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In 1802, Congress established a national military academy at West Point, NY, where the Patriots had establish a series of fortifications during the American Revolution in order to secure the passage of the Hudson River. The original post was designed by Rufus Putnam (cousin of General Israel Putnam), the first Surveyor General of the US. Rufus Putnam also directed the building of fortifications at Sewall's Point, Providence, Newport, and on Long Island. Fort Putnam at West Point was named for him.A 19th century stereo card of the area near West Point from Fort PutnamThe idea of making West Point an institution for the scientific study of warfare was slow to mature. For a decade the school languished in “an inchoate existence, without teachers, or limited studies, or proper discipline.” The West Point academy was the only engineering school in the country until the founding of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1824, and it significantly influenced every American engineering school founded prior to the Civil War.Upon his graduation from the United States Military Academy in 1806, Alden Partridge, one of its first graduates, had received the rank of lieutenant of engineers and an appointment at the academy as an assistant professor of mathematics. In 1808, he took over the responsibilities of Superintendent emphasizing physical fitness, the study of liberal arts, agriculture, modern languages, and engineering in addition to the sciences and various military subjects. No permanent instructors were appointed until 1812, and cadets were graduated whenever the professors felt they were ready. There were few graduates prior to 1815.The federal government put the Military Academy under the stewardship of Colonel Sylvannus Thayer as its Superintendant in 1817. Thayer had transferred as a cadet from Dartmouth College in 1807 and graduated from the Military Academy as valedictorian of his class after a single year in attendance in 1808. During the War of 1812, Thayer directed the fortification and defense of Norfolk, Virginia, and was promoted to major. In 1815, Thayer was provided $5,000 to travel to Europe, where he studied for two years at the French École Polytechnique. Thayer was impressed with École Polytechnique’s strict discipline and academic requirements.Sylvannus ThayerCaptain Partridge initially refused to relinquish his command to his former student (and now superior officer), but after court martial Partridge chose to resign his commission in 1818, having served his entire Army career of ten years at the academy. Partridge thereafter advocated a new program of regional and state-based military instruction. He drilled into all his cadets the essentials for a military man: discipline, precision, reliability, and honor. The curriculum instituted by Thayer included, in order of importance, mathematics, physics, mechanics, astronomy, engineering, chemistry, French, tactics, principles of artillery, mineralogy, ethics, and history. While this was a comprehensive curriculum, West Point quickly became the nation's foremost college of engineering.Colonel Thayer's time at West Point ended with his resignation in 1833, after a disagreement with President Andrew Jackson. Thayer would dismiss a student cadet for good reason; then Jackson, for political reasons, would return him by presidential order. Thayer spent the great majority of the next 30 years as the chief engineer of the army for the Boston area. In 1867, Thayer donated $40,000 to the trustees of Dartmouth College to create the Thayer School of Engineering. Thayer chose Dartmouth in large part because it offered several courses in higher mathematics that were not yet available at other older colleges like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or William and Mary.Yet not every voice was imbued with praise for the West Point academy. Henry Barnard, educational reformer and editor of the American Journal of Education noted of the effort: “It was not to be expected that schools of refined, scientific art should be found in … a new world. When even their clergymen must resort to Europe for education, and their lawyers for license, it was in vain to expect their soldiers to be accomplished engineers.” The academy was accused of being a center of nepotism that turned below-average students into average officers. In 1830, folk hero and Tennessee congressman Davy Crockett tried to pass a bill abolishing West Point. In 1840, Citizen Soldier, a period newspaper associated with Partridge, found the academy “monopolizing, aristocratic, unconstitutional, and worse than useless.” In the midst of war in 1863, Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio noted, “I do not believe that there can be found, on the whole face of the Earth . . . any institution that has turned out so many false, ungrateful men as have emanated from this institution.” [i]The concept of a “national” school certainly ran afoul of the popular concept of federalism at the time (often expressed as state’s rights). There was no evidence available at the time to show that officers, who attended civilian colleges, or any one of the south’s Senior Military Colleges such as the Citadel or VMI, were lesser leaders than their Academy colleagues. It was rare to find West Point cadets from the lower social classes, and many appointees came from among the plantation aristocracy or northeast squirearchy. Yet the Academy offerred a superior education to many men who could not otherwise afford it like Ulysses S. Grant (the son of a leather tanner) or George A. Custer (an out-of-work schoolteacher).The problem of military education was thought not to revolve around simple ignorance of academic facts, but rather around an unequal development of the intellectual, physical, and moral disciplines. It was these that the Academy held in the highest regard. A century after the Civil War (1962), General Douglas MacArthur, himself a first rank West Point graduate (1903), spoke to the Cadet Corps of the Academy: “Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. … Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be duty, honor, country.”[ii]Richard DelafieldRichard Delafield was appointed superintendent of West Point three times. During his own time as a cadet at West Point (class of 1818), Delafield was the first cadet teacher detailed as acting assistant professor of mathematics. Ultimately made a major of engineers, he was first appointed superintendent of the Military Academy after the fire of 1838 and served till 1845. The fire destroyed the original academic building and most of the academy's records.It can be said that Delafield more than anyone else created the atmosphere and character of the Academy in the Antebellum period. He designed much of the physical environment that cadets see today. He oversaw the construction of the old cadet library and observatory. The Tudor Gothic style helped set the tone of future buildings. He also designed the cadet uniform that first displayed the castle insignia partly in deference to the engineers. The origin of the turreted castle as a symbol of the Corps of Engineers is shrouded in mystery. As a consequence, many speculative stories about its origins have been advanced. While the designs of the emblem and the button have changed, the castle remains a distinctive symbol of the U.S. Army Corps of EngineersReplaced at the Academy by Henry Brewerton and then Robert E. Lee, Delafield oversaw the construction of coast defenses for New York Harbor from 1846 to 1855. He then led the so-called Delafield Commission, which was sent to Europe to study its military during the Crimean War. Delafield served for a second time as superintendent of the Academy during the difficult prewar period from 1856-1861. During this period, Jefferson Davis extended the time cadets spent at the Academy from four years to five, a change that remained until 1861, when Lincoln's need for lieutenants resulted in two classes graduating from the Military Academy in May and June of the same year, as well as a return to the four-year curriculum. In 1864, after Delafield was commissioned a brigadier-general, he replaced Joseph Totten as the Chief of Engineers, staying in charge of the Bureau of Engineers until his retirement in 1866.Robert E. LeeIn 1852, Robert E. Lee was appointed superintendent of the academy — a position he did not want. From 1829 when he graduated from the Academy until 1852 when he became its superintendent, Lee was an active engineer working on surveys, fortifications, and harbors in a number of states and territories. Lee distinguished himself in the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) as one of Winfield Scott's chief aides. Lee demonstrated his tactical talent early. By the end of the war in Mexico, Lee had received additional brevet promotions to Lieutenant Colonel and Colonel, but his permanent rank was still Captain of Engineers, and he would remain a Captain until his transfer to the cavalry in 1855.Lee was reluctant to enter what he called the "snake pit" at the Academy, but the War Department insisted. It is not clear why he spoke of the institution in this manner, but the 1850s were difficult times for Lee, with his long absences from home, the increasing disability of his wife, worries concerning the property of his aging in-laws, and his often-morbid concern with his personal failures. During his three years at West Point, Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee improved the buildings and course offerings and spent much time with the cadets. As superintendent he seems to have kept of lid on partisan politics at the Academy. Of course, the brief period of his tenure was one characterized more by the hope of compromise in the national political arena rather than by confrontation. Yet the timing of his tenure put him in contact with many of the young officers who would become famous in the Civil War. His own son Custis would graduate first in his class and his nephew Fitzhugh would attend there while Lee was superintendent. They would follow him into the Confederacy.R.E. Lee was enormously relieved to receive a long-awaited field promotion as Lt. Colonel to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment to fight Indians in Texas in 1855. It meant leaving the Engineering Corps and its continuing sequence of staff jobs for the combat command he truly wanted. The cavalry offered the most promising field for early promotion. As Lee left the Academy in 1855, it was clear that some form of civil unrest was approaching like a moving train. Open and bloody combat had already broken out in Kansas, and partisan militias were in the field. The Academy remained the only truly national institution left in the United States. It was not surprising. The Academy had consistently tried to eliminate sectional prejudice and foster national sentiments.[i] Henry Barnard, Military Schools and Courses of Instruction (1872), The West Point Military Library Series (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1969) 720-723.[ii] MacArthur’s Thayer Award Speech (1962). The text of this speech is reproduced from Department of Defense Pamphlet GEN-1A, US Government Printing Office, 1964. URL: http://www.dmi.usma.edu/Milresources/voices/Duty_Honor_Country.htm

It will take finesse, patience…like fly fishing for a wily old trout wary of hooks.You have to listen. Listen as he babbles what you know is complete and utter nonsense—not just nonsense but nonsense that came from the fossil fuel industry’s lips straight to your dad’s ears. And as you listen, you have to not roll your eyes, not squinch up your nose, not lean forward like a hound straining at the leash like you’re about to leap in and try to refute all he says.In other words, you have to act like those CSPAN hosts on their call-in shows as they listen to the old coot calling in from some survivalist redoubt railing against the “Muslim in the White House.”Ask him—super-politely—about how he came to each conclusion. And keep listening. Remember, he’s telling you what every one of his friends believes, what every information source he trusts says on the radio and TV and online, including every politician of his party.He can quote science fellers who agree with him, like the meteorologist who runs the wattsupwiththat climate denialist website. He doesn’t know that the “meteorologist” in question is a shill for the fossil fuel companies, and he doesn’t know that the “meteorologist” is a former TV weatherman with no academic credentials past a high school diploma. And if you try to hammer him with these facts he’ll close up and tell you he doesn’t believe you.From his point of view you’re the oddball with the ideas motivated by your commie politics, while his point of view is the reasonable one—that you’re just saying what you’re saying because you believe everyone should be hanging off Big Gummint’s teat, because you were brainwashed by the pinko teachers at the Little Red Schoolhouse you called college.America’s oligarchs have carefully constructed an immense propaganda establishment including some rogue scientists working for the Heartland Institute (that gots its start helping the tobacco industry stave off regulation with immense piles of pseudoscience). Every part reinforces every other part, from the fake think tanks to the fake “concerned citizen” websites to the intertwining of political dogma with the science, all the time accusing us of every sin they’re committing—that we’re the ones politicizing the science, that we’re the ones faking the data, that we’re the ones succumbing to Dark Money from George Soros.But wait there’s more…bad news for you. You’re also up against human nature. We evolved to trust our instincts, which made sense 200,000 years ago, because our instincts perfectly matched our environment. Which didn’t include pondering climate, which is weather averaged over several decades. Several decades could span the entire adult life of most of those distant ancestors.Science has become ever more counterintuitive, from string theory to the fact that white flowers aren’t white (they’re a color human eyes can’t detect but insects can). Statistics violates our instincts as well. We’re designed by evolution to believe in personal exceptionalism—I’ll survive the unsurvivable battle; I’ll get away with it (whatever “it” is).Our instincts even skew our sense of danger, exaggerating certain kinds while discounting others. People drive on the freeway who are terrified of flying, for example. We drive our kids to school even in communities that has never had a stranger abduction in thirty years, because the news channels spent three days obsessing on a stranger abduction 3,000 miles away in a very different community.And there you are, trying to tell him that his own instincts are wrong. Think of all the training you needed to acquire the mental training and discipline to overcome both your own instinctual shackles and the never-ending barrage of propaganda emanating from the powerful special insterests arrayed against you.Not just the fossil fuel industry. What I like to call the “Angry Billionaire’s Club” has been trying to cut the public’s trust in science and scientists and in government for many decades, because science reveals inconvenient truths about how major industries routinely privatize profits while socializing costs (such as risks and pollution). The toxicity of the lead industry’s product became clear to science in the 1930s, and the industry responded by viciously attacking the scientists and the science, so effectively that lead wasn’t regulated for many decades—and the lead industry’s ill-gotten gains? It got to keep them. Ditto tobacco. Ditto fossil fuels.And the ABC has been trying to kill Social Security and the rest of the social safety net for 80 years, using the philosophy of billionaire worship—AKA Libertrianism—to preach smaller government, less regulation, despite the reduction ad aburdum of such a philosophy—that is, no government and no regulation being the logical conclusion of that mantra, since it recognizes no boundary conditions on its downward push.This mantra controls the thinking of half the country, and the fossil fuel industry piggybacked on it to frame global warming as an insidious plot to enlarge the size of government and increase the amount of regulation—because that’s how they define liberalism as being Communism-lite, always wanting to increase our dependence on gummint. This is in fact the big corporations’ framing device and the reciprocal of their right wing mantra.Try telling your dad all this, though. Trouble is you’re telling him everyone in power that he’s trusted all his life are his enemies, and he should cast his lot with hippie America-haters. Scoundrels always use patriotism to bait the trap.So obviously you can’t say any of this. What you can say is to ask him whether it could be useful to separate the question of whether global warming is happening from the question of what it would cost to do something about it. Not that cost doesn’t count, but that it’s a diffeent issue.This is crucial because the real reason most right wingers reject global warming is that they don’t want to pay/sacrifice anything to remediate it.Consider the context, for them. The way American society has evolved since the 1960s has made folks like your dad feel like strangers in a strange land that was once their country. Look at the world of the 1950s—the role of women and blacks, the invisibility of homosexuals and atheists, the role of white Anglo men at the top of the heap at work and at home; and, economically, the fact that any Anglo white man who worked hard and kept his nose clean had a place at the middle class table, even if he was only a high school graduate.All that feels to them like it’s been upended, culminating in an uppity black man becoming our President, with a powerful woman his likely successor.So when you try to change his views on global warming, he’ll most likely feel it as a challenge to the entire world he grew up and is now, bit by bit, losing.With all that in mind, find out if there is any scientific authority he would accept. He might say well the climate scientists themselves want those grants and they’re experiencing groupthink—both major memes of the fossil fuel industry’s propaganda.So then, what about the national scientific societies not directly involved with climate research (and climate research funding)? One of the world’s most prestigious national science associations is the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science). Every scientist who’s a full member has a doctorate in some field of science and has done postdoc work as well.Here is the AAAS position on climate change, which it has held for over a decade:“The overwhelming evidence of human-caused climate change documents both current impacts with significant costs and extraordinary future risks to society and natural systems. The scientific community has convened conferences, published reports, spoken out at forums and proclaimed, through statements by virtually every national scientific academy and relevant major scientific organization — including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — that climate change puts the well-being of people of all nations at risk.“Surveys show that many Americans think climate change is still a topic of significant scientific disagreement.[i] Thus, it is important and increasingly urgent for the public to know there is now a high degree of agreement among climate scientists that human-caused climate change is real. Moreover, while the public is becoming aware that climate change is increasing the likelihood of certain local disasters, many people do not yet understand that there is a small, but real chance of abrupt, unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts on people in the United States and around the world.”http://whatweknow.aaas.org/get-the-facts/Scientists usually arrive at this sort of consensus when they find that many avenues of research, conducted independently and with different forms of observation and validation, all support the same conclusion. It takes more than scientists reviewing one scientist’s particular research and saying it looks good to them.So even if one strand of research proves shaky, scientific consensus is more like a tightly woven basked than a house of cards. The fossil fuel industry’s attack on the science of climate change depends on attacking one particular aspect—say, satellite data, or the exact locations of land-based weather stations, or one scientist’s projects, or, worse yet, incorrect predictions that reflect journalists looking for sexy headlines—such as predicting a coming ice age back the 70s when even then most climate scientists were predicting just what has happened.The attacks depend on the unstated assumption that proving one strand wrong proves all strands wrong. This run contrary to how science works, but it fits popular misconceptions about science.Global warming was first guessed at over a century ago, when the greenhouse effect of CO2 was discovered. It wasn’t generally accepted until the 1970s in the climate science community, and thirty years later by the general science community.However, that’s also when top management in the fossil fuel industry learned about global warming from their own scientists and of course chose to suppress it in the name of Profit. From 2000 to 2011 the fossil fuel industry and its allies spent over $558 million in a massive propaganda campaign intent on sowing fear and doubt among the public, so as to prevent government action on the fact of dangerous, man-caused global warming.This has been proven by Drexel U. sociologist Robert J. BrulleNot Just the Koch Brothers: New Drexel Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort - DrexelNowand by subsequent research by others as well.American conservatives are highly dubious about any information generated outside the right wing bubble, by what they contemptously refer to as the MSM and academic sources as well. So don’t assume such references will work. But it beats quoting Mother Jones and Huffington Post. Find out what media sources he trusts and which ones he’s willing at least not to reject out of hand.American conservatives resemble cult members in this regard—brainwashed to reflexively reject “outside” authority, including even the most reputable media and scientific sources. By “reflexively” I mean they won’t consider the arguments originating from unapproved sources. This simplifies life for them.Of course the rest of us won’t consider arguments from unapproved sources either, but it’s usually things like what Putin has to say about Ukraine, or a Holocaust denier about the Holocaust. Or the fossil fuel industry’s sock puppets about climate. But you can’t use such language of course.Good luck. You’ll probably fail, but it’s worth a shot. Just be sure to get his agreement to consider any given source of information before trying to share information from that source.The process I’m describing here means working your way back to points you and your dad agree about, then building from there, step by careful step. You have to become aware of all the unstated assumptions you share with your peers but not your dad, and not rely on any of them.This article on trends among Republicans vis a vis climate change would be good background research for you:Many More Republicans Now Believe in Climate ChangeandConservative groups push back against Republican party's climate denialism—including the ad aimed at fellow conservatives that Fox News refused to run.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati, whose death anniversary falls this week (October 30, 1883), deserves attention from all Indians. If Mahatma Gandhi is “Father of the Nation”, Swamiji has been called “The Grandfather of the Nation” by no less than a Speaker of our Parliament ; President Radhakrishnan termed him the “Maker of Modern India”; Swami Vivekananda was inclined to place him alongside Kabir, Nanak and Chaitanya for ensuring Hindus weren’t wiped out in their own homeland . A man as towering as Adi Sankaracharya himself ; he is credited to have laid the real foundation of modern independent India ; who went farther than “Brahmo Samaj and even Ramakrishna Mission,” as per se Romain Rolland . To Sri Aurobindo, he’s been “A Soldier of Light” to the land we call Bharat or India .A piece is hardly enough to encompass a man who needs a shelf-full of books to do justice to him. He believed in ancient Vedas and not Vedanta; was a Hindu without Hinduism. He wanted the living beings of this land to return to roots of Vedas and side-step Upanishads, Puranas, Idolatry and was critical of Brahmins for not disseminating Vedas’ profundity to masses. Such a man can’t be expected to be reverential to Islam or Christianity and he wasn’t. In no way, it implied religious intolerance—rather he wanted the entire humanity to drink from this fountain of eternal wisdom called Vedas. The greatest of all Sanskrit scholars, Swamiji chose to reach out to masses in their own language of Hindi with his magnum opus, Satyarth Prakash (The Light of Truth).So reams could be written and hours be spent in marvelling how a young boy ran away from his home at 14, never to return or see his family again, spending a quarter of a century as a wandering ascetic, and devoting his entire celibate life in uplifting widows, untouchables and orphans and regenerating the Hindu society. He was the first to give call for Swaraj in 1876, “India for Indians,” which was later taken up by Lokmanya Tilak and a good half-century later by Gandhi-Nehru. To this day, the presence of Arya Samaj in our neighbourhood remind us of him; as do scores of DAV Schools and Colleges which dot most towns and cities of India. Not to forget the admirable Gurukul Kangri in Haridwar.It is one of history’s painful irony that two men who lit the light of India’s renaissance, Swami Dayanand Saraswati and Mahatma Gandhi, now stand at cross-purpose, even hostile to each other’s philosophy, in the annals of time. Both were born in the state of Kathiawar in Gujarat; the year 1869 which saw the birth of Mahatma Gandhi was also a seminal year in Swamiji’s life when he won over hundreds of learned Pundits in a historic debate in the holy city of Kashi, Banares.First, it’s no help if we pigeon-hole these two giants in social, religious or political boxes. Those who try to run down Arya Samaj for its unswerving loyalty to Vedas, are worth being reminded that a few of the greatest Indians in freedom struggle like Lala Lajpat Rai, Bhagat Singh, Veer Savarkar, Madanlal Dhingra and Ram Prasad Bismal were shaped by Arya Samaj philosophy. Men like Swami Shraddhanand and Bhai Parmanand were martyred and Swami Dayanand himself was poisoned.In 1912, a special committee under the chairmanship of Nehru, surveyed all the jails of the country and reported that 70% of its inmates were Arya Samajis. In 1931, that figure rose to 80%. The great historian K.M. Pannikar credited 80% of all freedom-fighters as being inspired by Arya Samaj.This fervour wasn’t limited to India. In England, Shyamji Krishna Varma began India Home Rule Society in 1905. Another organization with similar aim and objective, namely Ghadar Party was floated in United States by Har Dayal. Sohan Lal Pathak breathed revolutionary fire from Burma in 1915 .This all flowed from Swami Dayanand’s philosophy of overturning the alien rule. He recognized the influence of education in regeneration of the Hindu race. The clarion call emanated from DAV College of Lahore and the Gurukul Kangri and between 1886-1918, the Arya Samaj ran over 500 educational institutions throughout India. Long before Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Swamiji had said: “It should be made a penal offence to keep a child at home after that (5-8 years) age.”All these institutions included the idea of Swadeshi in their curriculum. He mobilized Rajas and Maharajas in this regard. Under his influence, the Maharaja of Jodhpur and all his officials began using hand-spun and hand-woven clothes. All adopted Khadi produced in Marwar. All of these were independent of any governmental assistance. Significantly, military training was made compulsory. One of his critic Valentine Chirol said: “…the whole drift of Dayananda’s teachings is far less to reform Hinduism than to range it into active resistance to the alien influence which threatened, in his opinion, to denationalize it .”By the advent of Mahatama Gandhi in India in 1915, Arya Samaj had become big enough a threat for the British government to ban any of its followers from entering the “precincts of its regimental barracks.” No Arya Samaji was to be enlisted in the army. Swamiji had long gone by then, having been poisoned in 1883 by communal forces but Arya Samaj brooked no stopping.Gandhi was an early recipient of Arya Samaj’s largesse when he received funds for his struggle against apartheid in South Africa and wrote a personal letter of thanks to its head, Mahatma Munshi Ram. Thereafter students of Phoenix Ashram came to India and stayed several months in the Gurukul. Gandhi himself paid a visit to Gurukul when he arrived on his first visit in 1915. It was here that Mahatma Munshi Ram called Gandhi a Mahatma, a title that Gandhi unsparingly used thereafter in public life. Two years later, Mahatma Munshi Ram took sanyas as “Swami Shraddhanand Saraswati” in 1917.When Gandhi was praised for his Satyagraha in South Africa, he was quick to respond: “I am worthy of teaching anybody but I yearn to learn myself from anyone who is servant of his country.” He had marvelled at Swami Dayanand Saraswati and his body of work in a mere 11 years. On meeting Swami Shraddhanand in India, Gandhi described him as having a stature as tall as a mountain .In the spirit of those times, Swami Shradanand soon joined Congress, moved by Gandhi’s call that “dharmic aims alone can transform the political field, (leading to pure and true amelioration of India .” Alongside, he infused a new life in Hindu Sangathan, known these days as Hindu Maha Sabha.No sooner had Swami Shradanand joined Congress, he began seeing the futility of his decision. Ironically, his biggest heart-ache came on the matter of Untouchability. Swami Shraddanand was convinced that seven crores of Indians can’t be allowed to stay out of freedom struggle only because they were Untouchables. He feared they were ready pickings for Christian missionaries. Despite Gandhi’s avowed stance against Untouchability, he received no support from Congress on the matter. His proposals were rejected by Congress in its 1920 Calcutta session. Swamiji was aghast to see Gandhi was more into his non-violent, non-cooperation creed and completely immersed in making the Khilafat Movement a success .Gandhi was completely taken in by his mission to forge a Hindu-Muslim unity. Gandhi’s support to Khilafat Movement, a movement to restore Ottoman Sultan and Caliphate in faraway Turkey—in order to gain Muslim support—and the subsequent Moplah riots in which thousands of Hindus were butchered and about which the apostle of non-violence never offered any criticism, stung Swami Shradhanand. He also found to his dismay that Gandhi was forming committee on various issues and then taking arbitrary decisions. He lamented: “I thought it would be a misfortune if Mahatmaji would be obliged to sever his connection with the oldest political movement (Arya Samaj) in India.”Gandhi meanwhile had begun to distance himself from Arya Samaj. A flashpoint must have come in 1923 when Swami Shradanand became the president of the Bhartiya Hindu Shuddhi Sabha, created with an aim of reconverting Muslims, specifically Malkana Rajputs in the western United Province. For Arya Samaj has always believed that most minorities of India, whether Muslim or Christian or any other minority, were converts out of Hindu fold. And this it expressly aimed to stop, fearing for such continuance would play havoc for Hindu’s existence in the future.Soon enough, Gandhi began criticizing Arya Samaj in no uncertain terms. On May 29, 1925, Gandhi wrote in Young India: “Swami Shraddhanandji…his speeches are often irritating…he inherits the traditions of the Arya Samaj.”Gandhi didn’t spare even Swami Dayanand and his magnum opus, Satyarth Prakash. “I have profound respect for Dayanand Saraswatiji…But he made his Hinduism narrow. I have read Satyarth Prakash, the Arya Samaj Bible. It’s a disappointing book from a reformer so great.”In our times, Arya Samaj is losing its steam primarily for it doesn’t have leaders of stature of Swami Dayanand Saraswati and a few others. Its offices and compounds are now turning into “baraat ghars.” A great movement is dying out. The educational institutions, fashioned by Swami Dayanand Saraswati, though are doing fine.