The Ferengi's Columns: A Western journalist opening his eyes to the true India

159 Pages·2001·1.026 MB·English

by  Francois Gautier

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Dedicated to “ Sri Sri ”

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The author wishes to express his gratitude to Sudheendra Kulkarni, one time editor
of Blitz; to Mr. Narayanan, editor of the Hindustan Times, when it was still a versatile
newspaper; and to Shekhar Gupta, editor of the Indian Express, who stuck by him in spite of
a lot of internal resistance !

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Contents

FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR ............................................................................. 7
1. AYODHYA ....................................................................................................... 9
THE SYMBOL OF AYODHYA ............................................................................. 9
THE BOMBAY BLASTS ................................................................................... 12
WHY AYODHYA ? .......................................................................................... 14
2. KASHMIR : A DEAD-END AND A SOLUTION .................................................. 17
THE SHADOW OF A HORSE ........................................................................... 17
THE KASHMIRI "FREEDOM" FIGHTERS .......................................................... 20
KASHMIR AND THE FOREIGN JOURNALISTS .................................................. 22
PAKISTAN AND KASHMIR .............................................................................. 25
3. THE CHRISTIANS : A MINORITY IN MORAL MAJORITY .................................. 27
THE CHRISTIAN STORY : A WARPED INDIAN MEDIA ...................................... 27
THE RIGHT WAY TO WELCOME THE POPE .................................................... 29
THE HINDU ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY ........................................................... 31
CHRIST AND THE NORTH-EAST ..................................................................... 33
THE "PERSECUTION" OF CHRISTIANS IN INDIA ............................................. 35
4. THE HINDUS : A MAJORITY IN MORAL MINORITY......................................... 39
POOR HINDUS ! ............................................................................................ 39
THE GREAT AMBITION OF HINDUISM ........................................................... 41
EDUCATION : WHAT THE HELL IS THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT ? .................... 44
" SEVA AND GOVERNMENT " ........................................................................ 47
ARE HINDUS COWARDS ? ............................................................................. 50
5. THE INDIAN MEDIA: AN HOSTILE FORCE ...................................................... 54
INDIAN JOURNALISTS ................................................................................... 54
THE INDIAN MEDIA AND GURUS .................................................................. 56
AN INDIAN SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM ........................................................... 57
HOW FOREIGN JOURNALISTS VIEW INDIA .................................................... 60
AN ANSWER TO SWISS JOURNALIST BERNARD IMHASLY .............................. 64
6. THE (UNFRIENDLY) NEIGHBOURS IN ASIA .................................................... 68
Pakistan ........................................................................................................ 68
THE "FRIENDLY" TALIBANS ........................................................................... 72
SRI LANKA ..................................................................................................... 75
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The Great Japanese Hypocrisy ...................................................................... 77
7. THE WEST AND INDIA................................................................................... 80
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE US PRESIDENT ...................................................... 80
"THE TRUTH ABOUT INDO-FRENCH RELATIONS" .......................................... 82
THE SECRET BROTHERHOOD OF INDIA AND ISRAEL ...................................... 84
RUSSIA AND INDIA : SHARING THE SAME FIGHT ........................................... 86
8. EXAMPLES NOT TO FOLLOW ........................................................................ 89
THE LESSONS OF EAST TIMOR FOR INDIA ..................................................... 89
" THE BLACK KARMA OF THE WEST IN KOSOVO " ......................................... 91
THE TERRIBLE FATE OF TIBET ........................................................................ 95
9. THE FALSE GODS .......................................................................................... 99
WAS MAHATMA A MISFIT?........................................................................... 99
RAMA RAO, AN ACTOR OR A CHIEF MINISTER ? ......................................... 101
EXPLODING THE MOTHER TERESA MYTH ................................................... 103
SONIA GANDHI AND THE GREAT ARYAN MYTH .......................................... 106
10. THE GREAT INDIAN MYTHS ...................................................................... 109
" DID BUDDHISM HARM INDIA ? " .............................................................. 109
"HINDI-CHINI BYE-BYE" ............................................................................... 111
THE GITA AND WAR .................................................................................... 114
CRICKET THE VAMPIRE ............................................................................... 116
11. THE ROT OF BOLLYWOOD ........................................................................ 118
REFUGEE, A SECULAR FILM ? ...................................................................... 118
MISSION KASHMIR ..................................................................................... 120
AN OPEN LETTER TO JAWAHARLAL NEHRU ................................................ 122
12. INDIA: EVERYTHING THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE ......................................... 126
VIP SECURITY AND KARMA (" or what the BJP manifesto forgot to say") .... 126
" DELHI : THE SODOM AND GOMORH OF INDIA ? " .................................... 127
TOURISM IN INDIA AS SEEN BY A FOREIGN JOURNALIST ............................ 129
ONE BILLION INDIANS ? .............................................................................. 132
INDIA : AN ECOLOGICAL PRALAYA ?............................................................ 134
THE BIG SCAM OF NGOS ............................................................................. 136
13. THE HIDDEN TREASURES .......................................................................... 139
THE WONDERS OF PRANAYAMA ................................................................ 139
AYYAPPA ..................................................................................................... 141
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KALARIPAYAT .............................................................................................. 143
JALLIKATTU ................................................................................................. 146
14. THE RENAISSANCE OF INDIA .................................................................... 148
"NOSTRADAMUS AND THE BJP" ................................................................. 148
" SEVA AND GOVERNMENT " ...................................................................... 151
WESTERN SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY ........................................................ 153
INDIA’S ROLE IN THE THIRD MILLENIUM ..................................................... 155

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FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR

India, for a foreign journalist, is a vast, diverse, difficult and often contradictory
country. Most foreign correspondents are posted here for three, or a maximum of five
years. They often arrive here with unconscious prejudices and set ideas - since the West is
generally totally ignorant of India - and are posted in Delhi, an arrogant city, de-centered
compared to the rest of India, where they tend to hear the same stories, the same opinions
in the Embassy cocktail circuit, or at journalists’ parties: "secularism, communalism, caste
abuses, sati, Hindu fundamentalists", etc.

As a result, western correspondents, however talented and well-meaning they are,
not only rarely see the real India, but they often leave after four or five years with the same
opinions with which they had arrived, having meanwhile fed their readers with near
identical stories: "how Christian are persecuted in India, the rise of the ‘dangerous’ RSS, the
Human Right Abuses of the army in Kashmir, or some side feature on Medha Patkar and the
Narmada Dam".

I was lucky: I came to India when I had just turned nineteen, an age where the mind
has not yet settled in hard and frozen patterns. The moment I stepped in India, I sensed I
had come "home" and felt immediately at ease with my brothers and sisters from the land
of Bharat. I was also extremely privileged to spend the first eight formative years of my
time in India in the Sri Aurobindo ashram of Pondichery, where I came in contact with
Indians from all over the country and was able to meet the Mother, an extraordinary
person, as well as read Sri Aurobindo, whose writings have had a deep influence on my life.

Thus, I thought, in my arrogance, that I knew India. But when I began freelancing in
the early eighties, I started with the same prejudices, set ideas than most of my fellow
correspondents have: secularism is the best system for India, given the explosive mosaic of
its ethnics races and religions; the Congress is the flag bearer of ‘secularism’; Gandhi is the
‘father’ of the nation; there are also Hindu ‘fundamentalists’; or Christian missionaries are
doing ‘wonderful’ work in India.

Once again, I was lucky. Instead of plunging straight into political India, where
journalists, both Indian or foreign, quickly become cynical if not bitter - I did photographic
features in the deep South: the extraordinary kalaripayat, the villages of Kerala, which is the
ancestor of all great Asian martial arts in; the absolutely amazing Ayappa festival on the
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border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala; Ayurveda, the most ancient medical system in the world
still in practice; the exquisite Ayanars of Tanjore district. There, I discovered that the genius
of India is in its villages and that the tradition of gentleness, tolerance, hospitality, is rooted
in rural India (Mark Tully, in his own way, came to the same conclusion in the North) and
not in the cities of India, where people have often lost touch with that inner reality.

And when I entered the world of south Asian politics (in 1984, for Le Journal de
Genève), I was ready to have my eyes opened. Thus slowly, as I came in contact first-hand
with the political reality of India and South Asia, I realized that the Congress had actually
stolen the merit of having achieved India’s independence from the real nationalists, Tilak,
or Sri Aurobindo; that it had encouraged a criminal de-culturation of India at the hands of
the Marxists; that the Mahatma Gandhi, however a great soul, he might have been, had,
through his rigid non-violence, precipitated India’s partition; that India was fighting a lonely
battle against Muslim fundamentalism which surrounds her; that the RSS is probably one of
the most harmless outfits in Asia; that the Ayodhya mosque stood like an incongruous wart
in the midst of a wholly Hindu town; or that generally India is terribly misunderstood in the
West.

These collections of articles, written mostly for Blitz, the Hindustan Times and the
Indian Express, represent the story of my awakening to the true India or at least to what I
feel is the true India, because no one, least of all a foreigner, can claim that he or she fully
understands the wonder, the baffling diversity and the extraordinary unfolding truth that is
India.

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1. AYODHYA

Ayodhya marks my political awakening. It is there that for the first time I came in
contact with this strange phenomenon of Indian politics (which repeats itself all over the
world): that what appears true, may often turn out to be false or is at best a half-truth; and
that which seems false, or politically not correct, often turns out to be a truth. Journalism
has to be a first-hand experience; that is, the correspondent should be able to judge what
he has been asked to report not through the prism of his atavism, set ideas and prejudices
which he brings with him - but thanks to an inner intuition towards which he has constantly
to aspire. Ayodhya is the perfect example of an untruth which has been taken as a universal
truth by India and the whole world, because very few journalists cared to look beyond
appearances.

THE SYMBOL OF AYODHYA

How many of those who have lambasted so many times the "Hindu fundamentalists"
and lamented the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque as the "death of secularism in
India", have been to Ayodhya and not Faizabad, mind you, which is Ayodhya's twin Muslim
city ? When one arrived in Ayodhya before the destruction of the mosque, one was struck
by the fact that it was a Hindu town "par excellence". More than Benares even, it is dotted
everywhere with innumerable temples; it has all these old Hindus houses and this lovely
river with its ghats which runs through the lower town. And then, forlorn on the top, there
was this lone mosque with its two ugly domes, which looked so out of place and unused,
that any one with a right sense -and that includes the Muslims- should have seen that it was
not worth making an issue of. The destruction of the Babri Masjid still evokes such fiery
reactions, that the importance of Ayodhya has been totally overlooked: Ayodhya is a
symbol, through which two India’s are facing each other. And the outcome of their
confrontation will shape the future of this country for generations to come.

The first India wants to be secular and unite together through an egalitarian,
democratic spirit all the minorities, ethnic groups, religions and people of the country. But
the question is: what would be the binding element of this kind of India? Secularism, says
the first side. But secularism has a different meaning for each one. For the British, it was a
convenient way to divide and rule, by treating each Indian community on par, although
some were in minority and others in majority, thereby planting the seeds of separatisms.
For the Congress Party, it has always meant giving in to the Muslims' demands, because on
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the one hand it assured itself of the Muslim vote and on the other, Congress leaders never
could really make out if the allegiance of Indian Muslims first went to India and then to
Islam - or vice-versa. And for India's intelligentsia, its writers, journalists, top bureaucrats,
the majority of whom are Hindus, it means, apart from belittling its own religion and
brothers, an India which would be a faithful copy of the West: liberal, modern, atheist,
industrialized, intellectual and western-oriented.

But the question is: what makes India unique? Certainly not its small elite which apes
the West; there are millions of these western clones in the developing world who wear a
tie, read the New York Times and swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries
from doom. Nor its modern youth, whom you meet in Delhi's swank parties, who are full of
the MTV culture, wear the latest Klein jeans and Lacoste T Shirts, and who in general are
useless, fat, rich parasites, in a country which has so many talented youngsters who live in
poverty. Not even its political, bureaucratic and judicial system; it's a copy of the British set-
up, which is not fully adapted to India's unique character and conditions. What then?

The second India which is confronting the other through the Ayodhya issue is, of
course, the India of the Hindus. When Imam Bhukari states that "we (the Mughals) gave
everything to this country, its culture, its manners, its arts, and the Hindus by destroying
the Babri Masjid showed how little gratitude they have", apart from making a pompous
declaration, he proclaims exactly the opposite of the reality. Because the truth is that not
only Hinduism is what makes India unique, so different from all the other nations of the
world, but it is the single most important influence in Indian history. In the words of Sri
Aurobindo, India’s Great Sage and Modern Age Avatar: "The inner principle of Hinduism,
the most tolerant and receptive of all religious systems, is not sharply exclusive like the
religious spirit of Christianity or Islam...it is the fulfillment of the highest tendencies of
human civilisation and it will include in its sweep the most vital impulses of modern life.."

And indeed, if you look at India today, you find that Hinduism has permeated,
influenced, shaped, every part of this country, every religion, every culture. Be it the
Christians who are like no other Catholics of the world, or Indian Muslims, who whatever
they may say, are utterly different from their brothers in Saudi Arabia. But Hinduism is too
narrow a word, it's a corruption of the original word "Indu", for true Hinduism is Dharma,
India's infinite and eternal spiritual knowledge, which took shape into so many varied
expressions throughout the ages, be it the Vedantas, Buddhism, or the Arya Samaj and
which is today still very much alive in India, particularly in its rural masses, which after all
constitute 80% of its population. And the words of the great Sage still echo in our ears:
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