'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks

[Vishal Agarwal]

----Original Message Follows----
From: Shrisha Rao <shrao at IA.NET>
Subject: Re: 'INDIA ABROAD' on new textbooks
Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 11:56:44 -0600
However, I must add that Praful Bidwai isn't the most credible person one
could find to write a proper rebuttal.  He has no credentials as a
historian, and his bilious comments might actually have the opposite
effect

VA: Praful Bidwai is a hardcore self professed Marxist political commentator
who has appeared in TV discussions and wrote profusely in the Times of India
and communist publications like the Frontline magazine as a 'secular
Intellectual' and a 'historian'. He has an inveterate hatred for BJP etc.,
and has opposed the Nuclear Program of India with vengeance, which is not
surprising because he lives off a hefty grant from a European green
organization. I used to cut his articles regularly and save them. Some gems
from him in TOI: (paraphrasing from memory)
1. The Sangh Parivar patronised the Ram temple agitation but left out the
Krishma Janmabhoomi and Kashi Visvanath shrines because Rama was a high
caste Kshatriya while Krishna is an OBC and Shiva an ST (kirata)
2. The Bharata Ekatma yatra of Murli Manohar Joshi left a bloodbath in
Kerala and has strained the communal atmosphere there. (The TOI published
his article containing these words on its editorial page A DAY BEFORE the
yatra actually ENTERED Kerala)
3. In another article in the TOI, he chastized Mulayam Singh for being
lenient despite the fact that his police killed a score (official figure, I
have seen 55 obituaries with addresses and photographs of victims) of
'Karsewaks' at Ayodhya. An irate reader wrote to the TOI asking if Bidwai
wanted more people to be killed to satisfy his 'secular' beliefs.
4. In another article, he suggested that OBC's, SC/ST, Muslims and
Christians and other minorities should form a 'Secular Brigade' to resist,
even with violence, the 'communal, hindutva' brigade of Upper Caste Hindus.

Others, who write in the same vein, are: Amulya Ganguli, Anikendra Nath Sen,
Seema Mustafa, Achin Vachnaik, Shabana Azmi, Anil Dharker, Badri Raina, D N
Jha......As for their credentials as historians, please read 'Eminent
Historians'by Arun Shourie.

It is a pity that ill informed Western Academicians are so easily mislead!
This is my last post on this topic.

Vishal
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