Excerpts from “The Purveyors of Slime”…

Below, some excerpts from a very well written article by Dr Vidyasagar titled, “Why are India’s Achievements So Little Known?”. Although slightly dated (Aug ’03), I still found it highly relevant to the conditions today. Amongst other things, it contains a brilliant and devastating critique of the way a police encounter was reported by two “respected” Indian journalists.

Please note that I have not used Italics to identify the excerpts as the article itself contains several Italics to emphasise particular points.

Excerpts follow:

“….we should ask: Why is it so easy to slander India and get away with it? My suggested answer is: Because one does not pay any price for doing so.

Let me elaborate. I mean that the Arundhati Roys, the Dilip D’Souzas and the Praful Bidwais of this world do not pay any penalty at all for purveying their own peculiar brand of venom directed against the Indian society and the Indian state. These people are purveyors of what I call the Self-Loathing Indian MEntality, or SLIME for short. ….Indeed, if one tries counter such negativists through any sort of rational argument, they deflect the argument to how “brave” they are to bash India while still living in India. In short, India is a very soft target, and Hindus are a soft target.

There is no point saying that what such people say is “true”. In a huge and heterogenous society like India, one instance of almost every kind of deviant behaviour can be found, especially if one goes looking for it. The issue at hand is one of perspective…”

“…We make a very basic mistake if we delude ourselves into thinking that the purveyors of SLIME are well-meaning but somewhat misguided critics of India, and an even more serious mistake if we believe that they are well-wishers of India, however much we might disagree with their conclusions. We must face the truth, namely: These people are enemies of modern India. If Pakistan is the enemy without, they are the enemy within.

Let me talk first about our leftists. Let us remember that in 1942, when the Mahatma launched the “Quit India” movement, the Indian leftists collaborated with the British, on the premise that Hitler was a greater danger to India than the British. During the freedom struggle, they treated Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji as their enemies. When China invaded India in 1962, they found fault with the Indian position, and sided with the invaders. To this day they have neither renounced nor apologized for either stance. In any other country, these leftists would be lined up against a wall and shot as the traitors they are. But in India they are not only considered “respectable,” but they have put down deep roots into Humanities departments in all of our leading academic institutions. Thus our children continue to be taught outdated and discredited rubbish such as the “Aryan invasion theory,” which has now been debunked based on both archeological and geneological grounds.

When attempts are made to rectify some of these distortions, these “historians” shout from the rooftops about attempts to “rewrite history.”

If my readers think this is an old and/or isolated example, let me quote a more recent event, namely the killing of two aspiring terrorists in an underground parking lot in Ansal Plaza, Delhi. Nothing illustrates better the anti-India attitudes of our SLIME purveyors than their handling of this incident. On the day after the killings, the newspapers were full of praise for the sleuthing work done by the Delhi Police in first detecting and then foiling the terrorists’ plot. But within a day, Star News led off with a story about an “eye witness,” one “Dr. Srivastava,” who stated that the two were not killed in a gunfight with the police, but were shot in cold blood. Not wishing to fall behind in the “India-bashing sweepstakes,” Kuldip Nayar promptly filed a grievance with the Human Rights Commission on behalf of the “victims.” For good measure he added a newspaper editorial piece in which he described how the two dead persons were “dragged away, kicking and screaming, to be shot in cold blood.” One would have been pardoned for imagining that Kuldip Nayar was himself an eyewitness, rather than someone who was merely repeating hearsay. Star News kept up with daily bulletins containing more and more details provided by the “eye witness” whom none of the viewers of Star News could, unfortunately, witness with their own eyes. But never mind. Mrs. Srivastava was there to tell us that her husband was in hiding, because he was afraid that the Delhi Police would “liquidate” him too. The impression conveyed was that India was a lawless state where the Police were out of control.

To their credit, the Delhi Police showed great restraint, and a few days later, came out with GPS data from “Dr.” Srivastava’s cell phone service provider, which showed that at the time of the killings he was nowhere near Ansal Plaza. Moreover, at this point the Agra Police got into the act, and said that (i) “Dr.” Srivastava was not a Doctor at all, (ii) in Agra he had duped a number of persons pretending to be a medical practitioner, and (iii) the real reason he was in hiding was that he was running away from the Agra Police, who were looking for him on the basis of some complaints of cheating filed against him in Agra. With these developments, the accusations against the Delhi Police simply fell apart.

At this point, the critics of the Delhi Police had two choices. A sincere and thoughtful critic would have simply said that Srivastava’s accusations were so serious that they had to be taken at face value and investigated thoroughly, in the interests of our public image. I have no problem with that stance. A gracious critic would perhaps even have apologized for doubting their word in the first place. Now let us examine the reactions of the duo mentioned above. On the evening when the truth came out about Srivastava, Rajdeep Sardesai led off Star News making two comments: (i) “Why did the Delhi Police take so long to come out with the evidence of Srivastava’s movements, if they had nothing to hide?” and (ii) “Questions still remain about the Delhi Police’s version of the events.” What those remaining questions were, Sardesai did not choose to enlighten us poor ignorant and misinformed viewers. Kuldip Nayar, being an occasional newspaper commentator, had an even easier escape route: He just “went off the air.” In other words, he simply stopped commenting on the matter. He used the oldest trick in the book, namely: When you are losing the argument, change the topic. Are these the actions of people who wish to hold India to a very high standard of behaviour (which all of us want), or of people whose sole aim is to malign India at all costs, even choosing to believe dubious testimony from discredited sources if it suits their disreputable purposes? I leave it to the readers to determine.
In short, we cannot afford to treat the purveyors of SLIME as people just like us, who merely happen to hold different views. They are out to undermine, even destroy Indian society. And we cannot eradicate SLIME unless we take radical measures. Rational debate won’t do the job, for reasons mentioned above….”

“…We can begin by making life as difficult as possible for the purveyors of SLIME, by making it clear that we know what they are up to. We must demonstrate openly the utter contempt that most of us feel towards them.

We must counter their negativism with a barrage of good news about India. Information is easier than ever before. Already there are several web sites operated by thoughtful groups, such as goodnewsindia and indiacause . There need to be far more such sites. We also need to spread the news about the existence of such sites amongst well-wishers of Indian society.

And finally, all of us must take a solemn oath to open our eyes to all the good things that happen around us, everyday, to everyone. We must not only notice them, but we must also shout from the rooftops about them. If we merely take these good things for granted and do not publicize them, then we leave the field open to the purveyors of SLIME. As Edmund Burke said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

“…Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the strategy adopted by the SLIME purveyors is succeeding….(During my visits abroad and in conversation with various people), I was struck by the enormous disparity between what they perceive to be happening in India, and what I see happening around me. All they could talk about was the rise of fascism, Hindu fanaticism (as if there is no other kind of religious fanaticism), “exploitation of the poor,” and so on.

To these people, the India of the rising Rupee, falling inflation, rising foreign exchange reserves, rising current account surplus, falling unemployment, rising self-confidence, booming stock market, improving infrastructure, rapidly decreasing poverty, burgeoning IT sector, and the second fastest growing economy in the world for over a decade, simply doesn’t exist.
For them there is only the India of communal riots, bride burning, dowry harassment, female infanticide, corruption, decay, waste, and “human rights violations”.

I can add that India and Indians are still fair game for media bashing. One episode illustrates this point. A few weeks ago Anneka Sorenstam, a female golfer of some note, expressed a wish to play on the men’s professional tour. Vijay Singh, a Fijian golfer with excellent credentials (including a Master’s title) expressed his disagreement with the idea, saying that Ms. Sorenstam should stick to the ladies’ tour. His comments brought forth all the usual righteous indignation that might have been expected. But what caught my attention was a comment in the Boston Globe by a sports writer (whose name I forgot) who said that Singh’s comments were hardly surprising because Singh was not really a Fijian but rather an Indian. For good measure this guy added that “India was a medieval society where women are routinely abused, tortured and otherwise mistreated.” …The gratuitousness of the slander of an entire nation and a five thousand year-old civilization would be breathtaking in its audacity, if it weren’t so commonplace.

I could point out to this guy that gender-stereotyping is much more rampant in the USA than it is in India. Leaving aside obvious examples such as our willingness to vote for female political leaders, which is in stark contrast with the US society’s views, I could highlight that in engineering and computer science (both of which are “tomorrow’s professions”), the percentage of women in India is noticeably higher than in the USA. After so many years of “women’s liberation,” girls in American high schools are still made to feel “unfeminine” if they like mathematics, or express a liking for engineering. If I were to put forward any of these arguments, this sportswriter would simply throw back at me some article(s) written by SLIME purveryors and tell me “This is what your own compatriots are saying about India, so I simply don’t believe you.”

“…Again, I would like to quote a specific incident rather than argue in general terms. We may recall that the music director Nadeem has been holing up in the UK, and has been fighting extradition to India to face charges in the murder of fellow music director Gulshan Kumar. When Nadeem’s extradition was requested by the Indian government, Nadeem’s lawyer argued that if Nadeem were to be extradited to India, he would not get a fair trial as he is a Muslim. The honourable British judge, no doubt feeling that he was striking a blow for the long-departed and unlamented British empire, accepted that argument. Now I don’t know whether Nadeem is “guilty” or not. But I feel deeply offended that he can get away with making that kind of argument, given that the President of India is a Muslim, the richest man in India is a Muslim, until recently the captain of the Indian cricket team was a Muslim, and so on, ad infinitum. But such are the consequences of allowing foreigners to entertain seriously inaccurate impressions about Indian society. The really ironic thing was that, while the British judge was in effect slandering the entire Indian society, the British Minister for IT was in India and stating that the doors of the UK were open to Indian IT professionals!

“…Another mistake we make is that we are always in a reactive mode. Why should we wait until a company puts Ganesha’s image on chappals or toilet seats to react and protest?
Each one of us, who cares deeply about our country, should make it a point to go out and touch someone on a regular basis.

We can talk about our wonderful heritage, our contributions to world (not just Indian) culture, be it in arithmetic or astronomy. We can talk about the fact that India has had an uninterrupted civilization of more than five thousand years, now that the so-called “Aryan invasion theory” has been thoroughly discredited. We can talk about the recent deciphering of the Harappan script, which showed that, far from being a “pre-Hindu” civilization as our leftist historians would like us to believe, the Harappans were actually Hindus. (After all, if the persons who wrote the Linear B script were actually Greeks, is it so surprising that those who wrote the Harappan scritpt were actually Hindus?) We can point out, as our beloved President Abdul Kalam repeatedly does, that in our five thousand-year history we have never invaded any other country, in spite of having been invaded countless
times ourselves.

Aside from making a conscious effort to reach out and touch others around us, we also need to make an overt effort to become more patriotic and to promote patriotism. I have always been struck by the demonstrative form of patriotism followed by Americans. While that approach might have its weaknesses, it is infinitely superior to the stupid notion propagated by our “liberals” that we ought not to be patriotic to India but should rather strive to be “citizens of the world.” This latter notion is an integral part of SLIME, and ought to be consigned to the dust heap.

And for God’s sake let us stop being so politically correct and start talking about ancient Hindu culture and civilization, not ancient Indian culture and civilization. For the first four thousands of our history, there were only Hindus here, for all practical purposes. Much of what defines contemporary Indian ethos has its roots in Hinduism, whatever our “secularists” might like to preach!

Given the objectives of this newsletter, I think it is important to mention the disclaimer:

“…Disclaimer: I am not a member of the RSS, VHP or any other such organization. Readers wishing to know my views about these bodies are encouraged to read the recent book India in Slow Motion by Mark Tully and Gillian Wright. Pages 151-153 are devoted to an interview Mark and Gillian did with me.”