François Gautier | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1950 (age 75–76) |
| Occupations | Journalist,historian andcolumnist |
| Spouse | Namritā Bindrā Kāūr |
| Writing career | |
| Genre | Politics |
| Subject | Politics,Hindutva,Indian History |
| Years active | 1982–present |
| Notable works | The Wonder that is India, Un Autre regard sur l'Inde |
| Notable awards | Panchjanya's Nachiketa Awards, Bipin Chandra Pal Award |
| Website | www |
François Gautier (born 1950) is ajournalist and Hindutva activist[1] based inIndia who served as theSouth Asiancorrespondent for multiple reputed French-language dailies.
He is also the founder of a private museum which seeks to portray Indian history in a nationalist manner. Gautier has written books on the history and Indology; he has establishedNGO namelyFoundation for Advancement of Cultural Ties.
Francois Gautier was born in 1950 inParis and received anupper-classCatholic education.[2] He was subsequently sent to reputed boarding schools across Europe, from where he was expelled several times.[2] Gautier said that he "never really fitted in the system".[2] He attended theIDRAC business school inParis before dropping out to work in a small newspaper.[2]
Gautier came to India at the age of 19 in 1969, as part of a trans-world journey, along with the first wave of Auroville-migrants.[3][2] He was accompanied by the son ofCharles François Marie Baron, Pondicherry's last French governor.[3] Deeply impressed withSri Aurobindo's writings, he chose to reside overSri Aurobindo Ashram where his encounters withMirra Alfassa influenced him to further prolong his stay.[3] Gautier went on to stay over there for about seven years.[2]
François Gautier is married to Namrita Bindra Gautier, whose mother was aHindu and father aSikh. Gautier primarily resides inAuroville in India, and visits his family inFrance annually.[2]
After arriving in India, Gautier stopped writing for many years and focused on other activities.[2] In 1982, he found an article in a French newspaper, that supposedly containedclichés about the Indian socio-polity.[2] He wrote a letter to the editor suggesting corrections, wherein he was offered to write an article.[2] He wrote several more articles for the newspaper and went on to work as a writer and photographer for other publications.[2]
He served as the South-Asia correspondent ofJournal de Genève, aGeneva-based newspaper before switching to the same post atLe Figaro in 1993.[2] He stayed over there for about 8 years before shifting toOuest-France and then,La Chaîne Info.[4]
Gautier used to write a regular column forRediff.com.[5] Gautier has also written columns forThe New Indian Express,[6]DNA India,[7]Outlook India,[8] and others. He is also the editor ofLa Revue de l'Inde.[9]
Gautier became interested inIndology when he began to travel outside Auroville.Sita Ram Goel contacted Gautier after reading some of his articles in a magazine calledBlitz and asked for permission to reprint the articles in his book. Gautier instead wrote the bookThe Wonder That Is India. Later, the websiteHinduism Today republished it online. Following this, Gautier wrote several other books. Gautier is also working on two books, one aboutKalaripayattu, anIndian martial art fromKerala, and another on French influence in India, with the help of photographerRaghu Rai.[2]
In 2010, an anonymously authored novel titledHindutva, Sex and Adventure was published that featured a foreign radio journalist who came to India and became aHindutva supporter—it was considered to be a satire of BBC reporterMark Tully.[10] It was speculated that Gautier may have been the author, but he denied the allegation.[10][11]
Gautier has established theFoundation for Advancement of Cultural Ties (FACT), a NGO dedicated to portraying Indian history in a "correct" manner.[4] It has organised multiple painting exhibitions across the country to depict and highlight how a range of events from theinsurgency in Jammu and Kashmir to the cruelties ofMughal emperors has affected the life of Hindus.[12][4][13][14] He eventually planned to establish a museum similar toHolocaust museums.[4] Gautier also planned to tour the world with his museums and educate the foreign community about the systemicextermination of Hindus.[14] The exhibitions have received mixed responses and the underlying motives have been questioned.[14]
In 2012, the Shivaji Maharaj Museum of Indian History was established by FACT.[15][16] In 2013, during the visit of the14th Dalai Lama, Gautier and his wife, organised an exhibition on the origin ofBuddhism in India and its spread toTibet with the help of materials from theTibet Museum of Dharamsala, to educate the local people aboutTibetan culture.[17]
Gautier, who iscritical of the partition of India,[18] has advocated forIndian reunification, stating "as long as Pakistan and India are divided there will be other Kashmirs, other Ayodhyas, other wars with Pakistan—nuclear maybe—and India will never be at peace with its own Muslim community, which is a permanent danger to herself."[18]
Gautier contends that India, through the exercise and spread ofSanatan dharma shall strive to be a global superpowerbut prior to that shall decentralize the economy and Indianize its social, political and educational systems, even at the cost of democratic principles and the constitution.[19][20] In abidance with a Hinducentric scholarship, he has criticized the narrative of Indian historiography to be leftist,[21] which have apparently glorified foreign invaders at the cost of the Hindu empires, and thus urges for a completerevisionism.[22][23]
A front-lineHindutva activist, Gautier also deems Hinduism to be under threat fromIslam,Christian missionaries,Marxism andwesternisation.[24][25] He calls foruse-of-force by the oppressed Hindus[26] and opines of theBuddhist-Jain philosophies ofAhimsa to have actually enabled exploitation of India by foreign invaders.[27] One of his most prominent views is about theHindu Holocaust perpetrated byIslamic invaders which exceeded the extents of theJew Holocaust and all other genocides.[25][21][28] Gautier has also rejected the western-oriental scholarship ofMax Müller,Arthur Llewellyn Basham as ill-portrayals of the history of the nation which birthed the theory of Hindu imperialism.[2]
Gautier accepts theIndigenous Aryan hypothesis in favor of theIndo-Aryan migration theory and supports the idea ofJesus Christ having come to India, to be inspired by Hindu and Buddhist esoterism.[25] He also considersKoenraad Elst as one of the most knowledgeable scholars on India and regretted of his' being unable to publish except from Hindu-oriented publishing houses.[2] A staunch opponent of Nehruvian ideologies,[24][3] he has critiqued Gandhi's policy towardsMuslim separatists during thepartition of India as Muslim-appeasement.[3] Gautier have also attacked the existence and manifestation ofcaste privilege in the Indian society and derivatives thereof, instead arguing for a hypothesis wherein the socially and economically privileged and dis-privileged populaces are in a constant flux and which primarily manifests inreverse discrimination in the long run.[29]
He has criticized theUnited Progressive Alliance government (2009-2014) and claimed that terrorism continued unabated whilst Muslim mullahs were allowed to preach freely and Hindu gurus were being targeted by the media and police.[7] He has earlier criticized the usage of the term "Godman" by Indian media to describe self-proclaimed Hindu gurus proposing that Indian journalists often were not proud of their culture and had called for imparting a more fairer treatment.[30][31]
Manisha Basu, writing inThe Rhetoric of Hindu India, deems him to be part of asuave derivative of Hindutva and notes of his consistent attacks upon left-liberal commentators—people who have supposedly leveraged theirsocial privilege to dominate the socio-political consciousness of the "Anglophone national bourgeoisie" for long enough—in the process of becoming one of the few self-appointed interpreters of the Indian Right.[32]Malini Parthasarathy too notes him to be a prominent voice of Hindutva,[19] others have noted him as an ideologue as well.[33] Basu remarks of his attacks against the constructs of Brahmanic privilege (and otherintersectionalities) along with the radical perspectivising ofproper historiography to be mere statistical extensions of first-hand-experiences have a high degree of similarity toJay Dubashi's writings and his broader views about thejournalistic model of history.[19] Scholars have rejected his theories of a Hindu-Holocaust and have deemed him to beIslamophobic.[34][35]
He was subject to severe criticism after having objected to the proposed induction ofAamir Khan, a MuslimBollywood actor over a planned dramatization ofMahabharata, aHindu epic.[36][37][38] He had earlier asked for the boycott ofPK, a Bollywood film starring the same actor, due to its depiction of a Hindu-Muslim love affair and accusedAshoka University of teaching an anti-Hindu anti-Brahmin book.[39][40]
In 2017, Gautier claimed over a blog atThe Times of India to have come across a hitherto-hidden manuscript ofNostradamus in a trunk, that (successfully) prophesied the statesmanship ofNarendra Modi.[41][42] The claims were reported across multiple news-outlets.[41][42] Earlier he had asserted of Nostradamus to have established theRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an IndianHindu nationalist organisation.[41] Other claims included that Nostradamus had successfully prophesied the chances of apossible nuclear war between India and Pakistan, the construction ofRam Mandir and theHindu domination of world affairs after 2014.[43][42] He later said in an interview that this had been a "spoof",[44] but it was taken in earnest by some leftist commentators who accused him of having tampered with the original passages for fulfilling his political agenda.[43][42] At one case, he used the same passage over his blogs across the course of a few years but changed the name of the subjects to keep up with the political currents.[43] Gautier has been accused by rivals to have propagated fake news over other occasions through left media outlets.[45][46]
In 2003, the idea of a 'Hindu Holocaust Museum' was proposed by French journalist and Hindutva - ally, François Gautier.
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