Author: T. Mani
Chowdary
Publication: Organiser
Date: December 17, 2000
The destruction, humiliation
and outrage to Hindus, the desecration of their holy places by the Islamic
invaders for a period of over 800 years has no parallel in the history
of any country in the world. Fortunately, the indigenous rulers and
people emerged triumphant after the 800-year-long struggle from 11th century
and tamed the remnants of the foreign ruling dynasties and their converted
collaborators. The Marathas and the Sikhs represented the resurgent
native people who finally put an end to the inhuman rule of a bigoted minority
over a overwhelming majority. However, to this date, the monuments
commemorating the defeat of the native people in the very places of their
worship stand testimony to the large-scale desecration and destruction
heaped upon the defeated majority. There are some other countries
and peoples who had also been, though to different degrees, outraged and
tormented by alien conquerors. Fortunately, there is of late reassertion
of the conquered and defeated and humiliated peoples in several of these
countries against the successors of the former oppressors. Six million
Jews in Germany had been sent to gas chambers by the Nazi rulers.
Some survivors escaped
to Israel. Israel has demanded an apology and also monetary compensation
from Germany. The German state accepted its guilt, furnished an official
apology and has paid millions of marks as compensation. The Aboriginals
of Australia had been conquered by Britain. The majority of them
had been decimated and the few survivors are having a deprived and degraded
life. Now they have been organizing themselves and have demand of
the government of the Whites that it must acknowledge the true fact that
the White colonists had waged a war, defeated the Aboriginals and established
the rule of the conquerors. The aboriginals are also demanding of
the White Australian to rewrite their history as one of conquest and the
occupation and most importantly to compensate the current generation for
all the 200 years of deprivation and humiliation inflicted upon them.
They are asking for the history books to be rewritten and demanding compensation
to the extent of millions of dollars. They ask the Australian Whites
to apologize for the genocide they committed against the Aboriginals.
They are most likely
to succeed in their demand since the wise and foreseeing among the Whites
realise the rational behind their demand and are agitating on the side
of the Aboriginals. In South Africa, the minority of Whites ruled
over and practised untouchability (apartheid) and inhuman discrimination
against the Black majority. The Blacks have at long last been able
to gain majority rule. They have established the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC). Nelson Mandela did not want to take revenge against
the Whites. He wanted truth to be established and that the Whites
who had committed crimes should acknowledge their guilt and repent.
If this is done sincerely, then the Black majority would forgive the perpetrators
of the crimes. Only this would ensure true reconciliation, otherwise
the Blacks whose wounds and injuries are still fresh in their mind might
take to vengeful acts. The TRC has been doing a very good job.
Several Whites have confessed to their guilt and expressed profound regret
publicly. Those who are not accepting are being prosecuted.
In Austria, during the Nazi regime tens of thousands of Jews as well as
true democrats had been subjected to inhuman treatment.
They claimed compensation.
Austrian government has accepted to pay millions of dollars worth of compensation
to the successors of those who had been unjustly treated. And now
comes the case of United States. The White settler population of
the US had been importing Black African slaves since 1690 onwards.
Their numbers reached more than four million by 1865. After the Civil
War all these slaves were freed. They are now over 30 million.
It has been only for the last few decades that the Blacks gained franchise
and have been enjoying all the rights guaranteed in the American Constitution.
But they are still conscious of the centuries of injury and humiliation
that were inflicted upon them by the Whites. They have now established
an organisation N-Cobra, which is demanding an apology from the Whites
and is also demanding of the State to pay a few billion dollars as compensation
for the past injuries. The movement is becoming stronger by the year.
Both in the US and in Canada the original inhabitants called Red Indians
and Eskimos respectively got the governments, quite some time ago itself,
to accept their demand for compensation and they are getting it.
These movements suggest
that the atrocities committed by the Muslim invaders in India should not
be pushed under the carpet. As opined by the great historian Arnold
ToynBee the inhuman treatment the invading Islamic hordes inflicted upon
the Hindus in India for centuries has no parallel. The mosques in
the very places where once stood Hindu temples are a constant tormentors
of Hindu psyche. On or by the sites of the holiest of the Hindu Gods'
temples-in Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura- are the mosques. If the intention
of the invaders was not humiliation of Hindus, mosques for Muslims in these
towns could have been built at other places. But encouraged by the
so-called secular, democratic, progressive historians, Indian history is
fabricated to absolve these Muslim invaders of their destruction of Hindu
India. Worse than this, the Hindus are being described as communal,
fascist and anti-Muslim. In every one of the sacred places of Hindus,
in Ayodhya, Mathura, Kashi, Somnath and others, there is a mosque in the
very place where the temple stood. These were constructed to remind
the Hindus of their defeat and to perpetuate their humiliation. Millions
of Hindu women who had been taken into the harems of the conquering Islamic
hordes, millions of defeated Hindu soldiers who had refused conversion
were sold in the slave bazars of Baghdad and elsewhere.
Tens of thousands of
Rajput women immolated themselves rather than be ravished by the rapacious
victors. One has to recall but one story of Rani Padmini of Chittore.
As long as these crimes are not acknowledged and, on the other hand, the
guilty go on accusing the victims of communalism and fascism when they
are asserting their self-respect, the past will rankle in the mind of every
true Hindu citizen of this country. It is therefore proper that like
in South Africa and elsewhere a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
is formed in India also. The history of India on the basis of several
documents including those chronicled by writers accompanying the Islamic
invaders must be the basis for establishing the truth and arriving at reconciliation.
As long as the wrong-doers do not acknowledge the guilt and instead accuse
the victims of communalism and violence, there can be no true reconciliation,
no true integration. At best, there may be truce. It is not
truce that we should keep precariously. We should strive for true
reconciliation and for lasting fraternity.
