Narendra Modi, former activist of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant wing of Bhartiya Janta Party, has a criminal record of having thousands of Muslims massacred in Gujrat during his tenure as Chief Minister, is now determined to destroy India, the so called largest democracy of the world as its Prime Minister. He is now openly backing and supporting Hindu extremist and militant groups for persecution of religious minorities of India. This is very unfortunate for India that such an extremist person has become its Prime Minister. One expected some concern for humanity in general, and for poor masses of India in particular, from Modi, the son of a tea vender.
Modi government has given a new life to the violent Hindutva – the movement for promoting Hindu Nationalism not only in India, but also in the whole of South East Asia. According to India’s liberal, secular, critical thinkers like Arundhati Roy, far Right parties like Shive Sena, another militant wing of Bhartiya Janta Party were formed in 1920s and are inspired by Italian Dictator Mussolini and Adolf Hitler and appreciate the ethnic and racial cleansing of Jews by Hitler. Such racist and fascist dictators are praised as the heroes of these extremist Hindu parties.
They believe that India belongs to Hindus only and all other religious communities are traitors and anti-India and unfaithful to India. The aim of these extremist Hindu parties is to either expel religious minorities like Muslims, Christians and Sikhs from India or compel them to live under the subjugation of the Hindus. They believe that religious minorities should live in India without any rights as citizens.
These parties are formed in reaction to invasion of Muslims and to the so called Muslim Rule for more than 1000 years. Although it was never Muslim Rule, but rule by some or the other Muslim dynasty and most of the Muslims were living in a miserable condition. Only because Muslim soldiers were used in wars by these Muslim dynasties from Arab region, or Afghanistan, Iran, or Central Asia, so the Muslims were made to believe that they, the Muslims were ruling over Hindu infidels and that it was the Muslim rule in India.
The extremist Hindus have a severe grudge against mainly three religious minorities: a. Muslims, b. Christians, and c. Sikhs. Let us analyze the causes of grudge and bitterness of extremist Hindus against these minorities:
a. Anger of Extremist Hindus against Muslims: The Hindus continue to call Muslims as “maleech” (dirty, filthy and untouchables). The major causes of anger against Muslims by the extremist Hindus are: the Muslims attacked Indian civilization; destroyed it; looted properties and grabbed lands; looted and raped Hindu women; killed more than 8,000,000 Hindus in the attacks by different Muslim invaders; adulterated, polluted and poisoned the Indian civilization; Muslims butcher cows, the sacred animal for Hindus just for meat; and are increasing their population like chicks to outnumber Hindus and re-establish the Muslim rule over India.
b. Hindus’ Complains against Christians:
Generally Hindus have been nice towards Christians and they particularly looked at Christian British invaders as the Messiahs and liberators of the Hindus, for, the British invaders, by invading the Indian Subcontinent liberated Hindus from the so called Muslim Rule and brought an end to the Hindu subjugation by Muslims. Hindus were also thankful to Christian Missionaries for promoting modern education in India and also for providing modern healthcare facilities to the Indian population. But the attitudes of the extremist Hindus have changed during the past 2 or so decades. Since the preaching and welfare programs of the Christian missionaries have brought a revolution in the lives of Da’lat (fourth caste of Hindus, which are declared untouchables by the so called upper castes of Hindus). The children of Da’lats are getting education, competing for high level jobs in public and private sectors. This has shaken the whole religious, social, cultural and economic structure of Hinduism. The fourth caste (Da’lats) does not want to remain the fourth caste anymore. This is clear-cut attack on and denial of the whole Philosophy of Hinduism as a religion, which does the grading of human beings in four castes. Hindus do not want Da’lats to sit with them on the same chairs. Also if there is no more fourth caste then who will do the dirty works because according to the Philosophy of Hinduism, fourth caste is supposed to do the dirty works and should not go for education and should not compete for white-collar jobs. Thus major complain against Christian missionaries is that they give Da’lats liberation from the inhuman sanctified, religiously legitimized system of slavery of Hinduism, which provides supremacy to the upper three castes of Hindus.
By the way, the drafter of the Indian Constitution was Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and he was a Da’lat with a Ph.D. in Law from London School of Economics.
Recently there was a protest rally in Kathmandu wherein the Hindus were demanding Christian Missionaries to leave Nepal although the Constitution of the Country says that it will be a secular country and that the state will not have any religion. You can see that the virus of Hindu extremism in reaching the neighbouring countries as well and it is generated and propagated by the Hindu elites.
c. Complains against Sikhs:
There are two major causes of anger against Sikhs: First, launching of the Khalistan Movement by Sikhs, whereby they demanded separation of Indian Punjab from India and formation of a separate homeland for Sikhs by the name of Khalistan. The second major cause of bitterness is the murder of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh security guards. But in the past both Hindus and Sikhs have enjoyed cordial relations and at the time of partition of India Sikhs were used by Hindus to massacre Muslims, wherein 1,000,000 people were killed in the name of religion to punish Muslims for cutting Indian motherland into pieces and having Pakistan as homeland for Muslims.
d. Rebuttal the complains against religious minorities:
• All Muslims, and particularly the Muslims of today should not be blamed for attacks by Muslim invaders more than 1000 years ago. The Muslim invasion was a thing of the past and the past should be buried.
• Christians play a major role in social development of India and if they changed social status of Da’lats, they have committed no crime by liberating Da’lats from social, cultural, religious and economic bondage of Hindu elite classes.
• All Sikhs are not backing Khalistan Movement, neither all Sikhs could be blamed for the murder of Indira Gandhi. Some 10,000 Sikh men, women and children were butchered after the murder of Indira Gandhi and no one was punished for that mass killing.
e. Conclusion: Following conclusions can be drawn from the above discussion:
• Extremist Hindus are persecuting Muslims for attacking Indian civilization, murdering 8 million Hindus, snatching and raping Hindu women, grabbing and looting Hindu properties, lands and wealth and for cow slaughter.
• Majority of Muslims and Christians of India and Pakistan originally belonged to the fourth caste of Hinduism because they wanted to get rid of the age old bondage of being Da’lats and untouchables and if they wouldn’t have changed their religion, they would have remained Da’lats forever and ever.
• Christians are being persecuted for leaving the bondage of being Da’lats and untouchables and also because they are attracting more and more Da’lats to Christianity.
• Sikhs are being punished for launching of Khalistan Movement and for the murder of Indira Gandhi.
• Beauty of Indian Culture and Civilization that lies in multi-cultural and pluralism is being destroyed by Hindu extremists, but they do not realize that they are working for destruction of their own society and defacing and degrading their own religion, culture and society.
• Religious extremists of every religion i.e. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Christians or Buddhists ultimately work against their own religions and their own societies. They present their own religions as source of hatred. They work for disintegration of their own societies.
• By taking a hardliner, extremist and violent position and having an extremist and intolerant mindset, they promote hatred, disenchantment and disgust against their own religion, culture and society. For example the promotion extremism and terrorism in Pakistan in the name of Islam turned the country into an untouchable society and rest of the world refused to invest here, send their cricket and other teams to play and the tourists refused to come to the country to see its beautiful landscape. Similarly, recent violence by extremist Hindu groups against Muslims, Christian and Sikhs has compelled many countries like USA, Canada and others to refrain from sending their sportsmen to India for international events. The Kabadi World Cup that was supposed to be held in India has been cancelled only due to violence of Extremist Hindu groups.
• Narendra Modi has proved to be the worst PM of India in the past 68 years and he is being worst enemy of his own country and religion. He seems to be determined to destroy India, its culture, economy, tourism, social fabric etc. He wants to bloodbath India in the name of Hindu nationalism.
• Extremist groups in any society become major source of human rights violations against the weak, the poor and religious and ethnic minorities.
f. Recommendations:
• The extremist religious groups everywhere should be educated and dealt strictly with law.
• State must ensure steps for peaceful co-existence of all communities.
• Every State including India and Pakistan must strengthen their democratic and state institutions and must not allow any religious group to become so powerful as to persecute the smaller communities and religious and ethnic minorities.
• Every community and minority or majority group must be educated to be sensitive to feelings of other groups in society so that a peaceful coexistence can be ensured. For example if Muslims can refrain from cow eating, they must do so and prefer other animals to create a congenial atmosphere between Hindus and Muslims.
• But certain beliefs that cause human rights violations of other human beings cannot be allowed, for example if Hindus say that keeping Da’lats as untouchables was part of their faith, then it cannot be allowed at the cost of the poor Da’lats.
(Professor Yunis Khushi Advocate teaches Social Sciences and practices Law in Pakistan. Email Address: yunisadvocate@gmail.com).