable; why else would they allege that
Christian tribals are forcibly converted to Hindutva? Thing is, Hindutva
reconverts the converted to Hinduism -- and that's why it is Enemy No.1
globally.
On Wednesday, September 4, The Indian
Express published a report from Amritsar, in which the VHP's Ashok Singhal
was quoted as saying, "Godhra happened on February 27 and the next day,
50 lakh Hindus were on the streets. We were successful in our experiment
of raising Hindu consciousness, which will be repeated all over the country
now." The report added, "Singhal also spoke glowingly of how whole villages
had been 'emptied of Islam,' and how whole communities of Muslims had been
dispatched to refugee camps."
Now, there are few people I loathe
more than Ashok Singhal and Praveen Togadia. Therefore, the question of
defending them does not arise. Nevertheless, I did find it extremely strange
that not PTI nor UNI nor IANS -- in fact, not a single independent news
agency that hovers around these worthies for their quotable quotes provided
reports against which I could verify the Express dispatch. Stranger still,
the Chandigarh-based Tribune reported that Singhal "exhorted Hindus to
unite to strengthen the roots of Hinduism," expressed dismay over the "discrimination"
meted out to Hindus, and declared that "for the first time that the tolerance
level among the Hindus had breached." No mention of "successful experiment"
-- as in "Hindutva laboratory."
The Hindi Amar Ujala, a Delhi-based
paper, had just one complex sentence on Gujarat, which had Singhal saying
that after the Godhra incident, lakhs of Hindus united and nearly 4,000
villages were emptied of Muslims, and that for the first time, Muslims
instead of Hindus had to go to refugee camps. No mention of "successful
experiment" -- as in "Hindutva laboratory."
On Thursday, September 5, The Hindu
and The Pioneer reported the Congress' demand for Singhal's arrest for
his confession about the "experiment" -- which both newspapers attributed
to "reports," ie, the Express. And then, the paper that's been conducting
a witch-hunt against the BJP waited two more days before publishing an
editorial based on its own report about the (unverifiable) "successful
experiment." Something stinks big time...
I've no doubt that Singhal spewed
his wishful, macho garbage against Muslims. But "Hindutva laboratory" isn't
something these Einsteins could organise even if they wanted to. For, to
accomplish that, malevolence ain't enough -- to work on that scale, one
also needs intellect. Which some pinkos and missionaries do posses, and
thus make legions of Hindu "secularists" swallow the "animism" shit and
express shock at the tribal uprising in Gujarat.
Hindus -- not the don't-know-my-ass-from-my-mouth
type -- do not accept the view that tribals are non-Hindus; and that Christians,
Muslims and Hindus have an equal right to offer their religion to them,
as then NCM chairman Tahir Mahmood claimed (Hindustan Times, Jan 28, 1999).
Mahmood also cited census reports to support his claim: "Appendix C to
the census report of 1991 gives details of Sects/Beliefs/Religions clubbed
with another religion. According to this annexure, no tribal community
has been clubbed with the followers of the Hindu religion in the report."
Whether Adivasis are Hindus or not
has always been a question of great controversy. The Niyogi Commission's
Report of the Christian Missionaries Enquiry Committee MP, Nagpur, 1956
(Vol I, Part I, Chapter I) states, "The Missionaries have throughout claimed
that they are not Hindus. A continuous attempt has been made by these organisations
to foster a sense of separateness amongst the Tribes from the rest of the
Hindus. Speaking about the separation of the aborigines from the mass of
the Indian population Gandhiji remarked: 'We were strangers to this sort
of classification -- animists -- aborigines, etc, but we have learnt it
from the English rulers.' To the question put by Dr Chesterman whether
Gandhiji's objection applied to areas like the Kond hills where the aboriginal
races were animists, the unhesitating reply was, 'Yes, it does apply, because
I know that in spite of being described as animists these tribes have from
times immemorial been absorbed in Hinduism. They are, like the indigenous
medicine, of the soil, and their roots lie deep there'." (I wonder what
our Gandhivadis have to say now.)
Whatever the Adivasis may have been
originally, there's no doubt that they were gradually absorbed into the
Hindu fold -- just like the pagans of Saudi Arabia and northern Africa
were into Islam, but only many, many centuries earlier. So does that give
Hindus poaching rights over Arabs...? The Niyogi Report states, "Where
a tribe has insensibly been converted into a caste, it preserved its original
name and customs, but modified its animistic practices more and more in
the direction of orthodox Hinduism. Numerous examples of this process are
to be found all over India and it has been at work for centuries."
Besides, what's the difference between
Hindu forms of worship and the Adivasis' "animism" anyway? Don't Hindus
worship trees on Vat Savitri, snakes on Nag Panchami, and cows everyday?
In 1891, J A Baines, the Census Commissioner, considered as futile the
distinction between tribals who were "Hinduised" and those that followed
a tribal form of religion because, "every stratum of Indian society is
more or less saturated with Animistic Conceptions but little raised above
those which predominate in the early state of religious development."
Tell me, how many Hindu Gods and
Goddesses can you name...? Even if you believe that each God is a mere
form of the One Reality, how many forms of, say, Durga, can you name? Have
you heard of Zanai? Well, She's a Bhosle daivat, and the tribals of that
area of Satara district, too, worship Her. Ms B Nivedita, of the Vivekananda
Kendra at Kanyakumari, writes, "The missionaries called the Gods and Goddesses
of these [north eastern tribal] communities 'spirits'... First introducing
and then popularising the use of 'spirits' for the Devi-Devata of these
communities, the missionaries started their campaign for conversion. The
people were told, 'You do not have God. You worship only spirits. What
you have is only primitive ideas of religion and a bundle of superstitions.
If you want to be saved then follow the Only True God'."
But why did the 1991 census make
the anti-Hindu distinction...? Really, you shouldn't ask stupid questions
when you jolly well know the will of a political class and bureaucracy
steeped in Fabian socialism and manipulated by frankly-Red historians.
Till 1901, all communities -- like nagarvasi, gramvasi, vanavasi -- were
listed as Hindus. But in 1901, the census officers were directed by the
British government to mention the religion of Adivasis as "animism."
Thing is, the census officers kept
complaining that it was nearly impossible for them to decide who was an
animist and who was a Hindu, since all worshipped God in many forms. Thus,
in one census, a community was "animist" and in the next it was Hindu,
or vice versa. Finally, the government directed the officers to enter the
name of a community as the name of its religion. Voilà: the religion
of the Santhals became "Santhal," that of the Nagas became "Naga," and
so on. After that, deriding each "religion" became easier for missionaries
following the policy of Divide & Convert.
But, no matter what manipulations
followed, the British just couldn't distinguish between Hinduism and "animism."
In the census of 1901, Sir Herbert Risley observed that "Hinduism itself
was animism more or less transformed by philosophy," and that no sharp
line of demarcation could be drawn between them as the one melted away
into the other (The People of India, 2nd edition). In 1931, the census
commissioner, Dr J H Hutton, admitted that the line between Hinduism and
tribal religion was difficult to draw and the inclusion of tribals within
the Hindu fold was easy (Census of India, 1931, India Report, Vol I, Part
I). The deputy commissioner of Amravati, Mr Stent, sent a note to the census
officer saying that the educated Indian officers maintained that Gonds,
Korkus, Bhils, Gowaris and Banjaras were Hindus, and that he himself conceded
that when members of these tribes settled in a Hindu village they became
Hindus. He commented on the tendency of Hinduism to absorb the religion
of other people, and also pointed out that the aboriginals returned themselves
as Hindus... (Census Report, Central Provinces and Berar, 1931, Volume
XII, Part I).
Then why did the British persist
with the scheme? The Niyogi Report states, "It is not easy to find any
sound reason for isolating the tribal people from the Hindus in view of
the repeated admissions made that the animistic or tribal religion was
hardly distinguishable from the Hindu religion. The mystery is solved when
we come to examine the Missionary activities within these tribal areas."
Those activities form a book, bits of which I'll give you some time.
How missionaries lull stupid Hindus
can be seen from the census of 1941: That year, for the first time, heads
were counted community-wise instead of on the basis of religion. That is,
a tribal was classified merely as one who belonged to a scheduled tribe
despite his being a Christian. Result, the all-India figures for Christians
were shown as 6,040,665 -- which was less by 256,098 than the figure recorded
in 1931. However, the Census Commissioner of India, Mr Yeats, made a note
where he disclosed that about 1/20th of the total tribal population were
Christian. Meaning, there was actually an increase of 3,474,128 persons
among the Christian community during 1931-41.
But let's return to where we started
-- Gujarat and its tribals. Davinder Kumar wrote in Outlook of July 1:
"Of all the disturbing facts that have emerged from the post-mortem of
the communal carnage in Gujarat, the most baffling and alarming is the
large-scale participation of Dalits and tribals in the rioting... Even
more shocking: tribals, who have little in common with mainstream Hinduism,
brandished weapons, looted and killed as they violently avenged the 'attack
on Hindus'."
From Rajdeep Sardesai, to Barbara
Crossette, to Our Special Correspondent -- everybody needed smelling salts
at this revelation. Quite natural. After all, what would those whose lineage
has no bond with Hinduism except for, if at all, the occasional phuljhadi
at Diwali, know about a Hindu memory...?
Identity is the result of the interactions
among an array of phenomena that gather around a responsive core and induce
its expression. Since the interactions are diverse, the relations that
emerge, too, are diverse and thus prone to change. An individual is not
just a biological entity; he also carries a memory imprint which, among
others, accommodates the body's mental and spiritual needs against the
external forces that protect or threaten his survival. The Adivasi or Vanvasi
or tribal was and is a Hindu. And as a Hindu, he did not require "successful
experiment" to rise in unprecedented anger at the unprecedented provocation
of 58 Hindus -- men, women and children -- locked into a bogie and set
on fire.
On the night of January 7, 1993,
four women, three men and two girls were locked in a room, doused with
kerosene, and set on fire. When the news of the Radhabai Chawl massacre
spread, including how the attackers stood around shouting "Allah-o-Akbar,"
Bombay burned. When 68 Hindus suffer the same fate, why wouldn't Gujarat
burn...? Did you really expect the Dalits and Adivasis of Gujarat to be
as brainwashed by our "eminent historians" as you are?
The right or wrong of the Gujarat
riots is not at debate here. I'm talking "Hindutva laboratory" and "animists."
Neither exists. What does is vile human character -- as displayed by the
Muslims in their unprovoked massacre, by the Hindus in their brutal retort,
and by the Christians in their unceasing efforts to destroy Hinduism. Fact
is, as long as "secularists" keep pinning Hindutva and condoning Islam
and Christianity, there will be more Gujarats.
