Author: Sandeep B
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 5, 2009
URL: http://www.dailypioneer.com/147753/Remember-the-Hindu-Holocaust.html
Islam's jihad against Hindustan is a gory
record of burnt temples, libraries and entire cities. Millions have been killed
over the ages simply because they were Hindus
In the light of Mr Kanchan Gupta's scathing
column on the defenders of the fidayeen who attacked Mumbai ("Mumbai's
Butcher and human rights", December 17, 2008) and Ms Sandhya Jain's warning
in her article ("Dark shadow of jihad, December 23, 2008), it is worth
recalling yet again that this jihad against India is neither new nor will
it stop. It is also imperative to trace what this jihad has historically cost
India in general and Hindus specifically.
In general, India was forcibly split into
two countries. When we examine the specifics, we can with little doubt say
that Islamic jihad has carried out a virtual Hindu Holocaust.
Some years ago, French journalist Francois
Gautier had posed the same question ("Where's India's holocaust museum?",
October 21, 2003). Mr Gautier asserted that based on available historical
evidence, it is sufficient to conclude that a Hindu Holocaust has occurred.
The Holocaust evokes horrific images and is
associated typically with a specific event. As we shall see, we can safely
apply it to the Islamic conquest of Hindu India.
The Oxford English Dictionary first used the
word to describe Hitler's treatment of Jews in as early as 1942. With time
the term has come to be equated with the Nazi genocide of Jews in conventional
parlance. The Holocaust elicits horror mostly due to these important reasons:
* Colossal scale of killings
* Its short time span
* Assembly-line like method
* Ideology that motivated it
The Holocaust is a fairly recent event, and
thanks to the efforts of the Jews, its memory has been kept alive. A few generations
in future, it will at most evoke pity sans the intensity of experience. The
chill of experiencing horror first hand doesn't have the same shock value
100 years later.
Barring the sheer numbers of Jews exterminated
in a specific historical period, the other defining features of the Holocaust
apply equally to the Hindu genocide. Indeed, 'holocaust' is a rather apt term
because the root meaning of holocaust is 'burn'. Islam's violent history in
India is a bloody record of burnt idols, temples, libraries, and entire cities.
There's yet another crucial differentiator: Hindu genocide was at least three-fold.
On the purely physical plane, millions of Hindus were killed because they
were Hindus. On the socio-cultural plane, those who were not killed were spared
because they agreed to convert to Islam, a good instance of cultural genocide.
Finally, on the economic plane, those that were allowed to live as Hindus
were subject to the unjust jizya, a tax system, forcing them into perpetual
penury, an instance of economic genocide.
In his Growth of Muslim Population in India,
Prof KS Lal estimates that the Hindu population decreased by 80 million between
1000 AD and 1525 AD, an extermination unparalleled in world history. This
number is overwhelming but then the Hindu genocide, unlike the Jewish Holocaust,
happened in painfully-regular installments.
'Hindu Kush' is a good example of one such
instalment. The conquest of Afghanistan in 1000 AD saw the annihilation of
its entire Hindu population. Even today, this region is known as the 'Hindu
Kush', which literally means 'Hindu slaughter', named after that massacre.
In 1399, Taimur killed 1,00,000 Hindus in a single day, and the Bahamani Sultans
made it a sacred duty to kill 1,00,000 Hindus every year.
In our own times, we see the systematic murder
of Hindus by Islamists in both Pakistan and Bangladesh after Partition. On
our own soil, thanks to anarchic policies and abject neglect, an estimated
4,00,000 Kashmiri Pandits are refugees in their own country. Understandably,
few voices speak out against this modern ethnic cleansing.
The unremitting flood of terror attacks against
India ever since the UPA took over is thus a protraction of that centuries-old
jihad. Only, in changed times, the intent of cultural genocide is manufactured
in the offices of the ISI and Pakistani terror camps remain intact. Its perpetrators
know how to express that intent with alarming regularity.
It is tragic that thousands of educated and
intelligent Indians seek to negate the Hindu Holocaust -- mostly unwittingly.
That is partly the result of reading fabricated history right from childhood,
and partly of being politically correct. No nation can be built on a foundation
of half truths and outright lies about its own history. It leads to mistrust
within its own people, as is evident today. Our own perverse political parlance
sustains these falsehoods and its attendant consequences. When our Prime Minister
says Muslims have the first claim on resources, is the underlying message
any different from Aurangzeb's diktat that all Muslims were exempt from tax?