എന്‍ എസ് എസ് ആരുടേയും പാട്ടപ്പരമ്പില്‍ കിടക്കുന്നവരല്ല എന്ന് സുകുമാരന്‍ നായര്‍. -
മൂക്കിനു താഴെ കിടക്കുന്ന ചെങ്ങന്നൂരിലെ എമ്മല്ലെ പോലും താക്കീതിന്റെ സ്വരത്തില്‍ കുറ്റപെടുത്താന്‍ തുടങ്ങി. സുകുമാരന്‍ നായര്‍ സ്വന്തം നില അറിയേണ്ട സമയം അതിക്രമിച്ചു.
ശബരിമല തന്ത്രി, ഗുരുവായൂര്‍ തന്ത്രി, തിരുവതാം കൂര്‍ മഹാരാജാവ്, തുടങ്ങിയവര്‍ മുതല്‍ എസ് എന്‍ ഡീ പീ, പുലയര്‍ മഹാസഭ, മലയാള ബ്രാഹ്മണ സഭ തുടങ്ങി നൂറോളം സങ്കടനകള്‍ ഒരുമിച്ചു ഹിന്ദു ഐക്യത്തിന് വേണ്ടി മുന്നിട്ടു ഇറങ്ങിയപ്പോള്‍ അതിനു തുരംഗം വച്ച ചരിത്രമാണ്‌ സുകുമാരന്‍ നായര്‍ക്ക് ഉള്ളത്. വെള്ളാപ്പള്ളിയും ഒരുമിച്ചു അന്ന് ഹിന്ദു ഐക്യത്തിന് ശ്രമിച്ചിരുന്നു എങ്കില്‍ കേരളത്തിന്റെ രാഷ്ട്രീയ ചിത്രം തന്നെ മാറിപോകുമായിരുന്നു. ആ സുവര്‍ണ അവസരം കളഞ്ഞു കുളിച്ചിട്ടു ഇപ്പോള്‍ കരയോഗത്തിന്റെ തിണ്ണയില്‍ കേറി നിന്ന് കുറച്ചിട്ട് ഒരു കാര്യവുമില്ല.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Monday, April 2, 2012
The story behind Hindu Kush
Mahmud of Ghori defeated Prithviraj Chauhan in the battle of Tarain (Taraori) in 1192. He then gauged out the eyes of Prithviraj Chauhan, blinding him; after which he had him dragged by a horse. Along with Prithviraj, the army of Mahmud of Ghori enslaved about 50,000 soldiers and their wives and children as part of the war booty. These captives were dragged across the battle field of Tarain (Taraori), present day Haryana, through the plains of Pakistan and over the hills into Afghanistan into the capital city of Ghori. Most Hindu captives did not survive this perilous and inhuman journey over the mountains.To constantly remind Hindus of this crushing defeat and the misery that they went through, this mountain range was named Hindu Kush by the Afghan rulers.
Source: Hindu Tolerance.. Over The Ages
Jai Hind
Why Did the British Leave In Such Great Hurry in August 1947?
It is commonly believed that it was the Congress
Party through its various movements like the Quit India Movement of 1942 that brought
freedom to India. This fails to explain the fact that the British granted
independence only in 1947 while the Quit India Movement had collapsed by the
end of 1942. The question that naturally arises is- why did the British leave
in such great hurry in August 1947? The answer was provided by Prime Minister
Clement Attlee, the man who made the decision to grant independence to India.
When B.P. Chakravarti was acting as Governor of
West Bengal, Lord Attlee visited India and stayed as his guest for three days
at the Raj Bhavan. Chakravarti asked Attlee about the real grounds for granting
independence to India. Specifically, his question was, when the Quit India
movement lay in ruins years before 1947, where was the need for the British to
leave in such a hurry. Attlee’s response is most illuminating and important for
history.
Here is what Attlee told him: In reply Attlee cited
several reasons, the most important were the activities of Netaji Subash
Chandra Bose which weakened the very foundation of the attachment of the Indian
land and naval forces to the British Government. Towards the end, I asked Lord Attlee
about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by
Gandhi’s activities. On hearing this question Attlee’s lips widened in a smile
of disdain and he uttered, slowly, putting emphasis on each single letter – “mi-ni-mal.”
(Emphasis added.)
The crucial point to note is that thanks to Subash
Chandra Bose’s activities, the Indian Armed Forces began to see themselves as defenders
of India rather than of the British Empire. This, more than anything else, was
what led to India’s freedom. This is also the reason why the British Empire
disappeared from the face of the earth within an astonishingly short space of
twenty years.
Indian soldiers, who were the main prop of the
Empire, were no longer willing to fight for the British. What influenced the
British decision was mutiny of the Indian Navy following the INA trials in
1946. While the British wanted to try Subash Chandra Bose’s INA as traitors,
Indian soldiers saw them as nationalists and patriots. This scared the British.
They decided to get out in a hurry.
(Attlee repeated his argument on at least two other
occasions, including once in the House of Commons. During a debate in the House
of Commons, he told Churchill that he would agree to the latter’s suggestion of
holding on to India if he could guarantee the loyalty of the Indian armed
forces. Churchill had no reply. The Labour Prime Minister was as much an
imperialist as Churchill, but more pragmatic, prepared to see the writing on
the wall.)
This will come as a shock to most Indians brought
up to believe that the Congress movement driven by the ‘spiritual force’ of Mahatma
Gandhi forced the British to leave India. But both evidence and the logic of
history are against this beautiful but childish fantasy. It was the fear of
mutiny by the Indian armed forces – and not any ‘spiritual force’ – that forced
the issue of freedom.
The British saw that the sooner they left the
better for themselves, for, at the end of the war, India had some three million
men under arms. One would have to be extraordinarily dense – which the British
were not – to fail to see the writing on the wall. So, as the great historian
R.C. Majumdar wrote, Subash Bose with his INA campaigns probably contributed
more to Indian independence than Gandhi, Nehru and their movements. The result
of Subash Chandra Bose’s activities was the rise of the nationalist spirit in
the Indian Armed Forces. This is the reason why Nehru, after he became Prime
Minister, did everything possible to turn Bose into a non-person. He wanted no
rivals. This brings us to Mahatma Gandhi and his ill-fated Nonviolent
Non-Cooperation Movement. Most Indians have been made to believe that it was
the first of Gandhi’s movements for India’s freedom. This is completely false.
The Non-Cooperation Movement was for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey as
the Caliph. This was known as the Khilafat Movement, launched by Indian Muslims,
led by Maulanas Mohamad Ali and Shaukat Ali. In fact, Gandhi postponed Tilak’s
Swaraj Resolution by nearly ten years in order to join the Khilafat. (Lokamanya
Tilak had died in 1920 and Gandhi and the Ali Brothers launched the Khilafat in
1921.
Gandhi even diverted a substantial part of the
Tilak Swaraj Fund to the Khilafat. Indian history books omit the fact that the
sole purpose of the Non-Cooperation Movement was the restoration of the Sultan
of Turkey.
Party through its various movements like the Quit India Movement of 1942 that brought
freedom to India. This fails to explain the fact that the British granted
independence only in 1947 while the Quit India Movement had collapsed by the
end of 1942. The question that naturally arises is- why did the British leave
in such great hurry in August 1947? The answer was provided by Prime Minister
Clement Attlee, the man who made the decision to grant independence to India.
When B.P. Chakravarti was acting as Governor of
West Bengal, Lord Attlee visited India and stayed as his guest for three days
at the Raj Bhavan. Chakravarti asked Attlee about the real grounds for granting
independence to India. Specifically, his question was, when the Quit India
movement lay in ruins years before 1947, where was the need for the British to
leave in such a hurry. Attlee’s response is most illuminating and important for
history.
Here is what Attlee told him: In reply Attlee cited
several reasons, the most important were the activities of Netaji Subash
Chandra Bose which weakened the very foundation of the attachment of the Indian
land and naval forces to the British Government. Towards the end, I asked Lord Attlee
about the extent to which the British decision to quit India was influenced by
Gandhi’s activities. On hearing this question Attlee’s lips widened in a smile
of disdain and he uttered, slowly, putting emphasis on each single letter – “mi-ni-mal.”
(Emphasis added.)
The crucial point to note is that thanks to Subash
Chandra Bose’s activities, the Indian Armed Forces began to see themselves as defenders
of India rather than of the British Empire. This, more than anything else, was
what led to India’s freedom. This is also the reason why the British Empire
disappeared from the face of the earth within an astonishingly short space of
twenty years.
Indian soldiers, who were the main prop of the
Empire, were no longer willing to fight for the British. What influenced the
British decision was mutiny of the Indian Navy following the INA trials in
1946. While the British wanted to try Subash Chandra Bose’s INA as traitors,
Indian soldiers saw them as nationalists and patriots. This scared the British.
They decided to get out in a hurry.
(Attlee repeated his argument on at least two other
occasions, including once in the House of Commons. During a debate in the House
of Commons, he told Churchill that he would agree to the latter’s suggestion of
holding on to India if he could guarantee the loyalty of the Indian armed
forces. Churchill had no reply. The Labour Prime Minister was as much an
imperialist as Churchill, but more pragmatic, prepared to see the writing on
the wall.)
This will come as a shock to most Indians brought
up to believe that the Congress movement driven by the ‘spiritual force’ of Mahatma
Gandhi forced the British to leave India. But both evidence and the logic of
history are against this beautiful but childish fantasy. It was the fear of
mutiny by the Indian armed forces – and not any ‘spiritual force’ – that forced
the issue of freedom.
The British saw that the sooner they left the
better for themselves, for, at the end of the war, India had some three million
men under arms. One would have to be extraordinarily dense – which the British
were not – to fail to see the writing on the wall. So, as the great historian
R.C. Majumdar wrote, Subash Bose with his INA campaigns probably contributed
more to Indian independence than Gandhi, Nehru and their movements. The result
of Subash Chandra Bose’s activities was the rise of the nationalist spirit in
the Indian Armed Forces. This is the reason why Nehru, after he became Prime
Minister, did everything possible to turn Bose into a non-person. He wanted no
rivals. This brings us to Mahatma Gandhi and his ill-fated Nonviolent
Non-Cooperation Movement. Most Indians have been made to believe that it was
the first of Gandhi’s movements for India’s freedom. This is completely false.
The Non-Cooperation Movement was for the restoration of the Sultan of Turkey as
the Caliph. This was known as the Khilafat Movement, launched by Indian Muslims,
led by Maulanas Mohamad Ali and Shaukat Ali. In fact, Gandhi postponed Tilak’s
Swaraj Resolution by nearly ten years in order to join the Khilafat. (Lokamanya
Tilak had died in 1920 and Gandhi and the Ali Brothers launched the Khilafat in
1921.
Gandhi even diverted a substantial part of the
Tilak Swaraj Fund to the Khilafat. Indian history books omit the fact that the
sole purpose of the Non-Cooperation Movement was the restoration of the Sultan
of Turkey.
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Fake Gandhians
Indira Priyadarshini perpetuated immorality in the Nehru dynasty. Intellectual Indira was admitted in Oxford University but driven out from there for non-performance. She was then admitted to Shantiniketan University but, Guru Dev Rabindranath Tagore chased her out for bad conduct.
After driven out of Shantiniketan, Indira became lonely as father was busy with politics and mother was dieing of tuberculosis in Switzerland. Playing with her loneliness, Feroze Khan, son of a grocer named Nawab Khan who supplied wines etc to Motilal Nehru’s household in Allahabad, was able to draw close to her. The then Governor of Maharashtra, Dr. Shriprakash warned Nehru, that Indira was having an illicit relation with Feroze Khan. Feroze Khan was then in England and he was quite sympathetic to Indira. Soon enough she changed her religion, became a Muslim woman and married Feroze Khan in a London mosque. Indira Priyadarshini Nehru changed her name to Maimuna Begum. Her mother Kamala Nehru was totally against that marriage. Nehru was not happy as conversion to Muslim will jeopardize her prospect of becoming Prime Minister.
So, Nehru asked the young man Feroze Khan to change his surname from Khan to Gandhi. It had nothing to do with change of religion from Islam to Hinduism. It was just a case of a change of name by an affidavit. And so Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi, though it is an inconsistent name like Bismillah Sarma. Both changed their names to fool the public of India. When they returned to India, a mock vedic marriage was instituted for public consumption. Thus, Indira and her descendants got the fancy name Gandhi. Both Nehru and Gandhi are fancy names. As a chameleon changes its colour, this dynasty have been changing its name to hide its real identity.
Indira Gandhi had two sons namely Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. Sanjay was originally named as Sanjiv that rhymed with Rajiv, his elder brother's name. Sanjiv was arrested by the British police for a car theft in the UK and his passport was seized. On Indira Gandhi’s direction, the then Indian Ambassador to UK, Krishna Menon misusing his power, changed his name to Sanjay and procured a new passport. Thus Sanjiv Gandhi came to be known as Sanjay Gandhi.
It is a known fact that after Rajiv's birth, Indira Gandhi and Feroze Gandhi lived separately, but they were not divorced. The book “The Nehru Dynasty” (ISBN 10: 8186092005 ) by K. N. Rao states that the second son of Indira (or Mrs. Feroze Khan) known as Sanjay Gandhi was not the son of Feroze Gandhi. He was the son of another Muslim gentleman named Mohammad Yunus.
Interestingly Sanjay Gandhi's marriage with the Sikh girl Menaka took place in Mohammad Yunus’ house in New Delhi. Apparently Yunus was unhappy with the marriage as he wanted to get him married with a Muslim girl of his choice. It was Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay Gandhi died in plane crash. In Yunus’ book, “Persons, Passions & Politics” (ISBN-10: 0706910176) one can discover that baby Sanjay was circumcised following Islamic custom.
It is a fact that Sanjay Gandhi used to constantly blackmail his mother Indira Gandhi, with the secret of who his real father is. Sanjay exercised a deep emotional control over his mother, which he often misused. Indira Gandhi chose to ignore his misdeeds and he was indirectly controlling the Government.
When the news of Sanjay Gandhi's death reached Indira Gandhi, her first question was “Where are his keys and his wrist watch?”. Some deep secrets about the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty seems to be hidden in those objects.The plane accident was also mysterious. It was a new plane that nosedive to a crash and yet the plane did not explode upon impact. It happens when there is no fuel. But the flight register shows that the fuel tank was made full before take-off. Indira Gandhi using undue influence of PM’s office prohibited any inquiry from taking place. So, who is the suspect?
The book “The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi” (ISBN: 9780007259304) by Katherine Frank sheds light on some of Indira Gandhi’s other love affairs. It is written that Indira’s first love was with her German teacher at Shantiniketan. Later she had affair with M. O. Mathai (father’s secretary), then Dhirendra Brahmachari (her yoga teacher) and at last with Dinesh Singh (Foreign Minister).
Former Foreign Minister K Natwar Singh made an interesting revelation about Indira Gandhi's affinity to the Mughals in his book “Profile and Letters” (ISBN: 8129102358). It states that- In 1968 Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India went on an official visit to Afghanistan. Natwar Sing accompanied her as an IFS officer in duty. After having completed the day's long engagements, Indira Gandhi wanted to go out for a ride in the evening. After going a long distance in the car, Indira Gandhi wanted to visit Babur's burial place, though this was not included in the itinerary. The Afghan security officials tried to dissuade her, but she was adamant. In the end she went to that burial place. It was a deserted place. She went before Babur's grave, stood there for a few minutes with head bent down in reverence. Natwar Singh stood behind her. When Indira had finished her prayers, she turned back and told Singh “Today we have had our brush with history.” Worth to mention that Babur was the founder of Mughal rule in India, from which the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have descended.
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It is difficult to count how many institutes of higher education are named after Rajiv Gandhi but, Rajiv Gandhi himself was a person of low calibre. From 1962 to 1965, he was enrolled for a Mechanical Engineering course at Trinity College, Cambridge. But, he left Cambridge without a degree because, he could not pass exams. Next year in 1966, he joined Imperial College, London but, again left it without a degree.
K. N. Rao in the above said book alleges that Rajiv Gandhi became a Catholic to marry Sania Maino. Rajiv became Roberto. His son's name is Raul and daughter's name is Bianca. Quite cleverly the same names are presented to the people of India as Rahul and Priyanka.
In personal conduct Rajiv was very much a Mughal. On 15th August 1988 he thundered from the ramparts of the Red Fort: “Our endeavor should be to take the country to heights to which it belonged about 250-300 years ago. It was then the reign of Aurangzeb, the ‘jeziya’ master and number one temple destroyer.”
The press conference that Rajiv Gandhi gave in London after taking over as prime minister of India was very informative. In this press conference, Rajiv boasted that he is not a Hindu but a Parsi. Feroze Khan’s father and Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Muslim gentleman from the Junagadh area of Gujarat. This Muslim grocer by the name of Nawab Khan had married a Parsi woman after converting her to Islam. This is the source where from the myth of Rajiv being a Parsi was derived. Mind that he had no Parsi ancestor at all. His paternal grandmother had turned Muslim after having abandoned the Parsi religion to marry Nawab Khan. Surprisingly, Parsi Rajiv Gandhi was cremated as per Vedic rites in full view of Indian public.
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Dr. Subramanian Swamy writes that Sonia Gandhi’s name was Antonia Maino. Her father was a mason. He was an activist of the notorious fascist regime of Italy and he served five years imprisonment in Russia. Sonia Gandhi have not studied beyond high school. She learnt some English from a English teaching shop named Lennox School at the Cambridge University campus. From this fact she boasts of having studied at the prestigious Cambridge University. After learning some English, she was a waitress at a restaurant in Cambridge town.
Sonia Gandhi had intense friendship with Madhavrao Scindia in the UK, which continued even after her marriage. One night at 2 AM in 1982, Madhavrao Scindia and Sonia Gandhi were caught alone together when their car met an accident near IIT Delhi main gate.
When Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were Prime Ministers, PM’s security used to go to New Delhi and Chennai international airports to send crates of Indian treasures like temple sculptures, antiques, paintings etc to Rome. Arjun Singh as CM and later as Union Minister in charge of Culture used to organize the plunder. Unchecked by customs, they were transported to Italy to be sold in two shops named Etnica & Ganpati, owned by Sonia Gandhi’s sister Alessandra Maino Vinci.
Indira Gandhi died not because her heart or brain were pierced by bullets, but she died of loss of blood. After Indira Gandhi was fired upon, Sonia Gandhi strangely insisted that bleeding Indira Gandhi should be taken to Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, in opposite direction to AIIMS which had a contingency protocol to precisely deal with such events. After reaching Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Sonia Gandhi changed her mind and demand that Indira Gandhi should be taken to AIIMS, thus wasting 24 valuable minutes. It is doubtful whether it was immaturity of Sonia Gandhi or a trick to speedily bring her husband to power.
Rajesh Pilot and Madhav Rao Scindia were strong contenders to the Prime Minister’s post and they were road blocks in Sonia Gandhi’s way to power. Both of them died in mysterious accidents.
There are circumstantial evidences pointing to the prima facie possibility that the Maino family have contracted LTTE to kill Rajiv Gandhi. Nowadays, Sonia Gandhi is quite unabashed in having political alliance with those like MDMK, PMK and DMK who praise Rajiv Gandhi’s killers. No Indian widow would ever do that. Such circumstances are many, and raise a doubt. An investigation into Sonia’s involvement in Rajiv’s assassination is necessary. You may read Dr. Subramanian Swamy’s book “Assassination Of Rajiv Gandhi — Unasked Questions and Unanswered Queries” (ISBN : 81-220-0591-8). It contains indications of such conspiracy.
~*~*~*~*~*~
In 1992, Sonia Gandhi revived her citizenship of Italy under Article 17 of the Italian Citizenship Law. Under Italian law, Rahul and Priyanka are Italian citizens because Sonia was an Italian citizen when she gave birth to them. Rahul Gandhi’s Italian is better than his Hindi. Rahul Gandhi is an Italian citizen is relevant from the fact that on 27th September 2001 he was detained by the FBI at Boston airport, USA for traveling on an Italian passport. If a law is made in India that important posts like that of President and Prime Minister should not be held by a person of foreign origin, then Rahul Gandhi automatically disqualifies to contend for the post of Prime Minister.
~*~*~*~*~*~
After finishing school education, Rahul Gandhi got admission at the St. Stephens College in New Delhi, not on merit basis but on sports quota of rifle shooting. After a brief stay there in 1989-90, he did his BA from Rollins College, Florida in 1994. Just for doing BA one need not go to the US. The very next year, in 1995 he got M.Phil. degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. The genuineness of this degree is questioned as he has done M.Phil. without doing MA. Amaratya Sen’s helping hand is thought to be behind. Many of you might have seen the famous movie “Munna Bhai MBBS”.
In 2008 Rahul Gandhi was prevented from using an auditorium of the Chandra Shekhar Azad University in Kanpur for a students’ rally. Subsequently, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, V.K. Suri, was ousted by the UP Governor. During 26/11 when the whole country was tense about how to tackle the Mumbai terror, Rahul Gandhi was lavishly partying with his friends till 5 AM. Rahul Gandhi advises austerity for all Congress members. He says it is the duty of all politicians to be austere. On the other hand he has a ministerial bungalow with a fully equipped gym. He is a regular member of at least two of the Delhi’s poshest gyms, one of which is 5-star rated. Rahul Gandhi’s trip to Chennai in 2009 to campaign for austerity cost the party more than Rs 1 Crore. Such inconsistencies show that initiatives taken by Rahul Gandhi are not his own but, workout of his party men only.
During the 2007 election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi said that “if anyone from the Nehru-Gandhi family had been active in politics then, the Babri Masjid would not have fallen”. It doubtlessly shows his Mohammedan affiliation as a loyalty to his ancestors. On Dec 31, 2004, John M. Itty, a retired college professor in Alappuzha district of Kerala, contended that action should be taken against Rahul Gandhi and his girlfriend Juvenitta alias Veronica for staying together for three days at a resort in Kerela. It is a criminal offense under Immoral Trafficking Act as they are not married. Anyway, one more foreigner daughter-in-law is waiting to rule the tolerant Indians.
The Swiss magazine Schweizer Illustrierte’s 11th November 1991 issue revealed that Rahul Gandhi was the beneficiary of accounts worth US $2 billion controlled by his mother Sonia Gandhi. A report from the Swiss Banking Association in 2006 revealed that the combined deposits of Indian citizens are far greater than any other nation, a total of US $1.4 trillion, a figure exceeding the GDP of India. This dynasty rules greater than half of India. Ignoring the center, out of 28 states and 7 union territories, more than half of them have Congress government at any point of time. Upto Rajiv Gandhi there was Mughal rule in India, with Sonia Gandhi, the Rome rule on India have started.
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The objective behind writing this article is to acquaint the citizens of India with their national leaders and show how a dynasty has misused the democracy of this country. Several prestigious national assets and schemes are named after these lose-character people to immortalize them. Many other shocking facts are not presented in this article because of lack of supporting evidence.
After driven out of Shantiniketan, Indira became lonely as father was busy with politics and mother was dieing of tuberculosis in Switzerland. Playing with her loneliness, Feroze Khan, son of a grocer named Nawab Khan who supplied wines etc to Motilal Nehru’s household in Allahabad, was able to draw close to her. The then Governor of Maharashtra, Dr. Shriprakash warned Nehru, that Indira was having an illicit relation with Feroze Khan. Feroze Khan was then in England and he was quite sympathetic to Indira. Soon enough she changed her religion, became a Muslim woman and married Feroze Khan in a London mosque. Indira Priyadarshini Nehru changed her name to Maimuna Begum. Her mother Kamala Nehru was totally against that marriage. Nehru was not happy as conversion to Muslim will jeopardize her prospect of becoming Prime Minister.
So, Nehru asked the young man Feroze Khan to change his surname from Khan to Gandhi. It had nothing to do with change of religion from Islam to Hinduism. It was just a case of a change of name by an affidavit. And so Feroze Khan became Feroze Gandhi, though it is an inconsistent name like Bismillah Sarma. Both changed their names to fool the public of India. When they returned to India, a mock vedic marriage was instituted for public consumption. Thus, Indira and her descendants got the fancy name Gandhi. Both Nehru and Gandhi are fancy names. As a chameleon changes its colour, this dynasty have been changing its name to hide its real identity.
Indira Gandhi had two sons namely Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi. Sanjay was originally named as Sanjiv that rhymed with Rajiv, his elder brother's name. Sanjiv was arrested by the British police for a car theft in the UK and his passport was seized. On Indira Gandhi’s direction, the then Indian Ambassador to UK, Krishna Menon misusing his power, changed his name to Sanjay and procured a new passport. Thus Sanjiv Gandhi came to be known as Sanjay Gandhi.
It is a known fact that after Rajiv's birth, Indira Gandhi and Feroze Gandhi lived separately, but they were not divorced. The book “The Nehru Dynasty” (ISBN 10: 8186092005 ) by K. N. Rao states that the second son of Indira (or Mrs. Feroze Khan) known as Sanjay Gandhi was not the son of Feroze Gandhi. He was the son of another Muslim gentleman named Mohammad Yunus.
Interestingly Sanjay Gandhi's marriage with the Sikh girl Menaka took place in Mohammad Yunus’ house in New Delhi. Apparently Yunus was unhappy with the marriage as he wanted to get him married with a Muslim girl of his choice. It was Mohammad Yunus who cried the most when Sanjay Gandhi died in plane crash. In Yunus’ book, “Persons, Passions & Politics” (ISBN-10: 0706910176) one can discover that baby Sanjay was circumcised following Islamic custom.
It is a fact that Sanjay Gandhi used to constantly blackmail his mother Indira Gandhi, with the secret of who his real father is. Sanjay exercised a deep emotional control over his mother, which he often misused. Indira Gandhi chose to ignore his misdeeds and he was indirectly controlling the Government.
When the news of Sanjay Gandhi's death reached Indira Gandhi, her first question was “Where are his keys and his wrist watch?”. Some deep secrets about the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty seems to be hidden in those objects.The plane accident was also mysterious. It was a new plane that nosedive to a crash and yet the plane did not explode upon impact. It happens when there is no fuel. But the flight register shows that the fuel tank was made full before take-off. Indira Gandhi using undue influence of PM’s office prohibited any inquiry from taking place. So, who is the suspect?
The book “The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi” (ISBN: 9780007259304) by Katherine Frank sheds light on some of Indira Gandhi’s other love affairs. It is written that Indira’s first love was with her German teacher at Shantiniketan. Later she had affair with M. O. Mathai (father’s secretary), then Dhirendra Brahmachari (her yoga teacher) and at last with Dinesh Singh (Foreign Minister).
Former Foreign Minister K Natwar Singh made an interesting revelation about Indira Gandhi's affinity to the Mughals in his book “Profile and Letters” (ISBN: 8129102358). It states that- In 1968 Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister of India went on an official visit to Afghanistan. Natwar Sing accompanied her as an IFS officer in duty. After having completed the day's long engagements, Indira Gandhi wanted to go out for a ride in the evening. After going a long distance in the car, Indira Gandhi wanted to visit Babur's burial place, though this was not included in the itinerary. The Afghan security officials tried to dissuade her, but she was adamant. In the end she went to that burial place. It was a deserted place. She went before Babur's grave, stood there for a few minutes with head bent down in reverence. Natwar Singh stood behind her. When Indira had finished her prayers, she turned back and told Singh “Today we have had our brush with history.” Worth to mention that Babur was the founder of Mughal rule in India, from which the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have descended.
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It is difficult to count how many institutes of higher education are named after Rajiv Gandhi but, Rajiv Gandhi himself was a person of low calibre. From 1962 to 1965, he was enrolled for a Mechanical Engineering course at Trinity College, Cambridge. But, he left Cambridge without a degree because, he could not pass exams. Next year in 1966, he joined Imperial College, London but, again left it without a degree.
K. N. Rao in the above said book alleges that Rajiv Gandhi became a Catholic to marry Sania Maino. Rajiv became Roberto. His son's name is Raul and daughter's name is Bianca. Quite cleverly the same names are presented to the people of India as Rahul and Priyanka.
In personal conduct Rajiv was very much a Mughal. On 15th August 1988 he thundered from the ramparts of the Red Fort: “Our endeavor should be to take the country to heights to which it belonged about 250-300 years ago. It was then the reign of Aurangzeb, the ‘jeziya’ master and number one temple destroyer.”
The press conference that Rajiv Gandhi gave in London after taking over as prime minister of India was very informative. In this press conference, Rajiv boasted that he is not a Hindu but a Parsi. Feroze Khan’s father and Rajiv Gandhi's paternal grandfather was a Muslim gentleman from the Junagadh area of Gujarat. This Muslim grocer by the name of Nawab Khan had married a Parsi woman after converting her to Islam. This is the source where from the myth of Rajiv being a Parsi was derived. Mind that he had no Parsi ancestor at all. His paternal grandmother had turned Muslim after having abandoned the Parsi religion to marry Nawab Khan. Surprisingly, Parsi Rajiv Gandhi was cremated as per Vedic rites in full view of Indian public.
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Dr. Subramanian Swamy writes that Sonia Gandhi’s name was Antonia Maino. Her father was a mason. He was an activist of the notorious fascist regime of Italy and he served five years imprisonment in Russia. Sonia Gandhi have not studied beyond high school. She learnt some English from a English teaching shop named Lennox School at the Cambridge University campus. From this fact she boasts of having studied at the prestigious Cambridge University. After learning some English, she was a waitress at a restaurant in Cambridge town.
Sonia Gandhi had intense friendship with Madhavrao Scindia in the UK, which continued even after her marriage. One night at 2 AM in 1982, Madhavrao Scindia and Sonia Gandhi were caught alone together when their car met an accident near IIT Delhi main gate.
When Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were Prime Ministers, PM’s security used to go to New Delhi and Chennai international airports to send crates of Indian treasures like temple sculptures, antiques, paintings etc to Rome. Arjun Singh as CM and later as Union Minister in charge of Culture used to organize the plunder. Unchecked by customs, they were transported to Italy to be sold in two shops named Etnica & Ganpati, owned by Sonia Gandhi’s sister Alessandra Maino Vinci.
Indira Gandhi died not because her heart or brain were pierced by bullets, but she died of loss of blood. After Indira Gandhi was fired upon, Sonia Gandhi strangely insisted that bleeding Indira Gandhi should be taken to Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, in opposite direction to AIIMS which had a contingency protocol to precisely deal with such events. After reaching Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, Sonia Gandhi changed her mind and demand that Indira Gandhi should be taken to AIIMS, thus wasting 24 valuable minutes. It is doubtful whether it was immaturity of Sonia Gandhi or a trick to speedily bring her husband to power.
Rajesh Pilot and Madhav Rao Scindia were strong contenders to the Prime Minister’s post and they were road blocks in Sonia Gandhi’s way to power. Both of them died in mysterious accidents.
There are circumstantial evidences pointing to the prima facie possibility that the Maino family have contracted LTTE to kill Rajiv Gandhi. Nowadays, Sonia Gandhi is quite unabashed in having political alliance with those like MDMK, PMK and DMK who praise Rajiv Gandhi’s killers. No Indian widow would ever do that. Such circumstances are many, and raise a doubt. An investigation into Sonia’s involvement in Rajiv’s assassination is necessary. You may read Dr. Subramanian Swamy’s book “Assassination Of Rajiv Gandhi — Unasked Questions and Unanswered Queries” (ISBN : 81-220-0591-8). It contains indications of such conspiracy.
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In 1992, Sonia Gandhi revived her citizenship of Italy under Article 17 of the Italian Citizenship Law. Under Italian law, Rahul and Priyanka are Italian citizens because Sonia was an Italian citizen when she gave birth to them. Rahul Gandhi’s Italian is better than his Hindi. Rahul Gandhi is an Italian citizen is relevant from the fact that on 27th September 2001 he was detained by the FBI at Boston airport, USA for traveling on an Italian passport. If a law is made in India that important posts like that of President and Prime Minister should not be held by a person of foreign origin, then Rahul Gandhi automatically disqualifies to contend for the post of Prime Minister.
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After finishing school education, Rahul Gandhi got admission at the St. Stephens College in New Delhi, not on merit basis but on sports quota of rifle shooting. After a brief stay there in 1989-90, he did his BA from Rollins College, Florida in 1994. Just for doing BA one need not go to the US. The very next year, in 1995 he got M.Phil. degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. The genuineness of this degree is questioned as he has done M.Phil. without doing MA. Amaratya Sen’s helping hand is thought to be behind. Many of you might have seen the famous movie “Munna Bhai MBBS”.
In 2008 Rahul Gandhi was prevented from using an auditorium of the Chandra Shekhar Azad University in Kanpur for a students’ rally. Subsequently, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, V.K. Suri, was ousted by the UP Governor. During 26/11 when the whole country was tense about how to tackle the Mumbai terror, Rahul Gandhi was lavishly partying with his friends till 5 AM. Rahul Gandhi advises austerity for all Congress members. He says it is the duty of all politicians to be austere. On the other hand he has a ministerial bungalow with a fully equipped gym. He is a regular member of at least two of the Delhi’s poshest gyms, one of which is 5-star rated. Rahul Gandhi’s trip to Chennai in 2009 to campaign for austerity cost the party more than Rs 1 Crore. Such inconsistencies show that initiatives taken by Rahul Gandhi are not his own but, workout of his party men only.
During the 2007 election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, Rahul Gandhi said that “if anyone from the Nehru-Gandhi family had been active in politics then, the Babri Masjid would not have fallen”. It doubtlessly shows his Mohammedan affiliation as a loyalty to his ancestors. On Dec 31, 2004, John M. Itty, a retired college professor in Alappuzha district of Kerala, contended that action should be taken against Rahul Gandhi and his girlfriend Juvenitta alias Veronica for staying together for three days at a resort in Kerela. It is a criminal offense under Immoral Trafficking Act as they are not married. Anyway, one more foreigner daughter-in-law is waiting to rule the tolerant Indians.
The Swiss magazine Schweizer Illustrierte’s 11th November 1991 issue revealed that Rahul Gandhi was the beneficiary of accounts worth US $2 billion controlled by his mother Sonia Gandhi. A report from the Swiss Banking Association in 2006 revealed that the combined deposits of Indian citizens are far greater than any other nation, a total of US $1.4 trillion, a figure exceeding the GDP of India. This dynasty rules greater than half of India. Ignoring the center, out of 28 states and 7 union territories, more than half of them have Congress government at any point of time. Upto Rajiv Gandhi there was Mughal rule in India, with Sonia Gandhi, the Rome rule on India have started.
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The objective behind writing this article is to acquaint the citizens of India with their national leaders and show how a dynasty has misused the democracy of this country. Several prestigious national assets and schemes are named after these lose-character people to immortalize them. Many other shocking facts are not presented in this article because of lack of supporting evidence.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
The Truth Behind Kandahar
Was it really an ‘abject surrender’ by the NDA Government?
There have been innumerable communal riots in India, nearly all of them in States ruled by the Congress at the time of the violence, yet everybody loves to pretend that blood was shed in the name of religion for the first time in Gujarat in 2002 and that the BJP Government headed by Mr Narendra Modi must bear the burden of the cross.
Similarly, nobody remembers the various incidents of Indian Airlines aircraft being hijacked when the Congress was in power at the Centre, the deals that were struck to rescue the hostages, and the compromises that were made at the expense of India’s dignity and honour. But everybody remembers the hijacking of IC 814 and nearly a decade after the incident, many people still hold the BJP-led NDA Government responsible for the ‘shameful’ denouement.
The Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi, designated IC 814, with 178 passengers and 11 crew members on board, was hijacked on Christmas eve, 1999, a short while after it took-off from Tribhuvan International Airport; by then, the aircraft had entered Indian airspace. Nine years later to the day, with an entire generation coming of age, it would be in order to recall some facts and place others on record.
In 1999 I was serving as an aide to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the PMO, and I still have vivid memories of the tumultuous week between Christmas eve and New Year’s eve. Mr Vajpayee had gone out of Delhi on an official tour; I had accompanied him along with other officials of the PMO. The hijacking of IC 814 occurred while we were returning to Delhi in one of the two Indian Air Force Boeings which, in those days, were used by the Prime Minister for travel within the country.
Curiously, the initial information about IC 814 being hijacked, of which the IAF was believed to have been aware, was not communicated to the pilot of the Prime Minister’s aircraft. As a result, Mr Vajpayee and his aides remained unaware of the hijacking till reaching Delhi. This caused some amount of controversy later.
It was not possible for anybody else to have contacted us while we were in midair. It’s strange but true that the Prime Minister of India would be incommunicado while on a flight because neither the ageing IAF Boeings nor the Air India Jumbos, used for official travel abroad, had satellite phone facilities.
By the time our aircraft landed in Delhi, it was around 7:00 pm, a full hour and 40 minutes since the hijacking of IC 814. After disembarking from the aircraft in the VIP bay of Palam Technical Area, we were surprised to find National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra waiting at the foot of the ladder. He led Mr Vajpayee aside and gave him the news. They got into the Prime Minister’s car and it sped out of the Technical Area. Some of us followed Mr. Vajpayee to Race Course Road, as was the normal routine.
On our way to the Prime Minister’s residence, colleagues in the PMO provided us with the basic details. The Kathmandu-Delhi flight had been commandeered by five hijackers (later identified as Ibrahim Athar, resident of Bahawalpur, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Gulshan Iqbal, resident of Karachi, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, resident of Defence Area, Karachi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, resident of Akhtar Colony, Karachi, and Shakir, resident of Sukkur City) at 5:20 pm; there were 189 passengers and crew members on board; and that the aircraft was heading towards Lahore.
At the Prime Minister’s residence, senior Ministers and Secretaries had already been summoned for an emergency meeting. Mr Mishra left for the crisis control room that had been set up at Rajiv Bhavan. In between meetings, Mr Vajpayee instructed his personal staff to cancel all celebrations planned for December 25, his birthday. The Cabinet Committee on Security met late into the night as our long vigil began.
Meanwhile, we were informed that the pilot of IC 814 had been denied permission to land at Lahore airport. With fuel running low, he was heading for Amritsar. Officials at Raja Sansi Airport were immediately alerted and told to prevent the plane from taking off after it had landed there.
The hijacked plane landed at Amritsar and remained parked on the tarmac for nearly 45 minutes. The hijackers demanded that the aircraft be refuelled. The airport officials ran around like so many headless chickens, totally clueless about what was to be done in a crisis situation.
Desperate calls were made to the officials at Raja Sansi Airport to somehow stall the refuelling and prevent the plane from taking off. The officials just failed to respond with alacrity. At one point, an exasperated Jaswant Singh, if memory serves me right, grabbed the phone and pleaded with an official, “Just drive a heavy vehicle, a fuel truck or a road roller or whatever you have, onto the runway and park it there.” But all this was to no avail.
The National Security Guards, whose job it is to deal with hostage situations, were alerted immediately after news first came in of IC 814 being hijacked; they were reportedly asked to stand by for any emergency. The Home Ministry was again alerted when it became obvious that after being denied permission to land at Lahore, the pilot was heading towards Amritsar.
Yet, despite IC 814 remaining parked at Amritsar for three-quarters of an hour, the NSG commandos failed to reach the aircraft. There are two versions as to why the NSG didn’t show up: First, they were waiting for an aircraft to ferry them from Delhi to Amritsar; second, they were caught in a traffic jam between Manesar and Delhi airport. The real story was never known!
The hijackers, anticipating commando action, first stabbed a passenger, Rupin Katyal (he had gone to Kathmandu with his newly wedded wife for their honeymoon; had they not extended their stay by a couple of days, they wouldn’t have been on the ill-fated flight) to show that they meant business, and then forced the pilot to take off from Amritsar. With almost empty fuel tanks, the pilot had no other option but to make another attempt to land at Lahore airport. Once again he was denied permission and all the lights, including those on the runway, were switched off. He nonetheless went ahead and landed at Lahore airport, showing remarkable skill and courage.
Mr Jaswant Singh spoke to the Pakistani Foreign Minister and pleaded with him to prevent the aircraft from taking off again. But the Pakistanis would have nothing of it (they wanted to distance themselves from the hijacking so that they could claim later that there was no Pakistan connection) and wanted IC 814 off their soil and out of their airspace as soon as possible. So, they refuelled the aircraft after which the hijackers forced the pilot to head for Dubai.
At Dubai, too, officials were reluctant to allow the aircraft to land. It required all the persuasive skills of Mr Jaswant Singh and our then Ambassador to UAE, Mr KC Singh, to secure landing permission. There was some negotiation with the hijackers through UAE officials and they allowed 13 women and 11 children to disembark. Rupin Katyal had by then bled to death. His body was offloaded. His widow remained a hostage till the end.
On the morning of December 25, the aircraft left Dubai and headed towards Afghanistan. It landed at Kandahar Airport, which had one serviceable runway, a sort of ATC and a couple of shanties. The rest of the airport was in a shambles, without power and water supply, a trophy commemorating the Taliban’s rule.
On Christmas eve, after news of the hijacking broke, there was stunned all-round silence. But by noon on December 25, orchestrated protests outside the Prime Minister’s residence began, with women beating their chests and tearing their clothes. The crowd swelled by the hour as the day progressed.
Ms Brinda Karat came to commiserate with the relatives of the hostages who were camping outside the main gate of 7, Race Course Road. In fact, she became a regular visitor over the next few days. There was a steady clamour that the Government should pay any price to bring the hostages back home, safe and sound. This continued till December 30.
One evening, the Prime Minister asked his staff to let the families come in so that they could be told about the Government’s efforts to secure the hostages’ release. By then negotiations had begun and Mullah Omar had got into the act through his ‘Foreign Minister’, Muttavakil. The hijackers wanted 36 terrorists, held in various Indian jails, to be freed or else they would blow up the aircraft with the hostages.
No senior Minister in the CCS was willing to meet the families. Mr Jaswant Singh volunteered to do so. He asked me to accompany him to the canopy under which the families had gathered. Once there, we were literally mobbed. He tried to explain the situation but was shouted down.
“We want our relatives back. What difference does it make to us what you have to give the hijackers?” a man shouted. “We don’t care if you have to give away Kashmir,” a woman screamed and others took up the refrain, chanting: “Kashmir de do, kuchh bhi de do, hamare logon ko ghar wapas lao.” Another woman sobbed, “Mera beta… hai mera beta…” and made a great show of fainting of grief.
To his credit, Mr Jaswant Singh made bold to suggest that the Government had to keep the nation’s interest in mind, that we could not be seen to be giving in to the hijackers, or words to that effect, in chaste Hindi. That fetched him abuse and rebuke. “Bhaand me jaaye desh aur bhaand me jaaye desh ka hit. (To hell with the country and national interest),” many in the crowd shouted back. Stumped by the response, Mr Jaswant Singh could merely promise that the Government would do everything possible.
I do not remember the exact date, but sometime during the crisis, Mr Jaswant Singh was asked to hold a Press conference to brief the media. While the briefing was on at the Press Information Bureau hall in Shastri Bhavan, some families of the hostages barged in and started shouting slogans. They were led by one Sanjiv Chibber, who, I was later told, was a ‘noted surgeon’: He claimed six of his relatives were among the hostages.
Dr Chibber wanted all 36 terrorists named by the hijackers to be released immediately. He reminded everybody in the hall that in the past terrorists had been released from prison to secure the freedom of Ms Rubayya Sayeed, daughter of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, while he was Home Minister in VP Singh’s Government. “Why can’t you release the terrorists now when our relatives are being held hostage?” he demanded. And then we heard the familiar refrain: “Give away Kashmir, give them anything they want, we don’t give a damn.”
On another evening, there was a surprise visitor at the PMO: The widow of Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja, whose plane was shot down during the Kargil war. She insisted that she should be taken to meet the relatives of the hostages. At Race Course Road, she spoke to mediapersons and the hostages’ relatives, explaining why India must not be seen giving in to the hijackers, that it was a question of national honour, and gave her own example of fortitude in the face of adversity.
“She has become a widow, now she wants others to become widows. Who is she to lecture us? Yeh kahan se aayi?” someone shouted from the crowd. Others heckled her. The young widow stood her ground, displaying great dignity and courage. As the mood turned increasingly ugly, she had to be led away. Similar appeals were made by others who had lost their sons, husbands and fathers in the Kargil war that summer. Col Virendra Thapar, whose son Lt Vijayant Thapar was martyred in the war, made a fervent appeal for people to stand united against the hijackers. It fell on deaf ears.
The media made out that the overwhelming majority of Indians were with the relatives of the hostages and shared their view that no price was too big to secure the hostages’ freedom. The Congress kept on slyly insisting, “We are with the Government and will support whatever it does for a resolution of the crisis and to ensure the safety of the hostages. But the Government must explain its failure.” Harkishen Singh Surjeet and other Opposition politicians issued similar ambiguous statements.
By December 28, the Government’s negotiators had struck a deal with the hijackers: They would free the hostages in exchange of three dreaded terrorists — Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Sheikh — facing various charges of terrorism.
The CCS met frequently, several times a day, and discussed the entire process threadbare. The Home Minister, the Defence Minister and the Foreign Minister, apart from the National Security Adviser and the Prime Minister, were present at every meeting. The deal was further fine-tuned, the Home Ministry completed the necessary paper work, and two Indian Airlines aircraft were placed on standby to ferry the terrorists to Kandahar and fetch the hostages.
On December 31, the two aircraft left Delhi airport early in the morning. Mr Jaswant Singh was on board one of them. Did his ministerial colleagues know that he would travel to Kandahar? More important, was the Prime Minister aware of it? The answer is both yes and no.
Mr Jaswant Singh had mentioned his decision to go to Kandahar to personally oversee the release of hostages and to ensure there was no last-minute problem. He was honour-bound to do so, he is believed to have said, since he had promised the relatives of the hostages that no harm would come their way. It is possible that nobody thought he was serious about his plan. It is equally possible that others turned on him when the ‘popular mood’ and the Congress turned against the Government for its ‘abject surrender’.
On New Year’s eve, the hostages were flown back to Delhi. By New Year’s day, the Government was under attack for giving in to the hijackers’ demand! Since then, this ‘shameful surrender’ is held against the NDA and Mr Jaswant Singh is painted as the villain of the piece.
Could the Kandahar episode have ended any other way? Were an Indian aircraft to be hijacked again, would we respond any differently? Not really. As a nation we do not have the guts to stand up to terrorism. We cannot take hits and suffer casualties. We start counting our dead even before a battle has been won or lost. We make a great show of honouring those who die on the battlefield and lionise brave hearts of history, but we do not want our children to follow in their footsteps.
We are, if truth be told, a nation of cowards who don’t have the courage to admit their weakness but are happy to blame a well-meaning politician who, perhaps, takes his regimental motto of ‘Izzat aur Iqbal’ rather too seriously. End
Kandahar decision won’t have been easy: Chidambaram
NDTV Correspondent, Thursday, January 22, 2009
(New Delhi) Home Minister P Chidambaram said on Thursday that there is no set formula for dealing with terrorists.
When asked if India should have a policy not to negotiate with terrorists, he said that while this worked in principle, in reality, when the human element came into play, he was unsure of how he would deal with the crisis.
“I do not know how I would have reacted if 150 families came to my door and pleaded that their loved ones in that aircraft must be saved. It is easy to criticise but if one is in that position, it is a very difficult decision,” he said at the NDTV’s Indian of the Year Awards function in New Delhi on Wednesday night.
The NDA government’s decision to release dreaded terrorists in exchange for hostages in the Kandahar hijack 10 years ago had come under attack from several quarters but Home Minister P Chidambaram is “not sure” saying it is a “very difficult” decision.
The decision of the Vajpayee government to release three dreaded terrorists including Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in December, 1999 received a lot of flak from various political parties including the Congress, more so because the then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh accompanied them (terrorists) to Kandahar.
Azhar’s name has subsequently figured in the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament and the attack outside Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in Srinagar in the same month.
There have been innumerable communal riots in India, nearly all of them in States ruled by the Congress at the time of the violence, yet everybody loves to pretend that blood was shed in the name of religion for the first time in Gujarat in 2002 and that the BJP Government headed by Mr Narendra Modi must bear the burden of the cross.
Similarly, nobody remembers the various incidents of Indian Airlines aircraft being hijacked when the Congress was in power at the Centre, the deals that were struck to rescue the hostages, and the compromises that were made at the expense of India’s dignity and honour. But everybody remembers the hijacking of IC 814 and nearly a decade after the incident, many people still hold the BJP-led NDA Government responsible for the ‘shameful’ denouement.
The Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu to New Delhi, designated IC 814, with 178 passengers and 11 crew members on board, was hijacked on Christmas eve, 1999, a short while after it took-off from Tribhuvan International Airport; by then, the aircraft had entered Indian airspace. Nine years later to the day, with an entire generation coming of age, it would be in order to recall some facts and place others on record.
In 1999 I was serving as an aide to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the PMO, and I still have vivid memories of the tumultuous week between Christmas eve and New Year’s eve. Mr Vajpayee had gone out of Delhi on an official tour; I had accompanied him along with other officials of the PMO. The hijacking of IC 814 occurred while we were returning to Delhi in one of the two Indian Air Force Boeings which, in those days, were used by the Prime Minister for travel within the country.
Curiously, the initial information about IC 814 being hijacked, of which the IAF was believed to have been aware, was not communicated to the pilot of the Prime Minister’s aircraft. As a result, Mr Vajpayee and his aides remained unaware of the hijacking till reaching Delhi. This caused some amount of controversy later.
It was not possible for anybody else to have contacted us while we were in midair. It’s strange but true that the Prime Minister of India would be incommunicado while on a flight because neither the ageing IAF Boeings nor the Air India Jumbos, used for official travel abroad, had satellite phone facilities.
By the time our aircraft landed in Delhi, it was around 7:00 pm, a full hour and 40 minutes since the hijacking of IC 814. After disembarking from the aircraft in the VIP bay of Palam Technical Area, we were surprised to find National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra waiting at the foot of the ladder. He led Mr Vajpayee aside and gave him the news. They got into the Prime Minister’s car and it sped out of the Technical Area. Some of us followed Mr. Vajpayee to Race Course Road, as was the normal routine.
On our way to the Prime Minister’s residence, colleagues in the PMO provided us with the basic details. The Kathmandu-Delhi flight had been commandeered by five hijackers (later identified as Ibrahim Athar, resident of Bahawalpur, Shahid Akhtar Sayed, Gulshan Iqbal, resident of Karachi, Sunny Ahmed Qazi, resident of Defence Area, Karachi, Mistri Zahoor Ibrahim, resident of Akhtar Colony, Karachi, and Shakir, resident of Sukkur City) at 5:20 pm; there were 189 passengers and crew members on board; and that the aircraft was heading towards Lahore.
At the Prime Minister’s residence, senior Ministers and Secretaries had already been summoned for an emergency meeting. Mr Mishra left for the crisis control room that had been set up at Rajiv Bhavan. In between meetings, Mr Vajpayee instructed his personal staff to cancel all celebrations planned for December 25, his birthday. The Cabinet Committee on Security met late into the night as our long vigil began.
Meanwhile, we were informed that the pilot of IC 814 had been denied permission to land at Lahore airport. With fuel running low, he was heading for Amritsar. Officials at Raja Sansi Airport were immediately alerted and told to prevent the plane from taking off after it had landed there.
The hijacked plane landed at Amritsar and remained parked on the tarmac for nearly 45 minutes. The hijackers demanded that the aircraft be refuelled. The airport officials ran around like so many headless chickens, totally clueless about what was to be done in a crisis situation.
Desperate calls were made to the officials at Raja Sansi Airport to somehow stall the refuelling and prevent the plane from taking off. The officials just failed to respond with alacrity. At one point, an exasperated Jaswant Singh, if memory serves me right, grabbed the phone and pleaded with an official, “Just drive a heavy vehicle, a fuel truck or a road roller or whatever you have, onto the runway and park it there.” But all this was to no avail.
The National Security Guards, whose job it is to deal with hostage situations, were alerted immediately after news first came in of IC 814 being hijacked; they were reportedly asked to stand by for any emergency. The Home Ministry was again alerted when it became obvious that after being denied permission to land at Lahore, the pilot was heading towards Amritsar.
Yet, despite IC 814 remaining parked at Amritsar for three-quarters of an hour, the NSG commandos failed to reach the aircraft. There are two versions as to why the NSG didn’t show up: First, they were waiting for an aircraft to ferry them from Delhi to Amritsar; second, they were caught in a traffic jam between Manesar and Delhi airport. The real story was never known!
The hijackers, anticipating commando action, first stabbed a passenger, Rupin Katyal (he had gone to Kathmandu with his newly wedded wife for their honeymoon; had they not extended their stay by a couple of days, they wouldn’t have been on the ill-fated flight) to show that they meant business, and then forced the pilot to take off from Amritsar. With almost empty fuel tanks, the pilot had no other option but to make another attempt to land at Lahore airport. Once again he was denied permission and all the lights, including those on the runway, were switched off. He nonetheless went ahead and landed at Lahore airport, showing remarkable skill and courage.
Mr Jaswant Singh spoke to the Pakistani Foreign Minister and pleaded with him to prevent the aircraft from taking off again. But the Pakistanis would have nothing of it (they wanted to distance themselves from the hijacking so that they could claim later that there was no Pakistan connection) and wanted IC 814 off their soil and out of their airspace as soon as possible. So, they refuelled the aircraft after which the hijackers forced the pilot to head for Dubai.
At Dubai, too, officials were reluctant to allow the aircraft to land. It required all the persuasive skills of Mr Jaswant Singh and our then Ambassador to UAE, Mr KC Singh, to secure landing permission. There was some negotiation with the hijackers through UAE officials and they allowed 13 women and 11 children to disembark. Rupin Katyal had by then bled to death. His body was offloaded. His widow remained a hostage till the end.
On the morning of December 25, the aircraft left Dubai and headed towards Afghanistan. It landed at Kandahar Airport, which had one serviceable runway, a sort of ATC and a couple of shanties. The rest of the airport was in a shambles, without power and water supply, a trophy commemorating the Taliban’s rule.
On Christmas eve, after news of the hijacking broke, there was stunned all-round silence. But by noon on December 25, orchestrated protests outside the Prime Minister’s residence began, with women beating their chests and tearing their clothes. The crowd swelled by the hour as the day progressed.
Ms Brinda Karat came to commiserate with the relatives of the hostages who were camping outside the main gate of 7, Race Course Road. In fact, she became a regular visitor over the next few days. There was a steady clamour that the Government should pay any price to bring the hostages back home, safe and sound. This continued till December 30.
One evening, the Prime Minister asked his staff to let the families come in so that they could be told about the Government’s efforts to secure the hostages’ release. By then negotiations had begun and Mullah Omar had got into the act through his ‘Foreign Minister’, Muttavakil. The hijackers wanted 36 terrorists, held in various Indian jails, to be freed or else they would blow up the aircraft with the hostages.
No senior Minister in the CCS was willing to meet the families. Mr Jaswant Singh volunteered to do so. He asked me to accompany him to the canopy under which the families had gathered. Once there, we were literally mobbed. He tried to explain the situation but was shouted down.
“We want our relatives back. What difference does it make to us what you have to give the hijackers?” a man shouted. “We don’t care if you have to give away Kashmir,” a woman screamed and others took up the refrain, chanting: “Kashmir de do, kuchh bhi de do, hamare logon ko ghar wapas lao.” Another woman sobbed, “Mera beta… hai mera beta…” and made a great show of fainting of grief.
To his credit, Mr Jaswant Singh made bold to suggest that the Government had to keep the nation’s interest in mind, that we could not be seen to be giving in to the hijackers, or words to that effect, in chaste Hindi. That fetched him abuse and rebuke. “Bhaand me jaaye desh aur bhaand me jaaye desh ka hit. (To hell with the country and national interest),” many in the crowd shouted back. Stumped by the response, Mr Jaswant Singh could merely promise that the Government would do everything possible.
I do not remember the exact date, but sometime during the crisis, Mr Jaswant Singh was asked to hold a Press conference to brief the media. While the briefing was on at the Press Information Bureau hall in Shastri Bhavan, some families of the hostages barged in and started shouting slogans. They were led by one Sanjiv Chibber, who, I was later told, was a ‘noted surgeon’: He claimed six of his relatives were among the hostages.
Dr Chibber wanted all 36 terrorists named by the hijackers to be released immediately. He reminded everybody in the hall that in the past terrorists had been released from prison to secure the freedom of Ms Rubayya Sayeed, daughter of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, while he was Home Minister in VP Singh’s Government. “Why can’t you release the terrorists now when our relatives are being held hostage?” he demanded. And then we heard the familiar refrain: “Give away Kashmir, give them anything they want, we don’t give a damn.”
On another evening, there was a surprise visitor at the PMO: The widow of Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja, whose plane was shot down during the Kargil war. She insisted that she should be taken to meet the relatives of the hostages. At Race Course Road, she spoke to mediapersons and the hostages’ relatives, explaining why India must not be seen giving in to the hijackers, that it was a question of national honour, and gave her own example of fortitude in the face of adversity.
“She has become a widow, now she wants others to become widows. Who is she to lecture us? Yeh kahan se aayi?” someone shouted from the crowd. Others heckled her. The young widow stood her ground, displaying great dignity and courage. As the mood turned increasingly ugly, she had to be led away. Similar appeals were made by others who had lost their sons, husbands and fathers in the Kargil war that summer. Col Virendra Thapar, whose son Lt Vijayant Thapar was martyred in the war, made a fervent appeal for people to stand united against the hijackers. It fell on deaf ears.
The media made out that the overwhelming majority of Indians were with the relatives of the hostages and shared their view that no price was too big to secure the hostages’ freedom. The Congress kept on slyly insisting, “We are with the Government and will support whatever it does for a resolution of the crisis and to ensure the safety of the hostages. But the Government must explain its failure.” Harkishen Singh Surjeet and other Opposition politicians issued similar ambiguous statements.
By December 28, the Government’s negotiators had struck a deal with the hijackers: They would free the hostages in exchange of three dreaded terrorists — Maulana Masood Azhar, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Sheikh — facing various charges of terrorism.
The CCS met frequently, several times a day, and discussed the entire process threadbare. The Home Minister, the Defence Minister and the Foreign Minister, apart from the National Security Adviser and the Prime Minister, were present at every meeting. The deal was further fine-tuned, the Home Ministry completed the necessary paper work, and two Indian Airlines aircraft were placed on standby to ferry the terrorists to Kandahar and fetch the hostages.
On December 31, the two aircraft left Delhi airport early in the morning. Mr Jaswant Singh was on board one of them. Did his ministerial colleagues know that he would travel to Kandahar? More important, was the Prime Minister aware of it? The answer is both yes and no.
Mr Jaswant Singh had mentioned his decision to go to Kandahar to personally oversee the release of hostages and to ensure there was no last-minute problem. He was honour-bound to do so, he is believed to have said, since he had promised the relatives of the hostages that no harm would come their way. It is possible that nobody thought he was serious about his plan. It is equally possible that others turned on him when the ‘popular mood’ and the Congress turned against the Government for its ‘abject surrender’.
On New Year’s eve, the hostages were flown back to Delhi. By New Year’s day, the Government was under attack for giving in to the hijackers’ demand! Since then, this ‘shameful surrender’ is held against the NDA and Mr Jaswant Singh is painted as the villain of the piece.
Could the Kandahar episode have ended any other way? Were an Indian aircraft to be hijacked again, would we respond any differently? Not really. As a nation we do not have the guts to stand up to terrorism. We cannot take hits and suffer casualties. We start counting our dead even before a battle has been won or lost. We make a great show of honouring those who die on the battlefield and lionise brave hearts of history, but we do not want our children to follow in their footsteps.
We are, if truth be told, a nation of cowards who don’t have the courage to admit their weakness but are happy to blame a well-meaning politician who, perhaps, takes his regimental motto of ‘Izzat aur Iqbal’ rather too seriously. End
Kandahar decision won’t have been easy: Chidambaram
NDTV Correspondent, Thursday, January 22, 2009
(New Delhi) Home Minister P Chidambaram said on Thursday that there is no set formula for dealing with terrorists.
When asked if India should have a policy not to negotiate with terrorists, he said that while this worked in principle, in reality, when the human element came into play, he was unsure of how he would deal with the crisis.
“I do not know how I would have reacted if 150 families came to my door and pleaded that their loved ones in that aircraft must be saved. It is easy to criticise but if one is in that position, it is a very difficult decision,” he said at the NDTV’s Indian of the Year Awards function in New Delhi on Wednesday night.
The NDA government’s decision to release dreaded terrorists in exchange for hostages in the Kandahar hijack 10 years ago had come under attack from several quarters but Home Minister P Chidambaram is “not sure” saying it is a “very difficult” decision.
The decision of the Vajpayee government to release three dreaded terrorists including Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar in December, 1999 received a lot of flak from various political parties including the Congress, more so because the then external affairs minister Jaswant Singh accompanied them (terrorists) to Kandahar.
Azhar’s name has subsequently figured in the December 2001 terror attack on Parliament and the attack outside Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in Srinagar in the same month.
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