Who the hell cares?

India, one of the oldest civilizations of the world derives its name from Indus, on whose banks once flourished the Indus Valley Civilization. Indus in fact is a Greek distortion of the word Sindhu. When Arabic or the Islamic invaders started their invasions from North-Western borders of United India, they mispronounced Sindhu as Hindu and thus words Hindu, Hindukush and Hindustan came into being. We Indians, in fact, owe our entire cultural being to Sindhu.

But one thousand years of slavery have shackled not just our Sindhu but our memory of Sindhu too. That is why we have learnt to live without thinking. We have got used to the idea of a shrunken and shrinking India. We can now think of India without North-West Frontier Province, without Western Punjab, without Sindh, without East Bengal and we are more than willing to do the same without Kashmir, without Assam and without other parts in the future.

With the dawn of independence on 15th August 1947, United India was bifurcated into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan, which had two states of Eastern Pakistan and Western Pakistan, which in their own term split into Bangladesh and Pakistan. But even after 58 years of partition we Indians remain confused and even unconcerned. We have been a poor student of history so we have also neglected its lessons. We are failing to read properly the forces that have been and are still at work to keep India down. In fact we do not even acknowledge them. All this because it involves doing nothing, anticipating nothing, planning nothing and we can continue to live from day to day. A realistic approach to our history will impose on us duties of a different kind and scope, which therefore we must shirk just as a pigeon closes its eyes to a cat in front of it.

Result of all this poor sense of history is terrorism of various shapes and shades in various parts of truncated India, attack on parliament of India , Kashmir , Assam and naxalism in various states along with rabbit like breeding over population.
Muslim fear of domination by Hindus and Hindu fear psychosis of domination by Muslims results not into some meaningful dialogue but stress on over population of Hindu India and Muslim India by Vishwa Hindu Parishad on one side and Fatwa wielding Mullahs on the other side, both sides ignoring tenets of modern science and fruits of science and technology in day to day living and raising the standard of living of our more than 60 percent population living below poverty line without bread, without health, without proper housing, without drinking water and without education.

Independence also brought about one of the biggest exodus and mass migration in world history when more than one million Indians were massacred and more than seven million people lost their age old hearths and homes, their temples and their fertile lands in the West Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and parts of Kashmir and the accompanying atrocities of the period, the carnage, the killings, the abductions and the forced conversions. But soon after we forgot all these gory details. Within a year, in 1948 Lt. Gen Kulwant Singh of the Indian army saved 2/5th of Kashmir for us but today no body in India even knows his name, leave aside having seen his portrait or a photograph.

In 1965 Lt. Gen Harbakhash Singh as chief of Western Command saved Amritsar and its Golden Temple, Sanctum Sanctorum of the Sikh people in particular and North-Western Indians in general. But we just know and practice only one dictum: Generals fade way in history.

In 1971 Lt. Gen Jagjit Singh Aurora as Chief of Eastern Command led India to unprecedented glory and split Pakistan into Bangladesh and Western Pakistan. But his recent death in Delhi demands no notes from apathetic public or unscrupulous political class. A close scrutiny of recent military history will reveal that a close associate of Gen. Aurora, Maj Gen. Shahbeg Singh who personally lead Mukti Bahini of Bangladesh to victory as his duty as a Brigadier of the Indian army, was discharged of the army one day prior to his retirement without pension, invoking a clause that had not been used in past 150 years of British India or independent India. His inglorious end came at Sri Akal Takht Sahib in Golden Temple complex along with Jarnail Singh Bhindrawale in 1984 where the dashing General fought against the same army that had nurtured and produced him.

Only 2 percent of Indians that is the Sikhs recite everyday in their prayer " Hey, Akal Purkh, Apne Panth De Sada Sahaie Datar Jeo! Sri Nankana Sahib Ate Hor Gurudwareyan, Gurdhama De, Jinha Ton Panth Nu Vichhoreya Giya Hai, Khule DArshan Deedar Te Sewa Sambhal Da Daan Khalso Ji Nu Bakhsho" (Oh God, You always help your Panth. Kindly bestow upon Your Khalsa unrestricted glimpses and services of Sri Nankana Sahib and other Gurudwaras and Gurdhams/Holy Places from which Panth has been separated).

It clearly has only one meaning that out of 100 crores only two crores still regard Sindhu Land as their own. 98 percent Indians have lost memory of their civilizational cradle.

Only 2 percent people produce Kulwant Singh, Harbakhash Singh, Shahbeg Singh, Jagjit Singh Aurora , Master Tara Singh or Partap Singh Kairon. But these 2 percent best Indians or rather 'Best Hindus' always feel neglected in our national life.

Even with a Sikh Prime Minister, the Sikhs cannot dream of winning back their Sindhu, their Lahore, capital of erstwhile Sikh Kingdom of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, Tomb of their legendry tiger General Hari Singh Nalwa at Jamraud on the frontier of Afghanistan, their Nankana Sahib, birth place of Guru Nanak Dev, the first Sikh Guru, their Panja Sahib, their Pakistan occupied Kashmir. It maybe mentioned here that Gen Nalwa recaptured Kashmir after one thousand years from Islamic imperialists. This all happens not because one Manmohan Singh, one Khushwant Singh or one Gen J J Singh have forgotten their villages in Pakistan occupied Indian Land but because our pygmy leaders of Congress or of BJP, whether 'secular' Sonia Gandhi or Jinnahphile L K Advani, have lost their sense of history, not just of modern India but also one of its glorious phase written by the blood of Guru Arjan Dev, the fifth Sikh Guru, Guru Hargobind Sahib, the sixth Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru, Gen Banda Singh Bahadur, Gen Baghel Singh of Chabal, Gen Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, Sikh Lion of Lahore Maharaja Ranjit Singh and his beloved general Hari Singh Nalwa and Gen Zorawar Singh.

Even today missiles launched in 'Pakistan occupied India' are christened 'Ghauri' (Mohammed Ghauri), 'Ghazanavi'(Mehmud of Ghazni attacked India 16 times), 'Abdali" (Ahmed Shah Abdali), but we Indians are masters in naming major roads in most major cities after the bigot, Hindu hating Muslim Kings such as Shah Jahan, Aurengzeb, Sher Shah Suri, etc.

Not contented with this forgetfulness, our Defence Minister Jaswant Singh himself leads Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar to Kandhar during the Taliban regime in Kabul.

Another Defence Minister George Fernandes is stripped naked twice in United States in 2003 in the garb of security check, , but he chooses to keep mum there, only to come back and shriek against American Multi Nationals on Indian soil. Also, Babu Lal Gaur, Ex-Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh along with his team of bureaucrats was humiliated in USA without an iota of protest. 80 years of RSS labours produce Shri L K Advani, who pays homage to 'secular' Jinnah, 'the great leader of history', forgetting all teachings of RSS 'Shakhas.

So, a Manmohan Singh in the Prime Ministers' office has little meaning if they have no mandate for getting their historical homeland in 'Pakistan occupied India' back to the Indian or the Sindhu fold. That is why I call Empowerment of India as 'Regaining of our Sindhu. First rekindle memory of Sindhu, and then produce a Hari Singh Nalwa to recapture Sindhu. Only then you have a right to call yourself a Hindu, an Indian or an Indian aspiring for an Empowered India.

No single party or any leader in India dares to touch the issue of population. Thomas Malthus is proving right in Sub Saharan Africa and is going to prove right in Indian sub continent (United India) in the coming few years.
Doyen of Indian industry J R D Tata cautioned Pandit Nehru against rapidly burgeoning population, but 58 years after Independence, we are still clinging to ' Jeh, population is our strength' theory.

All this happens because we have low self esteem, lack of confidence, lack of vision, because we have lost the 'power of thinking'. Long back Sri Aurobindo saw 'root cause of India's weakness' not in foreign yolk or poverty or dearth of spiritual experience, but in the 'decline of thinking power'. Everywhere he saw 'inability or unwillingness to think, which is a sign of tragic decadence'.

To break these shackles of mental slavery, every Indian should embrace and lead in their practical lives, a message of Indian nationhood as enshrined in our Vedas. Only then India will shine and India will be empowered and regain its position as 'Jagad Guru' in UNO and comity of nations.