Adopt Israeli unity 'model', Sanskritise India: French scribe tells Assam journos

By T Navajyoti*
Francois Gautier, an India-based senior French journalist, believes Hinduism is “the only religion” today that accepts and respects all the other religions, and though Hindus are descendants an ancient civilization in human history, there are many western journalists and correspondents who are “still biased” against Hindustan.
Talking with Guwahati-based scribes through video-conferencing, Gautier asserted that the westernm edia should at least respect the country, complaining “But most of the western correspondents posted in New Delhi take little notice about the uniqueness of India paying almost no respect to the billion-plus nation even after 70 years of its independence.”
Insisting that western journalists are “supposed to report honestly about India”, Gautier, who is a regular contributor several publications in France, lamented, foreign correspondents are “normally assigned for four to five years in India”, which is “not enough for understanding a country which is so vast, diverse and contradictory.”
Also complaining against Indian journalists who regularly write for western media outlets for allegedly following the guidelines of their editors, Gautier bemoaned, India is never in news in the West unless there is some major catastrophe or huge elections, adding, “If anyone wants to write for those publications, he or she has to find stories that might often border on the sensational, marginal and even misleading.”
Praising Hindu “tolerance”, Gautier opined that it has been a “one-way traffic for the Hindus as they experienced cruel genocide in history of humanity”, adding, “Hindus have shown extreme tolerance and Hinduism is the only religion that never tried to convert others.”
Coming down heavily on India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, Gautier noted, he was an admirer of English socialism and he adopted British constitutional, judicial and even education systems without considering Indian socio-cultural and traditional values.
“Nehru had to nurture the sentiment of a sizable Muslim population that did not join Pakistan and continued to live in India”, Gautier said, adding, “For these reasons, Nehru asked historians to show esteem to Muslim rulers like Akbar or Aurangzeb and ignored the greatness of Hindu warriors like Chatrapati Shivaji, Maharana Pratap, Rani Lakshmibai etc.”

The government should invite  dedicated linguists for devising a way of simplifying and modernizing the mother all Indian languages

A contributor to “Journal de Geneve”, “Le Figaro”, “La Revue” and “de l’Inde”, and some Indian newspapers, Gautier said, “Indian history should be rewritten”, accusing “people from Nehruvian-Marxist and pseudo-secular ideology” for influencing everything “from school curriculum to public policy to history writing.”
They built “a false narrative”, tried to turn the establishment “anti-Hindu”, negated “anythinga ssociated with Hinduism”, including “Vedas, Upanisad, Bhagavad Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Ayurveda and Sanskrit”, he said.
Praising Israeli leaders for reviving and adopting Hebrew and unifying Jews by bringing them all to the “holy land” in 1948, Gautier said, just as Hebrew language has “unified Israel like nothing else”, India should revive Sanskrit to unify the country.
“The government should invite some dedicated linguists to sit down with Sanskrit scholars for devising a way of simplifying and modernizing the mother all Indian languages. I am sure, it would energize and revitalize the whole Indian culture”, he said.
“Hindus and Jews, far from being the persecutors of minorities, have been persecuted for nearly two thousand years and have been the victims of worst genocides in history”, Gautier said, adding, “While the German dictator Hitler murdered six million Jews in his gas chambers, eighty million Hindus had to die at the hands of Muslim invaders.”

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*Guwahati-based scribe