Anti Communists

"We comfort ourselves: at least, the virus of reservations has not got into judicial appointments; at least, reservations have not been extended to Muslims and Christians. Both notions are just make-believe."

"As for reservations not having been extended to members of religions that repudiate caste – Islam, Christianity, Sikhism – again, that is but make-believe. The chairman of the Minorities Commission, my friend Tarlochan Singh, sends me a list of fifty-eight castes and of fourteen tribal groups, Muslim members of which have been given reservations. Even those who convert to one of these religions, continue to remain entitled to reservation. The rule in Tamil Nadu is that if the name of the father falls in the lists of Backward Castes/Most Backward Castes/Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes, then, even if the person has converted to another religion, he remains entitled to reservations. In Gujarat, members of Backward Castes continue to avail of not just reservations but even of advantages under the roster system after conversion – 137 castes and sub-castes have been listed as socially and educationally backward in the state; of these, twenty-eight belong to the Muslim community. In Karnataka, ‘caste at birth’ is the norm. In UP, several Muslim castes are included in the reservation list – Lalbegi, Mazhabis, even Ansaris. The position is no different in Madhya Pradesh, in West Bengal. The Indian Express correspondent in Kolkata reports that the government of the ostentatiously secular CPI(M) strained to have reservations in government service as well as educational institutions extended to Muslims qua Muslims, and directed the state Minorities Commission to ascertain how such reservation had been decreed in Andhra Pradesh. The plan has had to be deferred for the time being, he writes, Only because the Andhra Pradesh High Court has struck down the Andhra order as unconstitutional."

"Even as moves are afoot to get the Andhra judgment reversed, the government has directed the armed forces to count soldiers and officers by their religion. Nor is this move an inadvertence. It has arisen as a result of a committee that the government has appointed under a former chief justice of Delhi, Rajinder Sachar -each member of which has been carefully selected for his ‘secular’ beliefs. Each term of reference on which it is to supply information and make recommendations, as we noted at the outset, has been just as carefully selected to justify reservations and other concessions to Muslims as a religious group."

"With elections looming, in January 2006, the Government of Kerala announced another ‘package’ of reservations for backward castes and for Muslims: service rules of the state shall be altered to permit direct recruitment of these sections so as to fill the 40 per cent quota that has been set aside for them; if suitable candidates are not available from these sections, the vacancies shall not be filled by merit; the state Public Service Commission shall prepare an ‘additional supplementary list’ so that the vacancies may be filled only by these sections; 20 per cent of the seats shall be reserved for these castes in graduate and postgraduate courses in government colleges; the chief minister will himself monitor the implementation of the reservation policy; there shall be a permanent commission to ensure that reservations are fully filled..."

"With elections upon them, the DMK and its allies announced in Tamil Nadu that, once in office, they will bring forth legislation to give reservations to Muslims and Christians."

"The Jharkhand government, in turn, has announced that members of thirty-two tribes that are the most backward – literacy level among nine of them is said to be just 10 per cent – shall be directly recruited into government service; those among them who pass the graduation examination shall not have to take the qualifying examination which all others who enter government service have to take."

"And beware, the progressive judges have already put out the basis for extending reservations to Muslims or Christians as Muslims and Christians. The word that the Constitution uses is ‘communities’, the word it uses is ‘classes’, Justices Jeevan Reddy, Sawant and Thommen hold in Indra Sawhney. ‘Community’ and ‘class’ are wider than ‘caste’, they say. So, entities wider than ‘caste’ can certainly be subsumed under them, they say – the only proviso being that the groups so identified be ‘backward’. Second, in spite of the teachings of Islam, Christianity and Sikhism, castes persist in these religions also, they explain in justification. As that is the reality, it would be invidious to restrict access to reservations to the backward sections of Hindus alone...3"

"How far we have descended! Today progressives dress up their casteism as secularism! The benefits of reservation shall be extended to Muslims and Christians also, they proudly announce. In Andhra the decision of the government has had to be twice struck down by the courts – the government had decreed reservations for Muslims qua Muslims. Even as moves are afoot to get that judgment reversed, the Central government directed the armed forces to count soldiers and officers by their religion. Nor was the move an inadvertence. It arose as a result of a committee that the government had appointed under a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court. Each member of the committee has been carefully selected for his ‘secular’ and ‘progressive’ beliefs. Each term of reference on which the committee has been asked to supply information and make recommendations has been just as carefully selected to justify reservations and other concessions to Muslims as a religious group:"

"Every single item betrays the singular purpose of the whole exercise–to provide the rationale for extending reservations to Muslims. Nor is that opportunism confined to the present ruling coalition. In the run-up to the 2005 elections in Bihar, rival groups were vying with each other promising reservations for Muslims qua Muslims."

"The object of the framers of the Constitution was, as ours must be, quite the opposite. It was to wipe out the cancer of caste even from Hindu society. Only with the greatest reluctance did they agree to allow reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Tribe – for they felt that doing even this much would perpetuate caste distinctions. The reservations were, therefore, to be exceptions to the general rule."

"One must reflect deeply on the nature of the adversity, and on how it may be converted into an instrument for growth. The routine Gandhiji set for himself was always so much stricter and so much more demanding than anything that a jailer would have thought of imposing on anyone. Similarly, picture Vinoba in solitary confinement in that cell, 8 feet by 9 feet in dimension: how he converts imprisonment into ashram life; how in that tiny space, in forced and complete isolation, he retains his mental discipline by meditating for two to three hours every day; how he disciplines himself physically by walking every day for eight hours inside that suffocating cell, and thereby covering ten miles—covering ten miles in a cell 8 feet by 9 feet every single day! In both cases, control remained in the hands of the prisoner, not the jailer—a very important factor in dealing with adversity."

"The rituals—for instance, those we go through during a marriage ceremony—were devised to imbed certain values into us: the experience of centuries had led thoughtful persons to see that going through those steps, that reciting those mantras and reflecting on them would help us internalize those values, and mould our lives accordingly. But what do we do today? First, we outsource the ritual—to a pandit, say. As he goes through the motions prescribed for solemnizing a marriage, as he chants those mantras, we don’t have a clue about the meaning of the words that he is reciting, nor of the steps—‘Now pour some water on the earth, and then on . . .’ Nor do we care: ‘Panditji, puja zaraa jaldi khatam kar deejiye. Guest dinner ke liye wait kar rahen hain’—‘Panditji, please conclude the puja a bit quickly. The guests are waiting for dinner.’"

"In the end, India had to wait till 1998 for Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians to be published. This book uncovered in detail after ghastly detail, this multi-layered assault on the national psyche that has disfigured the minds of at least three generations regarding the vital truths of their own nation. And thanks to this seminal contribution, “Eminent Historian” has fittingly become a swearword in the Indian public discourse."

"Anyone who thought India had dismantled its notorious system of bureaucratic controls when it embarked on economic reform in 1991 ought to consult Arun Shourie. As cabinet minister (at various times since 1998) for privatisation, administrative reform, information technology and telecommunications, Mr Shourie's observations are close to the bone. The Hindu nationalist-led government in which Mr Shourie was the most prominent economic reformer was thrown out last May. Franz Kafka would have had difficulty dreaming up some of the examples cited in Mr Shourie's book. ... But it is what India's bureaucracy is like under normal conditions that matters and Mr Shourie does a depressingly thorough job in chronicling it. One can only hope that India's senior civil servants find the time to read this book - and have the grace to wince."

"Muslim leaders and Stalinist historians were raising a howl about Hindu chauvinism when it came to the notice of Arun Shourie, the Chief Editor of the Indian Express at that time, that some significant passages had been omitted from the English translation of an Urdu book written long ago by the father of Ali Mian, the famous Muslim theologian from Lucknow. He wrote an article, Hideaway Communalism, in the Indian Express of February 5, 1989 pointing out how the passages regarding destruction of Hindu temples and building of mosques on their sites at Delhi, Jaunpur, Kanauj, Etawah, Ayodhya, Varanasi and Mathura had been dropped from the English translation published by Ali Mian himself. This was a new and dramatic departure from the norm observed so far by the prestigious press. Publishing anything which said that Islam was less than sublime had been taboo for a long time. I was pleasantly surprised, and named Arun Shourie as the Gorbachev of India. He had thrown open the windows and let in fresh breeze in a house full of the stinking garbage of stale slogans."

"[Arun Shourie's article 'Hideaway Communalism'] had violated a taboo placed by the mass media and the academia on any unfavourable narration of the history of Islam since the days when Mahatma Gandhi took command of the Indian National Congress and launched his first non-cooperation movement in support of the Turkish Khilafat."

"Arun Shourie had shown great courage. But he had counted without the secularist crowd which had access to the owner of the Indian Express. He told me on the phone that there was some trouble brewing. I have never talked to him about the nature of the trouble, and do not know if my articles had anything to do with his ouster from the Indian Express next year. All I know is that he had to slow down the publication of my next two articles."

"Mani Shankar Aiyar totally condemns one of Arun Shourie's books, and then goes on to declare that he has decided not to read it : "Shourie gave the final touches to the manuscript of his book on Islam, a work so vicious and perverted that every English speaking Muslim I know was outraged... I decided then to show my solidarity with secularism by not reading the book." (The book he refers to, is apparently Shourie's Religion in Politics, a very sane and sober look at several Scriptures in the light of reason.)"

"The problem of book-banning and censorship on Islam criticism is compounded by the related problem of self- censorship. Thus, when in late 1992, the famous columnist Arun Shourie wanted to publish a collection of his columns on Islamic fundamentalism, esp. the Rushdie and Ayodhya affairs (Indian Controversies), the publisher withdrew at the last moment, afraid of administrative or physical reprisals, and the printer also backed out. Earlier, Shourie had been lucky to find one paper willing to publish these columns, for most Indian newspapers strictly keep the lid on Islam criticism. Hindu society is a terrorized society."

"Arun Shourie was sacked as Indian Express editor, apparently under government pressure, after revealing that, in October 1990, Prime Minister V.P. Singh had aborted his own compromise arrangement on Ayodhya under pressure from Imam Bukhari, prominent member of the BMAC."

"Or take A Secular Agenda by Arun Shourie, PhD from Syracure NY and stunningly successful Disinvestment Minister in the AB Vajpayee Government, when India scored its highest economic growth figures. It was a very important book, and it left no stone standing of the common assumption among so-called experts that India (with its religion-based civil codes and its discriminatory laws against Hinduism) is a secular state, i.e. a state in which all citizens are equal before the law, regardless of their religion. Though the book deconstructs the bedrock on which the “experts” have built their view of modern India, they have never formulated a refutation. Instead, they just keep on repeating their own deluded assumption, as in: “The BJP threatens India’s structure as a secular state.” (Actually, the BJP does not, and India is not.) They can do so because they are secure in the knowledge that, among the audiences that matter, their camp controls the sphere of discourse. Concerning the interface between religion and modern politics, the established “academic” view is not just defective, it is an outrageous failure."

"The only ray of light in this encircling gloom was Arun Shourie, the veteran journalist and the chief editor of the Indian express at that time. On February 5, 1989, he frontpaged an article, Hideaway Communalism, showing that while the Urdu version of a book by Maulana Hakim Sayid Abdul Hai of the Nadwatul-Ulama at Lucknow had admitted that seven famous mosques had been built on the sites of Hindu temples, the English translation published by the Maulana’s son, Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi (Ali Mian) had eschewed the “controversial evidence”. He also published in the Indian Express three articles written by me on the subject of Islamic iconoclasm. This was a very courageous defiance of the ban imposed by Islam and administered by Secularism, namely, that crimes committed by Islam cannot even be whispered in private, not to speak of being proclaimed in public."

"He dismisses Arun Shourie by pigeon-holing him as ‘post-modern’. He does not know that Hinduism has its own view of Time, and that a person who serves Sanatana Dharma cannot be dated. Scholars like Arun Shourie belong neither to the past, nor to the present, nor yet to the future. They belong to a timeless span."

"Just then Shourie was sacked as its editor. The reason was not so much the article, but, apparently, his entire policy of including columns by Hindu communalists like Ram Swarup and Sita Ram Goel, and his own articles that debunked some of the prevalent secularism, such as Hideaway Communalism."

"I thank particularly my friend Arun Shourie because we need people like Arun Shourie to challenge us so that we can rectify our mistakes and all together collectively move towards the creation of a new India, a new humanity."

"It is clear that Witzel himself has a political agenda: note his resentment of the “present Indian (right wing) denouncement of the ‘eminent historians’ of Delhi” (§9) – some of these “eminent historians” actively collaborated with Witzel and Farmer in their recent media-blitz in the Indian press. The reader is invited to go carefully through Arun SHOURIE’s book “Eminent Historians” (1998), which is being referred to here, and see the kind of political scholarship to whose defense Witzel has no compunctions in rushing!"

"As for Shourie, Mukhia is hardly revealing a secret with his information that Shourie “does journalism for a living”. The greatest investigative journalist in India by far, he has indeed unearthed some dirty secrets of Congressite, casteist and Communist politicians. His revelations about the corrupt financial dealings between the Marxist historians and the government-sponsored academic institutions are in that same category: fearless and factual investigative journalism. Shourie has a Ph.D. degree in Economics from Syracuse University in U.S.A., which should attest to a capacity for scholarship, even if not strictly in the historical field. When he criticizes the gross distortions of history by Mukhia’s school, one could say formally that he transgresses the boundaries of his specialism, but such formalistic exclusives only hide the absence of a substantive refutation."

"When Shourie's articles first appeared, they aroused great emotions and savage attacks. He quoted from the Bible and the Quran extensively on the question of co-existence. Many were shocked.... Shourie has called his book, Religion in Politics; someday he should bring out another book, Politics in Religion....The first book discusses politics complicated by religions factors; the second would discuss religions which are essentially political..."

"[National Socialism] has survived the flames of war and the tempest of vilification because, when war has done its worst and vilification has run its entire gamut, National Socialism remains, in the final analysis, synonymous with higher man's will to survive, his instinct for health and strength, and his desire for beauty in life; and, as long as that will, that instinct, and that desire remain on this earth, the creed of National Socialism will remain, indestructible."

"During the Leyton by-election, in which Patrick Gordon Walker tried vainly to get back into Parliament after losing his seat in the general election, I was speaking for him at a noisy meeting attended by a strong contingent of the National Front. At a given signal, all the Fascists in the audience launched flour bombs at the platform. Suddenly their leader, a repulsive brute called Colin Jordan, emerged from behind the curtains where he had been hiding, and began to harangue the mob. I knocked him off the stage, on to an inoffensive reporter who took years to forgive me for his broken spectacles."

"Both [Ernest Bevin and Winston Churchill] were as English as the oak and neither was afflicted with the tiresome form of intellectualism which is the curse of many of the younger Socialists."

"Churchill could therefore leave the Home Front, the organisation of the total man-power of the country, of its industrial and war production and supplies, the rationing of food, the financing of it all, to his colleagues. In all this, the most Churchillian figure among Labour leaders, Ernest Bevin, played a part second only to Churchill in winning the war."

"Putting all this together during March 1945, British and American leaders detected a fundamental and sinister shift of Soviet policy. Why it had happened, however, seemed less clear. Most attempts at explanation took as their premise the continued good faith of Stalin himself: that seemed to be one of the lessons of Yalta, indeed of wartime summitry as a whole. Therefore the change of heart was presumed to lie with his advisors—those sinister forces supposedly swirling around in the shadowy recesses of the Kremlin. British Cabinet Minister Ernest Bevin (soon to become foreign secretary) suggested that blame for the turnaround should be ascribed to Molotov. Alternatives postulated by the Foreign Office were the “Party bosses behind the scenes” or “Army marshals at the front” who were throwing their weight about amid the chaos of Eastern Europe. Churchill was similarly unwilling to blame Stalin. On 5 April he wrote darkly to FDR about “the Soviet leaders, whoever they may be.”"

"Some of us do not think that passports are the same since they were introduced by the words, "We, Ernest Bevin"."

"He is a powerful fellow, with a bull neck and a huge voice – a born leader...if there is trouble, mark my words! You will hear more of Bevin!"

"One thing which left its mark upon him was the bellicose attitude of the German Social Democrats in 1914, for which he never forgave them. He felt betrayed and it made him more anti-German than anything else the Germans ever did. His post-war experience confirmed him in his gloomy view of German Social Democracy and he found Dr. Adenauer much less difficult than Dr. Schumacher. But to the end he remained just as suspicious and resentful of Germany as he had ever been, although he never allowed his feelings on this subject to take command of his head."

"In general his attitude was robust and British; and one could foretell exactly what it would be in any given circumstance. He was a rock."

"He was interested in his predecessors in office and particularly Lord Curzon. He saw clearly that what hampered him most in the field of foreign affairs was the precarious state of our economy. So he envied his predecessors and he often asked me: "What would Lord Curzon do if he were in my shoes?" This led to reminiscences of the old Foreign Office, and I once told him a story of Lord Curzon's witty reply to an inappropriate telegram from an Ambassador abroad. More than a year later I went to see him on some Nato problem, but before I could broach my subject he said with a wicked grin: "I behaved like Lord Curzon this morning." "Oh, indeed," I replied. "What did you do?" "I saw a telegram from our Ambassador in Ruritania, reporting that reputable people in Ruritania were criticising the King's matrimonial antics. So I telegraphed back, 'Where have you found reputable people in Ruritania?'""

"[H]e was in every sense a big man, who concerned himself only with essentials. "You know my mind" meant that one could go away and take the necessary action without any further reference to him. If the subsequent telegrams and despatches did not quite meet his views, he never complained so long as they conformed broadly to his instructions. This made him very easy and pleasant to work for. He was equally magnanimous in negotiation. When dealing with the Russians he never pulled his punches, but he showed the utmost consideration for his Western associates... But he never allowed himself to be bounced into doing anything against his better judgement. Indeed it was misguised to try to bounce him into anything at all. "I will not be rushed", was his reply. He required time to read the files and to subject his experts to a penetrating cross-examination. Since he had the memory of an elephant, it behoved the expert to be careful. "That's not what you told me a year ago", might be his retort to an ill-considered piece of advice."

"Hitherto I had regarded him with great admiration: from now onwards, I regarded him with great affection. He was intensely human, warm-hearted, simple and brave, and his common sense was as massive as his shoulders. He threw his whole heart and soul into the war, and no Englishman of any political party had a deeper love for his country, a greater pride in her past, or a surer faith in her future. At the same time he loved his fellow men the world over, and was very internationally minded. As Foreign Secretary in the years of Soviet expansion westwards he was one of the principal architects of the North Atlantic Alliance."

"In him [Winston Churchill] Bevin found at least one Minister willing to treat the trade unionists on an equal footing with the employers. It must be stressed that the readiness of the trade unions to support the Government and to set aside their old quarrels with Churchill was due in large measure to the fact that in Bevin they had a personality who could meet the Prime Minister on level terms. Bevin, as Minister of Labour, was a necessary condition for the partnership which, despite all strains, lasted until the Nazis were defeated."

"Ernest Bevin died in April. I was deeply moved. By then I had come to regard him, as I still do, as one of the two greatest democratic politicians this century; the other is Franklin Roosevelt. The American patrician and the British trade unionist had two things in common – a powerful sense of direction which was rooted in moral principle, and a street-wise pragmatism in choosing the best route forward. Both men, too, had a constructive approach to politics. They were builders, not destroyers."

"[T]he [Labour] Party's success electorally has depended upon its historical identification with working-class interests. Sidney and Beatrice Webb helped, but it was the trade unions that made Labour a major party of state. Ernest Bevin, not Methodism or Marxism, is Labour's heritage."

"Tizard was fond of describing an incident round a conference table at which the technical pros and cons of Britain starting her own nuclear power industry were being debated. It appeared that the cons were winning when Bevin suddenly intervened: “What!” he said. “Do you mean to say that our kids are going to have to grow up without the benefits of nuclear energy?” Tizard, explaining that no-one could really avoid answering such blunt questions, would add: “Fine man, Bevin.”"

"Ernest Bevin had many of the strongest characteristics of the English race. His manliness, his common sense, his rough simplicity, sturdiness and kind heart, easy geniality and generosity, all are qualities which we who live in the southern part of this famous island regard with admiration."

"[Bevin is] far the most distinguished man the Labour Party have thrown up in my time."

"Bevin will, I think, do well. He knows a good deal, is prepared to read any amount, seems to take in what he does read, and is capable of making up his own mind and sticking up for his (or our) point of view against anyone. I think he's the best we could have had. He effaces Attlee, and at Big 3 meetings he does all the talking while Attlee nods his head convulsively and smokes his pipe."

"There is no doubt that the continuity of foreign policy—which caused one Labour man to remark of Ernest Bevin, "Hasn't Anthony Eden grown fat?"—blunted the blood-letting edge of party warfare during much of the Attlee government's tenure. Bevin was among several prominent Labour politicians who in the 1945 election had promised that Anglo-Russian relations would be better with a left-wing British Government: "Left can speak to left in comradeship and confidence", he had claimed. In office he proved a man big enough to eat his own unguarded words, and will rank high in history as one of the chief organisers of Western resistance against the advance of revolutionary Communism from the East. Particularly in the latter part of the 1945–50 Parliament I spoke with some frequency on foreign affairs against Bevin―or, rather, with Bevin; for, not only was our private relationship friendly, but on the major public issues arising from the "cold war" there was rarely much between us save a difference of emphasis or detail. I remember his taking me into the Smoking Room one evening and saying, "’Ave a beer, Rab, I'm worried about the A-rabs.""

"I should like to see in any reconstructed Government a strong Labour leader like Bevin."

"My policy is to be able to take a ticket at Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please!"