Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Organiser
Date: November 2, 2008
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=261&page=8
Introduction: For Hindus, and indeed, for
all nationalist Indians, the Batla House encounter is non-debatable. There
is no reason to doubt the veracity of the encounter that ended in this tragedy.
Those who do so have an axe to grind.
Muslim leaders would do well not to push the
Hindu community beyond endurance. Hindus are willing to view jehad as an issue
that can be settled by sound police work focussed against terrorist cells,
and not view the Muslim community as a whole as villains on a murderous spree.
But if persons like the Shahi Imam and Shabana Azmi, and Hindu-in-name-only
activists (too numerous to mention) try to malign the police without credible
evidence, then Hindus will be forced to come to their own conclusions about
the Muslim community as a whole.
India's two mighty, internationally-backed
minorities are displaying renewed zeal to respectively dominate the physical
polity and the cultural-civilisational landscape.
The saving grace in the current situation
is that the respective crusades against Hindu civilisation are separate and
distinct-Muslims quietly withdrew support from Christians after the West stepped
up its campaign to demonise Islam, while humiliating Muslims in occupied Muslim
lands.
As India has a long and unhappy memory of
suffering at the hands of Muslim conquerors and rulers, the Western campaign
fooled many Hindus into believing the West would support India in the modern
jehad inspired by Wahabi Islam. Few understand that the Saudi version of Islam
was and remains a tool of Western imperialism, and that there is a qualitative
difference between the early medieval Islam which launched an autonomous drive
for conquest, and the post-colonial jehad that has repeatedly wounded India,
but brought no commensurate gains for Islam, either in India or anywhere else
in the world.
Ideologically-savvy Muslims, however, are
feeling the pressure of this pincer. They have not retreated from the path
of jehad largely because the pressure to retreat is politically inadequate,
but they have ended their jugalbandi with the Christian community.
Hindu society, however, is fast losing patience
with jehad. The repeated targetting and killing of innocent civilians in city
after city, the claims of victimhood in a nation where the majority community
alone has no right to publicly affirm and demand respect for its religious
identity, the refusal to engage with the modern world while demanding the
benefits of backwardness, and above all, the belief that jehad is immune to
legal justice, have enraged Hindus.
Inspector MC Sharma's death has proved to
be the proverbial last straw. For Hindus, and indeed, for all nationalist
Indians, the Batla House encounter is non-debatable. There is no reason to
doubt the veracity of the encounter that ended in this tragedy. Those who
do so have an axe to grind. A few points may be noted.
One, jehad is the only concept invoked to
explain and justify the premeditated murder of hundreds of innocent civilians
(besides army, para-military, and police personnel) from the time of the Great
Calcutta Killing of 1946. The term jehad is Koranic, and though Muslim scholars
and apologists argue that the term has two meanings, the fact is that it is
invoked by Muslim organisations to wage war on Hindu India over grievances
ranging from a separate nation (Pakistan was granted in 1947); Palestine (where
India had no role-yet no violence ever took place in any Western country till
a few isolated incidents in recent times); and Kashmir (which legally acceded
to India in October 1947 under the same process that created Pakistan).
Two, the other jehad is internal to the individual
who chooses to practice it. It cannot be given a public face, which Muslim
leaders fallaciously seek to do, to mislead the common man. Unfortunately
for them, Hindu-Indian suffering in jehad attacks has been too immense and
intense to swallow this lemon.
Third, only rare intellectuals can perceive
that from the time of the Shimla Delegation that led to the creation of the
Muslim League, separate electorates, and finally Partition, important Muslim
leaders have served as agents of Western colonialism, and that this pattern
played out in much of the Muslim world from the First World War itself. In
the minds of ordinary Hindus, the pre-British Raj and Raj-inspired jehad are
fused inseparably as unending Islamic violence against Hindus and India.
Ironically for Indian Muslims, this phenomenon
has been entrenched by the refusal of Muslim and Leftist scholars to permit
an honest review of Indian history-warts and all. This prevented the academic
delineation of distinct phases of Indian history when different powers held
sway at different times; inhibited a proper understanding of the mischief
played by the British Raj and missionaries in undermining Hindu civilisation
and fostering animosity leading to Partition; and left Muslims bearing the
brunt of collective Hindu resentment over decades of Muslim appeasement in
the post-Independence period.
In these circumstances, Muslim leaders would
do well not to push the Hindu community beyond endurance. Hindus are willing
to view jehad as an issue that can be settled by sound police work focussed
against terrorist cells, and not view the Muslim community as a whole as villains
on a murderous spree. But if persons like the Shahi Imam and Shabana Azmi,
and Hindu-in-name-only activists (too numerous to mention) try to malign the
police without credible evidence, then Hindus will be forced to come to their
own conclusions about the Muslim community as a whole.
Muslim leaders must answer why, if Muslims
stand by the Deoband resolution against terrorism, do leaders rush to the
service of those accused of terror? And if terrorists really have no religion,
why is the defence of alleged terrorists made only on religious grounds?
Meanwhile, the civilisational assault by India
's supposedly miniscule Christian minority has been even more unrelenting,
as evidenced by the widening arc of Hindu reaction following the gruesome
murder of Swami Laxmanananda and four sannyasi disciples in Kandhamal district,
Orissa, on Janmashtami day.
To borrow Marxist terminology, there can be
no doubt that the Christian leadership perceives itself as a vanguard for
the en masse conversion of Hindu India, and feels emboldened by the political
ascent of the Italian-born Congress president. Smt Sonia Gandhi has done much
for her co-religionists under the UPA regime, putting the Christian cross
on coins and sending an official delegation when the Vatican elevated a little
known Kerala nun to sainthood.
Sainthood is, of course, purely political,
intended to spur more conversions, so that either a portion like the north-east
can be partitioned a la East Timor (2002), or the Christian population upgraded
into a decisive vote bank like the Muslim vote bank, so that it can have a
decisive say in the polity. It is necessitated because charities run by the
Albanian nun, Mother Teresa, who was given the Nobel Peace Prize to promote
the Christian agenda, have come under a cloud in the West itself.
It is pertinent that the widespread Hindu
angst against evangelists owes much to a popular perception that the Christian
population is much larger than admitted to census authorities, perhaps as
high as seven per cent. Should evangelists succeed in raising numbers by another
five-seven per cent, the combined minority vote bank would render Hindu vote
ineffective and completely alter the political demography of the Indian Parliament
and assemblies in several states. This is not a small threat, and the spreading
confrontation with locally ignited Hindu populations suggests that the danger
is real.
Indeed, this may well be the reason why Smt
Sonia Gandhi remained silent in the face of the on-going anti-Christian agitation
rocking India-she cannot afford to answer questions about her religious affiliations.
But as someone who spares no opportunity to malign organisations defending
Hindu culture and civilisation, Smt Gandhi must be asked to publicly explain
her position on conversions, especially as prominent Christians are spreading
the canard that the Constitution grants the right to convert. It does not.
(The writer is a senior journalist and can
be contacted at sandhya176@sify.com)
