BREAKING India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines, a book jointly authored by Shri Rajiv Malhotra, chief of the Princeton based Infinity Foundation and a Distinguished Fellow at Vivekananda International Foundation, New Delhi and Shri Aravindan Neelakandan, intellectual activist, columnist and popular science writer from Tamil Nadu, was launched in New Delhi on February 9. A galaxy of speakers participated in the discussion on the book.
Releasing the book, eminent international jurist and Member of Parliament Shri Ram Jethmalani said the book is ‘an eye opener, a warning to us’ about not only of internal enemies but external enemies outside our border who are collaborating with dummies, proxies inside our border trying to weaken India, break her unity, integration and ultimately to jeopardise our freedom, sovereignty, culture. Mentioning the area of South Asian studies in Western universities, as discussed in the book, Shri Jethmalani said that South Asian Studies in Western universities often invite those organisations and individuals who in India give support to separatists and terrorists. He said the book dwells in great details on 3 principal threats to India – such as the Islamist radicals spawned in the neighbouring countries and elsewhere, the Maoists used as a pawn by China to further its design and finally groups that are trying to create a new race of Dravidians by taking into account the large body of dalits and instigate separatism and further weaken the country. “The greatest success of those who wish to break India”, he said, “will be when we cease to be ourselves, give up our culture”.
Shri Aravindan Neelakandan while introducing the book said that it essentially seeks to put in spotlight foreign-based organisations that seek to shape and govern certain political and ideological movements inside India so that hatred and violent conflicts can be generated inside Indian communities leading to eventual balkanisation of the country. “We wrote the book for all Indians for you and me because we do not want our children to end up in refugee camps”, he said. Shri Neelakandan also quoted noted Tamil epigraphist and leftist scholar S Ramachandran as saying after reading the book, that foreign interventions in the Dravidian movement was documented by early Marxists but regretfully that recent Marxists have been co-opted by that same divisive doctrine.
Shri S Gurumurthy, columnist, public intellectual and financial analyst in his intervention observed that Tamil Nadu has been the playground of dalit politics. And the people’s emotional attachment to their language has been transformed into some kind of racial, ethnic identity promoted, funded, weaponised by political ideologies. He said how the introductory passage in classic Tolkapiyyam which talked about the work being for all who have studied the four Vedas was removed for the last fifty years from editions of the book. He observed that an idea weaponised in politics can transform a society into hating mutually each other. Talking about the plight of Dalit groups in Tamil Nadu he said they have been converted into private armies.
Professor Upendra Baxi, former Vice-Chancellor, Delhi University, said that the book essentially focuses on 3-S- Subordination of India’s independence, Surveillance of independent India and Subversion of independent India.
Shri Rajiv Malhotra presented a whole background to the book and his experiences and findings while working on it.
(FOC)
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