A report on the half-truths of ANHAD

On 27 September 2014, a self-styled secular organization ANHAD published a lengthy report titled ‘100 Days under the New Regime: The State of Minorities’, speaking of theNarendra Modi government’s performance with regard to minorities.

At the outset, this is not really a report by any standard. It is basically a collection of various news articles which speak of communal clashes or alleged persecution of the minority community.

The manner in which this voluminous report has been compiled and edited by the self-proclaimed secularist, Catholic activist, and Christian evangelist John Dayal, seems intended to convey the impression that a Fourth Reich has been established in India. Indeed, this report reinvents the same sort of fear mongering indulged by the Indian secularists for over four decades, which they intensified during the Lok Sabha campaign where they tried to create the same phony parallel between the BJP and the neo-Nazis.

Firstly, here are some facts about the editor of the report, John Dayal.

John Dayal was also closely associated with the activities of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC), especially in the body’s nefarious attempt at evolving a flawed and skewed Communal Violence Bill. John Dayal has been a past master at misrepresenting India and especially Hindus and Hindu organisations on foreign soil. A look at some of his past antics in this respect only exposes the claims of this Government that it has done much to project India’s image abroad….. when the US based advocacy group Policy Institute for Religion and State (PIFRAS) held a South Asia Conference, sponsored by “United Methodist Board of Church and Society and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA” John Dayal, as a participant, had contended that “minorities could not count on the Indian state to protect them, or to prosecute crimes committed against them.”  Dayal’s repeated use of foreign platforms to denounce the Indian system and polity is something which has been largely ignored by the mainstream media as well as the powers that be – i.e. the Sonia Gandhi led Congress and UPA whose patronage he has continuously received.

John Dayal, as a member of the National Integration Council gave a completely negative picture of Indian polity in his testament as a witness to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC)’s hearing titled “Plight of Religious Minorities in India” held on 4 April 2014 in Washington D.C. The likes of John Dayal in a way condone and support external interference and interventions into the internal affairs of India, as long as their agenda is served.

What else can justify his engagement with a foreign body in deciding internal political matters of India? Does Mr. Dayal consider India to be a tyrannical state? If so, he must answer how is he able to publish this report in India?

Analysis of the ANHAD report

It is relevant here to point out that this report, akin to most ‘secular’ documents, makes its case with partial evidence. The so-called 100 Days under the New Regime: The State of Minorities report can be broadly categorized into three parts:

• Politicization of academia
• Love Jihad
• Persecution of minorities in India

Accordingly, this IndiaFacts response is also divided into the same three parts.

Politicization of academia

This allegation from the house of ANHAD is based completely on the issue of the the newly-appointed chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR)Yellapragada Sudershan Rao, who due to his association with the RSS is considered non-Kosher by the Marxist-secular history establishment. Rao is accused of being a votary of the caste system as well as an advocate of pseudo-history.

The first accusation is based on a blog he wrote in 2007 titled ‘Indian Caste System: A Reappraisal’which stated:

The (caste) system was working well in ancient times and we do not find any complaint from any quarters against it. It is often misinterpreted as an exploitative social system for retaining economic and social status of certain vested interests of the ruling class.

The second allegation is based on Rao’s assertion that Ramayana and Mahabharata are historical documents and not mythology.

[pullquote]The likes of John Dayal in a way condone and support external interference and interventions into the internal affairs of India, as long as their agenda is served.[/pullquote]

Before dealing with such claims we need to look at the origins of ICHR:

During the premiership of Indira Gandhi,a history professor of Marxist leanings, Nurul Hasan became the education minister. It was not surprising because, to continue in office, Indira Gandhi wanted and obtained the support of the Communist Party of India.

Now it was this Nurul Hasan who successfully pushed for the creation of the ICHR in 1972. The ICHR was meant ‘to give a national direction to an objective and scientific writing of history and to have rational presentation and interpretation of history’.

This objective was exactly identical to that of the Soviet Union which was also known to ‘direct’ research, with the belief that all academic work follows and should follow the Marxist model. Similarly, most of those who ran the ICHR were Marxists or pro-Marxists and it was these scholars who further strengthened the Marxist roots of Indian secularism.

Under their regulation almost all of Indian history went through the process of Marxist revisionism, which intentionally portrayed Hinduism in a negative manner while whitewashing the genocide and persecution of Hindus by medieval Muslim kings.

Today, those who are speaking against Rao—for instance,Romila Thapar, Aditya Mukherjee and DN Jha are part of this Marxist clique which were exposed by ArunShourie in his Eminent Historians:Their Techniques, Their Line, Their Fraud.

India at the time of Independence had stellar historians like RC Majumdar, Jadunath Sarkar, Neelakantha Shastri among others. But these academics were systematically sidelined by India’s Nehruvian-Left historians as communal and their works were undermined.

To counter this blatant act of negligence, KM Munshi, founder of the Bharatiya VidyaBhavan, embarked on a major programme of historical research giving us the monumental History and Culture of the Indian People in 11 volumes.However, thanks to the ICHR and successive Congress Governments, and the elaborate system of patronage-based academia, the children of the nation didn’t have a chance to know any of these machinations.

RomilaThapar’s influence and reputation as a historian was largely based on the discredited theory of Aryans invading India which collapsed under rigorous scientific scrutiny. She was unsuccessful in her attempt to prove the non-existence of a temple in the disputed site of Ayodhya. Yet she is still included as one of the members of the high-profile Delhi Urban Heritage Foundation(DHUF) primarily due to her political connections. Indeed, she should be the last person to speak of politicization of history or education.

Coming back to Rao’s essay, I have mentioned previously that the subject of caste has not been studied with rigour, objectivity and dispassionate seriousness that any academic subject demands. Indeed, nowhere in that essay does Rao condone the present-day anomalies associated with caste.

Finally the whole discussion on how caste was in the Vedic era can be initiated for example, with this excerpt from ‘Annihilation of Caste’ penned by social reformer and Dalit icon Babasaheb Ambedkar:

The principle underlying caste is fundamentally different from the principle underlying Varna. Not only are they fundamentally different but they are also fundamentally opposed. The former is based on worth.…. While I reject the Vedic Varna vyavastha I must admit that the Vedic theory of Varna as interpreted by Swami Dayanand and some others is a sensible and an inoffensive thing. It did not admit birth as a determining factor in fixing the place of an individual in society….Varna is based on the principle of each according to his worth-while Caste is based on the principle of each according to his birth. The two are as distinct as chalk is from cheese. In fact there is an antithesis between the two..

And now on the question of Ramayana and Mahabharata, this report will help to give some support to Rao’s assertion:

 Prof. B. B. Lal, the former ASI Director General launched the first excavation at the PuranaQuila site in 1954-55 in which he found structures ascribable to the Gupta, Kushana and Sunga periods.

 “The trial excavation was alongside the passage leading down to water gate in the eastern fortification wall of PuranaQuila. The trial trench revealed that below the northern black polished ware levels lay the remains of the painted grey ware culture. Between the south of the PuranaQuila and Humayun’s Tomb, there is an open area from where a number of painted grey ware were discovered. It was here that the oldest settlement began.”

 Prof. Lal said the polished grey ware is the earliest common pottery connecting all the Mahabharat sites such as Hastinapur, Mathura, Kurukshetra and Kampilya.

“The evidence clearly establishes that the PuranaQuila and its southern neighbourhood represent Indraprastha of the Mahabharat times. In fact, right up to 1947, a village named Indrapat existed inside the PuranaQuila. This name was derived from ancient Indraprastha.”

Till reliable concrete evidence shows up, one cannot wish away the epics as mere myths just like one cannot call it irrefutable historical proof. But the record of Marxist historians’ special relish in diminishing Indian heritage is as long as it is voluminous—this alone explains their disdain for India’s ancient epics which have stood the test of time.

The very fact that there exists a term called “Marxist Historians,” and that they had dominated the writing of Indian history for more than four decades is itself a proof of how history has been politicized, and who started it.

Love Jihad

This so-called report reproduced the articles on Love Jihad which made the same points we have heard previously: how this alert on Love Jihad is actually against love and secularism. In some cases, the reports speak of the phenomenon with open prejudice. The IndiaFacts response is carried out with relevant citations from reliable sources.

[pullquote]The very fact that there exists a term called “Marxist Historians,” and that they had dominated the writing of Indian history for more than four decades is itself a proof of how history has been politicized, and who started it.[/pullquote]

First and foremost, Love Jihad is not about inter-faith love marriages, it is about sexual violence and marriage by deceit.Consider the following:

• In August 2009, the Kerala High Court asked the state government to consider enacting a law prohibiting it. “Under the pretext of love, there cannot be any compulsive, deceptive conversion,” said Justice KT Sankaran of the Kerala High Court, while rejecting the bail applications of two people accused of Love Jihad. He went on to say that after going through the case diary of such cases, it was clear that there was a concerted effort to convert girls of a particular religion to another with the blessings of some religious outfits. The Court pointed out that there were 4,000 to 5,000 religious conversions due to love affairs in the last four years in Kerala alone.Two weeks later, the Karnataka High Court also directed the state government to order a probe into Love Jihad cases. In October 2009, the Karnataka Government ordered a Crime Investigation Department (CID) probe into the matter. In 2010, then Kerala chief minister VS Achuthanandan called Love Jihad an effort to turn Kerala into a Muslim majority state”
• The Economic Times reported in 10 December, 2009 about the Kerala High Court finding indications of forceful religious conversions under the garb of “love” in the state, and asked the government to consider enacting a law to prohibit such “deceptive” acts. It quoted the HC as saying, “Under the pretext of love, there cannot be any compulsive, deceptive conversion.”
• According to Wikileaks, a cable mailed by Andrew T Simkin, US Consul General in Chennai on February 26, 2010 mentioned that “an alleged conspiracy of ‘foreign-funded’ Muslim men attempting to seduce, marry, and convert Hindu and Christian women, has  led to state-level investigations and generated  widespread suspicions”  in South India.
• In an incisive article titled ‘Love Jihad: A Myth or a Mission’, posted on the website of Uday India, a Muslim scholar, Syed Wazid Ali, has given some startling facts based on the statistics of  a survey conducted by the Crime Record Bureau of  Kerala Police and Kochi’s  University of  Advanced Law Studies. The survey revealed that the number of  girls missing from Kerala was 2127 in 2006 and 2560 in 2008. The police are said to have no information with respect of nearly 600 girls out of a total of 4,687 girls trapped in two successive years by love-jihadis.

Indeed, even a casual browsing of IndiaFacts archives exposing the various cases, facets, and analyses of Love Jihad is enough to show the alarming proportion this threat has assumed. It is for the self-styled secularists like John Dayal to explain why they are refusing to come to terms with the reality of the Love Jihad menace when facts show otherwise.

Persecution of Minorities by the present Government

We could begin by asking why John Dayal’s so-called report has chosen to ignore the incidents that are reported and analysed in these articles:

a. During the last days of 1980s US-based Evangelical Christian organizations like the International Mission Board, Southern Baptist Convention, Christian Aid, World Vision, Seventh Day Adventist Church and several similar enterprises run by famed evangelists like Pat Robertson, Billy Graham, among others, were aiming for a coordinated conversion campaign in India titling it as AD2000….. When AD2000 was conceived for India, it was based on well-researched information on various facets of selected people groups. This research was based on a detailed study of Indian demographics by Dr KS Singh, entitled ‘People of India Project.’ …it was renamed as the Joshua Project….. The targets of these missionaries are the unfortunate low-castes who, due to socio-economic conditions fall for their “promises.” According to the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI):

“The 300 million Dalits in India are considered to be less than human through the Hindu caste system…..The Dalit leadership has called the people to reject Hinduism. As Christians, we support the movement ….People have the freedom to choose. We are in solidarity with them because this is an issue of justice and of resisting oppression. As God’s people we stand with the issues of equality of justice, human dignity, identity, and the right to be treated with respect and equality. Therefore the church is involved.”

b. The Joshua Project includes a scale which allows the missionaries to track the progress of conversion:

1. Red indicates less than two per cent Evangelical and less than five per cent Christian.
2. Yellow indicates less than two per cent Evangelical but greater than five per cent Christian.
3. Green indicates from two per cent to greater than five per cent Evangelical.

In recent years, many Indian states with rising inter-religious tension, are states that show increasing green and yellow in the Joshua Project website.

As is with most cases, the secularists like to present only one side of the coin. That explains their selection of news reports which state one side of the story. This is the case with the report citing the Indian Express investigations on communal incidents in Uttar Pradesh. The IndiaFacts response tells the complete story in these articles.

[pullquote]First and foremost, Love Jihad is not about inter-faith love marriages, it is about sexual violence and marriage by deceit[/pullquote]

Furthermore if the present Government is a Hindu-only government, what can explain the cases of Hindus being persecuted within in India itself? Here is the complete archive of the incidents of Hindu persecution occurring in India starting from August 2014 till date that is a full two months after Narendra Modi was elected as the Prime Minister of India.

Conclusion:

The John Dayals of India imagine themselves as Fritz Gerlich, the German journalist who consistently opposed the Nazi Party, but in reality they share more similarities with Paul Joseph Goebbels the Reich Minister of Propaganda, since they follow his principle: If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

It is interesting to note that John Dayal and his ilk choose to anoint PM Modi as the ringleader of all fringe Hindu groups and chooses to put more faith in the statements of these fringe groups over PM Modi whose dictum has always been ‘Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikaas’—in other words, no appeasement or special treatment to any person or caste or community or group.  

Still, if John Dayal believes the PM to be responsible for the activities of all the fringe elements, then Dayal should compile another report titled ‘A decade under the UPA Regime: The State of Citizens’ where he should assign all the blame for communal clashes and even terror attacks to the then UPA regime, and since he was part of the NAC during that time, he should apologize to the nation for his ‘participation’ in all those tragedies.