The India International Centre, Delhi, is an NGO, but has been heavily supported and involved with the Indian Government since its inception in 1958 (Nehruvian-Congress era of politics).
The IIC was founded & funded by the Rockefeller foundation. The Rockefeller foundation & Rothschild foundation are partners in many projects. Now, both these organisations have dark sinister secrets and pasts.
A look at the ‘About’ section of the India International Centre’s website and one can see quite clearly that its past and present Presidents, Vice Presidents, Life Trustees and Trustees mostly belong to the comfortable coterie of Lutyens’ and Khan Market cabal.
Now, it hosts a CD Deshmukh Memorial Lecture every year on his birth anniversary which is 14th January in memory of its Founder President.
One of their previous speakers in this tradition of lectures last year was MK Rasgotra (Foreign Secy during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy who secured the release of accused Warren Anderson). He spoke (ironically) on “Foreign Policy: Past and Future”.
Then in 2018 they invited Rohintan F. Nariman (who passed incorrect remarks on Rig Veda & termed Babar and Akbar as secular). He spoke on, hold your breath, “Great” Contemporaries: Akbar, Suleiman I and Elizabeth I.”
And one more, before ending this section, was judge B. N. Srikrishna (his Srikrishna Report on Bombay riots of 1992-93 dragged on for more than 5 years and blamed the Shiv Sena as being largely responsible for it). He delivered a speech in 2012 titled “Beyond Federalism”.
One must especially take a good look at its current President Mr. Shyam Saran’s track record, as he is a well-known Congress supporter & Nehru dynasty loyalist.
In 2020, he criticized Prime Minister Modi for attending the Ayodhya event in an article in the Business Standard newspaper.
As a counter to Shyam Saran’s venomous article, Milind Sathye, an Australian Academic, wrote a factual counter on IndiaFacts.Org .
I would like to quote verbatim some excerpts from that brilliant article of Milind Sathye here:
In so doing, Shyam Saran not only toes the Pakistan government line but also has no qualms in unabashed concealment of truth.
He stated that “it was on the site of the criminal demolition of a mosque that a temple to celebrate Ram was being built.” He further goes on “‘’the continued popularity of Ramayana in distant lands (among others, in Indonesia, a Muslim majority country) is a testimony to the universal moral appeal of Indian epics’’.
Saran could have persuaded the Congress Party governments not to question the very existence of Ram in the Supreme Court. Was his diplomatic silence triggered by a personal ambition to become a foreign secretary? Or did he find that receiving Padma Bhushan honor was more appealing than Ram’s universal appeal? He could have at least convinced his foreign ministry colleagues like Hamid Ansari (former Vice President of India) or bosses like Salman Khurshid (former Foreign Minister) to learn from Indonesian Muslims?
‘’to trap Ram in a golden and glittering edifice is to shrink his universal appeal as a moral hero— a Maryada Mahapurusha— to a local deity…..’’. But does not tell us why similar logic could not be applied to holy places of other religions – the Vatican or the Macca – for example?
As the Indonesian Muslims were not exposed to the toxic Nehruvian history, they do not have issues in showing reverence to Hanuman and accepting their Hindu ancestry which Indian Muslims have.
How could Indians learn about the cultural legacy unless the learning is grounded in the educational system? How could Indians draw inspiration from its cultural heritage when the Marxist education system drilled down the message that we should be ashamed of our heritage as though the caste system is our only heritage. Given this, the need for a temple – a place where people congregate to connect with their cultural past forgetting caste differences – is felt all the more. Yet Saran opposes the Temple!
Saran then shows his anti-Mandir fangs by asking why does then Rama needs a manmade temple to reside.
Saran makes us laugh when he notes that the Independence movement bound ‘’us together in a shared sense of citizenship. If it was so, could the former diplomat explain why did the shared spirit fritter away as freedom was on the anvil? Did Nehru fail Indians? But Saran avoids difficult questions.
Saran then asserts ‘’Gandhi’s Ram Rajya was an embodiment of this idea of India. A Ram Rajya which needs a glorious Ram Temple as its symbol is a very limiting conception of India’’.
Instead of an intellectual debate, Saran resorts to mud-slinging. He describes the struggle for Ayodhya ‘’a violent and vulgar brawl’’ and ‘’ugly manifestations’’.
Saran could have a reason to feel dejected as his colleague Jai Shankar is now the Foreign Minister while Saran had to be content with foreign secretary position and receiving a civilian award.
To be true to his name, Saran could have surrendered to Krishna – and his universal appeal – given that Indonesia proudly showcases the Arjuna Vijaya chariot statue. But alas, Saran chose to surrender reason at the feet of Nehru dynasty.
It is no wonder that Shyam Saran invited the infamous distorter of Indian History, Ms. Romila Thapar for the very recent C.D. Deshmukh Memorial Lecture 2023, on 14th, on “Our History, Their History, Whose History?” It pointed towards some sort of ‘current crisis that has engulfed the teaching and writing of history as reflected in the new syllabuses for educational institutions of all levels.
The abstract of it read as “The talk will examine the current crisis in the teaching and writing of history as reflected in new syllabus for school, college and University, and in public statements on the past. There is a bifurcation between popular public views and those of professional scholars of history. The questions to be answered are how did this come about? How legitimate are the changes being formally suggested? And why these changes are being contested by historians? The focus will be on one frequently quoted interpretation relating to the second millennium AD., discussing the relationship between two communities.”
What is the ‘current crisis’ in the writing of history? Apparently there was none when a cabal of patronized historians, self-appointed ‘professional scholars”, were rubbishing those whom Hindus revere, such as Guru Nanak ji, Guru Tegh Bahadur ji, or were trivializing fighters such as Maharana Pratap, or questioning in the Courts the very historicity of Ramayana.
Without sufficient knowledge of Sanskrit & Persian, Romila Thapar is paraded as a scholar of Ancient Indian History. Her entire patronised academics has been an exercise in subverting the Sanatana Dharma and its narratives. To quote Jane Austen on Miss Bingley -“She won favors of the opposite sex [read ‘The Christo-Islamic West] by undermining her own [read Hindu Civilisation]. For her teaching young children the neutrality of cow-eating is a better educational goal than protecting all JIVA, all forms of life, the goal of Sanatana Dharma.
She was instrumental in a way inventing and propagating the now debunked ‘Aryan Invasion theory’ and sowing the ‘Anti-Brahmin’ poison in our minds through History textbooks in schools and colleges.
Romila Thapar and her fake history has been point by point demolished by the Supreme Court in the Ayodhya verdict, by great scholars like Shri Sitaram Goel, Dr. Meenakshi Jain, Dr. Koenraad Elst, Shri Rajiv Malhotra, Madhu Kishwar and many more. She has not yet accepted any debate with anyone who has challenged her and only resorts to her cosy den for lectures and interviews with absolutely no Q&A.
This very IIC put down the request of its member Dr Daksh Lohiya in July 2021 when he requested that a colloquium be hosted by Shri Sandeep Balakrishna to mark the centenary of the Moplah massacres, but lo & behold, the IIC did not even allow it as a ‘private event’.
But it hosts a formal event, that too a highlighted lecture with known distorter of History, Romila Thapar! Incidentally, her brother Romesh Thapar was one of its Directors from 1967-73.
We don’t see why the IIC at this point of time should enter a kind of political activism by organizing a lecture which will boil down, knowing the ‘pre-eminent’ historian’s known bias, to a critique that will amount to a subversion of the cherished values and historical experience of the majority community.
When the President of IIC, Shyam Saran, chairs such a lecture, it gets located in a characteristic partisan narrative that the invited scholar is renowned for.
Many IIC members, surely, would not like the esteemed IIC to be seen as an extension of Groups that are concerned about, and working for, the 2024 elections.
If the IIC was set up for “the quickening and deepening of true and thoughtful understanding between peoples of nations’ as mentioned in its manifesto then well demeaning Hindus and the Indian govt and glorifying or rather whitewashing the crimes of a certain community/communities is not the way around.
Either it becomes neutral or shows the truth and not lies/half-truths.
So, Mr. Shyam Saran, current President of IIC, need to wake up from their deep slumber of the bygone days of Nehru dynastic politics and smell the coffee of an Indian Renaissance happening right now.
Public wrath via thousands of emails and phone calls as well as major Twitter handles questioning IIC and Shyam Saran for inviting Romila Thapar led them to deploy police personnel outside the venue and change the audience from ‘Public’ to ‘Members only’ is just the beginning of backlash.
IIC will continue to face public wrath if its current and future Presidents and Trustees continue to invite Hindu and Indian Govt baiters in the future.
We are today coming out of a sabotaged and subverted state that ruled by rejecting and ridiculing Hindu Dharma and reduced Hindus to the status of second rate citizens. No more. Sanatana Dharma treats everyone as equal and shall do so. But we will now not allow anyone, particularly those ‘accidental” Hindus who bear Hindu names because they were born in Hindu families, to subdue us by their pseudo-shastra.
Note: The above article is written by Tanya, she tweets here.
