Guruji: A drashta — XXXVIII
S. Gurumurthy
GURUJI had been astounding in his insight and foresightedness about the real character of Pakistan as a nation and how dangerous Pakistan would be to India and perhaps to the world. Guruji said that Pakistan had “Evil Mentality” and it was driven by “Evil Propensity” against India and declared that as long as that evil propensity persisted, it was bound to arm itself again and again and prove a menace
(1) and the world now says about Pakistan what Guruji said decades earlier. When everyone in India saw Pakistan as just a neighbour which was created by the unfortunate Partition of larger India, Guruji clearly perceived evil propensity in Pakistan. When Guruji talked about Pakistan in such strong terms, his views were ignored or marginalised as not only anti-Pakistan but as anti-Muslim as well. No one other than Guruji could understand the dangerous content of the philosophy that created Pakistan which was mostly driven by anti-Hindu content of Islam than love of Islam. In the beginning, everyone saw Pakistan’s hostility to India as limited to the Kashmir issue.
Now experts realise that Pakistan’s ambitions were not limited to snatching Kashmir; it also wanted to see a dismembered India split into smaller and insignificant states, so that it could achieve its ambition to being the most powerful nation in the region.
(2) Pakistan, which was the creation of anti-Hindu ideology masquerading as Islamic separatism perceived at itself as continuation of the Mughals and as an Islamic power. Now, after almost half a century after Guruji had warned the people and the rulers of India that Pakistan has an evil mind and evil propensity, the world views Pakistan as global Islamist aggressor. The world nations are almost unanimous that Pakistan is the laboratory and the factory of global Islamic terror. Pakistan is variously described as ‘epicentre of global terror’, ‘Terrorism’s super market’, ‘Exporter of jihad’ ‘Sponsor of terror’ and so on. This is how the ‘evil mentality’ and ‘evil propensity’ which Guruji saw in Pakistan’s DNA is now manifest in the global discourse even as the world is shocked at the emergence of the evil that is Pakistan today – but decades after Guruji had diagnosed the evil. See the catalogue of reports on the evil mentality and evil propensity of Pakistan at work.
Now the world experiences Pakistan’s ‘evil mentality’ and ‘evil propensity’
In April 2009 The Daily Telegraph UK described Pakistan as the epicentre of global terror.
(3) In 2009, Pakistani President Asif Zardari himself admitted that Pakistan had, in the past, created terrorist groups as tool for its geo-strategic agenda.
(4) In the year 2010 the British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that Pakistan must not be allowed to export terror.
(5) In July 2010, Wall Street Journal wrote that Pakistan has become a sanctuary for terror with Pakistan’s official spy agency Inter Services Intelligence [ISI] caught in alliance with terrorists. It cited the book Between the Mosque and Military written by Hussein Haqqani, now Pakistan’s Ambassador to US, five years earlier, in which he had said that, in Pakistan, unlike in Turkey or Indonesia, “the mosque and the military have always been allies rather than adversaries”. [This is because Pakistan was created by the mosque, not the other way round]. The WSJ article says: “This alliance has roots in both ideology and realpolitik. The army (of which the ISI is the intelligence wing) sees itself as the guarantor of the world’s first nation created purely on the basis of Islam. Its motto is: ‘Faith, Piety and Jihad in the Path of Allah.’
(6) In September 2011 the Guardian UK wrote that America’s most senior military man Admiral Mike Mullen linked the terror network Haqqanis to Pakistan’s ISI. Mullen told US Senators that Pakistan government, its army and ISI use violent extremism as an instrument of policy; that has jeopardised America’s strategic partnership with Pakistan, also Pakistan’s respectability as a nation. Besides, he said, by exporting violence, “they have eroded their internal security” too.
(7) The Newsweek magazine (May 6, 2010) shockingly disclosed that, according to British probe, some 70 per cent of the terror plots in the past decade could be traced to Pakistan. It also unveiled how Pakistan was exporting jihad and branded country as terrorism’s super market. The global terror merchant Osama Bin Laden was tracked by the US intelligence in Pakistan and was killed by the US forces in a midnight operation. It became an open secret that he was kept hidden with clandestine Pakistan support.
(8) A well-known journalist Stephen Schwartz noted that several terrorist and criminal groups are “backed by senior officers in the Pakistani army, the country’s ISI intelligence establishment and other armed bodies of the state.”
(9) According to the author Daniel Byman “Pakistan is probably today’s most active sponsor of terrorism.”
(10) In The Australian newspaper Byman wrote that following the terror massacres in Mumbai, Pakistan may now be the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism, beyond even Iran; yet it has never been listed by the US State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.
(11) The ISI has has played major role in terrorist attacks across the world including in Kashmir
(12) and in the July 2006 Mumbai train bombings.
(13) The ISI is also seen as supporting Taliban forces
(14) and recruiting and training mujahedins to fight in Afghanistan.
(15) Based on intercepts, US intelligence agencies declared that Pakistan’s ISI was behind the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008.
(16) In December 2010 Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, launched fierce attack on Pakistan for allowing terrorist groups to form safe havens in its territory.
(17) The list is endless. That what Guruji foresaw decades ago – evil propensities of Pakistan –which the whole world – not just India – is experiencing and suffering from.
Guruji foresaw the re-emergence of Confucian China out of Communist China
On China too Guruji was equally astounding in his foresight. When an RSS worker asked for his opinion on China, Guruji said: ‘China has not broken up with their past. Wait for some more time. All their traditional ways will become patent once again. Their present desire to spread their tentacles of power and influence are in keeping with the tradition of their old emperors. A little of Confucius and a lot of their old emperors form the mainstream of their life. Communism is only a temporary phase.
(18) This dialogue took place in 1972, when China was steeped in the perpetual revolution agenda of Mao Zedong. It was reeling under the impact of Cultural Revolution [1965] which was China’s major endeavour to disconnect itself from all its ancient tradition. Millions of Red Guards had been let in the streets to destroy the ‘Four Olds’ – old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking. This damaged many of China’s temples, valuable works of art, and buildings. The Red Guards were instructed to treat the Cultural Revolution as a class struggle, in which “everything which does not fit the socialist system and proletarian dictatorship should be attacked.”
(19) The Cultural Revolution turned into almost a civil war and chaos. The Cultural Revolution which began in 1965 officially ended – three years after Guruji’s lifetime – when the ‘Gang of Four’ including the wife of Mao Zedong, who led the Cultural Revolution were arrested on October 1976.
(20) So, when Guruji was talking about the revival of the traditional China, the Cultural Revolution, one of the principal aims of which was to destroy all traditions, beliefs and old values, was still on. It was at that time that Guruji foresaw the traditional Confucian China re-emerging out of the Communist China when such a thought would have been considered absurd.
But now four decades after he foresaw that the traditional Confucian China would emerge from the Communist China, Guruji has now been proved totally correct. In fact, at one point, Communist China had used the Confucian respect for authority to build up Communist totalitarianism in China.
(21) Now Confucianism is taking birth again in China. Xinrujia orxinruxue, loosely translated as ‘New Confucianism’, is the new intellectual and cultural phenomenon that is evolving in the last twenty-five years.
(22) So, Communism, which once seemed to have subsumed the very Confucian values that had strengthened Communism, is now yielding to Confucianism. The China of today is no more Communist China — Communism has, in substance, disappeared though its name board remains. And, as Guruji had foreseen the traditional, Confucian China is re-emerging out of the demise of the Communist China.
But neither on Pakistan nor on China did the Indian political or intellectual leadership factor in the foresighted views of Guruji. With the result India did not have a consistent policy or strategy to handle either of them and now both of them have strategic association against India.
References :
[1] Bunch of Thoughts 1980Ed p420
[2] Low Intensity Conflicts in India: An Analysis by Vivek Chadha SAGE 23-Mar-2005 p117
[3] www.telegraph.co.uk/…/pakistan/…/Pakistan-the-epicentre-of-Islamist-terror.html
[4] ”Pakistani president Asif Zardari admits creating terrorist groups”. The DailyTelegraph, 2009
[5] www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/28/pakistan-promote-terror-david-cameron
[6] online.wsj.com/article /SB10001424052748703700904 575390762564079940.html
[7] blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/robcrilly/100107376/is-pakistan-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism/
[8] http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/05/07/terrorism-s-supermarket.html
[9] Stephen Schwartz (19 August 2006). “A threat to the world”.The Spectator
[10 Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism by Daniel Byman, Cambridge University Press, pp 155
[11] Asia’s Islamism engine, The Australian, 2008-12-04
[12] Terrorism Havens: Pakistan – Council on Foreign Relations
[13] Pakistan ‘role in Mumbai attacks’. BBC News. September 30, 2006
[14] Ali, Mahmud (October 9, 2006). ”Pakistan’s shadowy secret service”. BBC News
[15] Rashid, Ahmed (October 6, 2006). ”Nato’s top brass accuse Pakistan over Taliban aid”. The Daily Telegraph (London)
[16] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/world/asia/01pstan.html?_r=0
[17] www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/8186588/Nicolas-Sarkozy-launches-attack-on-Pakistan-over-terrorist-safe-havens.html
[18] Bunch of Thoughts p675
[19] Introduction to the Cultural Revolution: Adapted from Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China, 2001 Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies. Stanford University. Spice Digest. Fall 2007. Available at: iis-db.stanford.edu/docs/115/CRintro.pdf
[20] http://www.thecorner.org/hist/china/may4th.htm
[21] Ibid
[22] New Confucianism (Xinrujia):Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture summary available at: http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/new-confucianism-1-tf/
(Concluded)
