INDIAN
INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH INTO TRUE HISTORY
Newsletter
No 25 of
1 News and current affairs
1.1 Taj Mahal
Taj
Mahal and the Great British Conspiracy
This work of Mr Godbole is now being published by Dr
Bedekar, who has sent a checkprint.
Taj Mahal Slide Show
Mr Balubhai Patel, President of Vishva Hindu
1.2 Why Rewrite Indian History ?
This article by Mr Godbole was published in December 1982
issue of Itihas Patrika of Thane. Dr
Bedekar has now published it as a booklet. Copies are available from Mr
Godbole..
1.3 Around
First tour was on 3 April. Due to the forecast of thunder
storms, friends from Croydon decided not to come. Dr Gadre, a plastic surgeon
from Pune had come all the way from
Second tour was arranged on 7 May. 35 people attended, among
them were Dr Arora - head of Hindi Department and Mrs Divya Mathur of Cultural
Centre of Indian High Commission. We travelled by a coach, which was just as
well, as the weather was bad. Still people enjoyed the tour which lasted for 6
hours. We started from the
(built in 1930) and then Foreign and Commonwealth Office which
until Indian independence was the India Office, and finally the Caxton Hall.
Dr Arora had informed the Indian High Commissioner Dr
Singhavi of our tour, who was delighted by the idea. We hope that he would join
in one of our tours in future.
Mr Godbole's narration has been recorded on a tape.
1.4 New RSS Chief
Balasaheb Deoras has resigned due to ill health, and Prof.
Rajubhayya has taken over as the chief of RSS in
1.5 Veer Savarkar
Mr Godbole spoke on Veer Savarkar at Arya Samaj, Ealing,
1.6 Visitors
1.6.1 Dr Jain, a Member of Parliament of the BJP was in
1.6.2 Wing Commander Karnik met Mr Godbole on 15 April. He
was fascinated by the idea of Around
1.6.3 Prof Subhash Bonde, Head of Applied Mechanics
Department,
1.7 Hindu Awakening at
last.
Well done Balasaheb Thakare!
Channel 4 is showing a series called Bombay Chat by Nikki Bedi ( Saturdays at 12.30 )
Her interview with Balasaheb Thakare was shown on 2 April.
We must say we are pleased with Balasaheb. Normally the Hindutvavadis make
fools of themselves when talking to foreign journalists, and our boys and girls
born and brought up in
A note for future
Our leaders cannot answer one question. The reporters say,
" During cricket matches between
The answer is simple. First there must be a counter
question, " There are many Welsh people living in
Afterwards our leaders should say, " Indians supporting
the Indian cricket team in
1.8 British Democracy in
action
New Builder monthly reported on 25 March 1994, " Bankruptcy
proceedings threatened against architect Ketley Goold Associates by the Customs
& Excise have been withheld following an intervention by Conservative Party
chairman Sir Norman Fowler. Ketley Goold is partly owned by Colin Ketley who
lives with Sir Norman's secretary, Caroline Bell. The company owed £40,000 in
VAT ( Value Added Tax ) when Sir Norman urged the Customs to delay the action.
We are told that
1.9 Punishment of an
American hooligan.
Michael Fay, an 18 year old boy from
Daily Telegraph reported on 10
March :- US to continue flogging protest
On 20 March Simon Tindall reported for the Guardian
:-
" President Bill
Clinton personally intervened yesterday
for the third time in the case of an American teenager, Michael Fay,
........ With time running out for Fay after his appeal against sentence was
dismissed, Mr Clinton described the proposed beating with six strokes of a
ratten cane as " Severe " and likely to cause lasting mental and
physical injury. "The caning may leave permanent scars and some people who
are caned go into shock" Mr Clinton
said during a pre-recorded interview with the MTV cable channel. "
It's much more serious than it sounds."
" Caning, as administered in
" Apparently unconcerned about exacerbating the
bilateral animosity caused by the case, Mr Clinton said he remained unconvinced
of Fay's guilt. He said a confession made by Fay, aged 19, in which he admitted
spray-painting cars and stealing state property last year, may have been
extracted by force. It's not entirely clear his confession wasn't
coerced," Mr Clinton said, implying that President Ong Teng Cheong should
look favourably on a clemency petition organised by Fay's mother, Randy
Chan."
" Fay has retracted his confession, saying he signed it
only after being slapped and punched by policemen who held him for nine days.
He was also sentenced to four months in jail and fined $2,000. Fay said the
police would not let him sleep, severely restricted contacts with his mother and
step-father and the
" After visiting her son in prison yesterday, Ms Chan
said that Fay's lawyers would present the clemency petition, bearing several
signatures, today. " I still hold some hope but not very much." Ms
Chan said. President Cheong is expected to make a decision within the next two
weeks, after consulting his cabinet."
" Mr Clinton's
repeated personal interventions in the case have caused surprise and anger in
Singapore, where over 1,000 people are sentenced to be caned each
year.
" In response, the New
York Times among others have taken up Fay's cause, condemning
On 6 April Hugh Davies reported for the Daily Telegraph :-Americans want vandal to be flogged. Sentiment in
the crime-ridden
On 20 April Evening
Standard reported :- Lawyers in plea for mercy over caning
Fay pleaded guilty last month to two charges of vandalism,
two of mischief and one of possessing stolen property. Plea bargaining reduced
the original 53 counts filed against him last year for spraying paint, tossing
eggs on cars and other offences ( This is precisely what happens in America ]
On 6 May, Financial
Times reported, "
On the same day Richard Shears reported for the Daily Mail :- Tears and anger over
teenager's trashing
Fay was caned. But the controversy which raged over him, for
weeks continued. A frustrated President Clinton, whose appeal for clemency
succeeded only in reducing the sentence from six strokes to four, denounced the
flogging as a mistake. But he was being urged by senior advisors that any
attempt at retaliation in trade sanction would be a political and personal
disaster because the majority of electors were behind
[ What should we
learn ?
1.We should note that despite major crisis like wars in
2.Compare the bahaviour of Bill Clinton with that of Jawaharlal
Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. When did the Indian Prime Ministers
fought for the rights of Indian citizens abroad ? NEVER.Their ambassadors were
briefed to say to Indians in difficulty, " why did you come to this
country ? I did not ask you to come here. Go back to
The other ploy they would play is this, " How long have
you stayed in this country ? Why have you not accepted the nationality of this
country? " If the Indian would say that he has accepted the nationality of
that country, the reply would be, " well, you are no longer an Indian
citizen. and hence not my responsibility. You are dead to me and I am dead to
you."
Remember the days of virginity tests on Indian brides,
during the days of Maggie Thatcher ? So disgraceful was the behaviour of the
Immigration officials that the British Government apologised unreservedly to
the European Commission of Human Rights. But what was Indira Gandhi doing ? She
did absolutely nothing! Her party however,
made violent protests when Bhutto was hanged in
3.But why blame these leaders ?. They do not come from outer
space. We elect them. Mr Godbole went to
4. We should note the coverage given to this incident in
European Press.
5. We should also note the American argument - At first they
did not say that Fay was innocent, they tacitly accepted that he was guilty,
but his punishment was harsh. When that did not wash, they said that Fay may
not be guilty at all! just because he was an American.
As we publish this newsletter BBC reported that
1.10 Converts to Islam, be
aware
TIMES of 18 November
1993 carried interesting correspondence on some western women turning to Islam.
Mr Simon Huddlestone wrote, " Converts to all religious
tend to be very enthusiastic about the new ideas they embrace. In an
essentially secular society such as
" Outsiders find it difficult to reconcile seemingly
harsh punishments in many Muslim countries with much of the peaceful philosophy
of the Koran. The idea of sexual equality is hard to square with Islamic
marriage laws : a man may marry up to four wives, who may remain followers of
other faiths; a woman only one Muslim man."
Ms A Mirhosseini wrote, " Lucy Berrington's otherwise
interesting feature on the attraction of Islam for some British women fails to
remind readers that in some countries, notably the Islamic Republic of Iran, the punishment for anyone converting from
Islam to another faith can be death."
" The right to change one's religion is a fundamental
human right. Citizens of all democratic and secular countries enjoy this basic
right and the only risk they may face is, perhaps, isolation from their own
families."
" Perhaps the best service which the British and other
Western converts to Islam can render to their Muslim brothers and sisters
living in countries such as Iran is to campaign for respect for human rights in
those countries. After all, the right to think, read and associate freely with
people of other faiths has provided them with the opportunity of learning about
Islam. The right to dissent has enabled them embrace a new faith. These rights
should be enjoyed by all Muslims, not only by converts."
Ian Morshed wrote, " The Prophet Muhammad gave to
female Muslims the right to inherit and divorce, but as to inheritance ( Koran
ch 4.12 ) the share of a male is as the share of two females. .... and ( 4.39 )
men are managers of the affairs of women for that Allah has preferred in bounty
the one over the other.. "
" As to divorce, women have corresponding rights but (
2.229 ) the men are a class above them, and of course ( 4.4 ) men can have up
to four wives. The principles outlined in the Koran are, as you say, generally
sympathetic to women's interests but women's status is further undermined by,
for example, the requirement in the case of testimony ( 2.283 ) of two male
witnesses, or of one male and two women. The attestation of wills must be by
two men ( 5.107 ). Chapter 2.224 declares that " your women are a tillage
for you", and 2.229 clearly precludes any abortions. If it is true that
perhaps 15,000 women in Britain have embraced Islam after questioning the value
system of their own culture, one hopes that they have looked closely into what
they are exchanging it for."
1.11 Might is Right
1.11.1 On Friday the 22nd May BBC Radio 4 reported, "
On the eve of 5th anniversary of Tinnanmen square massacre President Clinton
has extended most favoured nation status of
[ There is a potential of US contracts in
1.11.2 Maurice Weaver reported from
Parking pests pay up as
A threat by the United States State Department to start
deducting unpaid embassy parking fins from foreign aid has borne fruit.
" An Israeli embassy official handed a cheque for more
than £42,000 to Washington city council only days before £800 million in annual
non-military aid to Israel was due to be paid."
" Government and local council officials were
congratulating themselves yesterday on at last finding an effective method of
putting the squeeze on recalcitrant embassy motorists who park illegally and
then claim diplomatic immunity.
" The new rules, conceived by Senator Jesse Helmes, a
Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were amended to
the Foreign Aid Appropriations Bill which came into effect on Sept 30. They not
only require a parking debt to be deducted from foreign aid, but impose an
additional penalty of 10 per cent of the amount owed. In
" The new measure has brought howls of protest from
some sections of Washington's large diplomatic corps, who say their embassies -
many of which are gathered in an elegant area north of the city centre - have
insufficient parking facilities for their often-substantial car fleets."
" There has been concern that American diplomats
overseas might become the victims of a retaliatory parking crackdown in some
countries. But officials say there is no sign of this happening yet." [
So, what the Americans are saying is that there is one law for them, one law
for the others! ]
1.12 Truth - who likes it ?
who wants to know ?
Michael Simmons reported for the Guardian on 20 April 1994
Flagship is sailing in choppy
waters
" Edward Lister, Tory leader of Wandsworth borough
council, has an unusual office sculpture; the council tax. Carved in bright
green fibre-glass, the figure of £139 sits on his window sill, as big and bold
- and as venerated - as an old family Bible. Wandsworth's inner-city Tories
proclaim endlessly that their council tax is the lowest in the country, as was
their poll tax- zero in 1991 and 1992. " I don't like the word
flagship," says the ebullient Mr Lister, " but I am proud we are a
radical council and we are bursting with new ideas."
" Tony Belton, leader
of the Labour opposition, says the low figure is partly a " confidence trick," but an
enormous price has also been paid to keep it low; big cuts in grants for
voluntary groups, social services pared to the bone, council houses "
flogged off ", libraries closed and 3,000 redundancies.
" Victims of the cuts include George Beasly, a
67-year-old joiner, and his wheelchair-bound wife, who recently found
themselves transferred to Wandsworth from Lambeth after boundary changes. In Lambeth, the home help they needed was
free and the council tax was £400. In Wandsworth they had to pay £600 for home
help and £136 for poll tax. [ In other words, the poor pensioner has to pay
£336 per year more ] To add insult to injury, because of administrative
bungling he currently has council tax bills awaiting payment from both
Wandsworth and Lambeth. " It's bloody horrifying and it means I have to
work to keep my head above water," he says. " I am prepared to go to
prison rather than pay Wandsworth. But if I do, my wife will need home help 24
hours a day."
" Mr Lister attributes the £139 council tax to
economies, efficiency and competence; "We have achieved £134 million in
savings in the last four years That's £130 per household. We bit into key
issues at a very early stage. We have a very distinctive style here."
" But another
reason is big grants from
Another reason is that Wandsworth is the only borough in the
country where all residents
( other than those in newly-built or newly occupied houses )
qualify for the transitional relief paid to people who suffered a sharp
increase in the move from poll tax to council tax."
" In other boroughs only some qualify and the amount
varies with the size of their household. But in Wandsworth, because it had a
zero poll tax, everyone qualifies by the same amount - £206 in Band D. This
allows Wandsworth to forget that its Band D council tax is £345 and quote an
after-transitional relief figure of £139 for which no comparative figure can be
produced by any other council - even if many of their residents qualify for
transitional relief."
" Just a few poor souls in Wandsworth, whose houses are
newly built or were empty on March 31, 1993, the last day of poll tax, have to
pay the full £345. They complain bitterly that they have been cheated."
"As the local elections approach, the flagship's
council tax is kicked around a bemused electorate like a battered football.
Wandsworth will probably remain Tory."
[ Note :- Wandsworth council did remain Tory. The Government
subsidy was too expensive to lose! As
for Mr Beasly - well that is his problem, True, as Neil Kinnock, the pormer
Labour party leader once warned us the sick, the poor, the old, the needy will
suffer under the Conservatives, but I am alright jack! Truth, who wants to
know ?]
2 Historical findings
Origins of Christianity
The Daily Mail
carries a column on Questions and Answers. On 30 March it answered the question
- Why does February have only 28 days ?
Barbara-Anne Eddy of
" His successor, Augustus Caesar, followed his example,
renaming and lengthening the sixth month. Despite the change from Julian to
Gregorian calendar, the lengths of the months, except for the provision of the
extra day for February in leap years, remained unchanged."
3 Forgive and forget
On 20 April 1993, Sarah Sands reported for the Evening Standard :- We
must never forget the evil man can do.
" Jews from around the world journeyed to
" The last living witnesses of the Holocaust made their
way by coach to Treblinka early on Sunday morning. The extermination camp of
Treblinka was custom-built for the Final Solution. It answered Himmler's
irritated command that "we must achieve the disappearance from sight of
the living space ( the
" Survivors felt that a visit to Treblinka was the
proper way to mark the 50th anniversary of the
" In July and August 1942, 200,000 Jews were
transported to the gas chambers of Treblinka. These were apocalyptic times. The
leaders of the uprising at the
" The diary of Noemi Szac-Wainkranc has been reprinted
in an extraordinary book of photographs, published this week, taken of the
ghetto by a German soldier, and compiled by Rafael Scharf, who served on the
War Crimes Investigation team."
Szac-Wainkranc wrote, " Escape would have been a
victory for us. But there was no escape. Wherever we went, failure would be
certain and victory - there could only be one victory ; to hold out as long as
possible and to kill the largest possible number of Germans. We were not
unhappy, on the contrary, for us it was the greatest happiness. Neither fear
nor pain existed for us. Can you compare such a death with death in the gas
chamber ? Die! For my mother, for my father, for my children, for our life! I
am aiming at you! Oh God, please let the shot hit the target."
Evening Standard reported on 22
March 1994,:- Spielberg's night of joy
as he scoops 7 Oscars
" Steven Spielberg's Holocaust epic Schindler's List,
with its 12 Oscar nominations, swept the board at the 66th Annual Academy
Awards in Los Anleles last night. It captured seven Oscars, including Best
Picture, and Best Director for Spielberg, 47, whose directional work has been
overlooked for top honours by his peers in past years."
"Filmed in black and white, the true-life drama adapted
from Thomas Keneally's historical novel about German industrialist Oscar
Schindler, who saved 1,100 Jews from Nazi death camps, also won for Art
Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Original Score and Screenplay
Adaption."
" Spielberg thanked the survivor who talked Keneally
into writing the book. 'I owe him such a debt.' [ On 5 April the Sun reportes that Spielberg donated all
profits to charities supporting Jews who suffered in the Nazi atrocity ]
In the same paper Peter Mckay reported from
" In April 1994, the
" ..... Down these long corridors you walk, past these
flickering, horrid films, alongside that so-ordinary railcar, into that room of
shoes; there's these so-small death camp uniforms, these guns, whips, coshes
and other instruments of torture; pictures of doomed children, of adults beyond
hope; strutting Nazis, clever machines which made their oh-so-necessary ID
documents; barracks from Auschwiz; finally, out into the last stretch-
impassive Nazis in court, grainly pictures of British squaddies alongside
dumbfounded by what they'd found, standing alongside stick men in rage. Out
into the gigantic atrium, where people sit dazed by what they've seen, heard
and felt."
" Entrance is free."
On 9th May 1994, BBC2 shown a programme entitled :
In three months of 1944, 437,000 Jews were gassed to death
by the Nazis in
SO, 50 years after the massacre, Jews still remember the
event. And they will not let us forget it. What about the massacres of Sikhs
and non Sikh Hindus, during the partition of
Do we have any memorial to Hindu victims of Muslim
atrocities of Mopla riots of 1921, Naohkhali/
Do we have any day (s) of remembrance for the victims of
massacres? NO.
Do the victims themselves observe any day of remembrance
themselves ? NO.
Why should the world
respect us ?
4 Behaviour of Christians
and Muslims today
4.1
Hassen Zenati of AFP in
" Bosnians die in Algerian knife massacre." He
says :- Foreign residents in
" They were among 20 workers from the former
"We have taken measures to evacuate our personnel from
" The number of foreigners killed in
" Fundamentalists of a radical group known as the Armed
Islamic Group issued an ultimatum in a message received on Oct 31, giving
foreigners a month in which to leave the country. Tuesday's attack came as
Algerian forces deployed armoured cars in the capital to increase security.
" The
On 25 March 1994, Daily Telegraph reported, " Spain
warned its 327 citizens in Algeria to leave as soon as possible unless their
presence was absolutely vital after a Frenchman and his son had their throats
cut by fundamentalist terrorists."
Christopher Walker wrote for The Times on 24 February, " Tourist train to
"
" The attack, the second against a train along the same
route in five days, comes after the expiry of an ultimatum by the main Islamic
group that all foreigners should leave
On 17 March Evening
Standard reported, " 9 bombers sentenced to death."
" A military court sentenced nine alleged Moslem
militants to death today for trying to assassinate the Egyptian Prime Minister,
Atef Sedki, with a bomb that killed a 12 year old girl. One defendant was
acquitted and five others received from three to 15 years in jail. Six of the
defendants are at large and were tried in their absence, including five of
those sentenced to death. The Jihad group, which assassinated President Anwar
Sadat in October 1981, claimed responsibility for the attack, in which Shaima
Abdel-Halim was killed. As they were sentenced, the defendants shouted,"
We are going to heaven."
On 18 March 1994
Charles Richards reported for the Independent
:
" Two Egyptian army officers were executed by firing
squad in
" The Egyptian authorities have said nothing publicly
about the plot against Mr Mubarak. Such is the sensitivity of the case that the
officially controlled media have not reported on the plot, the trial, the
verdict or its finale. A third officer accused of the attempt on the
President's life is still at large. The information comes from "military
sources", published only in opposition papers."
" The three were convicted in a secret trial of
planting explosives at an airstrip near the Libyan border, which Mr Mubarak was
to use when meeting the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi."
" Infiltration of the armed forces by Islamic
extremists is an abiding nightmare of the Egyptian authorities. It was a group
of army officers and men of the Jihad organisation who assassinated President
Anwar Sadat in
" Few believe the central government is weak enough, or
the potential plotters organised enough, for the assassination attempts to add
up a real threat of a coup at this stage."
" Of the nine condemned to death in
"It was the largest number of death sentences in a
single trial since 1992, when the government began using military courts to try
militants fighting to establish an Islamic state. In the past 15 months, 50
Islamists extremists have been sentenced to death and 32 of those have been
hanged."
" Mubarak, how many are you going to imprison, how many
are you going to torture and execute ? Islam will spring up through our
children," one convicted militant shouted." We tell Mubarak, the
military courts failed in
4.2
The organ theft scandal
David Adams reported for the TIMES on 18 November 1993, " From Argentina to
" Two years ago, after the families of other victims at
Montes de Oca complained, an official investigation revealed a gruesome
underground network which specialised in removing corneas from corpses in the
institute's morgue for distribution to hospitals around the country, where they
fetch as much as $7,000 ( £4,000 )"
" This trafficking in human organs has never been
officially recognised and human rights groups
have never taken it up as an issue, saying they have been unable to come
up with solid evidence. That may soon change. After several years of
investigation, a British charity worker in Latin America, Bruce Harris, and
film director Judy Jackson, will provide evidence in BBC's Everyman programme that the body parts business is thriving in
" Mr Harris, the director in Latin America of Covenant
House, an American-based charity that works with street children says that
young are often targets. Last year in Tegucigalpha, the capital of
" Mr Harris's film demonstrates that it is not just in
" Even in
" The purchase or sale of organs is a crime in
" In
" Mr Harris and Ms Jackson discovered that one of 22
doctors being investigated ran a transplant centre at the
" Official investigations in
" Doctors offered to export bio-materials anywhere in
the world for use in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics or surgery. Meanwhile penniless
" An enquiry in 1992 found grave violations in organ
retrieval in
" Ms Jackson says that she feels her film only "
scratches the surface." Much more investigating needs to be done, she
believes. But she warns that political influence and criminal interests make it
dangerous to ask questions. " Often, it is a police matter and not really
territory for journalists," she says. She emphasises that in most
countries transplants are well managed and help save lives. " The last
thing we want to do is discourage people from being donors," she
says."
[ The Body Parts Business, BBC Television, Everyman, Sunday 10.30 pm. ]
5.The Dreyfus Affair -
centenary of the injustice
Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us :-
Alfred Dreyfus was the son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer. In 1882 he
entered the Ecole Polytechnic and decided on a military career. By 1889 he had
risen to the rank of captain. He was assigned to the War Ministry when, in
1894, he was accused of selling military secrets to the German military
attaché. He was arrested on October 15, and on December 22 he was convicted and
sentenced to life imprisonment on the infamous penal colony of Devil's Island,
off the coast of
The legal proceedings, which were based on insufficient
evidence, were highly irregular. Although he denied his guilt and although his
family consistently supported his plea of innocence, public opinion and the
French press as a whole, led by its virulently anti-Semitic section welcomed
the verdict and the sentence. In particular, the newspaper La Libre Parole edited by Edouard used Dreyfus to symbolise the
supposed disloyalty of French Jews.
But doubts began to grow. Lieut. Col Georges Picquart found
evidence that Maj.C.F.
( Walsin- ) Esterhazy was engaged in espionage and that it
was believed that it was Esterhazy's handwriting found on the letter that had
incriminated Dreyfus. When Picquart was removed from his post, it was believed
that his discovery was too inconvenient for his superiors. The pro-Dreyfus side
slowly gained adherents ( among them,
journalists Joseph Reinach and Georges Clemenceau - the future World War I
premier - and a senator, Auguste Scheurer Kestner )
The affair was made absurdly complicated by the activities
of Esterhazy in inventing evidence and spreading rumours and of Maj. Hubert
Joseph Henry, discoverer of the original letter attributed to Dreyfus, in
forging new documents and suppressing others. When Esterhazy was brought before
a court martial, he was acquitted, and Picquart was arrested. This precipitated
an event that was to crystallise the whole movement for revision of Dreyfus's
trial. On Jan 13, 1898, the novelist Emile Zola (q.v.) wrote an open letter
published on the front page of Aurore, Clemencaeu's paper under the headline
"J'Accuse" By the evening of that day, 200,000 copies had been sold.
Zola accused the army of covering up its mistaken conviction of Dreyfus and of
the Ministry of War.
By the time of the Zola's letter, the Dreyfus case had
attracted widespread public attention and had split
Amid uproar in Parliament, the government was pressed by the
nationalists to bring Zola to justice, while anti-Semitic riots broke out in
the provinces. A petition demanding revision of the Dreyfus trial was signed by
some 3,000 persons, including Anatole France, Marcel Proust, and a host of
intellectuals. The trial of Zola began on February 7; he was found guilty of
libel and sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 3,000 francs.
From 1898 to 1899 the Dreyfus cause gained in strength.
Major Henry committed suicide at the end of August 1898, after confessing his
forgeries. Esterhazy, in panic fled to
A new ministry, led by Rene Waldeck-Rousseau (q.v. ) took
office in June 1899 and resolved to bring the affair to an end at last.
Dreyfus, brought back from Devil's island for retrial, appeared before a new
court martial in
In 1904 a retrial was granted and in July 1906 a civilian
court of appeals ( the Cour d'Appel ) cleared Dreyfus and reversed all previous
convictions. Parliament passed a bill reinstating Dreyfus. On July 22 he was
formally reinstated and decorated with the Legion of Honour. After short
service in the army, in which he attained the rank of major, he retired to the
reserves. He was recalled to active service during World War I and, as a
lieutenant colonel, commanded an ammunition column. After the war he retired
into obscurity.
[ What we have to
note is that the French Army never did justice to Dreyfus. Even after all the
revelations, the court martial still found him guilty. The President was forced
to pardon him. We face exactly such bloody mindedness in case of Taj Mahal.]
Christy Campbell wrote for Sunday Telegraph on 19 September 1993 :
A question of dishonour
" They made an odd couple, holding their regular trysts
in the shadow of the
" It was a bordereau,
a "memorandum", on flimsy paper. It offered French military secrets
to the Germans. There was a traitor at the heart of General Staff, an officer
with intimate knowledge of artillery. Within two weeks the culprit had been
figured, a wiry 35-year-old
gunner, Captain Alfred Dreyfus - a Jew."
" The French love an anniversary. For a country with an
uncertain political relationship with its military, the French also love a
parade............ But the centenary of the Dreyfus affair, which began with
his arrest on a charge of high treason on October 15, 1894, will not be an
occasion for national rejoicing. Two years ago a statue of Dreyfus was erected
in the Tuileries. The French army did not provide military honours."
If the Alsatian -born
captain had not been a Jew there would have been no affair. Like all great
scandals, it was not the original act that brought down the temple, but the
conspiracy of a power elite to cover its tracks. Like Watergate, that remains
the affair's centre of fascination.
Just to make sure, after Dreyfus's conviction Commandant
Henry forged a new document, mentioning Dreyfus by name. There was indeed a spy at the heart of the
French army, but it was not Dreyfus. The true author of the memorandum was
Commandant le Comte Walsin-Esterbazy, inconveniently a Catholic and an
aristocrat.
One hundred years ago the Republic was in peril.
"In his silent cell on the Ile de Diable, " the
slow guillotine " Dreyfus knew nothing of the battle for revision that engulfed
French politics for four years. Fashionable
" Why did the Dreyfus affair exert its magnetic pull a
century on ? The anti-semitic poison of La
Libre Parole and its clones never left the 20th century bloodstream - with
mass murderous effects that Alfred never saw. He died in 1935, a Chevalier of
the Legion of Honour. His grand-daughter Madeleine, a fighter in the
Resistance, died in Auschiwitz aged 25. Esterhazy, the true villain died in
6.Why does History matter ?
Anthony O'Hear wrote for the Daily Mail on 15 March , "
It's back to the past to defeat the barbarians." History matters. Without a knowledge of
history we would be strangers in our own land, unable to recognise our nation's
values, institutions or achievements. We would be like barbarians coming across
a great city and destroying it because we did not understand it. One of the
scandalous legacies of the Sixties has been an orthodoxy in teaching of history
which downplays historical knowledge in favour of so-called skills. Some of
this was inspired by a politically correct desire to disaffect pupils by making
them suspicious of our values and our history. We have, therefore, been in
danger of producing a generation ignorant of the past and doubtful that there
could be true knowledge of it.
7 Why we cannot tell the
truth
In September 1992, Safety
management reported
" All workers could soon be afforded protection against
victimisation for blowing the whistle on unsafe working conditions, claimed
Michael Forsythia, the minister responsible for health and safety offshore.
Visiting a
' Now I can announce that we shall extend equivalent
protection onshore, and that all employees - whether offshore or on - will be
given protection in particular circumstances against dismissal on health and
safety grounds. "
" The proposed changes, confirmed a Department of
Employment spokeswoman, are due to be presented in parliament in the autumn, as
part of Government's Employment BIll."
[ And we thought that
8. Acknowledgement
We are grateful to the following for their help :-
For posting
copies of our newsletters in
Arun Kankani of
Devendra
Kainthola of
For making
copies of our newsletter and distributing the copies to friends ;-
Dina Nath Behl of
For arranging a
coach for Around London Tour on 7 May
Dr Tanaji
Acharya of
For posting
copies of our newsletters in
Hemat Goil of
9. Publicity and
Appreciation
Please help by :-
* acknowledging the
receipt of this newsletter to the following address
Mr
V.S.Godbole
14 Turnberry
Walk
MK 41, 8AZ
* sending money to Mr Godbole
* making five copies of this newsletter and sending them to
your friends.