Mother Teresa’s Legacy: Under a Cloud

This is one of the several recent posts on Mother Teresa, whose Nobel Peace Award is questioned by many.

The plain and simple truth about her is that she did whatever sort of social work a Catholic Church worker could possibly be expected to do. Such work never can be very highly regarded, but, on account of successful propaganda, she won the Noble Peace Award which, we observe, is sometimes controversial and motivated by political considerations.

But to attribute miracles to her is an insult to human intelligence, which only the Catholic Church is capable of trying out.

The following section from Hindu writer Sita Ram Goel’s book “PAPACY, its Doctrine and History” (Voice of India, 1986) is well worth quoting in this connection:

CHRISTIANITY AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION

The less said about the Christian call for Freedom of Religion the better. The record of Christianity in this respect exists in cold print and need not be reproduced here. Christianity has been and remains one one of the greatest and most persistent enemies of every freedom, let alone freedom of religion. Some of the most unrelenting crusaders against freedom in every form are still being hailed as saints by the Church. We have yet to hear of a Christian theologian who has betrayed anything but awe towards men like St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis Xavier.

As recently as 1984, Mother Teresa gave an interview to INDIA TODAY which had come out a cover story on her in one of its issues. One of the questions put to her was: “With whom would you have sided between Galileo and the Church?” It did not take her even a split second to say, “With the Church.” Galileo was not propounding any theology opposed to Christianity. In fact, he was a believing Christian. he had only reported a physical phenomenon which he had seen with his own eyes and which he was prepared to show to the inquisitors appointed by the Pope. His discovery has since then been accepted by the whole world, including the Catholic Church. But Mother Teresa finds it difficult to forgive the man simply because differed with the Church, even though he was right and the Church was wholly in the wrong.

What the Church really means by Freedom of Religion is that it should have an unbridled opportunity spread its superstition and extend its hierarchy with the help of mammoth finances from the West. What it does not endorse a Freedom of Religion is a non-Christian’s right to live his own life without its ministrations. It insists that it has an inalienable right to inflict its missionaries and its mumbo-jumbo on everyone everywhere. If anyone objects to this uncalled for and aggressive interference, he is violating Freedom of Religion.

(See also whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com)

Quick Take - As It Happens

Why this strange acceptance towards Christian fraud and contempt towards ‘Hindu’ India?

other Teresa raised millions, if not billions in the name of Kolkatta’s poorest – and India’s poor.

From this exhibition of India’s poor and poverty, less than 7% of the total ‘take’ was spent on people in whose name this money was raised.

If any Muslim ‘missionary’ had done this, wonder what level of outrage this country would have felt.

But Indians have developed a strange acceptance towards this kind of Christian fraud and contempt towards ‘Hindu’ India.

For years now, there has been a malignant growth of Christian-Western NGO funding – known and documented for the last 8 years – at least.

Coming back to Mother Teresa.

Social workers all around the world have drawn inspiration from her work and commitment to her cause. Yet, today in her centennial year, her legacy has lost its shine…

View original post 1,748 more words

India’s Independence Struggle and Savarkar in Particular

I have written about Savarkar in several of my previous posts; see the comments to the July 2012 post for the list. But there is some further information that elementary historians much younger me should be aware of.

The Indian Independence Movement was not taught in history classes when I was in school. I mentioned in one previous post that Savarkar’s granddaughter laughed at me when we were in school when I told her that I had not heard of her grandfather or his alleged involvement in Gandhi’s assassination. I must add for good measure that her father (Savarkar’s son-in-law) committed suicide in much the same manner as Savarkar himself when some embarrassing information about him came to light. That was in the early 1990s; I am not sure of the exact date. The full details are known to the CPI(M) Bhandup (Mumbai) Party Unit, whose office is close the place of work of that man who I must decline to name for the moment. The privilege is left to that political party, which I have distanced myself from for much the same reason as journalist-politician Sudheendra Kulkarni. I feel that to conceal such a matter would lead to public ignorance later.

Coming now to the Independence Movement, I have relied on the following sources for information.

1. Vincent Smith: “The Oxford Student’s History of India” 15th ed., revised by H. G. Rawlinson, Oxford University Press, 1951.
2. C. P. Ramaswami Aiyer: “Annie Besant” 4th Reprint, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt. of India, 1992.
3. Abhay Kumar Dubey: “World-Famous Revolutions” Pustak Mahal, New Delhi, 1993.

The Mutiny of 1847

This has been recognised by many as the first stage of the Independence Movement. Savarkar’s book “The Indian War of Independence 1857” on the subject, available at savarkar.org did much to influence public opinion.

Lord Canning relieved Lord Dalhousie as Governor-General of India on the last day of February 1856, and remained in office for little more than six years, until March 1862. The history of his administration is the story of the Mutiny, its suppression, and the consequent reorganisation. To quote from Smith [1], p. 325:

The Mutiny. A panic in the sepoy army was caused in January 1857, by the discovery that the cartridges for the new Enfield rifle had been greased with animal fat, and that the purity of the sepoy’s caste was consequently endangered. The authorities did their best to remedy the blunder ignorantly committed, but the alarm extended throughout the army, and was not to be allayed, the men believing that the Government intended to force them to become Christians. Trouble with incendiary fires at Barrachpore, followed in February and March by mutinies there and at Behrampore, the cantonment of Murshidabad. In distant Ambala, too, fires in the lines during March and April indicated a rebellious spirit of the troops. The decisive outbreak occurred at Meerut on 19 May, when the Indian regiments broke out, burnt the station, murdered the Europeans, and set of for Delhi. The commanding officer of Meerut, an imbecile old man, did nothing with the two thousand two hundred European troops at his disposal, but allowed the mutinous regiments to escape and occupy the ancient capital, where the Christian population was slaughtered, and the sepoys tendered their allegiance to the titular emperor, Bahadur Shah II, then more than eighty years of age. Within a month nearly every regiment between Allahabad and the Sutlej had mutinied, and in most Districts of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh civil government was at an end. Those days are remembered as ‘the time of disorder’ (ghadr or balwa ka wakt).

The news of the rebellion determined Parliament to abolish the powers of the East India Company and transfer the government of India directly to the Crown. The Queen’s Proclamation of 1 Nov. 1858 appointed Lord Canning as ‘first Viceroy and Governor-General’. It was published at Allahabad, and a few days later the last of the Mogul emperors passed through on his way to Burma (Myanmar), where he spent the rest of his days in confinement.

The following timeline is also taken from Smith [1]:

Leading Events and Dates of the Mutiny

I	Delhi area	1857	10 May: Mutiny at Meerut: rebel occupation of Delhi 8 June: occupation of Ridge by a small British force 14 September: British recovery of Delhi
II	Lucknow		1 July: defence of Residency begun 25 September: reinforcement of garrison by Havelock and Outram 22 November: final relief by Sir Colin Campbell and Outram; withdrawal of garrison
		1858	21 March: British recovery of Lucknow
III	Kanpur	1857	6 June: defence of entrenchment begun 27 June: defence of entrenchment ended 27 June – 16 July: surrender and massacres 17July: entry of relieving force 27 November: defeat of Windham by Gwalior contingent 6 December: victory of Sir Colin Campbell (battle of Kanpur)
IV	Central India	1858	June: capture of Gwalior and death of Rani of Jhansi
	Bundelkhand	1859	April: execution of Tantia Tope
V	Rohilkhand	1858	June: recovery of Bareilly by British
	1 November	1858:	Queen’s Proclamation announced

Early Twentieth Century

We come now to developments in the early twentieth century. Smith’s book, which was revised in 1950, much after the death of the author in 1920, has missed out a lot of relevant information, and merely mentions that the Indian National Congress, founded in 1895 at the suggestion of A. O. Hume, a retired Indian civil servant, played an increasing part in Indian affairs since 1919. The book states that: “From 1919 till his death, the acknowledged leader of Congress was Mr. M. K. Gandhi, the great nationalist leader, who first rose into prominence by championing his fellow-countrymen’s cause in South Africa in 1896.” On other political organisations, it states:

Other political bodies were the Mahasabha, an orthodox Hindu association, and the Muslim League, presided over by Mr. M. A. Jinnah, which aspired to Pakistan, or the setting up of separate states wherever there was a Muslim majority. But these, unlike the Indian National Congress, were sectional organisations.

Far more information is given in Dubey [3], quoted below:

The ill advised partition of Bengal in 1905 By Lord Curzon saw an unprecedented upsurge of national awakening ad patriotism. This marked the rise of extremist schools of nationalism that took birth in Maharashtra and Bengal and later northern India. Aurobindo and Barindra Ghosh had founded the Anushilan Samiti in Bengal. The partition of Bengal saw an increase in the activities of revolutionaries in Bengal. Prafulla Chaki and Khudiram Bose hurled a bomb that killed two English ladies, Mrs. Kennedy and her sister. The target was the District Judge of Muzaffarpur. In the first Alipur Conspiracy Case, Aurobindo was put up for trial but was discharged for lack of evidence. The revolutionary movement came under the spell of the younger generation who formed groups in Barisal, Chittagong, Midnapur, Hooghly, Dacca, Mymensingh, Behrampur and Calcutta. In Maharashtra, it was lead by the legendary Veer Savarkar.

Public opinion forced the annulment of the partition of Bengal. In 1907, the Congress split into two groups at Surat. They were called Moderates and Extremists as their method of agitation against foreign rule were totally different. Another facet of the national movement was the agitation carried on in foreign countries for Indian freedom. Madam Cama, Shyamji Krishna Verma, Sirdar Rana were playing a prominent part in espousing the cause of freedom in foreign countries. Madame Cama unfurled the Indian flag at the International Socialist Congress (1907) at Stuttgart.

Madame Cama’s original Indian National Flag

The Swadeshi and anti-partition movements badly affected the English. It resulted in decrease in import of British goods which affected the British industry. As both the communities took part in these agitations, the British resorted to the time tested policy of divide and rule. Seeds of dissent were sown to isolate Muslims from the national stream. Communal riots broke out at many places, the national movement was weakened and the British government came out with many repressive laws so that the tide of nationalism could be checked.

The capital of India was shifted to Delhi. As the Viceroy Lord Hardinge rode into Delhi on December 23, 1912, a bomb was hurled at him by Rash Behari Bose. The viceroy was wounded. The Minto-Morley reforms did not satisfy anybody. Savarkar had been arrested in London and sent to prison in Andamans. A youth Madan Lal Dhingra had shot Sir Curzon Wylie. Ghadar Party was organised from among Sikh emigrants on the west coast of America and Canada. Oxford educated Lala Har Dayal was an indefagitable revolutionary. He first fled to Switzerland in 1914. From there he went to America and organised the Ghadar Party.

Savarkar left for London in 1906 to study law. His passage was paid for by Shyamji Krishna Verma. He was arrested in 1909 for involvement in an armed revolt against the Morley-Minto Reforms. He was later sentenced to 50 years imprisonment in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

I cannot attempt to write full biography of Savarkar, but will now quote from C. P. Ramaswami Aiyer‘s biography of Annie Besant [2], which does mention Savarkar’s name, but also goes into other matters of importance in India at the beginning of the 20th century, including the founding of Banaras Hindu University. Chapter V: “Campaign for Home Rule”, which is quoted, starts by discussing a case filed against Annie Besant by the father of Jiddu Krishnamurthi, the famous Indian philosopher.

It was in 1915 that Mrs Besant’s active political work was renewed soon after the termination of a case (in which she was the defendant) initiated by G. Narayaniah, the father of the present world celebrity J. Krishnamurthi. The case terminated in 1915. Thereafter, the lawyer for the plaintiff joined her in her political work. it was characteristic of Mrs. Besant’s generosity and fairness that the frank criticism of certain Theosophical tenets and personages indulged in by the advocate aforesaid during the progress of the case did not prevent her from collaborating with him in her political work.

Annie Besant’s characteristics may perhaps be best illustrated by a reference to her relations with J. Krishnamurthi. As is well known, Krishnamurthi’s father had entrusted the education and upbringing of his two sons, Krishnamurthi and Nityananda, to Mrs. besant. Later on prompted and financed by some who were personally opposed to Mrs. Besant and regarded her as a foreigner who tried to overturn Hindu society, the father instituted proceedings for recovering the custody of the children from Mrs. Besant who had not only spent large sums of money on the education of the boys but had arranged for their being entered in an English university. The author of this book is fully acquainted with the details of the action as he appeared for the plaintiff, Mr. Narayaniah. Mrs. Besant defended the action herself; and her demeanour and advocacy were on par with her historical performances as her own lawyer in the English courts. She was firm but always courteous to the Judge, notwithstanding that the Judge was an Englishman and was deeply prejudiced against her from every point of view — as one who had broken away from Christianity, and adopted Hindu modes of life and thought and as one who ranged against against the British government in political matters. The Judges who heard her case could not but admire the legal erudition that she displayed, the eloquence of her pleading and the logical common sense underlying every word that she spoke.

In the course of the case, she declined to disclose or to produce in court certain documents relating to Mr. Leadbeater whom she had constituted the preceptor of the boys under her guardianship and against whom certain grave allegations were made. …

……….

In the course of his early statements, Krishnamurthi severely criticised many persons and many beliefs, the targets of such criticism including Mrs. Besant herself, his teacher George Arundale, and his immediate preceptor C. W. Leadbeater. Mrs. Besant, however, never wavered in her love and affection for him and she did not regret the benefactions that she has showered on Krishnamurthi.

Under the inspiration of Ranade, Gokhale and others the Servants of India Society was founded which pledged to work for the public good in different directions. It represented the moderate group in politics. But the partition of Bengal and the repressive policy pursued in Punjab, Bombay and Bengal and the prosecution of leaders like Tilak, Lajpat Rai and others produced great bitterness in men’s minds. Savarkar was indicted for being implicated in the assassination of Wylie. he escaped when he was being brought to India for trial, but was captured. he was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. After his release, he became the President of the Hindu Mahasabha. The leaders of the Revolutionary Movement in Bengal edited successively the Bande Mataram, Nava Sakti, Karma Yogi and Dharma; and Bipin Chandra Pal helped in this work. The Terrorist Movement arose and spread in Bengal Many young men who joined the Movement were prosecuted and sentenced to death. Some Sikhs who had settled in Canada and the U.S. and then returned, started the Ghadar Movement.

It was in this posture of affairs that Mrs. Besant, who had already founded the Central Hindu College, planned her comprehensive work for India. Her first idea was, as already outlined, to start a great National University aimed at promoting Indian nationalism. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, who was then a prominent politacal elader in the United Provinces, wanted a Hindu University side by side with the Aligarh Muslim University which was being advocated by the great Sir Syed Ahmed. Mrs. Besant, as we have seen, tried to get a Charter for the National University; but was confronted with several difficulties and opposition, she agreed, with great self-sacrifice, to hand over the Central Hindu College to serve as the nucleus for the Hindu University aimed at by Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya. In 1921 the University honoured itself by conferring a doctorate on Mrs. Besant.

……….

It was about 1885 that the first Indian deputation went to England to plead the cause of India. It consisted of Surendranath Banerji,
Chandavarkar, and Salem Ramaswami Mudaliar. Other deputations went to England thereafter;and in 1913 Bupendranath Basu, Jinnah, Samarth, Lajpat Rai and others went there. Very few tangible results were achieved by these efforts and frustration became widespread. At this juncture, the Home Rule League was started on the 3rd of September 1916 by Mrs Besant who initiated the first attempt at mass appeal. She also organised “The Order of the Sons and Daughters of India.” …

……….

… in August 1917 she was made the President of the National Congress in Calcutta.

Savarkar most certainly has been mentioned as an important person in C. P. Ramaswami Aiyer’s book, which was first published in April 1963. However, when studying the history of the Independence Movement, organisations are more important then individuals, and we see that several individuals were involved with this stage of the movement.

Further Observations on Savarkar

Owing to the Gandhi Assassination Case and the inconclusive findings of the Kapur Commission almost two decades later, it is difficult to form an objective opinion of Savarkar, who undoubtedly did much to raise the awareness of Indians in the early twentieth century. He was rightfully awarded a D. Litt. by Pune and Nagpur Universities, but I find that some of his views on Indian Culture and Internationalism cannot be taken seriously. Kavita Krishnan, in her CPI(ML) site article (2003) casts several doubts on hischaracter. The matter of his suicide is also perplexing, seeing that his son-in-law also committed suicide in a similar manner much later, and Savarkar certainly could not have been unaware of the son-in-laws activities. What has been stated by savarkar.org is most unconvincing.

My Parents

The image below is a photograph of my parents

Their names are Bhalchandra Prasannakumar Kadam (better known as Bob Kadam) and Sudhira Kadam. Both of them died before the Internet came to India. My mother passed away a few days before the Gorbachev’s ouster as Head of the Soviet Union, and my father a few years earlier.

As I mentioned in a comment to my 27 Jul 12 post, my father was one of the police officers assigned to the Gandhi Assassination Case, but he left the police shortly afterwards. However, he remained the Secretary of the Police Sports Club, Mumbai, right up to his death. On account of the interest of the Mumbai Police, his obituary was published in some minor newspapers. He played regularly in the Pentangular Cricket Tournament, before the Ranji Trophy was instituted.

Coming now to my father’s professional life, he finally joined the Mumbai branch of the travel agency Trade Wings. After his retirement as a senior employee in 1974, the company gave him a five year contract as a consultant in order to organise their training programme. Trade Wings computerised its operations a little after his appointment expired in 1979. He was a rather successful professional, but somewhat short of distinguished.

My mother worked as an Office Assistant in the company of a family friend.

Diary Entry

13 Aug 12, 11:22 A.M. Indian Standard Time. The WordPress software is presently being updated. This is the first time in August that I can see a normal screen in my dashboard. I am also informed that all the browsers in the cybercafe that I use are outdated with the exception of Google Chrome.

I wonder why blogging software should be so dependent on the browser.

This nonsense certainly seems worth reproducing. It was published in “Hindutvameva Vijate” on 19 May 12. Sure enough, Nathuram Godse’s birthday is 19 May (1910). The present President of the Hindu Mahasabha is Himani Savarkar (nee Godse), daughter-in-law of Dr. Narayan Savarkar and niece of Nathuram Godse. I don’t know whether the blog “Hindutvameva Vijayate” actually represents the official viewpoint of the Mahasabha.

Update on Manual Typewriters

When Indian manufacturer Godrej and Boyce closed down its typewriter production a year ago, it was announced on the web by Yahoo! and other news agencies that the manual typewriter is now dead. (See last post). However it appears that Godrej and Boyce is getting more than its due share of publicity because a news report at cnet.com dated 22 Mar 12 stated that manual typewriters are available with the dealers Hammacher Schlemmer.

The machine available here is the Classic Manual Typewriter manufactured by Royal Consumer Information Products Inc. As the Hammacher Schlemmer page states: “Though supplanted by electronic word processors decades ago, the mechanical typewriter still has its devotees, … . This typewriter also proves invaluable for addressing envelopes, creating labels, or filling out forms – simple tasks that can be confounding with a computer printer.”

The manufacturer, Royal Consumer Information Products Inc. had its roots in the Royal Typewriter Company, founded in January 1904 by Edward B. Hess and Lewis C. Myers. Edward B. Hess, who died in January 1941, was a prolific inventor and held over 140 patents relating to the typewriter. The other founder, Lewis C. Myers, died in Freeport, New York at the age of 84. The sales of the company in North America totalled over $600 million in 1982.

In April 1986, Olivetti, the Italian typewriter/computer manufacturer, purchased Royal, which remained part of the Olivetti family for nearly two decades. It became a private American company again in September 2004 and is now known as Royal Consumer Products Inc. See the facebook page on Royal Consumer Products for further information.

As already mentioned here and in the Hammacher Schlemmer page, the manual typewriter is still useful for some specialised purposes. But there is another innovation in typewriter technology that deserves to be mentioned. This is the USB typewriter kit designed by Jack Zylkin in 2010.

This is an attachment to the manual typewriter that enables it to function as an input keyboard to a PC or other such device. Full information on the device is found at www.usbtypewriter.com. A report is given in IEEE Spectrum dated Mar 2011.

So far, the USB typewriter kit is of interest only to hobbyists, but there is a further possible addition which may increase its value considerably. As a fair amount of mechanical work is done while pounding the manual typewriter keyboard, the motion could be used to spin the electrical generator of an automatic quartz watch, which would then supply the power for the CPU of the PC or iPod. The saving of power makes this worth considering.

R.I.P. Manual Typewriter

The manufacture of manual typewriters came to a halt on 26 Apr 2011. This was announced in the Yahoo! News report reproduced below.

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YAHOO! NEWS

World’s last typewriter factory ‘shuts down’ in Mumbai

By ANI | ANI – Tue, Apr 26, 2011 12:18 PM IST

London, April 26 (ANI): Godrej and Boyce – the last company in the world that was still manufacturing typewriters – has closed its production plant in Mumbai, India.

The company is now left with its last 200 machines – the majority of which are Arabic language models.

Although typewriters became obsolete years ago in the west, they were still common in India – until recently.

But with consumers switching to computers the demand for the machines started falling drastically in the last ten years.

“We are not getting any orders now.” The Daily Mail quoted the company’s general manager, Milind Dukle, as telling India’s Business Standard newspaper.

“From the early 2000s onwards, computers started dominating. All the manufacturers of office typewriters stopped production, except us.”

“Till 2009, we used to produce 10,000 to 12,000 machines a year. But this might be the last chance for typewriter lovers. Now, our primary market is among defence agencies, courts and government offices,” he said.

The firm began production in the 1950s. (ANI)

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The site www.typewritermuseum.org (Est. Jun 2001) states in its page The End of History that “Today Olivetti is the only Western company producing manual typewriters.” However, the end of manual typewriter production in America was announced by Joe Halderman in his poem MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE, whose date is ascertained to be 1 Feb 2001 by Googlesearch on the term “olivetti valentine typewriter” for the time period 1 Jan 2001 – 31 Dec 2001. The first stanza of the poem reads:

There was an obituary in the business section
that touched me more than those of most humans;
the last manual typewriter made in America
rolled off an assembly line in Smith_Corona
and was presented to some bigwig
in a light-hearted ceremony.

The report about Godrej & Boyce was immediately followed up by announcements elsewhere that the company Swintec was still manufacturing typewriters. (See, for instance, The Daily Feed dated 26 Apr 11.) It was immediately noticed by readers that Swintech produces electronic typewriters and that the manual typewriter was indeed dead.

Descriptions of typewriters of various brands can be found at Typewriter Museum: Mr. Martin’s Web Site.

When Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press with loose type in the 15th century, he cleared the way for a gradual proliferation of the printed word. However, it was not until the 19th century, when production was automated, that the time was ripe for the typewriter. It was in the United States of America that mass production of typewriters started in 1873 with the Sholes and Glidden typewriter.

Inventor C.I. Sholes put together the prototypes of the first commercial typewriter in a Milwaukee machine shop in the 1860s. The machine shop tools available in this small town were too crude for precision work, and the instrument clashed and jammed when used, especially when two keys close to each other were typed in succession, so Sholes had to see that common letter pairs were separated on the keyboard.

Sholes & Glidden Typewriter 1874
Source: http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/firsttw.html

The keyboard arrangement was considered important enough to be included on Shole’s patent granted in 1878. It is shown below; click on image to see magnified copy.

It was designed after a study of letter-pair frequencies by educator Amos Densmore, brother of Sholes’ chief financial backer James Densmore.

The machine was mass produced in 1874 by the arms manufacturer Remington. The first model typed only capital letters. The second model, introduced in 1978, offered both upper and lower case using the shift key.

More information on keyboards is found on the Webopedia page: QWERTY keyboard and the links there.

Remington Arms Company was founded by Eliphalet Remington, who began to craft handmade guns in 1818 at his father’s forge. In 1826 he moved his operations to a site close to the newly constructed Erie Canal. E. Remington and Sons was incorporated as a stock company in 1865.

The company went into the typewriter business in September 1873. This business was sold in 1886 and became Remington Rand.

Godrej & Boyce was founded by Ardeshir Godrej who gave up law in 1897 and turned to lock making. The company then started manufacturing toilet soap from vegetable oil. It began production of typewriters in the 1950s, when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru described the typewriter as a symbol of India’s emerging independence and industrialisation.

After World War II, the electric typewriter advanced, with IBM as the market leader. The IBM ‘golf ball’ system was basically the system invented in the 19th century by Blickensderfer, and perfected in the 1902 Blickensderfer Electric. The IBM Selectric was introduced in 1961.

Later on, electronic typewriters and PCs entered the scene, with the typewriter almost obsolete by the end of the 20th century.

TIMELINE

868 CE	Earliest dated printed book, DIAMOND SUTRA, printed in China.
1041	Moveable clay type invented in China.
1436	Johannes Gutenberg invents printing press with moveable wooden or metal letters.
30 Sep 1452	Gutenberg’s Bible published.
12 Oct 1492	Columbus lands in Bahamas.
4 Jul 1776	U.S. Declaration of Independence.
4 Jul 1817	Construction of Erie Canal begins.
1865	E. Remington and Sons incorporated as a stock company.
1868	Sholes’ first typewriter model built.
1878	Patent granted to Sholes.
Sep 1873	First Remington typewriter produced.
1886	Remington sells typewriter business. Remington Rand formed.
1897	Ardeshir Godrej takes up lock making.
1902	Blickensderfer Electric Typewriter perfected.
15 Aug 1947	India gains independence.
1950s	Godrej & Boyce start manufacturing typewriters.
12 Sep 1958	First successful demonstration of microchip.
1961	IBM Selectric.
1981	IBM PC.
1992	World Wide Web.
26 Apr 2011	Godrej & Boyce ceases manual typewriter production.

Savarkar, Hindutva and Indian Politics

Hindutva (a word coined By Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in a 1923 pamphlet) is generally understood to be a term used to describe movements advocating Hindu nationalism. The BJP, formed in 1980, took up Hindutva only in 1990 and Savarkar in 2000. On May 2002, L.K. Advani spoke of Savarkar in the Andamans and admitted his intellectual debt to his essay Hindutva.

On 26 Feb 2003, at the insistence of the BJP-led government and in the face of opposition protest, Savarkar’s portrait was unveiled in the central hall of parliament by President A.P.J. Kalam.

 

AJIT KUMAR/AP

(See http://frontlineonnet.com/fl2006/stories/20030328003603400.htm )

From Left: parliamentary Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhavat, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi.

Frontline columnist A.G. Noorani is the author of the book Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection (LeftWord Books, Delhi, 2002). He observes:

“No government with any sense of decency would unveil such a man’s portrait in the hallowed premises of Parliament – there, to face the portrait of the very man he had, as Patel and Kapur found, conspired to murder. Another person familiar with police investigations was the Home Minister of the Bombay Province, Morarji Desai. He had assigned hisbest police officers to the investigation. Desai’s carefully worded judgment on Savarkar in the Bombay Legislative Council on 3 Apr 1948, when R.N. Mandlik referred to “the past services of the Savarkar brothers,” is devastatingly brief: “May I say, Sir, that the past services are more than offset by the present disservice?”

Shortly afterwards, in Apr 2003, an article appeared at the CPI(ML) web site, the beginning and end of which are quoted below:

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Unveiling Savarkar: Picture Imperfect

“But because of the then prevalent ideas about chivalry to women, which ultimately proved highly detrimental to the Hindu community, neither Shivaji nor Chinaji Appa could rape Muslim women.”

— V.D. Savarkar, The Six Golden Epochs of Indian History, p. 71.

Savarkar, the first person to ‘theorise’ Hindutva and to advocate rape as a necessary component of Hindutva nationalism, has been honoured with a portrait in Parliament Central Hall. Savarkar’s portrait in Parliament is a symbol of BJP’s blatent assertion of its model of poisonous, distorted “hate nationalism” — the model that killed Gandhi, that held Gaurav Yatras to celebrate the rape and killing of Muslim women in Gujarat.

Also the RSS-BJP, which has no history of participation in the freedom movement, is desperate to hunt for someone from the Hindutva ranks, whom they can claim as a freedom fighter. And Savarkar is the only one whom they can prune and touch up to fit the slot! But Savarkar’s ‘nationalism’, too, is hardly an unadulterated legacy; Savarkar blotted his record of patriotism by his own actions. It is true that Savarkar, in his youth, was a fiery patriot. He was the founder of the Abhinav Bharat Society, which was a revolutionary terrorist group which organised attacks on British authorities. He was the first ever too boldly challenge the British denigration of 1857 as a ‘revolt’ or ‘mutiny’, and to assert, in a book published in 1908, which was banned by the British, that 1857 was India’s First War of Independence.

Unfortunately, Savarkar washed his hands off this history. He was arrested for abetting the murder of the Collector of Nasik. He managed to escape from captivity through a ship’s porthole: the daring escape for which he earned the ‘Veer’ title. But the brave ‘Veer’ facet evaporated rapidly after his re-arrest and trial, when he was taken to the Andamans in 1911. Before spending even a single year there, he sent a petition begging for release. In a letter dated 24 Nov 1913, he repeated this petition, promising to mend his ways, and become “the staunchest advocate … of loyalty to the government … where else can the prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the Government?” Again in 1925. he sent a petition begging for release, and promising not to engage in politics “without the consent of the Government”. By then, of course, he had produced his essay on Hindutva (1923), and had emerged as a proponent of ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and his targets, in his writings as well as his politics, became the Muslims rather than the British.

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It is [also] a sad commentary on the bankrupcy of the “secular” parties of the mainstream Parliamentary Opposition. Shivraj Patil and Pranabh Mukherjee of the Congress, as well as CPI(M) leader Somnath Chatterjee were all on the panel that had approved of the portrait in a meeting held 5 Dec 2002. Now these parties are condemning the fact that Savarkar’s portrait has been put up opposite that of Gandhiji’s. But the fact is that they are ‘putting on their gloves after the bout is over”, as the editorial of the Hindustan Times put it. Comrade Chatterjee admits that he was guilty of “a mistake and an oversight”.

If the Sangh’s communal fascist agenda is to be defeated we must put up an uncompromising challenge to it on all fronts — its symbols, its language, its ideas and each of its acts of actual and symbolic violence needs to be vigilantly combated at every step.

— Kavita Krishnan

Home > Liberation > Year_2003 > April > Unveiling Savarkar: Picture Imperfect

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[The links above are to the CPI(ML) site.]

Kavita Krishnan’s remarks on Savarkar are pertinent, but she seems to have failed to understand the concept of Hindutva. We will discuss this below. But first the timeline:

Timeline (1947 – 2004)

15 Aug 1947	India’s independence
12 Sep 1947	RSS chief Guru Golwalkar meets Gandhi at Birla House
30 Jan 1948	Gandhi assassinated in Delhi
04 Feb 1948	RSS banned
05 Feb 1948	Letter from PM Nehru to Sardar Patel on RSS activity
Jun 1949	Golwalkar sends text of RSS constitution to Indian Government
12 Jul 1949	Ban on RSS lifted
13 Jul 1949	Golwalkar released from prison
07 Oct 1949	Congress Working Committee asks RSS members to join Congress
15 Dec 1950	Sardar Patel passes away
27 May 1964	Nehru passes away
Oct 1964	Gopal Godse and others released
12 Nov 1964	Religious programme to celebrate release of Godse et al. Godse re-arrested
1965 end	Gopal Godse finally released
1966	Indira Gandhi appointed Prime Minister; Savarkar commits suicide; Kapur Commission
1969	Kapur Commission submits its report; bank nationalisation
1975	Indira Gandhi imposes emergency
27 Mar 1977 – 28 Jul 1979	Morarji Desai Prime Minister
1980	BJP formed
31 Oct 1984 – 01 Dec 1989	Rajiv Gandhi takes over as Prime Minister after his mother’s assassination
21 Jun 1991 – 10 May 1996	P.V. Narasimha Rao Prime Minister
10 Mar 1998 – 13 Mar 2004	A.B. Vajpayee Prime Minister

References

1. www.savarkarsmarak.com/chronology.php gives a detailed chronology of Savarkar’s life.
2. pib.nic.in/archieve/others/gpmi.html lists all the Prime Ministers of India

As stated in the opening paragraph, L.K. Advani admitted his intellectual debt to Savarkar in 2002. Kavita Krishnan on her part points out that his book on the 1857 Mutiny was extremely important. The chronology at http://www.savarkarsmarak.com mentions that Savarkar was awarded honorary degrees by the Universities of Nagpur and Pune. His contribution to human knowledge is therefore obvious.

But we still have to go into the matter of his involvement in the Gandhi Assassination and his sometimes objectionable views. Excerpts of L.K. Advani’s autobiography are available at www.mycountrymylife.com. He states, on the assassination (Excerpts: Phase 2):

“The person who committed this sinful crime was Nathuram Vinayak Godse, an activist of the Hindu Mahasabha from Maharashtra. He had once been a swayamsevak of the RSS, but had left the organisation nearly fifteen years ago due to his strong ideological differences with the Sangh. he had in fact become a bitter critic of the RSS, charging that ‘the RSS has made Hindus impotent’. His main grouse was that the RSS had sublimated the ‘militant spirit’ among the Hindus, making them incapable of aggressive action. He ridiculed the Sangh’s focus on character building. His articles in the Marathi magazine Agrani from 1933 onwards show how bitter he was towards the RSS.”

The same excerpt of Advani’s autobiography points out that the Kapur Commission exonerated the RSS of all involvement in the case. Information about the Gandhi Assassination Trial and the subsequent Kapur Commission may be found at www.indiajudgments.com/murder-trials.php

Group of accused in Gandhi Murder Case

Standing: Shankar Kistaiya, Gopal Godse, Madanlal Pahwa, Digambar Badge Sitting: Narayan Apte, Vinayak Savarkar, Nathuram Godse, Vishnu Karkare

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

Savarkar was set free due to lack of evidence while Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte were hanged. Gopal Godse was sentenced to life imprisonment.

As stated at INDIA JUDGMENTS.COM, “The release of the conspirators in the Gandhi murder case in 1964 and the resultant celebrations in Pune and Ketkar’s remarks that he was aware of Nathuram Godse’s desire to kill Gandhi, led to a public outrage and resulted in the forming of the Pathak Commission, … ” [Dr. G.V. Ketkar was the grandson of Bal Gangadhar Tilak.] The Kapur Commission was set up in 1966.

Savarkar committed suicide on 25 Feb 1966. The Kapur Commission was set up some months after his death. Former Chief Presidency Magistrate of Bombay, Oscar Henry Brown, who signed Savarkar’s affidavit, reproduced at INDIA JUDGMENTS.COM, retired from the Bombay Court in the same year. Although I was too young at that time to understand him fully, he told my father, a few months after the suicide, if I recall correctly, that Savarkar committed suicide just when the commission was about to be set up, and that he also had some trouble with his family. [See my last post.] Oscar Brown unfortunately was a tricky man to deal with, so I did not attempt to question him on this matter.

The Kapur Commision finally exonerated Savarkar for want of sufficient evidence, however with the remark that the facts on the whole demolish any other theory but the conspiracy of Savarkar and his group in the murder. The RSS, on the other hand, was entirely exonerated. The BJP, despite its intellectual debt to a man of learning, need not have pushed so far for Savarkar’s recognition.

Coming finally to the matter of Hindutva, Savarkar’s definition was a clear definition of Indian culture, which philosophers would do well to understand. Before going into it, we should also take note of what journalist Sudheendra Kulkarni observed in his IBNLive blog article dated 15 Feb 2009:

“A leader is to be judged by which seminal ideas he injects into the life of a nation. Advani has initiated a nationwide debate on two interrelated and critically important ideas: the true meaning of secularism and the true basis of India’s national identity. He has called the latter Hindutva or Cultural Nationalism. Interpreted wrongly and narrowly, it can cause a lot of harm to our national fabric. However, if it is understood in a broad and enlightened sense, the sense which Advani has explicated in his book, it is indeed the guarantor of India’s survival.”

Savarkar’s definition of Hindutva is given in his 1923 pamphlet published at Nagpur. It is explained in the Economic and Political Weekly article “A Matter of Definitions” by S.H. Deshpande dated 27 Apr 1991. In the first four pages of Savarkar’s pamphlet we find the following:

“Hindutva is not a word, but a history. Not only the religious or spiritual history of our people as at times it is mistaken to be by being confounded with the other cogent term Hinduism — ‘Hinduism’ is only a derivative — failure to distinguish between these two concepts has given rise to much misunderstanding.”

For Savarkar, Hindus are a people with a common religio-cultural heritage. Who are the contributors to this culture? He mentions Vedic seers, Dayanand, Jina, Mahavira, Buddha, Nagasena, Nanak, Guru Govind, Banda, Basava, Chakradhara, Ramadas, Rammohan Roy. It willbe clearly seen from this list that it includes representatives of all tha main sects or religions, Vedic or non-Vedic, ancient or modern.

Deshpande goes on to give some excerpts from Savarkar’s writing. The following one is the most relevant:

“Hindutva — “Hinduness” — is more comprehensive than the word ‘Hinduism’. Hinduism concerns itself with the religious systems of the Hindus, their theology and dogma. But this is precisely a matter which the Hindu Mahasabha leaves entirely to individual or group conscience or faith. The Mahasabha takes its stand on no dogma, no book or school of philosophy — whether pantheist, monotheist or atheist.”

Savarkar’s 1923 pamphlet seems just as important as any published work that he was recognised for, but his personal views very often are not worth going into.

BA-NA-NA-NA – Ay-yo! How Long do you want Stretch Banana

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, despite the defects of his personality, was an important contributor to Indian political thought. I first heard of him in 1966, the year of his death, when my father had a long discussion with his friend Mr. Brown. I was too young to understand the two men’s conversation fully but, on going home, my father explained to me that a cartain Mr. Savarkar had committed suicide and Mr. Brown had just retired from his job as a magistrate because he was unable to bring his dear friend back to life. He also told me that I might possibly have met some of Mr. Savarkar’s family members. On the prompting of my English teacher, I asked a number of students in my school whether they had heard of a Mr. Savarkar. I got no answer except from one senior girl who told me that she knew Mr. Brown and that I did not deserve to win the general knowledge prize in school that year if I had not read my history textbooks properly.

I asked my father if he could tell me something more about this Savarkar, and he said that he had met this man before I was born, when he was a police officer assigned to the Gandhi assassination case, and that the case went to Mr. Brown’s court. But when I asked him whether the comic senior girl was the family member he meant, all he said was “Mr. Savarkar is no more, and dead men tell no tales.” On reading the history textbooks several years later, I am still no wiser, and, as my father too is no more, my question will never be answered. But I notice that the comic girl’s surname is neither Savarkar or Chiplunkar. [savarkar.org has some details about V.D. Savarkar’s family (so also does the wikipedia).A copy of a legal document signed by O.H.Brown can also be found at this site. Savarkar’s daughter frequently wrote fiction for a Bangalore magazine under the pen name Prabha Chiplunkar.]

After his dear friend’s death, Mr. Brown grew more and more despondent, and finally decided to become a priest. he very soon qualified as a Reverend Canon and is the only priest I know of who spoke about Spinoza’s philosophy from the pulpit. This went above my head until someone explained pantheism and its relation to Marxism to me. On questioning कानून Brown, I found that he had learnt his philosophy from his teacher Rev. Canon H.K. Dasgupta. However, Dasgupta was asked to retire from the church a few years later, and कानून Brown decided to recant his pantheism. I chose to recant my Christianity instead. Readers with some knowledge of philosophy will observe that pantheism is an influential component of some schools of Indian philosophy recognised by Hindutva, but is rejected by fideist forms of Christianity.

कानून Brown’s career as a priest ended with an anti-climax. he was asked to retire on account of some malpractice at his church which he himself reported to the police. The Bishop of Mumbai, Church of North India, was dismissed six months after him, and the office of Reverend Canon discontinued by the Church of North India. A Protestant priest of a different denomination told me several years later that he too knew of this, and that the office of Reverend Canon was in fact discontinued because of O.H. Brown.

Immediately after leaving the church, the कानून got married and settled down in Germany. I lost track of him after that, but the WORLD WIDE WEB INFORMS US THAT HE NOW HAS A SISTER-IN-LAW CALLED BANANA. [See link here.]

My Blog’s New Look and other Web Developments

I received an e-mail dated 13 Oct 10 from the Windows Live Team stating that Windows Live Spaces is to close on 16 Mar 11. The timeline given by them is as follows:

• Sep 10, end: On visiting Live Spaces you will be given the option to migrate to wordpress.com.
• Jan 11: You won’t be able to make changes to your blog, but still can migrate.
• 16 Mar 11:Windows Live Spaces closes entirely.

I did not visit my space after my last posting until I received this e-mail, but the blog has now been shifted as per instructions, with the system generated “Hello World” posting marking the date.

There is another development at Microsoft which is causing a bit of disruption to the web at the moment. This is the Bing/Yahoo! merger which was announced in July 2009.The estimated completion date is 2012. In my last month’s blog posting here I compared the search listings of several search engines including Bing and Yahoo!. It can be seen from the table there that the listings of these two engines was, until a month ago, entirely different. At present, Bing shows roughly the same listings as before, while Yahoo! sometimes shows its old listings, sometimes those of Bing. Altavista, which now uses the Yahoo! engine, has also been affected. As I pointed out in a posting in Fropper blog in July 09, it is necessary to go into corporate history to understand the development of search engines. An up to date exposition of the theoretical aspects of web search is given in an on-line course by RalucaRemus (2009), but it seems that no wholly satisfactory algorithm exists, and a comparison of the listings of various search engines (previous posting mentioned above) gives the impression that there may be a great deal of human intervention in the creation of search listings.

This posting was originally intended to be the first after the “Hello World” entry, but before I could write it up, I read about Mandelbrot’s death and put in an entry here announcing it. Mandelbrot’s website still exists, but we cannot be sure for how long. Readers interested in his work would be well advised to download whatever they can from the site while they still can.