THE OXYGEN IMBROGLIO

Shortages of Oxygen has been a hot topic in India during the last several weeks. It started with a few Opposition-run State Governments blaming that India had exported the largest quantity of Oxygen from the country when the requirement was mounting in the country due to the Covid-10 pandemic. The Government and Industry clarified that it was Industrial oxygen that was exported and not medical oxygen. The Union Government pointed out that earlier this year, the PM-CARES Fund had allocated Rs 201.58 crores for the installation of an additional 162 PSA Medical Oxygen Generation Plants inside public health facilities and many states had not done the job. This is the context of this blog.

The mainstay of treatment for patients with COVID-19 is ‘supportive care’. Rather than treating the underlying viral infection, supportive care aims to maintain the function of the body’s vital organs to keep the individual alive while the disease progresses and eventually resolves. Severe bilateral pneumonia is the main feature of severe COVID-19. Supplemental oxygen is a first essential step for the treatment of severe COVID-19 patients with hypoxemia and should be a primary focus. Infected and damaged lungs are less effective at allowing oxygen to pass from the environment to the bloodstream.

The main reason for being admitted to a hospital with COVID-19 is to receive supplemental oxygen, to increase the amount of oxygen in the lungs and blood, which will be sufficient treatment before recovery in most cases. This can be administered in a number of ways, including into the nose using plastic tubing, or via a loose-fitting face mask: 1) Nasal cannula-based oxygen therapy for those with 2-5 litre requirement of oxygen per minute. 2) Mask-based for those with 6-15 litre requirement. 3) High-frequency nasal cannula oxygen therapy for those with 15-50 litres and ventilator support above that. AIIMS director Randeep Guleria said that ’20 percent of the patients need oxygen therapy and five percent need ventilation.

Medical experts were increasingly preferring non-invasive oxygen therapy over ventilation as doubts over the effectiveness of ventilator increased after an overwhelming majority of Covid-19 patients on the ventilator were dying in India and abroad. It was thought that ventilators were worsening the lung damage caused by Covid-19. Doctors have stopped using ventilators for management of COVID-19 (except very late) as early ventilation was said to increase the chances of death. Many people stay at home till late and approach hospitals for admission at a stage when oxygen demand is pretty high (five-six fold) as compared to the low flow stage. Late presentation (low presentation baseline oxygen saturation) can exponentially increase the risk of death. Hence medical community suggests early care and therapy (oxygen/steroid/heparin) in the pulmonary phase (90-95 percent saturation).

Cryogenic separation is most effective when any of the three criteria need to be met: high purity oxygen is required (>99.5%), high volumes of oxygen are required (≥10to the power of 2  tons of oxygen/day), or high-pressure oxygen is required. Cryogenic air separators take more than an hour to start up. Additionally, since cryogenics can produce such a high purity of oxygen, the waste nitrogen stream is of usable quality.

Pressure swing adsorbers (PSA) are a much newer technology as compared to cryogenic ASU. PSA devices are best suited for processes that do not require extremely high purities of oxygen (<95%). While PSAs can achieve as high as 99.9%, the cost associated with going above 99.5% in a PSA device rises tremendously. Furthermore, PSA devices are best suited for small volumes of oxygen production, typically on the order of 10 to the power of 1 ton/day. Since the output of oxygen is largely controlled by the bed size in the PSA systems, costs rise linearly when higher volumes of oxygen are required. PSA devices take only a few minutes for start-up.

Membrane Technology: Conventional membrane technology involves passing air over a membrane filter. The filter will allow fast gasses to pass and slow gasses will stay. Oxygen is considered a fast gas and nitrogen and argon are considered slow gasses. Varying levels of purity can be achieved by varying the time that the gas spends undergoing filtration. Previous membrane technology could only produce purity levels of less than 50%. But the recent The ion transport membrane (ITM) was developed by Air Products and Chemicals, in conjunction with the United States Department of Energy and Ceramatec can produce greater than 99% purity and high volume (equivalent to volumetric flow of cryogenic separation systems) Oxygen at much lower costs than cryogenic separation!

MEDICAL OXYGEN: The air we breathe is a mix of several gases, such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen. The term ‘medical oxygen’ means high-purity oxygen, which is used for medical treatments and developed for use in the human body. Oxygen is also used in industries for combustion, oxidation, cutting, and chemical reactions. The difference is that purity levels of industrial oxygen are not appropriate for human use. There can be impurities, which can make people ill. Medical oxygen cylinders should also be free of contaminants.

Years ago, gas supply vendors typically maintained two separate storage facilities for oxygen: "welding or industrial or technical" (a non-USP, or illegal to sell for human consumption label) variety and gas intended for human use in respirators or medical procedures (a USP label). Since most gas supply vendors have decided that it is simply not cost-effective to store separate grades of medical gases, almost all oxygen sold in the US is a USP grade- the United States Pharmacopoeia- (meets USP requirements for human consumption). However, there are distinct differences in how the cylinders are filled. Most vendors in the US are now filling all cylinders with USP gas. If the vendor fill station operator sees that a cylinder is labeled as a medical or emergency oxygen cylinder, or intended for human respiration, then the cylinder is evacuated and filled with USP/Medical oxygen. But most welding or Industrial grade oxygen cylinders are filled with USP oxygen without an evacuation-between-fills step. Grade 4.5 oxygen is USP oxygen that has a purity greater than 99.995 % oxygen Grade 5 (or "five nines") oxygen is USP oxygen that is certified 99.999 % pure. It is sometimes called research grade.  This is the highest purity of oxygen manufactured in the US and is typically found only in top-end chemical research facilities. Its non-research use is associated with specialty welding of titanium and titanium alloys for the nuclear or aerospace industry.

It is heartening to note that the Government of India has taken up the responsibility of supplying Oxygen to the states, and have requested/instructed industries to chip in producing medical oxygen stopping the production of industrial oxygen to the minimum. The Prime Minister's Office has approved funds for the installation of 551 dedicated Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) Medical Oxygen Generation Plants in public health facilities in the country.  The Indian Railways have done a great job of running Oxygen Expresses delivering as on today 9^th May 4500 MT oxygen across the country.

Countries like the United States, Russia, Ireland, Thailand, France, Italy, Germany, have been contributing to India’s medical requirement by building oxygen plants, sending ventilators, oxygen concentrators, rapid testing kits, and medicines. The Oxygen imbroglio has almost come to an end!

 

 

 

COVID  VACCINATION – FEARS and OBJECTIONS

It is a common fear more than an actual complaint that people  suffer common side effects of COVID-19 vaccinations like fever, experience fatigue (tiredness) and headache, feel nauseous, in addition to pain or swelling in the arm where the shot was administered. But statistically, in trials, most people didn’t have side effects. A little over 50% didn’t experience any side effects as monitored by hospitals after the vaccination drive began all over the world. I am 74, and I didn’t have any side effects after the first or the second dose. The nurse who administered the vaccine injection asked everyone to rotate their arms after the shots. I too did it, and the next morning did some digging in the garden without feeling any discomfort.

There are people who feel that the side effects mean the vaccine is doing its job. When the vaccine enters the muscles, the cells start making a spike protein, which makes our body think our muscle cells are infected with the coronavirus, and it tries to fight off the simulated infection in the cells, causing some inflammation that people experience.

The cells that have replicated the COVID-19 spike protein (RNA) generate antibodies specific for SARS-CoV2 When our innate immune system locates an infection and attacks it. That’s what can cause sore arms, fevers or muscle aches. These symptoms reveal that your immune system has been activated! Data from each clinical trial show younger patients tend to have more systemic reactions than older patients do. That is because, as a person ages, the ability of his/her immune system to recognize and quickly create antibodies and aggressively attack the intruder (infection), starts to get weaker. But those who are vaccinated are protected whether or not they have developed side effects. That is, you don’t have to feel terrible to prove that you’re protected from COVID-19!

In Johnson & Johnson’s clinical trial, more than 60% of younger patients had systemic reactions compared to about 45% of patients over age 60. Pfizer and Moderna’s studies show similar numbers, but not as large of a difference. The number of reactions increases with the second shot. Data also shows more women having a reaction to the shot than men. Details regarding COVISHIELD and Covaxin are not available at the moment.

Fear and anxiety about the vaccines can also create a reaction by making our body release adrenaline. Some might confuse that feeling with vaccine response. Adrenaline rush may increase the heart rate, and lead to a feeling of the heart racing, and redirect blood toward the muscles and a change in temperature as a result of the blood redirection, sweating as a reaction to stress, and feeling lightheaded due to changes in blood and oxygen supply. No harm in any or all these, it may be noted!

WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER IS THAT THE REACTIONS ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO ACTUALLY GETTING SICK WITH COVID!

Caste-based Reservations

(Reply to a friend)

I have serious objection to the Reservation policy which on the giver’s side is a sop or lollypop not to upset the vote bank already created in the pre-Independence period and on the taker’s side mere entitlement psychology welling from the power of the block-votes.

Now let us look at those “right questions” the learned judges of the Supreme Court were expected to ask:

“When will caste-based discrimination come to an end? Why are the backward classes not represented in the higher positions of state services, including the judiciary? Why is reservation not being implemented in its letter and spirit? Why backlog vacancies of these classes are not filled in? What is the sanctity of economically weaker sections reservation when economic backwardness was not accepted as a stand-alone ground for providing reservation in Indra Sawhney (1992)? How can the Union government recruit directly to higher positions in civil services through lateral entry, bypassing the constitutional provisions? Why are public enterprises being privatized on such a large scale? Why is there no reservation in the private sector?”

These are notable for their shrillness just as much for their shallowness. The proponents of the caste-based reservation cannot swallow the ground reality that the poor Brahmin is as deprived as the poor Dalit. Likewise, there are no special difficulties for the poor Muslim or the poor Christian which the poor Hindu does not suffer. This is my view even as I agree that India does need welfare policies such as Reservations and quotas as there are millions in the bottom of the pyramid for not much fault of theirs. As Warren Buffett put it, they just did not win the ovarian lottery. So, affirmative action policies are needed.

I think a deprivation-based system should be applied for all reservations and the upper limit should be 50% and affirmative action such as good schooling, scholarships, financial growth, and hostels should be stepped up and eventually reservation should be gradually tapered off.

Now, though the caste system which is prevalent to date has been a fundamental part of Indian culture for time immemorial, I maintain after going through the literature on Caste system that it was the 1881 Census conducted by the British India Government which for the first time enumerated castes and arranged them in a hierarchy. To my knowledge India does not record a single caste war in its written history of 2000 years, or in its literature!

The philosophy of caste system had actually disappeared following the preaching of Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Dayananda Saraswathi among others and only the morphology remained. As that too was crumbling, when the modern movements apparently rooted in progressive ideals have brought back the castes, (particularly recasting ‘Harijans’ as the oppressed classes-Dalits) into political toys through an attractive and addictive reverse discrimination. We now see clans and communities aspiring for ‘backward’ tag for reservations and other short-term benefits. These benefits have brought a special sense of competitive entitlement into the social system, making caste animosities deeper and more aggressive! “Jaathichoadippin” (ask for the caste) has come up as a slogan in the identity politics of recent years as against oft-quoted words of Shree Narayana Guru “Ask not, say not, think not caste”!

Unfortunately among the various identities an individual caries in India, the caste identity is the most potent one. On the positive side it facilitates group identity and helps in group activities. Many ignore its influence in business relationships in the Indian economy which is still predominantly “relationship-based”, not a “contract” or “value” based. It secures jobs and in many parts of India facilitates initial capital formation and credit for doing business and also risk mitigation. Caste elders consider failure a part of the process of learning and don’t frown upon it.

Reservations for the SC/ST categories was a Constitutional provision that was "purposefully discriminatory". In law, it is a form of affirmative action whereby a percentage of seats are reserved in the public sector units, union, and state civil services, union, and state government departments and in all public and private educational institutions, except in the religious/ linguistic minority edu­cational institutions, for the socially and educationally backward communities and the Scheduled Castes and Tribes who are inadequately represented in these services and institutions. Parliament routinely extended reservation for SC/ST fixed at 10 years first, without any free and fair revisions. Later, reservations were introduced for other sections as well.

MISUSE OF 9^th SCHEDULE: The original intent behind creating the ninth schedule was to ensure that land reforms were not thwarted by judicial pronouncements in favor of the right to property, which would only have benefited landlords. But thanks to the desire of politicians to do everything without the judiciary having the right to review bad laws, governments have not only put land laws in this schedule, but an entire bunch of laws, including one to overturn a Supreme Court-mandated 49 percent limit on the reservation. Some states of the Union like Rajasthan have implemented a 68% reservation that includes a 14% reservation for forward castes in services and education, and Tamil Nadu made it 69%. These Reservations pose a systemic risk and they benefit more often the better-off among the lower strata!

In the modern context this unique institution – caste-  has been in use for political mobilization. Those social reformists and social engineers who argued for a “casteless society” fell on the wayside. They have perhaps been helpful in reforming the caste system, but not in abolishing it. Interestingly, the one-man-one-vote system of representative democracy has led to the integration of many sub-castes into a larger cast identity. The best example is Nairs! The caste system in its present form has become therefore a valuable social capital that gives a cushion from the shocks in dealing with the larger society, and more so in the interaction with the State for families and individuals! Everywhere else in the world, the individual is alone in the society with his constitutional/legal rights! 

RSS remains a Hindu Organization Part-2

The stubborn obduracy of Christians and Muslims that those who do not belong to those faiths no longer have a place in God’s plan for humanity added to their questionable behavior regarding territorial loyalty creates an atmosphere of disunity and distrust of the most ominous quality! So expecting Muslims and Christians with their exceptionalism and exclusivity cannot be expected to join the mainstream that RSS wanted to represent! Have you noticed, a bit queer, isn’t it, two years after Partition, Muslim members of Constituent Assembly, who represented the Muslims who preferred to stay back in secular India, could raise vehement demands for a separate electorate and could successfully stall the proposal for a common civil code, think of the Muslim leadership of India then! Six decades after Partition, we want dialogue with Muslims; we want co-existence; we want to build bridges!

Islam demands a black-and-white separation of believers and non-believers, and the Prophet too wanted Muslims to separate themselves from the rest after he fled Mecca for Medina. It is little surprise that this kind of mental partitioning makes all Muslims living as minorities anywhere think they must separate themselves from the rest to retain their identity. Muslim youth avoid certain attitudes, standard language, clothes and some behaviours because they consider them part of Hindu way of life. They fear that adopting Hindu ways would be detrimental to their collective racial identity and solidarity. The behaviours and attitudes to be avoided included, for example, striving for high grades, talking properly, hanging around too many Hindu students, and participating in extracurricular activities that were populated by Hindus. And Hindu parents tended to have higher academic expectations for their kids. Some teachers and education administrators expect less of the Muslim students in terms of performance, even going so far as to de-emphasize the importance of academic achievments. Eventually there is a “learning gap” and communal politicians and civil rights leaders encourage Muslims to see themselves as victims.

What is that the Hindu majority of India expected to do under the above circumstances? No people with a self-respectful notion of national identity can carry within a disillusioned history of themselves, and therefore some embellishments, some glorification of the past etc. are essential strategy. This is the essence of a new national identity called Hindutva. Hindus, unlike Xians and Muslims don’t divide humanity into those chosen by God and those eternally damned! Hindu dharma requires regarding all as brothers and sisters. Vedas declare "Ekam sat. Vipraa: bahuda vadanti" - "Truth is One. The learned speak of That in so many ways". While it's probably impossible to avoid ever offending anyone, Hindus really don't want to gratuitously offend deeply held non-Hindu belief systems. Tolerance, a virtue seeing other peoples’ point of view has been degenerating into if not exactly self-hatred, certainly a form of cultural relativism in which the unique achievements of the Hindu civilization are devalued. We can’t accept it! We believe that the acid test of secularism Muslims/Christians have to take is this: will they be tolerant to the extent they accept other religious beliefs on an equal footing with their own? 

In a land which had extended its hospitality over millennia to people of every faith, only Muslims saw themselves as a people apart refused to become assimilated and repaid India’s welcome by tearing the country in two. What did Dr.Ambedkar, not very pleased with the Hindu religion thanks to the bitter fruits of the caste system himself, think of the situation as an architect of the Democratic Republic of India? “...I felt that it was only by partition that Hindus would not only be independent but free. If India and Pakistan had remained united in one state, Hindus, though independent, would have been at the mercy of the Muslims....”(Ambedkar- Thoughts On Linguistic States, 1955)

Were Hindus conquered, subjected to hatred proselytization and persecution because we were different human beings, lesser mortals? Or is our Hindutva a meaningless the distinction that deserves no commendation and attracts animus and violence as an inferior faith? Shouldn’t we stand together to defend ourselves, and our rights as Hindus, recalling that we were subjected to a thousand years of subjugation, disdain, exploitation, conversions, divisions because of our disunity?

Is an unpleasant divisive politics preferable to the Hindutva which tries to hold together a large number of castes and communities under its umbrella? Is promoting an identity politics predicated on historical victimization and the equality of result more important than the principle of equality before the law? History is civilizational memory. It’s a way of seeing, understanding, and rendering the world as well as other forms of knowledge. Without it, “or the stories memories are suspended in, we cannot say who we are or what we are…we cannot…even dwell in society.” But to make sense of all the purportedly dry and boring facts and dates that relate who and what we are, we need some organizational narrative, a structure within which “facts arrange themselves and thereby take on significance.” Hindus have those stories, a great tapestry of mythology, great literature! Most of Hindu mythology is full of traditional humanizing myths. If and when they are removed from our lives, nothing much is left. Remember, cultures/civilizations die when they cease to believe in themselves! Myths, whether Indian or Roman, belonging to the Hindu culture of Christian, are the collective historical conscience of the respective communities; their instructions to the future generations. Preserving the memory of historical events, codifying religious rituals, and at times dramatizing contemporary social conflicts in aesthetic forms as poems or parables, they do forge a collective identity.

Hindus have very little recorded, verifiable, factual history, but there is another one: culturally constructed and embodied in popular memory, told, retold over and over again. Hinduism places time and history as of secondary importance in the realm of the phenomenal world. Thus Mahabharata, Ramayana, Vedas, Upanishads, and all our scriptures are messages permeating across time and generations. Mahabharata and Ramayana are the foundational texts of Indian civilization. They are not mere mythologies: they are Itihāsas. An Itihāsa is a history that has overcome historicism: a history that has become critical and self-conscious. They have transformed high abstract philosophies of the Upanishads into aesthetically appealing literary work which has touched the hearts of millions of Indians and has further manifested as performing arts which have been lived and experienced by common people throughout Indian history. The people who wrote the Mahābhārata were profound intellects. India has produced some of the greatest philosophical thinkers known to humankind. It has produced works we are still grappling with. If a nation is a historical continuity bound by such inheritance and also a shared culture, India is one of the oldest nations with a continuous history of several thousand years.

In his Discovery of India Jawaharlal Nehru shows his fascination with this mysterious unity of India that is Bharat through the ages: “the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities”, “some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization” The Indian republic generally completed the metamorphosis from the artifact of colonial unification to a nation-state. The Indian nationalism or ‘Hindu nationalism’ if you will, mobilized the frustrations, emotions, affinities, and hatreds too attending the cultural humiliation of the encounters first with Islam (the Moguls) and Western Imperialism which devalued the Indian heritage. An overarching layer of common culture composed of the richly diverse symbols of Hindu Cosmology and history would perhaps help wipe out the cleavages of caste and community; provide a common ideology and a binding passion needed to unite a civilization and inspire it for progress.

Those who refuse to share this passion forces themselves out of the civilizational State; but not the administrative state as citizens. You have to accept that Hindutva is a heterogeneous movement and that most members reject the more extreme positions.   Hindus resent the idea that all other groups may advance their rights while only we - only the Hindus - may not. The RSS believes that Indians are united not only by a common past, and common heritage, but by a common and burning support and reverence for liberty, for pluralism, our commitment to our common future, and our common values, of inquiry. Religious identities and differences are not straightforwardly objective facts. It is a prior belief in separateness that leads one to construct narratives that exaggerate points of difference. According to the RSS world view, the attitude "separation is necessary for distinctiveness" could fairly serve as the tagline of an anti-national or anti-social ideology! The RSS stands athwart the “Left-liberal” secular narrative. It vouches for representative democracy, respect for all religions in public life, a responsible ethic of nationalism, and a duty-centric form of citizenship that encourages individuals to put the nation before themselves! Citizens in a democratic republic live in three planes: personal, social, and political. Freedom of worship exists at the personal level. Social traditions have to conform to the code of dos and don’ts defined legally. And the political role of the citizen emerges out of the concept of all Indians being part of the same nationhood. A moral idea like secularism appears too weak to bond disparate peoples together in a political union. Something denser and more tangible, like cultural identity, must be the glue that holds a nation together... building a public sphere constituted by a shared — often internally contested — moral language. It does not mean RSS is consciously keeping non-Hindus out of it. There were attempts to embrace all Hindus according to the RSS’ definition of Hindus into RSS. But they cannot be yet considered as moderately successful. This is the story of RSS so far!

Why RSS is a ‘Hindu organisation’?

The idea that RSS is not inclusive in the sense it keeps Muslims and Christians out is either a misunderstanding or mere liberal “virtue signalling”! Those who have studied history will know that while Veer Savarkar’s Hindu Maha Sabha and RSS more inclusive while the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP Hindu-centric).

Savrkar’s social philosophy had identified  that the Hindu society was bound by seven shackles (bandi): 1) Restrictions on touch (sparshabandi) of certain castes.2) Restrictions on inter-dining. (rotibandi) 3) Restrictions on inter-marriages (betibandi) 4) Restrictions on pursuing certain occupations (vyavasayabandi) 5) Restrictions on crossing the sea (sindhubandi) 6) Restrictions on rites sanctioned by the Vedas (vedoktabandi) 7) Restrictions on re-conversion (shuddhibandi)!

Savarkar was more against Christianity (obviously because its association with the British who came here with “a Bible in pocket and a gun in the other”) and wanted Hindus and Muslims to join the fight against the British. The founding of the All India Muslim League in 1906 and the British India government's creation of separate Muslim electorate under the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909 was a catalyst for Hindu leaders coming together to create an organisation to protect the rights of the Hindu community members to form a political entity called the Hindu Mahasabha. Savarkar wrote that “the conception of a Hindu Nation is in no way inconsistent with the development of a common Indian Nation, a united Hindustani State in which all sects and sections, races and religions, castes and creeds, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Anglo-Indians, etc., could be harmoniously welded together into a political State on terms of perfect equality”! The Hindu Mahasabha joined hands with the Muslim League and other parties to form governments, in certain provinces after the 1937 elections. Such coalition governments were formed in Sindh, NWFP, and Bengal. He was dissuaded from trying to continue this alliance because the Muslim League started showing its fangs by then. They went closer to the British, unlike sections of the Hindu Community. Gandhiji tried to forge a Hindu-Muslim alliance against the British later, even supporting the Khilafat movement and failed! Though the Hindu Mahasabha identified India as "Hindu Rashtra" (Hindu Nation), it broadly supported the Indian National Congress in its efforts to attain national independence. But HM criticised the Congress commitment to non-violence and secularism, as well as its efforts to integrate Muslims and engage in dialogue with the separatist All India Muslim League,(having tried it earlier and failed!) which the Mahasabha thought as appeasement. So, as a Hindu Mahasabha leader, Savarkar was in politics, and CPM leader, and former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s father Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, a  jurist served as president of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha and was Burdwan MP of the party which Somnath won when his father expired in 1971! As in the case of RSS, Hindu Mahasabha was not a watertight compartment in India politics; many of its leaders joined Congress. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee started the Jan Sangh, which after the Janata Part experiment in 1977 became the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)!

RSS was founded on cultural nationalism and its Hindu “agenda” was about holding together a civilisational state, and give it the glory it deserved after centuries of alien rule. It is significant that name given was Rashtriya (National) Swayam Sevak (Voluntary) Sangh (Corps), not  ‘Hindu Swayam Sevak Sangh’. A civilisational-state doesn’t just represent an ethnic or linguistic community or a single religious community, but a unique civilisation distinct from others. It was a very conscious decision that Sangh will not be just a Hindu outfit. But didn’t Vincent Smith (Indologist and historian) write that the “unity underlying the obvious diversity of India may be summed up in the word ‘Hindu’”? Hindutva came into existence as an anti-imperialist construct answering the challenge posed by the modern world built on the concept of a nation-state. Proponents of this worldview naturally saw India as a nation, and Hindutva provided the intellectual foundation for it. RSS Sarsangh Chalaks have repeatedly said that the Sangh defined Hindus as Savarrkar had: “Aasindhu sindhu paryantaa Yasya Bharata Bhoomika/Pitrubhu Punyabhuchaiva Tavai Hinduriti Smritah”(‘Those who regard this land of Bharat spread between river Sindhu (in the north) to the ocean Sindhu (Sindhu Sagar – Indian Ocean in the south) as their Pitrubhumi – Fatherland and Punyabhumi – Holy land are called as Hindus’.) Shri M.S. Golwalkar ‘Guruji’ told an Iranian scholar Saifuddin Jeelani in 1971 that: “According to our ways of religious belief and philosophy, a Muslim is as good as a Hindu. It is not the Hindu alone who will reach the ultimate Godhead. Everyone has the right to follow his path according to his own persuasion. That is our attitude.”Recently, the present Sarsangh Chalak, Dr.Mohan Bhagwat repeated it.

The British Home Department’s 1939-40 report on volunteer organisations shows RSS was 150000 strong then. The British government initiated a recruitment drive for the army, ARP and Civic Guards when World War II broke out. Please note, Nathuram Godse’s Hindu Rashtra Sena decided to join the British army to get military training. (24. The persistence of alleged responsibility for Gandhi murder and other tropes can be explained in part by confirmation bias, which is currency today than ever before thanks to the instant and widespread dissemination of personal opinions over social media.) The RSS refused to co-operate with the recruitment to British and had to suffer the wrath of the British rulers. In June 1939, the Home Department suggested the Central Provinces government use Section 16 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act (XIV of 1908) to ban RSS in retaliation but the province’s chief secretary GM Trivedi wrote to the central government on May 22, 1940, that it was not feasible as it would lead to huge protests in the province! The Sangh’s decision to participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement erased the government’s delusion that it was a tail of the Hindu Mahasabha. CP & Berar police’s fortnightly report stated that RSS founder Hedgewar’s participation had invigorated the movement. He led thousands of sataygrahis and suffered a year’s rigorous imprisonment. The Sangh’s anti-British stance now invited suppression by an infuriated government. The Home Department report stated, “Of late, the Sangh has started taking interest in political movements of the country, as a result of which the CP government in their circular letter No 2352-2158 IV; dated 15/16 December 1932, was compelled to issue an order warning government servants of the communal and political nature of the Sangh, and forbidding their becoming members or participating in the organisation’s activities.”

There is nothing fanatical about India’s Hindu heritage Sangh Parivar swears by. To the contrary, being loyal to that heritage means not only that Indians of all walks of life, all religious creeds can feel at home in India, and all non-Hindu citizens can integrate into the mother society without having to surrender their unique cultural and religious identities. Anthropologist France Boss has written that “if we wish to take over the direction of a society we must either  guide it from within its cultural framework or else eradicate its culture and impose a new culture”. Hindutva forces prefer to operate from within the frame work of our ancient culture. Communists try to eradicate the past culture and create a new one. Did they succeed anywhere yet?

The contemporary reality is that Christianity and Islam are the world’s two major missionary religions, which between them claim half of humanity as their followers, with Christians numbering over two billion and Muslims over a billion of a global population of approximately six billion. These religions try to convert the followers of non-missionary religions to their own faith, thereby generating the phenomenon of religious conversion. Hindus are open towards other views, unlike ‘good’ Christians and Muslims who feel obligated to make everyone believe what they believe, if necessary by deceit or force. What is the logic behind conversions? It is, simply put, is “my religions is better than yours”. That is fine. But what if they say the Hindus are pagans and infidels, and need to be converted eventually so that they deserve God? Jesus said:”I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto Father but by me!” Christians, a minuscule 3 percent of India’s population, can put up with unrelenting and murderous persecution in Muslim countries but various Xian Churches in India worry about ‘hate speech’ as their focus is soul harvesting! Christian evangelists have been doing great harvest of souls for centuries and still they are no nearer now than they were in 52 AD, 190 AD or 1757 AD! A tolerant multi-religious society is the last thing supremacists of any evangelist faith want! We can see Christianity, even now, centuries after coming to India, as a new and uncertain graft upon the Indian trunk!

With respect to Islam, in India we do have a cultural baggage of alienation with it because India was under the subjugation of Islamic rulers who were passionately following the commands of Prophet Muhammed to convert Hindus, kill them or charge a tax jizya for allowing them to live as Hindus. The length and breadth of the two princely States of Malabar and Kochi are strewn with Temples vandalized by Tippu Sultan. Mughal empire, despite the whitewashing by Leftist historians, was known for its denial of basic human rights to the subjects belonging to the majority religion, denied them the right to practice their religion freely and destroyed their places of worship with continued brutality, some of the holiest of the holy ones being pulled down several times, their building material used in lavatories, or used in Mosques upside down, idols and carvings defaced and used as pavement stone and so on. Please remember, blaming RSS/BJP/and the demolition of Babari structure in Ayodhya for the Islamic terrorism in India is a hoary cliché these days!

The point of friction, not only in India but worldwide, has been the propensity of Christianity and Islam to proselytize. Remember, the Minorities subcommittee of the CAI altered the wording of Article 25 was modified to include the right to propagate!  As a wit has put it, “a seemingly equal right to peddle one’s religion becomes unequal and unfair, much like giving wolves and sheep the right to eat one another”. In India as elsewhere, the two Abrahamic faiths have been known to poach followers from each other besides targeting Hindus and indigenous tribes.

COMMUNISM vs RSS PART 2

Following the India-China conflict, Nehru, who was against the RSS earlier, allowed a contingent of the RSS to participate in the 1963 Republic Day parade in New Delhi, as an acknowledgment of the work of the Swayam Sevaks helping Indian troops carrying supplies to forward areas. The RSS was also hailed by the next Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and General Khushwant Singh of the Indian Army for their contribution to relief and support worn during the Indo-Pak war of 1965. The RSS was the first organization to donate blood during the Indo-Pak war of 1971.

So we have two movements parallel and antithetical to one another to look at - text-book cases of directly opposed, contrasted, mutually incompatible ideologies! One passionate about the country which sings the song “Namaste, sadaa, valsale, Mathrubhume....” to begin the daily Shakha and, that believes that the love for one’s country is worth more than all the riches in the world! It is the grappling-iron that binds generations together; it is passion, conviction, and redemption! India is the manifestation of the Hindu conception of a nation-state. As such, India is the custodian of the Hindu Civilization, the primary objective of which is to ensure the continued existence of Dharma. The other, Communism which never had any patriotic feeling, was an idea of International political organisation with world hegemony as its goal. It rose to power in the Soviet Union, China, and several countries in East Germany, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, etc, but collapsed like a house of cards in its heartland, and survives in only China as an economic and military power thanks to discarding the economic ideology! Marxism has been comprehensively discredited as an economic system, but its supporters then began looking for ways the oppressor/oppressed dynamic could be put to use elsewhere. Communists are now taking great pains to paint themselves as liberal urbane contrarians, democrats and social provocateurs when they are neo-Nazis, minus the Aryan fixation!

Where does RSS and Communism conflict? As we can see, the name Communist is automatically seared into the Nationalist consciousness as an organization hostile to everything RSS stands for! On every political issue, the Left take the side of chaos and destruction, crime and disorder. RSS would consider Marxism as another delusion made up of a “fixed false belief” as Dawkins would call religion! Worse, Communists have this tendency to regard Marxism as being synonymous with wisdom!

What exactly is the reason why Communists oppose RSS? Their main allegation against the RSS is its “aggressive re-institution of oppressive 'traditional values”! They claim to be "progressive". This political correctness and junk thought are inherent in the Left ideological system. The rebranding of Communism as “progressivism” did not take away their love for totalitarianism and absolute statist control, which everywhere has lead to misery, corruption, and brutality, and never elevated humanity.

Communist intolerance is accepted as a legitimate political platform! “Political violence peaked in the period from 1966 to 1970, driven by incidents involving Communist parties”-Rohit Tikku, researcher... “While the Congress was associated with the greatest number of incidents, the Communists were associated with most deaths.””...political violence may have a non-linear relationship with political power i.e. the likelihood of violence is at its maximum when the competition for political control is in balance...”Now look at the killing fields of Kannur for validation! Violence and bullying are the left’s stock in trade, as are fake and exaggerated claims of oppression and sacrifices!

Commies quite literally regard the values that sit at the very heart of Indianness/Hindutva/Modi govt – the rule of law applied equally to all, limited government, respect for all religions, and the free and open exchange of ideas – as “oppressive.” A contempt for these values is precisely what defines the Left generally. Hence Leftism is not “liberal” – or concerned with liberty in any way at all. It is the very opposite of real liberalism. It is fascism. I think they are feeling an existential threat!

Communist propaganda is being wedged deeper and deeper into the educational system. Teaching kids to hate their culture, their religion, their nationhood, is the on-going history education! Dennis Prager’s insightful distinction between the political left and right appears to be very correct: the right, according to him, generally sees the left as wrong but not evil, whereas the left sees the right not merely as wrong but as evil! But they are rabidly illiberal, irrational, and immoral, and evil!

Now as we can observe, the RSS can confidently claim that Swayam Sevaks rule the most number of States and lead the Union Government! If political power decides all issues, Sangh Parivar has several times that of Communists and most of the political Opposition put together! But the RSS has avoided confrontation hiding its strengths and biding its time. RSS is possibly the world’s largest cultural association. What is more, it has seeded and fronted more than 140 associated bodies, which it continues to guide, if not control. Its membership runs into millions. In this context, I would like to stress that the character building and community service objectives of the Sangh with its collective conviction of patriotism have made it indeed the “second line of defense” to the country as former Supreme Court Judge K T Thomas observed recently.

WHY DO COMMUNISTS OPPOSE THE RSS?

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded on Vijayadashami, 27 September 1925. (Interestingly, the officially recorded date of the founding of the Communist Party of India is 26 December 1925!) The founder of the RSS, Dr Keshav Baliram Hedgawar, was a Congressman. The objective of this organisation came from an understanding that ‘values’ always decay over time. Societies that keep their values alive do so by escaping the process of decay by a powerful process of regeneration. That was what the founder of RSS, Dr.Hedgewar wanted to do with the organisation. The perpetual rebuilding, of Hindu community, to enable each generation to discover the living elements in its own culture (the “usable past” as T H Eliot wrote) and leaders who could assist in that rediscovery in the Hindu community which while trying to create a generous cultural space for all immigrants to our ancient land, had allowed our own inheritance to be relegated to a peripheral role. It was unquestionably clear to ‘Dr’ and his band of young and educated disciples that the metaphysical invocation of India’s diversity cannot serve the purpose of this national rejuvenation. History stands testimony to the fact that Hinduness is a movement and a growing tradition truly reflecting the uninterrupted life of this nation. It is the raison d'être of Bharat. In short, Hinduness is the selfhood of Hindustan evolved and developed through centuries. It is the vital force that keeps the nation going and doing. It belongs to all the children of soil without any discrimination. It enters one's inner being as a legacy and not as a choice. It creates in every child born in this land a sense of belonging to the nation. In other words, an individual develops into a national by inheriting Hinduness. The singular becomes the collective. A fierce commitment to nation-building, loyalty to Mother India and to reviving and nurturing is civilisational values were the obsessive concerns of the RSS. For this ‘Hindu unity’. Hindu here was a term that included all faith groups with Indic roots!

Before we go to the Communist movement, let us go to the Congress Party. What was the purpose of Congress? Founder WC Bonnerjee explained - "British viceroy Dufferin felt that it would be in the interest of BRITISH rulers that Indian politicians should meet yearly to discuss how the administration could best be improved and British rule stabilized." That it evolved and became the “be-all and end-all” of the Freedom struggle was an evolution....

What was the background of the Communist movement in India? The Communist Party of India was inspired by the Russian Revolution. It had its roots in the erstwhile Soviet Union. The party was born in Tashkent in 1920 as the brainchild of M.N. Roy. Some British Communists and M.N.Roy inspired a group of young Indians, who were great admirers of Marxism and the Russian revolution to set up in India an organization to spread the Marxist ideology. This organization came formally into existence on 26 December 1925, and was named as the Communist Party of India. Shortly after, the CPI was recognized on Roy’s advice, as a branch of the COMINTERN (Communist International). Roy was the founder of Mexican Communist Party.

So Communism in India was born under the sign of internationalism. The project of the world revolution did not recognize national boundaries. (It is funny to see Indian communists today positioning themselves as great protectors of national sovereignty!) Indian communists have always had a very uncomfortable relationship with nationalism. Their behavior throughout India’s existence as an independent nation does not exactly hold up the comrades in an edifying light. From the British Communist Party’s influence they went to Soviet Communist influence and from there, most of them went to the Chinese Communist Party. “Stalin’s mustache is the mustache” & “Russia varanam, Russia varanam” (Russia has to come) to "Chiner chairman amar chairman" (“Chairman Mao is our Chairman”)!

They had supported Muslim demand for a Muslim ‘Home Land’! In 1948, within a few months of India becoming independent, the CPI under the leadership of B.T. Randive launched the line that this freedom was fake (yeh azadi jhooti hai), and argued that the situation in India was ripe for an armed revolution. They tried it in Telegana region of old Madras State, and also in Punnapra-Vayalar in the then Travancore State; and failed in both places. They supported the Sikh’s demand for Khalistan, though Khalistanis hated irreligious Communism! They tried to whitewash the Mopla Riots of 1921 in Eranad taluka of Kerala and their government gave the remaining killers of Hindus pensions as “Freedom Fighters” to win Muslim votes. As early as 1942, a Muslim member of the central committee of the Communist Party of India asked its Muslim members to join the Muslim League in Punjab. One should understand that it was not opportunism. It is more because of the intuitive understanding of the synergy between Marxism and political Islam as totalitarian movements, which while making use of democratic polity, could strangle the same when they got their hands on power.... In 2006, the same year Kerala banned the movie Da Vinci Code, Frederick Forsyth made an insightful observation on Kerala in his Al Qaeda-based thriller, The Afghan: “Once a hotbed of Communism, it has been a particularly receptive territory for Islamist terrorism".

The Communist slogan "Inquilab Zindabad" is credited to Hasrat Mohani. (It was actually a straight lift from "Viva la revolution" (long live revolution) used during French Revolution. Hasrat Mohani is often painted as an "Indian freedom fighter". A look into his history dispels such notions. Hasrat Mohani became a member of Jinnah's Muslim League and actively campaigned for Pakistan in the 1945-46 provincial elections which decided Pakistan. He was the star campaigner for Muslim League in UP. After Partition, he stayed back as a Communist leader (!) like many others and expressed no regrets.

The work of RSS during the days of partition is described in the book ‘Now It Can Be Told’ by A N Bali. Late Prof. Balraj Madhok, a Jan Sangh MP was the chief organizer of RSS in Jammu and Kashmir and he has written how RSS was left to hold the fort when Pakitan attacked the Kingdom which was yet to join India, as the Indian Army arrived only after the kingdom's accession to the Union of India was signed by Maharaja Hari Singh. Similarly, in the liberation of Dadara, Nagar and Haveli, and Goa, the RSS was at the forefront of the agitations!

In 1962, when the Sino-Indian border conflict occurred, a section of communists, among whom EMS Namboodiripad was prominent, chose to uphold the cause of China and portrayed India as the aggressor. The government threw several communist leaders in prison. V S Achuthanandan then a Central Committee member, was in Thiruvananthapuram Central Jail and mooted the idea of donating blood for the jawans and contributing money from the sale of prison rations saved by inmates to the defense kitty of the government, actually to blunt the campaign accusing the comrades of being Chinese agents. But the party opposed it, and senior party leaders scowled at Achutanandan and he dropped the idea. But in 1965 a party worker filed a formal complaint with the leadership about Achuthanandan’s ‘anti-party activities’. A probe panel was formed, which found Achuthanandan guilty, and by the end of that year, the Kerala committee ratified the findings of the panel: that Achuthanandan’s approach was anti-communist, and he should be demoted from the Central Committee to the Branch level!

Post-1989 (since the collapse of the USSR) most communist intellectuals have turned mercenary, offering their services to the highest bidder! They favor group rights, identity politics, perpetual inter-caste/interreligious grievances, the flouting of laws that don't conform to their own political preferences, a bloated government that intrudes upon every facet of individual life, a socialist economy, and raging intolerance for anyone who holds an opposing political view. The systematic debasement and criminalization of public life in Kerala and West Bengal (for 34 years continuously!) where normal politics has been replaced by crude attempts to impose single-party dominance.

Their electoral performance during the two last General elections in the country is known to all. Communists will continue to hemorrhage voters among the ‘working class’. Hence the Communists use the new argument against elected governments (when they aren’t the ones elected!) “Hitler himself came to power through the process of elections and established legal procedures!” Modi, Trump included!

So, given its track record, the Communists’ attempt to see themselves as protectors of India’s national sovereignty, Constitution, and democracy is a disgrace. Communists in India have acted, at critical periods, at the behest of the Soviet Union or China. In so doing, communists have sacrificed India’s national interests.

Right now, what is going on? Those who had, in utter disregard of the appeal of Islamism which led to the creation of Pakistan, and has fuelled the growth of separatist consciousness and fundamentalism, indulge Muslim communalism in contemporary India on the ground that this is the consequence of fear psychosis among minorities. This identity-politics mindset has been used as the raw material of public policy by Congress party and Communists in power, which has not led to increased harmony between separate demographic groups. Without exception, it has increased intergroup hostility and violence! With assistance from the mainstream media, Communists and the Left-liberal combine has been peddling a narrative of supposed widespread hate crimes against Muslims, Dalit, fuelled by the election of BJP-NDA, as part of a continuing effort to delegitimize Modi government and attack RSS. (Part-2 to follow)