June 24, 2006

No signs of gratitude

Apparently, there was a long delay in setting up a cyclotron in Ranchi in the '70s. One person connected with this project, an eminent scientist, writes in his autobiography:
    One of the reasons for the delay was the arrival of ten million Bangladeshi refugees at the site of the project. [I]t seemed as if they had come to stay permanently. But luck favoured us and one day, after several months of squatting around, they all returned to their country and we resumed our work.

    [italics mine]
Yes. An entire Bombay-sized city "squatted" on this site for some months, and "one day", they just upped and left. How lucky.

Later in this book, the eminent scientist writes of visiting Delhi right after Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984:
    When I arrived at my brother's place, his neighbours, who were Sikhs, were hiding in his house. They shared their anguish with me but unfortunately I did not detect any signs of gratitude in them for the refuge they had sought ... [Indira Gandhi's] funeral ceremony was attended by a large number of Heads of States and prominent residents of Delhi, but the Sikhs were conspicuous by their absence.

    [italics mine]
Could they have been absent, I wonder, because in those particular few days, Sikhs were being slaughtered in the streets of Delhi? Because many were in hiding, fearing for their lives?

Sure they were in hiding and fearing for their lives, but they were filled with ingratitude too. Yes.

Is it possible that one of India's best-known scientists wrote all these lines? Well, that's the late Raja Ramanna, arguably the principal architect of our nuclear programme.

Read more in this article (PDF). You may not agree with all that its author, Sankaran Krishna, says, but he'll give you things to think about.

4 comments:

barbarindian said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
barbarindian said...

My response posted:
Attempt to create Hindu-Sikh rift foiled

Frankly Dilip, you have gone too far this time.

Anonymous said...

The entire article was simply an attack on the Indian middle class, Dr Raja Ramanna.
First the author does not credit Dr Raja Ramanna's brother who like all decent human beings sheltered sikhs during the riots.
Everybody ignores the fact that the middle class is proud of minorities like Azim Premji and others who have made our country proud and the middle class have played a role in these peoples rise.
He simply picks up a few statements here and there and trash India's nuclear program as one promoted by fascists and nationalists.

Barbarindian - I do not agree with the statement
Which party caused, aided and abetted the 1984 riots between Sikhs and Hindus?
Answer below (*)
The party did not abett the 1984 riots. They actively participated in them. Ordinary Hindus did not.

Small wonder Dilip only focuses on HKL Bhagat and completely ignores that all subsequent Congress govts made him a Cabinet minister. Even Tytler has hardly been mentioned. So only Bhagat is to blame. But the Congress has been declared innocent.
Quiz 2 - Who declared during the 1984 riots - 'When a big tree falls, the earth shakes'.

Anonymous said...

Dilip you have to clear up as to when HKL Bhagat went into a rendition of Vande Mataram.

Also, was this post inspired by something said a day earlier on your blog:
Soliders killing intellectuals on street doesn't happen but we do see 'journalists' like Dilip and his gaggle of typists-leftists who publicly scron and heap abuse on our nuclear engineers.
http://dcubed.blogspot.com/2006/06/get-rid-of-women.html#c115107211376227189