Posted on 11/14/2005 5:09:12 PM PST by wagglebee
NEW DELHI - Israel is planning to protest a western Indian state's move to include references in school books that glorify Adolf Hitler, a news report said Friday.
The Israeli Embassy is planning to communicate its displeasure to Gujarat state, appalled that the school textbooks "sing praises" of Hitler, the Indian Express reported.
The state is ruled by the Hindu rightist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Israel's Consul general in Bombay, Daniel Zonshine said the representation of Hitler in Gujarat's textbooks was "misleading".
"Personally, I feel offended, and publicly, the representation has caused anger and unhappiness at the twisting of facts," Zonshine was quoted by the paper as saying.
Zonshine said the protest could include writing to the state government. "We are exploring options, coordinating and exchanging views on this."
He added Israel plans to get the support of Germany. "It could also be a joint effort with the German embassy," he said.
The controversy concerns a Class X text book of the Gujarat Education Board that is silent on the Holocaust and glorifies Hitler. In a section on "Internal achievements of Nazism", the school book states; "Hitler adopted a new economic policy and brought prosperity to Germany. He made untiring efforts to make Germany self reliant within one decade".
The Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) has also demanded the textbooks be withdrawn, stating the books are full of prejudices and hatred towards religious minorities.
Let us get this right - this is about one school board in a country of a billion people!! Additionally, 60000 Indians lost their ives fighting for the Allied cause in WW2. Eough said.....
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1292892.cms
Saturday, November 12, 2005 01:25:06 am
GANDHINAGAR: Finding that the uncritical references to Adolf Hitler in a class 9 social science textbook was having international ramifications, the Narendra Modi government withdrew the ten-page chapter — 'Present Currents of World History' — where the German dictator was called a 'nationalist' and a 'socialist'.
An education department official said the chapter "ceases to be part of the syllabus". A letter dated October 29, 2005 written by Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Board secretary BV Nanavati has been sent to all district educational officers in this regard.
The withdrawal was declared a day after Israel's consul-general Daniel Zohar Zonshire, who was on a visit to the state, indicated in Vadodara that he would write to the Gujarat government protesting against the glorification of Hitler.
The objectionable portions in the textbook, which was published this year, were first highlighted in the media by TOI on July 23, 2005, after which it received world-wide condemnation.
Significantly, the chapter makes no reference to the most gruesome genocide in history. After the furore, a revision of the textbook was being planned by the government by describing Hitler as "cruel", without referring to the systematic decimation of Jews during World War II.
More recently, a rebel BJP MLA cited references to Hitler in the textbook to castigate Modi. Officials said on Friday that a completely revised chapter would be added to the class 9 textbook for the academic year 2006-07.
The chapter, significantly, will be written by selected teachers from Gujarat-based Kendriya Vidyalayas, instead of Gujarat's own committee of educationists involved in preparing the state textbooks.
Did you see this post in a different thread? Though you might be interested in reading some ridiculous FReeper commentary on India: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1521125/posts?page=149#149
Presumably Indian Christians are a special case not subject to the laws of logic.
Pinging...
The economic state of Germany after WW I, was understandably devastating and made worse by the repressive and vindictive policies of the Treaty of Versailles. This economic catastrophe gave rise to Hitler, who from the early to mid 30's did bring a turn around in the economic conditions of Germany.
All of this is, of course, overshadowed by the horrible calamities of WWII. No history of Germany would be complete w/o telling of both the rise to power, and then of the unforgiveable horrors which followed.
Now fast forward to 1968-1973. Richard Nixon as President accomplishes some significant policies that are today overlooked (Opening the door to China, is one example). Nixon accomplished a lot as President, however, when was the last time we read a report, or article, about Nixon w/o there being the references to the "crimes" of Watergate? I am not comparing Nixon to Hitler, but am drawing a parallel to the way they are viewed by historians. It seems that the events of their downfalls, takes the lead (understandably so), and that anything said, except for complete condemnation, falls on deaf ears.
In regards to this specific text book, it would seem to be telling only one side of the story, a trait much more common to liberals it would seem to me.
However, this book praises Hitler's economic accomplishments, while ignoring the Holocaust and the fact that Hitler caused the death of tens of millions and turmoil for the entire planet.
He would however have had to defeat the outstanding jewish officers in the Indian armed forces to do all this.
My family got their start in North America with a convenience store100 years ago. So don't you be badmouthing convenience stores. Everyone has to make a living. ;)
I like Indians, and the ones I know don't act like that way at all. Plus, India and China are the rising powers, and I'd rather India than China any day. India is very anti-terrorist most of the time, capitalist and democratic. I don't like the caste system, but in time it will end. Slowly, not in our lifetimes, but it will weaken within our lifetimes.
Maybe I'm just more idealistic than you because I'm younger. But, while I have many problems with specific incidents and events and a few fundamentalists, I really have few problems with modern Indian culture in general.
http://www.brandonsun.com/story.php?story_id=9768
Narayanan, first 'untouchable' to become India's president, dead at 85
NEW DELHI (AP) - Former president K.R. Narayanan, the first "untouchable" from India's pernicious caste system to occupy the office in a validation of the country's democratic roots, died Wednesday. He was 85.
The soft-spoken, scholarly Narayanan was admitted to an army hospital in the capital Oct. 29 with pneumonia and kidney failure. He was placed on life support two days later and died Wednesday, Defence Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar said.
Although the president's post in India is largely ceremonial, Narayanan showed during his 1997-2002 tenure that he was no rubber-stamp executive. He broke from precedent twice to defy the government that appointed him, refusing to sack opposition-ruled state administrations.
"He was a monumental personality, a personality who proved what (the) Indian Republic stands for," former prime minister I.K. Gujral said on private New Delhi Television. "... In him, the Indian Republic's philosophy was testified. In all the time he occupied the high office, he always upheld his oath to protect the constitution."
Narayanan's rise to the top was remarkable in a country where "untouchables" - now known as "Dalits" - are the lowest members of society, having faced ridicule and hostility for centuries.
The Dalits - literally "broken people" - are outside the caste system, a 3,000-year-old hierarchy dividing Hindus into four categories of descending social importance. Because they are without caste, the Dalits, nearly a fourth of India's billion-plus people, are considered unclean.
"Coming from a very poor family, coming up only with the dint of his own effort and labour, he proved . . . that neither religion nor caste can come in the way of a person who is able to exert himself intellectually," Gujral said.
Discrimination based on caste was outlawed in 1950, and much progress in social equality has been made since, but centuries of entrenched habits have been hard to break.
In his public statements, Narayanan never harped on the caste discrimination he faced growing up, instead emphasizing the positive.
"In fact, if you can see one consistent tendency in India, one trend in India, from the time of the Buddha onwards, it is the slow but steady movement of the lower classes among the scale of the class system," Narayanan said in a 1998 interview with state television.
"It took 2,000 years. But it is something which is going on."
The son of a traditional "Ayurvedic" medicine physician, Narayanan was born in a poor household in the village of Uzhavoor in the southern state of Kerala on Oct. 27, 1920.
He earned a bachelor's degree from the London School of Economics and worked as an English teacher, journalist and diplomat.
He once was barred from primary school because he could not afford the fees, but he stubbornly stood outside the classroom to listen to lessons.
Narayanan did so well on his final high school exams that he was given a government scholarship to continue his education.
He also received help from a fund set up for oppressed Indians by independence leader and social reformer Mohandas Gandhi, and an Indian industrialist later paid for his studies in London.
He returned to India in 1948 with a letter of introduction from a prominent economist to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The prime minister personally recommended Narayanan for the Indian Foreign Service.
Narayanan served as India's ambassador to China and the United States, two of the most important posts in the service.
His first posting as a diplomat was to Myanmar - then known as Burma - where he met his future wife, a Burmese woman who had studied social work in India.
They married in 1950, with special permission given by Nehru, as Indian diplomats are not allowed to marry foreigners.
Narayanan turned to politics in 1980, winning a seat in Parliament on a Congress party ticket. He was vice-president before being elected the country's 10th president in 1997.
© 2005 The Brandon Sun - All Rights Reserved
There are Jewish officers in the Indian armed forces? 8o
Cool. Can you tell me more about them, or freepmail me some info?
In regards to this specific text book, it would seem to be telling only one side of the story...
Sounds like an American success story. Good on him.
You are aware that 60, 000 Indian soldiers dies fighting for the Allies in WW2, aren't you?
See post 30 on this thread
Jewish general led Indian army in 1971 war
Alter.: The Jewish general who beat Pakistan
By SHELDON KIRSHNER
In the annals of modern warfare, the 1971 war between India and Pakistan is regarded as a template of brilliance. Within 13 days, the Indian army routed Pakistan in one of the swiftest campaigns of the 20th century.
Occasionally compared to Israel's victory in the 1967 Six Day War, and studied at military academies as a textbook example of efficient planning, the Indo-Pakistan war gave rise to a new state, Bangladesh, and established India as a regional superpower.
The major general who masterminded and spearheaded India's offensive, and who accepted Pakistan's surrender, was Jack Frederick Ralph Jacob, the scion of an old Jewish family from Calcutta. A spry bachelor of 81 who retired in 1978 as the commander of India's eastern army, he considers that war the highlight of a long and distinguished career as a soldier. Having written a book about it, Surrender at Dacca, published in 2001 by Manohar, he claims that the war was "surely the greatest military feat in our history."
Although historians are acquainted with his resumé, Jacob is not exactly a household name outside India. As I prepared for my trip to India late last year, I ran across his name in my research. Intrigued by the possibility of interviewing a Jewish warrior from an exotic country whose Jewish community is rooted in antiquity, I asked to meet him.
When I arrived in New Delhi on my last day in India, following relatively brief flights from Cochin and Mumbai, B.B. Mukherjee, a helpful contact from the ministry of tourism, was at the terminal to greet me with the news that Jacob had consented to an interview. I was pleased, but the timing was hardly fortuitous. I was tired, coming down with a cold and a hoarse voice, and my flight back to Toronto was just hours away. Nevertheless, I told Mukherjee I would be ready to talk to Jacob at his home in New Delhi at around five o'clock.
After a shower and change of clothes, I met Mukherjee in my hotel lobby, and off we drove to Jacob's flat in a non-descript gray apartment building in the centre of this sprawling city and capital of India. When we arrived, one of his Nepalese houseboys opened the door and ushered us into a dimly lit room filled with French furniture and crowded with original Mogul art on the walls.
Jacob, a surprisingly small man with a café au lait complexion and a formal manner, was smartly decked out in a blue blazer, creased pants, shirt and tie. He motioned me to sit down next to him on a narrow couch.
I began by asking him about his role in the war the 33rd anniversary of which was marked shortly before my trip to India and his decision to become a soldier. Jacob, whose Baghdadi family settled in Calcutta more than 200 years ago and whose father Elias Emanuel was a businessman, was quite effusive, enunciating his words in a posh upper-class Indian accent.
A brigadier-general by 1963 and a major-general by 1967, he was appointed chief of the Eastern Command in 1969 by Gen. Sam Maneckshaw, the Parsi chief of staff. Jacob's immediate superior was Lt. Gen. J.S. Aurora, a Sikh.
Jacob joined the British army in the summer of 1941 while at university and when India was still a British colony. He did so, he said, "to fight the Nazis." After graduating from officers training school in 1942, he was posted to northern Iraq in anticipation of a possible German thrust to seize the Kirkuk oil fields. He trained with Glubb Pasha's Arab Legion, which would be the backbone of Jordan's army. In the wake of Japan's defeat, he was assigned to Sumatra. Returning to an independent India after taking a gunnery course in Britain, Jacob commanded a mountain battery and served in an armoured division. Then, in short order, he took artillery and missile courses in the United States and was a general staff officer at Western Command headquarters.
"I didn't plan to be a career officer," he said. "I liked the army and stayed on. I did everything I was supposed to do."
During the mid-1960s, when India fought a war with Pakistan, he was the commandant of the School of Artillery. Subsequently, he was in charge of an infantry division in Rajasthan, where he wrote a much-praised manual on desert warfare. Promoted to chief of staff of the Eastern Command, based in Calcutta, Jacob was soon grappling with insurgencies in Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.
The Eastern Command was a sensitive one. The partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 had led to the emergence of India and Pakistan, which was made up of two distinct and geographically disconnected areas. Although East Pakistan was more populous than West Pakistan, political power rested with the western elite, causing resentment, unrest and calls for autonomy in the other half.
By 1971, East Pakistan was in revolt, and Pakistan's ruler, Yahya Khan, cracked down. As the violence escalated, with a massive loss of life and an exodus of millions of Hindu refugees into Indian territory, Indo-Pakistani tensions rose.
When India's prime minister, Indira Gandhi, extended assistance to Bengali rebels who sought to break away from Pakistan and form their own country, Pakistan responded first by attacking rebel camps in India and then, on Dec. 3, by bombing nine northern Indian airfields. In a dramatic broadcast to the nation, Gandhi declared war on Pakistan.
Having watched these developments with mounting concern, Jacob realized that conflict was imminent. "We knew we would have to intervene, but we hardly had any infrastructure and had to build it up," he recalled.
In consultation with his superiors, he refined his plan to engage Pakistan in a "war of movement" in difficult terrain with few bridges and roads, crisscrossed by rivers and broken up by swamps, mangroves and paddy fields. Jacob's strategy was clear. Dacca the heart of East Pakistan would be captured and Pakistani forces bypassed. Pakistan's communication centres would be secured and its command and control capabilities destroyed, while its forces would be drawn to the border. Some Indian commanders raised objections to the unorthodox plan, but it was finally approved.
"I planned for a three-week campaign, but it went faster than I expected," said Jacob, who instinctively understood that speed was essential and that a protracted war would not be in India's interests: The United Nations would apply pressure on India to halt its offensive, and the Soviet Union India's ally might not be able to fend off calls for a ceasefire.
As fighting raged, Jacob flew to Dacca and wrested unconditional surrender terms from his opposite number, Gen. Amir Niazi, who would later accuse Jacob of having blackmailed him into submission.
"It was a total victory over a formidable, well-trained army," he observed. "Had Pakistan fought on, it would have been difficult for us." Indian casualties were 1,421 killed and 4,058 wounded. "We expected higher casualties," he admitted. The Pakistani figures were much higher, in India's estimation: 6,761 killed and 8,000 wounded.
Jacob, who calls Surrender at Dacca the most authoritative and objective account of the war to date, ascribed his victory to a few factors imaginative planning, flexibility of approach, the capacity to react to shifting and perhaps unforeseen events and, of course, luck. But for Jacob, a keen student of warfare, historical context was always of crucial importance. As he put it, "I've learned from every campaign since Alexander the Great and Napoleon."
Looking back, he described his 37-year career in the army as "the happiest and most enjoyable period of my life." Never once did he feel the sting of anti-Semitism in the Indian army. "But I had some problems with the British," he said, declining to elaborate. "I don't like to talk about it."
Interestingly enough, Jacob whose Hebrew name is Yaacov Rafael and who serves as president of New Delhi's one and only synagogue was not the only high-ranking Jewish officer in the armed forces. "There was another Jewish general, a chap named Samson, and he was in research and development and ordnance. And there was also a Jewish vice-admiral."
Upon leaving the army, Jacob went into business. But in 1998, he was called out of retirement to be governor of Goa, a former Portuguese colony popular with Israeli tourists. He remained there until 1999, when he assumed the governorship of Punjab, a job he held until 2003.
A three-time visitor to Israel who was once invited there by Yitzhak Rabin when he was the prime minister, Jacob was also on friendly terms with Mordechai Gur, a former Israeli chief of staff. Jacob played an indirect role in India's decision to establish diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, but he refused to talk about his role in that diplomatic rapprochement.
Referring to himself as "a very private person," he was likewise reluctant to speak about his family, apart from saying that his brothers and sisters are deceased.
Today, in his twilight years, Jacob is a writer and lecturer on military and political affairs. But he wryly described his current status as "unemployed."
http://www.cjnews.com/viewarticle.asp?id=5574&s=1
Of course. Still, that didn't keep the Brits from locking up the Congress Party leadership during the war.
CarrotAndStick, do you still have the info on jewish officers in the Indian armed forces. I know you posted it once. If so, could you please pass it on to Alexander Rubin.
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