Author Archives: François Gautier

SRI AUROBINDO, THE AVATAR OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Posted on August 15, 2017 | Leave a comment
15TH August is also Sri Aurobindo’s birthday. Let us remember him. In the words of the Mother:
” To THEE who hast been the material envelope of our Master,to THEE our infinite gratitude. Before THEE who hast done so much for us, who hast worked, struggled, suffered, hoped, endured so much, before THEE who hast willed all, attempted all, prepared, achieved all for us,before THEE we bow down and implore that we may never forget, even for a moment, all we owe to THEE.”
 
Sri Aurobindo as a revolutionary, a lover of Mother India – and long before Gandhi,he asked the British to leave in India – by force if necessary, in the true spirit of the Bhagavad Gita (his brother Barin manufactured bombs in the basement of Sri Aurobindo’s house). He was an extraordinary philosopher and his Life Divine or Synthesis of Yoga are the most profound works on Indian spirituality. HE was too a world class poet on par with Homer or Shaespeare, as his Opus Magnus, Savitri, attests today. Finally , he was an avatar, who came to prepare humanity for its next stage of evolution : the Supra-mental (man after Mind).
 
But did you know too that he was also a staunch defender of Hindus and Hinduism, which he called the religion of humanity in his famous Uttapara speech, fact that most of his biographers sweep under the carpet. Listen to this:
 
“At the root of all that we Hindus have done, thought and said through these many thousands of years, behind all we are and seek to be, there lies concealed, the fount of our philosophies, the bedrock of our religions, the kernel of our thought, the explanation of our ethics and society, the summary of our civilisation, the rivet of our nationality, a small body of speech, Veda. From this one seed developing into many forms the multitudinous and magnificent birth called Hinduism draws its inexhaustible existence. Buddhism too with its offshoot, Christianity, flows from the same original source. It has left its stamp on Persia, through Persia on Judaism, through Judaism, Christianity and Sufism on Islam, and through Buddha on Confucianism, and through Christ and mediaeval mysticism, Greek and German philosophy and Sanskrit learning on the thought and civilisation of Europe.
 
There is no part of the world’s spirituality, of the world’s religion, of the world’s thought which would be what it is today, if the Veda had not existed. Of no other body of speech in the world can this be said.
 
Let us pray to HIM who did so much for humanity and hope that his philosophy and poetry be taught in Indian schols and foreign universities SOON
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The deviousness of Indian Journalism

Posted on April 9, 2017 | 10 comments

Look how Indian journalism is slanted, devious and dishonest :
A few days ago I received an email from Himanshi Dhawan of , asking for an interview by email :

De: Himanshi Dhawan <>
Objet: regarding an interview
Date: 5 avril 2017 17:05:25 UTC+5:30
À:

Dear Mr Gautier

I would like to interview you for an article that I am writing. Will it be possible for me to send you some questions on how you developed the passion for India and your work in the field? My contact details are below, in case you have some clarifications. Regards.

—
Himanshi Dhawan
Senior Assistant Editor
Times of India
Phone:
Twitter:

His questions immediately made me suspicious, so I wrote to him :

On 06-Apr-2017 9:39 AM, “François Gautier” <>
Hi, are you going to write a slanted article, that twists my answers so that it fits your ideas?
fg

François Gautier

And he replied very innocently:

<>
Objet: Rép : regarding an interview
Date: 6 avril 2017 11:32:08 UTC+5:30
À: François Gautier <>

Hello Sir,
I have no intention to “twist” your responses. The article is about academics/intellectuals/ thinkers who find a resonance in BJP’s ideas and philosophy without any value judgement. Would appreciate it if you could answer my questions. Thanks.

So I trusted him and sent my answers, here below:

have written widely in praise of PM , his political accomplishments and his work. When did you begin to feel an affinity towards the BJP and Mr Modi’s idealogies and work?

A. I did not know Mr Modi. But I have a Foundation FACT (Foundation Against Continuing Terrorism) that does exhibitions on Indian History, as well as great heroes and heroines. We have such one based on Aurangzeb’s firmans or edicts, which are preserved in the Bikaner archives (), it was attacked in Chennai by goons of the nawab of Arcot, whose ancestors was nominated by Aurangzeb, with the support of the Chennai police then under the DMK’s Karunanidhi and closed down. This was widely reported in the Media and Mr Modi who was chief minister of Gujarat, heard about it and contacted me. He subsequently came to Mumbai to inaugurate our exhibition on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Vinod Khanna and Gopinath Munde. Subsequently, I met Mr Modi quite a few times in Gujarat. What particularly impressed me was that when I first went to his office, there were no hangers on, no sycophants, only people who came for work. I found the same thing when I visited his culture minister row of chairs and people waiting, while the minister with one secretary taking notes gives 5 mnts to each applicant. This is totally contrary to the Congress policy of most people to meet ministers and MP’s are for favours not work. I also found that Mr Modi was a great ecologist and had a genuine interest in that field, making of Gujarat the greenest, most investor friendly state of India. So I started praising him in my articles, though at that time nobody thought he could become PM of India

drew you to the Hindutva idealogy?

A. You have to give me some credit: most journalists in India are mostly their father’s children or their teachers pupils, that is they repeat more or less brilliantly what their atavism has grooved into them from early childhood. I had an upper class catholic education in France and when I came to India, I did not know the difference between a Hindu or a Muslim. In fact, I had many of the ideas that are politically correct today about India – Congress is the best party to unite it; Hindus can be fundamentalists too; or the RSS is a dangerous outfit.. But then I covered extensively Kashmir from the late 80’s till 2000 for Le Figaro, France’s largest circ paper and saw the Hindu leaders I had interviewed earlier such as Dr Tikoo, savagely assassinated by Kashmir Muslims separatists and then was 350.000 kashmiri Pandits flee the Valley under terror, for no other fault than being Hindus, without firing a single shot in self-defense, becoming refugees in their own country, a first in this already sad world. I also witnessed how Kashmir, once a more gentle sufi place (I witnessed the burning by Muslim of the last sufi shrine in Kashmir the Shrahr-e-Sharif), became so easily radicalized by Sunni influences from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The truth is I don’t know about Hindutva, I only know what Francois gautier saw first hand and now believes in.

#You have listed enemies of “Hindus” including Sonia & Rahul Gandhi, CPI, Aamir & Shah Rukh Khan, the Pope and even Hindus themselves. These appear more like the party’s list of political opponents. Would you comment?

A. Once more, your question is slanted, because it contains an indication of what you or your newspaper thinks, without bothering to verify my point of view. Let me say that my experience in 40 years in India as a journalist is that Hindus are the least intolerant of all communities. In fact, it is because they are the only ones in the world who till today recognize that God manifests himself or Herself at different times of humanity’s history, with different names, using different scriptures. This is why a Hindu is able to enter a church or even a mosque andfthe reverse is not true. This is why all persecuted religious minorities found refuge in India all over the ages from the Syrian christians to the Parsis, from the Jews to the Tibetans today. The irony is that Hindus have been the most persecuted in the world. If a proper tally of how many have died at the hand of Muslims invasions was done, it would easily reach a hundred millions

critics feel you are a spokesperson for the BJP. How do you feel about that?

A. Well, the BJP never asked me to be a spokesperson and I would not be one for I speak for Francois gautier. Nevertheless I asked Mr Modi to conduct workshops for his MP’s/Spokespersons so that they know how to answer coherently and efficiently accusations of fundamentalism, speak about conversions, respond to western correspondents’s accusations, but never got an answer. It would be fun to have a westerner working for an Indian Govt, whereas Indians worked so long for their western masters and are still queuing like mad in western embassies to get visas, no?

you join the BJP or RSS?

A. No, though I am an OCI married to an Indian for 30 years. Anyway they never asked me. In fact, since it has come to power at the center, the BJP in many ways resembles other political parties except a few exceptions. That is because they have to function in a system put in place by decades of Indian National rule, where every minister or PM for that matter, has a ring of at least 15 PA’s PS’, peons and security, and also the fact that Delhi is a big bubble far away from the rest of India, which suited the British, who wanted to to control acces to North India, but shoud be decentralized today

you feel and Hinduism is misunderstood and a victim of poor image building (the perception of being a polytheist, poor country continues to prevail)?

A. See, the biggest enemies of Hindus are Hindus themselves. No country would have been able to invade India if Hindus had not betrayed Hindus, from Alexander the Great who used the King of Taxila against Porus to the Vijaynagar kingdom, the last great Hindu empire, of beauty justice and Dharma, that was betrayed to the Muslims by the Lingayats. Today some of the most venomous anti-Hindus, particularly in American universities, or even in India, are Hindus themselves. And are not members of the Congress 90% Hindus? I defend Hindus, but I am not blind to their faults…

End of Interview….

….And look how they twisted everything out of context, putting their own slanted views instead of faithfully reflecting what I said. The title itself is demeaning: the word ‘Hindutva’ – when I expressly said that I am foreign born and catholic educated and that my ideas are garnered from on the ground reporting and coming to my own conclusions – for God sake, when I started reporting nobody spoke about Hindutva and nobody thought the BJP or Narendra Modi would come to power. And the word ‘cheerleaders’, which is employed contemptuously in this case. And then he used that discredited historian Irfan Habib who for decades, with the Congress blessings, distorted Indian history books and curriculum without any shame, glorifying monsters like Aurangzeb and putting in cupboards Maharana Pratap or Shivaji Maharaj as mere chieftains or plunderers, just because they were Hindu heroes, yet a million times more secular than Aurangzeb, Ghazni or Teimur as they never harmed the children, daughters and wives of their enemies and never touched a mosque.

My sad conclusion is that Indian journalism has not only not changed, but it has become WORSE. Before it was only the Marxist intelligentsia putting forth their Hinduphobia, now there is the added element of commercialism and paid journalism. Shame on Himanshi Dhawan. If you feel, you can mail him what you think at : , or you can tweet
Francois Gautier

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/…/articlesh…/58085790.cms

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NOSTRADAMUS & INDIA

Posted on March 29, 2017 | 9 comments

Very few people know that Nostradamus, the famous French astrologer & doctor of the 16th century, who foresaw Hitler’s rise, the Iraq war, or the Wall Street collapse, made quite a few predictions about India, both in old French and Latin, the language of the learned of these days.

For instance, in his Quatrain N° III.3, he predicts the Tsunami of 2000:   

Mars & Mercure, & l’argent ioint ensemble,

Vers le Midy extreme ficcité:

Au fond d’Asie et des Indes, on dira terre tremble,

Et la mer se levera.

It’s the line Au fond d’Asie et des Indes on dira terre tremble which tells it all: “in the depth of Asia, and India, the earth will shake and the sea will rise.

He also prophesized the rise of the ISIS & Al Qaeda, as well as India’s suffering:

En Arabie naîtra un roi puissant de la loi de Mahomet,

qui dominera l’Europe et par la discorde,

la négligence française S’ouvrira un passage à Mahomet (aux arabes)

et l’Inde souffrira moult

 “In Arabia, a powerful Lord of Mahomet’s law will be born,

who will dominate Europe

France’s negligence will open the door to the Arabs

And India will suffer much”.

 In 2012, French scholar and Nostradamus specialist, Bamprelle de la Rochefoucault, discovered in an old trunk bought two hundred euros to an antics dealer, old manuscripts which have been analyzed and found to be of the 15th century. There are quite a few stanzas devoted to India, which is named here as Indicus in Latin and Indes in old French.

One of them relates to a possible Indo-Pakistani nuclear war:

 XXIX : Le Griffon Indes se peut aprester
Pour à l’ennemy résister ,
Et renforcer bien son armée,
Autrement l’Elephant viendra
Qui d’un abord le surprendra,
Six cens et huict, mer enflammée.

 “The eagle India should get ready and reinforce its army,

Otherwise the Elephant (Pakistan) will surprise her

By putting to flame its people and the sea”

But did Nostradamus see the advent of the and ? Apparently yes:

In his IV, 50 stanza, for instance, he predicts:

Deux mil quatorze verra regner les Hindoos,

De ciel & terre tenir la Monarchie,

D’Asie forces nul ne verra peries,

“Hindus will reign from 2014 onwards

They will rule heaven and earth

Nobody will resist them in Asia”

Nostradamus is even accurate about the name of the leader of the Hindus. This stanza is in Latin:

Indus supremus gudjaratus status natus est

Patrus Theus boutiqus, studium bonus est

Namusprimum narendus est

 “The supreme leader of India will be born in the state of Gujarat

His father will sell tea in a shop

His first name will be narendus (Narendra)”

He goes on to foretell Narendra Modi’s career:

Tribus gudjaratus statum princeps est

Quae stillabunt optimum est

Honestus indicus est

“He will become three times leader of Gujarat state

Where business will be at its best

And honesty will reign”

Nostradamus seems to be speaking next about Sonia Gandhi:

Alba femina indicus supremus regnus est

Improbus eius regnum decem annum est

Autem impetus narandus facere

 “A white woman will rule supreme on India

Dishonesty will spread for ten years

However Narendra will fight her”

He also seems to have a clear idea about the party of Narendra Modi;

Groupus indicus hindosus

Groupus populo indicus

Regum est vingiti unus saeculum

 “The political group of the Hindus

will be called the Party of the Indian people (BJP)

it will dominate India in the 21st century”

 Why is the Hindu power good for India? Nostradamus explains:

Hindosus universalus doctrinum est

Misericordia populo orbis

Deus diversitas est potestatem

 “Hindus have a universal doctrine

They see God in the Many

And they have compassion for all”

Then Nostradamus goes on to enunciate the goals of Narendra Modi:

Avertat lex septuaginta

opera facto unum

aedificarem domum hindosus Ramus

vivificabit Kashmirum

“Remove Article 70

Institute a Common Civil code

Build a temple to the Hindu Ram

Preserve Kashmir”

But Nostradamus has a word of warning for Mr Modi:

Maledictus Hindosus coniuriato

Narendu idealus non dabo et Hindosus

Aliter perdet potestatem

“The curse of Hindus is betrayal

Thus Narendra should not betray his ideals

And the Hindus

Or he will lose power”

 But If the BJP remains faithful to its initial goals and to Hindus, then, says the French Seer:

 “Grandus cognitio Hindosus

en mundo scio

et salvum facere Apocalypsus”

“the Knowledge of the Hindus

will spread to the world

and save humanity from Apocalypse”

Translated from the French and Latin by François Gautier

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THE WORD AND ITS PUBLIC SPACE

Posted on March 27, 2017 | 1 comment

First, we need to define what is the Word, as there are so many words floating around today in the Public Space, that it has become a cacophony…

In the Beginning, as we all know, There was Silence before the Word.

In the words of India’s great poet, philosopher, revolutionary and Yogi, Sri Aurobindo:

“It was the hour before the Gods awake. 

Across the path of the divine Event 

The huge foreboding mind of Night, alone

In her unlit temple of eternity,

Lay stretched immobile upon SILENCE’s marge…”

Thus, the first primeval sound, coming out of Silence, as the Animate, started replacing the Inanimate, is the sound ‘Hmmmmmmmm’, like a cosmic humming.

Out of this original sound was born the first mantras: OM for the Hindus, AUM for the Buddhists and Jains, Amen for the Christians, Amin for the Muslims…

What is it meaning of AUM or OM or AMIN? Don’t intellectualize it: just close your eyes, watch your breath for a few seconds and pronounce it thrice slowly and clearly, and then observe what’s happening in you. You will now have had the experience of the first sound of this Universe and understood why it remains the most important one, out of which all other sounds, in whichever languages, today and yesterday, derive….

Then we need to define what is Public Space…

For a long time the Public Space was largely unoccupied and there still was mostly silence. Though writing was invented, some say in Mesopotamia, 5000  years ago, some say in the Saraswati-Indus civilization, in 5400 BC, it did not occupy much space and led to no cacophony. In France, in the old days, heralds would announce royal decrees at each street corners of cities, along with the beating of the drums.. .

After that came the invention of the Printing Press – which the West credits to Gutenberg – but which existed much before him in Asia , though Gutenberg’s Bible was probably the first mass produced book. A corner of the Public Space became occupied.

Then, the newspapers appeared. The Romans had some form of newsletters (the Senate’s proceedings), but it’s only in the 16th century, in Germany and Italy, that the first public-circulated newspapers saw the light.

Henceforth arrived the Radio, invented by Marconi officially, but actually experimented by many before him – including the Indian JC. Bose in Calcutta in 1896. And the cacophony of the world started. By the mid 20’s, 605 radio stations were broadcasting to millions in the USA.

Then Television made its entry in Scotland in 1926, invented by John Logie Baird. But it’s not till the 50’s that it became popular specially, in the mid 60’s as colour TV first appeared in the US. The Public Space started not only getting crowded, but influencing people’s opinions.

The birth of Internet Protocol Suit happened in 1982, again in the US, and by the mid 90’s, thanks to the birth of Social Media, the Public space had become a cacophony.

Yes, the Word is occupying it. But it’s overcrowded there. Not only that, but we live now in a virtual world of second hand opinions, which have a huge sway on billions of people, who lack first hand knowledge. Whoever reads what is said on India in mainstream newspapers or televisions in the West, knows that it’s mostly about the sensational, the clichéd and sometimes even the false. It is true that the freedom and the lack of politically correct control in the Social Media have made it the space which reflects in the most faithful manner the feelings of the People at large. But the cacophony remains…

How to go back to the some harmony? How does a journalist or a writer find his or her true inspiration, that is not fueled by alcohol, drugs or sleepless nights?

We need to revert back to the Silence to find true Intuition. In India there are tools that can help you do that: Pranayama meditation, or Hata yoga. These tools can be practiced by all, regardless of their ethnicity or religion: does the air we breathe around us have a religion or a race, asks ? The simple silent repeating of your God’s name in your heart region will also induce a quieting of the mind, that will leave space for true inspiration. And 20 mnts of daily of yoga will help the body be the vessel of a quieter mind.

Then in this Silence will we find our own Private Space and be able to communicate in a better and true manner onto the Public Space

OM

François Gautier

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Hindu Power. Part I

Posted on March 27, 2017 | 2 comments

Once upon a time Hindus had power: emperors like Chandragupta, who was advised by the remarkable Chanakya, or Kautilya, possessed territories so vast, that they extended from Karnataka till the present day Afghanistan. His soldiers were feared by enemies – in fact, contrary to what western history books tell us, Alexander the Great, who had the most powerful army of this time, encountered tremendous resistance in India and had to retreat, dying from his wounds on the way back to Greece. Yet, Hindu power had discrimination: battles were only fought between kshatriyas, during the daytime and the crops and lives of farmers were never touched. Hindu power could also be ‘soft’: contrary to Christianity and Islam, Hindus never sought to impose militarily their religion and way of life to other nations. Yet, Hinduism went peacefully towards the East and can still be seen today in Bali, Laos or Cambodia, witness Angkor Vat; and towards the West, where it had a great influence on the Greek and Celt philosophy and religion. It should be noted that Hindus, during the centuries to come, gave refuge to all the persecuted religious minorities of the world, from the Jews to the Parsis, from the Christian Syrians to the Tibetans today.

The administration that Chanakya and Chandragupta established, was so remarkable that it was later used by the Mughals and the British with little modifications. Many more great Hindu civilisations then rose-up: in the South, for instance, the Pallavas of king Simhavishnu conquered Ceylon, as well as annexing the Chera, Cholas & Pandya kingdoms. We owe them the superb sculpted temples of Mahabalipuram and powerful cities such as Kanchpuram. Under their rule, Sanskrit went through a revival period and the mandapam technique of temples flowered like never before, as did the Bhakti movement, which gave a fresh dynamism to Hinduism. In the Centre of India, the Vardhamana dynasty of king Harsha, added Bengal and Orissa, to an already powerful empire that included today’s UP, Bihar, and even spread northwards towards Nepal and Kashmir. French historian Alain Danielou wrote « that King Harsha symbolised all that was right in Hindu monarchy, wielding an absolute power, but each sphere of administration was enjoying a large autonomy and the villages were functioning like small republics ».

Even after successive centuries of violent Arabs invasions, Portuguese and Chinese travellers still marvelled at the land of ’milk and honey’ that India was, where practically ‘no beggars could be seen’. The last great Hindu Empire was that of Vijayanagar, where the kings also ruled in a dharmic manner and provided justice, education to all, freedom of religion and the flowering of art and culture. Historians tell us that the sacking of Vijayanagar was one of the most bloody ever in the history of India: rivers ran red with bloods for days, ten of thousands of Hindus were brutally killed, the looting went for six months, all the statues had their noses and ears chopped and every Muslim soldier went back to his land with a bounty of gold, horses, women and slaves…

Hindu power then vanished for nearly 450 years. The British, who rightly understood that Hindus were the principle obstacle to their colonising the land and the minds of India, further undermined Hindu Power by dividing India on the lines of religion and castes, a legacy that lingers even after Independence, and shaping-up in Cambridge and Oxford an elite class of Indians who today still think and act British. In 1947, Nehru who had already embraced the British idea of socialism, saw to it that Hindus still be denied any form of power, by promoting other religions, erasing from history books most traces of Hindu greatness, taking over Hindu temples, and restraining the few Indian Hindu nationalists, whom he had to admit to his Govt, such as the no-nonsense Sardar Patel.

In the year 2000, Hindus at last came back to power, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was elected Prime Minister of India. Hindus had great hope in him, but Mr Vajpayee, in true Hindu tradition, showed lack of insight, by giving orders to leave Sonia Gandhi alone and driving to Lahore in a’ peace bus’, while Pakistani President Musharraf was sending his disguised soldiers to take over the Kargil hills. The BJP was also complacent, thinking that the little bit economic progress they brought to India, would be enough to win the next elections. But he Congress was re-elected for ten years and Mrs Gandhi, far from being grateful, mercilessly went all out after the BJP and Narendra Modi. And once more, Hindu power was snatched away.

Then Mr appeared on the scene: he was a remarkable chief Minister of Gujarat, making of his state the most prosperous in India, the less corrupt, the greenest and the only one where ministers actually worked for the people – instead of for themselves or their parties. Many did not forgive him for not calling the army immediately after the anti-Muslim riots, triggered by the burning of Hindu pilgrims in the Sabarmati train, but that did not stop him from positioning himself as a prime ministerial candidate.

More than even Mr Vajpayee, Mr Modi became Prime Minister of India in 2014 on a united Hindu vote, from the Dalits to the Brahmins. Hindus voted Mr Narendra Modi to power, because he pledged many things that they had been yearning for a long time: a Common Civil Code, the removal of article 370, or the building of the Ram temple in Ayodhya. They also liked the fact that Mr Modi was a fiery Hindu, so different from Mr Vajpayee: he called a spade a spade, was not afraid of naming his enemies and was a passionate and eloquent orator. Mr Modi thus became Prime Minister of India with a huge majority, and all Hindus hoped that power had come back to them after 5 centuries, for at least several generations… (to be continued)…

François Gautier

Francois is the South Asia correspondent of the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles (valeursactuelles.fr), as well as the editor in chief of the Paris-based La Revue de l’Inde, published by Harmattan.fr. He is also the author of “A History of India as it Happened” (Har Anand, Delhi). Follow him on:

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Islam and the Bhagavad-Gita

Posted on March 27, 2017 | 2 comments

In the last 30 years, I have spoken against Islam and Islamic fundamentalism numerous times in my books as well as in in my articles and conferences. Often thus, I have been often branded as an Islamophobe or a hard-line pro-Hindu…

Yet, when I came to India, I was innocent : I did not know the difference between a Muslim and a Hindu. And as a journalist I had the same prejudices and ideas about India as any other Western correspondent. In fact I embraced the same ideas: ‘secularism, the Congress is the only party that can unify India, Hindus too can be fundamentalists’, et cetera…

But then, I started covering Kashmir during the 90s, when separatism bloomed and violence set fire to the Valley. It is there that I saw the first Hindu leaders whom I had interviewed previously, assassinated in the most savage manner, such as doctors, lawyers, or All India radio broadcasters. And then, when Benazir Bhutto gave her famous speech of ‘Azad Kashmir’, every mosque in Srinagar and the Valley repeated that cry, telling Hindus: “Convert or die”. And in a few weeks, 350,000 Kashmiri Pandits left their ancestral houses and land, for no other crime than being Hindus – and that without firing a shot in self-defence – becoming refugees in their own country, a first in the world.

Thus my eyes were opened and I lost my innocence. Since then, covering many other countries, I witnessed the same phenomenon in Bangladesh, Pakistan or Afghanistan, of Hindus being the target of hatred, as Jews have been for centuries. This set me to study Indian history and I quickly realised that great Hindu heroes such as Shivaji Maharaj or Maha Rana Pratap, had been bypassed in Indian history books, to a single paragraph: Shivaji Maharaj who alone with his wits, extraordinary courage and a few hundred men, defeated the most powerful army of the world of his time, is a ‘plunderer’; and Maharana Pratap, is described as a small chieftain, although he is the only Rajput to have fought the Moghols and to have held Akbar’s army at bay the Hadilghati battle. The irony is that tyrants such as Aurangzeb, who were monsters not only towards Hindus but also with their own family – Aurangzeb poisoned his own father, beheaded his brother Dara Shikoh, imprisoned his son – are lauded in history books as ‘firm but just emperors under whom arts flourished’ (Aurangzeb actually banned music at his court, because it was un-Islamic)….

…It happens that my wife and myself are teachers of the pranayama and meditation techniques of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, which we have practicing for the last 25 years and which have changed our lives, giving us energy, enthusiasm and commitment. We do this free, as a sewa, to partake of this great gift to humanity that originates from India.

During the last Shivaratri celebrations, we taught in Sri Sri’s Bangalore ashram a pranayama course to a batch of Iranians. Our group, which had many girls and ladies, some of them who always covered their heads, was reserved at first, but as the course progressed, there grew a bond of affection and warmth between us all. We could perceive so much love and humanity in all of them. And by the end of the course, we all danced and hugged each other.

Now it is not because I have fought Islam that I did no know before this course that Muslims are as much as the others, decent human beings, warm, family oriented, hospitable. I remember when I drove to India by road from Paris, crossing many Muslim countries. My best friend was then a Muslim French Moroccan. He would say “Assalam–o–Alaikum », and doors would open, smiles were flashed, we would be dined, entertained, respected. This universal brotherhood of Islam does not exist in the Hindu world.

So this set me thinking: Islam was born in Iran and since Khomeini’s takeover, though it has a Shia majority, Iran has an image of a hard-core Islamic nation, where the Sharia reigns supreme and which is ready even to use a nuclear weapon to impose the supremacy of its faith. Yet these people we taught were the opposite and showed values of refinement and love that are today missing in the western Christian world….

I do understand even more now that most Muslims are good, witness the many human right organizations, journalists or intellectuals that fight for their rights as refugees, at the moment Yet the stumbling block remains the Koran, a wonderful scripture, no doubt, but which was written for people and mentalities of 1400 years ago, when realities were harsh, punishments even harsher and survival a matter of life and death. Nobody has read the Koran properly, except the Islamic terrorists of today: it does say that the Infidels should be slayed, that Islam must be the world religion, that women can be stoned if unfaithful, or that being gay is a crime punishable by death. Logic would say that Muslim scholars of international repute should get together and reform the Koran, as Christians have done, so that it becomes adapted to the 21st century world. Problem is that nobody dares touch it or question it for fear of death. Problem is that even within the most moderate, educated and enlightened Muslims, logic and good sense, stops when it comes to the Koran…

Thus, I will continue fighting Islam, in the spirit of the Bhagavad Gita: so many of my brothers and sisters are in the opposite camp. I have come to love them and respect them too… Yet, I know that willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, by accident or by karma, they are born in a religion that is harming the world, that is on the side of the anti-human and anti-divine forces. Therefore it must be challenged, even if it is with love in the heart – and not hatred.

Nevertheless, this course also opened my eyes: Sri Sri reminds us that we are one World family, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. Let us not forget that…

François Gautier

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THE GREAT HINDU REVOLUTION OF NARENDRA MODI

Posted on March 27, 2017 | 2 comments

All these clever journalists got it wrong: true UP voted for – but more than anything, they voted for a man who works 17 hours a day, who puts the country before himself, who is bold enough to take a huge gamble – demonetization – because he believes it is necessary for India. A man who fights against corruption without fear and is the Prime Minister of all Indians, though once more, it is the Hindu vote which elected his party the .

This election may also have signalled the beginning of the end of caste politics, another cancer that gnaws at India’s entrails – and Mrs Mayawati had become a champion at it, taking a leaf from the Indian National Congress, who for 70 years, mostly got elected on the Dalit & Muslim vote.

Many newspapers and television channels blazed across the headline: “Saffron wave in Uttar Pradesh”. This is another ill-advised coin word, that wants to sensationalize and demean, but which falls flat. What does ‘saffron’ mean? First saffron is mainly cultivated in Kashmir – and that by Muslims – so it’s a wrong comparison. Secondly, in Hinduism, saffron is the color of renunciation, a beautiful and noble tradition, that has been followed all over the world, by Buddhists, Jews, or Sufi saints. Mr. Modi and many of his ministers, such as Manohar Parrika,r have renounced many of the worldly pleasures to work for their party and their country. When will Indian journalism stop being small, petty, untruthful, without any depth or vision? The mastery of English does not make an Indian better than a simple country folk of UP or Tamil Nadu, who lives more in his or her heart than these arrogant journalist and intellectuals. I was most of the day, when the election results came, on the TV studio, with different panels of journalists. Most of them were of the old Nehruvian-Marxist mold, dinosaurs, who do not realize that they are out of sync with reality and are clinging to an obscure and anti-evolutionary path. One of them, from the newspaper, even said that demonetization was ‘communal’! Can you imagine how biased the guy can be?

All right, the got four out of five states. Nothing wrong with that: Chanakya would have approved and the , who cries foul about Goa & Manipur, did much worse than that. One doesn’t need a deep political insight to predict that the BJP is soon going to rule the whole of India – both at the Centre and in the states – exactly the way Congress had done during the Nehru-Indira Gandhi era. And that the writing for Congress has been on the wall ever since. Will the sycophancy of the ever stop? It’s a remnant of colonialism, a legacy of Macaulay, who wanted to have brown sahibs as tools. On top of that, Rahul Gandhi has no dignity: he should immediately have taken responsibility for his party’s thrashing and resigned. There are plenty of talented people in the Congress ranks who can take his place.

One of the big tasks of Mr Modi, now that he has secured more of a majority in the Raja Sabha, is to reform education. Many have said that his choice ofYogi Adityanath as the UP Chief Minister, shows that he is moving towards a Hindu India, away from secularism. However, as I have explained in a series of articles in this blog, Hindu power will always be compassionate: Hindu men and women are still today the only people in the world who recognise that God may manifest Himself or Herself at different times, using different names, and different scriptures. This is why a Hindu is still capable of worshipping not only in his own temple, but also to enter in a Christian church or a Muslim mosque, and that with respect and devotion. The reverse is not true

But for that it is important that Hindu children, know their own history, their poets, such as the great Kalidasa, who is on par with Shakespeare or Homer; their warriors, such as Maharana Pratap, Shivaji Maharaj and many others, who are as good, if not more visionary and more spiritual than Napoleon; their heroines, like the Rani of Jhansi, or Ahilyabai of Indore, or Chennama, who easily compare with Joan of Arc; their philosophers, such as Sri Aurobindo, whose depth, height and knowledge is as wide and much greater than Nietzsche or Kant; their artists, whose sculptures, such as the dancing Nataraj, or architects, who built the Meenakshi temple or the Rajasthan palaces, are so beautiful that they even survived the holocaust of repeated savage and bloody Muslim invasions – see the Hampi/Vijaynagar statues, every one of which the noses and ears have been chopped, but which still retain their ethereal beauty…
In this way, they will grow up proud to be Hindus, wile retaining Hinduism’ broad outlook and tolerance, which actually is the knowledge that God is One but manifests Himself or Herself in multiple avatars, men and women.

Instead, what happens? Most of Hindu kids are brought up in schools and universities that mostly teach them western subjects and concepts and even Indian History is viewed through the negative western prism. As a result, not only do not they grow-up as Hindus, which would be a boon both to India and the world, but they become clones, good only for export – indeed Hindus are the biggest brain drain of the world, from India to the West.

Mr can succeed in his task only if a new generation of Hindu youth grows up with that knowledge and help him and the to introduce the essential reforms – not only educational, but also, economic, constitutional , judicial, cultural, sports wise, that are needed for India to become a real superpower and spread this great Knowledge that will save the world.

François Gautier

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