Dear Mr. Vineet Jain,
In recent years one has witnessed a steady transformation of The Times of India, the premier daily newspaper of our country into a platform for pathological Hindu Bashers.
This is not so apparent in the pages covering news. But the pride of place, especially in The Sunday Times, is given to those who use malicious lies and indulge in brazen distortion of facts to pour venom on Hindus. For instance, when you give pride of place to someone like Aakaar Patel, a leading member of the Break Up India Mafia who is now booked under serious charges including sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) and section 117 ( abetting commission of offences by the public) there is cause for alarm. Patel is a foreign funded political activist, not a journalist. And yet your paper gave him the most prominent space for pouring out weekly malice against Hindus. You got rid of Dileep Padgaonkar in a jiffy when he grew too big for his boots. But you allowed the political riff raff he recruited to continue unchecked.
The result is that even someone like Swaminathan Aiyar who for long years was a respected economist whose editorials in The Times Of India invariably provided factually grounded insights into important issues confronting India, has been infected by the #sickular Anti-Hindu Virus.
I used to praise Swaminathan's articles publicly because he was among the few who avoided ideology driven agendas in sharp contrast to his brother Mani Shanker Aiyar. His downhill journey began reluctantly but over time he seems to be following in the footsteps of low-on-wits-and-high-on-vitriol Sagarika Ghose. His recent essay in The Times of India of August 16 is seething with contempt on an issue sacred to Hindus. Echoing the once favorite anchor of Times Now: The nation wants to know Mr Jain, Do you endorse Swaminathan's views on Ram JanmSthaan Mandir?
I am offering you a detailed critique of his essay to ask you directly, is this what The Times of India stands for? Is this your idea of journalism?
His article shows no awareness of the countless wounds inflicted on our people and civilization for over a 1000 years including destruction of thousands of Hindus, Jain and Buddhist temples by Islamic Jehadis but dismisses contemptuously the 500 year-long battles waged by Hindus to reclaim one of their most sacred sites, the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. My heart boiled with rage when I saw the 27 defiled Jain temples turned into mosques by Qutubuddin Aibak at the Qutub Minar Complex or the defaced murtis in Jain temples in Mount Abu and elsewhere. Have those ugly reminders of Islamic assaults stopped bothering you, Mr. Jain?
Notice the pompous, imperious tone Swaminathan uses throughout the article:
I am used to abuse from BJP trolls. But they seemed especially abusive when I wrote last week that the new Ram temple being launched at Ayodhya would eventually turn out to be a minor event with few political consequences. I said India already had lakhs of temples and one more in Ayodhya would make a little difference. The trolls castigated this as the delirious maundering of a “sickular” “atheist” “libtard” who knew nothing of Hinduism.
Mr. Jain, would the editors of your paper dare describe the Church of Nativity in Jerusalem, where Jesus was believed to have been born, as just "one more church" whose existence or destruction should not be matter of any concern to Christians? Would your paper dare describe what Muslims consider the 'Great Mosque of Mecca", where millions gather every year for Haj–a wasteful easy-to-dispense-with-mosque since there are crores of local mosques all over the world?
Its time for you to educate Swaminathan that all those who feel passionately about restoration of the Babar-Vandalized-Ram-Mandir are not lowly trolls. Most of them are far better informed about the history and faith traditions of India than a Doon school educated Brown Sahib like Swaminathan! Most of us grew up unaware of our history and what the invasions by Islamic barbarians meant for India because we were fed on the history written by Leftist-Islamist-Distortionists.
But today, we have access to our history without need for Distortionist-Gatekeepers. A mountain of scholarly information is available on the internet and in social media. Therefore, the senior most journalist on your pay roll has no right to be so ignorant in addition to being arrogant about our wounded civilization. Please get your editorial team to read Sita Ram Goel’s book: “Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them?” and Prafulla Goradia’s “Hindu Masjids” in order to get a reality check.
The second para of his article is not only offensive but also laughable in its phoney piety:
In response, let me present my mother. She spent the last two decades of her life at the Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh and became a sanyasin. She was a devout Hindu. But would she have approved of the mob that destroyed the Babri Masjid in 1992? No, she would have called them thugs, a disgrace to all that was good and great in Hinduism.
Firstly, who has given Swaminathan the authority to lecture us on behalf of his long dead mother? How does he know how she would have responded to the Ram Mandir movement? He calls himself an atheist while she wasn’t. He is neither well informed about Hinduism nor a practicing Hindu. Why then is he giving us a pulpit sermon on behalf of his long dead mother or as a self-appointed spokesperson of “all that was good and great in Hinduism”?
He tells us that his mother took sanyas and stayed in an ashram for the last 20 years of her life. Could it be that she found life with both her sons insufferable and therefore stayed away from both? Not very pleasant to have one turn out to be a pompous Jehadi-Commie who is more happy in cocktail parties in Lahore & Islamabad– as is Mani Shankar Aiyar–and second one, an Atheist Dandy who doesn’t have an iota of empathy for his own ancestors who bore untold suffering, indignities and oppression in order to survive as Hindus during those traumatic centuries of Islamic rule.
He expects us to take inspiration from his mother when he himself failed to imbibe any cultural values or sanskars from her and turned out to be a Macaulay Putra full of disdain for Hindu faith traditions!
The unkindest cut is when he proclaims that his mother who would have treated the Kar Sewaks who demolished Babri Masjid as “thugs”. Mr. Jain, The Times of India needs to answer how would you describe Babar and other Islamic invaders who destroyed, looted, vandalized thousands of Hindu mandirs and converted them into mosques? They didn’t stop at that. They massacred Hindu population that came in the way and offered only two choices: “Death or Conversion” to the surviving population. They gang raped and captured Hindu women and turned them into sex slaves. Many were put in Islamic harems in India while lakhs were taken to be sold in the bazaars of Arabia, Turkey etc. The story continues to this date in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Islamic countries where abduction of Hindu women and forced conversions upon pain of death is a daily routine. Sadly, your newspaper has never given space to writers who provide us real glimpses into our history and current dangers faced by India and Hindu civilization. Are you among those who consider those barbarians as proud specimens of Ganga-Jamuni Tehzeeb which your editors often peddle?
Going further, Swaminathan writes:
The media has tom-tomed the bhoomipujan of the Ram temple as a major event for all Hindus. Sorry, but it is an event for Hindutva, not Hinduism. My mother would have questioned the mega publicity given to the new Ayodhya temple. For the vast majority of Hindus, the new temple will matter much less than local temples, and cannot compete with great Hindu centres of worship such as Tirupati, Varanasi, Thanjavur, Badrinath, Puri, Vaishno Devi or Shirdi.
My mother would have called temple building a commendable Hindu act that communities did in every village.
Again his ignorance is only matched by his arrogance. If the local village or Mohalla temple is all that matters to Hindus, how come millions visit Vaishno Devi, Kedarnath, Gangotri- Yamunotri Mandirs in Uttar Kashi, Kedarnath Temple in Garhwal, HariMandir Sahib in Amritsar, Banke Bihari Temple in Vrindavan, Vishwanath Mandir in Kashi, Siddhivinayak Temple in Mumbai, Sai Baba Mandir in Shirdi, Vithoba Temple in Pandharpur, Somnath Mandir in Gujarat, Kalighat Temple in Kolkatta, Meenakshi Mandir in Madurai, Sabarimala Temple in Kerala, Brihadeeswara Temple in Thanjavur, Kamakhya Mandir in Gauhati, and countless other pan Indian temples?
It was not for nothing that in the hoary past, Kerala born Adi Shankracharya (some believe he was born in 507 BCE but there is no confirmed date regarding his birth) traversed on foot the length and breadth of India to establish four peeths: 1. Jyothir Mutt in the North in Uttarakhand; 2. Dwarka Peeth in the West in Gujarat; 3. Sharada Peeth at Sringeri in the South on the banks of Kaveri river in Karnataka; 4. Govardhan Mutt at Puri in the East, Odisha.
Please check if Swaminathan knows how many millions go for pilgrimage to Chaar Dhaams (the Four Abodes) and various pan-indian temples every year. Also check if he knows that in the Hindu tradition, the importance of a carefully chosen sacred sthaan is of crucial importance. And all sacred sthaans are not linked to birth places, as in Ayodhya. Before trains, planes and automobiles appeared to ease the journey, for hundreds of years, Hindus from all across India walked to these teertha sthaans. Swaminathan probably thinks they did so because they didn't have an Atheist Dude to advise them to confine their devotion to their kitchen shrine or village temple!
Swaminathan says that local mohalla temples are all that are needed for “genuine Hinduism” to exist in a secular India . But I have never seen your editors upset when in Bangladesh or Pakistan even local temples are routinely vandalized and converted into mosques along with burning down of Hindu homes. Nor do I remember Swaminathan or other #sickular editors of The Times of India express any grief or outrage when countless ancient local temples were broken, murtis desecrated and their lands taken over by Jehadis in Kashmir. For a 1000 years, where ever Islamic marauders held sway, no temple—local or pan Indian—survived.
Not being satisfied in giving us a caricature version of his mother’s beliefs, the Atheist Dandy of TOI arrogates to himself the right to speak also on behalf of his long-dead-father:
My father built a Ganesh temple in New Delhi. Did this have anything to do with politics or politicians, or putting down another religion? Absolutely not. During the Partition riots of 1947, our family was in Shimla. A Muslim family came running into our house chased by a Hindu mob. My mother quickly locked the Muslims in the attic and let the Hindu mob rampage in vain through the house. Who represented the devout Hindu, my mother or the Hindu mob?
Swaminathan is the last person to know his father’s reasons for building a Ganesh temple in New Delhi because as an atheist, Swaminathan discarded their sanskars and beliefs. I bet he probably told his father, why waste money on a temple, why not spend on having a snazzy bar in the house!
Mr. Jain, please check with your #sickular editor whether he knows why the Laxmi Narayan Mandir built by GD Birla in Delhi in the year 1939 is the first Hindu temple constructed after some 700 years of destruction of all Hindu temples by Islamic marauders in North India.
During those 700 years Hindus were not allowed to build even local temples or celebrate their faith traditions in the public domain even while countless Hindu sacred mandirs— including the Kashi Vishwanath, Mathura’s Krishna Temple and Ram Mandir at Ayodhya—were destroyed and their wealth looted, the deities were desecrated and even used as stepping stones to the mosques built over mandirs. That is why in Kashi, numerous ancient temples and murtis were found hidden in private homes during the redevelopment drive. Countless priests sacrificed their lives trying to protect the sacred deities from Jehadi marauders—sometimes by burying them deep or dropping them in wells as was the case with the Shivalinga of Kashi Vishwanath temple. I advise you get everyone of your staff to read Meenakshi Jain’s book : The Flight of Deities and Rebirth of Temples: Episodes from Indian History” in order to familiarize them with the meaning of temples and the live significance of deities in the lives of Hindus.
Please answer, Mr Jain, was the destruction of these temples a political act or not? Or does The Times of India see them as acts of Islamic piety?
Is that why in Swaminathan’s worldview Hindus mourning the desecration of those of temples and their centuries long battles to recover their sacred dharmasthans is a crime against Muslims since by reclaiming those temples we are going against the tenets of Islam & the most cherished belief of Islamists that all of Hindustan must be converted to Ghazwa-E-Hind? This mission includes forcing all Hindus into accepting Islam, destroying all temples and smashing all sacred murtis. Anyone who resists merits death!
Even though The Times of India won’t allow us to say so, Social Media has given us the freedom to say it loud and clear that the destruction of our sacred temples was a political act to make us accept servitude in all respects. Therefore, restoration of those temples cannot but be done through political mobilization. Even the modest Ganesh temple built by Swaminathan’s father could not have come into existence in Delhi during the centuries of Islamic rule. Nor could he have done that if he lived as a Hindi in Lahore or Peshawar. His ability to construct it in a public place in Delhi demonstrated change of power equations.
And politics is not just BJP versus Congress vs this or that party. Politics is essentially about power equations between different groups in society: whether preserving the status quo of power equations or working to change them. Hindus acquired the freedom to worship their deities ONLY after Islamic rule ended. Therefore, that modest Ganesh temple was an affirmation of changed power equations.
Swaminathan probably wouldn’t have noticed or cared because for Macaulay Putras of India having bars, pubs, night clubs, five star hotels, expensive diners and discotheques is far more important than having temples or pilgrimage centres. Sadly for him, if Hindu majority in India turns into a minority, pubs and discotheques won’t be allowed either.
Here are some more platitudes using his mother as a fighting sword against “Hindu thugs”…
My mother would have preferred me to be deeply religious, yet smiled indulgently at my atheism, and said there were atheist traditions like the Charvaka school of philosophy within Hinduism. The Hindutva trolls seem blissfully unaware of this. Anyway, they worry less about atheists, who are small in number, than secularists, and constantly claim that secularism is anti-Hindu or entails looking down on Hinduism. That is pure tripe.
How come a man of Swaminthan’s seniority doesn’t know that Charvaka philosophy is the very opposite of Gandhi ji’s worldview which he extols in the next few paras? Charvakas extoll hedonism, even if it means running into debts and causing grief all around. Sensory pleasures are all that matter to Charvakas. Jabali, a proto-Charvaka philosopher was part of Ayodhya’s royal durbar and advised Sri Ram on following the Charvaka philosophy, instead of going into vanvaas. He was powerfully rebutted by Sri Rama in the Valmiki Ramayana (Ayodhya Kaand, Sarga 108-109). Charvakas never went beyond being a fringe sect, more marginal than even Aghoris. This is because all major schools of Hindu philosophy put great emphasis on responsibility towards family, society and Mother Earth. If The Times of India continues to follow the Charvaka philosophy, it will also end up on the lunatic fringe, like the Charvakas.
Witness how after hedonism of Charvakas, Dilettantish-Swaminathan uses Gandhi as his weapon against us “Hindu thugs”!
Mahatma Gandhi was without question a devout Hindu. He was also a fundamental secularist and saw absolutely no contradiction between the two. He said people called God by many names and so claimed to have different religions, but all prayed to the same Holy One. This was the foundation of his secularism and belief that all religions should be treated with equal respect. Secularism was not lack of respect for Hinduism but respect for all.
Mr Jain, The Times of India needs to read the writing on the wall. In recent years, it has become clear that Gandhi ji has become the last refuge of all rogues, thugs, scamsters, Murderous-Commies, Genocidal-Maoists and Islamic-Jehadis. #ProphetsOfSickularism in the Sonia-Pappu- Congress Party need Gandhi’s wisdom more than us! Leave us “thuggish Hindus” to decide who we wish to hold up as our ideal, in what measure and for what purpose. Gandhi is allowed his due place in our hearts. For instance, we revere him when he talks of the antimjan and offers his vision of Swaraj.
But we don’t use him as a stick to beat up our political opponents without paying the least heed to his message, leave alone follow his path. By the way, can your five star editors point to one thing that is Gandhian in their personal lives?
The wisdom of Gandhi and Nehru of equating Allah with Ishwar has proved to be lethal for the survival of Indic civilization. And therefore, that wisdom belongs to the dustbin of history! Gandhi’s role in messing up Hindu-Muslim relations leading up to the gory Partition of India is unforgiveable. We reject the Gandhi who gave Hindus the following advice with perverse conviction:
“I would tell Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. … I must die without rancour. … You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain.”.
“Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives. None should fear death. Birth and death are inevitable for every human being. Why should we then rejoice or grieve? If we die with a smile we shall enter into a new life, we shall be ushering in a new India. (Prayer meeting, April 6, 1947, New Delhi, CWMG Vol. 94 page 249)
“If all the Punjabis were to die to the last man without killing (a single Muslim), Punjab will be immortal. Offer yourselves as nonviolent willing sacrifices.” (Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight, p-385)
Today’s India is not willing to stomach Gandhian pieties in dealing with the Break-Up-India-Brigade. We need the courage and wisdom of Guru Govind Singh to deal with enemies of India—both within India and outside. Since your editors have been using those poisonous pieties to cover up the crimes of those who want multiple repeats of the 1947 genocide, we can only ask them to SHUT UP or go preach these pieties in Pakistan or in ISIS lands!
The following paragraph of Swaminathan literally turns Gandhi on his head:
Gandhiji was also a believer in inalienable individual rights, and the duty to respect beliefs of others and not force one’s views on them. Hence, he supported cow slaughter by non-Hindus. Despite being a devout Hindu who held a daily prayer meeting, he was shot by Nathuram Godse for being too secular. His last words were “Hey Ram.” Was he a sickular libtard?( Emphasis mine)
It is truly bizarre to suggest that Gandhi “supported” cow slaughter by Muslims and Christians. Gandhi kept appealing to Muslims to abandon cow slaughter out of respect for Hindu sentiments. But they paid no heed to him. While it is true that Gandhi ji did not want to use a punitive law by the British against Muslims who use cow slaughter in order to humiliate and hurt Hindus, but your editors ought to know that inclusion of ban on cow slaughter in the Directive Principles of State Policy enshrined in the Constitution is largely due to Gandhi’s pressure over Nehruvians in the Congress.
Here is a litmus test for Swaminathan’s Gandhi Bhakti: Is he willing to persuade his Islamic comrades to voluntarily abandon killing of cows out of respect for Gandhi who worshipped Gau Mata? Gandhi was also dead against conversions. Does he dare support a ban or at least speak against conversions? Highly unlikely that Swaminathan would risk doing that! His Juvenile-Gandhigiri is only meant as a weapon for Hindus-Bashing!
Here is another painful example of Gandhigiri by Swaminathan:
Today the Hindutva crowd claims it alone represents true Hinduism. It cannot stand Gandhiji’s secularism and adores Godse. BJP Member of Parliament Pragya Thakur, under trial for killing 10 people in the 2008 Malegaon bomb blasts, has lauded Godse as a great patriot. She was criticised and disciplined for this by Modi. Yet the Hindutva crowd has been emboldened to erect many statues of Godse and has made him a deity in a Hindu temple in Gwalior. Yogi Adityanath has proposed changing the name of Meerut to Godse city.
As for Sadhvi Pragya, since the case is sub judice, I will not pick up cudgels on this issue. But let me say it plain and simple: Once the case is concluded and the full facts are made available in the public domain, Swaminathan may have to eat humble pie! For the moment, I would only like The Times of India to keep in mind that Sadhvi Pragya was subjected to third degree torture for years during their incarceration- that too without as much as a charge sheet being filed against her. Sadhvi came out on bail after eight years in a crippled condition and may not live long, given the permanent damage caused to her health.
For a meaningful debate on Godse, let Swaminathan first understand Gandhi ji in all his multifaceted complexity, including his salient flaws and gigantic blunders before flagellating Gandhi’s ideological adversaries.
As for Yogi Adityanath, a man like him rooted as he is in Sanatan Dharma and the civilizational values of Bharatvarsh, is beyond the comprehension of the Macaulay Putras you have chosen to run The Times of India. Please buy a copy of Shanatanu Gupta’s The Monk Who Became Chief Minister: The Definitive Biography Of Yogi Adityanath for TOI library so that your editors do basic homework before they shoot missiles at Yogi ji.
With obsessive zeal to flagellate every possible Hindu iconic figure, Swaminathan goes further on to expose his half-baked knowledge and venal prejudice against long dead Vinayak Damodar Savarkar:
I just looked up Wikipedia’s list of Indian atheists. I was amused to find that the list included both me and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva! Savarkar strongly opposed traditional Hindu beliefs and viewed Hindutva as a politico-cultural rather than religious project. He hated Muslims. In some speeches he called himself an atheist, though more correctly he rejected the old Sanatan Dharma and sought a major modernisation of Hinduism. He said there was nothing sacred about cows and advised Hindus to give up vegetarianism. Savarkar’s biographer, Dhananjay Keer, points out that when his wife died, despite entreaties by his followers, he refused to allow any Hindu rituals. I wish the Hindutva trolls would highlight this.
The Macaulayite indoctrination Swaminathan underwent during his years at Doon-School, St. Stephen’s College and Oxford University plus the hard wiring of his brain in the Abrahamic mode by various American think tanks he has served, have rendered him incapable of comprehending the patriotism of a man like Savarkar. If instead of Bible and perhaps Quran, he had read the Mahabharat and Ramayana, he would have grown out of Good Versus Evil polarity in assessing the worth of human beings. In the Indic universe even Devis and Devatas are not expected to be perfect. Hindus are taught to see reality not in mutually exclusive “Good versus Evil”— polarities but to recognize that each one of us is a mixture of many shades.
Savarkar being an atheist doesn’t bother us one bit because he was sincere about it. It was not a fashion statement for him, as it is for your dandy editors. The greatness of Savarkar lies in his awe inspiring devotion to Ma Bharti. Given his brilliant educational qualifications, he could have had a more successful and luxurious life than Swaminathan, had he chosen to be toady of the British and a phoney patriot like Nehru. But he underwent harrowing physical and mental torture in Andaman jail for 17 long years. Your editors would crack up in 5 minutes under those soul-destroying, body-breaking conditions. Therefore, please advise them not to belittle our national heroes who sacrificed their all for their motherland.
Now to the penultimate example of pious conceit:
What should the trolls learn from the three examples of my mother, Gandhiji and Savarkar? First that devout Hindus can be those that save Muslims from Hindu mobs. Second, that the most devout Hindus can be the staunchest secularists. Third, Hindutva promotes not religious Hinduism but Hindu majoritarianism.
Mr. Jain, we have had enough stories about Hindus saving Muslims including from my own family. We have done that through history, starting with Prithviraj Chauhan who let Mohammad Ghori escape unharmed after snubbing his invading armies countless times. Please educate Swaminathan about the reward Ghori gave to Prithviraj Chauhan and his queen for sparing Ghori’s life 16 times! Now we demand to know when will Muslims start saving Hindu lives as in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and now even in Mini-Pakistans of Kerala and West Bengal? We want to know when will Muslims stop treating us as Kafirs worthy of death? When will Muslim majority countries give Hindus equal rights and not force them to convert through force and fraud?
I assure you that for all the #sickular posturing of The Times of India editors, the women of their families will be treated same way as Yezdi women of Syria or Hindu women in Pakistan if Mission Ghazwa-E-Hind succeeds. They are safe in India only so long as there is a Hindu majority.
Being in the employment of CATO, a think tank backed by the #LeftLibtard Democratic Party of the US, Swaminathan has to indulge in such posturing and demonize Hindus through a fake narrative peddled by Islamists that Muslim lives are endangered in India because of Hindus. But today, the whole world knows who kills who and how Muslims are endangering the entire humanity, including fellow Muslims. However, Paid Hirelings of ISI or American “Think Tanks” choose to defend those with genocidal history and continuing barbarities, as witnessed in Pakistan or perpetrated by brainwashed ISIS Jehadis!
Mr Jain, it is easy to ignore Swaminathan’s hit job on Hindus at the behest of his current paymasters in the US. In the process he is becoming as irrelevant as his brother, Mani Shankar Aiyar. But surely, you have a stake in India. Do you think you will be allowed to run papers like The Times of India or The Economic Times or even Flimsy Femina, if India were to be completely run over by Islam as happened to the region that is now Pakistan or Afghanistan which was for millennia Hindu majority?
If you are determined to use your media house as a platform for Gandhigiri which has thus far manifested itself only in Hindu Bashing, may I suggest that you take Gandhi Bhakti seriously and start an Urdu paper to preach Gandhian values to Muslims and send your editors to mosques, madrassas and churches to deliver sermons on Truth and Non-Violence – the core values upheld by Gandhi—which Muslims have total disdain for. Please keep your editors and reporters away from our temples because anti-Hindu Gandhigiri is going to create a massive backlash against your paper.
Hindus of today are not going to be as tolerant of Jaichands, Mohammad Ghoris, Jinnahas or the present day Break-Up-India-Gang as were Hindus of yore! To quote a famous Jewish rabbi, Hilel the Elder: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Certainly not CATO Think Tankers!
:
