ABOUT @DONALDTRUMP’S VICTORY IN US ELECTIONS

Contrary to expectations & contrary to all predictions by TV channels, pundits, intellectuals, Hollywood actors, the Indian Media, etc, Donald J. Trump has won the USA elections. No doubt Hillary Clinton was more knowledgeable when it came to foreign policy and would have made a more seasoned president. But there are FOUR aspects that interest us:

1) This election is mostly about Islamic terrorism: the common American people are fed-up to hear every time that there is an Islamic terrorism act, their politicians say that it has nothing to do with Islam. They also have lost faith in the Muslim community which never acknowledges that these terrorists take their inspiration from the Koran & then complain about Islamophobia

2) Donald Trump will be a friendlier President towards India than Hillary, who has always been pro-Pakistan and was even planning to make her friend and close associate, Huma Abedin, an American of Pakistani-Indian origin, her Secretary of State. Indeed, in a letter dated une 13, 2012, to the State Department Inspector General, five Republican members of Congress claimed that Abedin “has three family members – her late father, her mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations”…

3) One notable note facts about Donald J. Trump‘s history in the US elections is that not only the entire Media, American as well as Indian or any other for that matter had predicted that Hillary Clinton would win, but also that shamelessly, for a profession that is supposed to inform people and remain neutral, they shamelessly all tried to undermine Trump in whatever way they could, even if it meant ignore the fact that Hillary Clinton’s emails as released by Wikileaks showed that she knew that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were funding the ISIS and Al Qaeda, while pretending to be part of the American coalition against them.
Does this mean that that journalists or CNN or the BBC News or the The New York Times or of India’s Firstpost or NDTV are going to apologize to their readers or viewers for having misled them? Not at all, they act as if they did not err and find excuses for @HillaryClinton, forgetting that she was badly beaten. It is for us the hapless public to make known to these people our anger and dismay

4) The last fact is that there are a lot of similarities with the election of @narendramodi, who was hated by the Media and the intellectuals. Mr Trump will have to learn a little from the Indian PM, how he rose above party politics and yet remained firm and decisive, whether striking against militants in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, or declaring war on Black Money

 

Francois gautier

HOW FOREIGN JOURNALISTS VIEW INDIA. The excessive media coverage of the #Nirbhaya rape or the so-called vandalizing of Delhi churches

(which never happened, see: http://www.firstpost.com/india/crying-wolf-narrative-of-delhi-church-attacks-flies-in-the-face-of-facts-2101105.html.), by the western press, raises the question of the fairness of western journalists posted in India.

In my experience, foreign journalists (and photographers) are generally interested in three kinds of India :

1. a) The macabre and the negative : rapes of course,such as the horrific #Nirbhaya one and the documentary #IndiasDaughter, which wilfully made it look as if every second woman is raped in India, which is totally untrue. There are many more rapes, say in the UK, where it was found that in the town of Rotherdam, 1400 young girls, many of them under the age of sixteen, were sexually exploited by men, mostly Pakistanis, with the police turning blind eye for politically correct reasons :(http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerscruton/2014/08/30/why-did-british-police-ignore-pakistani-gangs-raping-rotherham-children-political-correctness/) ; the widows of Benares, the caste system as practised in Bihar, Mother Teresa’s place for the dying in Kolkata, kidneys’ traffic in Tamil Nadu, the slums of Mumbai, bride burning, etc. These subjects have their own truth and there does exist in India horrible rapes, terrible slums, unacceptable exploitation of caste, dying people left unattended, or bride burning. But by harping only on these topics, the foreign press always presents a very negative image of India. Foreign writers have also tended to exploit that vein: Dominique Lapierre in his “City of Joy”, which still is a world-wide best-seller and has been made into many films, has done incalculable damage to India, as it takes a little part of India – the Calcutta slums – and gives the impression to the western reader, who generally is totally ignorant of the realities of India, that it constitutes the whole.

b) The folklore and the superfluous : maharajas, of whom Westerners are avid, although they are totally irrelevant to modern India; the palaces of Rajasthan, cherished by the such as Vogue magazine, who regularly sends there photographers and lanky models, who have no idea of India; festivals :Pushkar, the camel fair, Kumba-melas, where photographers love to click on sadhus with cell phones, dance performances in Khajurao… all these have their own beauties, but they represent only a small part of this great and vast country.

c) The politically correct. There must be at least three hundred foreign corespondents posted in Delhi, which should vouch for a variety of opinion. But if you give them a subject to write about – any subject – say Ayodhya, the #RSS, fanatic Hindus, secularism, or Sonia Gandhi, you will get two hundred and ninety eight articles which will say more or less the same thing, even if it is with different styles, different illustrations and various degrees of professionalism (this is not to say that there are no sincere western journalists who write serious stories which do homage to India’s greatness and immense culture; but they are usually the exception). And at the end, the result is more or less the same : a downgrading of India, a constant harping on “Hindu fundamentalism”, on the “fanatical khaki-clad RSS members” or “the persecution of Christians in India”, as recently seen in the vandalizing of Delhi churches, which had nothing to do with Hindu ‘militants’. But the damage is done –– and no Media, including Indian ones cared to rectify it. It is also conveniently forgetting to mention that Christians have found refuge in this country for 2000 years and have often taken advantage of this great Hindu tolerance, witness the crucifying of heretic Hindus in Goa by the Portuguese, or the huge conversion drive today by Pentacostists or Adventists, who have targeted India as a “pagan country to be brought to the true Word” (please check their Internet sites: htpp//www.bethany.com)

These three kinds of reporting about India have been going on for sixty years and very few Indians have dared – or bothered – to complain. But the interesting question is WHY ? Why this always harping on the negative, the folklore, or the politically correct ? Why this uniformity of views and un-originality in the selection of subjects, in a country which is so ancient, whose civilisation is so diverse, so profound, so fascinating, that there are thousands of extraordinary topics, which could be exploited ?

It seems to me there are two important factors, which are at play in every foreign correspondent. Firstly, a foreign correspondent before even being posted in Delhi, has already fixed ideas about India : prejudices, clichés, negative “à-prioris” etc. This is not to say that it is wilfully done, but it is just something which we pick-up unconsciously from the concepts on India floating in the West : Tintin’s stereotyped India – the good maharajas and the bad fakirs; Kipling’s jungle child ready to embrace the good of the Christian civilisation; or else it is the poverty, the dirtiness and the squalor of India which is always over-emphasised in the West and which scares many of us, used to a clean disinfected (and soulless) world.

More subtly even, we western journalists are influenced by what is said about India in the “serious” books of distinguished Indologists, who have got it all wrong : the supposed invasion of India by the Aryans (which, say more and more archaeologists and linguists, never happened); the great achievements of Moghol culture (absolutely untrue: Aurangzeb banned music from his court and even his Muslim musicians protested); the fanaticism of Hindu social and political movements (which were born in the early twenties after nearly thirteen centuries of horrendous persecutions by Muslim invaders and shameless European colonisation); the importance of being “secular” in Modern India and how Nehru was its great father (forgetting to say that secularism has been hijacked by the Congress for its own selfish purpose), etc.… These “wise” historians have unfortunately a very strong hold on the image of India abroad and they give all the wrong ideas to foreign newspapers editors, who in turn expect a certain (Hindu fundamentalism) angle from the stories of their correspondents.

The second factor is simple: India is a vast and complicated country, often contradictory, full of paradoxes, with many castes, religions, ethnic groups, political parties…It is thus extremely baffling to the mind of the foreign correspondent freshly arrived from the United States, for example, where everything is black and white, good or bad (as seen by the denying of Mr Modi’s visa for years). Thus, naturally, the foreign correspondent will turn for advice and information to his counterpart : the Indian journalist, who is frequently witty, brilliant and well informed. And here lies the crux of the matter, because Indian journalists are often the worst enemies of their own country – they are more secular than the secular, more anti Indian than its worst adversaries and often play in the hands of India’s foes (for instance the magazine Frontline should rightly be called the “Voice of China”, as it often echoes the views of the Chinese communist party, which is profoundly inimical to India, or the newspaper the Hindu should be renamed the Anti-Hindu, as it has a profoundly Marxist outlook; so does #NDTV (by the way, as Prannoy Roy is married to the sister of Brindra Karat, leader of the communist party in India). Another important factor which enhances the uniformity of views amongst foreign correspondents, is that New Delhi has become a very superficial and arrogant city, geographically cut-off from the rest of India (does Delhi have any idea of what is happening in the South ?); and there, the foreign correspondents always hear the same stories, whether in the Embassy cocktails, or at journalists’ parties.

It would be nice to say that even though Indian journalism looks at its own country in a very negative manner, it is something which is self generated and that its opinions are formed independently. But unfortunately, this debasing self-criticism, this eternal inferiority complex, this constantly looking at India through a western prism (take the magazine India Today, for instance, who under the misguided rule of @ShekharGupta, vice-president of India Today, does issues on India as a ‘depressed’ country, when any fool who has lived in India for more than a few years, can tell you that there is some much joy here, even in villages) ) This inferiority complex was born at the beginning of this century, when the “moderates” of the Congress Party (which, nobody should forget, was founded by an Englishman, A.O. Hume – strange today that it is another foreigner, however deserving she may be, who president of the #Congress party, tried to stifle the voices of the real nationalists : Sri Aurobindo, Tilak, or Bepin Chandra Pal, who already then, advocated the booting out of the English coloniser – if necessary by force. Thus when the first real cultural, social and political movements, which had at heart the defence of India’s true heritage started taking shape, such as the much decried Hindu Mahashaba, which attempted to counterbalance the Muslim League’s influence, or the even more maligned Rama Rajya Parishad, initiated by Swamy Karpatri, they were ridiculed by the Congress (read: the British pulling the strings of the Congress), who utilised to the hilt its English speaking press to present these Hindu parties as barbaric, fanatical, ridiculous and amplified the problems of untouchability, castes, or cow worshipping, to belittle these movements, which after all, were only trying to preserve India’s cultural and spiritual heritage.

We have then come a full circle: we thought that the western press was negative about India, out of a personal bias, but we have found that it is influenced by the Indian press; we thought that the Indian press was negative about its own country, because of some dark, sceptical, self destructive streak in itself, but we found out that it was a tendency generated by the Congress, which in turn was manipulated by its British. All along the snake was biting its own tail !

Fine ! But where do we start : is it the western press which must first change its views of India and thus influence the Indian media ? Or is it the Indian press which must be more lenient towards its own country and thus influence the western medias ?

Fortunately, since Mr Narendra Modi came to power, times have changed, there is a new mood of nationalism amongst Indians that is reflected more at the moment in the social Media, FB and Twitter, but has not reached yet the mainstream press, which remains critical of Hindus and their movements. This nationalism may have come with some excesses, but it is a sign of times to come and #IndiaToday should take notice of it, for no nation can move forward without some kind of nationalism and pride of itself.

We have got to change the image of India amongst industrialised nations, if only because India needs a lot of foreign investment. Who in the West wants to do business with a country with a backward image and associated with rapes and slums? The Western press is not playing its true role of information. But that should not be a problem – look at China : less than thirty years ago it was considered in the West as the “Red Devil”, a feudal country, totally closed to the world. But then in 1971 Nixon went there and suddenly it became acceptable to do business in China; and today it even possesses in the West an image of a fast, forward, modern nation (although THE CHINESE killed a million Tibetans, gave Pakistan its nuclear technology and still claim part of Indian territory). Many of us are trying to change India’s image abroad, but it’s extremely difficult. I for one, have written so many articles and books, telling France that it needs to look towards India s an economic AND GEOPOLITICAL alternative to China, as India is democratic, western friendly and juridically safe. But French Indianists such as Christophe Jaffrelot who still rules the roost in France when it comes to India write long articles in Le Monde newspaper, speaking about Hindu fundamentalism and saying that India is a ‘soft’ power which never have China’s reach. And the French, including the French embassy in India, would rather listen to #JaffrelotC -not to Mr Gautier.

Thus, unless the Nehruvian legacy of bureaucracy and centralisation is discarded, unless India starts looking at herself differently, unless its people have a little more pride in being Indian, there is very little we can do.

For there is nothing wrong with a bit of nationalism, which any nation needs to have a minimum amount of self-respect. We French are proud of our Revolution, which changed the face of the world for ever; we are proud of Christianity, which gave us an island of sanity and learning during the dark and cruel Middle Ages; we are proud of our philosophers, such as Descartes, who taught us to look at things with a logical and clear eye. And India herself has nothing to be ashamed off: hers is a great civilisation infinitely older than any civilisation in the West; and not only was it great but its inner genius has survived the genocide of Muslim invasions, a stifling colonisation by the British, and even Marxism, which incarnated itself in the minds of India’s intellectual elite and tried to kill the Hindu genius of the land of Bharat.

Isn’t it then time to fulfil the prophecy of Sri Aurobindo, who wrote 100 years ago : “India of the ages is not dead nor has She spoken Her last creative word; She lives and has still something to do for Herself and the human peoples. And that which She must seek now to awake, is not an anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of the Occident’s success and failure, but still the ancient immemorial Shakti recovering Her deepest self, lifting Her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and vaster form of Her Dharma.

Then will we, foreign journalists, look at you differently…

François Gautier

ABOUT #BBC, #IINDIASDAUGHTER & #FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS

I have had the privilege to live for more than 40 years in India.
To my knowledge, only two foreign journalists have stayed so long in this country: Mark Tully, who as you know was for long the South Asia BBC correspondent and myself.
It has long been my opinion that India is A very difficult country to grasp for a foreign correspondent, as it is so different from the West, full of contradictions, paradoxes, baffling parameters, etc. Going from Delhi to Madras, for instance, is like flying from Paris to Athens, because there is absolutely no comparison between the two, as if you have passed from one continent to another. Thus, for a Westerner, say from Europe, where all the countries share more or less the same religion (Christianity), more or less the same ethnic origins (Caucasian), more or less the same food habits (meat) and more or less the same dress code (ties and dresses), India can be a very enigmatic country.
Disinformation about India by the intellectual media .

Yet, not only do we find that Western correspondents are generally posted only for three, maximum five years in India – too short a time to really start getting the ABC of the subcontinent; but also, that most of them have – before even reaching India – very strong and biased ideas, prejudices, misconceptions, on the country they are supposed to report about in an impartial and fair manner. The film #IndiasDaughter will only add to the misconceptions.
Forget the fact that by the time they leave India, these foreign correspondents have even been more reinforced in their prejudices: the Hindu “fundamentalists”, the “persecuted” minorities of India, the “Human Rights” abuses performed in Kashmir by the Indian Army, plus the usual folkloric the stories about India: the “dashing” maharajas (who are absolutely irrelevant to modern India), the “atrocities” on Indian women, as portrayed in a warped and skillful manner by #Lesleeudwin, who has a Pakistani father (see my previous post: no country in the world as India has given such an important place to its women), or the “horrible” sati and bride burning (an old British trick to show Hindus in a bad light).

I was lucky. First I came to India when I was very young, with hardly any prejudices, because I had never really thought about India; I was also immensely fortunate to have spent my first eight formative years in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram of Pondichery, where I met the Mother, a formidable Presence and read at length Sri Aurobindo, India’s modern Avatar, Revolutionary, (the first Congress leader to have advocated India’s Independence, if necessary by force), immense Poet, Philosopher and Yogi (yet totally ignored by today’s Indian youth); I was also extremely lucky that when I started journalism in the early 80s, I did freelancing assignments in rural areas, particularly in the South: Kerala’s extraordinary Kalaripayat, the ancestor of all great Asian martial arts; the beautiful Ayyappa pilgrimage, also in the jungles of Kerala; the Ayanar sculptures in the villages of Tamil Nadu.

And this led to my most important discovery, which endured to this day: namely that the genius of India was (and still is) in its villages – and not in the cities — where an arrogant intelligentsia and a more and more westernized youth, have less and less idea about their roots and culture.
Even so, it took me ten years to feel that I was beginning to understand India and to discard the ideas I had somehow picked-up along the way: that the Congress was the best party to lead India out of communalism; that secularism was the best option for the country, given its incredible ethnic and religious diversity; or that the RSS, the VHP and other Hindu groups were “violent” and dangerous. On a more positive note, it also took me ten years to understand what a wonderful culture and civilization Hindu India had been — and still is in some way: how Hinduism never tried to use the might of its armies, as Islam and Christianity did, to convert other nations; how Hindus always recognized the divinity of other religions and never shied from also worshipping in Buddhist temples, Christian churches, or Muslim mosques; how India, since time immemorial, has been the land of refuge for all persecuted minorities of the world: the Jews, the Parsis, the Syrian Christians, or today’s Tibetans.

It also took me ten years to see, that far from being the fundamentalists described by the British and today’s Indian Marxists, Hindus have been at the receiving end of persecution for 1,600 years: first wave upon wave of Muslim invasions, which tried, in the most ruthless and horrifying manner, to wipe-off Hinduism from the face of the earth; then the more insidious European colonisation – but no less harmful – witness the Portuguese who crucified countless Brahmins in Goa, or the British under whose “enlightened” rule 30-million Indians died of famine. And it is not finished: today’s Hindus are still killed in Kashmir, in Bangladesh (see Taslima Nasreen’s book Lajja), Pakistan or Afghanistan.

It also took me a long time to understand that Indians -Hindus sorry – are sometimes their worst enemies: Indian journalists have often taken-up like parrots the slogans coined by the British to divide India and belittle its civilisation; Nehru blindly adopted most of the set-up left behind by the English, without bothering to borrow from India’s ancient genius and, as a result, India’s constitutional, judicial or educational system is totally non-Indian and only produces western clones.
This is why today, instead of trying to counterbalance the very untrue and negative image that the film #IndiasDaughter is spreading around the world, #NDTV & other Indian Medias are only stoking the fire and adding to the damage.
Cry O my Beloved India. Look at what Thy children are doing to Thou
Francois Gautier

Sonia’s presence in Delhi is costing India dearly

by Francois Gautier

02 Dec 2008
Source: New Indian Express

In 1898, the French writer Emile Zola wrote an open letter to the then French president in the newspaper L’Aurore, titled j’accuse (‘I accuse’), where he accused the French government of anti- Semitism towards Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer unfairly condemned for treason.

Now it is time for the people of India to say openly that which many, including within the Congress, think secretly and may utter in the privacy of their chambers.It is not about Manmohan Singh, it is not even about Shivraj Patil, the fall guy; it is about that one person, the Eminence Grise of India. She who pulls all the strings, She whose shadow looms menacingly over so many, She who holds no portfolio, is just a simple elected MP, like 540 others, but rules like an empress.

Sometimes, one’s very physical presence at the top is enough to move things, to influence the course of events. One word from Her, a glance, a frown, are enough to put the whole heavy, inert, unwilling machinery of India’s bureaucracy and political system in full motion. Sometimes She need not say anything: in the true tradition of Bhakti, Her ministers, Her secretaries, interpret Her silences and rush to cater to Her western and Christian identity.

Nevertheless, she has said and acted enough so that one day she may stand accused on the pages of History for what she must have done to India.

I’accuse Sonia Gandhi as being responsible for the tragedy of Mumbai, having emasculated India’s intelligence agencies by stopping them from investigating terror attacks in the last four years, including the Mumbai train blasts. She has also neutralised the ATS by ordering them at all costs to ferret out ‘Hindu terrorism’, which if it exists, has wrought minuscule damage compared to what Islamic terror has done since 2004.

Did the US send a warning to India that there may be an attack on Mumbai and that the Taj would be one of the targets? Were these ignored because the ATS was too busy chasing Hindu ‘terrorists’ on Sonia’s orders? I accuse Sonia and her government of having made the NSG the laughing stock of the world. How many times did the NSG (who took ten hours to reach Mumbai) claim that it had “sanitised the Taj and that the operation was over” and how many times did a bomb go off immediately after? For the last 20 years, the NSG has guarded VIPs and has become soft. See the comments of Israeli terror specialists, who said the NSG should have first sanitised the immediate surroundings of the places of conflict, kept the bystanders and press (who gave terrorists watching TV in the Taj rooms a perfect report of the security forces’ whereabouts) out of the place, gathered enough information about the position of the terrorists and hostages before taking action, instead of immediately engaging the terrorists, and ensuring the deaths of so many hostages.

I accuse Sonia of having let her Christian and Western background, in four years, divide India on religious and caste lines in a cynical and methodical manner.

I accuse Sonia of weakening India’s spirit of sacrifice and courage, so that 20 terrorists (or less) held at ransom the financial capital of India for more than three days.

I accuse Sonia Gandhi of always pointing the finger at Pakistan, when terrorism in India is now mostly homegrown, even if it takes help, training, refuge and arms from Pakistan; of not warning Indians of the grave dangers of Islamic terror for cynical election purposes.

I accuse Sonia of being an enemy of the Hindus, who always gave refuge to persecuted minorities, and who are the only people in the world to accept that God may manifest under different names, in different epochs, using different scriptures.

I accuse Sonia Gandhi of taking advantage of India’s respect for women, its undue fascination with the Gandhi name, and its stupid mania for White Skin.

I’accuse Sonia of exploiting the Indian Press’ obsession with her. She hardly ever gave interview in 20 years, except scripted ones to NDTV, yet the Press always protects her, never blames her and keeps silent over her covert role.

I’accuse Sonia and her government of trying to make heroes of subservient and inefficient men to hide the humiliation of Mumbai 26/11. Before going to his death, Hemant Karkare, the ATS chief, was shown on television clumsily handling his helmet, as someone who uses it very rarely. Why did he die of bullet wounds in the chest when he was wearing a bullet-proof vest? Either Indian vests are inferior quality or he was not wearing one.

How did the terrorists who killed him and his fellow officer escape in the same vehicle used by the ATS chief ? Why did he and his officers go into Cama Hospital without ascertaining where the terrorists were? We honour his death, but these facts say a lot about the ATS’ battle-readiness.

Will someone in the Congress, someone who feels more Indian than faithful to Sonia, stand up and speak the truth? Who said, “Go after Hindu terrorists”? Who insisted on putting pressure on BJP governments in Karnataka or Orissa for so-called persecution of Christians, when Christians have always practised their faith in total freedom here, while their missionaries are converting hundreds of thousands of innocent tribals and Dalits with the billions of dollars given by gullible westerners? Who said, “Go soft on Islamic terrorism”? Who wants to do away with India’s nuclear deterrence in the face of Pakistani and Chinese nuclear threats, by pushing at all costs the one sided Indo-US nuclear deal, which makes no secret of its intention to denuclearise India militarily? I am sure Sonia Gandhi has good qualities: she probably was a good wife to Rajiv, a good daughter in law to Indira and by all accounts, she is a good mother to her children. One also hears first-hand reports about her concern for smaller people, her dignity in the suffering that befell her when her husband was blown to pieces, and her courtesy with visitors.

Nevertheless, she is a danger to India.

Her very presence, both physical and occult, open the doors to forces inimical to India. Even Indian Christians should understand that she is not a gift to them: her presence at the top has emboldened fanatics like John Dayal or Valson Thampu, who practise an orthodox Christianity prevalent in the West in the early 20th century, but no longer, to radicalise their flock. Indian Christians should recognise that they have a much better deal here than Christians or Hindus have in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Saudi Arabia.

Under Sonia’s rule, Indian Muslims, too, have been used as electoral pawns. They have been encouraged to shun the Sufi streak, a blend of the best of Islam and Vedanta, for a hard-line Sunni brand imported from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the good of India, her civilisation, her immense spirituality and culture, Sonia Gandhi has to go and a government that thinks Indian, breathes nationalism and will protect its citizens must be voted to power.

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