archive: The second coming of barbarians
The second coming of barbarians
A K Ray
The Pioneer
June 24, 1999
Title: The second coming of barbarians
Author: A K Ray
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: June 24, 1999
In one of the most brutal acts, the Pakistan Army tortured six Indian
soldiers, including a young Lieutenant, gouged their eyeballs, burnt
them with cigarette butts and chopped off noses, ears and genitals."
Thus ran the news report on June 11, aptly head-lined, 'Barbarians'.
That was the state of Lieutenant Saurav Kalia and five of his men from
4 Jats who had gone on a patrol on May 14 in the Kaksar area.
The same morning appears a piece by a renowned columnist in which he
says, "Now that the unspeakable dishonesty of the Pakistani
establishment (as opposed to the Pakistani people, let us always
remember) is manifest in Kargil..." That instantly brought back to
mind the days in Berlin (1955-57) where I read and heard about the
controversy over who were responsible for the horrors of the Holocaust
and other Nazi atrocities during the second World War. To the
question, "Who did it?" the infuriating reply from large numbers of
Germans was, "We didn't do it; the SS did it." Then one day, Gerhard
Reitlinger's "SS, the Alibi of a Nation" tore off the mask of
hypocrisy. Who were the SS, he asked. Were they not fathers,
husbands, brothers and sons of those who pleaded innocence? When Jews
loaded in cattle-wagons were being shipped to Belsen and Auschw4tz
over German railroads, did not the station masters know what was
afoot? And so on.
First, there was the deliberate murder of Squadron Leader Ajay Ahuja,
and now comes the murder of Lieutenant Saurav Kalia and his five men
and the barbaric mutilation of their bodies after evident torture.
Who did these things? Are they not fathers and husbands, and brothers
and sons of the people of Pakistan? These foul deeds cannot be
watered down by ascribing them to the Pakistani "establishment" as
opposed to the Pakistani "people". These barbaric acts constitute the
collective guilt of the entire Pakistani nation, which every
Pakistani-including the Najam Sethis-must share and pay for. There is
absolutely no ground, no justification, for a schizophrenic
distinction between those who wield power in Pakistan and the rest.
It is not enough to be shocked and out-raged by instances of Pakistani
barbarism, now exposed to the horror of the civilised world. This
barbarism exists and thrives next door. Therefore, one must go beyond
the act to the mind that produced the act.
To he able to do that, it is imperative to shed the suicidal delusion
that Pakistan to-day consists really of the nice friends and
neighbours one had in pre-1946 Lahore. The fact is that it does not.
The reality is that the Pakistanis today are a different breed. Ayub
Khan's civilised gesture to Field Marshall KM Cariappa in 1965
be-longed to a different age altogether and an entirely different set
of values. Yet, the disease had perhaps begun to spread even
earlier. Conversation with the PoWs of the 1965 war revealed that the
officers and men of the Pakistani armed forces received intensive
indoctrination from mullahs about the superiority and invincibility of
Islam, and the religious merit to be gained by killing kafirs. Tank
crews were taught that if kafirs make things difficult, just recite
such and such ayat, and see them running away from the battlefield!
Perhaps we did not realise then what this revelation meant. It is
doubtful if we do even now. It actually signified the rapid growth of
the influence of the mullah and the increasing reach and clout of the
Jamaat-e-Islami. The Jamaat does not believe in representative
government, and cares not it is not represented in the legislature.
Its sole purpose is to "Islamise" the minds of the people, and to get
such "Islamised" people into crucial positions in the Government, the
armed forces and civil professions. Its targets are the lower level
Government employees, the rural population, and their children.
Together with a number of similar organisations, they teach that
Islam-the Sunni variety-is predestined to rule over the whole world,
and that it is the duty of every Muslim to contribute to that end;
that the earth be-longs to Allah and therefore only Muslim's have the
right to live on it and so on.
For the ideologues of these organisations, kafirs are sub-human-the
Untermenschen of the Nazis-not human at all. So what one does with
them and to them does not matter. Throughout their teaching runs the
theme, "Hate India, hate the Hindus".
Professor Tahir Mahmood condemns the atrocities committed on our
soldiers by the Pakistani Army as contrary to Islamic law. The
Islamist mullahs of Pakistan may well tell him that on the analogy of
what was done to the Banu Quraiza tribe in early seventh century, what
was done to our fighting men could not fall in the category of the
forbidden in the rive-degree Islamic scale of ethicality. Although it
may not belong to the category of the mandatory it could fall into any
of the other three categories.
The sadistic orgy indulged in by the Pakistani Army is not an isolated
instance of aberration by a few. It is an expression of-the deepest
feelings in the mind brought to the fore by battle conditions. What
was barely under the surface merely floated up with all its ugliness.
It is, therefore, time to square up to the fact that the present
generation of Pakistanis, nurtured and guided by rabidly Islamic
mullahs, share nothing with us-neither the past, nor the present, nor
the future. No amount of pre-emptive capitulation via the so-called
"Gujral Doctrine" is going to alter their mind-set even a wee bit. It
is, therefore, vitally necessary to abjure the shibboleth of bygone
days that a strong, united Pakistan is good for us.
It is a historical inevitability that Pakistan will go into the
Taliban mode. We must be indubitably forewarned in this regard, and
forearm ourselves accordingly. Mercifully, the kebabs of Lahore do
not attract the vegetarians in the BJP, nor do they tempt the BJP's
allies as they do the non-vegetarians and pseudo-vegetarians and the
motley crowd of fools and exhibitionists on the side opposed to
them-witness one of them embracing Riaz Khokar on the occasion of a
book release.
Sober reflection, untainted by the starry-eyed naivete of a
media-hyped garrulous few in this city and their gimmicks like the
candle-light vigil at Wagah, will show that the conflict between us
and Pakistan now is not political or territorial but essential
civilisational-one between the Indic and the radical Islamist. The
contradiction is total, and, in Mao's terminology, "mutually
annihilatory". This truth has to be relentlessly drummed into every
Indian mind. We must realise that we are fighting in the preliminary
round of the great coming battle between radical Islam and human
civilisation. None of us can escape the blood, sweat and tears that
this struggle involves.
The age of the barbarians is again upon us. We must stand up, fight
and defeat it decisively. Let the nit-picking brigade of nitwits
scowl and frown, rave and rant. Ignore them.
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