British Indians came to join a protest rally at Westminster London

Over 500 British Indians came to join a protest rally from 12pm to 4pm on 19th June at Westminster London to express their anger against the Indian Government’s brutal attack on the peaceful protestors a fortnight ago in Delhi.

The rally was attended mainly by Hindus from the temples across the UK to show their disapproval at the way, 50,000 people sleeping at midnight at the Ramlila Ground in Delhi under the Satyagrah Fast of Baba Ramdev against Indian corruption, were brutally attacked by the Indian Government who helped approve the Ground for their congregation in the first place but at midnight sent in the police to ambush the poor people, women and children and the frail old people and attacked them with long wooden police batons, Lathis.

They used tear gas to remove them from the safety of the ground and sent them into the dark streets with no transport facilities. These poor peoples’ crime was that they were protesting peacefully against Indian corruption. Nearly a thousand people were injured and hundreds taken to hospital; children and parents were separated, it was a bad day for human rights in the so called largest democracy.

To coincide with the police’s 1am attack on Sunday 5th June the rally opened with a two minute silence at 1pm on Sunday 19th June.

Madhava Turumella of Action Against Corruption (AAC) said a prayer and said that the Indian Government keeps the 450 million people below poverty line so that every 5 years they can go and buy their votes and he said you will see the party activists paying with notes of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 on the streets of Indian towns and villages.

Muna Chauhan compeered the debate and invited Anil Bhanot OBE of Hindu Council UK to open the debate.

This is my speech:

“The midnight attack on the 50,000 protestors, who were asleep, at 1am in the morning on the 5th of June, was a dark day in India’s democracy. It showed that what we refer to as the largest democracy in the world is nothing more than one dynasty’s autocratic rule over the sovereign and free people of India. I say autocratic rule because such things do not happen in a democracy. But what makes this attack so vile is that it was on a spiritual people asking for Government’s help to put a stop to India’s rampant corruption. Their demands were for the wellbeing of all the people in a corruption free country. Yet even after this brutal attack, in the morning after, Sonia Gandhi’s spokesperson Digvijay came to further abuse and lay one concocted charge after another on Swami Ramdev. He called the Swami a Thug on several drummed up accounts. And this is not the first time this dynastic politicians of Sonia Gandhi have attacked our Swamis, India’s heart of spirituality.

In 2004 they attacked the Shankracharya of Kanchi, the Hindu Archbishop of South India, again at midnight and what is even more alarming they did it on the Diwali midnight. Then too they had concocted charges of murder on the Shankracharya which were later proven to be false. Of course the legal channels must always be followed but what was the point of attacking his Ashram on the most auspicious day for Hindus at midnight Diwali?
Indeed now they themselves may have tried to murder Swami Ramdev according to his personal account and of the women protestors there who saw the police trying to choke him to death. When they thought they heard the sound of a gunshot the women quickly gave the Swami their spare clothes to enable him escape under disguise. These are serious charges and we know in this country, which is a real democracy, the perpetrators would have already been caught. But in India it is the law of the powerful mob, the ruling class only, and at its top is the Sonia Gandhi dynasty and her cronies like Digvijay and the like. They have the power to put anyone in jail who threatens their power base, according to Digvijay’s own words in the India Times report recently. That is their law; that is India’s democracy, where you cannot even peacefully protest. The right to protest is the hallmark of democracy. But India’s Government Ministers say that once they are elected the civil society has no right to interfere.

Even the Indian High Commissioner here told me a few days after that fateful night that if Ramdev interferes in politics he will be treated as such. What did he mean, exactly, I shudder to think. But even when I told him that British Hindus were hurt too and they wanted to protest here, he showed no remorse for their feelings and instead told me to go and do the student protest here in the UK, to let off our steam as it were. Can you imagine a diplomat telling someone to go and protest against the country he is commissioned to? This was sheer contempt on his part. He is a pleasant sort of chap but on this occasion when I mentioned Ramdev he went ballistic on me and suddenly turned into some sort of a fiend. It was almost like he was trying to instil fear in me.

Judging from his reaction it seemed to me there is a systemic problem of this contempt that perhaps comes from the top and filters right through to their civil servants. For instance Digvijay’s verbal abuse of the Swami on the morning after the police attack was no less than contempt for the Swami and his supporters. A couple of the Government Ministers visibly coming across as insincere and brushing off the Civil Society as irrelevant is nothing less than contempt for the civil society. One of their MP’s calling Swami Ramdev a ‘bloody Indian’ is nothing less than contempt for the entire spiritual base of Hindu Majority India; it is blatant contempt for all the free people of India.

Perhaps this dynastic ill-governance began from the day Indira Gandhi imposed her Emergency rule in 1975. Just to remind you the Emergency was when the Supreme Court declared the elections null and void but Indira Gandhi instead took matters in her own hands and imposed her autocratic rule for a couple of years. Those days too were referred to as the dark days of India’s democracy. My own uncle Shri Shambu Dutt Sharma who is still alive and active at 93 now, was put in jail during that Emergency and the irony of it all was that he went to jail with Gandhi ji to win independence in the first place and then in a free India Indira Gandhi put him in jail again. That of course broke his heart and he then left politics – he was in the late PM Lal Bhahadur Shastry’s party – and has since lobbied, through his Gandhian Satyagrahi brigade in Delhi, for a Lok-Pal Act to make the parliamentarians accountable to the people, which means that the people could directly take a case out against corrupt parilamentarians. He told me about 3 years ago that every Government since 1975, including BJP when it was in power, has failed to enact that legislation in spite of their promises before the election. Only now Anna Hazare ji, another Gandhian, is pursuing it through a Satyagrah 2 struggle with perhaps some muted success. But it seems to me that it was that “Emergency” which gave birth to a neo-colonialism in India itself, what I would like to call the ‘Indian colonialism’.

Of course the Indian Colonialists are a select few people; most of the Government Ministers are, I am sure, honourable people. One MP even resigned from the Congress party after their midnight attack on people, so there are many, perhaps free from the Dynastic power-mongering control, who are good honourable people in the party. For instance, last year I met the Rural Minister C P Joshi who explained to our delegation that there are two nations there, one India (of the upper class rich) and the other Bharat (of the 800 million poor). Well it is the 800 million poor who are being colonised by the Indian neo-colonials. Absolute power corrupts.

These Indian Colonialists, now under Sonia Gandhi, exploit the one billion Indian masses. They rule with contempt like the unelected Digvijay. Sonia Gandhi, also unelected, keeps an indirect control over the PM through the National Advisory Council of which she is the Chair. The PM Manmohan Singh it would seem is far from independent. Perhaps to keep the other grandees at bay the PM allows Sonia Gandhi to maintain control, as in India even the worst of men cower before a woman for their respect for Shakti, the Mother Goddess principle.

In the beginning I quite liked Sonia Gandhi and her promising children but over the time her ‘colonial’ type agenda has become much more evident. Last year Rahul Gandhi said in a speech to a UP university youth that India needs a dynasty while referring to his Grandmother Indira Gandhi’s rule but please learn from the current Arab Spring and relinquish this birth based, Jaati - Caste, dynastic aspirations.

Perhaps it is because Rajiv Gandhi was killed supposedly by a Tamil Hindu that both Priyanka and Rahul adopted their mother’s religion, a Roman Catholic, and thus both have found Roman Catholic partners. I have no problem with their preference for Roman Catholicism but now with Rahul’s several anti-Hindu remarks over the last year he no longer inspires me as someone who ought to rule over the Hindu majority India. I genuinely sympathise with Rahul and Priyanka for their father's loss, it is a terrible thing, but it would be unfair to hold the entire Hindu population of India at ransom, not because they are Roman Catholic, that would not bother me, but because they are probably subconsciously a little bit anti Hindu. This anti-Hindu charge might be seen as being a bit melodramatic but the evidence is there for all to see, when our spirituality which is dear to us, British Hindus, is crushed, when real terrorism is excused by shifting the emphasis to ‘Hindu Saffron Terror’, when our Swamis are seen as the easy targets to arrest and put in jail, missionary evangelicals are allowed a free pass to coerce people to switch ideologies creating social unrest, our spiritual people attacked at midnight and so on. That is not at all fair on us or on the Dharmic majority India.

Let us pray for those people who got crushed that night and got severely injured. I’d like to recite the Mahamartunjya Mantra three times for their wellbeing:

Om Tryumbkum Yajamahe Sugndhim Pushty Verdhanam,
Urva Rukmev Bandhnat Mrityor Mukshyia Mamrataat Om.”

Then Swami Ramdev came on the phone and spoke to the people about how India could be a great nation again if there was no corruption at the top level and he was overwhelmed with the solidarity and support of the Non Resident Indians (NRI’s) from across the world.

Sunita Poddar of PYPT (UK) Yoga Trust spoke and said that she has seen people actually living on a less than 30 pence a day whereas in terms of wealth India is no longer a poor country. She said that her organisation has lodged a complaint at the Geneva HQ for the UN human rights against the Indian Government’s attack on its own people and the UK Parliament will table an Early Day Motion (EDM) soon.

Sinna Mani of the British Organisation for Persons of Indian Origin (BOPIO), spoke that he was disgusted to call Parnab Mukerjee his friend that he was and he later mentioned several other politicians he had known including Indira Gandhi whom he entertained here in the UK and that it is high time the politicians in India learnt the meaning of the word Democracy. He promised to hold a meeting at the House of Lords for all Indians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians to continue this struggle against the Indian Government’s corruption.

Bharat Shah a Chartered Accountant from Friends of India Society spoke for the need to continue this struggle and suggested that everyone present should write to their MP to support the EDM as soon as its tabled.
Ashok Kapoor and Anita Kapoor, the Conservative Councillors from Ealing spoke passionately to motivate people to also go and arrange a march in Delhi which they said all NRI’s ought to attend.

Dr Suraj Jain from Moorefield Eye Hospital said that he goes to India to set free eye clinics but even for his charity work he has to bribe the officials and on top of that the equipment he takes from here they sell it off to line their pockets so that every time he has to take new equipment.

Patrick Nickisch a Hindu from Germany representing the newly forming Global Hindu Congress (GHC) said that Hinduism does not have an overarching Pope type structure but in order to deal with the issues in today’s world we need to unite under larger organisations as otherwise the human rights for Hindus do not even get acknowledged.

Sanjay Jagatia extended a vote of thanks to everyone who came to the rally and a special thanks to the Metropolitan Police for their kind assistance and to the Westminster Council for being understanding to allow us to use the PA system under a very short notice.