Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924-2018): Kinder, Gentler Face of Hindu Nationalism
Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away today in New Delhi, India, according to media reports. He was 93. He was seen as the moderate face of Hindu Nationalism. Mr. Vajpayee led Hindu Nationalists to their first-ever outright election victory with the majority of seats won by his BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) in the Indian parliament in 1999. He had briefly held the prime minister's job twice earlier but the third time proved to be the charm. His third term in office lasted from 1999 until 2004.
Hardcore Hindu Nationalist:
Vajpayee represented kind and gentle face of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Beneath the surface, however, he was a hardcore Hindu Nationalist. He joined the RSS at the age of 16. The RSS has sought to make India a Hindu Rashtra (nation) since its founding in 1925, a year after Vajpayee was born.
Vajpayee stoked hatred against India's large Muslim minority. In a speeches to Hindu audiences he said: "Wherever there are Muslims in large numbers, they do not want to live in peace."
In 2003 as Prime Minister of India, Vajpayee installed a portrait of virulently anti-Muslim Hindu Nationalist leader VD Savarkar in the Indian parliament house in New Delhi. Savarkar, in one of his books titled Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, elaborates on why raping of Muslim women is not only justified but encouraged. Prime Minister Modi describes Savarkar as "worthy of worship". After getting elected to the highest office in India, Modi paid tribute to Savarkar by laying flowers at his portrait that still hangs in India's Parliament.
Savarkar has used revisionist Hindutva history to exhort his followers to rape Muslim women as payback for historic wrongs he believes were committed by Muslim conquerers of India. “Once they are haunted with this dreadful apprehension that the Muslim women too, stand in the same predicament in case the Hindus win, the future Muslim conquerors will never dare to think of such molestation of Hindu women,” he writes.
1971 India-Pakistan War:
Vajpayee saw India's military victory over Pakistan in religious terms. He lavished praise on Indira Gandhi by calling her Durga, Hindu goddess literally meaning "the invincible", on India's victory over Muslim Pakistan in the 1971 war in East Pakistan. `
Indian Muslims faced "insulting and provocative slogans" by Hindu Nationalists celebrating India's 1971 war victory over Pakistan. Here's an excerpt of a report from India:
"The chief reason for the resentment of the Muslims is that the event of the independence of Bangladesh and her severance of all ties with Pakistan was generally celebrated in India as if the 'victory' had been gained against the Muslims themselves. Insulting and provocative slogans were raised against them in public meetings in this country. A second reason is that the Muslims in general do believe that the war was primarily fought for the purpose of destroying the integral unity of Pakistan. Our Ministry of Information hands out all sorts of propaganda but does nothing to dispel the dejection and resentment of Indian Muslims" (Quoted in Sidq-i-Jadid; 21 January 1972).
Vajpayee's successor Prime Minister Narendra Modi has railed against Muslim rule of India by describing it as "bara so saal ki ghulami" (1200 years of servitude). Here's an excerpt of Modi's 2014 speech:
"Barah sau saal ki gulami ki maansikta humein pareshan kar rahi hai. Bahut baar humse thoda ooncha vyakti mile, to sar ooncha karke baat karne ki humari taaqat nahin hoti hai (The slave mentality of 1,200 years is troubling us. Often, when we meet a person of high stature, we fail to muster strength to speak up).
India-Pakistan Nuclear Tests:
Vajpayee ordered India's underground nuclear tests in 1998 to intimidate Pakistan and assert India's status as a nuclear power on the world stage. Within weeks, Pakistan responded to those tests with six of its own, forever altering South Asian security.
Vajpayee threw away India's substantial conventional military edge over Pakistan by going nuclear. It gave Pakistan the justification it needed to go nuclear a few weeks later, thereby achieving balance of terror with its much larger neighbor with a huge conventional military.
Indian analyst Krishna Kant explains his country's policymakers blunder as follows: "Nuclear weapons have reduced Pakistan defense cost while we (India) have been forced to spend tens of billions of dollars to acquire latest military hardware in a bid to retain the edge. Its shows in the defence budget of the two countries since 1999 nuclear blasts. All through 1980s and 90s, Pakistan was spending around a third of its government budget and 5-6% of its GDP on defense, or about twice the corresponding ratios for India. After going nuclear, Pakistan’s defense spending decelerated and its share in GDP is expected to be decline to around 2.5% in the current fiscal year, slightly ahead of India’s 2%. This is releasing resources for Pakistan to invest in productive sectors such as infrastructure and social services, something they couldn’t do when they were competing with India to maintain parity in conventional weapons."
Agra Summit:
In 1999, during Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to Pakistan, both countries agreed to the Lahore Declaration and pledged to make joint efforts for peace and stability in South Asia. The Kargil war came months later and proved to be major setback in this effort.
Contacts between India and Pakistan resumed at the highest level with talks in New Delhi between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in July 2001. A.S. Dulat who has served as Chief of India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and as Special Director of India's Intelligence Bureau told Indian Journalist Karan Thapar of India Today that the Musharraf-Vajpayee meeting resulted in agreement on Kashmir and other major bilateral issue but still ended in failure. He put the entire blame for its failure on India's Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani. Here's an AS Dulat quote from the interview:
“This is when L. K. Advani surprised Musharraf by asking for Dawood Ibrahim. This took Musharraf back and a shadow was cast thereafter on the Agra summit.” “As Mr. Mishra put it: “Yaar, hote-hote reh gaya … Ho gaya tha, who toh.”
Rise of Hindu Nationalism:
The rise of Hindutva forces that began with Vajpayee's 1999 election victory is tearing India apart along caste and religious lines as the country celebrates 71 years of independence from the British colonial rule. Hindu mobs are lynching Muslims and Dalits. A recent Pew Research report confirms that the level of hostility against religious minorities in India is "very high", giving India a score of 9.5 on a scale from 0 to 10. Pakistan's score on this scale is 7 while Bangladesh's is 7.5.
Summary:
Atal Bihari Vajpayee represented kind and gentle face of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Beneath the surface, however, he was a hardcore Hindu Nationalist. He led Hindu Nationalists to their first-ever outright election victory with the majority of seats won by his BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) in the Indian parliament in 1999. Vajpayee saw India's military victory over Pakistan in religious terms. He lavished praise on Indira Gandhi by calling her Durga, Hindu goddess literally meaning "the invincible", on "Hindu" India's victory over Muslim Pakistan in the 1971 war in East Pakistan. Vajpayee ordered India's underground nuclear tests in 1998 to intimidate Pakistan and assert India's status as a nuclear power on the world stage. Within weeks, Pakistan responded to those tests with six of its own, forever altering South Asian security. Vajpayee threw away India's substantial conventional military edge over Pakistan by going nuclear. It gave Pakistan the justification it needed to go nuclear a few weeks later, thereby achieving balance of terror with its much larger neighbor with a huge conventional military.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Disintegration of India
Who's at Fault in India-Pakistan Conflict?
1971 India-Pakistan War
Dalit Death Shines Light on India's Caste Apartheid
India's Hindu Nationalists Going Global
Rape: A Political Weapon in Modi's India
Hindutva: Legacy of British Raj
India's Superpower Delusion
Riaz Haq Youtube Channel
VPOS Youtube Channel
Vajpayee represented kind and gentle face of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Beneath the surface, however, he was a hardcore Hindu Nationalist. He joined the RSS at the age of 16. The RSS has sought to make India a Hindu Rashtra (nation) since its founding in 1925, a year after Vajpayee was born.
Vajpayee stoked hatred against India's large Muslim minority. In a speeches to Hindu audiences he said: "Wherever there are Muslims in large numbers, they do not want to live in peace."
In 2003 as Prime Minister of India, Vajpayee installed a portrait of virulently anti-Muslim Hindu Nationalist leader VD Savarkar in the Indian parliament house in New Delhi. Savarkar, in one of his books titled Six Glorious Epochs of Indian History, elaborates on why raping of Muslim women is not only justified but encouraged. Prime Minister Modi describes Savarkar as "worthy of worship". After getting elected to the highest office in India, Modi paid tribute to Savarkar by laying flowers at his portrait that still hangs in India's Parliament.
 |
| Hindu Nationalist Leader VD Savarkar |
1971 India-Pakistan War:
Vajpayee saw India's military victory over Pakistan in religious terms. He lavished praise on Indira Gandhi by calling her Durga, Hindu goddess literally meaning "the invincible", on India's victory over Muslim Pakistan in the 1971 war in East Pakistan. `
Indian Muslims faced "insulting and provocative slogans" by Hindu Nationalists celebrating India's 1971 war victory over Pakistan. Here's an excerpt of a report from India:
"The chief reason for the resentment of the Muslims is that the event of the independence of Bangladesh and her severance of all ties with Pakistan was generally celebrated in India as if the 'victory' had been gained against the Muslims themselves. Insulting and provocative slogans were raised against them in public meetings in this country. A second reason is that the Muslims in general do believe that the war was primarily fought for the purpose of destroying the integral unity of Pakistan. Our Ministry of Information hands out all sorts of propaganda but does nothing to dispel the dejection and resentment of Indian Muslims" (Quoted in Sidq-i-Jadid; 21 January 1972).
Vajpayee's successor Prime Minister Narendra Modi has railed against Muslim rule of India by describing it as "bara so saal ki ghulami" (1200 years of servitude). Here's an excerpt of Modi's 2014 speech:
"Barah sau saal ki gulami ki maansikta humein pareshan kar rahi hai. Bahut baar humse thoda ooncha vyakti mile, to sar ooncha karke baat karne ki humari taaqat nahin hoti hai (The slave mentality of 1,200 years is troubling us. Often, when we meet a person of high stature, we fail to muster strength to speak up).
India-Pakistan Nuclear Tests:
Vajpayee ordered India's underground nuclear tests in 1998 to intimidate Pakistan and assert India's status as a nuclear power on the world stage. Within weeks, Pakistan responded to those tests with six of its own, forever altering South Asian security.
Vajpayee threw away India's substantial conventional military edge over Pakistan by going nuclear. It gave Pakistan the justification it needed to go nuclear a few weeks later, thereby achieving balance of terror with its much larger neighbor with a huge conventional military.
Indian analyst Krishna Kant explains his country's policymakers blunder as follows: "Nuclear weapons have reduced Pakistan defense cost while we (India) have been forced to spend tens of billions of dollars to acquire latest military hardware in a bid to retain the edge. Its shows in the defence budget of the two countries since 1999 nuclear blasts. All through 1980s and 90s, Pakistan was spending around a third of its government budget and 5-6% of its GDP on defense, or about twice the corresponding ratios for India. After going nuclear, Pakistan’s defense spending decelerated and its share in GDP is expected to be decline to around 2.5% in the current fiscal year, slightly ahead of India’s 2%. This is releasing resources for Pakistan to invest in productive sectors such as infrastructure and social services, something they couldn’t do when they were competing with India to maintain parity in conventional weapons."
Agra Summit:
In 1999, during Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to Pakistan, both countries agreed to the Lahore Declaration and pledged to make joint efforts for peace and stability in South Asia. The Kargil war came months later and proved to be major setback in this effort.
Contacts between India and Pakistan resumed at the highest level with talks in New Delhi between President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in July 2001. A.S. Dulat who has served as Chief of India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and as Special Director of India's Intelligence Bureau told Indian Journalist Karan Thapar of India Today that the Musharraf-Vajpayee meeting resulted in agreement on Kashmir and other major bilateral issue but still ended in failure. He put the entire blame for its failure on India's Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani. Here's an AS Dulat quote from the interview:
Rise of Hindu Nationalism:
The rise of Hindutva forces that began with Vajpayee's 1999 election victory is tearing India apart along caste and religious lines as the country celebrates 71 years of independence from the British colonial rule. Hindu mobs are lynching Muslims and Dalits. A recent Pew Research report confirms that the level of hostility against religious minorities in India is "very high", giving India a score of 9.5 on a scale from 0 to 10. Pakistan's score on this scale is 7 while Bangladesh's is 7.5.
 |
| Chart Courtesy of Bloomberg |
Summary:
Atal Bihari Vajpayee represented kind and gentle face of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh). Beneath the surface, however, he was a hardcore Hindu Nationalist. He led Hindu Nationalists to their first-ever outright election victory with the majority of seats won by his BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) in the Indian parliament in 1999. Vajpayee saw India's military victory over Pakistan in religious terms. He lavished praise on Indira Gandhi by calling her Durga, Hindu goddess literally meaning "the invincible", on "Hindu" India's victory over Muslim Pakistan in the 1971 war in East Pakistan. Vajpayee ordered India's underground nuclear tests in 1998 to intimidate Pakistan and assert India's status as a nuclear power on the world stage. Within weeks, Pakistan responded to those tests with six of its own, forever altering South Asian security. Vajpayee threw away India's substantial conventional military edge over Pakistan by going nuclear. It gave Pakistan the justification it needed to go nuclear a few weeks later, thereby achieving balance of terror with its much larger neighbor with a huge conventional military.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Disintegration of India
Who's at Fault in India-Pakistan Conflict?
1971 India-Pakistan War
Dalit Death Shines Light on India's Caste Apartheid
India's Hindu Nationalists Going Global
Rape: A Political Weapon in Modi's India
Hindutva: Legacy of British Raj
India's Superpower Delusion
Riaz Haq Youtube Channel
VPOS Youtube Channel
Comments
ueen Victoria rid India of Islamic terrorists and invaders - with this tagline, Hindu Sena, a right wing outfit was seen celebrating the British royal's death anniversary on January 22.
Known for its bizarre protests and celebrations, the Hindu Sena on Tuesday organised an event at Delhi's Jantar Mantar to celebrate the Queen.
In its invite that is circulating on social media, Hindu Sena also declared the 1857 as the year in which India gained independence in the truest sense.
http://www.riazhaq.com/2018/04/rape-political-weapon-in-modis-india.html
ZARGANA System uses ZOKA Acoustic jammers and decoys. Acoustic jammer is a broadband high power acoustic noise generator that covers all operating frequency bands of both classical and modern acoustic homing torpedoes operating in passive, active, or combined homing modes. As a softkill measure, acoustic decoys are aimed to deceive incoming torpedoes by emulating dynamic and acoustic behaviors of the submarine.
Zargana system was fitted Turkish Navy’s PREVEZE-class (Type 209/1400) submarines, which was spotted by Yoruk Isik and released on Twitter in January 2021.
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Turkey's leading defence company Aselsan has completed factory acceptance tests (FAT) of the Zargana Torpedo Countermeasure System for the Pakistan Navy's Agosta 90B-class submarines mid-life upgrade (MLU) project.
The tests of Zargana were attended by Pakistan’s Attachee, a Pakistan Navy representative, and STM Defence officials, according to Aselsan’s most recent bulletin. The FATs were also carried out as part of Zargana’s integration with Indonesian submarines.
Aselsan made the initial announcement of the export of the Zargana torpedo countermeasure system to Pakistan in May 2019. The contract is part of the Pakistan Navy’s Agosta 90B MLU program, which includes the modernization of three Agosta 90B submarines under a contract signed in 2016 with the Turkish STM Company as the prime contractor. STM officials revealed during the Naval Systems Seminar held in Ankara on 15 and 16 November that they delivered the first modernized submarine, PNS Hamza. According to multiple OSINT reporters, the second submarine’s upgrade is complete.
Because officials did not disclose relevant information, it is unknown when the next trials will take place or which submarine will be equipped. The best option appears to be outfitting the third Agosta 90B-class submarine, PNS Saad (S-138), which is currently being modernized.
In the same bulletin, Aselsan announced that it had completed the FAT of its MITOSTM WECDIS (Warship Electronic Chart Display), an electronic map-based navigation system that assists navigation by providing information compatible with current electronic maps and provides route planning and route tracking capability to navigation personnel, for the Pakistan Navy’s first Babur-class corvette.
The defense industry collaboration between Turkey and Pakistan has grown year after year. Aside from the MLU of Agosta 90B submarines, Turkey is building four Babur-class (PN MILGEM) corvettes for the Pakistan Navy. Though officials did not provide any details regarding Pakistan’s Jinnah-class frigate project, officials from KUASAR Marine, a Turkish engineering firm, informed Naval News in an interview that they will be in charge of the frigate’s design.
An excerpt from ‘Hindutva and Violence: VD Savarkar and the Politics of History’,
by Vinayak Chaturvedi.
https://scroll.in/article/1028621/a-new-book-examines-vd-savarkars-project-to-establish-hindutva-not-as-an-ideology-but-as-history
. . . The ubiquity of Hindutva has ensured that everyone in India will have Savarkar’s ideas in mind for the foreseeable future. For Savarkar, Hindutva was never meant to be understood as bounded by national borders; his ambition was always planetary. Anyone with an interest in South Asia also knows that neither Hindutva nor Savarkar can be ignored today, no matter where they live. The challenge for all of us now is navigating the intellectual and political terrain to think with and against his ideas.
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is a difficult figure. As an intellectual founder of Hindu nationalism, he has emerged as the most controversial Indian political thinker of the twentieth century. His arguments for Hindutva transformed political debate by rethinking the concepts “Hindu” and “Hindustan.”
He is remembered as an anti-imperialist who simultaneously longed for the resurrection of the lost Hindu Empire of centuries past. He is celebrated and condemned for his roles as a nationalist, a revolutionary, a political prisoner, and president of the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha. He gained notoriety for his programme to “Hinduise Politics and Militarise Hindudom” while also arguing for permanent war against Christians and Muslims. He was never forgotten – and for many, never forgiven – for his associations with the murderers of MK Gandhi – the Mahatma. The consequence: Savarkar is declared a martyr by some and condemned as the enemy by others.
The historical significance of Savarkar’s life is acknowledged and accepted by those familiar with modern South Asian history. Less is known about the corpus of his work. His prolific writings have certainly not received the attention of those of his contemporaries or interlocutors.
Moreover, there is a lack of awareness of how much Savarkar actually wrote in his lifetime. The fact that his interpretations, conceptualisations, and ideas were at the epicentre of key debates that shaped the landscape of Indian political thought in the twentieth century is generally overlooked or simply ignored. There is no agreement about how his work should be represented or remembered given his polarising status within India. As a result, the reception of Savarkar’s ideas remains penumbral...
https://scroll.in/article/1028621/a-new-book-examines-vd-savarkars-project-to-establish-hindutva-not-as-an-ideology-but-as-history
Savarkar first identified Hindutva as a word in his text; he then asserted the negation of Hindutva as a word. This should not be seen as a negation of Hindutva per se, but as the negation of a word – and, by extension, language – that could not adequately represent the essence of Hindutva. And yet Savarkar knew he could not abandon the word “Hindutva” either; it was irreplaceable.
It is in this moment of what might be called an existential impasse for “Hindutva” – as a word and not a word – that Savarkar immediately offers “history” as an alternative to provide meaning to “Hindutva.” To clarify matters once more: Hindutva is not simply “history,” or “the history,” but it is “a history,” or more specifically “a history in full.”
Hindutva as a history is the singularity of Hindutva’s history – a single and singular history that is finite. And yet simultaneously Savarkar’s characterisation of it as a form of fulness suggests multiplicity, plurality, and completeness within that singularity or finitude.
Savarkar concluded that the question of the meaning of Hindutva is not to be found in the word “Hindutva” itself, but within the multitude that is encompassed within a history. The essentials of Hindutva are truly the essentials of history.
Hindutva and Violence tells the story of the place of history in Savarkar’s thought. The book is organised around Savarkar’s formulation of “a history in full” as the central conceptualisation in his writings. In many ways, I have been guided by Savarkar’s own argument. Hindutva may be indefinable, but the articulation that “Hindutva is not a word but a history” provides meaning to both “Hindutva” and “history.”
For Savarkar, the key point is that “a history in full” is Hindutva, too. In other words, he not only linked Hindutva to Being, he also made it clear that history was going to be his method of interpreting Hindutva: his “a history in full” was going to provide the ultimate interpretation of how Hindutva may be actualised, recovered, or approximated in language.
Excerpted with permission from Hindutva and Violence: VD Savarkar and the Politics of History, Vinayak Chaturvedi, Permanent Black.
Ravi Nair
@t_d_h_nair
This BJP spokesperson says that Savarkar wrote a series of mercy petitions to the British Crown because Chhatrapati Shivaji wrote five mercy petitions to Aurangazeb!!!
https://twitter.com/t_d_h_nair/status/1593985786042798080?s=20&t=paG6pM0HFOpQvG9R13OPxA
Just three years before Ghaznavi's raid on Somnath in 1022, a general acting on the authority of Rajendra I, Maharaja of the Chola empire (848–1279) had marched 1,600 kilometres north from the Cholas’ royal capital of Tanjavur. After subduing kings in Orissa, Chola warriors defeated Mahipala, maharaja of the Pala empire (c.750–1161), who was the dominant power in India’s easternmost region of Bengal. The Chola's crowned their victory by carrying off a bronze image of the deity Śiva, which they seized from a royal temple that Mahipala had patronized. In the course of this long campaign, the invaders also took from the Kalinga Raja of Orissa images of Bhairava, Bhairavi and Kali. These, together with precious gems looted from the Pala king, were taken down to the Chola capital as war booty.
The question arises why is Mahmud Ghaznavi demonized but not Rajendra Chola's plunder of Hindu temples?In fact, the demonization of Mahmud and the portrayal of his raid on Somnath as an assault on Hinduism by Muslim invaders dates only from the early 1840s.
In 1842, the British East India Company suffered the annihilation of an entire army of some 16,000 in the First Afghan War (1839–42). Seeking to regain face among their Hindu subjects after this humiliating defeat, the British contrived a bit of self-serving fiction, namely...that Mahmud, after sacking the temple of Somnath, carried off a pair of the temple’s gates on his way back to Afghanistan.
By ‘discovering’ these fictitious gates in Mahmud’s former capital of Ghazni, and by ‘restoring’ them to their rightful owners in India, British officials hoped to be admired for heroically rectifying what they construed heinous wrongs that had caused centuries of distress among Hindus. Though intended to win the letters' gratitude while distracting the locals from Britain’s catastrophic defeat just beyond the Khyber, this bit of colonial mischief has stoked Hindus’ ill-feeling towards Muslims ever since.By contrast, Rajendra Chola’s raid on Bengal remained largely forgotten outside the Chola country.12 years after the attack, a king from the Goa region recorded performing a pilgrimage to the temple, but he failed to mention Mahmud’s raid. Another inscription dated 1169 mentioned repairs made to the temple owing to normal deterioration, but again without mentioning Mahmud’s raid. In 1216 Somnath’s overlords fortified the temple to protect it not from attacks by invaders from beyond the Khyber Pass, but from those by Hindu rulers in neighbouring Malwa; apparently, such attacks were so frequent as to require precautionary measures; apparently, such attacks were so frequent as to require precautionary measures.
The silence of contemporary Hindu sources regarding Mahmud’s raid suggests that in Somnath itself it was either forgotten altogether or viewed as just another unfortunate attack by an outsider, and hence unremarkable.
1. “India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765” by Richard M. Eaton2. “Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History” by Romila Thapar
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/panorama/it-could-be-a-question-of-modi-bailing-out-pakistan-and-he-could-do-it-1192023.html
S. Raghotham of Deccan Herald: What is the legacy that Gen Pervez Musharraf, who passed away recently, has left on the Kashmir issue?
Ex RAW Chief AS Dulat: I was a great admirer of Musharraf. In fact, it was one of my unfulfilled desires that I wanted to meet him, but I never could. Having watched Kashmir for more than 35 years, I feel that there has been no Pakistani leader who has been more reasonable on Kashmir than Musharraf. From our point of view, the most positive thing was that he repeatedly said that whatever is acceptable to Kashmir and Kashmiris would be acceptable to Pakistan. There’s not been anybody else in Pakistan who has said that. Of course, Musharraf got into trouble when 9/11 happened, and he had to willy-nilly join George Bush’s War on Terror. And 9/11 definitely helped us, because it put pressure on Musharraf. And as part of that pressure, he was also told that he had to behave with India. In the years following 9/11, militancy went down. The other positive thing for us (post-9/11) was that the average Kashmiri....
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Manmohan Singh is on record that they (he and Musharraf, after Vajpayee and Musharraf in Agra in 2001) were very close to signing an agreement.
Q: What happened that we didn’t?
A: I think we dragged our foot, we took too long…Musharraf kept waiting for Manmohan Singh’s visit to Pakistan. The visit never happened.
Q: So, the recent revelations by Gen Qamar Bajwa, that PM Modi was to go to Pakistan, stay in a temple there for nine days, and then come out with a peace accord that would freeze the Kashmir issue for 20 years. Is that all true? Is it still possible? ...
A: I wouldn’t know. But coming from the (recently retired) Pakistan army chief Gen. Bajwa, there has to be some truth in it. I mean…there may be some exaggeration in it. I think this year -- this is my hunch, my gut feeling -- that something should happen because the Pakistanis are very keen. And they are in a big mess. So, it could be a question of Modi actually bailing out Pakistan. And he could do it…I feel Modi is the right man, he is under no pressure to move forward, but he can move forward.
@sajournal1
According to Biographer of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was a rabid anti Muslim communal man
#Vajpayee
https://twitter.com/sajournal1/status/1665321245901041665?s=20
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According to Biographer of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He was a rabid anti Muslim communal man
https://thewire.in/video/watch-vajpayees-biographer-on-former-pms-adulterous-relationship-lovechild-views-on-gandhi
The issues discussed include: the anti-Muslim side of the young Vajpayee; how he changed as an adult, his attitude to Deendayal Upadhyaya; his doubts and prevarications as well as his desire to compromise with Indira Gandhi during the Emergency, the fact he never called Indira Gandhi Durga on December 1971; the assertion that Nehru never identified Vajpayee as a future prime minister but, in fact, thought of Vajpayee in his early years as an MP as “a highly objectionable person”; the myths Panchjanya has created about Vajpayee, the fact that Vajpayee did play a role in the Quit India movement and Congress is wrong to say he did not; aspects of Vajpayee as a bon viveur including his fondness for bhang, the fact he drank in moderate quantities and visited night clubs in New York.
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The author of 'Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977', Abhishek Choudhary, discusses with Karan Thapar, in an interview, about the unseen side of the former prime minister, and punctures several myths about him.
A subject that has never been discussed publicly and certainly has not been written about before is carefully assessed and analysed in the recently published first volume of a two-part major biography of Atal Bihari Vajpayee. I am referring to Vajpayee’s adulterous relationship with Rajkumari Kaul, who was at the same time married to Birjan Kaul, the warden of the boy’s hostel at Ramjas College in Delhi.
The book is called Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977 and confirms that Vajpayee and Kaul had a child out of wedlock in August 1960 called Namita nicknamed Gunnu. As the book says: “As she grew older, Gunnu’s facial features began to resemble her father’s (but) on paper, she was to be the warden’s daughter … Vajpayee may have felt the void of not being able to officially call himself a father, though Gunnu began calling him ‘Baap ji’.”
Writing about Rajkumari Kaul and Vajpayee’s relationship, Abhishek Choudhary says: “Rajkumari’s embarrassed family tried convincing her to save her marriage by letting go of the new man in her life. She refused (yet) there are no clear answers as to why she did not divorce her husband and formally marry Vajpayee.” As a result, he says, Rajkumari Kaul, Vajpayee and Birjan Kaul lived for many many years as a threesome. “With time the trio arrived at an equilibrium of sorts. Rajkumari made genuine efforts to balance her care between the husband and the lover.”
There’s a discussion at the very start of the interview about why Choudhary thought it was important and necessary to openly and honestly discuss and analyse Vajpayee’s private life i.e. his decades-long affair with Rajkumari Kaul and their love child Namita. I will leave you to see Choudhary’s explanation and why he thought this must be
https://thewire.in/video/watch-vajpayees-biographer-on-former-pms-adulterous-relationship-lovechild-views-on-gandhi
The book is called Vajpayee: The Ascent of the Hindu Right 1924-1977 and confirms that Vajpayee and Kaul had a child out of wedlock in August 1960 called Namita nicknamed Gunnu. As the book says: “As she grew older, Gunnu’s facial features began to resemble her father’s (but) on paper, she was to be the warden’s daughter … Vajpayee may have felt the void of not being able to officially call himself a father, though Gunnu began calling him ‘Baap ji’.”
Writing about Rajkumari Kaul and Vajpayee’s relationship, Abhishek Choudhary says: “Rajkumari’s embarrassed family tried convincing her to save her marriage by letting go of the new man in her life. She refused (yet) there are no clear answers as to why she did not divorce her husband and formally marry Vajpayee.” As a result, he says, Rajkumari Kaul, Vajpayee and Birjan Kaul lived for many many years as a threesome. “With time the trio arrived at an equilibrium of sorts. Rajkumari made genuine efforts to balance her care between the husband and the lover.”
There’s a discussion at the very start of the interview about why Choudhary thought it was important and necessary to openly and honestly discuss and analyse Vajpayee’s private life i.e. his decades-long affair with Rajkumari Kaul and their love child Namita. I will leave you to see Choudhary’s explanation and why he thought this must be discussed. All I will add is it’s very convincing and very truthful.
This subject is the first of many revelations about Vajpayee that are discussed when, the author of the new biography, Abhishek Choudhary, spoke with Karan Thapar in a 53-minute interview for The Wire. In fact, there are many important revelations in the book which are picked up and discussed in the interview. There are also several myths about Vajpayee, that have been accepted as gospel truth, which the book punctures. They too are discussed in the interview.
Let me mention one other important subject, amongst the many discussed in this interview, which arises out of the biography. This is Vajpayee’s surprising (to many) and disturbing (for some) response to Gandhi’s assassination. The book says: “Atal most certainly did not consider Gandhi’s death a serious loss to mankind. The dozens of articles he had written and edited holding the Mahatma responsible for India’s partition and condemning him for pandering to Muslims had most certainly contributed to poisoning the air that ultimately led to his assassination”. In the interview, Choudhary readily accepts that there is an element of blame that falls on Vajpayee.
Because most, if not all, of the issues covered in the interview are sensitive – sometimes potentially controversial – and because paraphrasing can lead to misunderstanding but also because selectively choosing aspects of the interview to highlight conveys a sense of subjective priority, I will leave you to see this interview for yourself.
All I will do is identify the key issues discussed and then, second, give you a list of the questions so you know the order in which things will come up.