1. A Hundred Years of Non Violent Resistance

2. The Poster

Peace, and may all live as one!

Well Said!!! May your tribe increase!

Will you email me on 1conoclast@mutiny.in? I’d like to get to know more & more people like you.

He genuinely strode this nation as a colossus, was a hero and always will be a hero.

One more thing:

By 1947 his theories and ideologies had failed completely. There was partition facing him and he would have gone into obscurity within no time.

WHERE EXACTLY did you study your History from?

His ideology of Ahimsa, Satyagrah & Civil Disobedience, Non-Cooperation etc., his leading from the front at Dandi & numerous other places, all of that won you your freedom. It’s a different matter than you happen to be thankless.
Even in the 1930’s Gandhiji’s Non Violent Protest was inspiring people in far off America & of course Britian & South Africa. People who admired him go by the names of Einstien, Tolson, Mandela, Martin Luther King & Obama.

Obscurity…??? The widely believed reason for the 1948 Nobel Peace Prize not having been announced is that they didn’t give it out posthumously in those days.
He made the cover of Time Magazine 3 times before he died, the first time in 1930.

Like I said, a hero way back then & a hero still!

Do you even know what you’re talking about?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore#Twilight_years_.281932.E2.80.931941.29
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi (Read the first paragraph fully & you will find the Tagore reference in here)

If you would like more proof, do let me know.

Absolutely right about the nomenclature. It shouldn’t be Hindu Terrorists. It should be hindutva terrorists. These guys are giving the (hitherto considered rather chaste) Hindus & Hinduism a bad name.

Nitin Jshii @ 79:

With all due respect, I think you should check your facts before making a claim.

The title Mahatma was bestowed on Gandhiji by Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore himself died in 1941, so obviously the title has to have been bestowed before the time you claim it was. That’s reason # 1 why you’re wrong.

Tagore bestowed the title on Gandhiji when the latter returned from South Africa around 1915 I think. That’s reason # 2 why you’re wrong.

Tha Mahatma was & is an international star without the “favour” that dogse did him.

Thank You for your time.

You are absolutely right. All organizations that increase the communal divide in the country are dangerous. They need to be tackled head on, and their influence nullified.

However, for that to happen, there needs to be a conscious effort on the part of every Indian citizen, so that we constantly work towards being INDIANS. The unity that has been demonstrated in the wake of the terror attacks is heartening and we need to take this forward and further.

Inspiration for the RSS cadres and their paramilitary training was derived from Benito Mussolini’s fascist paramilitary groups, the Blackshirts, after RSS mentor and founder, BS Moonje visited the Italian dictator in 1931. As detailed in Marzia Casolari’s article, “Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s: Archival evidence” (Economic and Political Weekly, January 22, 2000):

“To understand militant Hinduism, one must examine its domestic roots as well as foreign influence. In the 1930s Hindu nationalism borrowed from European fascism to transform ‘different’ people into ‘enemies’. Leaders of militant Hinduism repeatedly expressed their admiration for authoritarian leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler …”

It is not only naive but also sheer deception to claim as Mr.Advani does that the RSS does not believe in violence or that Nathuram Godse dissociated himself from the RSS. The ideological connection between Sawarkar, Hindutva, RSS, and the bomb-culture as exhibited in Malegam-tyoe bomb blasts is as infaliible as the DNA test and can be traced back to Sawarkar’s student days in London as revealed in Valentine Chirol’s The Indian Unrest. The BJP leadership cannot idolise Sawarkar by committing the ultimate affront to Mahatma Gandhi by placing Sawarkar’s portrait opposite that of Gandhi in the Parliament House and claim with a straight face that RSS does not believe in violence.

Hinduism does not preach violence but Hindutva manifest in RSS>BMS>Abhinav Bharat are explicitly rooted in fascist ideology. And Nathuram Godse was not unacquanited with the bomb culture before he actually murdered Mahatma Gandhi on 30th January, 1948. Madanlal Pahwa, a refugee threw a bomb at Gandhi’s prayer meeting on 20th January, 1948 and his statement before the police had given the names of the conspiracy afoot to assassinate Gandhi.

The fact is that before the actual assassination in 1948 there were several attempts on Gandhiji’s life from 1934. The first was when Mahatma Gandhi was engaged in a nationwide tour against untouchability he went to Poona on 19th June 1934. On 25th June 1934 he was targetted with a bomb by the Hindutva fundamentalist. There was no question then either of the partition of the country or the 55 crores to be given to Pakistan. The incident of this bomb attack is mentioned by Pyarelal in his Last Phase Part II . Even more detailed information is given in D.G. Tendulkar’s Mahatma Part III. A bomb was thrown at Gandhi on 25th June 1934 when he was going to Pune Municipality conference hall to give his talk . In this bomb attack the chief executive of the municipality along with two police constables were seriously injured. Mahatma Gandhi escaped just because he was in the car behind. Pyarelal says the attack was well planned. The photos of Nehru and other congress leaders were found in the shoes of the attackers which means that the culprits were arrested. Thus before the bomb attack by Madanlal on January 20 1948 there was an earlier bomb attack. Most of the newspapers of the day published reports stating that the bomb attack was to kill Mahatma Gandhi.

Even more significant was another attempt on Gandhi’s life at Matheran in 1944 when Nathuram was arrested when trying to assault Gandhiji with a sharp weapon at Panchgani near Pune as testified by Manishanker Purohit, the proprietor of the Surti Lodge in Pune before the Kapur Commission . It is pertinent to note in this context that Pyarelal testified before the Kapur Commission that the RSS had infiltrated in the police force.

The then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to the then home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel on 26th February 1948 that : “The RSS has infiltrated into our offices and the police force and therefore it is official secrecy cannot be maintained.” Sardar Patel replied the very next day on 27th February 1948 stating that “A group belonging to Hindu Mahasabha under the leadership of Sawarkar conspired to murder Mahatma gandhi and brought it to fruition.” (Sardar Patel’s Correspondence: Part 6, p.56.)

There was another attempt on Gandhiji’s life when he was going by train from Bombay to Pune on 29th June, 1946. Between Neral-Karjat stations huge rocky stones were put on the railway tracks to cause accident. But due to the watchful railway driver L.M. Pareira the accident was averted but the engine was severely damaged. Pyarelal has written about this incident in the Harijan issue dated July 7, 1946. This train was known as Gandhi Special as testified by Pareira before the Kapur Commission.

Mahatma Gandhi mentioned about this incident in his prayer meeting at Pune on 30th June, 1946. He said:” By god’s grace I have escaped safely from the very jaws of death. I have never hurt anybody, and I have enmity with none. I cannot understand why there should be so many murderous attempts on me. Yesterday’s murder attempt was a failure. I am not going to die so soon. I shall live hunddred and twentyfive years.”

Having known personally Dr.Jagdish Chandra Jain, the Chief Prosecution Witness in the Gandhi murder trial I think I can say that the assassination was a well conceived conspiracy. One has only to read Dr. Jain’s book in Hindi ‘main Bapu ko na bacha saka’ in Hindi and ‘I could not save Bapu’ in English to understand the entire course of the conspiracy.

The slackness of the police becomes all the more inexplicable when one considers the aftermath of the bomb explosion. It is very important to note that Madanlal made a confession overnight to the Delhi Police in which he gave the full details of the conspiracy. More important still is the fact that the Delhi Police sent Madanlal’s statement to the Bombay Police by the evening of January 21.

How precisely the Bombay Police reacted to this statement is not clear. But in view of the subsequent course of events culminating in the murder on the event.. of January 30, one fact emerges clearly—that the Bombay Police were not alert in acting upon information supplied by Madanlal’s statement.

In his memoirs published in the book “The Civil Servant in India” Mr R.N. Banerjee, then Secretary for Home Affairs in the Union Government, has made a reference to this incident. He says: “Both Godse and Apte could have been found and nabbed in one of their two Bombay haunts on the 23rd. Unfortunately, nobody took any action on this statement of Madanlal, and the Delhi Police did not even remind the Bombay police. The Delhi magistracy and the Home Secretarial remained ignorant of the statement (as head of the Delhi Police never kept them informed) till the world was staggered by the ‘Hay Ram’ shot on the 30th evening.”

All the available evidence strongly suggests that the Government failed to protect Gandhiji when it could have done so. The stock excuse provided Government for inadequately security measures is that Government did not like persons attending prayer meetings to be scared.

To justify Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination many calumnious falsehoods have been fabricated by the Hindutva fundamentalists over the years. One of these was that Gandhiji went on indefinite fast from 13th January 1948 to insist on payment of 55 crores to Pakistan. As a matter of fact Gandhi went on fast with an appeal for communal peace. And it is pertinent to recall that Gandhiji was not alone in asking that Pakistan should be given 55 crores as per the pact of partition. Lord Mountbatten, the then governor of Reserve Bank, C.D. Deshmukh too were of the same opinion. Why did the Hindutva fundamentalists, whethger belonging explicitly to RSS or not, target them for murderous attacks?

In a letter to the RSS chief, Golwalkar, on the ban on the RSS following Gandhiji’s assassination, Sardar Vallabhabhai Patel, India’s first union home minister, clearly acknowledged the complicity of the RSS in the Gandhi assassination.

If the deleterious rot of the RSS ideology was so deep at the dawn of freedom one cannot simply imagine its hydra-headed extent today and its cancerous damage to the body politic. I remember as a lad of sixteen, distinctly the pyromania that prevailed in the RSS stronghold at Pune and Sangli (Maharashtra State) by the enraged mobs against the Brahmin community on learning about the identity of Nathuram Godse. At Jaysingpur near Sangli a mob set on fire a stationery shop of one Jain RSS Shakha Chalak-Monitor of RSS branch- who after garlanding a photo of Dr.Hedgewar-founder of the RSS- and breaking the photo of the Mahatma distributed sweets. When the furious mob attacked him he sought refuge before the writer’s father who happened to be a Civil Judge & Magistrate. A Gandhian by temperament he pacified the violent mob and refrained from firing. Such was the writer’s earliest brush with the quintessential RSS ideology and its demonic manifestations in the Hindutva fundamentalism which renders constitutional secular ideal meaningless.

JUSTICE KAPUR COMMISSION OF INQUIRY IN GANDHI MURDER

I corresponded with the then Chairman of the Gandhi Memorial Fund, Mr.R.R. Diwakar in 1964 expressing shock and indignation at the revelation of a Pune Editor that Nathuram Godse used to discuss with him his plan to murder Mahatma Gandhi six months prior to the assassination at the Satyanarayan ceremony held to celebrate the return of Gopal Godse after serving his life imprisonment as the convict in the Gandhi murder case.

When Ketkar made this brazen confession I wrote to the Mr.R.R. Diwakar, the then Chairman of the Gandhi Memorial Fund dated 13th November 1964:

“This negligence is culpable enough, but it assumes unpardonable proportions in the context of a scandalous disclosure which was made by a Poona Journalist. Mr. G.V. Ketkar, former editor of the “Kesari” and now editor of the “Tarun Bharat” disclosed at a reception given in Poona to Mr. Gopal Godse and Mr. Vishnu Karkare on their release from lifeterms for complicity in the Gandhi Murder case that “he knew from Naturam Godse, assassin of Gandhiji, the plan of Gandhiji’s murder for quite a few weeks earlier.” The report also further says that Naturam “used to discuss with me the pros and cons of his idea to kill Gandhiji.” He (Mr.Ketkar) added that he was opposed to the idea end ‘used to tell Nathuram to consider the consequences, social and political.”

Mr.Diwakar was good enough to respond to my letter stating dated 17-11-64 ‘As to what is to be done I will have to consider the matter.

“The remarks that you have made are too plain and no exception can be taken . But whether something can be done now seems to be remote. However, I shall think over the matter.” And on 2nd December, 1964 Mr.Diwakar wrote to me again: “Much has happened after you wrote to me, and I wrote to the Home Minister and others

“This mornings papers convey the news that a Commission is going to be set up by the Central Government to investigate once again regarding the past, the knowledge of the conspiracy etc.”

Mr.Diwakar consulted some high authorities and also there was a furore in the Parliament. As a result the Government of India appointed a Commission of Inquiry under the Chairmanship of Mr.Pathak to inquire once again into the Gandhi murder conspiracy. On Mr.Pathak’s appointment as a minister Justice J.L. Kapur, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of India was appointed.

Twenty years after the assassination, the Justice Jivan Lal Kapur commission of inquiry found that Badge’s evidence was being corroborated by Savarkar’s bodyguard Appa Ramchandra Kasar and Gajanan Vishnu Damle. Justice Kapur’s conclusion: “All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”19

The verdict of acquittal was sound in law. However, Union Home Minister Sardar Patel,s conclusion was characteristically clear: “It was a financial wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that (hatched) the conspiracy and saw it through”. (Emphasis added, throughout.)

The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Conspiracy to murder Mahatma Gandhi, which was set up in 1965, deserves greater weight than the verdict of the Sessions Court. It was headed by Justice Jivanlal Kapur of the Supreme Court and was provided with evidence not produced in the court; especially the testimony of two of Savarkar’s close aides – Appa Ramachandra Kasar, his bodyguard, and Gajanan Vishnu Damle, his secretary.

Had they testified in Court, Savarkar would have been convicted. There was none of the ambiguity surrounding Godse and Apte’s visits to Savarkar on January 14 and 17, 1948. Kasar told the Kapur Commission that they visited him on or about January 23 or 24, which was when they returned from Delhi after the bomb incident. Damle deposed that Godse and Apte saw Savarkar “in the middle of January and sat with him (Savarkar) in his garden.”

Justice Kapur’s findings are all too clear. He concluded: “All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”

You have noted the ivolvement of the army officers even with the rank of major. But it is much more insidious and widespread and almost from the dawn of freedom!

There has long existed a strong suspicion, ever since the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, that RSS cadres have infiltrated various administrative departments in the country. This fact was also noted by Vallabhbhai Patel when the RSS was banned in the wake of the Mahatma’s assassination. Describing the antecedents of the conspiracy to murder the Mahatma and the lack of security despite the bomb explosion at a meeting that Gandhi was addressing in Delhi on January 20, 1948, Gandhi’s personal secretary, Pyarelal observes in Mahatma Gandhi: the Last Phase (1958):

“What, however, surprises one, is that in spite of the definite and concrete information of which the authorities were in possession, they should have failed to trace and arrest the conspirators and frustrate their plan. The failure was an index of the extent of the rot that had permeated many branches of the services, not excluding the police. In fact later it was brought to light that the RSS organisation had ramifications even in the government departments and many police officials, not to mention the rank and file, gave their sympathy and even active help to those engaged in RSS activities… A letter (to) Sardar Patel after the assassination of Gandhiji from a young man, who according to his own statement had been gulled into joining the RSS organisation but was later disillusioned, described how members of the RSS at some places had been instructed beforehand to tune in their radio sets on the fateful Friday for the “good news”. After the news, sweets were distributed in RSS circles in several places… The rot was so insidious that only the supreme sacrifice could arrest or remove it” (p. 756).

There is striking evidence that even supposedly independent arms of the Indian administration, such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), are now under the RSS’ sway. According to reports, while addressing an RSS rally former director of the CBI, Joginder Singh proclaimed that the “RSS is the only hope of the nation

If the poisonous rot of RSS ideology ran so deep at the dawn of India’s freedom, one can only shudder at its hydra-headed extent and its cancerous damage to the body politic today. Irrespective of the BJP leadership’s professions to the contrary they cannot dissociate themselves from their Hindutva ideology which is personified in Sawarkar and which has been eloquently expressed by Himani Sawarkar-Veer Sawarkar’s daughter-in-law and President of Abhinav Bharat in a recent interview to the Outlook Magazine as follows:dt.Nov 17, 2008 When asked as to how India should fight terrorism her response was :

“We must declare ourselves a Hindu rashtra where everyone is a Hindu. Anyone who isn’t should be declared a second-class citizen and denied voting rights. Those who have problems with this should leave and settle in other countries. The Hindu votebank must unite to vote out any government that fails to tackle terror. Then we must throw out the outsiders like Bangladeshis who live off India’s wealth and work towards destroying us.

What if people of other faiths reject your prescription and refuse to call themselves Hindu.?…

“Then they are welcome to leave this country. Those living in Germany are called Germans, in England they are English, then why shouldn’t those living in Hindustan be called Hindus?”

In the aforementioned context of the RSS fascist ideology and the Sangh Parivar as a whole and its “Quit India” (!) call to all the non-Hindus it would be dangerous to ignore the internal sabotage to the national security and unity by the rhetorical challenges by the professedly Hindutva organisations like Abhinava Bharat whose President Himani Sawarkar is the daughter in law of Veer Sawarkar, niece of Nathuram Godse and daughter of Gopal Godse who firmly expressed his conviction till his death recently that he would not hesitate to commit the same crime again!!

It is being constantly dinned into our ears that India must be united in confronting the alien terrorists and it is rightly so. But in doing so it would be suicidal to let up our efforts to locate the internal terrorists.

Please see my article: Could Gandhi be Saved : RSS Role in Gandhi Assassination http://nonviolence.ning.com/profiles/blogs/1991979:BlogPost:284