MISSION INDIA 2

Towards the end of his life Swami Vivekananda seemed to have summed up his Gospel in one word --- MANLINESS. This was quintessentially Swamiji's message to mankind --- 'Above all be strong and manly...I have respect even for the wicked for his strength will one day bring him to goodness...Strength, strength, this is the watchword of the Upanishads.'

Today, India is beset with a myriad problems topping which is national security. Terrorist attacks which are proxy wars of Pakistan against India are a recurring phenomena. Negotiations of peace, summit meetings and periodic pleas to Pakistan for handing over to India the masterminds of the terrorist attacks have failed to draw the desired response and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future for these terrorist leaders are but the carriers of the commandment of the extremist sections of the Pakistani establishment. Deception, disruption and denial --- these are the magic mantras that guide Pakistan's India-policy and this has been characteristic of Pakistan right from Independence. After having dominated India's political scene since 1192 with the capitulation of Hindu power at the hands of Muhammad Ghori in the Second Battle of Tarain till the Britishers established their suzerainty in India, a section of the Indian Muslim community spearheaded by Muhammad Ali Jinnah started the propaganda of impending Muslim subjugation at the hands of the Hindus in post-independence India. This fear was fuelled by the Britishers who designed to permanently impair free India by dividing it along communal lines to suit their long-term strategic interests in the subcontinent. Accordingly, they gave allowance to the persistent demand of the Muslim League to partition India at the time of her independence. And when the hour came, India was partitioned. On the 14th of August, 1947 Pakistan was born. A day later India gained her independence. The civil war that Nehru and the Britishers had, so to say, wished to avert by allowing the Partition of India could not be averted. The transfer of population, the greatest in human history, that followed, as the Hindus and the Muslims by the tens of millions got uprooted from their homelands and migrated across the borders that demarcated the two countries to seek relocation in their new homelands, led to the loss of millions of lives through communal riots, deprivation and disease. The ensuing blood-bath was unparalleled in its scale and monstrosity in the history of India. Indians killed each other in their abortive bid to set right the political adjustment that gave birth to the two nations, India and Pakistan. The horrors of Partition shook the subcontinent like never before and an integrated landmass and people was broken into two nations that have since independence fought four wars and a continuous skirmish along the border characterizes the relations of the two nations.

The question arises as to why the Muslim community that seceded from India could not trust the Hindus, a fact that led to Partition? The reason is but obvious. It is a well-known principle in psychology that what one does towards another one fears the same in return from that quarter. Following the Second Battle of Tarain in 1192 the invading Muslims began to dominate the political landscape of India and started systematic subversion of  the Hindu people by destruction of their temples, confiscation of certain basic rights of decent living, exaction of unjust taxes and forced conversion into Islam. Mahmud of Ghazni had earlier desecrated the famous Somnath Temple in Gujarat and plundered its wealth. Ghori, the Slave Dynasty rulers, the Khiljis, the Tughlaqs, the Sayeeds, the Lodhis and the Mughals barring Akbar, all in varying degrees kept up the religious persecution of the Hindus and their sub-sects like the Sikhs with the malicious motivation of conversion to Islam. For nearly six centuries this oppression of the Hindus by the Muslims continued till the British gradually gained political mastery over India. The meek Hindu race silently suffered this cruel fate save for occasional resistance when a Maharana Pratap or a Shivaji or a Guru Gobind Singh surfaced as their saviour for fleeting moments and that too in no great measure for the might of the Mughals then was mammoth. The British Raj established a certain element of religious stability, true, but the wedge the Britishers drove into the heartland of India in their bid to divide and rule the land eventually led to the Partition of this great land along communal lines. The British made great efforts to keep the Hindus and the Muslims disunited and cleverly used the Muslim League against the Congress to sow seeds of disaffection and distrust among the members of the two communities. The ploy worked, for the Muslims, long used to dominating the Hindus, now began to realize that their days of political mastery of the Hindus was over and that they would be relegated to minority status in independent India at the mercy of the majority Hindus. Such a view was really uncalled for. Once the British left, India could have evolved into a multicultural secular democratic State and the projected fears of the Muslim League about the safety of the Indian Muslims was largely politically motivated and not grounded in reason or in historical experience suggesting such a possible pathetic state. But the Muslim League aided by the British Indian government was successfully able to drive home paranoia into the Muslim mind about their security in a Hindu-majority free India. And so the Partition did take place with its horrific consequences and a permanent state of political tension in the sub-continent. But why did the Muslims accept the bait offered by the Muslim League? Could it be that deep down they were afraid of Hindu reprisal to their age-old tyranny? Was it that they saw things through the prism of their intolerant past and given the way they had historically treated the Hindus, they could not imagine a better fate for themselves? There were liberal voices among the Muslims but their feeble protestations got drowned in the general melee that prevailed. Thus was humanity defeated yet again at the hands of fanatical forces feeding on age-old irrational ideological indoctrination and Mother India was cut up in halves. Gandhiji was assassinated soon after. His dream of a free united India had been dashed to 'pieces' and in his last days he witnessed the precipitous fall of his beloved India into the clutches of the violence he abhorred. China and Pakistan carved out by deceit 50 % of the State of Kashmir and India, paralysed by policy, stood to watch this decapitation of her geographical form. In 1962 China occupied a large portion of Arunachal Pradesh which it continues to unlawfully hold, and it dares Indian Prime Ministers in the face should any such pay a visit to Arunachal which is a legitimate part of India despite Chinese propaganda about its proprietorship over the same citing the McMahon Line dispute with India.

Such then is the predicament we as a nation face with over 1.3 billion people, the second-most populous country in the world now, veritably, a multicultural, multilingual, multi-religious continent of men and minds maturing into the most vibrant democracy in the world, a nation of infinite possibilities whose role in the world has been set out by the Rishis ages ago, that of spiritualizing the whole of humanity in the ages to come. But to achieve this stupendous spiritual objective India must be united. As Swamiji had once famously said that what India needed was an Islam body and a Vedanta brain. By Islam body he meant that India would have to have human solidarity with its diverse races, communities and groups coalescing into a united whole which was to be the State of India. And by Vedanta brain Swamiji had meant that the universal principles of the Vedanta that had the divinity of all of humanity as its focus was to be the the core of our national consciousness, a vast catholic conception of life which was inclusive and never exclusive or sectarian. Thus would harmony be achieved in this land of a myriad diversity and the destiny of India fulfilled, that of spiritualization of the whole of humanity along non-sectarian philosophical lines and not sectarian religious lines. This is the destiny of India and its fulfilment is possible only by the spiritual resurgence of India along Vedantic lines. May this be the national mantra --- 'Vedanta brain, Islam body'. May the greats of all races, all nations, all cultures, all religions and all times bless our Motherland that she may foster her children into a unified brotherhood full of the light of the Vedas, the Mother of all religions and spiritual civilizations! May we love each other and build an ideal nation which shall yet teach the world the glorious principles of the Vedas! May we all gain in vigour through amity, peace and mutual goodwill! May good sense prevail in all our endeavour and not blind bigotry! May we address each other as Indians and not as Hindus or Muslims or by any other special denomination! This country is ours. May we safeguard its integrity and stability by right thinking, right living and right action! May we, the children of Mother India, all unite to preserve our rich heritage, our tradition of peaceful co-existence with our neighbours and harmonious living within our borders despite the aberrations that have crept in from time to time in our long and and protracted history! And for all these we need strength. National valour, manliness and not cowardice masquerading as virtue is the need of the hour. May Swamiji bless us with his ideal of strength! Jai Bharatatma Vivekananda!

May Peace prevail everywhere! Om! Shanti! Shanti! Shanti! (Om! Peace! Peace! Peace!) Jai Hind!