An insight into the 'Perversion of India's Political Parlance' book

“The word secular is defined in the dictionaries as "the belief that the state, morals, education, etc. should be independent of religion." But in India it means only one thing -- eschewing everything Hindu and espousing everything Islamic.” [pg. 15]

This quote from ‘Perversion of India’s political parlance’ perfectly fits in the current scenario of the country. This book by Sita Ram Goel ji – published in 1984 – clearly explains how a simple word, forcibly and intentionally planted in the political parlance, plays a vital role.

The author, Sita Ram Goel, was an Indian historian, religious and a political activist. He lit the torch of literature about Hinduism and Hindu nationalism in the late twentieth century 1980s, 90s when the dark clouds of the leftist ideology tried to cloud it.

His stance has generated significant debate and scrutiny among scholars and observers of Indian society and politics. If we break down the title, ‘Perversion of India's Political Parlance’, ‘perversion’ means ‘a change or an alteration in meaning’, while ‘parlance’ is a group of words or style of speaking used by a particular group of people. So it’s about the words and their means are altered to set new narratives, favouring the left.

“Do you know what you’re talking, and to whom?” There was a touch of temper in his voice.” …..These words were spoken by J.P. Narayan to the author when he informed J.P. about an invitation to visit an RSS camp.

Mr. Goel begins the book by sharing a story as the first chapter, titled ‘Something was Seriously Wrong Somewhere’. The story can be summarised as when in the summer of 1959, Goel, the secretary of an organization led by J. P., informed him about an invitation to visit an RSS camp. He was aware of Narayan's prejudice against RSS, but he tried to convince him, accusing him of performing untouchability for being aloof from the RSS while consulting with almost every other political force existing then.

This accusation worked like magic, J.P. agreed to visit the RSS camp the next evening. He spent two hours there, but he refused to speak on stage as he had no idea what to say. This visit removed the cloud of misconceptions that existed in J.P.'s mind, but this perversion is still there in millions of other minds.

In the next chapter, ‘Words Which Defy Dictionaries’, he brings to light how political scientists and journalists add nuances to this broad bracketing of the left, the right and centre. But one is left guessing about the location of the centre itself. It is sometimes suggested that the centre is constituted by the ruling Congress Party. The Congress Party, however, repudiates this description.

These uncertain and nasty brackets unjustly divide people into brackets and consider the leftists as –progressive, revolutionary, socialist, secularist, and democratic, modern and scientific secular. while the rightists as reactionary, revivalist, capitalist, and fascist (supporting centralized power) conservative and stuck in the golden history communal.

In ‘The Sources of Leftist Language’– third chapter – a social commentator and the author makes us realise how leftist professors and publicists claim that their language was formulated in the course of India's fight for freedom from British rule. But this is a plain and a big lie. The annals of that freedom struggle provide no evidence that this language was used in India's politics till the late thirties of this century (1930s).

It was only after the attainment of independence that this parlance spread like a plague, particularly during the period when Jawaharlal Nehru dominated the Indian political scene. A majority of Englishmen and their press in this country The leftists started dubbing the Congress as a ‘Hindu organization dominated by Bengali Babus’.

Some Muslim politicians, who fancied themselves as successors of the erstwhile ruling race, picked up these jibes. Their leader, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, did some saber-rattling (threatening military actions) on behalf of his community. Nehru became Congress president for the second time in 1936; the whole political atmosphere had become chock-full of communist catchphrases like bourgeois and proletariat.

In the fourth chapter, ‘The Character of Leftist Language’, Sita Ram Goel, mentions the imperial characteristics of the ideologies working against Hinduism i.e. Islam, Christianity and Communism. They divide human history into two sharply separated periods. For instance, Christianity mentions B.C. or the age of darkness which prevailed before the birth of Jesus and C.E. or Common Era.

They usually revolve around an incomparable person. All pronouncements of this person are placed beyond the reach of human reason or experience. They have to be accepted on faith. Compared to faith, reason and knowledge are found to be faulty faculties.

The chapter, ‘The History of Leftist Language’ follows and we get to know how leftist language first came to India as the language of Communist imperialism. Its main spokesman was M.N. Roy. Roy published his book "India in Transition" in 1922, and laid down practically all fundamental formulations which, in due course, became the stock-in-trade of India's Leftist parties. Lesser known fact, he had been sent abroad by Bengal revolutionaries in 1915 in search of German arms.

The Germans did not live up to their promise and he wandered away through China and Japan into the USA where he was positively impressed by modern Western culture and civilisation. Next, he went to Mexico where he came in contact with Communist thought. That cured him completely of whatever love was still left in him for India's ancient culture. Finally, he landed in the Soviet Union in 1920 and became a confidant of Lenin. He functioned as a leading luminary of the Communist International for several years.

‘The Role of Leftist Language’ is the sixth chapter in which Goel ji mentions the heartbreaking story of the split in the national movement. Although Nehru was the chief patron of this Leftist language inside the Congress leadership, he formally kept aloof from the communist-socialist combine. He had an axe to grind, so he used it secretly to hurl all sorts of criticism on Sardar Patel and Subhash Chandra Bose.

The anti-Hindu forces highlight the fact that a Hindu murdered the Mahatma as if the Hindus have done nothing in the whole of their history except murdering the Mahatma. This overshadows the fact that it was the Hindus who had always rallied round Mahatma Gandhi, who had adored him throughout his life. We can see its parallel in History when the Catholic Church which has portrayed the Jews only as murderers of Jesus.

Surprisingly, in the second last chapter of the book, ‘The Place of Mahatma Gandhi’, the author somehow defends Gandhi while admitting his errors. Beginning with the fact that Mahatma started dominating the freedom movement when thirty-five years had already passed since the founding of the Indian National Congress by A.O. Hume in 1885. After a year or two after Sir Syed Ahmed Khan started sabre-rattling on behalf of his community. There is no evidence that any Hindu leader called his bluff at that time or at a subsequent stage.

Hindus contributed quite a lot of money towards the establishment of his Anglo-Oriental Mohammedan College at Aligarh which was to become the main seat of Muslim separatism at a subsequent stage. Mahatma Gandhi was nowhere near the scene. The only Hindu response to this Muslim mayhem was to hail Siraj-ud-daulah, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan as national heroes. Again, Mahatma Gandhi was not on the scene. Gandhi warned against Islamic imperialism but considered Islam as religion, the BIGGEST Mistake.

Goel Ji gives the book with a hopeful climax, ‘Towards a Language of Indian Nationalism’. This parlance played its most perfidious role when it blackened Indian nationalism as "Hindu communalism" and aided and abetted Islamic imperialism to consolidate on the soil of India an aggression spread over more than thirteen hundred years.

Indian or Hindu nationalism is age-old, we can see how Bankim Chandra Chatterji didn’t coin ‘Bande Mataram’ but he had inherited it from his ancestry and passed it on to future generations. But, what if we adopt this Indian Nationalism? Goel goes on to delineate the first implication that Bharatavarsh is an indivisible whole and that its present division into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Hindustan, and Bangladesh, brought about by Islamic imperialism, must go. Islamic imperialism has alienated not only large areas from the national homeland but also significant segments of the national population. Indian nationalism cannot and should not rest till this aggression gets vacated for good.

As they say, think before you speak. This book by Shri Sita Ram Goel Ji makes us further conscious about the origin and implication of words we often carelessly use and take forward the vicious perversion cleverly done by the leftists. Truly, a must read for all!

Article by

Bhavesh Rohira

Younginker
Madhyapradesh