Politicians From India

"Happiness of Hindus is the happiness of my family and me. The problems faced by Hindu society are our problems and its humiliation is our humiliation. Such feeling of belonging should be in every Hindu. This is the basis of Hindu Dharma."

"Bhagwa Dhwaj is not Sangh’s own creation. Nor, it has any intention of creating a separate flag. Sangh has only accepted the Bhagwa Dhwaj, which for thousands of years has been the flag of our Rashtra Dharma. Bhagwa Dhwaj has a long history and tradition and it is an embodiment of Hindu culture."

"Peace and love are possible only between equals. The real enemies of peace are those weak people, who, because of their weakness, incite the strong. If we are weak, we commit the sin of disturbing world peace. The real cause of our degradation is our mental weakness."

"Seeing the Saffron Flag (Bhagwa Dhwaj), the entire history of the nation along with its tradition and culture comes before our eyes. The mind rises and special motivation comes in it. Only this Saffron Flag (Bhagwa Dhwaj) we consider as our Guru, as a symbol of our Tattva i.e. principle. Sangh has regarded the most sacred Bhagwa Dhwaj as the Guru instead of any particular individual. The reason for this being that an individual may be a great person but he cannot remain consistent in his life style nor can he be perfect in all respects. Consequently, instead of making our position awkward by accepting any individual person, we have adopted an inspirational symbol of victory and strength, Bhagwa Dhwaj, as our guru. It represents our history, tradition and supreme sacrifices made for our nation. It is the embodiment of all basic elements of our nationhood."

"I have had long association with Thengadiji. I was present in the Bhopal meeting in which the decision to form the BMS was taken. During the discussion to decide the name of the new organisation, Thengadiji had suggested the name Shramjivi Sangathan. The name Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh was coined keeping in view the fact that the name should be simple and meaningful. I feel trade unionism is facing a crisis today. We have before us two paths, one of these is on the way out. There is a need to find out the third one. Workers' interests should be protected but at the same time the nation's interest too must be borne in mind. The workers' movement is in a crisis and how to balance things in a changing scenario should be considered using the third way out, which was what Thengadi had been attempting. Whatever Thengadiji has written should be read by all of us. I feel it will guide us for long."

"Small wonder that balance of farces in Kashmir should have continued to tilt in favour of Islamic imperialism till the last Hindu has been hounded out of his ancestral homeland. Small wonder that the hoodlums strut around not only in the valley but in the capital city of Delhi with airs of injured innocence. Small wonder that the Marxist-Muslim combine of scribes who dominate the media blame Jagmohan for arranging an overnight and enmasse exodus of the Hindus from the valley. (They cannot forgive Jagmohan for bringing back Kashmir to India at a time when the combine was hoping that Pakistan would face India with an accomplished fact.) Small wonder that what Arun Shourie has aptly described as the "Formula Factory" - the Nayars, the Puris, the Kotharis, the Dhars, the Haksars, the Tarkundes - should be busy devising ways for handing over the Kashmir Hindus to their age-old oppressors."

"This awakening to the need of more integrity and more purposeful action is part of a larger pattern set by politicians like erstwhile Kashmir Governor Jagmohan, former Minister of Disinvestment Arun Shourie and former Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi: to cut through the vested interests and not to let them sap the energies of society. All three have been have been criticized by the secularists as paragons of Hindutva. Indeed, we have it on the authority of the secularists that those whom we know as men of integrity and as spectacularly good administrators, are “rabid communalists”, while the opportunists and time-servers whom they call “moderates”, are practitioners and upholders of corruption."

"Jagmohan was reinstated as the governor in January 1990 and remained in office till May that year. He has been made the fall guy by the Congress and its ‘secular’ allies to deflect attention from their failures. Shri Jagmohan wrote in his letter to Rajiv Gandhi how he was being targeted while bringing forth the point that he had been repeatedly alerting the government about the situation in the state. Shri Jagmohan wrote:…Need I remind you that from the beginning of 1988, I had started sending “Warning Signals” to you about the gathering storm in Kashmir? But you and the power wielders around you had neither the time, nor the inclination, nor the vision, to see these signals. They were so clear, so pointed, that to ignore them was to commit sins of true historical proportions… …To recapitulate and to serve as illustrations, I would refer to a few of these signals. In August 1988, after analysing the current and undercurrents, I had summed up the position thus: “The drum-beaters of parochialism and fundamentalism are working overtime. Subversion is on the increase. The shadows of events from across the border are lengthening. Lethal weapons have come in. More may be on the way”. In April 1989 I had desperately pleaded for immediate action… …Around that point of time, when the police set-up was getting demoralised, when intelligence was fast drying up, when infiltrators in Services were bringing stories of subversive plans like TOPAC, your protégé Dr Farooq Abdullah was either going abroad or releasing 70 hardcore and highly motivated terrorists who were trained in the handling of dangerous weapons, who had contacts at the highest level in Pakistan occupied Kashmir, who knew all the devious routes of going to and returning from Pakistan and whose detention had been approved by the three-member advisory board presided over by the Chief Justice… …The truth supported by the preponderence of evidence is that before January 19, 1990, the terrorist had become the real ruler. The ground had been yielded to him to such an extent that it dominated the public mind. He could virtually swim like a fish in the sea. Would it matter if the sea was subsequently surrounded? In your attempt to hide all your sins of omission and commission in Kashmir and as a part of your small politics which cannot go beyond dividing people and creating vote banks, you took special pains to demolish all regard and respect which the Kashmiri masses, including the Muslim youth, had developed for me during my first term from April 26, 1984, to July 12, 1989. Against all facts, unassailable evidence and your own precious pronouncements, you started labelling me as anti-Muslim."

"Aiyar wants the public to believe that the Kashmiri Pandits are so unintelligent that they left their comfortable homes and beautiful Valley at the instance of a pied piper called Jagmohan, and not by the militants' strategy of 'killing one and frightening one thousand'. He ignores the hard fact that eminent Kashmiri Pandits had been butchered before I took over."

"Democracy does not reside in speeches but in actual practices of its votaries."

"The Kashmiri Pandits left the Valley in droves in 1990 because they were corralled and herded out like cattle by the cowboy-Governor of the day...."

"It is Mr. Jagmohan .... who saved the Valley for India. He slowly re-established the authority of the State. He put the terrorists on the run."

"Jagmohan, in his recent My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir shows the deep sickness that has overtaken the country, the intimate nexus that exists between the militants, the so-called national political parties, and groups of doubtful motives working under various names: liberty and civil rights forums, prominent citizens or private initiative, etc. Their game is obvious; it is to confuse the nation’s counsel, to weaken its will, to create a soft society so that its parts can be picked up one by one."

"Accept only that which stands to your reason. Never accept anything merely because it is preached by some great leader. Test its truth on the touchstone of your intellectual discrimination."

"PM Modi gave an example of administrative intolerance. During the last days of the Vajpayee government, it was decided to build six All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The then health minister Sushma Swaraj named the Patna AIIMS Jaiprakash Narayan Institute, and similarly, the other five were also named after non-Congress national leaders. Vajpayee’s government lost the elections and the Congress-led UPA came to power. The UPA passed a Bill in Parliament and ‘banned’ these names to be used for any government project. That was the level of intolerance, he said."

"Of all the Indians speaking out for the Bengalis, the most striking name to protest was Jayaprakash Narayan. He was an elder statesman of India’s independence struggle against the British Empire, who had been uneasily won over to a tactical kind of nonviolence by Mahatma Gandhi. Narayan—known as J.P.—was a close friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, but his name is eternally linked to Indira Gandhi’s for a more tragic reason. In 1975, Narayan would challenge her rule with a mass mobilization of his supporters, and she would in response declare her notorious Emergency, suspending India’s democracy... Narayan fierily supported the Bengali guerrillas, meeting with Bengali political leaders and Mukti Bahini officers, and taking a particular interest in supplying them with arms and artillery. He demanded the defense of the “political and human rights” of the Bengalis, and decried a “holocaust” carried out by a “Hitlerian junta in power in Islamabad.”"

"Freedom became one of the beacon lights of my life and it has remained so ever since. Freedom with the passing of years transcended the mere freedom of my country and embraced freedom of man everywhere and from every sort of trammel—above all, it meant freedom of the human personality, freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit. This freedom has become the passion of my life and I shall not see it compromised for bread, for security, for prosperity, for the glory of the state or for anything else."

"I was reviewing H.V. Seshadri's book, The Tragic Story of India's Partition, in a series.... As the proofs came one day, I found that some of the significant passages regarding Sufis were missing from the composition by the printing press. I picked up the typed copy, and saw that those passages had been crossed out with red pencil. I turned to Shri Malkani, and asked him if he had done it. He would not look me in the eyes, but muttered, "We have to live with them." I observed, "I was also trying to see that they learn to live with us." He did not reply. Shri Malkani was sacked soon after. I do not know the whole story. All I came to know much later was that his failure to stop me from writing regularly in the Organiser was one of the reasons for the sorry outcome. But at that time I did not suspect it that I had something to do with his departure from a weekly which he had served for three score years, so much so that the Organiser had come to mean Malkani and Malkani the Organiser. Ale ways of party bosses are always inscrutable."

"When in the 1980s the historian Sita Ram Goel filled a weekly column in Organiser with mustering evidence for his position that fundamen­talist intolerance is the essence of Islam itself rather than a deviation, RSS General Secretary H.V. Seshadri intervened to have the column discon­tinued and the editor, the arch-moderate K.R. Malkani, sacked. The reason given for the discontinuation was that "othe­rwise, with such attacks on Islam, the Muslims will not join us"."

"Next day, I gave to JP my Hindi book, Samyak Sambuddha, which I had recently compiled from Buddhist classics. In its introduction I had maintained that Buddhism was only a dimension of Sanatana Dharma which I had then proceeded to define. I requested JP to read just the introduction, if he could spare the time and had the inclination. I wanted him to know what I meant by Hinduism. JP said that he liked Buddhism very much, and that he will read the whole book. I had no hope that he would. But I was pleasantly surprised when I met him after a few days. He said, "I have to seek your forgiveness (khsama chahta hun) for losing my temper that day. I did not know that you were a scholar, and had made such a deep study of Buddhism. And I have simply fallen for the beautiful (madhura) Hindi you write." I was moved to tears, and touched his feet. He continued, "If Sanatana Dharma is what you say it is, I am all for it. You can count me as a Sanatanist from today. You can say to whomsoever you please that JP has become a Sanatanist." I felt very happy. My relations with JP became more or less smooth thereafter. I thought that my Hinduism was no more a matter of suspicion in his eyes. I have told elsewhere the story of how I was able to take JP on his first ever visit to an RSS camp."

"Hindu [educational] institutions have no fundamental right to compensation in case of compulsory acquisition of their property by the state... a lasting solution to this problem lies only in amending Article 30 of the Constitution..."

"I don't care who is with me. I want this ban to be implemented because as a doctor I believe that more than any medium, films influence impressionable minds."

"Section 377 of IPC, which criminalizes men who have sex with men, must go."

"India will be another Africa, if left to itself."

"We definitely condemn the incident where women were attacked, but the pub culture must stop. It is because of this that youth in the country have taken to drinking in a big way."

"We will teach people to fish, rather than provide them fish. We will bring schemes that will create jobs."

"In our country, we do sex. But we don't want to talk about it and that is why we have a billion population."

"Muslims have also contributed to the youth who are willing to be cannon fodder in the name of jehad. I believe that most of the Muslims want to live peacefully and have nothing to do with vandalism. It's very unfortunate that not even 10 Muslim leaders have marched to resettle the displaced Kashmiri Pandits while on the other hand Hindu leaders marched for rehabilitating Muslims who have suffered in Gujarat. After the Gujarat violence, there was an outcry by the Hindu leaders but not a fatwa has been issued till date by the Muslim ulama against the 70,000 people killed in Kashmir."

"First, all Hindus and Muslims should accept one reality - that we are ethnically and culturally the same. No one from the Hindu-Muslim society must suffer German-Jew paradigm. Each and every Muslim of India emanates ancestorily from the gene, RBC, bone, blood and flesh of a Hindu. If there is something in Hindu dharma that hurts Muslims, I, as a Hindu leader, am ready to reform that."

"Violence of any type by anyone and anywhere should be vehemently condemned. I feel that Muslims haven't condemned the violence in Godhra and Kashmir the way they did in Gujarat-an undemocratic act. When the secularists selectively condemn the Gujarat violence, it seems that without Sita haran (Sita's abduction) the Lanka dahan (Lanka's burning) is imagined. So if you have to criticise the Gujarat carnage, you must also condemn the Kashmir killings as well as the Godhra massacre. If you are only condemning Gujarat, you are inviting the jehadi terrorists and Musharraf to attack Akshardham538 with a red carpet welcome."

"In the same manner Muslims must think about the closed concepts of Darul Islam, kufr, jehad etc that have resulted in Pakistan, the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits and other global acts of terrorism . Muslims should also come forward and accept plurality rather than totality for peaceful co-existence. Each Indian Muslim should project a Mohammed (PBUH), a Ram, a Christ and a Guru Nanak in him."

"Neither our houses and businesses nor our daughters and sisters are safe in places such as Hyderabad, Bhopal and Meerut. Development is important, but what will be its use when Hindus won’t be there at homes, and like Hindus in Kashmir, they are thrown out of their motherland."

"The chapter is poisoning the minds of little children. They will not respect their own religion in future. They will not turn out to be good Hindus and it will cause harm to the nation."

"There are secular forces that want to convert India into a graveyard like Kashmir. I am proud of VHP."

"A Hindu cannot be a Talib, jehadi or kafir because a Hindu is one who is a hundred times more refined, cultured, more honest, more religious and more balanced in his outlook. Hinduism is the culmination of the cultural evolution of mankind. As a Hindu, I see God in every individual."

"A Talib is one who cannot tolerate the Bamiyan Buddha; a jehadi is one who kills and displaces the innocent Kashmiri Pandits; a kafir is one who is intolerant like Osama and his followers. Osama's religion misguided him to be a terrorist. Had Osama been a Hindu, as per this religion, he would have been running a Rama- Krishna matha somewhere in the Hindukush Mountains for the welfare of the needy rather than plotting the massacre of thousands of innocents in the 9/11 tragedy."

"VHP is “running more than 8,000 social service projects through out the length and breadth of India. Those who are trying to defame an organisation like this are only paving way for ruining India”."

"What is wrong if some organisations like the VHP, RSS and Shiv Sena believe that the Vedic culture of a society that believes in plurality and unity in diversity, has to be retained? If we are saving a civilisation that preserves 1100 religions and 1600 dialects, defending it against the totalitarian and violent religious belief system within democratic set- up, is it wrong?"

"We are fighting against such people who are trying to destroy the Hindu society with their totalitarian attitude that only promotes the Church paradigm of the 17th and 18th century Europe. We are exposing the grand design of Pakistan and the ISI to destabilise India. If we are being critic ised for that, it means that the secularists are supporting the plans of Musharraf and Macaulay both against the unity of India."

"I am heartbroken to say that the youth of the country doesn’t deserve us. I am here to hear who has a word of solace and point of solution of the problems that the nation is facing. Is it only votes that matter? Is it just us and them? Are we not simplifying matters by breaking up the country in two parts—us and them?"

"It has been showcased as a tool exclusively meant for disbursement of subsidies and we do not realise that it can also be used for mass surveillance. Can the government ... assure us that this Aadhaar card and the data that will be collected under it – biometric, biological, iris scan, finger print, everything put together – will not be misused as has been done by the NSA in the U.S.?"

"In the villages of my constituency, old people, venerable people used to smoke marijuana. Today, by imposing ban on natural substances, which people have been using for ages, from the time of Shiva, we have actually forced a lot of these people to move on to alcohol."

"Let's be totally intolerant towards intolerance."

"We have never said that Bengal should not be given funds but Odisha should be treated equally."

"Just because we do not speak Hindi does not mean we are not Indians."

"A hungry man is an angry man."

"I am not judging them, but they are judging the House. Decrying the NJAC Act, it is a slap on the face of the people. It is a very sad event."

"You run an NGO, wear jeans ripped at the knees, move about in society, children are with you, what values you will teach?"

"We will cleanse every area of public discourse that has been westernised and where Indian culture and civilisation need to be restored - be it the history we read or our cultural heritage or our institutes that have been polluted over years."

"We discussed education and culture and how we can inculcate values. The other issue was pollution of ideology, national ideology...Some people alleged that we are doing saffronisation. If at all saffronisation has been done, it has been done by the public of India. We accept the mandate of the people."