India

"[Maulana Wahiduddin, a former official at the Jammat-i-Is­lami who wrote the Tabligh Movement describes the Meos that Ilyas saw:] “These uncouth and illiterate people…in practical life…were far from Islam. They kept their Hindu names, like Nahar Singh and Bhup Singh; they left a lock of hair [chõtî] on top of the shaven head as Hindus do; they worshipped idols, celebrated all the Hindu festivals and made sacrifices to the pre-Islamic gods and goddesses. They could not even recite the…kalimah. So unfamil­iar…was the sight of …namaz…that if by chance they came across someone praying, they gathered to enjoy the spectacle, assum­ing that the person must either be mad or suffering from some ailment due to which he was kneeling and prostrating himself again and again.”"

"The Bhils have long ceased to be a homogeneous people. In the course of millennia, various ele- ments have fused to shape the community. During their long and tortuous history, other aboriginal groups which came under their sway have probably merged with them, losing their identity. One can see a wide range of physical types and complexion. The vari- ation in complexion is very striking indeed, ranging between fair to quite dark-skinned... There is no consensus among scholars on the exact ethnic character of the Bhils. They have been alternatively described as proto-Australoid, Dravidian or Veddoid."

"They are ' said to have come originally from Rajputana, whence they fled early in the fourteenth century, after the capture of Chitor by Ala-ud-dm Khiljl. After passing through the Kumaun hills, they first settled near Palpa, and thence gradually extended their dominions. Prithwi Narayan gladly availed himself of the opportunity thus given of establishing a secure footing in Nepal. Ranjit Mai, however, soon found out his mistake, and was obliged to come to terms with the neighbouring kings in order to resist the encroachments of the Gurkhas. Nevertheless Prithwi Narayan succeeded in taking Kirttipur, a town belonging to the Patan Raja, and then proceeded to attack Patan itself. At this junctui’e the Nepalese applied for assistance to the British Government. Aid yas granted, and Captain Kinloch was dispatched with a small force in the middle of the rainy season. But his force was quite inadequate for the purpose it had in view, and being still further weakened by sickness, was repulsed before he had penetrated into the Valley. The Gurkhas then returned and attacked Katmandu. Prithwi Narayan, having obtained possession of this city by treachery, directed his attention again to Patan and later on to Bhatgaon. Both were taken, and in 1769 the conquest of Nepal by the Gurkhas was complete."

"The Khas, Magars, Gurungs, and Thakurs are the military tribes of the kingdom, from which the fighting element of the Nepalese army is drawn. They are the descendants of the aboriginal tribes who intermarried with Rajputs and other Hindus who took refuge from Muhammadan conquest in the hills of Nepal in the twelfth century.Since the Gurkha conquest, they have spread throughout the whole country, though their real habitat is to the west of the Valley of Nepal. It is to these tribes that the often misapplied term ‘ Gurkha or ‘ Gurkhali ' should be confined."

"Gurgaon district abounds in Meos. They are the same stock as Minas of the Aravalli Hills. They fought the Muslims for long, but eventually succumbed to become Muslim. Now, although almost all have become Muhammadan, they have retained Hindu customs which are now under attack of tablighis."

"Meos from Gurgaon, Bharatpur and Alwar not very long time ago, on the instigation of the Muslim League, demanded Meostan and they were involved in very serious rioting against the Hindus—their neighbours at the time of Freedom. Right in 1947 a serious riot was going on by these Meos against their Hindu neighbours. These Meos, under this very lax permit system, are returning and demanding their property. This is secularism no doubt, but a very one sided and undesirable type of secularism which goes invariably against and to the prejudice of Sikh and Hindu refugees."

"Shafia Zubair said, “Meo community resides in Alwar, Bharatpur, Nuh, and in some parts of Mathura, where Krishna was born. I traced the ancestry of the community to know what our history is. The result says that we are from the lineage of Lord Krishna. Even if we have converted our religion, the blood does not change, and it belongs to Ram and Krishna.” Shafia Zubair added, “You should all remember who Meos are (descendants of Ram- Krishna) and consider them as Mewa (dry fruits). Nobody should tell us again and again that we are backward. It has given three MLAs (Zubair, Wajid Ali from Nagar, and Zahida Khan from Kaman) and you will see where the Mewat will reach in the next 10 years.” Therefore, Mewat should not be considered a backward region, she said."

"Great plunder was taken and many captives, so that five Hindu [Khokhar] captives could be bought for a dinar."

"The Khokhars were not annihilated in this affair by any means, and gave great trouble in after years..."

"Mahmud protected his flanks with entrenchments and instead of following his usual impetuous tactics strove to entice the enemy to attack him in his own strong position. In this he succeeded and the Hindus attacked on December 31. A force of 30,000 Khokars, bareheaded and barefooted and armed with strange weapons, charged both his flanks simultaneously, passed over his trenches, and did such execution among his troops that he was meditating a retreat when a fortunate accident decided the day in his favour."

"The next morning the mountaineer coolies arrived, and a strange ill-favoured race they are. In their high cheeks, long narrow eyes, broad fronts, and narrow chins, they bear an evident affinity to the Tartar. Their stature is very short, but they are wide-chested and strongly limbed, and show prodigious strength in carrying burdens up the steep mountain tracks. The Gourkahs, in our wars with them, proved the enemies best worthy of the British arms in India. It is said that these hardy little warriors speak with the greatest contempt of their gigantic long bearded neighbours the Seikhs. They make first-rate tirailleurs, and at the siege of Bhurtpore one of the Company’s Gourkah regiments much distinguished itself. They appeared on that occasion, somewhat pigmy by the side of our British grenadiers, their average height being barely 5 feet."

"The Kokars were completely defeated, and, " in that country there remained not an inhabitant to light a fire." " Much spoil in slaves and weapons, beyond all enumeration, fell into the possession of the victors.""

"For instance, when Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak mounted a combined attack on the Khokhars of the Salt Range (Koh-i-Jud), “great plunder was taken and many captives, so that five Hindu [Khokhars] captives could be bought for a dinar”. Captives were so plentiful that they were also sent “to sell in Khurasan, not long after.”"

"…Colonel Young, who is the chief man here, commands a most interesting native regiment, the Gourkas. I should say they will fight less well now we have brought them down to our English drilling and nonsense, but there was a time, when four or five hundred of them in their hills beat our troops considerably and kept beating them for a whole year. They are the most dwarfish race that I ever saw and look like a little set of children in their dark uniforms. Last year a party of them fell in with a tiger on the road we travelled yesterday. They were on foot and had no guns, but they made a circle round him, and when he charged one side they cut at him on the other with their swords, and so killed him."

"The advent of Christian broadcasting in India, transnational as well as local channels, offers the space for identification with a “Christian Umma” far beyond the boundaries of the territorialized nation-state."

"Yet, almost all the Western papers have chosen to blacken Hinduism almost as thoroughly as the secularist Indian press has done. The first reason is that the Western correspondents in Delhi just don't know very much, and also don't feel the need to find out more. Their work is not considered important by their editors, because India is still perceived as a backward and economically unimportant country. Western correspondents in Delhi are very lazy. I have been to some press conferences concerning this Ayodhya affair (which involves principles, has generated an unprecedented mass movement, and has toppled a government), and not met any foreign press persons there. In Ayodhya and in the offices of those very people that could give authentic background information, again I did not see any foreign correspondents. I don't know what they tell their employers, but I can testify first-hand that they are not doing any journalistic work here, except for copying the Indian English-language papers. The second reason is that they very uncritically swallow that version of the facts which happens to reach them. Since they hang out a lot with the westernized clique that controls the media, education and the government, they don't know better than that those people's viewpoint is authoritative."

"Today the Khokhars are Split up into Muslim, Rajput and Jat sections. Originally they were all Hindus. Both Minhaj Siraj and Hasan Nizami describe them as infidels.“ The tale of their resistance to Islam and conversion to it synchronises with the Muslim invasions of India."

"India under Indira Gandhi was also probably the arena for more KGB active measures than anywhere else in the world, though their significance appears to have been considerably exaggerated by the Centre, which overestimated its ability to manipulate Indian opinion. According to KGB files, by 1973 it had ten Indian newspapers on its payroll (which cannot be identified for legal reasons) as well as a press agency under its ‘control’. During 1972, the KGB claimed to have planted 3,789 articles in Indian newspapers – probably more than in any other country in the non-Communist world. According to its files, the number fell to 2,760 in 1973 but rose to 4,486 in 1974 and 5,510 in 1975.66 In some major NATO countries, despite active-measures campaigns, the KGB was able to plant little more than 1 per cent of the articles which it placed in the Indian press."

"Indian media, especially the metro-based English media, is the most dishonest institution of India.... The media has created a ‘group of somebodies’ and a ‘group of nobodies’."

"There is, however, a remarkable abhorrence,among the Santals, of the Mohammedans, whom they call Turuk, a term which carries a connotation of contempt. According to their tradition, the sojourn of the Santal ancestors in ‘the corrupt and defiled land’ of the Muslims was attended with such grave harassment that contact with Muslims must be avoided. ... the Santals of Pangro, likemany other Santals elsewhere, however, do not accept food from these Muslims."

"“Nishi teachers at the government high-school in Yazali, who were members of a youth organization formed to promote traditional tribal culture, told me how frustrated they were because they could not match the large sums lavished by the missions on propaganda which is undermining the old Nishi life-style.”"

"“While among the non-Christians the most important part of the marriage ceremony is the Sindradan, or smearing the bride’s forehead with vermillion, among the Christians the exchange of rings by bride and groom marks them as husband and wife. The applying of sindoor [= vermillion] is tabooed.” The clean break is also in evidence in the funeral rites: “In the funerary ceremonies, there is little trace of non-Christian customs and modes of thought.... The converts are, by and large, being alienated from their village communities. Moreover, converts also become estranged from their own kinsfolk. They are prohibited by their own religion from taking part in the ritual offerings and ceremonies [for the ancestral and other deities]. These ritual practices and ceremonies … act as a strong unifying force among the household and family members.... Cutting themselves off from many aspects of their old community life, the converts find themselves members of a new community, the Christian community."

"The Press must become a unit of the government."

"My informants insisted that the missions encouraged the establishment of separate settlements for Christians, and that the Christians refused to participate in village festivals, thereby demonstrating their dissociation from the tribal community. It was alleged, moreover, that converts, not satisfied with this symbolic withdrawal from village life, went a step further by abusing and physically attacking priests as they invoked the gods in the performance of traditional Nishi rituals.”..."

"[the Rohillas were, with few exceptions] the only sect of Mahometans in India who exercised the profession of husbandry; and their improvements of the various branches of agriculture, were amply recompensed by the abundance and superiour quality of the production of Rohilcund."

"The Rohillas displayed their iconoclastic fervour during the campaing, melting all the silver and gold idols they could seize. In the interests of the Himalayan trade and the pilgrimage traffic, the Kumaun rajas maintained cordial relations with them."

"[Thus, the Nishi tribe in the North-East finds that in Christian mission schools] “a good many Nishi youths have been converted to Christianity. This in itself need not have created any difficulty, for Nishis, like most tribals, are not greatly concerned about the beliefs of their fellow-tribesmen, and if the Christian converts had been equally tolerant, their rejection of traditional Nishi religion might have been ignored by the great mass of conservative tribesmen. However, the converts seem to have been lacking in tolerance and tact, and educated young men of villages affected by the ideological split to whom I spoke in 1980 complained bitterly that Christians deliberately disrupted the harmony of community life. They allegedly refuse to share the houses of adherents of the old faith, and this meant that old parents were abandoned by their converted children, who claimed that they could not stay in dwellings where ‘devils’ were worshipped. …"

"What has not been appreciated is that the Rohillas, after establishing themselves in the province in the early eighteenth century, accomplished an almost perfect obliteration of any rights which may previously have been in force. Almost every landowner, no matter how petty, who was considered to be a potential source of difficulty and who could possibly be a focal point of anti-Rohilla activity was uprooted and either killed or forced to cross the Ganges. The old Hindu village institutions were generally subverted and the Rohilla chiefs leased the villages for a period of ten years to the highest bidder at a public auction. ... Henceforth, until the destruction of Rohilla power, the only proprietors in Rohilkhand were to be the Rohilla chiefs. Rohilla rule was terminated in 1774 when the country was overrun by British"

"The missionaries do not ask us to practise costly rituals or change our lifestyles, languages or even our wardrobe. Many of the converted tribals, like me, have not even been asked to change names. We have received the gospel of Jesus, enlightenment, education. My own Nyishi tribesmen were rude, uncultured and a warrior tribe. The church has made us better people. What is wrong in that? ... Christianity was born in Central Asia. How can it be foreign?"

"Missionaries offer medicine, food grain and cash to the needy on the back of strong funding from outside. Earlier, we were all one. There was no disharmony. But now converted tribals — our own brethren till a couple of years back — look down upon us."

"They are working for conversion; we are working for education. Their plans are treacherous... Tribal culture ought to be preserved with the same zeal that missionaries display while converting tribals."

"But then he said, “Now let me be very blunt,” and ripped into Kenneth Keating: “Every Ambassador who goes to India falls in love with India.” (This direct presidential attack was so far out of bounds that Kissinger and Saunders censored it out of their official record of the conversation for the State Department.) Nixon told the senior State Department officials that they “have to cool off the pro-Indians in the State Department and out in South Asia.” He added that fewer Americans swooned for Pakistan, “because the Pakistanis are a different breed. The Pakistanis are straightforward—and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line.”"

"In one of the awkward alignments of the Cold War, President Richard Nixon had lined up the democratic United States with this authoritarian government, while the despots in the Soviet Union found themselves standing behind democratic India."

"Nixon and Kissinger actually drove their South Asia policies with gusto and impressive creativity—but only when silencing dissenters in the ranks, like Blood, or pursuing their hostility toward India. They found no appeal in India, neither out of ideological admiration for India’s flawed but functioning democracy, nor from a geopolitical appreciation of the sheer size and importance of the Indian colossus. Instead, they denounced Indians individually and collectively, with an astonishingly personal and crude stream of vitriol. Alone in the Oval Office, these famous practitioners of dispassionate realpolitik were all too often propelled by emotion."

"Nixon’s anti-Indian leanings had been reinforced when John Kennedy took a warmly pro-India line. India seemed a cause for the Democrats. This point was once driven home by George H. W. Bush, Nixon’s ambassador at the United Nations, who knew how to play up to his boss. Bush said that a friend of Kennedy’s had explained that “Kennedy spent more time on India, and the mystique, I know they didn’t like us, but it was a kind of a liberal mystique.” That, Bush and Nixon agreed, was what they were up against."

"Nixon and Kissinger bear responsibility for a significant complicity in the slaughter of the Bengalis. This overlooked episode deserves to be a defining part of their historical reputations. But although Nixon and Kissinger have hardly been neglected by history, this major incident has largely been whitewashed out of their legacy—and not by accident. Kissinger began telling demonstrable falsehoods about the administration’s record just two weeks into the crisis, and has not stopped distorting since. Nixon and Kissinger, in their vigorous efforts after Watergate to rehabilitate their own respectability as foreign policy wizards, have left us a farrago of distortions, half-truths, and outright lies about their policy toward the Bengali atrocities."

"Nixon was baffled and annoyed by Americans’ popular sympathies for India, which he repeatedly described as a psychological disorder. He scorned a “phobia” among some Americans that “everything that India does is good, and everything Pakistan does is bad,” and once told the military leader of Pakistan, “There is a psychosis in this country about India.” The Americans who most liked India tended to be the ones that Nixon could not stand. India was widely seen as a State Department favorite, irritating the president. He recoiled from the country’s mystical fascination to the hippie counterculture, which he despised. Henry Kissinger thought that Nixon saw Democratic “obsequiousness toward India as a prime example of liberal softheadedness.”"

"I bring to this nation of four hundred million, assurance from my own people that they feel that the welfare of America is bound up with the welfare of India. America shares with India the deep desire to live in freedom, human dignity, and peace with justice. A new and great opportunity for that sort of life has been opened up to all men by the startling achievements of men of science during recent decades. The issue placed squarely before us today is the purpose for which we use science. Before us we see long years of what can be a new era; mankind in each year reaping a richer harvest from the fields of earth--gaining a more sure mastery of elemental power for human benefit--sharing an expanding commerce in goods and in knowledge and in wisdom--dwelling together in peace."

"Above all, our basic goals are the same. Ten years ago, your distinguished Prime Minister, when I was his host at Columbia University in New York, said: "Political subjection, racial inequality, economic misery--these are the evils we have to remove if we would assure peace." Our Republic, since its founding, has been committed to a relentless, ceaseless fight against those same three evils: political subjection, racial inequality, economic misery."

"Our military supply policy toward Pakistan has, more than any other single issue, contributed to the sharp deterioration in Indo-US relations."

"The peptalk about India and the US being "natural allies" as "the biggest and the oldest democracy" has little impact on real-life policies... The American state is arming Pakistan, and even if it were to fully stop arms deliveries to Pakistan, it still carries a legacy of having armed the Pakistani Army and trained the Pakistani secret service, agents of terror against Indian citizens and the Indian state. The guilt for keeping Indo-American relations unfriendly is entirely on the American side... For those who look at facts rather than at newspaper headlines, it is obvious that there is no danger whatsoever of the US giving the impression of valuing a Muslim life less than a Hindu life. Rather the reverse, and this consistently for decades. In 1971, the Pakistani Army was butchering Hindus in East Bengal by the hundreds of thousands (many times the total number of victims of Hindutva since then), yet the USA stood by Pakistan and did nothing to rein their Islamic allies in. Throughout the 1990s and till today, Pak-backed terrorists have been butchering Hindus in numerous shootings and bomb attacks and ethnically cleansing them from the Kashmir Valley, yet the USA have not used their leverage with Pakistan to stop this continuous terror wave. Dr. Hathaway's misrepresentation of this highly unbalanced American policy adds insult to injury."

"The young Hindu, of course, is optimistic. He has been to America and he has been contaminated by the cheap idealism of the Americans, contaminated by the ubiquitous bathtub, the five-and-ten-cent store bric-a-brac, the bustle, the efficiency, the machinery, the high wages, the free libraries, etc., etc. His ideal would be to Americanize India. He is not at all pleased with Gandhi’s retrogressive mania. Forward, he says, just like a YMCA man. As I listen to his tales of America I see how absurd it is to expect of Gandhi that miracle which will deroute the trend of destiny. India’s enemy is not England, but America. India’s enemy is the time spirit, the hand which cannot be turned back. Nothing will avail to offset this virus which is poisoning the whole world. America is the very incarnation of doom. She will drag the whole world down to the bottomless pit."

"“99.99 per cent of Indian media is ‘Godi Media’, doing ‘chamchagiri’ of Narendra Modi, showing ‘bakwas’…. TV is making a fool of you, brainwashing you with bogus debates and propaganda”:"

"No country is free from the slave media. The freedom from ‘Godi Media’ will bring new freedom."

"OpIndia is a news and current affairs website that’s hugely popular with those affiliated with the centre-right ideology... The website also runs a fact-checking initiative that extensively debunks media lies and popular personalities who often criticise the Narendra Modi led-BJP government. OpIndia is the only fact-checking website that Prime Minister Narendra Modi follows on Twitter, along with its editor. The website received widespread attention from several national as well as international media organisations when its editor Nupur J. Sharma wrote a series of articles criticising BBC’s research on fake news in India and questioning the credibility of its findings."

"The OpIndia page on Wikipedia is negative because OpIndia dared to challenge the ecosystem and the foot-soldiers of the ecosystem decided to hit back at us."

"In the last few days, you would have noticed that we were the target of a coordinated attack from the usual suspects as well as from some unusual corners... I am not saying that they can’t make mistakes, and when our well-wishers like you would point them out, they will make amends. But this time, their only mistake was that they were standing on the wrong side of the ideological divide. But that stand is non-negotiable. That’s what is the soul, the identity of India. That’s not going to change."

"The OpIndia page on Wikipedia has been created and edited by an ecosystem that the OpIndia went after and exposed, time and again."

"We live in a post-truth world where the facts often get lost in the cacophony of emotional wails and motivated narratives. One website which has occupied the driver’s seat in the information-warfare era is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become the agent of misinformation and propaganda. In a post-truth world where facts are relegated to the ‘right-wing imagination’ and the Left narrative is considered as the Gospel truth, Wikipedia reigns supreme."

"If I disapproved of the ban on The Satanic Verses, if I disapproved of Dinanath Batra (whom I called “Ban Man” in my article in The Washington Post), if I disapproved of how Taslima Nasreen was hounded and attacked in Hyderabad by Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM, then I can’t suddenly do a volte face and chest-thump today. When you ban a book, it acquires a kind of cult status because the market fuels curiosity. That is what happened with other banned books. In fact, there are books chronicling banned books by different regimes in history...All I am saying is that forcing Bloomsbury India to withdraw the book is counter-productive – both politically and in the pure sense of how market forces work... Where do you draw the line? Today, many are relieved that this book will not find a publisher in Bloomsbury. But what will you do if Swarajya or OpIndia launches a publishing house of its own in the future?'"