By Saswat Pattanayak

Russian Orientalist, Prof. Grigory Bondarevsky has been murdered in Moscow. Of course, he used to take special interest in the subversive role of Western intelligence agencies in the history of India, Iran and Arab countries.

And of course, after dissolution of the USSR, the systematic obliteration of the original researches have been started full force. Indeed, Bondarevsky is the 10th Russian scholar to have been killed over the past year (for example, in June, Alexander Krasovsky of the Academy of Sciences died following an armed burglary into his apartment, while in January Viktor Frantzuzov, deputy rector of the Moscow Institute of Chemical Technologies, was shot dead etc). And none of the murder mysteries have been solved yet.

In the Indian context, Prof. Bondarevsky was the honorary professor of the Meerut University and winner of the Jawaharlal Nehru International Prize as well as Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian awards. In the Soviet context, the most recent and unique research of his was regarding the Chechen struggle. In fact the attackers had not stolen anything from his apartment except a Chechnya-related research. The Russian interior ministry was quick to suggest the killers might have been members of the Russian Mafias.

Mafias work for whom and why? Who would benefit from the people’s researches on Islam and the West’s contribution in its militarization?

Well, Well!

Tags: USSR, Saswat, Communism, Capitalism, India, Academic