April is remembered as holocaust month in USA. In April 1945, the liberating allied forces in Germany brought the human killing factories to the attention of the world. More than 11 millions people including 6.5 million Jews were systematically killed in scores of Nazi concentration camps.
The world remembers only what you let the world not forget it. The story of Hindu holocausts is of such a magnitude that over the centuries it has reduced the Hindu lives of lesser significance. These thoughts were triggered last month by a visit to the Gadar Memorial Center, San Francisco. This Reflection is a corollary to the article that I recently did on the Spirit of the Gadar.
Few remember how the forces of Temur butchered the entire Meerut city of nearly 300,000 population. His anger was ignited when one of his soldiers was beaten to death for raping a Hindu woman. In 1398, Temur invaded India on the pretext that ?the Muslim sultans of Delhi were showing excessive tolerance to their Hindu subjects?. Mind it, the Hindus were living in their own homeland!
The trails of Hindu carnage particularly in Panipat and Delhi during three months (Sep to Dec) were so devastating that Delhi took 100 years to rebuild it. The Hindu mothers used to hush their crying babies to silence by Temur'sname. The Hindukush (means the killing field of the Hindus) in Afghanistan is a living testimony of Hindu genocide when the region was Islamicised.
Under the Mughals, the atrocities over the Hindus reached new heights during 48+7 year reign of Aurannzeb and his son. It was a cultural genocide. SAVA MANN JANEU JALANA (nearly 1000 Lbs. of sacred thread worn underneath by ?baptised? Hindus put to flame every day) is proverbially etched in the memories. The Hindus had to pay two separate taxes for living in Hindustan! It was during this period that the Muslim population in India grew from a few thousands to more than 50 millions. At the same time a continuous stream of Muslims migrated to India from every where.
The British fully understood the psyche of the Indians drawn from three politically active religions viz. Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism. Their major thrust was to cut the vital roots of Hindu culture by spreading nonsensical theories on the origin of the Hindus, Vedic interpretations, and imposing damaging systems on education, agriculture and flourishing cottage industry. After quelling India's1857 Rebellion, they imposed extraordinary levies on land and special taxation that gradually broke the will of the people to live.
This is the approach that the Germans took in working the inmates of the concentration to death while keeping them under nourished. The new diseases of plague, small pox, tuberculosis and typhoid not existing in India before the advent of the British started wiping the Indian populace in hundreds and thousands a day. It also happened to the native populations in many countries in North and South America when the European colonisers occupied them. It is the world'sfirst biological warfare!
According to the British Gazetteer, 19 millions died of famine. 15 millions died of plague and malaria according to Sir William Digby during 1891-1900. Hundreds died in Bankura, Bengal and Rajputana in the famine 1915-16. 7,251,257 (Yes, more than 7 millions!) died from plague during 1897-1913.The actual numbers may be double. These are the most recent holocaust of India, and the Hindus were the worst hit.
The Gandhi movie captures this human condition when Gandhi after his return from South Africa, tours India during 1915-18. During my 1987 tour of Rajasthan, I often wondered at the absence of tall and strong men who could carry 100 Lbs. of battlefield armor of Maharana Pratap as displayed in Agra Fort during 1980?s. What happened to the generations of such sturdy men? The same was observed in Gujarat and Bihar. Most men and women were hardly 5? tall and weighing 80 Lbs. Orissa, Bihar and Bengal are still worse. Imagine the lost generations during 1880'sthrough Independence in 1947.
In half of his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi has tangentially mentioned how in South Africa the British treated the Muslims as a race better than the Hindus. But the most glaring example of Hindu racial inequity is the crime punishment schedule in Saudi Arabia. There are numerous instances that go to prove that the Hindu life comes cheap.
When a member of Nazi death squad was asked, ?How could you shoot at the innocent Jews?? The answer was, ?Because they don'tresist!? A similar question was posed to Gandhi, ?Do you believe that your non-resistance policy would work against the Germans??
The Sikhs faced the gruesome genocide after Banda Bahadur Bairagi. It is incredible that his torture-to-death moved Nobel Laureate Tagore 200 years later to compose a poem.
According to one reliable source, 43% of the Sikh population in Punjab was literally hunted down during 1716-1738. This holocaust is called Ghalughara in Sikh history. Every Sunday the Sikhs are reminded of it!
I owe it to my name, my scholarship and my lofty Hindu heritage for bringing these buried holocausts out so that the present generations stand up to political events in India and overseas. The awareness of these historical monstrosities shall awaken the racial self-esteem of the Hindus. The Hindus in India will emerge strong like the Jews in Israel. The time is ripe for making a documentary on the holocausts of India. I have broached this subject to a young documentary producer, Arti Jain.
