Senthilraja’s blog

Do you feel, any relation b/w all these three words.  I could sense, after looking at the issue that Arun Gandhi generated recently.  He has setup an institute “MK Gandhi institute of Peace” and ran his business over there.   It seems, peace has become a business and a commodity. Some few people think, they are the only custodians of peace.  And to me Arun Gandhi appears one among them.

He made this peace, a commodoty, and started prescribing it to every sections.  Can we call him a “Peace consultant” .. probably, another word “dubious” can be inserted before them

Ok.. let us come to the issue..  In an online discussion in washington post blog, arun gandhi seems to have said, that jews should not overplay their holocaust history.  and he went on further to proclaim “Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs” .  This post evoked strong response and received as much as 438 comments
This in my opinion is to rekindle the wounds of one’s millenia of suffering.  I could remember the Nehru’s idiocity, when he said “Why should we need army.. we had got independance ” ..  Thank god, nehru stopped just with his suggestion, and did not disband it..  And Arun Gandhi’s comment is not less a crap than those of Nehru’s.

He had definitely, extended his hand in to snake’s den..  Probably, he has mis-calculated, rather, over confident, that being grandson of MK Gandhi, what ever he says would be accepted by all..  He had definitely played down the worst sufferings for two thousand years, faced by jews, and  how they had struggled to form their nation, out of all odds..  and more importantly, the death trap that they are living still now with all surrounding nations, ready to tear it in to pieces.

Probably, he should explain, why dont he advocate the same to palestinians, and America and britain?  Why only jews or israel?

He might have thought that just like Hindus, who had forget their worst history, inspite of a mountain named “HinduKush” marking their genocide,  Jews would also would have forget their history, so that he can play on it in whatever way he can.  Gandhian illusion dispersed long ago, and today’s generation had come out of that depressed mentality, and instead, started realising Peace in its real term..

And Not to mention, the jews had demonstrated, that they meant business.  No public protest.  No official protest.  No demand for apology.  But, everything happened, in their lines.  They had demonstrated, they cannot compromise their morality and pride to some one, who sits in a AC room and provides immatured advocacy . (in popular tami, karuthu kandasamy )

Popular Columnist Ramesh N Rao has written a detailed article in daily pioneer over this issue…  due to permalink problem of that site, i have included the whole article below…..

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Ramesh N Rao

Mahatma Gandhi sired four sons, and his family history has become as
rich and complex as any fable in Hindu mythology and may be more
colourful and mixed than any post-modernist parable. Some in the
family have leveraged the Mahatma’s name to carve out a career for
themselves, and of them, one grandson, Mr Arun Gandhi, came to the
United States to launch his programme of non-violence. He founded the
MK Gandhi Institute For Non-violence.

Mr Arun Gandhi was recently in the news. Invited by The Washington
Post to contribute to an online discussion, ‘On Faith’, he wrote,
“Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust
experience — a German burden that the Jews have not been able to
shed. It is a very good example of how a community can overplay a
historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends.”

Not content with that initial salvo, he asserted that the “Jewish
identity in the future appears bleak”, and any nation that “remains
anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation
that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs”.
Finally, he went overboard, saying that “Israel and the Jews are the
biggest players” in the modern “culture of violence”.

More than 400 responses flooded the newspaper. Mr Gandhi wrote a
half-hearted apology, poorly worded. He wrote that he had criticised
other Governments too and so his criticism of the Israeli Government
was not special. He then speciously commented that “… (if) people
hold on to historic grievances too firmly it can lead to bitterness
and the loss of support from those who would be friends”.

He did not tell his readers why he had singled out Jews. Don’t Muslims
all over the world hold historic grievances, not just against the
Jews, but also against many other groups? And is not the continuing
violence in West Asia based on a concerted effort by surrounding
Muslim nations that have vowed to wipe Israel off the map of the
world?

Given the tepid and defensive “apology”, readers wrote back even more
angrily. Mr Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League said, “I
think it’s shameful that a peace institute would be headed up by a
bigot… One would hope that the grandson of such an illustrious human
being would be more sensitive to Jewish history.” Mr Judea Pearl,
father of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, said, “My son Daniel died
mighty proud of his Jewish identity. He, like the millions of decent
and peace-seeking Israelis, and Americans who proudly carry on their
Jewish heritage, did not see his identity as ‘dependent on violence’
as the title of Gandhi’s article implies…“.

Soon, Mr Gandhi submitted his resignation as president of the MK
Gandhi Institute of Non-Violence. Given the incendiary nature of the
flap, the University of Rochester, where the institute is located,
accepted his resignation.

This brings us to the more important question about Mr Gandhi, which
others have not asked: Was his blog entry an aberration, a single
instance of misjudgement and analysis, or was this part of an ongoing
pattern of selective attacks and selective support to religious
groups?

The Mahatma had advised Jews, when they faced extinction at the hands
of the Nazis, “… to lay down the arms you have… You will invite
Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the
countries you call your possessions…”. Louis Fisher, Gandhi’s
biographer, asked him: “You mean that the Jews should have committed
collective suicide?” Gandhi responded, “Yes, that would have been
heroism.” May be, his grandson wants the same.

The Mahatma was consistent in his advice to Hindus, too. When faced
with violence perpetrated by Muslims, he asked them to not fight back
but die “honourably”. [ ] Many Hindus succumbed to the Mahatma’s advice,
and hundreds of thousands of Hindus were killed, raped and assaulted,
over a period of three decades that the Mahatma’s writ ran over India.

Gandhi never advised Muslims to lay down their arms. He sang, “Ishwar,
Allah tere naam” but did not acknowledge that Muslims would never
accept Allah be called anything but Allah. He did not ask Muslims to
look into their hearts and find why they so hated their Hindu
neighbours and fellow countrymen.

In an essay I had raised the question as to what would have happened
had the Mahatma not backed Jawaharlal Nehru to become India’s first
Prime Minister instead of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Drawing from Durga
Das’ book, India from Curzon to Nehru and After, to point out how the
Mahatma manipulated India’s leaders and masses to do his bidding, it
would not be incorrect to suggest that the Mahatma’s support to the
Khilafat movement led to the massacre of thousands of Hindus and the
rape of hundreds of Hindu women in what is known as the Moplah
massacre.

Responding to that essay, Mr Arun Gandhi wrote that the “Moplah
rebellion” had nothing to do with the Khilafat movement, and that
Gandhi’s support of Nehru was because he wanted to “encourage young
blood in a party dominated by old people”! Mr Gandhi concluded his
rather wayward response by saying that if his grandfather had not
returned to India from South Africa in 1915, the Congress would have
continued to be a “country club,” and that the Hindu Mahasabha and the
RSS “…could have mobilised people into a civil war against Muslims
to teach that Hindustan is for Hindus and they better behave…”,
forgetting that before the Mahatma there were great Congressmen like
Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Bal Gangadhar Tilak who had both indigenised
the Congress and made it a people’s party.

Mr Gandhi later acknowledged a connection between the Khilafat
Movement and the Moplah Massacre. “But history is not often an
accurate recording of events,” he complained, and launched a tirade
against the RSS. I had said nothing about the RSS in my essay, but Mr
Gandhi raised the spectre of a Hindu extremist group that would
ethnically cleanse Muslims out of India. He also accused the 1940s
bureaucrats and politicians of India of collusion in the assassination
of his grandfather.

It is, therefore, not surprising that this loose-lipped Gandhi scion
would pen something so obnoxious as he did for The Washington Post.
But the disciplined Jews would not take this lying down, and Mr Gandhi
has had to resign in shame.

Mr Gandhi’s many cousins, nephews, uncles and aunts have succumbed to
the lore and lure of their famous ancestor. In fact, his son, Mr
Tushar Gandhi, too wags a similar loose tongue, and poses as a
’secular, progressive’ person. Meanwhile, the Mahatma’s grandson
follows in his grandfather’s footsteps, blinkered about political and
religious dynamics. But he lacks the Mahatma’s charisma.

– Prof Rao is Chair of the Department of Communication Studies and
Theatre at Longwood University, USA