The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
Sometimes major events completely disconnected may be data points for the plans of the different powers around the world. The challenge is to discern what purpose they serve? More critically, what are we moving towards?
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
Vasco da Gama is often venerated by the liberals in India. He has often been touted by this ignorant and Hinduphobics Secularists think. And, they hold him in high esteem as the first “emancipator” of lower castes from Brahmanical tyranny. Remember, he was the first Christian to establish power in India.
Excerpt from the book (Mappila Muslims: A Study on Society and Anti Colonial Struggles by Husain Raṇṭattāṇi) lays out the atrocities that Vasco da Gama unleashed unprovoked. It is a matter of discussion as to how many folks returning from Mecca were killed 400 or 700, but what is not debatable is that half of them were women and children!
Further, he was a barbaric imperialist fueled by the desire to spread Christianity and loot the others who unleashed unspeakable horrors on the innocents in Kerala. As the Paris-based Historian J B P More states in his interview with Shobha Warrier.
On October 27, 1502, he seized 50 Malabaris at sea, got their heads, legs and hands cut off and sent ashore in a boat with a message in Arabic, asking the Zamorin to make curry out of the severed limbs.
Not satisfied with this, he bombarded Calicut from the sea for three consecutive days and razed it to the ground, killing several hundred people in the process.
All these crimes have been recorded by Portuguese chroniclers and have gone unpunished.
He had been ordered by the Portuguese ruler to “capture the wealth and land of the barbarians, Moors, and pagans” apart from proclaiming Jesus. They mixed with the local people and created a mixed-race that would be loyal to them and help them. They achieved all this by proselytization and forcible conversions.
Accolades for this achievement have long obscured the messianic motivation for the 1498 voyage, “to invade, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and other enemies of Christ; to reduce them to perpetual slavery; to convert them to Christianity; [and] to acquire great wealth by force of arms from the Infidels,” as sanctified by various Papal Bulls, together called “the Doctrine of Discovery” (Dum Diversas, 1452; Romanus Pontifex, 1455; Inter Caetera, 1493). (source:Vasco da Gama’s Voyages to India: Messianism, Mercantilism, and Sacred Exploits by S. M. Ghazanfar)
The Indian kids have always been misinformed by ideologically compromised so-called historians in our school texts that Vasco da Gama was some kind of intrepid explorer. Far from it. He was a barbaric monster who wanted to proselytize Christianity and loot, plunder, kill and enslave the non-Christians, especially Muslims and pagans (which was shorthand pejorative for Hindus).
We need to revisit the history that has been thrust upon by the imperialist monsters on humanity and make it closer to reality.
The Indian budget every year has always been an eagerly awaited event. For many decades, the best minds in economics, finance, tax, business and industry throng the media house to analyze the provisions shared by the Financial Minister.
When the US Ambassador threatened India's "Strategic Autonomy" policy over India's friendship with Russia - much more than meets the eye was at stake. Let us unpack how the Ukraine war has fundamentally changed the US and the world. And why are we here anyway?
This visit of India left me with many questions. Many observations and inputs from different people and sections. Food for thought that I have tried to contemplate on and make sense of. Sharing all that with you.
When you analyze the last 60 years of the economic miracles of Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia versus the continued impoverished Indian economy, you get very interesting lessons. Can Indians have the wherewithal in them to do in one generation so that the coming generations may rise?
Every Sunday AM (US Time)/ PM (India time), we send out a weekly detailed newsletter. We also share other insightful notes during the week. Its free. Do sign up and share with friends!