Wednesday, May 16, 2018

INDIAN ARMY IS BROKE!

SOURCE
https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/cover-story/story/20180514-defence-budget-squeeze-indian-army-unprepared-for-wars-1226462-2018-05-03



                 INDIAN  ARMY IS BROKE!
  • Sandeep Unnithan





         FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF 
                    
                          AROON PURIE


It is said the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. This is a lesson India refuses to learn - sadly, most of the sweat is not out of any exertion, but frustration at the pace of modernisation and indigenisation of our armed forces. The world is moving towards third and fourth generation warfare.


Third generation warfare uses speed, stealth and surprise and involves cyber warfare, airpower and networked armed forces delivering precision strikes. Fourth generation warfare is aimed against violent non-state actors like the ISIS. Yet, here we are, still struggling, confusing military modernisation with a    shopping list of weapons - which we are the world’s largest importers of - waiting patiently for the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) to deliver the magic bullet.


In China, meanwhile, President Xi Jinping has overseen dramatic changes in his country’s armed forces, and is turning it into the world’s fifth largest arms exporter. India, meanwhile, has failed to produce an effective rifle; locally made Arjun tanks cannot be used on the sensitive China or Pakistan borders because of performance issues; and after three decades spent developing our own light combat aircraft, India has now put out a tender for 110 warplanes.


The last time the Indian Army underwent any sort of transformation was after the 2001 Parliament attacks when India updated General Sundarji’s doctrine with the Cold Start strategy that would involve limited, rapid armoured thrusts, with infantry and air support, and allow offensive operations to begin within 48 hours after orders had been issued. Despite its grand public pronouncements on national security - the BJP’s 2014 manifesto promised to "modernise the armed forces, fast track defence purchases and carry out organisational reform" - the defence ministry wallows in its bureaucratic quagmire, with four defence ministers in as many years. 


Although India’s defence budget has been hiked by 7.8 per cent, it is just about 1.6 per cent of the projected GDP for 2018-19, the lowest such figure since the 1962 war with China. According to experts, it needs to be over 2.5 per cent to ensure the armed forces are capable of tackling the "collusive threat" from Pakistan and China.


During the Kargil war of 1999, then Army chief General VP Malik had said “we shall fight with whatever we have”. Almost 20 years later, the Army finds itself in almost the same situation with a budgetary squeeze and poor defence planning.


The government has neither drawn up a national security strategy nor appointed a chief of defence staff (CDS), a single-point military advisor to the government who can foster integration of the armed forces and also allocate budgetary resources among them. In the absence of a CDS or an integrated headquarters of the armed forces, each individual service prepares to fight wars on its own and makes separate competing claims for budgetary resources. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is an ossified structure inherited from the British. But while Britain has moved on by horizontally integrating its MoD and armed forces, India still struggles with a wasteful colonial system. Other major militaries too are reducing manpower and increasing the use of technology; only the Indian Army is adding men instead of equipment.


Executive editor Sandeep Unnithan, who wrote the cover story, has been covering the defence ministry for over a decade, which is roughly the time it takes the government to buy an item of military hardware. He says: “It usually takes a crisis for the government to wake up to the neglect of the military as it did after the 1962 war and the Kargil war.”

Ironically, there is a lot of talk of nationalism, but no serious effort to resolve the mess in the MoD. The Make in India campaign for defence, which held great promise, is a failure. DRDO and ordnance factories are a millstone around the necks of the defence establishment. We are the largest importers of defence equipment in spite of this large government-owned military-industrial complex. The procedures are so convoluted that decisions are not made or are delayed so that equipment is obsolete. The Modi government may have removed corruption in defence purchases, but the paralysis remains.


Our armed forces are a great 
institution with fine traditions. They 
need to be equipped for modern 
warfare with new and innovative 
thinking. Their courage can never be 
doubted; they need to be looked after.


(India Today Editor-in-Chief's note for cover story, The Army is Broke; May 14, 2018.)





03 MAY 2018


ARMS CRUNCH The army fears it won't have the money to pay for the replacements of obsolete INSAS rifles and light machine guns of the kind carried by these soldiers along the LoC. Photo: Chandradeep Kumar



S ometime this year, the Union minister for defence Nirmala Sitharaman is to issue a fresh set of operational directives to the armed forces. The slim, top secret document called the 'Raksha Mantri's Operational Directives', usually updated once in a decade, asks the armed forces to prepare for the possibility of a simultaneous war with both Pakistan and China.( TAKE IT FOR GRANTED it will never be issued MOD ministry  doesn't  have the competence even to prepare a draft -VASUNDHRA )


What the document doesn't mention, however, is the army's glaring inability to fight and win simultaneous wars with Pakistan and China. "We presently have barely enough to hold both fronts," a senior army official says. The gap between military strategy and capability emerged at army vice chief Lt Gen. Sarath Chand's recent deposition before the parliamentary standing committee (PSC) on defence. In the report, which was tabled before Parliament on March 13, the army vice chief said that 65 per cent of its arsenal is obsolete. 

The force lacks the artillery, missiles and helicopters that will enable it to fight on two fronts. Worse, even existing deficiencies in the import of ammunition are yet to be met, part of what the army calls is its ability to fight a '10 day intense' or 10(I) war have not been met. An 'intense' war is primarily related to the consumption of ammunition where tanks and artillery can fire up to three times the number of shells and rockets than would be used in a 'normal' conflict.


The army's angst relates to the short shrift it was given in this year's budget, which it says is insufficient to stock up for this 10(I) scenario. The army had asked for Rs 37,121 crore to fund 125 schemes. In the end, it received Rs 21,338 crore in the Union budget presented on February 1, a shortfall of Rs 15,783 crore.


All of the Rs 21,338 crore the army gets will be swallowed by pre-committed liabilities-the military equivalent of EMIs the army pays out for equipment it has bought over the past few years. This leaves a deficit of over Rs 15,000 crore and no money to fund 125 (purchase) schemes, as the vice chief said. These buys range from light utility helicopters to anti-tank missiles, ammunition and air defence missiles to small arms like assault rifles, light machine guns and carbines, requirements worth over Rs 43,000 crore that have been in the pipeline for a decade and are now close to conclusion (see Hardware Squeeze).







This means one of two things-the army simply puts off the buying until the next year or goes back to the finance ministry, hat in hand, asking for a financial bailout. In either case, it is no-win situation. The committed liabilities it is unable to pay for in 2017 get passed on to 2018, increasing its financial burden. And the finance ministry rarely allows for out-of-budget funding. Even the post-surgical strike fast-track purchases of 19 contracts for Rs 11,739 crore, the services discovered to their horror, were deducted from the military budget, not as an additional sanction.

A fiscal freeze has already set in at the South Block, with officials saying money is not being released even for recently initialled contracts, stalling approved projects. Announcements are plenty but contracts being signed few. Even the government's pet Make in India contracts have suffered-a Rs 670 crore contract to upgrade 468 of the army's Zu-23 anti-aircraft guns by private firm Punj Lloyd has been stuck at the defence ministry since late last year.

"The possibility of a two-front war is a reality," the vice chief told the standing committee early this year. "It is important that we are conscious of the issue and pay attention to our modernisation and fill up our deficiencies... however, the current budget does little to contribute to this requirement." The two-front war, meanwhile, threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The 760 km Line of Control with Pakistan is at its most violent since a 2003 ceasefire, with almost daily incidents of firing. The 4,000 km Line of Actual Control with China saw a war-like situation during the 72-day standoff at Doklam in Bhutan last year, with India rushing tanks and troops to the border and the Eastern Army Command going on alert. The impasse was diplomatically resolved on August 28, 2017, but not before it alerted the army to critical gaps in preparedness, particularly the unfinished roads and bridges in the mountains even as the bellicose state-owned Chinese media threatened war.

India's current defence spend as a percentage of the GDP is just 1.6 per cent (not counting pensions), the lowest since the 1962 war, as military analysts ominously draw parallels with the scenario when a poorly equipped army was routed by the Chinese army. China's $175 billion military spend is three times that of India's $45 billion.

Last year, India's armed forces asked the government to sanction $400 billion under the 13th five-year plan between 2017 and 2022 to modernise the three armed forces. Indicating a hike of well over 2 per cent of the budget, it appears unlikely given the existing pattern of stagnant defence allotment.

"The aim of our military modernisation is to deter conflict," a senior military planner says. "By degrading our deterrence and weakening ourselves, we actually make ourselves vulnerable because we allow the other side to contemplate military action resulting in us having to fight on two fronts."


NOT CRYING WOLF

Deficiencies and shortages in the military, particularly the army, which accounts for 50 per cent of the $45 billion defence budget, might have a familiar, several decades-old ring to it. The channels for the armed forces to directly communicate these shortages to the political executive are narrowing. Some years ago, the annual state-of-the-forces presentations made by service chiefs was converted into a letter-writing exercise. In 2012, when one such letter from then army chief General V.K. Singh, complaining of his force having been hollowed by neglect-tanks without ammunition, air defence batteries without missiles and the infantry without anti-tank missiles-leaked out to the media, even this exercise was scrapped. Since then, presentations before the PSC on defence are the only platform for the army to talk of deficiencies. These presentations are left to the vice chief, who is responsible for the planning and acquisition wings that steer the army's battle preparedness.

The picture they have painted-of a military machine in decay and of sustained budgetary neglect by the government-is an alarming one. In 2015, army vice chief Lt Gen. Philip Campose told the PSC that nearly 50 per cent of the military machine was obsolete. Four years later, that figure has jumped further to 65 per cent, as Lt Gen. Sarath Chand said.








A broken indigenous military-industrial complex incapable of meeting all its defence needs means India has become the world's largest arms importer, even for ammunition.

Stocking imported ammunition, especially for specialised frontline weapons to fight a 10-day intensive war, is expensive. A few years ago, the army drastically scaled down its projections for fighting a 40(I)war down to fighting a 10(I) war. Even this goal remains beyond reach. The army needs over Rs 2,000 crore just to buy 3,744 rockets for all 42 launchers of the Russian-made 'Smerch' 300 mm rocket launchers for a 10(I) war.

The defence minister dismissed concerns over the army's budgetary shortfalls. "Our focus has been to prioritise what we have. We are ensuring maximum utilisation of funds. Things are happening in the defence ministry," she told the media at the inaugural session of the bi-annual Defexpo-2018 in Chennai on April 11.

A week later, on April 18, the government announced the setting up of a Defence Planning Committee (DPC) headed by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval to outline a defence planning roadmap, set up strategic and security-related doctrines, including the draft national security strategy, the international defence engagement strategy and capability development plans for the armed forces.

Sitharaman's 'prioritisation' mantra, meanwhile, to focus on urgently-needed hardware and then push through with decision-making within the financial year, has been conveyed to the armed forces. It apparently flows from twin realisations within the ministry-major hikes in defence spending are unlikely, particularly with the government emphasis on infrastructure. This year's budget, for instance, allocated Rs 5.97 lakh crore to infrastructure, more than three times what was allocated in 2014-15.

The defence ministry, as is commonly known, has a hard time even effectively spending available allocations to buy hardware. An internal study presented before the Prime Ministers Office in late November by the minister of state for defence Subhash Bhamre was scathing about the ministry's functioning. A study by the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff found that 144 schemes contracted between 2014 and 2017 took an average of 52 months to conclude, more than twice the stipulated 16 to 22-month period. To blame were 'multiple and diffused structures with no single-point accountability, multiple decision-making heads, duplication of processes-avoidable redundant layers doing the same thing over and over again, delayed comments, delayed decision, delayed execution, no real-time monitoring, no programme/project-based approach, tendency to fault-find rather than to facilitate'.

MEN OVER MACHINES

A shrinking capital budget affects all three services, particularly the hardware-dependent air force and the navy which have their own two-front contingencies. Last month, the IAF's largest exercise in three decades, Gaganshakti 2018, which saw Su-30 MKI fighter jets flying from Assam to the Arabian Sea over 4,000 km away, projected requirements for 110 new combat jets worth an estimated $18 billion. The navy, which carried out twin manoeuvres along its eastern and western coasts this year, worries whether it can afford critically needed force multipliers such as new helicopters and submarines. Manpower costs have been growing exponentially-from 44 per cent in 2010-11 to 56 per cent this year. Capital expenditure has declined in the same period from 26 to 18 per cent. A combination of GST and sales tax on defence imports (they were earlier exempt) have added 15 per cent costs to an already shrinking capital acquisition pie.

Yet, this budgetary imbalance affects the world's third largest army the most. It accounts for 85 per cent of the uniformed services but only 55 per cent of the defence budget. The army's predicament is actually the result of a slow convergence of multiple maladies: it is growing by adding on costly manpower, its military machine is heading towards obsolescence and sustained budgetary neglect has constricted replacement of its equipment.

India spends close to $15 billion on pensions for its nearly 3 million retirees, nearly double Pakistan's entire military budget of $9.6 billion. Pensions come out of the MoD budget, not the defence budget, yet the finance ministry considers them part of the overall defence expenditure. The army presently spends 83 per cent of its budget on revenue expenditure, paying salaries and for maintenance of equipment and facilities. "Trends indicate that this revenue to capital expenditure ratio could go down to an extremely unhealthy 90:10 in the coming years, against an ideal of 60:40," says Laxman Behera who tracks military budgets at the MoD think-tank Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA).






The army is progressively adding on 88,000 soldiers to staff a new Mountain Strike Corps. (The British army has a total of 80,000 soldiers.) The additional cost of these troops is pegged at Rs 64,000 crore. Two divisions, 56 and 71, have already been raised for the Panagarh-based 17 Corps, two more divisions are to be raised. While this strike corps-meant to launch limited offensives into Chinese territory in the event of a border war-was swiftly sanctioned by the UPA in 2014, it did not provide for the nearly Rs 10,000 crore annually it would take to equip this formation. The budgetary neglect which has continued under the NDA government has seen the army cannibalising its war wastage reserves-the critical weapons and ammunition it sets aside to be used in conflict-to equip the strike corps. The intended capacity of the strike corps-land a swift conventional punch against China-has now turned into a giant anaconda, slowly squeezing the life out of the army's modernisation budgets. 

It is not that the army did not foresee the implications of adding more men. A draft report titled 'Rebalance and Restructuring' that sits within the files of the army's Perspective Planning directorate had warned of this scenario. This study was commissioned by the then army chief Gen. Bikram Singh in 2012 at around the time the army had accelerated its push for the Mountain Strike Corps. The study explored the costs of additional manpower on the army in the light of two vectors-the Seventh Pay Commission, which would hike salaries and pensions, and the raising of the new strike corps. The report threw up alarming figures-each additional soldier would cost the army over Rs 12 lakh a year. It also suggested a way out-for the army to thin out existing formations to build up the strike corps, thus not having to recruit more soldiers. The army pulled the plug on this study because it feared that the bureaucracy would use it to deny manpower. Army officials say there is one very important reason for their mistrust-manpower savings are never ploughed back into the military but go instead to the Consolidated Fund of India. This is primarily because while expenditure on manpower is met from the revenue budget, capital acquisitions are funded from the capital outlay. "Even within the revenue budget, money allocated for pay and allowances cannot be diverted for other purposes. But this can be done by the finance ministry and indeed there have been instances in the past where this was done," says Amit Cowshish, former financial advisor (acquisition) in the MoD.

"The only way the shortfall, primarily in the committed liabilities, can be bridged is by internal reappropriation either within the army's budget heads or by transferring money from other services/ departments within the overall capital outlay," Cowshish says. Another option is for the MoD to ask for additional funds during the year or at the revised estimate stage from the finance ministry.

The last attempt at rationalisation was made 20 years ago in 1998 when General V.P. Malik ordered the 'suppression' of 50,000 personnel from non-field forces with the assurance that the money saved would be given for purchasing military hardware. The MoD didn't follow on this assurance and the Kargil war which broke out the following year saw the army shelving this proposal.

Staring at massive shortfalls in ammunition, especially for the 155 mm Bofors howitzers which finally turned the tide of the war, Gen. Malik made the famous statement that the army would 'fight with what it had'. This philosophy seems to have been embraced by his successor Gen. Bipin Rawat, nearly two decades on. The army has now snapped up the government's prioritisation mantra.

"It is possible to reprioritise and readjust the budget within the existing money available, by giving the operational preparedness a higher priority," Gen. Rawat said on March 28. "This is not to say that accommodation for families is not needed, but they can take some time. We are balancing the budget to focus on operational preparedness."

In his opening remarks at the biannual army commanders' conference in New Delhi between April 16 and 21, Gen. Rawat stressed the need to 'judiciously lay down priorities to ensure that the allocated resources are utilised optimally and the force modernisation be carried out unabated'. The army also made the unprecedented move of making public its deficiencies, saying it was resigned to holding less than 10-day stocks for tank ammunition, anti-tank missiles and, yes, Smerch rockets.

A long-standing premise guiding India's military preparedness is that 'China might not join an India-Pakistan war, but Pakistan will certainly join an Indo-China war'.

The Indian army and air force are deployed on two fronts, a northern one against China, and a western one against Pakistan. When it has to fight on one front, it can transfer all troops, fighter aircraft and resources from the other front to notch a decisive victory. A two-front war means such inter-front resource switchover is not possible. Each front has to be addressed with the available resources, impeding a decisive win.

The two-front war, sometimes enlarged into a two-and-a-half-front war (the half being insurgencies in Kashmir and the Northeast) is a covenant, an article of faith from which there is no turning back and the single-minded focus to obtain a greater share of military budget in the foreseeable future. There is no debate, despite some of the army commanders who are actually meant to fight this war publicly questioning it. The western army commander, Lt Gen. Surinder Singh, who, in a seminar in Chandigarh on March 1, said it was 'not a smart idea' to be fighting on two fronts, is believed to have been pulled up for airing his views publicly.




HALF-HEARTED REFORM

The Indian military's malaise is far deeper than it seems. These are not issues which can be solved merely by throwing more money at them. Possibly every single problem, including those of a fund-starved army and tardy modernisation, can be traced back to India's dysfunctional higher defence management. Efficient defence management would harmonise resources and allocate them based on priority. The US national security strategy, for instance, dictates a national defense strategy from which, in turn, flows a national military strategy which the joint forces adhere to. The armed forces are tightly integrated under joint forces commands.


All five countries sitting on the high table of the United Nations Security Council, a seat India aspires to, have one thing in common. They have a military-industrial complex that ensures they are not dependent on imports and closely integrated militaries that are being modernised for future challenges.


While the government has prioritised indigenous defence manufacture under Make in India, it has been slow to move on higher military reform and long-term planning. It has, for instance, no national security strategy, the RM's Op Directives being the closest India gets to one, and even those are based on inputs provided by the armed forces. A general terms the lack of a national security strategy as akin to playing a football match without goalposts. Security analysts dismissed the 2017 Joint Doctrine of the Armed Forces as a joke simply because there are no synergies in either planning, procurement or operations. Piqued by the lack of synergy among the services, the navy in 2016 took back the strategic Andaman & Nicobar command it had once offered to be held in rotation by the army and the air force.







In a seminal 2017 paper for the army think-tank Centre for Land Warfare Studies, Lt Gen. Campose outlined what happens in the absence of an integrated military. 'The Indian army plans to go ahead and fight its land wars independently, the air force focuses on the air war, the navy on the sea war, with insufficient sharing of resources and operational synergy between them.'


Two successive committees, the Group of Ministers headed by then home minister L.K. Advani in 2001, and another one by Lt General D.B. Shekatkar in December 2016, recommended the creation of a Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), a position to be manned by a four-star officer from one of the services, who can not only act as a single-point military adviser to the government, but also foster jointness and reprioritise armed forces' budgets towards specific needs. The government is yet to act on appointing the CDS who could, for instance, question extravagances such as the army's purchase of six expensive Apache helicopter gunships for $650 million last year when the IAF is already buying 22 of the same machines.




The neglect is glaring because the government clearly does not believe a two-front war could be a reality. A senior government official calls the whole debate 'misplaced', decrying the futility of preparing for the worst-case scenario. "We should talk about probability and not possibility. The possibility of such a scenario exists, not the probability," he says.



Prime Minister Narendra Modi's informal summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan was part of an attempt to reduce tensions along the border. It will buy the Indian military time to prepare themselves because, as the armed forces argue, intentions change overnight, military capabilities need decades to build.


One of Xi's first goals after taking over in 2012 was to downsize the 2.3 million-strong People's Liberation Army by a million (see The New Red Army) and, more recently, push for a leaner, agile, technologically-driven force by 2035.


India's political leadership has been wary of the armed forces' manpower binge. In a rare articulation of its discomfort, PM Modi, at a combined commanders' conference in December 2015, said, "When major powers are reducing their forces and relying more on technology, we are still seeking to expand the size of our forces. Modernisation and expansion of the forces at the same time is a difficult, and unnecessary goal."


Little, however, has been done to suggest a reprioritisation of military resources away from concepts like a two-front war or put in place reforms that can ensure bigger savings or set goals for a modern, agile, technology-centric military. These reforms could now hopefully take off with the setting up of the DPC headed by NSA Doval. It is another step where many others have failed.




















Monday, May 7, 2018

PARTITION : Trail of Tears

SOURCE:
http://www.pragyata.com/mag/trail-of-tears-493









PARTITION : Trail of Tears

The consequences of Muslim separatism have been seen throughout Indian history but it came to a head during the time of partition.
By 






Perpetrators of India’s Partition

  [https://ithihas.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/perpetrators-of-indias-partition/ ]



Today we find Muslim communalists in India posing as the protectors of Dalits and accusing Hindu organisations of being communal. Many Muslim leaders talk as though they (Muslims) did a great sacrifice by remaining in India and not going to Pakistan after partition. Many people in India especially the power-hungry politicians and the majority of those in the media believe in the fabricated myth, through the history text books written by Marxist historians, that put the blame for India’s partition squarely on the Hindu nationalists and the British all the while portraying the Muslims as the aggrieved and innocent. But a thorough examination of facts reveals that the very existence of anti-patriotism among the Indian Muslims was responsible for the partition of India. What the Britishers did was to exploit and aggravate the problem. 

But the problem was there even before the arrival of the Britishers.






The Genesis of Muslim Separatism


The separatist and intolerant tendencies of the Muslims in India were dormant even before the establishment of British rule in India. During the Medieval period, though the Hindu rulers and the people accorded a generous treatment to Muslims, they did not reciprocate the same. For example, the Zamorin of Calicut gave orders that in every family of fishermen in his dominion; one or more of the male members should be brought up as Mohammedans. The Hindu reformers and teachers emphasized that Hinduism and Islam were two different paths leading to the same goal. They preached that Ram and Rahim, Krishna and Karim, Ishwar and Allah, were different names of the same god. An earnest attempt was made to bring about unity between the two communities by deprecating priestly ritualism and formalities and emphasizing inner religious devotion. Not only were the foreign Muslims honoured and respected, but even Indian converts to Islam were shown regard and a treatment which was better than that meted out to lower castes among the Hindu themselves. The Muslims on the other hand, believed in their superiority and branded the Hindus as an inferior people, feeble and unprogressive. If a Hindu, who was converted to Islam, showed any inclination to revert to the religion of his forefathers, he was, according to the law of the Sultanate, put to death, and if any Hindu preached that Hinduism and Islam alike were true religions, he was liable to capital punishment. Moreover, according to the Quranic injunction it is not permissible for a Muslim male to marry a non-Muslim woman without first converting her to Islam; nor it was permissible for a Muslim woman to be given in marriage to a Hindu, unless he himself became a Muslim. Further, by the orders of the Quran, Muslims were prohibited from showing any respect or consideration for their non-Muslim ancestors. This.... 

.....Quranic injunction made it impossible for Indian Muslim, most of them who were converts from Hinduism, to have anything to do with their Hindu ancestors, or to have legitimate pride in the ancient history of this country.



          Religious Fanaticism and Aggression



The Muslims of India though living in this country for centuries unmolested by the Hindus and having full religious freedom could not develop any friendly feeling with their Hindu counterpart or consider India as their motherland. The main reason for this was the religious fanaticism of the Muslims. The Muslims always insisted on their separate identity and never regarded themselves as Indians first. To them a Muslim foreigner was a nearer kith and kin than a Hindu neighbour. They were more sensitive to the misfortune of their Turkish co-religionists than to the murder of their Hindu brethren at Jallianwallabagh. The Indian Muslims searched for their national roots elsewhere and to some extent found them in the Afghan and Mughal periods of India. This search for their culture roots led the Indian Muslims to Islamic history and to the periods when Islam was a conquering and creative force in Baghdad, Spain, Constantinople, Central Asia and elsewhere. After the collapse of the Muslim power in India with the arrival of the British, the Indian Muslims began to derive their temporal and spiritual inspiration from the Turkish Empire and its Khalifa.


In contrast the Buddhist of China and South East Asia knew that their Lord (Buddha) was born in India, but never sought to glorify or emancipate India; they were exclusively concerned with national matters of the country in which they lived. Speaking on the Hindu-Muslim question, Bharat Ratna Rabindranath Tagore opined that it was almost impossible for Hindu-Muslim unity to become an accomplished fact as the Muslims could not confine their patriotism to any one country. The poet said that he had very frankly asked many Muslims whether in the event of any Mohammadan power invading India, they would stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common land; he could not be satisfied with the reply he got from them. (The Times of India, April 18, 1924)  


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google  CLICK TO OPEN  https://books.google.co.in/books?id=GXryl8xgQ5UC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=The+Times+of+India,+April+18,+1924&source=bl&ots=OS0_yEyppw&sig=t6jmDTEpVj3TT1AbZgZHJQRxvVc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPpcG1w_PaAhVHOI8KHWOTAkQQ6AEIWjAE#v=onepage&q=The%20Times%20of%20India%2C%20April%2018%2C%201924&f=false

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             Spewed Venom on Hindus


All prominent Muslim intellectuals were rabid communalists who had nothing but contempt towards India and Hindus. In a speech on 16th March 1888, Syed Ahmed Khan said that the Hindus and Muslims were not only two nations but as two warring nations who could never lead a common political life should ever the British quit India. Mohammad Iqbal said to be the originator of a separate Muslim State was inspired by the spirit of Pan Islamism. He proposed the formation of a Muslim State in the North-West part of India. Mohammad Ali Jinnah considered as the father of Pakistan at the Lahore session of the Muslim League in March 1940 said that

the Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs and literatures and it is a dream that Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality.


During the Khilafat movement the Moplahs (Muslims of Kerala) committed terrible atrocities against their Hindu neighbours which included ripping open the stomach of pregnant Hindu women; this in spite of the Hindus giving support to their movement. None of the leaders of the Muslim community condemned this action of the Moplahs and instead denied the atrocities and even tried to shift the blame on Hindus. The Muslims animosity and hatred against Hindus was such that they even did not spare MK Gandhi. One of the leading men of the Khilafat Movement, Mohammed Ali made a statement in 1924 at Aligarh where he said that however pure Gandhi’s character may be, from his (Mohammed Ali) point of view he (Gandhiji) is inferior to any Mussalman even though that Mussalman may be of bad character. Many dismissed this statement as press fabrication. Later when he was asked to clarify Mohammed Ali reaffirmed that statement he had made. Mohammed Ali’s contempt for India was such that he preferred to be buried in Jerusalem rather in India.

The Muslim leaders were so intolerant that they found fault even with progressive leaders like Tilak, Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Gandhi just for being pious Hindus in their personal life, for taking pride in their historical and mythical heroes and for praising their motherland. Contrast this attitude of the Muslims with that of Hindu nationalists; who all believed in the concept of Akhand Bharat and proclaimed that all those who live in India were Hindus. It should be remembered that the formation of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS. took place only to counter the aggressive attitude of the fanatical Muslims who at the drop of a hat used to organise communal riots.

     Appeasement Policy of the Congressmen

The Congress leaders from Gokhale to Gandhi presumed that by a policy of generosity they could win over the Muslims; but the Muslims demands were insatiable. The Muslim demanded certain rights which they were not prepared to concede to others.


[A]  They wanted the right to convert Hindus to Islam but objected to the Shuddi movement of Arya Samaj (a movement to bring back converted Muslims to their ancestor's faith). 

[B] The Muslims demanded the right to self-determination but tried to deny the same right to minorities in Muslim majority provinces.

 [C]  The Muslims were against parliamentary system because they wanted to dominate the political life of the country and reimpose their rule in India.

[D]  Deep inside their hearts the Congressmen knew the real character of the Muslims but acted as liberals in public as they wanted their support to fight against the Britishers. 

 [E]  According to Gandhiji it was Hindu’s cowardice that had made the Mussalman a ‘bully’ leading to Hindu Muslim riots and the parents of middle-class Hindus, themselves timid, continue to transmit their timidity to their children. (Harijan, January 6th, 1940)

[F]  The Congressmen knew that it was impossible to live with Muslims peacefully in united India and hence agreed to partition. Sardar Patel’s argument was that if two brothers cannot stay together, they better divide. If they are forced to stay together, they tend to fight every day. It is better to have one clean fight and then separate than have bickering every day. C Rajagopalachari also supported partition and so also Ambedkar.

[G]  But Ambedkar was of the view that there should be mutual transfer of population, Muslims living in India to migrate to Pakistan and Hindus living in Pakistan migrating to India so that Hindus could live in peace and free from Muslim aggression. But the Congress party under the leadership of Gandhiji and Nehru allowed the Muslims to stay behind in India to showcase their secular credentials though  they did not have such credentials. For instance, when Moti Lal Nehru’s daughter wished to marry Syed Hussain, the editor of a newspaper Independent, Moti Lal Nehru threatened that he would commit suicide. Gandhiji later persuaded Syed Hussain to forget about his marriage and to leave the country. Similarly, when Gandhi’s son embraced Islam, he ostracized him and only reconciled once he was brought back into the Hindu fold under Birla’s influence.

 [ CLICK / GOOGLE TO OPEN   http://urdufigures.blogspot.in/2010/02/syed-hussain-man-behind-motilal-nehrus.html    ]

Reasons behind Muslims remaining in India 


In the elections of 1945-46 the Muslim League captured an overwhelming majority of Muslim seats in all the provinces which shows that Muslim living all over India supported Pakistan. For most of the gullible Muslims who supported partition of India, Pakistan meant the very place they lived. Only later they realised that they had to leave their home, job and start a new life if they had to go to their dream land Pakistan. Hence except the rich and powerful, most of the Muslims stayed back. Moreover, the Muslims living in India were never threatened by the Hindus to convert nor their women’s honour outraged. Moreover, the mullahs had other sinister designs. The Jamait-ul-ulema was opposed to Pakistan, as it would affect its propagation of Islam. Maulana Madani delivering a speech on 19thSeptember 1945 in Delhi on the occasion of the formation of the Azad Muslim Parliamentary Board to fight the last constitutional battle against the demand of Pakistan said that at the termination of the Muslim rule, there were about 25 million Muslims in India. Within a period of less than a century their number increased up to 100 million. The missionary work of the Jamait has a great share in this increase. The great object of an overall spread of Islam in the whole of India cannot be realized by appealing to passion of hatred and antagonism. It is the non-Muslims who are the field of action for the tabligh (spread of Islam) and form the raw material for this splendid activity.

                            Muslim and Dalit Divide

With regards to the Muslim pretension of being friends of Dalits, way back in 1947

Ambedkar had cautioned Dalits to be vary of Muslims intentions. 



On November 27th 1947 in a press release Ambedkar said that it would be a fatal for the Scheduled Castes, whether in Pakistan or in Hyderabad to put their faith in the Muslims or the Muslim League. It has become a habit with the Scheduled Castes to look upon the Muslims as their friends simply because they dislike the Hindus. This is a mistaken view. The Muslim wanted the support of the Scheduled Castes but they never gave their support to the Scheduled Castes. Jinnah was all the time playing a double game. He was very insistent that the Scheduled Castes were a separate entity when it suited him but when it did not suit him he insisted with equal emphasis that they (Scheduled Castes) were Hindus. After the formation of Pakistan, Ambedkar invited the Scheduled Castes to come to India as they were subjected to forcible religious conversion.


It is high time that Hindus become aware of the real facts that had taken place in our history, especially our younger generation and very importantly those working in the media and public sphere.


References / Footnotes

1. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writings and Speeches, Vol 8 and Vol 17- part I, Publishers- Dr. Ambedkar Foundation, Ministry of Social, Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, New Delhi
2. P.D.Kaushik- The Congress Ideology and Programmes- 1920-1947, Allied Publishers Pvt Ltd, 1964
 3. Ram Gopal- Indian Muslims: A Political History (1858-1947), Asia Publishing House, 1964
 4. Ziya ul Hasan Faruqi, The Deoband School and the demand of Pakistan, Asia Publishing House, 1963.
 5. Gauba K.L., The Consequences of Pakistan, Lion Press, Lahore. 1946
 6. Srivastava A.L,Medieval Indian Culture, Shiva Lal Agarwala & Company, Agra
 7. B.L.Grover, S.Grover- A New Look at Modern Indian History, S.Chand & Company Ltd, New Delhi, 1993