The Calcutta Quran Petition

Title: The Calcutta Quran Petition
Author: Sita Ram Goel
Publisher: Voice of India, New Delhi, 2012 (First published 1966)
ISBN: 9788185990583
Pages: 325

This is my 600th book review in this blog.

 

India was conceived as a secular republic right from independence. This envisaged a system of government that does not interfere in religious affairs of its citizens. People were free to follow the religion that pleased them and were guaranteed the freedom to propagate it. But practice of this exalted principle of governance often differed widely from theory as soon as elections began to take place. The ruling party found it expedient to appease religious minorities, especially Muslims, and receive votes in return as consolidated vote banks. This shameless cozying up reached the lowest depth in the 1980s. In a case that later became famous as Shah Bano, the Supreme Court granted alimony to an aged Muslim woman who was divorced by her husband. The Muslim fundamentalists erupted in violent protests across the nation demanding that the court verdict ran counter to their religious law that made divorce a right of the husband without any burden of providing financial support to his erstwhile wife. Bending under pressure from the ultra-religious, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi brought in a constitutional amendment that nullified the court verdict and specifically permitted Muslim men to divorce their wives at will, without any monetary provisions. This did lasting damage to Indian secularism. Hindu forces originated in retaliation and took strong roots following this incident. Other aspects of Muslim jurisprudence were also disputed at this time. Chandmal Chopra of Calcutta filed a writ petition in the Calcutta High Court on Mar 29, 1985, stating that publication of the Quran attracts sections 153A and 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) because it ‘incites violence, disturbs public tranquility, promotes on grounds of religion, feelings of enmity, hatred and ill-will between different religious communities and insults other religions or religious beliefs of other communities in India’. This book expounds the events that followed a critical evaluation of the Muslim holy book in view of the allegations made. Sita Ram Goel (1921 – 2003) was an Indian political activist, writer, historian and publisher. He had Marxist leanings in his early life but later became an outspoken anti-communist and also wrote extensively on the damage to Indian culture and heritage wrought by expansionist Islam. He was a staunch follower of Hindu nationalism.

The petition placed before the court 85 ayats (verses of the Quran) which command Muslims to practice violent, genocidal behavior towards non-Muslims. The book contains detailed descriptions of each of them. Judge Padma Khastgir allowed the petition and directed to issue notices to the state and union governments. The case was later transferred to Judge Bimal Chandra Basak who pronounced the verdict. The petition prayed for a direction from the court to the state government to confiscate all extant copies of the Quran under the relevant provisions of the IPC. The petition ruffled the feathers of the establishment. Weak-kneed central and state governments tried to scuttle the case at first. The communist-led state government’s sleuths trailed the petitioners to find something incriminating. He was later arrested, just for filing a plea in a court of law on an issue in which he believed justice was being denied. Muslim mobs went on the rampage across many parts of the nation. Justice Basak finally made an anti-climactic judgment which rejected the petition outright, Justice Basak started by accepting the Muslim claim that the Quran was the word of God. By that logic, if the ayats sounded obnoxious, they must have been torn out of their original context. Without examining the merits of the case, he dismissed the plea.

The Quran was a source of litigation on other occasions too. In another case in Delhi in 1986, the Metropolitan Magistrate judged that the 24 ayats which are said to cause communal riots are harmful and teach hatred and are likely to create differences between Muslims and other communities. Here we see two courts taking diametrically opposite positions on the same issue. While one court preferred to stay away from any evaluation of a book on the reason that it was revealed directly by God, the other persuaded to do just the same irrespective of the threats and intimidations directed against him. Goel argues that the coincidence between the prophet’s convenience on the one hand and Allah’s commands on the other makes it obvious that Allah of the Quran is none other than the prophet himself (p.32). Eighteen points are listed out and narrated in support of this claim (p.20-32).

The book provides an exhaustive view of the importance Quran assigns to waging war against the infidels (jihad). A full chapter is devoted to enumerate the battles fought by the prophet (p.77-136). Killing infidels in battle is an act that returns immense merit to the believers. Even if one gets killed in such a skirmish, his afterlife becomes very rewarding. Such persons go directly to paradise without waiting till the Day of Judgment. There are different grades of believers in heaven. An ordinary believer is entitled to paradise, but a mujahid (one who took part in jihad) is hundred times more deserving. A ghazi (one who killed infidels in jihads) is still higher in merit. A shahid (one who got killed in jihad) gets instant paradise. The incentive scheme is clearly tilted towards extracting maximum valour from Muslim soldiers in their fight against infidels.

The book contains many quotes from the Quran and other sacred Islamic books. Goel expertly uses them to analyse the real status of non-Muslims in a country governed according to Sharia law. Imam Abu Hanifa, who lived in the eighth century CE, systematized Muslim law. He is highly regarded by Indian Muslims, almost all of them belonging to his Hanafi School. The ‘Hidayah’ is the most important treatise of this school and our book quotes from this the relevant portions pertaining to recommended treatment of outsiders in an Islamic society. The law books refer to such people as zimmis who are denied all rights otherwise granted to Muslim citizens. They are grudgingly conceded the right to life and property upon payment of a crippling poll tax. When Muslims conquer an infidel country, the inhabitants, together with their wives and children are all plunder and the property of the state, as it is lawful to reduce all infidels to slavery. Idolaters should be immediately killed, but kitabis (people of the book – Jews and Christians) can buy their life by payment of jizyah. They are not allowed to build any new place of worship. Zimmis are also required to look different in attire from Muslims. They should not be allowed to ride on horses or use armour. They must be made to wear a woolen cord or belt round their waists or outside of their garments. Zimmis should put some distinctive sign on their houses so that ‘beggars who come to their door may not pray for them’!

There is a long line of scholars, especially belonging to the Left, who deliberately play down the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism. They argue that these are one-off events which have no place in the modern world. This is a pious lie. We have seen what the Islamic State had done to non-Muslims in the territories they conquered and ruled for a short time. Modern times or not, they faithfully put in action all the Quranic injunctions to the letter, by killing off idolatrous Yazidi men and making their women sex slaves. Goel of course did not know this as he died many years back, but his warnings are so prescient as to make us wonder whether he anticipated the ISIS takeover. The author argues that though the mujahids lived in many different centuries who belonged to different races and spoke different languages, yet their actions followed the same pattern. It looks as if the Muslim historians have only filled in the blanks in a prescribed pro forma. The dramatis personae of the drama continued to change, but the script remained loyal to what the Quran taught. The key to all this behavior is held by the Quran which is the only thing which all jihadis and their historians share in common. This is an ominous pointer to India. Jihad cannot be regarded as something which happened only in the past. It is an ever present threat to India as the Quranic verses would provide the basis and motivation for a jihad wherever and whenever the infidels provide an opportunity. Pious Muslims in every place and at all times are taught to see, or seek, or provoke situations in which solutions prescribed by the Quran can be practiced (p.209).

This book is not recommended for faint-hearted Muslims as it seeks to present a lesser known facet of their religion. They may better avoid this book. It has quoted extensively from Islamic texts, which make the reading cumbersome on many occasions. A long reproduction from Tuhfat ul-Mujahideen on jihad has a single paragraph that spans across nine pages of the book! The author declares that it is high time for Hindu scholarship to come forward and make a serious study of the Quran with the help of Islamic theology and history. It is time for them to have a close look at the character of Allah which is the seed from which everything in Islam has sprouted. The results will be very rewarding. Goel has included references from medieval Muslim historians such as al-Utbi, Hasan Nizami, Abdullah Wassaf, Amir Khusrau and Muhammad Qasim Ferishta. We do not find a trace of pity or sorrow or sympathy in these historians while they expound stories of slaughter, pillage and the plight of zimmi men, women and children.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time

Title: Work – A History of How We Spend Our Time

Author: James Suzman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus, 2020 (First)

ISBN: 9781526605016

Pages: 464

 

Most of us do work in return for monetary reward, either as pay from somebody else or as profits in the case of an own business. Regardless of the nature of the work, the effort itself is considered as a noble pursuit in all societies. We work to live and live to work, by finding meaning, satisfaction and pride in any job. The work we do defines who we are, determines our future prospects, moulds many of our values and controls our life. This book is a loosely organized narrative of the development of the human species and the techniques with which they choose to spend time with. Very rarely do we come across such books that narrate so many events having such vast scope as the invention of fire or farming and the change in work patterns in the post-industrial age under the influence of artificial intelligence. Naturally it manages to show such huge expanse of ideas with corresponding shallowness in getting under the skin of any major topic. James Suzman is an anthropologist specializing in the Khoisan peoples of southern Africa. He is now the director of Anthropos Ltd, a think tank that applies anthropological methods to solving contemporary social and economic problems. He lives in Cambridge.

 

Any reference to work and money stirs our thought to the basic principles of economics. Work as an economic activity is a clever strategy of an individual to maximize the benefit from a scarce resource that has alternate uses. The story of progress and the engine or progress is our urge to work, to produce, to build and to exchange, spurred by chronic scarcity of all resources. Suzman defines work as the time and effort we spend meeting our needs and wants. The narrative strictly follows a utilitarian approach and never strays into philosophy or metaphysics.

 

The invention of fire is claimed to be the primary reason behind the evolution of bigger brains in some hominins. Humans diverged from apes through hominids as they began developing larger brains. Homo habilis is our closest ancestor along this line. But brains consumed tremendous amounts of energy. In a typical human, the brain consumes almost a fifth of the total energy input required for the whole body, even in sleep. Building and maintaining such big brains on raw, plant food was impossible. To do this required eating more nutritionally dense foods or to spend every wakeful moment eating, chewing and ruminating. Fire helped the hominids extend to many more plant types unpalatable till that time. This made preparation of energy-rich foods very fast. Fire’s greatest gift to mankind was thus the gift of free time. In that sense, it was the first labour-saving technology. Mastering the art of fire and cooking, Homo erectus secured greater energy returns for less physical effort. As their brains further grew, so did the amount of time available to apply human intelligence and energy to activities other than finding, consuming and digesting food. They got better at making tools and the road to all future human innovations lay open before them. Suzman suggests that boredom is a good motivator for innovation. So the post-fire hominids might have been heavily burdened with it which edged them to improve and innovate.

 

The transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer took place in the colder climes. Nature is bountiful in the tropics and people are generally not aware of the marginal scarcity of essential foods. But in cold climes, foragers had to store food in a safe place and organize their work year to accommodate intense seasonal variation. Storage of food took place in safe caves and not entirely coincidentally, the first echoes of art are also reverberating on these cave walls. The community did not have much to do in winter than consuming the food and waiting for the inhospitable spell to pass. Hierarchy developed in human societies in order to better organize the actions of responsible members. Climate change-induced scarcity played an important role in pushing some populations to become food producers. At the start of the current warm inter-glacial period beginning around 18,000 years ago or more specifically, over a 5000-year interval beginning 12,000 years ago, a sequence of unrelated populations in at least eleven distinct geographical locations began cultivating crops and rearing a variety of domesticated animals.

 

The book details the highly exploitative nature of factory work in the initial stages of Industrial Revolution. Children were frequently employed in the workplace and up to 78 hours of work in a week were fairly common. Trade unions came into being but most beneficial laws for labourers came about when the politicians persuaded the parliament to step out in support. The Bank Holiday Act of 1871 declared eight days as bank holidays which was later extended to the factories too. Under the Master and Servants Act, workers who are disrespectful to their managers were subject to criminal prosecution. Then came the Factories Act of 1835 which limited the working week of women and children to 60 hours. Further reduction in the working hours had to wait till the First World War. Shaped by the carnage men witnessed in the battlefields as well as technological advances and a surge in productivity, working hours quickly declined to 48 hours a week. After another decade, prompted by Henry Ford’s example, the 40-hour week came into effect. Attempts to reduce it still further did not offer rewards. Kellogg’s introduced a 30-hour week, but after a few years, majority of the workers expressed their wish to go back to the 40-hour week as they were spending too much time with irritable spouses back at home!

 

Much of the discussion is just drifting across a vast sea of closely related ideas without a specific sense of direction. This is to be expected in a work which does not assign a serious place to ‘work’ and may probably be living up to its title. Being a social anthropologist, the author liberally extracts from his rich experience in working with the Ju Hoansi tribe in Namibia which still follows the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The introduction of fire takes up almost a quarter of the book, which amply demonstrates the unhurried pace of the narrative.

 

The book is highly recommended.

 

Rating: 3 Star

 

Globalization Before Its Time

Title: Globalization Before Its Time – The Gujarati Merchants from Kachchh
Author: Chhaya Goswami
Publisher: Portfolio Penguin, 2016 (First)
ISBN: 9780143425120
Pages: 291

India had had the misfortune to come under the political domination of a trading company for nearly two centuries. The political masters in this unusual setting tweaked the rules and commercial environment to ensure primacy for the produce of their own homeland. The open discrimination against Indian industry prompted them to band together and support Indian freedom fighters in its quest to dismantle foreign rule. This history of colonialism in India conveys a misleading assumption that Indians were no good in trade or commerce. Even though conventional authors follow this route to accentuate the effort – both of the political party and Indian industry – in achieving freedom, there are examples where Indians operated vast networks of traders and managed the merchandise of an entire country. Indians were not always the losers or exploited in their encounters with colonizers. In fact, Indian mercantile traditions were robust enough to challenge European interests and seek advantages in the interstices of intra-European competition. The maritime entrepreneurs of Kachchh linked India, Arabia and Africa in a golden triangle of trade during the dying days of the Mughal Empire. This business flourished in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This book belongs to the series on the story of Indian business. Gurcharan Das provides a brilliant introduction to the relevance of the book. Chhaya Goswami is herself from Kachchh and is an honorary fellow of the University of Exeter. She specialises in western Indian Ocean maritime history. Her current research explores maritime trade and piracy in the gulfs of Kachchh and Persia in the eighteenth century.

Kachchh, we know, is a piece of semi-arid territory with not much agriculture and notorious for frequent earthquakes. The Jadeja dynasty that ruled in the sixteenth century realized that revenue from agriculture would never amount to much in their country as the rainfall was scant and the landscape mostly barren. They actively promoted ports and trade and ship-building became an obsession with the rulers. They established flourishing trading posts at Muscat whose rulers also followed a not altogether different policy. As Omani trade extended to Zanzibar off the coast of Tanzania, Kachchhi merchants facilitated trade and extracted revenue for the Arabs. The Kachchhis, irrespective of religion, developed social institutions that could unite them and enabled them to bargain with the authorities. Trade guilds called Mahajans resolved disputes like interest payments, breach of contract, marine insurance claims and bankruptcy. Enforceability of the guild’s decisions was purely based on the reputation and mutual recognition of the jury’s judicial power. The writ of the panel reached overseas shores too. Religious inhibitions were also involved in decision making. The ultra-rich business concern of Jairam Shivaji’s in Zanzibar was forced to revoke a deal with a European firm, as it included a contract for trading in beef.

Goswami explains what made the Kachchhis successful even in exotic places. In their towns of origin as well as locations where they migrated, these merchants were bounteous in donating to charitable works, contributing to their prestige. Social and cultural sanctions on overseas travel by orthodox Hindus were ameliorated with liberal donations to religious institutions. Hindu monasteries (math) also participated in business transactions and augmented the economic initiative by operating as business conglomerates. They owned rich lands, accumulated capital leveraging their role as clearing banks for overland trade. Safe deposit services were available for clients who needed to store their gold and valuables. The monasteries’ long and short term credit were both productive and remunerative. This too helped to do away with the stigma attached to overseas travel. The Gujarati community exhibited such consummate skill in foreign trade as if to doubt the existence of a trading gene in their heredity!

The book neatly explains the geographical as well as commercial significance of the sea trade. By the eighteenth century, Muscat rose to prominence as a conduit to trade. The Omani sultan was himself a merchant and had great empathy for all merchants, irrespective of their ethnic or religious affiliations and encouraged them to invest and settle in Muscat. His police guaranteed security of life and property to foreigners also. Early sultans extended considerable religious freedom to Hindus. Ethics did not involve in the items of trade. Human slaves, ivory and gum copal were the export of East Africa for which cloth, beads and copper wire were exchanged in return. Duping of the naïve local chieftains was rampant. The slave trade went on in full swing till the British changed policy and outlawed it in the nineteenth century. Dates were exported from Arabia, mainly to the US.

Zanzibar was equally important as Muscat for the flourishing Kachchhi trade. This island was held by Oman at that time and they diligently cultivated the island’s reputation as a free port. It offered a low, consistent five per cent import duty on all goods, no duties on exports, no taxes on shipping, no charges for pilotage, no charges for use of the port and no requirement of manifests or approvals from port authorities before sailing. Attracted by the equatorial island’s potential, Omani sultans shifted their capital from Muscat to Zanzibar. The place was ideal for cultivating spices and sultans encouraged widespread cultivation of cloves in Pemba Island. Kachchhi traders followed the imperial camp loyally.

The Kachchhi merchants were deeply religious and the author tactfully explains how they played around religious taboos and inhibitions. The first witness to Kachchhi legal documents was the sun. It transcended religious differences as the Memons and Khojas too maintained this custom. Agreements were hence prepared and signed only in daytime. In financing the ivory business, the Kachchhis were in fact financing the slave trade. Every caravan that came from the interior carrying ivory employed thousands of porters, who were then disposed of as slaves. This does not seem to have roused much moral compunction then as it does now. Hindu religious traditions regarding nonviolence did not affect the demand for ivory objects. Peshwa Savai Madhav Rao claimed to have found in Hindu sacred books a law prohibiting Brahmin women from using metal hair combs. This was followed by a decree supporting the use of ivory combs. Many users sought comfort by staying under the impression that the ivory they used came from elephants that had died naturally!

The book also provides subtle hints of the hardening of the Arabian mindset on the arrival of revivalist religious sentiment. In the beginning, many sultans were favourably disposed towards Indian trading communities irrespective of their religion. Regardless of the enlightenment of the rulers, the Omani economic system was still heavily weighed down by religious dogma. The import duties were dependent on the religion of the importer! While Muslims paid 5 per cent as duty, non-Muslims had to cough up 7 per cent. By the nineteenth century, the sultan wanted to relax the rates to bolster trade. Consequently, he reduced the non-Muslim rate to 5 per cent, but at the same time halved the Muslim rate to only 2.5 per cent. Humiliating dress code was prescribed for Hindu merchants in the cities of Yemen. Cremation of the dead was banned and they were forced to bury their dead kin. Sultan Said Azzar bin Qais (1868 – 71) put a stop to the long tradition of toleration by objecting to Indian religious rituals including the use of drums. People were required to grow moustaches in the fashion of Mutawas (moral police). Tobacco trade was banned.

The book is easy to read but lightly anchored on verifiable reference sources. There is a tendency to idealize the merchants and their efforts to prosper. Readers are left with no idea about the local sentiment towards them – whether the people in the far off lands saw them as benefactors or exploiters. Goswami shows a proclivity to generalize on scant evidence. On top of it all, it does not tell the whole story, of how the Indian entrepreneurship got unraveled in the last century. Anyway, it provides a rare glimpse on the great Indian attempt at world trade.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Bunch of Thoughts

Title: Bunch of Thoughts
Author: Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar
Publisher: Jagarana Prakashana, 1980 (First published 1966)
ISBN: 9788186595190 (typical)
Pages: 684

Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (1906 – 1973) was in the news recently when the government decided to name a new campus of the Rajiv Gandhi Biotechnology Centre after him. Left liberal groups were vociferous in accusing the government of bringing in divisive politics into an institution of higher learning by commemorating the hallowed memory of the second Sarsanghchalak (supreme head) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) from 1940 to 1973. Much invective was heaped on Golwalkar, whom the Sangh workers respectfully address as ‘Guruji’. When the tirade exceeded normal limits of decorum, I was naturally curious to know more about him. This book is a collection of his writings, speeches and conversations on varied topics such as national reorganization, spirituality, organizing the youth and politics, among others. This was first published in 1965, at the Sangh’s fortieth anniversary and also to mark Guruji’s twenty five years at the helm. This book was not written by Golwalkar himself, but compiled and translated from Hindi to English.

Golwalkar defines the mission of the Sangh as a nation-builder which tries to reorganize the national life. This goal is conducive to and the inevitable precondition to realise the dream of world unity and human welfare. We have to stand before the world as a self-confident, resurgent and mighty nation. Forging the scattered elements of Hindu society into an organized and invincible force both on the plane of the spirit and on the plane of material life is the acclaimed program of the Sangh. Right from childhood, Golwalkar used to wonder how and why invaders from faraway lands and far inferior in numbers could defeat Indians and hoist their alien regimes on this soil. It is the lack of cohesion and the unitary spirit that had done us in. Of course, the book always refers to this country as Bharat!

After settling all doubts on Sangh’s mission, Golwalkar goes on to examine how it could be realised in practice. A Hindu should mould his life with an attitude of discipline and self-restraint, which purify and strengthen him to reach the supreme goal in life. There is a trinity of Hindu nationalism – the feeling of burning devotion to the motherland, the feeling of fellowship born out of the realization that we are the children of that great common mother and intense awareness of a common current of national life. Guruji classifies such people as Hindus who revere the nation, respect the ancestral heroes and who subscribe to the philosophical concept that the inner fire that lights up every living being is the same. Moreover, without a firm base of nationalism, to speak of humanity and internationalism would be losing at both ends. Our national philosophy and heritage have always embraced within its fold the highest good of all humanity. A wrong interpretation of ahimsa has deprived the national mind of the power of discrimination, looking upon strength as violence and to glorify our weakness. A strong, militarily powerful nation is critical to ensure a harmonious life to its people. The full manifestation of dharma in human life helps create the spirit of cooperation. In such a democratic scheme, Golwalkar proposes two types of representatives – territorial and functional, the latter being elected from various professions and avocations.

Guruji is patriotic to a fault. This undercurrent of love for one’s homeland ebbs and flows underneath all the arguments as if a universal rhythm that animates the words. He claims that the average man of this country was at one time incomparably superior to the average man of other lands. India has been under foreign yoke of one or the other persuasion for nearly twelve centuries, yet the culture maintained its unbroken continuity from the present to the hoary past. He suggests a plausible answer to this seemingly paradoxical fact. The basis of our national existence was not political power. Rulers were never taken as props of our national life, but saints and sages were its torch-bearers. This was the secret of its survival. This principle should be carried to the modern age as well. State power should be constrained to the duty of protecting its people against foreign invasions and internal strife. Concentration of all power and authority and undivided control of all spheres of life such as education, medical aid and social reforms is a characteristic of a modern, western-style nation. This should be adapted to Indian conditions.

Caste repression and strife between different castes is not uncommon even now. Golwalkar analyses this issue with special interest. The feeling of inequality, of high and low, which has crept into the varna system is comparatively of recent origin. Earlier, he states, the castes were still there, but they were well harmonized as the various limbs of the corporate social being (virat purusha). Together, and by their mutual interdependence in a spirit of identity, they constituted the social order. But he accepts that in the present day, the caste system had degenerated beyond all recognition. Untouchability is a social evil. Positive and persuasive efforts will yield results to combat this menace. Guruji wonders at the perseverance of the victims of oppression for remaining within the folds of the Hindu faith. In spite of the insults and humiliations they have been suffering at the hands of the rest of society in the name of caste for so long, they stubbornly resisted the temptation to renounce their mother faith and opt for an alien one. However, assigning a separate identity to them is not conducive in the long run. Volunteers of the Sangh should work among the downtrodden and successfully integrate them with the mainstream. If the foreign Christian missionaries, having come from far-off lands and working with ulterior motives of mass conversion, could show love and affection to the suffering people, the Hindu society – with positive love for their own people and their dharma – can certainly do it better.

Golwalkar hits the nail precisely on the head on his justification for why Hindu nationalism is the glue that binds people together with a viable slogan. Talk of economic plans and industrial glory cannot stir the people to suffer and sacrifice. We have parallels from Europe where the people were galvanized to join the cause of nationalism by charismatic leaders. Here, Sangh does not look for personal charisma, but demands the total surrender of self to the national ideal. This book advocates a unitary form of government for India as the federal system generates and feeds separatist feelings due to too much autonomy. A clear mooring of Guruji’s nationalist ideal on the native religion of India is visible. He argues that religious conversion of an individual often does not take place after a serious and comparative study of philosophies. It is always by exploitation of poverty, illiteracy and ignorance or by deceptive tactics such as precondition to marriage. This must be stopped.

The Sangh’s attitude to non-Indian religions such as Christianity and Islam has always been a subject of bitter controversy. This is mainly because the leftist intellectuals do not bother to get familiar with its policy which is plainly stated in this book. This Muslim or Christian has perfect freedom of worship as long as they do not seek to destroy or undermine the faith and symbolism of the national society. They should subordinate their exclusive claims for final or solo revelation vis-à-vis the national society. They could bear witness to their faith in life and speech but they should not indulge in any unfair or unspiritual mode of conversion. Muslims and Christians should give up their present foreign mental complexion and merge in the common sub stream of our national life. In short, they have a national responsibility, duty to society, duty to ancestors and personal faith. In the last one, they can choose any path which satisfies one’s spiritual urge.

There is a clear line of demarcation in the thinking of the two stalwarts of Hindutva – Vinayak Savarkar and Golwalkar. While Savarkar was an atheist, Guruji was a practicing Hindu with full faith in god and temple worship. Thus we see him railing against beauty contests and morally depraved movie stars masquerading as India’s cultural icons. On the other hand, he opposes Prohibition and does not mind people having a genuine source of liquor. He is ideologically against communism and is friendly towards western democracies if it suits India’s interests. Being a compiled form of speeches, many chapters are on a preaching style with lot of parables to keep the listeners’ attention riveted on to it what he has to say. Some of the tales are from the Bible!

A few drawbacks may also be pointed out. Guruji suggests that elections to panchayats shall be unanimous as that will help create a force of greater cooperation. This may be theoretically true but may not be practical. His claim that Indian missionaries had reached America before Columbus can only be taken as a big leap of imagination by a patriotic mind. This book was written almost sixty years ago and the chronological fashion of intellectual discourse has changed much in the intervening period. Golwalkar asks the nation’s youth to shun Cricket and take to Kabaddi instead. While the core principles remain unchanged, it would be better if a Sangh ideologue brings out either a commentary to this book or else a fresh initiative to codify its guiding principles in light of almost fifteen years in power and of the twenty-first century,

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star