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After being attacked by the bombs of the terrorists (13/7, 2011),
we are facing the barrage from the ideologues of Hate and
divisiveness. Many a ideologues of religious nationalism have come
out with outpourings associating religion, Islam and so Muslims
with terrorism and the need to confront this attack of terror by
uniting as Hindus, voting a Hindu party, taking away the
citizenship rights of Muslims, and declaring India as a Hindu
nation (Subramanian Swamy 16/7, 2011). Swamy says the terrorism is
an attack of Islam on Hinduism. Islam wants to take over India. So
in response Hindu mind set has to be promoted, temples built at
Ayodhya and Varanasi, article 370 should be abolished, conversion
from Hinduism to other religions banned while conversions to
Hinduism should not be stopped. India should be declared as Hindu
Rashtra and Muslims should be disenfranchised. While being put
forward in a brusque and blunt fashion, there is nothing new about
his article, as this is precisely the agenda for which RSS combine
has been working and spreading the ‘Hate politics’ in India. The
political ideology making Hinduism as its political base, the
Sangh Parivar, has been propagating this from close to a century
by now. And to add to this the US propaganda, US media coining the
term ‘Islamic terrorism’ has added further grist to the mil of
hatred.
Terrorism though a centuries old phenomenon has come to global
prominence especially after the creation of Al Qaeda, Taliban; in
the especially set up Madrassas by US. The whole US design in the
last three decades of last century was to dominate in West Asia,
one of the richest oil reserves. While the US state manufactured
one or the other pretext to attack these countries, it had already
sown the seeds of formation of Israel at the end of Second World
War and the idea was clear that this emerging global power needed
a close ally to conquer the oil fields of the West Asia. This zone
was predominantly inhabited by Muslims, some compliant Muslim
Sheikhs and tyrants were easy enough to find in the region to
collaborate with. The best allies, of the ‘Democratic US’ have
been, the tyrannical rulers in West Asia and other parts of the
World.
While the US state was preparing one or the other pretext to
attack different countries in the World, in the oil zone the story
had already begun by overthrowing the democratically elected
Mossadeq in Iran, who had tried to nationalize the oil wells and
thereby harming the interests of US-UK oil corporations. Later
with Soviet army occupying Afghanistan, the need to ‘use’ Muslim
youth for anti Russian fight was fulfilled through these Madrassas
especially opened in Pakistan with US assistance and
encouragement. It is these Madrassas which distorted the meaning
of word Jihad (Jihad in Koran means striving to utmost) to killing
the Kafirs, (Kafir in real sense means those hiding truth),
presented as those not believing in Allah. Parallel to this Samuel
Huntington floated the theory of ‘Clash of Civilizations’.
According to this theory, with the decline of Soviet Union, the
clash is no more between free-democratic Worlds (US-UK etc.) but
between the backward Islamic civilizations versus the Western
civilization.
This theory gave impetus to the whole distortion of Islam, which
came to be projected as backward and violent. The madrassa’s
created a mind set, the fanatics who in the name of Islam were
willing to kill and maim at the drop of the hat. US carefully
nurtured these groups by supporting them financially and with
armaments. With Ayatollah Khomeini coming to power in Iran, US
media coined the word, Islam the New threat and with 9/11 attack
being presented as the handiwork of Osama, Al Qaeda, the US media
created the word Islamic terrorism. Needless to say neither Islam
nor most of the religions permit the killings of innocent people.
While the political groups like Irish Republican Army to
Liberation tiger of Tamil Elam or Khalistanis or ULFA did
undertake acts which were having political goals but in the
process they also killed innocent people. This was the process of
demonization of Islam and Muslims which was seen in its highest
form in Danish cartoons, showing the Prophet of Islam keeping
bombs in his turban.
In
India the earlier process whereby the British policy of
divide-and-rule promoted a communal view of History aimed to
create mutual hatred against the two major communities, Hindus and
Islam, got mixed up with the new propaganda associating Islam,
Muslims with violence and terrorism. The points raised by
Subramanian Swamy, using the cover of Hindu religion are
obnoxious. The terror attacks are not aimed at any one religious
community, barring the one’s which were especially done in front
of mosques or places of Muslim congregation by the likes of Sadhvi
Pragya Singh Thakur and Aseemanand. In the biggest terror attack
of 9/11 2001, people of all religions and counties were killed.
The victims of Al Qaeda terror are equally there in Pakistan.
To
think that Muslim Kings came here to spread Islam is sense-less,
as religions were not spread by Kings, barring King Ashoka who
spread Buddhism by peaceful means. Islam in India was spread by
Sufi saints and it was embraced by the shudras in main to escape
the tyranny of caste system. To think that Muslims want to convert
India into Darul Islam by killing Hindus and increasing their
tribe by producing more children is a figment of imagination as
during last 60 years (from 1947 to 2001) the percentage of Muslims
went up by nearly 0.8%, as during the same period the percentage
of Adivasis went up from 7.5% to 8.5%, the reason for both being
poverty and illiteracy rather than a conscious program to increase
population.
The extension of ‘Clash of civilization’ theory is the prevalent
perception that ‘all terrorists are Muslims’. One concedes that
the Muslim youth lured by the Madrassa’s set up by US, were
programmed for killing in an insane way. Most of the misplaced
arrests of Muslim youth in India later turned out to be baseless
and showed the bias of investigating agencies.
To believe that in India only Hindu get killed in the terror
attacks is totally false, in the 26/11 2008 attack the number of
Muslims killed was much higher than their percentage in population
and even in the current 13/7, 2011 attack also people from both
communities have been killed. The solutions being offered that
Hindus must give a unified response, vote for a Hindu party smack
of sheer propagation of Hate politics. India has been secular due
to the choice of people of India who rejected the notion of
Islamic state and Hindu state during freedom movement and the same
values got enshrined in our Constitution.
We
cannot forget the investigations done by Hemant Karkare, who
meticulously unearthed the link from Pragya Singh Thakur to
Aseemamand to Indresh Kumar, the RSS functionary. The
indoctrination of people in the Islamic state or Hindu state
ideologies is a political goal either of global super power or of
local groups aiming to suppress the democracy and pluralism of our
county, which are the highest values emerging from our freedom
movement. By retaliating, (against whom?), attacking Pakistan is
an idea close to insanity and a sure recipe for disaster in the
subcontinent.
To
accuse any community of harboring terrorists is wrong, few
Aseemanands or Dayanand Pandeys don’t make all the Hindu community
as terrorists.
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