Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone - Issue #95: The World's largest Social Laboratory
“All other factors being equal, change one variable” - goes almost every laboratory experiment. The greatest and the largest social laboratory experiment ever conducted on this planet was in India.
The partition between India and Pakistan created two entities which can be studied to understand the impact of one variable - Belief.
All other factors and variables kept constant. These two nations can be considered the greatest social laboratory experiment ever conducted.
When the Jews came to India because of persecution by the Romans and Christians later, they came to a Hindu country. From Megasthenes (who wrote the book Indica) to Christopher Columbus to East India Company - everyone saw this group of people from the now Afghanistan in the West to Assam in the East as one group of people - Indians. Despite many kingdoms, what united the people?
Dharma.
A Spiritual thread that ran within the hearts and the fabric of the societies.
From the stand-point of outsiders brought up on “Belief” and “Faith”, India was a “religious” unit. Except that it wasn’t.
What was a belief, predicated on an apriori assumption of god, was an exploration to us in India. That is why it was called realization.
Realization can only be the result, not an assumption. It is the destination. Not the starting point. Divine was a realization, not a belief.
When Divine is a search, a seeking, then how can you fight anyone else who is also on that same journey? A journey that is within, personal and subjective.
Belief systems with apriori stories on god have had a major problem. Of validation and certification.
There is no benchmark. No one who can say he is correct. So, the only way to sanctify statements made in books that believers held holy was to enforce its holiness. The holiness really didn’t matter. The enforcement did. How strict, how terrible and how exacting your enforcement and revenge against those who did not believe was, the holiness was that much established.
Belief can only survive on the back of violence and exclusivity.
Seeking can only succeed in acceptance and inclusivity.
That is a major dichotomy. And, the one variable that was different between India and Pakistan. All other factors being constant and equal.
“Freedom cannot be bestowed - it must be achieved.” - Elbert Hubbard
LoC Gurez Sector, J&K 🇮🇳 https://t.co/pzHKyUnCTE
In those cold ravines, passes and mountains, they stand on vigil - against the enemy and the cold. Every Independence day has been possible because of their sacrifice.
1962 Indo-China war - how India was betrayed
In 1954, Nehru wrote to his cabinet colleagues before before his famous (and in hindsight – an infamous) visit to China.
“Dear Comrade,” wrote Jawaharlal Nehru to each member of his Cabinet. “On the eve of my visit to China, I venture to write to you to dispel doubts and rumors.” In 1,300 loosely strung words, the leader of the world’s second most populous nation proclaimed that he would not run for re-election as Congress Party president when his term expires next January and would not “function as Prime Minister for at least some time.” (Source)
He was using the Gandhian tactic of emotional blackmail by saying that he would not stand for re-election as the Congress President in 1955 and would not function as a Prime Minister “for sometime”. The letter had its intended effect as he beat down on the moderates, Centrists, and “right-wing” colleagues and India took a sharp turn to Communism and Socialism – more socialism at home, more flirting with Communism abroad. In hindsight, nothing could have been more tragic for the citizens and more prosperous for the ruling few! A empire that was to be built on mockery of the silent poverty and illiteracy through slogans and repeated emotional blackmail – was initiated only to be passed on as a family heirloom. India was betrayed and remained so.
Impact of this dalliance with Communism was to plant folks who would destroy the Indian fabric and union in many different ways.
Nehru and Krishna Menon
On February 3, 1956, Menon joined the Union Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio. In 1957 he was elected to the Lok Sabha from Bombay, and in April of that year he was named minister of defence under Prime Minister Nehru.
Meanwhile, the politics of lies, deceit and falsehoods continued.
“I can tell this House that at no time since our independence, and of course before it, were our defence forces in better condition, in finer fettle, and with the background of our far greater industrial production…to help them, than they are today. I am not boasting about them or comparing them with any other country’s, but I am quite confident that our defence forces are well capable of looking after our security.” - Prime Minister Jawarharlal Nehru addressing the Lok Sabha on 25th November 1959.
When the Chinese attacked India in 1961-62, India was hardly prepared. It had been so poorly equipped - deliberately - that it was criminal. Read this account from the Battle of Namka Chu from Oct 10 to Nov 16, 1962 to fully understand the criminality.
Furthermore poor planning in the air drops did not help. Instead of snow clothes & ammo they got tent pegs, kerosene was dropped in 200L barrels. Many rolled down slopes and although some could be retrieved, many were given up. Especially high were losses from drops by C119s due to the higher speed of the aircraft. Meanwhile two platoons of MMGs from 6 Mahar and 34 Heavy Mortar Regiment reached Lumpu. The mortars had no ammo.
It wasn’t as if the Indian side did not know of what was happening. It did.
It was all ignored. Deliberately.
From the account in his book, Spy on the Roof of the World, Wignall appears to have willingly agreed to be a spy. But he didn’t tell the rest of his team. As it turned out, the Chinese were right when they arrested the three expedition members on the slopes of Nalkankar for being on a spying mission. Wignall managed to gather information even during his detention about a strategic highway the Chinese were building towards western Tibet, and an estimate of the garrison strength at Taklakot. But this information didn’t do the Indians much good, since Nehru and Menon ignored it and were caught unawares when the Sino-Indian war erupted in 1962 during which large numbers of Indian soldiers, including Nepali Gorkhas, were killed in the icy mountains of Arunachal Pradesh and Askai Chin. (Source)
When General Thimayya had gone to Krishna Menon, the then Indian Defense Minister, to discuss the road being built by the Chinese way back in 1957, he met with rebuke instead!
Finance Minister Morarji Desai angrily set out to get the facts about the Red road. Cross-questioning India’s Army Chief of Staff. Lieut. General K. S. Thimayya, he asked when he first knew about the road. In 1957, said the general, and he had offered proposals to safeguard the security of India, but they were turned down by the Defense Minister, lean, rancorous V. K. Krishna Menon. “Why?” asked Desai. “Because,” replied Thimayya, “he said that the enemy was on the other side [i.e., Pakistan], not on this side.” (Source)
The investment in installing Krishna Menon at the helm was paying off.
When Menon was the Indian High Commissioner in London in 1947, the MI6 had kept close tabs on him. This is what they wrote on him:
“Whatever his politics may be, and they appear to go fairly far to the Left, MENON is clearly dishonest, immoral an opportunist and an intriguer…whether or not MENON´s retention as High Commissioner is the lesser of two evils, the relations between him and Miss TUNNARD…are of considerable importance.” (Source)
The Ms Tunnard, mentioned in this communication was Krishna Menon’s mistress.
ISIS Akbar tero naam
Akbar – who is supposed to be the epitome of Secularism in the Mughal Rule, wrote this letter – Fatehnama-i-Chitor – after his victory in Chittor against the Rajputs:
in conformity with the happy injunction of the Quran (27:40)…[he was busy] in subjugating the localities, habitations, forts and towns which are under the possession of the infidels…may God forsake and annihilate all of them, and thus raising the standard of Islam everywhere and removing the darkness of polytheism and violent sins by the use of sword. We destroy the places of worship of idols in those places and other parts of India. The praise be to Allah, who hath guided us to this, and we would not have found the way had it not been that Allah had guided us…. in accordance with the imperative Command – and kill the idolaters all together (Quran 9:36), those defiant ones who were still offering resistance having formed themselves into knots of two to three hundred persons, were put to death and their women and children taken prisoners.
Open the tweet and check what the ISIS did to Yazidis. This may give you a small glimpse into how the Rajputs who didn’t convert or had resisted were “put to death” by Akbar the Great.
If the world tomorrow has historians like the ones we have had in India - there might come a time when the coming generations will learn about “ISIS the Greats”.
Warning ⚠️ warning ⚠️
With deadline to convert to Islam expired, ISIS murdered the Yazidi men, as they knew that they'll be killed whether they convert or not. And that’s what they did.
#YazidiGenocide https://t.co/FikfFtwMJT
different woke standards
After George Floyd’s death at least 50 confederate symbols or structures have been taken down in the US demonstrators rallying against systemic racism and calling for justice.
Among some of the more prominent changes sparked by Floyd’s death is the speedy removal and renaming of landmarks and monuments representing the Confederacy. Such symbols have come down amid controversy in recent years, but the outcry surrounding police brutality, particularly against people of color, have sped up the initiative. (Source)
The leftists are celebrating this woke awakening.
In India, however, they are aghast that the Babri structure (as per many Muslim scholars a mosque built on another’s place of worship is not a mosque, so its validity as a mosque should have been void ab initio), which was also a symbol of slavery and humiliation, should not have been brought down.
nota bene
“In the coming 1000 days, every village in the country will be connected with optical fibre cable,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his address on the occasion of 74th Independence Day earlier today. PM Modi mentioned that before 2014, only 5 dozen panchayats in the country were connected with optical fiber cable. In the last five years, nearly 1.5 lakh gram panchayats in the country have been connected with the cable. (Source)
In US, an approval to kill up to 840 sea lions in a portion of the Columbia River and its tributaries over the next five years to boost the survival of salmon and steelhead at risk of extinction is expected from the Federal officials. (Source)
Taiwan formally signed an agreement to buy 66 of the latest model F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin Corp., a move likely to further inflame tensions between the US and China. Taiwan’s purchase of the F-16s marks the first sale of advanced fighter jets to the island since President George HW Bush announced approval for 150 F-16s in 1992. (Source)
If you tend to notice faces in inanimate objects around you like the scowling face of a house, a surprised bowling ball, or a grimacing apple, you’re not alone. ‘Face pareidolia’ – the phenomenon of seeing faces in everyday objects—is a very human condition that relates to how our brains are wired. And now research from UNSW Sydney has shown we process these “fake” faces using the same visual mechanisms of the brain that we do for real ones. (Source)
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Bhavya Bharat
We have come a long way. It could have been more and better, specifically for the poor and the weak. Bharat is an idea, civilization and a nation that is critical for the survival of the world. And, who better to explain this than Sadhguru.
The making of Bhavya Bharat.
Bhavya Bharat: Making of a Colorful Nation #IndependenceDay
blast from the past
Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone - Issue #33
Free speech is free. For all. Or it is tainted. It is free even when you don’t like it and it criticizes you. When Majrooh Sultanpuri was jailed for 2 years for alluding to Nehru as Hitler, that was a devastating assault on free speech. When Indira’s emergency threw thousands into the jails for no r…