On the recent victory of BJP in three states, MP, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, an inveterate anti-Hindu journalist Swaminathan S. Ankalesaria Ayer wrote an article in the Times of India (14.12.2003) entitled 'A victory that's actually bad news'. It ridiculed the Prime Minister Shri Vajpayee and claimed that it had nothing to do with his or his party's popularity. There is no pro-BJP wave, he said. Rather it confirmed that even with bad governance, the communal climate he created could spell a diabolical win for him.

Our English press is hardly a watchdog of democracy now. What is happening in India today is totally contrary to all those avowed principles around which the Fourth Estate is said to exist. The level of abuse of freedom is such that whenever a Hindu is targetted, truth is always buried assiduously.

The zenith of the vilification of the BJP government of Narendra Modi, of the VHP and of the Hindu community in Gujarat was an article by Harsh Mander, IAS, published by the Times of India on its edit page of 20th March, 2002 under the title 'Hindustan Hamara - I can never sing that song again'. The article was then circulated over the web under the title 'Cry My Beloved Country'. The Indian nation was once again portrayed as being ruled by fanatic Hindus who thought nothing of a pogrom against the Muslims.

One Krishnen Kak, IAS (retired) of New Delhi, complained to the Press Council of India that Mander's article was highly irresponsible, inflammatory, blatantly biased and damaging to public morale, and that there was nothing in it to show that the author had verified the stories that he had passed off as facts. What happened to that complaint is a commentary on the freedom of the press in India.

Let the Press Council's decision of 30th June 2003 tell it to you. It recorded that the Inquiry Committee expressed its deep concern over the indifferent and irresponsible attitude of the Times of India in not filing its comments in response to the Council's letter and in not being represented before the Inquiry Committee to present its defence in a matter of grave public importance.

On the merits of the case, the Council's Inquiry Committee noted 'the article at several points reiterated rumours that were being circulated at the relevant time'. The truthfulness of the facts mentioned had not been established at any point of time till then but Shri Mander had chosen to base his views and sentiments on them, and put pen to the opinion thus formed by him. It was expected of the author as a responsible serving officer as well as of the respondent paper of repute like The Times of India to be more restrained and circumspect in pronouncing a denouncement of the whole system in a communally surcharged atmosphere.

Worse was that though the Press Council's guidelines require the publication concerned to publish the Council's decision, The Times of India has not done so till now.

A glimpse of the charge-sheet against Hindu organisations is as nauseating as it is revolting. The much-touted columnist on history, Akhilesh Mithal sums them up in his weekly outpourings in the Asian Age. He discovered RSS-British nexus and reviled all the much venerated icons of Indian history like Shivaji and Rana Pratap.

For him history is only a tool to divide Indians into Hindus vs. Muslims in accordance with the Savarkar brand of "Hindutva". As for "Indian heroes" the concept of Indian or even Rajput nationalism did not exist in the time of Rana Pratap who fought only for his patrimony.

The perversion of logic, as if had no limits. They write that Hindu communalist only talk of the temples and palaces pulled down, the numbers massacred and the loot collected as if it was all violence and that there was no positive impact at all.

The same Akhilesh Mithal goes on and on like an insane man. He wrote in his column on 7th December 2003, that in India also, the mirror image of the jehadis, the RSS appear to go from strength to strength. The demolishers of the Babri Masjid on 6th December 1992, are enjoying power personally and institutionally at the Centre and in the states of Madhya Pradesh as well as Rajasthan. Will justice ever be meted out to them and the Rule of Law prevail?

Should RSS be denounced only because it preaches devotion to the motherland and Hindu culture? An outfit which was the source of inspiration for revolutionaries like Veer Savarkar, Chandrashekhar Azad and Madanlal Dhingra, should it be the butt of ridicule just because its ideology exhorts Hindus to rise and awake?

By this yardstick, why should the Muslim League not be condemned? In fact, it was the Muslim League, in connivance with the British, that demanded a separate homeland for Muslims. It was not the RSS ideology that fractured India, it was Jinnah's Muslim League. Another glaring example of Mr. Mithal's lack of research is when he says that Navratri and Sankranti are caste Hindus festivals and mean nothing to Dalits (Re-establishing the rule of law in Gujarat, Itihaas, The Age on Sunday, November 23). Has he gone to Dalit's households to find out which festivals they celebrate and which they shun? Navratri, through Dandiya Raas, has been today transformed into a universal festival, in which members of all communities participate with great gusto.

Then talking about Gujarat, he says that the government of an Indian state cannot deploy public resources to celebrate the festival of a particular community (read Hindu). Pray, what does he have to say about the plethora of Iftar parties regularly thrown by various politicians and political parties? So as one reader, A.S.Ghate, rightly points out in 'Not the whole truth' (Letters, The Editorial Page, The Asian Age, November 9), Mr.Mithal should put in more study in his efforts and should not be just a crude anti-Hindu Congress puppet with no sense or awareness about the under-currents of modern history.

A few other gems are quite amusing :

"The RSS has no real programme for the amelioration of the miseries of the people"

"Soon after independence, the Babri Masjid was invaded by a mob and contemporary 20th century images of Ram Lalaa were surreptitiously planted in the structure to make it into a disputed site."

"There is a serious apprehension that an ultra-communal leadership might dominate this country, jeopardising democracy."

There is a wave of new books and articles which have been ridiculing the cultural nationalism and even questioning whether we are a nation at all. A diabolical game of political propaganda has been going on to divide the society. Just as history had been appropriated by Marxists, we are now told that India never was unified nation. 

The unity was given to us by Britishers. On the pattern of Nehru's Discovery of India, Shashi Tharoor writes a book entitled "The Invention of India" but with a different angle. Brajadulal Chattopadhyaya, similarly in his "Studying early India" denies Indian history on the basis of homogeneous and monolithic Hindu period. An idea of India does not necessarily make reference to Hindu 'Idea of India' which has yet to take roots. Celebrated writers like Salman Rushdie have gone on record saying Hindus have been responsible for all the ills of the Indian sub-continent, in a newspaper. They say a revivalist Hindu has been turning into extremist and this is the danger signal for India.

These are only few examples. There are many other similar writers who continue to spew venom despite the recent electoral victory of BJP. What slimy stinking depths, enemies of Hinduism do not hesitate to slither to, to try to denigrate it, including hate-mail, internet, fake web-sites like "Dalitistan Journal" or many others who argue, rather crudely or unconvincingly against non-existing Brahminical hegemony on the Dalit tribals or Muslims. For journalists like Seema Mustafa, it appears, any stick is good enough to beat the BJP and Hindu organisations. She even described Prime Minister Vajpayee, even after recent elections as "wily politician" with "Brahmanical deviousness". While Nafisa Ali of Action Aid called Narendra Modi Osama Bin-Laden, Ashutosh Varshney, pampered by foreign media said that Hindu nationalism will destroy India.