TWO countries, Britain and Canada, have banned the head of the Islamic Research Foundation and Peace TV from entering their country on the grounds that his intended visit “is not conducive for public good”. Naik is not exactly a loveable character. He is running an organisation that seems to have been blissfully endowed with enormous funds, the source of which remains a mystery. His occasional references in his public speeches to other religions is in very bad taste. Even some of his comments on terrorism call for serious questioning. As he sees it every Muslim should be a terrorist against ‘anti-social elements’.
The term has not been defined and it is obvious that Naik has no faith in India’s law and order system. What he said is open to several interpretations but Naik has gotten away with his eloquence. The Government of India’s approach to communal forces is very laid back. There is too much freedom in this country. One does not know whether the Home Minister has warned Naik to mind his language, and if it hasn’t, it is about time it did. This is a democratic country and there is total freedom of expression, but that does not give Naik the right to speak lightly of other religions.
Writing in NDA (June 24 ), R Jagannathan noted that “Naik has outrageous views on freedom”. Naik, he said, “is all for equal rights for Muslims in non-Islamic countries, but not the reverse”. Reason? “Because Islam is the right religion, others are wrong, so how can they claim parity with Islam?” We are not living in the 17th century when Shah Jehan, having ascended the Moghul throne on February 6, 1628, issued a proclamation that said that “preaching of any religion except Islam is banned”. How nice of him. We allow preaching and take any offensive remark against Hinduism with composure. Obviously Britain and Canada observe another culture. And what is Canadian culture?
In an article in The Telegraph (June 23 ), KP Nayar presented an example of it. In mid-June, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission made some startling revelations. As we all know, all of North America was once inhabited by people wrongly called ‘Red’ Indians, thanks to Christopher Columbus’s error in believing that he had discovered ‘India’ on his voyage. Ergo, the American natives came to be known as ‘Indians’ and later as “Red” Indians. What the white immigrants from Britain and some parts of Europe did to the Red Indians is another story, that does not reflect much credit on contemporary Americans.
To know how Canada has dealt with its own ‘native’ Indians all these years comes as a shock. It would seem that the ‘Red Indians’ were treated most shabbily and brutally for decades. Christian missionaries set up ‘schools’ called Indian Residential Schools (that had nothing to do with India), starting in the 19th century to “reform” children of the “natives” who were taken away from their families. They were punished if they spoke to each other in their own language and were converted to Christianity and initiated in western ways of life, much like what the Portuguese conquerors did in Goa.
Nayar writes: “it is estimated on the basis of documents in Canada’s national archives which were examinated three years ago that half the children in these “Residential” schools in the early 20th century died from tuberculosis, over-crowding, poor sanitation and lack of medical care. And then there was mental, physical and sexual abuse of the children. Par for the course. The last Indian (!) Residential School in Canada was closed down as late as 1996.
According to Nayar, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has now begun to interview some 80,000 survivors of this dreaded school system to get a feed back on how the schools functioned and what damage they did. Good for it. Adds Nayar: “The aim of these hearings is to tell and re-tell the stories of a monumental Christian wrong and to correct doctored history in the minds of many Canadians in the hope that their people will behave differently in the future under similar but different circumstances in the 21st century”.
It is in this context that we must view the proposed ban of Naik’s visit to England and Canada. England’s behaviour towards real Indian ‘natives’ when it first came to power has not been any better. Wasn’t it Macaulay who wanted his countrymen in power to do their best “to form a class (in India) who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”? Macaulay did not favour English missionaries, but the British rulers did, witness North East India today where they had a free hand. The point is that neither Canada nor Britain can take objection to Naik’s visit, howsoever obnoxious he may be. Naik may also argue that if India can permit western missionaries to come to India, neither the British nor the Canadians have the moral right to deny him a visa to their countries. Canada, one learns, is being repentant in some ways in a different context. Thus it would seem that Canadian Intelligence officers had actually witnessed the “dry run” of the explosion that occurred on board Air India’s plane Kanishka but could not record it or photograph the Khalistanis who set off a trial bomb blast. It is plainly unbelievable. The excuse is that the white Canadian Intelligence officers were unable to identify one Sardar from another, because they all looked alike! A retired Canadian Supreme Court judge, John Major is now quoted as saying that the “Government of Canada behaved in the aftermath of the tragedy (that occurred 25 years ago and killed all 329 people on board) as if the Kanishka bombing was some one else’s problem…” Indians were expendible, even if most of them were Canadian citizens. The only consolation is that even after a quarter of a century, some Canadians are repentant about their official behaviour. But what does that tell us of the white Canadian mindset? Naik is a pathetic figure. He deserves to be exposed. But Indian may feel compelled to defend his rights, not because he deserves to be, but because he is an Indian. The present Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has apologised for his country’s “institutional failure” in the Kanishka affair, saying “we are sorry”. No one has heard Naik say he is sorry for the kind of remarks he has made about other religions. He deserves no sympathy.
