Calling to wake up the sleeping Hindu - Francois Gautier's mission

Posted here are some articles by Francois Gautier, a French journalist and writer, who is specialized in Indian affairs.

His is perhaps one of the few lone voices in the India media, focusing on how the Hindus and Sanatanic culture are being systematically derided by a combine of politicians, communists, the non- secular media which claims itself to be secular and other vested interests. His other posts can be read at http://www.francoisgautier.com

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White man's burden?

http://francoisgautier.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/white-mans-burden/

By Francois Gautier

Why do Indians have such an attraction towards white
skin? I am a White and a born Christian - but even after
more than 30 years in India, this attraction in its
people still baffles me. I have looked in my mind for
answers.

When I see Mr Bill Gates coming to give charity to the
poor and ignorant Indians, who do not know how to handle
sex and are on the way to becoming the largest AIDS
reservoir in the world, I wonder: Do Indians really
believe in what the White man says? Do they need a White
man to tell them what to do and what not to do? Actually
the funny thing is that this AIDS scare is an old trick
of hostile NGOs, Christian organisations and the enemies
of India. It is true that AIDS is the scourge of the 21st
century, the great black plague of our era. But more is
being made of it than is necessary, especially in the
Indian context.

World health organisations are fond of saying that India
has the largest population of HIV contaminated cases -
some even speak about 25 millions by 2010. But as every
one knows, AIDS spreads through three agents:
Homosexuality, hypodermic syringes of drug addicts and
prostitutes. Yet, whatever Deepa Mehta or Shabana Azmi
would like us to believe, homosexuality is not very
common in India's villages, which comprise 80 per cent of
the population; one-sided homosexuality is a Western
phenomenon and it is brought to India by Westernised
Indians.

As for hard drug addiction, again it is not all that
common in Indian villages, except in some of the North-
East border states, many of which incidentally happen to
be Christian. The prostitutes carry the greatest threat
of spreading the disease, particularly in big cities like
Mumbai. Then in turn, those men who have contacted it
will bring it to the villages, when they have intercourse
with their wives. But 25 million AIDS cases?

Again, when I see the fascination that Indians - old and
young, rich and poor, whether from the Congress, the CPI
or even the BJP - have for Congress president Sonia
Gandhi, I wonder: Does India, one of the great ancient
civilisations, need a White woman to govern it? I am sure
she has great qualities, but are Indians so backward that
they cannot find amongst themselves someone intelligent
enough enough to lead them? And what about this craze for
Mother Teresa? She may have been a saint, but nobody has
harmed India's image in the West as much in the 20th
century. When you mention India in the West, their eyes
light up and they say: "Mother Teresa/ Calcutta/ poor
people/ starving people/ who do not know how to care
after their own underprivileged/ who need a White woman
to show them how to pick-up those dying in the street and
to look after orphans."

Is this the image that Indians needs today - one that is
harming them, which is stopping Western investors from
investing in India? Yet Mother Teresa is worshiped here,
from Calcutta to Chennai, and when she will be made a
saint by the Vatican, perpetuating this colonial,
superior-minded, Christian symbol of White superiority
over the Brown/Black man, the whole of Indian media will
rejoice in their own mental slavery and the Indian
Government will probably declare a national holiday!

Why don't Indians understand that Brown is beautiful?
White people spend hours in the beach and put a hundred
cream and lotions to get tanned. Why this obsession in
Indian woman to have white skin? And why this growing
trend to colour their hair blonde? How come the two most
popular actors in India, Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik
Roshan, have very fair skins and blue eyes? Why this
craze about "fair" brides? If you find the answer to
that, you will understand the reason behind Indians'
fatal attraction towards Mr Bill Gates, Ms Sonia Gandhi
and Mother Teresa.

Obviously, colonisation has frozen the Indian mind in
certain patterns and the British made sure, through
Macaulay's policies of leaving behind them an enduring
complex of inferiority amongst Indians, by constantly
harping on the flaws of Indian culture and inflating
them. This is why Indian intellectuals today repeat what
their masters said before: "Hindus are fundamentalists/
Brahmins are exploiters/ Golwalkar was a Nazi/ Indians
are corrupt and no good." But that does not explain
everything: Most colonised countries have aped their
masters after having hated them. No, in my mind the
greatest factor behind India's love of the White is the
absurd theory of Aryan invasion.

According to this theory, which was actually devised in
the 18th and 19th century by British linguists and
archaeologists, the first inhabitants of India were good-
natured, peaceful, dark-skinned shepherds called the
Dravidians, who had founded what is now known as the
Harappan or the Indus Valley civilisation. They were
supposedly remarkable builders: Witness the city of
Mohenjo-Daro in Sind. But they had no culture to speak
of, that is to say no literature, no proper script even.
Then, around 1500 BC, India is said to have been invaded
by tribes called the Aryans: white-skinned, nomadic
people, who originated somewhere in Western Russia and
imposed upon the Dravidians the hateful caste system. To
the Aryans are attributed Sanskrit, the Vedic-Hindu
religion, India's greatest spiritual texts, the Vedas, as
well as a host of subsequent writings, like the
Upanishads.

This was indeed a masterstroke on the part of the
British: Thanks to the Aryan invasion theory, they showed
on the one hand that the Indian civilisation was not that
ancient and that it was secondary to the cultures which
influenced the Western world, and that whatever good
things India had developed had been as a result of the
influence of the West. Thus, Sanskrit, instead of being
known as the mother of all Indo-European languages,
became just a branch of their huge family; thus, the
religion of Zarathustra is said to have influenced
Hinduism, and not vice versa.

On the other hand, it divided India and pitted its people
against each other, rifts which still endure. Yet, most
recent archaeological and linguistic discoveries point
out that there never was an Aryan invasion and many
historians, including Romila Thapar, are distancing
themselves from it. Yet, most Indians still believe in
this absurd theory.

It is time for you Indians to wake up. You are as great,
if not greater, than the White man. You can do as well,
if not better, than the White man. Not only did your
forefathers devise some of the basic principles of
mathematics, astrology, or surgical medicine, not only
are your people today amongst the most brilliant in the
world - half of Silicon valley is of people of Indian
origin; 30 per cent of UK's doctors are Indians - but you
still hold within yourselves a unique spiritual
knowledge, which once roamed the world, but which has now
disappeared, replaced by the intolerant creed of the two
major monotheistic religions, which say: "If you don't
believe in my true God, I will either kill you or convert
you." Wake-up India. Brown is beautiful, smart and it is
the future.

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Redefining India

Francois Gautier

This is an article meant for my friends, the "fringe Hindus"; those who have

either espoused a Marxist outlook, or are, for their own good reasons,

strongly anti-Hindutva, or are neutral; as well as for the Muslim and

Christian minorities of India. 

When Jawaharlal Nehru came to power in 1947, he sincerely thought that some

of Marx's ideas could be put to use in India and help level the terrible

inequalities that existed within between the very rich and the poor, the

high castes and the low castes, the mighty and the helpless. The motive was

noble but, unfortunately, Indian socialism often made the rich richer and

the poor poorer and created a massive, inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy,

that any government today in power finds difficult to dismantle. Everywhere

in the world, communism and Marxism are defunct - even China has more or

less done away with it.             

However, in India, not only does communism remain alive in West Bengal and

Kerala, it also remains firmly entrenched as a powerful idealism in the

minds of much of India's intelligentsia. Most of India's English language

mediapersons and journalists, many of the writers, historians and thinkers,

are sympathetic towards communist thought. Once again, there is nothing

wrong with that: Indians show, in a world racked with materialism and

cynicism, that they remain idealists, loyal and dedicated to selflessness

and seva, as the thousands of Indian NGO's still prove today.

Nevertheless, the world is changing, Asia is changing, and even India is

changing. We have to live with our times, especially after September 11,

2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, which radically altered the

outlook of most Western nations. What is going to happen in Gujarat on

December 12 is equally of paramount importance to the 850 million Hindus in

India, the nearly 1 billion Hindus worldwide, and the Christian and Muslim

Indian communities, as it might redefine their own outlook. Indeed, if the

BJP and Mr Narendra Modi win with a handsome margin, an intense intellectual

debate will be triggered in the country. We will hear cries of alarm,

disgust or worry on the part of the Western press, the Indian English

language Media and the intelligentsia, about "Hindu fanaticism taking over

India", or "the terrible direction that the results of this election seem to

portend for India".

But, once again my "fringe" Hindu brothers and sisters, as well as the

Christian and Muslim communities of India, should remind themselves than in

the entire Indian history, Hinduism has always shown that it is not

fundamentalist, that it accepts the others with their religions and customs

as long as they do not try to impose these beliefs on the majority

community. Indeed, in a recent report, UNESCO pointed out that out of 128

countries where Jews lived before Israel was created, only one, India, did

not persecute them and allowed them to prosper and practice Judaism in

peace.

Moreover, if under the intense and often bloody onslaught of Muslim

invasions and later of European colonialism, such as the Portuguese - which

committed untold atrocities in Goa - the Hindus did not lose their peace and

tolerance, why should they do so now? Also, Hinduism is probably the only

religion in the world which has never tried to convert others, or conquer

other countries to propagate itself as a new religion. The same is not true

of Islam and Christianity.

Thus, it would be good if the "fringe" Hindus and Indian Christian and

Muslims do some introspection and look into the real causes of the Gujarat

riots which followed the burning of the 58 kar-sevaks on the Sabarmati

Express. If Mr Modi wins, instead of accusing the BJP of fanaticism, or even

"Nazism", a people which gave to India and to the world Mahatma Gandhi,

unique textiles and a solid peaceful culture, it may indeed be time to call

a spade a spade and to stop burying one's head in the sand like an ostrich.

We see the Gujarat riots through the eyes of the Western press and the

Indian Media: "Hindu fundamentalists who went on the rampage", etc. But what

if Gujarat was the first sign that good, peaceful, non-violent, middle-class

and even lower-class Hindus have had it and that they are tired of being

made fun of, attacked, bombed, burnt, killed, their women raped, their

temples destroyed? What if, rightly or wrongly, it is the portent of things

to come, that the next time innocent Hindu women and children are targeted,

Hindus might be tempted to take an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, the

way Israel does at the official level? You may argue that it is a hateful,

mad and blind violence, but it is also true that Hindus have been at the

receiving end of Christians and Muslims attacks for centuries, that even

today 400,000 of them have been made to flee from their ancestral homes in

the valley of Kashmir.

Thus, our bother of sisters of Islam, most of whom are peaceful and

good-willing, have also to do a little bit of introspection. Every time

there is an attack on a Hindu temple, or a bombing, we accuse Pakistan or

the Al Qaeda. But none of these attacks could happen without the active

support of groups of Indian Muslims, as the Bombay blasts or Coimbatore

bombings have shown. In the same way, our Christian brothers and sisters

should think about this: The first community in the world, the Syrian

Christians, established themselves in Kerala in the first century and

prospered there in peace. At no time did the Hindus of Kerala try to impose

their own religious beliefs upon them, either by force or by allurements.

Is it right that the Indian Christian community today not only allows, but

often actively collaborates with, the foreign missionaries who are bent upon

making India a Christian kingdom, and are often using dubious economic

incentives to do so? Do not our brothers and sisters think that it is bound

to provoke sooner or later some kind of backlash and that the murder of

Graham Staines, however reprehensible, may have been a warning to

missionaries who convert by devious means, in the same way Gujarat riots

were a warning to the Muslims?

It may be true that the overwhelming majority of this country, which has

often been in minority morally, is waking up and trying to assert itself,

sometimes in an excessive and unforgivable manner. Yet, the fringe Hindus

and the Indian Muslims and Christians should not worry: India is a composite

society and it is a settled fact. Hindus, Christians, Muslims and other

minorities have to learn how to live together peacefully. There is no other

choice. And it will be done.

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Call a spade a spade

Francois Gautier

In most of the cases, it is Indian Muslim terrorists

I have often been accused of being a 'Right-winger', a 'saffron journalist', a 'Hindu-lover'. Actually I am proud to be a lover of the Hindus — 850 million in India, a billion in the world, one in every six humanbeings on this planet. I am proud to defend people who have always accepted others, who have given refuge to all persecuted minorities in the world, and who still possess knowledge of karma, yoga, avatar and the hidden realities behind life. People who still produce gurus, ashrams, individuals for us to learn from.

What surprises me the most is that there must be around 200 foreign media correspondents posted in India and that I do not know another one who defends Hindus, except maybe Mark Tully, in a roundabout manner.

I am appalled at what is happening at the moment. For, make no mistake, it is not a question of buying MPs to get through a dubious vote of confidence, it is not even a question of the Communists versus the Samajwadi Party, or even so-called secularist forces against the BJP, or the unleashing of terrorism on Indian democracy. It is, in fact, an all out attack on Hindus and their values.

Nobody wants to call a spade a spade, or else, apologists of Islam will say that Islamic fundamentalism happens because of Palestine or Ayodhya or the Gujarat riots. But make no mistake. All these attacks in Jaipur, Mumbai, Varanasi, Bangalore and Ahmedabad are only targeting Hindus; it is an accident if some Muslims also get killed. Why is it then that at the moment India seems to be paralysed into inaction in the face of an all-out war against Indian liberties and values by Islamic terrorists?

One is really shocked and suspicious as to why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appears hell-bent to impose upon the nation a nuclear deal with the US which will neutralise India's nuclear weapons in the face of the aggressive nuclear weaponisation of China and Pakistan, and negate India's independence in foreign policy, as well as to bring with it immense Westernisation, not to speak of a huge influx of Christian missionaries. Here again, Hindus will lose.

Most of today's media, sadly, is anti-Hindu. Nothing symbolises this more than CNN-IBN. This channel has chosen to sit on sting operation tapes that clearly show someone close to a very senior Samajwadi Party leader handing over a crore of rupees to three BJP MPs as inducement for abstaining from the trust vote moved by the Prime Minister. If the tapes had been aired, it would have immediately led to the postponement of the trust vote and the UPA would have ultimately lost confidence motion.

Instead, CNN-IBN decided not to telecast the tapes. It sat on them for 24 hours before handing them over to the Speaker. Is this the role of the media? Can a mainstream television news channel, which is associated with a well-known international television organisation, be so partisan and unethical? And get away with it?

Whenever Hindus are hit, the Government looks the other way. It happened when four lakh Hindus were chased out of the Kashmir Valley and many were killed in terrorist attacks over a period of time — both the Centre and the State Government just kept watching. It happened over the recent Sri Amarnath Shrine Board land transfer issue. How dare Mr Omar Abdullah make a self-righteous yet untruthful speech in Parliament and then complain that he was booed?

And now look at the inertia of the Union Government and the media after the Bangalore blasts followed by the the horrible bombings in Ahmedabad, killing more than 50 innocent people.

Does the UPA think that the common citizen of India is a nitwit and does not understand that the Government of India, by pointing its finger at Pakistan's ISI, or at some Bangladeshi outfit, is trying to deflect attention from the fact that most of the recent terror attacks have been perpetrated by Indian Muslims, with or without Pakistani or Bangladeshi (or Al Qaeda) help?

It is not only a matter of vote-bank in times of election but also a fact that politicians in India want to keep their citizens blindfolded and pretend that nothing is happening. Does not the Government realise that we have all become cynical to its usual conduct on such occasions. It first condemns 'in the strongest terms' the 'barbarous act' and appeals for calm and 'communal harmony', and then gives a few lakhs each to the families of the dead or injured, so that they shut up, and finally never catches the culprits. And so it goes on till the next terrorist strike.

I am a born Christian, but I marvel at the greatness that is Hinduism and Hindus. Ms Sonia Gandhi and Mr Manmohan Singh are doing all they can to cut Hindus to size. Unless Hindus wake up now, unless they realise that they are under attack from all sides, one of the greatest civilisations of all times will slowly pass away. That will be a great loss to the world.