CRIME, POLITICS AND RETRIBUTION IN INDIA; THE ATIQ AHMED SAGA

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

What transpired in Prayagraj was shocking and totally unexpected. A notorious criminal Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf Ahmed were gunned down execution style by 3 gunmen as they were being taken for a medical examination at Colvin Hospital at 10.30 in the night. On the 13th his son, Asad Ahmed and his accomplice Ghulam were killed in Jhansi by the Special Task Force constituted by the Government. This sequence of events has explosive implications for the politics of India in general and Uttar Pradesh in particular.

Certain questions that are bound to come up before the Judicial Inquiry constituted by the Government of Uttar Pradesh:

1 Why were the two hand cuffed criminals taken to the Hospital at 1030 in the night.

2 How did the news of their medical examination lea out giving the killers time to organize their crime by laying in wait at the Hospital Gate.

3 How did the 3 killers get Press identification cards which gave them access

4 Why was the flank of the two prisoners left unprotected giving the killers the opportunity to fire and kill the two

5 The two were under the custody of the Police and hence the involvement and conduct of the Police has also to be questioned.

Atiq Ahmed and his brother were sons of a tonga (an Indian horse drawn vehicle) driver and though he proudly sported Khan in his name, came for a very humble background. He took to crimes such as murder and extortion along with land grabbing and kidnapping for ransom from an early age and by the time he was 20 had more than 40 criminal cases registered against him. He had a very successful run as a politician and was elected to the UP Assembly 5 times on the tickets of the Samajwadi Party, Apna Dal and the Bahujan Samaj Party. In 2004 he was elected to Parliament from the Phulpur constituency from where Jawaharlal Nehru was once elected in the 1952 General Elections. When he vacated his Assembly seat he sought to have his brother Ashraf elected in his place, but was defeated by Raju Pal who contested on the BSP ticket. 

Atiq was close to the Samajwadi Party and being a Muslim became the symbol of the political bonds between the Yadavas who dominated the Party and Muslims who shared power with them, an arrangement that is generally called Secularism in India. Using the clout with the political establishment Atiq built up an empire of nearly 12,000 crores. And in this growth all political parties with the exception of the Bharatiya Janata Party colluded with him.

In 2005, the defeated candidate Ashraf Ahmed had Raju Pal  killed publically in a gruesome manner. Raju Pal was ambushed by 15 criminals and more than 150 rounds fired into his body. In February this year Umesh Pal, the lawyer and eye witness in the earlier case was gunned down by a team of 13 assassins led by Asad Ahmed, the son of Atiq Ahmed. The long career in violent crime came to an abrupt in 2017 with the election of Yogi Aditanath as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. The Chief Minister sees to improve the Economy of the state by attracting Foreign Direct  Investment for which Law and Order was the fundament requirement. He promised to make UP, "Mafia Mukth" Mafia free. He famously declared on the floor of the Assemby that,Mafia ko mitti me mila denge, we will bring down the mafia rule.

Events started taking frenetic pace when Atiq Ahmed was brought from Sabarmati Jail to Prayagraj to face trial in the Raju Pal murder case in which he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. With 167 cases registered against him the police were keen to  track down his cfrime empire and sought police remand which was duly granted. Atiq and his brother Ashraf were killed while they were in police custody.

The execution style killing with shots fired to the temple has raised far too many inconvenient questions both for the Government of Uttar Pradesh and for the Opposition parties. It is now being speculated that they were eliminated as their political patrons no longer needed them and indeed, had become an embarrassment. The fact that the 3 killers were caught alive is the saving grace. Otherwise the charge of political cover up would have been made. The shocking crime reminded me of the elimination through murder of the assassin of JFK ,Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. Till today there are suggestions that Lee was killed in order to hide the larger conspiracy. Fortunately that scenario is unlikely in this case.

My own assessment is that the people of Uttar Pradesh will, while not endorsing the murders of the two, not hold it against the Government as Atiq and his criminal gang had terrorised North India for nearly 30 years.

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. 

Ponniyin Selvan in the light of History: Some Highlights

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

Ponniyin Selvan, the literary extravaganza created by Kalki still remains, nearly seven decades after is initial publication, one of the most popular novels of contemporary Tamil Nadu. Rightly so. Well written, with a tight narrative, revolving around the intrigues of succession in the Chola court, against the background of the Chola invasion of Sri Lanka, this novel fulfils all the criteria of a Historical Novel enumerated by George Lukcas. The setting of the plot is reasonably accurate, the characters are plausible in that they are situated in the glare of History, and there is no overt "fictionalizing" or the introduction of extra historical details. Like we cannot tae Sir Walter Scot's Waverly Novels as a record of medieval history, we cannot assume that Kalki has got his facts or perspective right. And that was not his goal.

The chronological framework of the Novel (PS) was derived from   Nilakanta Sastri's magnum opus, The Cholas which was published by the Madras University. The role of the Palluvettaraiyars, the clan to which Nandhini belonged was loyal to the Cholas right to the bitter end when Jatavarman Kulasekara Pandya triumphed over the Cholas in the thirteenth century and therefore the huge question mark over the loyalty of this Clan is not backed by evidence, though the twist does impart a dramatic dimension to the plot. The death of Rajaditya in the Battle of Takkolam in 949 AD is attested to by historical records like the Tiruvanladu Copper Plates and it also records the "disappearance" of Aditya, a subtle euphemism for the assassination, as shown in PS. The removal of Aditya the son of Sundara Chola Parantaka II (956-923) paved the way for Arulmorrivarman to ascend the throne as Rajaraja I (985-1014). A silence in the historical record is transmuted into an eloquent conspiracy, and this indeed, may have been so, but the records are silent. 

The Big Temple at Tanjavur has been studied by this Historian in the M S Najaraja Felicitation Volume and in the K V Ramesh Memorial Volume and so I will not go over those details here. However there are two curious details from the cinematic depiction of PS that are important.  These pertain to the use of the Horse as a fighting platform and the state of Naval Technology in Chola Tamil Nadu. Of course, Kalki has used his imagination and we are not faulting him for that. We are merely testing the cinematic depiction against contemporary records,

The figure on the left is from the Mandapa od the Srirngam Ranganatha Swami Temple. This sculpture depicts a horseman and belongs to the 15th century, after the temple had been rebuilt and reconsecrated by the Vijayanagara Rayas. What is to be noticed here is the absence of the stirrup, that vital innovation that is a force multiplier, the speed and weight of the horse to hurl the mounted soldier against his adversary. It is the stirrup that enables the rider to stay bolt upright and balance himself on the horse. The stirrup was unknown in South India until the advent of the Muslim Conquest in the fourteenth century. The battle scenes shown in the film PS show horses with saddles to which are attached stirrups, and as such anachronisms, in the bright glare of History.

The ships and water crafts shown in PS celebrate visual design not historical accuracy. Only one solitary example of a 13th century Indian Ship has been found so far and that too in distant Kerala. The Lateen sail shown on ships plying between Chola Ports and Sri Lanka were introduced only in the 13th century, and the Arabs were probably responsible for this technological advance. B Arunachalam in his Chola Navigation Package has illustrated Chola sea crafts of the time of Rajaraja I.

The Chola vessels were certainly sea worthy and the claim of Rajendra I that he conquered lands across the "rolling seas" is certainly true as they are attested by inscriptions found in the Gankaionda Chola Puram Temple. However, the shape and design and technical details are still unknown. And the reason is due to the heavy dose of identity politics and fanciful theories that dominate the field.

In the Forest of No Joy: The Congo=Ocean Railway and the Tragedy of French Colonialism ( A Review)

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

 

Forest of No Joy

  Forest of No Joy: The Congo Ocean Railway      and the Tragedy of French Colonialism

   J P Daughton

   W W Norton and Company

    New York 2021.

   

   This book has been shortlisted for the               Cundill      Prize in History and it will not         surprise me if      it wins the Prize. Post             Colonialism in contemporary       historical       scholarship   privileges a set of themes which reinforce the  dominant ideological themes in western  society: political correctness, black lives matter, and a belief in race equity. In this book we have all three in good measure. 

Post colonialism has essentially hitched its wagon to the dominant ideological discourse emanating from western media and academia. Race Equity, identity politics and racial justice. Obviously the enormous human cost involved in the construction of this railway makes it an attractive proposition for such investigation that can stir the liberal western/white "Conscience" while skirting all important political and economic issues. For example, Racism can be critiqued as the institution animating western dominance over Africa and indeed other parts of the world. But the diplomatic and political contexts are to be studiously avoided. The defeat of France at the hands of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871 provided the immediate spur to colonialism in Africa and Germany encouraged this by essentially allowing France a free pass, wink-and-nod at the leap across the Mediterranean on the part of the Chancellor Bismarck. The entire edifice of western domination was built on racial ordering of the human race and the ideology of Progress made colonial societies inured to the costs they imposed on societies they ruled. In the case of the Congo-Ocean Railway too, we find the same allure of Progress an philosophical conceit that virtually dehumanises non white peoples and cultures. The author recognises this aspect when he states that European history recorded its achievements not the trauma of indigenous societies. Since the recognition of the Holocaust as a fact of History, Historians have adopted the eschatology of bearing witness and we find this element in the present book.

The route

   The French acquired the Congo       after the Congress of Berlin             when Belgium was given a part       of the same region. While the           horrors of Belgian Congo are           well documented, little is known     about French Congo. Before the       advent of the French, Dahomey,       the most powerful state in                 Central   Africa was the backbone of the Atlantic Slave Trade supplying slaves to both the Arab and European Slavers. This important fact is not even mentioned in this book, a bow towards political correctness. 

A cartoon lampooning the Railway 

   The Congo-Ocean Railway linked Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire on the Atlantic coast, very close to the notorious Slave Coast of Atlantic Africa. In terms of todays costs the entire 512 km railway cost around 2 billion US dollars and in terms of lives lost, around 17,000 men women and children as Child labour was not discouraged. Till this day the Congo-Ocean Railway is still the only railway track in the region.

The author documents in extreme detail the miserable conditions in which the workers toiled.  Since the region was forested and thinly populated, the colonial administration guaranteed the construction company, Bartignolles, the labour force it needed and this proved to be the original sin. Workers had to be "recruited" from Chad nearly 1500 kilometers to the north and all sorts of methods were employed. Chiefs were required to supply a quota of men and if they did not comply they were subjected to beatings in front of their villagers. Further able bodied men were kidnapped and taken in rows bound by coffle to the neck in the same humiliating fashion of slaves and any resistance was met with brute force. Men were shot and beaten to death and no questions were asked. Andre Gide who visited the region when Pacha was the Administrator wrote about the cruelties inflicted upon the people of the region. The Deputies, particularly the Socialists, raised questions in the Assembly and soon the furore died down. The living conditions of the workers was horrible and there was hardly any medical assistance at hand. Even the International Labour Organization did little more than ask a few perfunctory questions.

This book makes sad reading and even if we do not doubt the humanitarian spirit of the Historian, the larger question is: What are we do when confronted with such immense moral issues. Societies that have profited from such exploitation must give a percentage of their GDP as reparations to the affected region. This is the need of the hour. Not pious thernodies.

SALVATORE BABONES AND THE DEFENSE OF INDIA, INDIAN DEMOCRACY AND CIVILIZATION; AN ESSAY

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

Dr Salvatore Babones

  Dr Salvatore Babones,a Sociologist trained in the John Hopkins University and now an Associate Professor of Sociology in Sydney University, Australia, has kicked up a huge storm by coming out in defense  of India, with all guns blazing. While there is a sharp polemical streak in his popular writings, Dr Babones as a Sociologist he is essentially a sympathizer  of the Left with a bias towards World Systems approach pioneered by Immanuel Wallerstein. Therefore, he does not take the received discourse at its face value. He excavates the evidence and vivisects te data for possible errors and inconsistencies. Nothing remarkable about the method as Historians have been doing just that for over 2000 years, What is new and novel is the ease with which Dr Babones is able to deconstruct the hegemonic discourse from Western Capitals and of course, his own homeland, the USA. 

Dr Salvatore Babones knows how to handle Big Data and subject them to critical scrutiny. All the Data that the ranking agencies lie V-DEM, Freedom House, and the Economist deploy in their Reports are all available in public domain and are generated by the Government of India through its own specialised Statistical wings like the National Sample Survey, Niti Ayog, Reserve Bank of India, and of course, Crime Statistics compiled by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Ranking Agencies do not contest the validity of the Data and when China provides falsified and inaccurate data none of them dare call out the communist entity due perhaps to the heavy load of western investments there. The narrative report created by the ranking agencies are based on the information provided by "intellectuals, journalists and professors" in the target countries. Dr Babones is certainly right when he says, and he received considerable flak for his intellectual honesty, that Indian "intellectuals" are anti India and are willing partners in the international game of demonising India and vilifying the country. He  however takes a Pollyanna view when it comes to the Ranking Agencies themselves and he says that they are objective but are misled by the Indian informants. I think the answer is not so simple. The Western Ranking Agencies choose "experts" who are known for their political views and ideological pretenses. They essentially round up the usual suspects and ask them to provide an analysis which the "expert" gladly does thereby winning the kudos from his backers and can strut in India with the injured look of a martyr who "speaks truth to Power". 

Where does the problem start, at the Indian end or in Europe and USA. Dr Babones has rightly stated in his now famous article in The Quadrant that  the fall in India's ranking as a Democracy dates back to 2014, the very year Narendra Modi came to Office following an electoral landslide in his favor. And the criticism grew even sharper after he repeated his victory in 2019. It is obvious that the discourse on Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights, carries a huge burden of western liberal expectations, and has nothing to do with  ground realities. Some of the prominent figures who are known to be pro western and who are able to get published in the liberal platforms such as Washington Post, New York Times and the Guardian have been booked by the Government of India for fraud and that has nothing to do with their journalism but more related to crowd funded scams for COVID relief which were conveniently transferred to personal accounts. Even USA has laws against Money Laundering, Wire Fraud and the like. The context is deliberately obscured and a discourse of Freedom of the Press being threatened with the active collusion of such hucksters.

The fall in India ranking in the Hunger Index caused considerable consternation in India with loud mouths in India latching on to what appeared to be a drastic fall under the watch of Narendra Modi. Even I was taen by surprise as I have mentioned in my Blogs that the Direct Transfer Benefits to the low income groups and the free distribution of food grains directly to the target population were some of the innovations introduced by Modi through the linking of National Identity Card (AADHAR) with Bank Accounts.  Babones pointed out that the fall in ranking was due to the false data given in 2013 by the UPA regime which was not corrected by the new Government. In a poor resource constrained country like India, targeted distribution is the only solution. There can be no Universal Distribution Scheme  in India and if ranking agencies cannot understand the rationale, India could care less.

Indian Social Sciences is a discipline that mimics, imitates and copies the intellectual trends in western countries and so we are not surprised that "Social Scientists" in India have a Pavlovian response to the promptings of their handlers and so play ball. Most of the assessments provided by the Indian informants are either misleading or deceitful as Dr Babones has stated on several occasions. Another flawed method used to downgrade India and its Civilization is to use absolute figures, especially crimes against women, and paint a dreadful picture. However when factored for population, then India comes across as a safe country. While I do not want be belabor the point, there is no escape form the fact that the false reportage is due to the complicity of Indian "experts". And most of them work in Public funded Universities and face no administrative or legal issues shows that academic  freedom/license is indeed very high and is systematically misused against India and its image.

People of India must be grateful to scholars like Dr Salvatore Babones for their trenchant rebuttal of the fae narratives pedaled against India.

Was Rajaraja I a Hindu? Let the Historical Evidence speak fr itself

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

 Rajarajesvara Temple, Tanjavur

  Rajaraja I (985-1014), a splendid   monarch, has now become the   centre  of an unseemly controversy   over his depiction in Mani Ratman's   magnum opus, Ponniyin Selvan, a   film based on Kalki's novel of the   same name, published more than 70   years ago. Virulent debates over   identity  and ideology are the stuff of Indian public discourse, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. The term "Hindu" was first used by Al-Biruni in his book/kitab on India and he used that term to designate the indigenous people of India, as opposed to the invading Turks/ turushka as they were called in Indian records. Obviously then we cannot hope to find a "Hindu" identity expressed as such in the contemporary Chola records. However, the fact remains that the Cholas were deeply embedded in the practice and propagation of Saiva religion with a pronounced leaning towards Saiva Siddhantha. Aghorasivacharya and Umapatisivacharya were both important commentators on Raurava Agama, a foundational text of Saiva Siddhantha.

In the nineteenth century, Saiva Siddhanta became the ideological armature of the nascent Dravidian Movement and hence tried to distance  itself from mainstream Saivism and the hangover of this ideological rupture exists until this day. Let us look at the contemporary evidence and see where it leads us.

The deity enshrined in the Great Temple consecrated by Rajaraja I on the 20th day of the 26th year of the reign of Rajaesari, the regnal title of the King was Dakshina-Meru-Vittankar. a definite indication of adherence to Isvara/Siva. On the same occasion Rajaraja I assumed the title, Siva-pada-sekara, a potent exhibition of a leaning towards Saiva faith. Another important piece of evidence is the reference to Pasupatas and Kalamukas, radical Saivite sectarian groups who were placed in charge of the funerary shrines built by Rajaraja I (pallippadai) at Melpadi for Arinjiya.

Rajaraja I signature

K A N Sastri on whom Kalki depended for the historical details has stated that Rajaraja I was an "ardent follower of Siva" and the titles that he displayed on the walls of the Temple at Tanjavur stand testimony to his religious faith.

The beautiful mural found in the Temple is a depiction of the king with his Saiva preceptor, and this mural puts paid to any lingering doubts one may entertain about the religious affiliations of Rajaraja I.

The term Hindu carries with it, at least in the medieval period, the sense that the term refers only to the indigenous inhabitants of Bharatvarsha and was not used to express the religious identity. The confusion between an ethnic label with a religious identity which was distinct from Islamic identity was caused by the Turkish Sultans who began to talk of non Moslems as Hindus. And it appears that the confusion still persists.