Author: Hermann Jung
Publication: Aseemaa
Date: June 2002
Please excuse me for writing this
letter in English; I want to send it to some Indian friends later and hope
to save the time for translating it.
I agree with you in calling Imam
Bukhari an agitator and instigator, and I also agree that the majority
of Indian Muslims is loyal, has a reasonable stand on Kashmir and wants
a secular state. Only by "secular" they mean something different from our
concept of secularism, namely a state of affairs that prevailed in India
from the time of Nehru until recently (see below).
Column 1
The young shopkeeper in Jama Masjid
in Delhi says that for years the climate between Hindus and Muslims had
been systematically poisoned by the BJP and its sister organisation". This
statement sounds as if since the BJP is in power India must be simmering
with communal unrest, and unfortunately he does not give any details and
examples. More or less the contrary is true; Heavy riots, about which I
can give background reports, took place in India under former, governments
whereas under the present one ostensibly some people felt the urge to fabricate
disturbances and bomb attacks in churches and then accuse "Hindu organisations"
in order to bring the BJP-led government down.
The explosions turned out to have
been staged by Christians themselves in collusion with a Muslim group.
Attacks on nuns and on Christian schools were reported as committed by
Hindu fanatics but in reality had a criminal background or were Invented
stories.
Column 2
So it, is presumed that Imam Bukhari
has been told clearly that he has to keep out of politics. This would be
a rather mild reaction of Indian authorities. Just imagine what would have
happened to a prominent person or priest of a religious minority in a Muslim
country.
In India so far only Hindu priests
could cause a storm. In the media by imprudent statements. I remember that
in 1968 or 1969 some Shankaracharya quoted a passage in a certain scripture
where untouchability was treated whereupon Indian Marxists demanded his
flogging in public.
But when a prominent Muslim praises
the Taliban, insults his government, when Christians stage bomb blasts
and then make false accusations - without even apologizing when the truth
comes out - then the large Indian media seem to have no space left on their
front pages.
Some more facts about Imam Bukhari:
On Sept. 7, 1998, he used the public
address system of Jama Masjid to call the Indian government a Kafir government.
When after his incendiary speech his followers committed excesses he quickly
flew to Libya. He was repeatedly charged with criminal acts.
In 2000 he declared in an interview
that India herself fabricated terrorism Kashmir to defame the Muslim community
and that he did not want Kashmir to remain a part of India. Whereupon a
leader of the Indian Shia Community - they are being persecuted in Pakistan
- advised him to get Pakistani citizenship.
Column 4
"In India (Muslim) religious rigourism
was never converted into a political program or tried to be propagated
with the help of arms .... This is not in the nature of Indian Muslims".
These sentences will, at best produce
a weary smile on the faces of insiders.
If terrorism is not in the nature
of Indian Muslims then we must ask why the Kashmiris, described everywhere
as peaceful people, in 1989 struck at the -defenseless Hindu minority first.
And world media as well as Human Rights. Organizations report only excesses
of Indian security Forces and conceal the root of the trouble, the atrocities
of Kashmiri Muslims, armed and instigated by Pakistan, against the Kashmiri
Hindus.
Then there is Al-Umma, active mainly
in South India. In the nineties alone they blasted an RSS office in Chetput
and a Hindu Munnani office nearby, instigated riots in Coimbatore and tried
to kill BJP Rajya Sabha MP O. Rajagopal.
Upto 1994 seven prominent members
of Hindu Munnani, a reform movement in Tamil Nadu, were murdered by Muslim
fundamentalists.
In Malappuram, a Muslim majority
district in Kerala, 23000 Hindus were converted to Islam in 1996 alone,
partly with the help of petrodollars, mostly under pressure. From the mid-eighties
to 1996 about 50 temples were destroyed or damaged and a large number of
Hindu owned cinemas damaged by explosions of cigarette bombs. BJP and RSS
workers were killed and prominent Hindus received death threats. The RSS
office in Thanur was damaged by an explosion and Chekannoor Moulvi a prominent
Muslim who criticised extremism in his community, disappeared mysteriously.
The Islamic extremist groups responsible
for the above excesses a SIMT (Students Islamic Movement of India), NBF
(National Democratic Front), Al-Ulema, Al-Huda, Jehad, Muslim Tiger Force
etc.
If a Muslim girl ventures to marry
a Hindu boy both may receive death threats from Fundamentalist Muslim organizations.
On the other hand, Muslim boys frequently marry poor Hindu girls and get
them converted to Islam. The girls can be happy if the marriages were not
fake ones in order to keep or sell them as prostitutes.
After September 11, 2001, Muslim
youths burst crackers, distributed sweets and took out processions with
posters, of Bin Ladin in Kanpur. Muslim youth rioted in Jalgaon. VCDs with
Bin Ladin speeches were sold by Muslims in Assam. Muslims rioted when an
effigy of Bin Ladin was burnt in Patna. Muslin youth in New Delhi's Jama
Masjid chanted: "Taliban, Taliban!" Mullahs exhorted people to boycott
Coke and -Pepsi to protest against US air strikes Afghanistan, and then
these drinks were banned in most Muslim-owned hotels in Mumbai. 60 policemen
were injured when Muslim youth threw stones during an anti-US rally in
Hyderabad.
By the way: Imam Bukhari not only
lauded Bin Ladin and condemned Americans, he' also called upon his coreligionists
to extend total support to the Saudi terrorist because this was their duty
as Muslims. He told them that Muslims all over the world would consider
an American attack on Afghanistan as an attack on Islam, and they would
sacrifice all they had to protect their religion.
He appealed to destroy the enemies
of Islam and warned the Indian government that if it supported the US attacks
waves of violence would be inevitable in India.
Column 5
"If somebody (in India) questions
this concept (of a secular-state) it is the party in power, the Hindu rationalist
BJP".
Upon this I can frankly say that
the BJP not only does not question this concept but at present is the only
political party that will and can realize it.
It will do away with unjust reservations,
cancel privileges of minorities and delete untrue and insulting passages
in textbooks.
Under former governments the Hindu,
majority was discriminated against in the educational sector. School law
applied only to Hindus whereas religious minorities in the and some other
respects were above law.
- Hindu Institutions needed a licence
for opening a school, minorities did not;
- Schools of Hindu institutions
had to observe communal representation, i.e. they had to reserve places
for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Backward Castes etc. Whereas minority
schools could use all their places for their own Community;
- Every Hindu school had to form
a school committee, which was not found necessary with minority schools;
- Even if all the teachers and students
of a minority school were Hindus the above discriminatory privileges applied;
- The pseudo-secularist politicians
forced large Hindu temples and monasteries to form so-called Temple Committees
whose members partly consisted of politicians who were always quick to
lay their bands on the temple revenue to use the money for non-religions
purposes. With mosques and churches this was never practised;
- Land owned by temples were grabbed
by politicians and given away according to their whims whereas the property
of mosques, churches etc. was not touched.
The Hajj of Muslims to Mekka was
subsidized by the government. Pilgrims also were exempted from airport
tax and accompanied by medical personnel and Hajj Officers. Air India operated
upto 140 special flights to Mekka annually so many regular flights had
to be cancelled.
Shortly before the BJP- had coalition
came to power the government planned to pay Muslim clerics from the state
treasury.
You certainly cannot imagine the
Dalai Lama or a Hindu Jagadacharya as a state guest in Berlin or London
appealing publicly to Buddhist / Hindu centres in Europe to double their
efforts in order to convert Europe to Buddhism/Hinduism in the present
century or millennium. But this is what the Pope did in Delhi. And he did
not deem it necessary to apologize for the atrocities of the Portuguese
in India (which he did for the cruelties of the Crusaders in the Hear East).
Column 6
"A certain feeling of fear of the
overwhelming, majority of the Hindus has always been there among Indian
Muslims".
So, right from the times of Mahmud
of Ghazni they committed all sorts of brutalities out of fear.
But if this feeling is present now
there might even be a small measure of bad conscience at the bottom of
it. Who knows.
The "feeling of being persecuted"
expressed by your interview partner is a psychological masterpiece. If
there is no real persecution you simply talk of the feeling, get it published
and can he sure to influence world opinion in your favour.
Of course, Ayodhya! Hindu baiters
all over India (Muslim and Christian groups, Marxists, Secularists etc.)
cling to this structure, a kind of mosque without even a minaret, to prove
that Hindu communalism Hindu fascism and what not are on the rise. Here
the world has got at least one example of the danger Hindu fascism poses
to the minorities.
Fascism, as we all know, goes hand
in hand with stupidity. You can gauge the stupidity of the Hindu fascists
from the fact that they did not make their own Ayodhya for world opinion
out of the following happenings:
a) the selective assassination and
following expulsion of nearly the whole Kashmiri Hindu community and the
destruction of dozens of temples there by the peaceful Kashmiri Muslims.
In 1989-1990 (before Ayodhya) and
b) the desecration and destruction
of about 80 Hindu temples in Bangla Desh as well as of many temples in
-Pakistan, accompanied by heavy violence against the Hindu minorities there,
In November 1909 and afterwards.
It is also certainly a sign of the
low Intelligence of the Hindu extremists that they were unable to explain
to the world that the existence of a Ram temple on the site of the destroyed
structure has long been proved and that they had offered to take the "mosque"
down and rebuild it in some other place.
I am sure the Western media will
soon offer a similar forum for the Muslim members of BJP and RSS and then
for Hindus and other Indian non-Muslims belonging to the above parties
and organizations as they have repeatedly granted to Indian Christians
and Muslims. The above groups have all their grievances and will be happy
to make them known to the Western reader (even if only after the elections
in some Indian states).
You need not take my lines as a
personal criticism; it is intended to be a necessary correction of general
reporting on South Asia.
