Writing History, Scripting Politics and the Nation State: A Critique of the Nehruvian Consensus

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Ram Manohar Lohia and Sita Ram Goel were both eminent public figures in the early decades of the Republic, when the Nehruvian consensus on India was forged and was institutionalised in the School and University curriculum. Essentially, this consensus represented a compromise with the Muslim population for votes and this arrangement was brought under the ideology of Secularism. Second, the pre Islamic past of India was to be viewed as an "area of Darkness" with the Indian civilization playing at best a marginal role in world history. Therefore all the fault lines of an ancient civilization were ten as its defining features: caste, social division and hierarchy. The entire historical experience of India was brought under these categories.  The triumph of post-colonialism in the Academia has given added strength and vigour to these notions. 

Sita Ram Goel started life as a "Marxist" and soon found himself exiled from the promised land. He is known widely for his two volume study of Hindu Temples during the period of Islamic rule. The Left-Liberal Historians consider even asking this question of India's past a heretical act that invites the wrath of the elect elite "professional historians". In the pamphlet, a riposte to the notorious Communalism and the Writing of Indian History by the "Trimurthi"of contemporary Indian Historiography, Romila Thapar, Harbans Muhkia, and Bipan Chandra. 

The defining event of Modern India was the Partition and the Congress acquiesced in the Partition even though Gandhi had declared that he would die to preserve the integrity of India. (Partition over my dead body, thundered Gandhi). The tension between the Muslim elites and the Congress Party could not be papered over and with the strident call for Partition given in the Lahore session of the Muslim League in 1940, the Congress could do little to stem the tide of events. The leadership lost the opportunity to place its point of view when the Congress boycotted the Simon Commission and the resignations from the Ministries following India's entry in World War II left the field to the Muslim League. Ram Manohar Lohia has written an insightful essay on those he believed were responsible for Partition. Jawaharlal Nehru , Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi were the "Guilty Men".  Nehru was too anxious to come to power and longed for the comforts of Office, Mohandas Gandhi had reached the nadir of his political life and was not in a position to influence the tide of events. And Abdul Kalam Azad hardly comanded a following among the Muslim populace. Lohia has argued that the mistakes both at the strategic and tactical level made by the leadership of the Congress was responsible for the tragedy of Partition.

After Independence a clutch of Historians dominated the discourse on the past of India. The attempt to view India and its past in a positive manner was brushed aside as "communal" a term that has not been defined or properly explained. Identity Politics in the name of religion can be taken as the key feature of a "communal" mode of writing history. And in this the medieval period which is dominated by the Alighar School is quite prone to the projection of Islamic identity on Historiography.

The little pamphlet deals with the Ancient Period only and it exposes the errors and distortions in the writings of Romila Thapar. 

George Soros, the Politics of Disruption and engineered political change

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

George Soros

 George Soros is an oligarch with a wealth of around 9.5 Billion US dollars. Through his Open Society Foundation, George Soros invests in Civil Society groups and other special interest groups like farmers and the like in order to create near total chaos in target countries. The Farmers 'Protest in India last year was only one of several protests organized with "seed capital" from organizations linked to the Open Society Foundation. The anti CAA protests and the signature Shaheen Bagh protests have been linked to people who have received huge funds from the Open Society Foundation. The purpose of such protests is to create an impression before the entire world, with the help of a compromised and pliant media, that the protests are symptomatic of resentment against what they describe as "nationalistic, authoritarian" "regimes". Only non white Government are designated as "regimes" and the sub text is of complete and total demonization of the leadership, a process amplified by the captive Media.

George Soros was born in Budapest, Hungary, on August 12 1930 making him one a very senior oligarch. There are unconfirmed accounts that he saved himself from the Holocaust by changing his Jewish surname Schwartz to Soros and adopted the Christian religion. He seems to have collaborated with the Germans in identifying Jews and their property and if this is true he will be the most despicable of humans who being a Jew collaborated with the Germans and there is in the lexicon of the Holocaust a word to describe such individuals. Be that as it may, after the War he went to England where he studied in the London School of Economics where he came under the influence of Sir Karl Popper whose philosophy George Soros claims to be following and  his foundation is named after the most famous work of Popper, Open Society and its Enemies. We must point out that Popper wrote his classic wor against the backdrop of two huge totalitarian movement, Nazism and Communism and his life work was to sound the alarm bell if ever the world should drift towards these ideologies. Soros has quite cleverly transformed the central theme of his philosophy from Popperian attack on totalitarianism to Nationalism. Karl Popper did not attack Nationalism or the Nation State. He opposed illiberal  anti democratic ideologies and political practices which he equated with expanding and expansionist ideologies as National Socialism and Communism. George Soros is taking liberty with the very important and durable work of Karl Popper by attributing ideas to him which are contrary to his own stated positions. Such appropriation of the philosophy of Sir Karl Popper for spreading chaos and economic meltdown in parts of the world must be challenged.

George Soros has influenced events all over the world quite directly. He encouraged the establishment of Non Governmental Organizations all over Easter Europe and  provided financial support to the dissident movements in Europe, particularly in East Germany and Hungary and Romania that resulted in the fall of Soviet Union. This success was followed up by significant infusion of funds in the Arab world that resulted in the short lived Arab Spring and color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. The funding of protests movements and giving them both political legitimacy and international visibility through the mediation of Western media like Washington Post, New York Times and The Guardian shows that there is harmony of views between white media giants and the Soros ideological game plans. In fact these media houses and their journalists are known to receive huge subventions from the Open Society Foundation. On surface protest may appear uncoordinated and spontaneous but in reality they are planned and executed on the basis of "tool kits" produced in western capitals. 

The Open Society Foundation disburses grants worth 5 to 6 billion US dollars each year to organizations that adopt the western political and geopolitical objectives. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Climate Change activists, LGBTQ groups, and various other such entities are given funds with the main objective being to pitch them against other socio-economic groups. Thus labor rights and climate change activism come in handy to target economic plans and activities. Religious groups can be harnessed to crate disturbances in the name of "secularism" women can be encouraged to rail against "patriarchy" and of course LGBTQ is the latest arrival on the block. The fact that International Finance is in no way threatened by these protests as the failure of Occupy Wall Street Movement demonstrated very clearly. In fact white privilege and white financial hegemony over the world is being strengthened when identity politics is weaponised as is the case with George Soros and his "Open Society" foundation. 

George Soros has written a very revealing book, the Alchemy of Finance in which he outlines a pseudo scientific theory of "Reflexivity". He has forgotten the most important contribution of Sir Karl Popper: a scientific theory is open to refutation and Soros, our hero with a palindromic name, has given us a theory that is circular and self validating and therefore remains a hypothesis and not a theory. However, there is an important lesson lurking in this book. Market decisions are based on perceptions and market decisions are impacted by information as market values are not driven by economic fundamentals. Paul Krugman, the noted economist accused George Soros of triggering the collapse of the Bank of England in 1992, a collapse that saw people lose their savings and George Soros came off with a windmill profit of 1,5 Billion Pounds. Soros was convicted by the European Court for insider trading over the purchase of Societe Generale public equity. In India, the dramatic fall in the price of Adani stock has led to the conclusion that Hindenburg Report was the catalyst to bring about the "reflexivity" as Soros inelegantly puts in, in the market.

It is very clear that George Soros is targeting India and its economic potential by attacking the interests of Indian corporate houses that have to raise liquidity in western stock markets. It will be quite sometime when India can be a major player in the Global Financial Market and the attack has started. Earlier too the Press in India made huge uproar over Pegsus, the Raffale Deal and the Indian Vaccine. In all these cases funds from Soros and his Organization were deployed and the Congress Party particularly its mascot Rahul Gandhi seems to be thick with the Soros Foundation. Both politics and the market share a characteristic in common: Equilibrium and this equilibrium can easily be disturbed and that is the relevance of George Soros.

The misuse of Popper's ideas to promote the elitist conception of an oligarchy oriented politics is repugnant as it is both inhuman and anti democratic. Inciting violence and calling it democratic protests makes democracy weak. And it is sheer white arrogance on the part of men like George Soros to arrogate to themselves the right of certifying democracies. What he represents is a cabal of the financially rich oligarchs out to create mayhem in the democratic world. His support for the Black Lives Matter and the so called Antifa has made USA so unstable today that not a day passes without a mass shooting somewhere. Politics revolving around identity and sexual orientation make way for chaos, violence and authoritarianism. 

Will Soros and his cohorts in India, a band of reliable collaborators, hold overs from the bad days of UPA I and UPA II are coming out in strength to mouth the same tired lines. But 2024 will be a decisive mandate and the revulsion that most of us feel for such evil will fins expression in the ballot box.