Thursday, January 26, 2017

Diwali, Hinduphobia and the Great Indian Derangement Syndrome

D
iwali (or Deepavali) is a time for celebration.
Diwali is a time for celebrating the return of Rama, Sita, and Lakshmana back to Ayodhya after fourteen years in exile.
Diwali is a time for bursting firecrackers to welcome the return of the Prince of Ayodhya.
Diwali is a time for celebrating the victory of Krishna over Narakasura.
Diwali is a time for happiness, joy, prosperity.
Diwali is a time for lighting lamps to welcome Goddess Lakshmi into our lives.

Diwali is also a time for welcoming the return of the annual Great Indian Derangement Syndrome. It is a rabid affliction which is marked by the apogee of a ritual that many Indians punctuate with long, haunting howls of dirges, for several nights at a stretch, every night, their penned faces pointed towards the west, the words contorted into a grotesque visage that seems to beg forgiveness for collective sins unknown. The climax of this annual ritual is a long, unbroken shriek of guilt that is somewhat quaintly reminiscent of the atavistic call of dogs to their savage masters out on their hunts. So powerful is this ritual that several people who have witnessed this ritual have lost their sanity. Let us take a look at once such recent example.

It all began with a tweet on the 27th of October by @padhalikha that I was pointed to:
The screenshot embedded in @padhalikha's tweet was of a tweet by the controversial news channel, @NDTV, of a five-day awareness campaign on child sexual abuse launched by the The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (@NCPCR_), and which was jointly launched in Delhi by the Delhi government and the Childline Foundation (@CHILDLINE1098). The Delhi government is run by the AAP Party (@AAP).

Screenshot of tweet from NDTV


The campaign on awareness of child abuse is in itself is neither objectionable nor controversial. In fact, it should be lauded.

What was controversial, or eye-brow raising at the very least, was this statement, attributed to the NCPCR in the news article:
"The awareness campaign is being undertaken in the city around Diwali as during this time children become susceptible to sexual abuses in large gatherings and as parents leave them in the custody of others while taking part in festivities,"
On a second reading, the insinuation was unmistakable - "around Diwali as during this time children become susceptible to sexual abuses." The assertions were manifold.

  • First, that Diwali is a time when the sexual abuse of children rises.
  • Second, it is imputed that Diwali facilitates the sexual abuse of children because of "large gatherings" that leaves children "in the custody of others."
  • Third, that Delhi as a city is more susceptible to the sexual abuse of children.
  • Fourth, the unsaid but clear assertion was that it was the Hindu festival of Diwali that made children more susceptible to sexual abuse than festivals of other religions.

The statement had been carefully constructed to establish an association between Diwali, and by association, Hindus, with child sexual abuse, and yet cloak it in a message of awareness. Why would anyone in their sane minds want to do something as egregious as associating the Hindu festival of Diwali with child sex abuse?

Veracity

I tried to ascertain the veracity of the statement attributed to the NCPCR. My first suspicion was that it was either an outright lie, a distortion, or a mis-attribution on the part of NDTV. It would not have been the first instance when NDTV would have done so, but I wanted to be sure.

Therefore, I looked around for other news sites that may have carried the same story. Sure enough, there was a story in the Business Standard on the 25th of October - a syndicated feed from PTI - with the same quote attributed to the NCPCR. So that it was a hit-job from NDTV could be ruled out.
Screenshot of PTI news story carried by the Business Standard
Screenshot of PTI news story carried by the Business Standard

I now went to the NCPCR's website.
After all, if this was a statement made by the NCPCR, and if the campaign had been launched by the NCPCR, there would have to be some mention of it on the Commission's website. The NCPCR's "Press Release" page had no mention of this campaign. I accessed the page on Oct 28th, and the page itself mentions it having been last updated on the 28th of October ("Last Updated On: 28/10/2016"). No press release on the NCPCR website. I even tried using a search engine to search the entire site for the statement. Nothing.
Screenshot of "Press Release" page of the NCPCR

The third was to tweet to the Women and Child Development Minister, Ms Maneka Sanjay Gandhi. Why Ms Maneka Gandhi? Because, as per the website of the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD), the NCPCR is an "associated organization" of the WCD. While it would be unreasonable to expect her to have direct knowledge of everything that goes on in the NCPCR, my hope was that she would notice the tweet and at least direct her ministry to get a clarification and thus close the matter.
As of writing this post, there had been no response or acknowledgment of the tweet.

Before proceeding further, it is important to summarize what I learnt:
  • I have not been able to verify with certainty that this is indeed a statement made by the NCPCR, as asserted by the PTI story. Evidence suggests that the NCPCR did in fact make this statement.
  • Neither the NCPCR nor the NWCD minister have chosen to issue a clarification.
  • The "campaign", titled "Jagruk Raho, Chuppi Todo" has been launched jointly with the @AamAadmiParty Delhi Govt and @CHILDLINE1098. 
  • The NCPCR is an associated organization of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, which is headed by Ms Maneka Gandhi.
  • Ms Maneka Gandhi recently met with the Delhi Chief Minister, Mr Arvind Kejriwal. She tweeted about the meeting.
  • The state of Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls in 2017. People widely believe the BJP has a good chance of coming to power in the most populous state in the Indian Union. The political stakes are huge for all parties involved.
  • There has been speculation that Ms Maneka Gandhi is strongly in favour of her son, Varun Gandhi, being annointed as the BJP's Chief Ministerial candidate for the UP state elections (see Has the fight for Uttar Pradesh begun within BJP? for example)
  • There is a relationship between the NCPCR and WorldVision.


Center for Advocacy and Research

Which brings me to World Vision. But before that, a detour into the Center for Advocacy and Research (CAFR) is called for, for reasons that should become clearer.

As per the minutes of the 29th Statutory meeting of the Commission, held on 10th Feb, 2016 (the date is also somewhat pertinent), Agenda Item No. 3 was a proposal stated by Ms Rupa Kapoor, Member, on "Child Participation with an e-initiative" titled as "AskMantri.in" in collaboration with World Vision India Foundation." The proposal was accepted, and the minutes tell us that a "meeting will soon be held with World Vision India Foundation to finalize the proposal." Here is a screenshot of the Agenda Item:
Agenda 3 NCPCR Meeting Minutes
Do note that the minutes that have been uploaded are an optical scan of a printout of the document. The document itself would have been prepared not on a typewriter but a document processing application software like Microsoft Word. This digital document was not uploaded, or a read-only PDF version. What was uploaded is an image-based document that cannot be searched. Furthermore, the quality of the scanned document is such that even automatic OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software programs would find it difficult to accurately scan the document. Does the NCPCR not know how to upload text PDF documents? Or was the intent to deliberately obstruct easy searching of the minutes? One can only speculate, unless the NCPCR chooses to clarify.

Ms Rupa Kapoor, the Member of the NCPCR that suggested this collaboration with World Vision, was appointed in November 2015 (link). She was earlier a consultant with the Centre for Advocacy and Research (@delhicfar). Therefore, my detour on CFAR? What is CFAR?

  • According to Form FC-4 available for CAR for the year ending Mar 31, 2015, from the FCRA site, CFAR had "Total Foreign Contributions" of ₹12,31,15,232.65 (more than twelve crore rupees). 
  • For the year ending Mar 31, 2014, CFAR received a total of ₹7,22,61,679.42 as foreign contributions. (more than seven crore rupees)
  • For the year ending Mar 31, 2013, it received a total ₹11,07,36,619.72 (more then eleven crore rupees.
  • For the year ending Mar 31, 2016, I was able to glean the following information from the CFAR website (link): it received a total ₹7,76,05,923.73 (more then seven crore rupees

The striking factoid from CFAR's FCRA receipts is how much it is reliant on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Consider the BMGF's percentage of all foreign funding the FCRA received:
  • The BGMF provided 87% (₹6.4 crores) of all foreign funding to the CFAR in 2015-16
  • 30% (₹3.4 crores) in 2014-15 - an anomaly that is worthy of a deeper investigation, in my opinion.
  • 91% (over ₹10 crores) in 2013-14
  • 85% (₹6.1 crores) in 2012-13
For an advocacy group that is so overwhelming reliant on one single foreign donor for its operations, it would be difficult for anyone to make the claim that CFAR is not overwhelming beholden to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In many ways, one could say that for all practical purposes the CFAR is a front for the BMGF. To what extent BMGF directs the agenda of the CFAR is something we can only speculate on. The sudden drop in the funding of the CFAR by the BMGF in 2014-15 (from 85% and 91% in earlier years to 30% in 2014-15) and then the equally sharp rise the next year (to historical levels of more than 85%) is suggestive of the successful application of financial pressure by the BMGF. This is one interpretation. Of course, given the cloak of secrecy within which NGOs in India operate, it is very difficult for one to ascertain the real facts.

Other foreign donors to the CFAR include the Ford Foundation, Population Services International, and others. The Ford Foundation has a very disturbing past to it, where for several years it was at the forefront of funding research into fetal sex determination and then aggressively advocating sex-selective abortions in India. I wrote about it earlier in 2016 on IndiaFacts, Was Ford Foundation Culpable In Aborting Female Foetuses In India? As for Population Services International, (@PSIimpact), it is described as a "a $670 million organization that markets abortion drugs in the developing world." (link)

Coming to the NCPCR, in Nov 2015, Ms Rupa Kapoor, a consultant with the CFAR, was appointed Member of the NCPCR. Less than three months later, in Feb 2016, Ms Rupa Kapoor brought out a proposal to collaborate with World Vision to provide multi-platform access to children. The proposal was accepted. The multi-platform access looks more like a very efficient means to track children across offline and online media. The potential violation of the privacy of children has not been addressed or even hinted at in the minutes. The same cabal of self-proclaimed defenders and champions of children have kept strangely quiet on this possible violation of one of the most basic rights of children - of privacy. Strange indeed are the ways of these self-proclaimed champions.

Now let us turn to World Vision.

The World Vision Connection

World Vision is a $2.8 billion global "humanitarian" organization engaged in relief, development, and child welfare work. This is the organization that the NCPCR is collaborating with. For more information on World Vision, do give this blog post a read - World Vision India: A Quick Intro -  on the blog, India Happenings.

Apart from the NCPCR, where else is World Vision embedded within the government of India? At least two places can be called out:
  • World Vision India "is part of the Planning Commission Working Group on Women's Empowerment and Child Development. This group provides input to the Planning Commission on issues of children and women, to be incorporated into the 11th five-year plan."
  • World Vision India "is also part of the NGO steering committee of the National Disaster Management Authority, the premier agency dealing with disaster relief and preparedness in India." [both references can be found on World Vision's India website: https://www.worldvision.in/Advocacy]
So what exactly is World Vision? Let us see and read, in World Vision's own words (bold-emphasis mine, all World Vision links accessed Oct 29th, 2016):
Statement of Faith | World Vision
There are more strident, dogmatic statements from the World Vision Singapore website, which have since been deleted. One has to use the services of the Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/) to find an archived copy of the page. What does the now-removed-or-deleted page of World Vision's Singapore website page say? (bold-emphasis mine, all World Vision links accessed Oct 29th, 2016)
  • "World Vision is an expression of the Church in mission on behalf of the poor and oppressed."
  • "World Vision shares the Church’s commitment to disciple followers of Jesus Christ who bear witness to the Gospel by life, deed, word and sign, with the goal of encouraging people to respond to the Gospel."
The article, Many Don't Know of World Vision's Evangelical Mission | Huffington Post, references a page from the Singapore website of World Vision - http://www.worldvision.org.sg/st_ourchristainfaith.php. Clicking the link takes you to the home page of the World Vision's Singapore website, there is a HTTP 301. [permanent URL redirection]

Even more disturbingly, World Vision seems to be a fanatical organization with a deeply bigoted and intolerant streaking running through it. World Vision’s U.S. operations are headquartered in Federal Way (a city in the King County, sandwiched between Seattle and Tacoma), and which employ more than 1,200 people. All employees are required to sign a statement of faith affirming their belief in Jesus and the Trinity. In 2011, the US Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of three former employees of World Vision, thereby letting the ruling of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stand. World Vision won its right to fire workers who it suspected did not believe completely in Jesus or the Trinity. (see Supreme Court Won't Hear World Vision Hiring Case | Gleanings | ChristianityToday.com and High court refuses World Vision hiring case | The Seattle Times).
Sterns had said that World Vision's hiring policy is "vital to the integrity of our mission to serve the poor as followers of Jesus Christ." [link] World Vision’s U.S. president, Richard Stearns, in a statement had this to say - "After four years of litigation, we at World Vision U.S. may now put this matter behind us, and continue our policy of hiring only Christians."[link] 
In recent years, it emerged that 60 percent of World Vision's funding for the Gaza Strip was diverted to the Hamas, a terrorist organization (see World Vision's Christian Donations Funded Hamas - Israel Today | Israel News, World Vision funds $7.2 million per year to terrorist group allied to ISIS., ) Closer home, there were investigations and allegations that World Vision was involved in the gruesome murder of 80-year old Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati. See Laxmanananda Saraswati unmourned yet again for disturbing details of the case.

Such an organization has spread its tentacles into the government of India, and is advising the government on issues related to women and children. Its interference continues unabated, unquestioned, uninvestigated, even under a supposedly right-wing government.
Pause and ponder this point.

World Vision's statements and the facts collated above should put to rest any doubt that might exist that it is first and foremost, and primarily, a powerful, very well-funded, and aggressive evangelical organization that uses its financial clout to promote its evangelical agenda in countries. What is also not in doubt is that this organization's India arm continues to receive hundreds of crores of rupees every year via the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) route. This money is deployed across more than one hundred districts in the country, and World Vision's employees use this money to infiltrate almost every branch of the government. From an evangelical perspective, missionary organizations target the poor, the vulnerable, the young, and the women for their soul-harvesting activities. To that end, natural disasters present one of the best opportunities for evangelical organizations to spread the gospel and harvest millions of souls. The catastrophic earthquake in Nepal and the devastating tsunami in South Asia in 2004 are but just two such examples where natural disasters have been used for rampant conversion activities.

Therefore, it is but natural that such evangelical organizations infiltrate those departments of the government that focus on child and women welfare. The NCPCR and the Women and Child Development Ministry are prime targets. 
Locations of FCRA Utilization Bank Accounts of World Vision India. (via https://indiahap.wordpress.com/ - interactive map here)
The role of Ms Rupa Kapoor in any case warrants a closer and thorough investigation - especially any links she may have with World Vision or other advocacy or evangelical groups. It would appear, prima-facie, that there are enough grounds for suspicion that she has been compromised and is more than willing to do the bidding of World Vision.

The Great Indian Derangement Syndrome (GIDS)

Diwali, or any Hindu festival and activity, is a legitimate target for assault in the eyes of an assorted gang of evangelicals, liberals, racists, Hinduphobes - many of whom are difficult to tell apart. While in the early days of this assault on Hinduism the masters and  agents were the same - as in the manufacture of atrocity literature around Sati for example - today a sophisticated level of separation and plausible deniability has been established between the two. The fanatical evangelist, the rabid liberal, none need to come to India to do their dirty work. They only need send their money to Indians, who gladly carry out the bidding of their paymasters. This model has now been perfected - these paymasters need not send huge sums of money. By infiltrating every arm of the government, these paymasters get the government - you, the taxpayer - to pay the bulk of the money required to exterminate the way of life, the culture, the religion of the very people who pay these breaking India forces.

In infiltrating and hollowing out a nation and culture from within, the modern-day educated Indian has been more than a willing tool, because of a near-complete lack of self-respect and awareness.
"The educated Indian, particularly the Hindu, suffers from such a deep loss of self-respect that he is unwilling to be recognized as such. He feels, in fact, deeply threatened by any surfacing or manifestation of the identity that he has worked so hard to, and has been trained to reject. ... It is these people wearing various garbs - liberal, left, secular, modern - who oppose, more often than not from sheer ignorance, any attempt to introduce Indian traditions of thought in the mainstream education system - a classic case of self-hate taking the form of mother-hate." [Kapil Kapoor, quoted in "Indian Culture and India's Future", by Michel Danino]

Such self-loathing, rootless Indians are today more the norm than the exception. There is the example of a famous journalist who penned an anguished post that Indians who doubted the surgical strikes against Pakistan were "self-loathing", and yet in a remarkable act of self-unawareness had experienced no cognitive dissonance earlier in tweeting, repeatedly, her definitive pronouncement about Indians being "among the most racist people in the world."

The great Indian sage and philosopher, Sri Aurobindo, had said this about the class of "educated Indians" - "They will not allow things or ideas contrary to the European notions to be anything but superstitious, barbarous, harmful and benighted, they will not suffer what is praised and practised in Europe to be anything but rational and enlightened." [Sri Aurobindo, reproduced in Michel Danino, "Indian Culture and India's Future"]

Perhaps the most disgusting display of this mental enslavement has to be this now-deleted set of tweets by famous journalist, where Lord Ram and Sita were abused with comparisons to the human anatomy:
Or, consider this Bollywood starlet. In 2010, when she was a relative newcomer, her Diwali greetings were what you would expect from a normal person.
Even in 2014, her Diwali greetings were "normal":
But come 2015, she had been struck down with GIDS.



Why GIDS? Because fish do not count for her sympathies. Except on the menu:


In closing, what Swami Vivekananda wrote about what the Macaulayite education system does to the Indian is truer today that a hundred years ago:
"The child is taken to school, and the first thing he learns is that his father is a fool, the second thing that his grandfather is a lunatic, the third thing that all his teachers are hypocrites, the fourth that all the sacred books are lies! By the time he is sixteen he is a mass of negation, lifeless and boneless." [Swami Vivekananda, "On India And Her Problems", reproduced in Michel Danino, "Indian Culture and India's Future"]

But today, that mass of negation, the modern-day Indian secular, liberal intellectual, is no longer lifeless. The spirit has been educated away into thin air, the poison of hate that has been injected into him (or her) has resulted in a vampire-like creature that stalks every walk of life. Preying on any vestiges of Hinduism that it can detect, it submits itself to ever more toxic bites from foreign funders, and in turn turns its fangs on his own country, its culture, its roots. This vampire-like mass of negation today will, in return for money and recognition from the west, will happily bring out statements that associate Diwali with child sexual abuse.

And yes, I still await a clarification from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, or the Ministry of Women and Child Development, on its insinuating that Diwali causes a rise in the sexual abuse of children.

Tweets and screenshots:







Screenshot of tweets abusing Ram and Sita


Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a speech

An edited version of this post first appeared in OpIndia on Nov 1, 2016 and Nov 3, 2016
Article in two posts on OpIndia

First post on OpIndia
Second post on OpIndia


 © 2016, Abhinav Agarwal (अभिनव अग्रवाल). All rights reserved.
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