Doctored CDs and Gita For Gandhi's: The Truth

The mysterious appearance of an allegedly ‘doctored’ CD is being used by our Hindu-bashing media to defame and condemn Varun Gandhi, the bright young B J P aspirant wanting to contest election for the Lok Sabha seat from Pilibhit. In this comical debate the media has conveniently forgotten that a number of similarly doctored CDs are being openly sold in hundreds across Pilibhit and several U.P. towns. According to a news published on March 22, 2009, in Hindustan Times, New Delhi, a CD of the so-called ‘hate’ speech of Varun Gandhi was being sold for Rs. 15,000 and several political parties and mediapersons were lapping up the coveted CDs.

On top of it, the buyers are openly telling the CD seller, one Maqbool, to “delete this scene, it will not serve my purpose”. And such openly ‘doctored’ CDs are being unabashedly purchased by the election campaigners for three well known political parties. Yet not one media analyst has tried to fathom the origin of the ‘dubious’ CD, nor who prepared it and why, nor where is the original CD. All these questions have been left unanswered by the Indian media as well as the Election Commission.

How is it that the Election Commission and our voluble media analysts have not bothered to investigate what made the cyber café owner, Maqbool of Pilibhit, openly doctor and modify CDs of Varun’s speech for selling them like hot cakes to all and sundry ? Most mysterious, however, is the inaction of the somnolent Uttar Pradesh police who have neither caught Maqbool, nor interrogated him.

Varun’s knowledge of Gita is questioned... Frankly, not many media analysts appear to have any sound knowledge of Gita, nor of the bold message of recourse to karmic action it gives to Hindus like Varun. No wonder they fail to realize that in not too distant past the same message had fired the imagination of the renowned stalwarts like Lokmanya Tilak, Aurobindo Ghosh, Ras Behari Bose and hundreds of revolutionaries and freedom fighters, including Chandra Shekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Ram Prasad Bismal and lakhs of foot soldiers of our freedom movement.

After conversion to the hollow western creed called ‘secularism’, most media WOGs (i.e., West Oriented Gentlemen) have lost their civilizational moorings. In their static minds ‘ahimsa parmo dharmo’, a truncated shloka popularized by Mahatma Gandhi, remains etched as the central theme of Gita. They seem to be blissfully unaware that Gita goes far beyond ‘ahimsa parmo dharma’ and gloriously sanctions the use of violence as a sacred duty in the cause of righteousness, especially for protecting ‘Dharma’. As highlighted by Swami Chinmayananda in a soul stirring article, the correct Shloka in Gita is ‘Ahimsa Parmo Dharma, Dharmah Himsa Tathaiva Cha’, meaning thereby that recourse to violence for protecting ‘Dharma’ is an equally important duty enjoined upon all Hindus.2 The learned sage bemoans that frequent misuse of this truncated sacred verse has reduced us Indians (read Hindus) to the status of “poltroons and cowards”.3 By over emphasizing non-violence, says Swamiji, “we have reached the pathetic situation of today when thousands, in cowardly fear take to precipitate flight, leaving their innocent children to be butchered and their unarmed helpless women to be converted or killed”.

The rousing speech of Varun Gandhi has to be understood in the context of the pitiable condition of Hindus of Pilibhit. In recent months there have been innumerable complaints by Hindus of Pilibhit alleging oppression by Muslim gangsters of the area, including scores of instances of cow slaughter which is forbidden by law. But no one listens to Hindus because the District Magistrate and Additional District Magistrate of Pilibhit, being Muslims, are perceived to be ranged against the majority community. In such a dismal scenario, the courage shown by Varun came like a whiff of fresh air for the beseiged Hindus of Pilibhit.

It is time that voluble journos and politicos realized that there is a healthy unanimity of views between what Varun Gandhi told the beleaguered Hindus of Pilibhit and what the learned Swami Chinmayananda upholds as our grand civilizational ideal, enshrined in Bhagvad Gita.

Though Priyanka Gandhi did not say anything about her own understanding of Gita, apparently she does not know much about the bold and valorous message to fight the forces of evil given by Sri Krishna to Arjun on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Gita does not preach passivity or renunciation, nor submission to tyranny. It preaches action, bold and purposeful, for achieving victory against tyranny. Instead of faulting Varun, she would do well to listen to the sagely advice of Swami Chinmayananda when he says that “the only solution for the day’s internal chaos is to bring home to the people the significance of the much neglected teaching of ‘dharma-himsa’. Gita gives the message of victory through valour to every Hindu, loudly and clearly, exhorting them to join the battle when no other option is available.

And that is what Varun Gandhi has been trying to do by relaying the wake up call to oppressed Hindu masses, besieged by jihadi terrorists and enemies of Dharma. It is time that our ignorant media analysts devoted a little bit of their time to re-reading of the Gita, instead of faulting Varun’s knowledge of the sacred Song Divine.

- R. K. Ohri, IPS (Retd)