Madhu Kishwar





Madhu Purnima Kishwar (born 1951 in Delhi) is an Indian academic and writer. She is the founder and editor of Manushi: A Journal about Women and Society.

2000s

 * This is a classic example of conflicts arising not out of ignorance but surfeit of knowledge combined with the unconsciously imbibed arrogance of Western academia which assumes that its tools of analysis and value systems enable them to understand and pass judgment on the experiences and heritage of all human beings including those who operate with very different world views. Instead of dealing with the criticism leveled at their intellectual tools, many Western Indologists treated the conflict as a case of ‘academic freedom’ versus the intolerance of Hindu community leaders, thus leading to a bitter stalemate.
 * Antonio de Nicolas, Krishnan Ramaswamy, and Aditi Banerjee (eds.) (2007), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis Of Hinduism Studies In America (Publisher: Rupa & Co., p. 302

2010s

 * Noteworthy-in its biography of Sardar Patel, Wikipedia avoids all mention of how Nehru stole PM office from Patel by blackmailing Gandhi. Nehru didn't get even one Congress Committee to vote for him.
 * Madhu Kishwar on Twitter on 16 Nov 2018


 * Please note Wikipedia's devious description of the geography of Kashmir-- as though it is an independent kingdom outside the border of India. "Kashmir region is bordered by China to the east, India to the south, Pakistan to the west..."
 * Madhu Kishwar on Twitter on 7 May 2019


 * Once again IITians & those engaged in cutting edge scientific research are in forefront of challenging & correcting distorted narratives on Indic faiths floated by Wikipedia.
 * Madhu Kishwar on Twitter on 13 Jan 2019

Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, 2014

 * I am well aware that many will dismiss this book as a hagiographical account of Modi’s term as CM. To them I can only say, for 12 long years you have swallowed uncritically poisonous propaganda against him based on statements and testimonies which are being proven motivated, cooked-up, and plain false by courts and the SIT team. Let this come as a necessary antidote to that malicious smear campaign. I assure you that, unlike most of Teesta Setalvad’s witnesses, none of the people who spoke to me used tutored language. All of them spoke spontaneously on video. Unlike Teesta’s many witnesses, none of these people are likely to disown what they told me.
 * Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.


 * The demonisation of Modi did not start with the 2002 riots. “Smear Modi Campaign”started from day one and was carried out in the same do-or-die spirit that one witnesses today when Congress Party wants to eliminate him from the prime ministerial race.


 * At the same time, Congress’s well-orchestrated chorus calling Narendra Modi a “maut ka saudagar”, mass murderer, Hitler, snake, scorpion, yamdoot, and worse kept getting shriller by the day, duly amplified by propped up NGOs, pliable journalists, and patronised academics. So much so, that many within the BJP also came to believe the charges leveled against him and even demanded that he be sacked. Several BJP allies quit the NDA alliance, which facilitated the ousting of the otherwise popular Vajpayee-led NDA government in Delhi. The anti-Modi hysteria ensured that no one gave him a hearing; no one was willing to look at facts. How Modi retained not just his personal sanity but also emerged, as an outstanding administrator, capable of dreaming big for Gujarat and translating those dreams into action deserves serious study.


 * Given Modi’s determination to crack down and eliminate underworld dons and international crime syndicates who had deeply embedded links in the Congress and many “secular” parties, letting him survive or grow in strength would sound the death knell of the Congress and all such parties. Congress was the first to recognise this danger and therefore went gunning for Modi from the start quickly rallying all other compromised parties to join in the battle. As we shall see in later chapters, it was not Modi, but the Congress Party that played communally-divisive politics in order to derail Modi’s inclusive development agenda With Atal Bihari Vajpayee as the prime minister having already dislodged the Congress Party in the Central government, the Congress Party was in dire need of an issue to target the BJP at the national level and Modi in Gujarat. The Godhra carnage and the riots that followed were the product of this desperation.


 * The fourth phase starting May 5 saw even more aggression by rogue elements propped up to attack Hindu localities, with the clear intention of triggering large-scale Hindu-Muslim riots. These were deliberately staged on the eve of the concluding session of Rajya Sabha on May 6 to provide ammunition to the Congress and its allied parties to attack the NDA government. The morning of May 5, 2002, saw organised and aggressive attacks on Parikshit Nagar area of Ahmedabad city. It was marked by large-scale use of firearms and explosives. Miscreants used bombs and rocket launchers in this phase of violence.


 * Such incidents on an important festival were clearly aimed at provoking Hindus. The timing also betrayed their real purpose. The Parliament was scheduled to resume its session on April 22. This fresh outbreak of violence provided much-needed ammunition to the Congress and the Left parties to go ballistic against the Vajpayee government at the Centre and Modi’s government in Gujarat


 * The first phase of violence that began on February 28, 2002 and lasted until March 3, 2002 was characterised by anti-social politicians of all hues exploiting mass outrage against the Muslim community for the Godhra train burning. However, the worst was over in 72 hours due to a swift deployment of the army. By mid-March, the situation started cooling down.


 * The second phase of stray incidents of violence, from March 18 to March 28, was part of a deliberate strategy by politically-patronised miscreants to disrupt the board examinations at various centres, which started from March 18, 2002. This was done to keep the pot boiling.


 * The third phase, starting April 17, was again engineered by miscreants, on the eve of the second phase of board examinations, to subvert return to normalcy conditions so that the world could be told that Modi was unwilling and incapable of controlling the violence.


 * The fourth phase of violence starting May 5 saw attacks on Hindu neighbourhoods by mischief mongers with the intent of provoking a backlash. The idea was to influence the scheduled discussion on Gujarat in the concluding session of Rajya Sabha the next day. These stage-managed riots were aimed at misleading the Parliament, as well as the outside world, to believe that the situation in Gujarat was grim and to build a national hysteria around Narendra Modi in order to browbeat Prime Minister Vajpayee into sacking Modi.


 * However, the fact that Mushrif has to apologise for giving his community good news from Gujarat, gives us an idea of the kind of intellectual terror Congress and its “secular” allies have come to exercise among Muslims. They must appear as permanent victims in the Congress scheme of things or else be declared traitors as happened with Salman Khan, who dared speak a few mild words in favour of Modi’s regime or, worse still, be bulldozed into silence as happened with Maulana Vastanvi.


 * It has already been well-documented how false reports were spread about a pregnant Muslim woman whose stomach was allegedly ripped open, her foetus wrenched out with a sword, and set on fire. BBC lent credibility tothis rumour in its report of March 6, 2002. Harsh Mander repeated the same story in a tear-jerking article published on March 20, 2002, in The Times of India. The Tehelka website lent further colour and credence to it by writing that a woman named Saira Banu had claimed that the victim of that gruesome incident was her sister-in-law.


 * One of the early charges against Modi was that when post-Godhra riots broke out, he justified and legitimised violence against Muslims thus proving his complicity. This mischief started with an incomplete statement telecast on Zee TV based on an interview conducted by Zee correspondent Sudhir Chaudhary. Modi’s exact words were: “Kriya pratikriya ki chain chal rahi hai. Hum chahte hain ki na kriya ho aur na pratikriya.” (A chain of action-reaction is going on. We want that there should be neither ‘action’ nor ‘reaction’). But Zee TV deliberately left out the second sentence and presented the mischievously clipped first half of the statement to build a case that Modi had justified the post-Godhra riots as a legitimate reaction of Hindus against the killings of karsevaks at Godhra.... When Chaudhary questioned the CM about the Gulberg Society massacre in which the former Congress MP, Ehsan Jafri, was killed along with more than 50 others, the chief minister in his reply referred to the reports that Jafri had first fired at the violent mob, which apparently infuriated the crowd further. Thereafter, the mob stormed the Gulberg Society and set it on fire. According to Chaudhary, Narendra Modi referred to Jafri’s firing as “action” and the massacre that followed as “reaction”.... However, he could not provide a satisfactory explanation why in the Zee TV telecast, the last line—“Hum chahte hai ki na kriya ho aur na pratikriya”—was deliberately omitted. ...But this admission, coming years later, was not telecast and propagated the way the mischievous half-statement had been. What is worse, Sudhir Chaudhary continues to reiterate even today that Modi had justified the 2002 riots.


 * But within days, the narrative started getting manipulated as though an invisible hand was guiding it in the direction of targeting Narendra Modi as the evil genius who personally masterminded the massacre. This line of argument became so aggressive and entrenched that when in 2010, the SIT report did not fall in line with those targeting Modi, SIT members came in for vicious personal attack and slander. They were accused of having been bought over by Narendra Modi. Teesta & Co. launched a full-fledged campaign for disbanding the SIT and replacing it with a fresh inquiry. It is worth asking why the SIT report and various court orders that came before and after the SIT clearing Modi’s name have not altered the tone or tenor of the hate campaign carried out by leading journalists, NGO activists, and jet-setting academics. Why do journalists keep flinging the same set of questions to Modi and repeating the same charges ad nauseam totally ignoring the outcomes of court cases and the SIT report?


 * Modi told me the last straw for him with regard to NDTV was when one of their correspondents, Vijay Trivedi, accompanied him in a helicopter for an interview. When he started asking the same old insulting questions, Modi simply kept quiet and refused to respond any further. Piqued at Modi’s ignoring him, Trivedi spread the canard that Modi nearly threw him out of the helicopter mid-air because he had asked tough questions. Modi says on that day he decided never to give legitimacy to NDTV by giving them an interview or responding to any questions from them. Vijay Trivedi treats this incident as a badge of honour.
 * page 302. also in a slightly different version at: Madhu Kishwar, Manushi, "Narendra Modi on the Role of NDTV during the 2002 Riots" (8 April 2014).

2020s

 * No one lies more grossly than Wikipedia when it comes to profiling people who speak up for Hindu Dharma and Ma Bharati.
 * March 2022

The Girl from Kathua, 2023

 * Arnab Goswami of Republic TV also deserves acknowledgement for making of this book. At an early stage of #GhazwaVictim case, he invited me on his prime time show to discuss the case. Because I did not join the hysterical chorus baying for the blood of the targeted Dogras, he shouted me down imperiously, instead of listening calmly to my reasoning why the whole narrative was very suspect. This hardened my resolve to investigate the case with thoroughness.
 * Preface


 * "I am both humbled and inspired by the courage and dharmic commitment of my grandparents-maternal as well as paternal, who (like millions of other Hindus) refused to convert in order to stay put in their homeland that was turned through devilish means into a Dar al-Islam called Pakistan in 1947. They preferred to move into what little remained of Bharat as destitute refugees, rather than bear the indignity of abandoning their Dharma.
 * Preface


 * But they never fully understood the forces that caused the cataclysmic Break-Up of India through genocidal violence. I began to comprehend the meaning of the epic-scale tragedy only after I began to study and come to grips with the foundational doctrines of Islam following the Kathua case. The Nehruvian ecosystem has not only prevented Hindus from knowing the reality of Islam, but it also forced the post-Partition generations to shut their minds to the traumatic reality of this Genocidal Cult, lest we become "intolerant" towards this murderous ideology that has inflicted countless woulds on our civilization, culture and people"
 * Preface

Quotes about Madhu Kishwar

 * There exists a much wiser and more rooted Indian women’s advocacy movement, pioneered by Madhu Kishwar’s paper Manushi, one area where India can teach the world, not in the past but today. Unfortunately, meanwhile the American conflict-oriented (at heart Cultural-Marxist) variety is gaining ground. I don’t expect any Hindu revival to go very far if Hindus keep on swallowing the enemy’s narratives like this.
 * Elst, Koenraad. Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars. (2019). New Delhi : Rupa.


 * Likewise, India has a more realistic approach to women’s rights than the American variety of feminism. Madhu Kishwar’s periodical, Manushi, is the pioneer of this rooted and more mature form of feminism in Indian society.
 * Foreword in Elst, Koenraad. Hindu Dharma and the Culture Wars. (2019). New Delhi : Rupa.


 * I know Madhu Kishwar and am positively impressed by the realism and the humanity of Indian feminism.
 * Elst K. 2019, A Conversation with Koenraad Elst