Indian Defence Review

Recently, the Maharashtra ATS arrested nine suspects allegedly owing allegiance to Islamic State. They were planning to carry out chemical attacks in large public gatherings including the Kumbh. They also had designs to poison water supply in major cities.  One of the suspects, Rashid Malbari, is a close aide of Dawood Ibrahim. Indeed, Islamic State is a vector being used by the ISI of Pakistan against India. Dawood is part of the plot.

The ISIS is known to have used chemical weapons in Kirkuk and Mosul, in Iraq as well as in Syria. It also had a special unit for chemical weapons such as ‘mustard gas’. The Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has also confirmed that the ISIS used chemical weapons against Kurdish forces.

The UK Security Minister, Mr Ben Wallace, maintains that the ISIS has no ‘moral objection’ to chemical warfare. The ISIS wants to harm and terrorize as many people as possible. If the ISIS can turn an innocuous public transport into killing machines, they would have no moral considerations in using Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) or waging Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) warfare. The casualties and terror that can by means of such warfare are a nightmare for security planners.

The prospect of Jihadis, laying their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is the ‘worst fear’ for the entire world. The planning to use chemical weapons against mass targets in India by Pakistan is no less than the ‘worst fear’. Chemical weapons are also referred to as poor man’s nuclear weapons.

This factor of WMD is an inflection point in the proxy war against India by Pakistan. The scenario appears even more alarming given the growing  collusion between Maoists and jihadis.

The stark question is that dares our intellect and morality is to how proxy war against India has reached the inflection point of WMD?

Morally, jihadi proxy war has reached the beastly level wherein there is no sanctity of Ramzan, no sanctity of Namaz and no sanctity of women. In Kashmir, CPO Nissar was pulled out of his house and killed in cold blood by the jihadis. He had come to attend some religious ceremony associated with the death of his son, who had died in an accident few months back. When he was being dragged by the jihadis his wife rushed out from the house, and the father from the nearby mosque, where he was offering his morning Namaz. Both fell on the feet of the jihadis. The other namazis also had arrived by then, and put their caps on the feet of the jihadis. Nothing worked. Nothing moved the jihadis. They killed Nissar in full audience. And now the jihadis have killed one IshratMuneer, a 25-year old lady in Sophian. She too begged for life, but of no avail. The jihadis pumped not one, but two bullets into her from point-blank range. The jihadis recorded the entire killing and proudly circulated it. She was killed because the jihadis suspected her to be an India sympathizer or someone who acted for India.

Is it not the duty of the Indian state that those, who are on the side of the country, or those who are fighting for country in this proxy war, are protected and secured?

The question again is therefore, how has this proxy war from Pakistan taken such a devilish and devious religious route? The answers are unpalatable when considered comprehensively.

The first premise is that both jihadism and Maoism are foreign ideologies, being used as weapons against India. They emanate from Islamic radicalism and Communism, which are alien to the Indian soil. Both these ideologies are murderous in their import. The uncomfortable reality is that ideological assault with their violent components is being perpetrated on India for centuries. The perpetrators of these ideological assaults imperially maintain that they have the right to assault the Indians and their civilization. The Church also feels that it is their right to convert Indians. So practically, India all through has been fighting a ‘defensive war’.

Sadly, there have always been sell-outsand collaborators of the enemy in this defensive war.

Our war against proxy war is therefore for preservation of our civilization. On the contrary conventional wars in our context are for defence of territory.

The collaborators in this proxy war have battered our defences over a period of time by assaults on our culture and self-confidence. Recently, there was a controversy about morning Sanskrit prayer in Central Schools across the country. There were objections on the plea that Sanskrit was a language of Hindus. The truth is that Sanskrit is also the mother of so-called Urdu language, as all the verbs have been borrowed from Hindi / Sanskrit. Without verbs, language cannot flow. If we try and run away from Sanskrit, we will have to run away from Hindi films, Indian music and Indian geographical framework, which includes the Ganga and the Himalaya. Sanskrit is the mother of most Indian languages, i.e. Bengali, Gujrati, Marathi, Malyalam etc.

How can any Indian abandon Sanskrit? A R Rehman’s mother changed her religion but Rehman continues to pursue music as a career despite the fact that the origins of that music are exclusively in Samveda.

When the Nawab of Oudh, Wajid Ali Shah was being taken by the British from Lucknow to Calcutta, he wrote a piece of poetry which has been rendered by all great musicians of India. He wrote:

Babul moranaiharchhuto hi jaay
Char kahaar mile, moridoliyaasajave
Mora aapnaabeganachhutojaay!
Aanganatohparbatbhayoaurdeharibayibidesh
Jay babul gharaapnomaichalipiyakedesh!

This is the lament of a daughter when she leaves her father’s house. She laments that she is leaving her own people and going to the land of unknown. The parting is terrible, the loss is insurmountable. Nevertheless she is going to her husband, which actually is an allegory for God. Genuine lament comes only in mother tongue, and this pathos is in a Sanskrit derivative.

The prayer that is offered in the Central Schools is ‘Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya, Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya, Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya, Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih’.

It is a prayer to God to guide us from unreality to reality, from untruth to truth, from ignorance to knowledge, from darkness to light and finally to immortality.  The emphasis is on knowledge and truth. Where is the religion in this?

If on suggestion of Vinoba Bhave, the Devnagri script were to be used for so-called Urdu language, the instrument of language to divide India would have been blunted.

It should be remembered that imposition of Urdu on East Pakistan by the rulers of West Pakistan created Bangladesh. But West Bengal government in India is following the reverse course. It may be instructive to know that in the annual meeting of Ahmadiyya in Bangladesh in 2016, the community head of the subcontinent, Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih addressed the followers in so-called Urdu, but it was simultaneously interpreted in Bengali, a pure derivative of Sanskrit.

The Sanskrit prayer in Central Schools was also objected on the grounds that it is regressive in the development of scientific temper amongst students. The truth is that the basis ofMacaulayeducation system is colonial, unscientific and is a living example of mental slavery. It smacks off the intellectual assault by the British on Indians. The British were the rulers and therefore found devious ways to label Indians as ignorant, debase, beastly and superstitious.

The reality is that our forebears used religion as a vehicle for scientific thought. Temples were used as health centers. The following example is a testimony.

Plague and smallpox came to India with contact with Europeans. The same had happened with Mayan civilization. The ‘vaids’ (doctors) in India had developed vaccination in the 18th century against these diseases. Sheetla Mata temples came up all across undivided India and served a vaccination centers. The priests in these temples were non-brahmins, even dalits. At another level, in the gurukuls of Benaras, students after having taken blessings of their gurus operated in teams. Each team was entrusted with 30-40 villages. These students were equipped with silver blades, needles and cotton etc. Children between 5 and 15 were collected and blessed with Sheetla Mata, which was actually smallpox. The blade was used to draw few drops of blood and then the material wrapped in cotton was rubbed on that portion. In two days times there were eruptions of smallpox. The whole procedure involved 8-10 days. Then the eruption was pierced with needle and the fluid was collected and subsequently deposited with the guru. This was reported in 1767 in London College of Physician by one J Z Holwel.

The crooked British however began to decry the same after they developed the same vaccination based on the Indian version.

An average Indian may not know the principles of science, but his life and conduct was surely embedded on it. His understanding of science came through the convenient route of stories and rituals. The British took advantage of it and labeled it as superstitious.

Readers may ponder that between 6th and 11th Century AD, Europe was in throes of dark ages and from 11th to 15th Century AD, under the shadow of dark age.  How is it that following this period there was a sudden downpour of knowledge and science. The reason was that the European missionaries and travelers had begun to smuggle Indian knowledge and science in a big way.

Both the Church and Islam and their book were bigoted in the view that the earth was flat. They maintained that the earth came into being in 4000 BC, while Indians had calculated the speed of the earth to the last minute at least 5000 years ago.

This is to proof that the basic premise of Indian existence is on science.

Three aspects forge India together, i.e. Sanskrit, Sangeet (Music) and Saree (Women’s wear). S D Burman, who hailed from Tripuracomposed music for Hindi films in Mumbai. Women from Manipur to Kerala, wear saree. Stitched clothes are considered inappropriate for religious functions in India because it is a proven fact that the portions where the hem of stitched cloth runs is house to vast amount of harmful microbes.

While the emphasis of this article is on the ‘Unity of India’, and to psychologically fortify Indians against proxy , there are forces trying to literally break India. ‘Bharat Tere Tukre Honge’ is one such brazen example. Kanhiya and Umar Khalid are is embodiments of such forces. These forces come in various garbs and persuasions, i.e. politics, judiciary and educational institutions. What we indeed saw in JNU is the tryst of jihadis and Maoist streams of proxy war. These ideologies have their basis in Pakistan and China respectively. Tapping into this proxy war is the Church for its own agenda of conversion. It has been doing the same in Nepal.

All those who are in support of Kanhiya and his ilk are actually proxy soldiers of India’s enemies.

We have no option, but to discern  all the facets of proxy war and fight it at all levels. I take inspiration for this war, from ManoharParrikar, the former Defence Minister. A person, fighting a war with death, should come with the rile tube in his nose and address patriotic Indians is surely  an embodiment of a soldier against proxy war. Not to be deterred by his extremely debilitating physical state, he exhorted with all the energy that he could summon and asked ‘How is the Josh’? Nothing could be more inspiring. The ‘surgical strike’ has heralded a new template in response to proxy war.