Politics of Muslim appeasement by petty politicians for gaining votes has been going on for decades, which gave an impetus for anti-Hindu groups to intentionally do things which are disrespectful to the Hindu community
Martand Jha
This week, when a bus full of Amarnath Yatris was attacked by militants in Kashmir, there was a huge outpour of emotions from people across the country. This tragic incident which left 7 dead and more than 20 people injured, again showed the dark face of terrorism. People are angry with this dastardly attack and rightly so. This anger builds up when they get to listen to statements like “Terrorism has no religion”. The so called seculars keep harping on this point.
But their rant does no good because even if terrorism has no religion, the fact is that terrorists do have. It is in the name of religion only, that these brainwashed Jihadi-Wahabi-Salafi groups operate upon. One could have understood the point made by secularists that terrorism has no religion if these cases had been like a one-off incident. But in 9 out of 10 cases of terrorism, one finds out that a Muslim is behind such an activity. This is not just the case in India, the phenomenon is true globally.
Yes, it is agreed that an entire religion is not bad and all religions give the message of spreading peace and harmony. But people can’t turn their faces away from the harsh realities just because it puts a question mark on people following a particular religion. For centuries, there has been a lot of violence in the name of Jihad. The religion got spread throughout the world through the use of force, bloodshed and religious wars in the last millennium. Because there was no concept of nation-state then, these acts were just referred to as ‘holy wars’ and were not seen through the prism of ‘terrorism’ as we see it today.
Many Islamic scholars, academicians, politicians have time and again said in their usual catchphrase that, “There is no place for terrorism in Islam”. The question is why most of the terrorist organisations like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba have been indulging in terrorism in the name of their religion. In Islam, people following other Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Christianity are called ‘Dhimmi’, while people having non-Abrahamic faith have been called ‘Kafir’, which is used as an abuse by people following Islam.
This framework puts all the Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jainis and Parsis under the ‘Kafir’ category, because none of these religions are Abrahamic faiths. Muslim rulers in India couldn’t put Hindus under ‘Kafir’ category simply because of the sheer size of Hindu population. Coming back to the present, Kashmir has again been the place of terrorist activities and it has been so far almost three decades now. Cross border terrorism along with home grown terrorism has made such a beautiful place a zone of violence. Both cross border and home grown anti-social elements are people with Islamic radical ideologies.
One point to be noted here is that, Kashmir is the only state in India with majority Muslim population where the minority Hindu population had to undergo mass exodus when Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave the valley. Anyone who tries questioning the attacks on Hindus is comfortably labelled as a ‘Sanghi’ or a ‘Right Wing element’. Does the majority Hindu population have no rights? Are the human rights only for the minorities?
Last month, many people gathered at Jantar Mantar against the incidents of lynching. People were carrying banners and placards where it was written ‘Not in my Name’. This type of event happened not only in Delhi but also in many cities. These groups are trying to showcase that the majority Hindu population have become radicalised and anti-Muslim. Why didn’t this brigade carry out the same hue and cry when the Amarnath Yatris were killed? Weren’t they innocent people?
Everytime a Muslim is killed, beaten or harmed in anyway, some people always try to make it a point that it was because the person was Muslim, that is why he got in the harm’s way. Mostly, the reasons come out to be quite different from what is popularised as propaganda. This propaganda is then internationalised by feeding stories to the international media. This brings bad name to the country. One thing that can’t be understood about the liberals’ logic is that whenever Hindus retaliate against the harm done to them, it is seen as completely unacceptable by secular groups.
The hypocrisy of these groups is evident with the fact that when someone makes cartoons or says something disrespectful against Hindu Gods and Goddesses, these groups don’t shed a tear and take it very casually. While, if someone makes slanderous remarks on Prophet Mohammed or the Holy Quran, these groups gather together to condemn these acts. Yes, these acts should be condemned but why do they not condemn when the same thing is done against Hindu deities?
Hindus’ faith is often not respected in this very country, where they are in majority. The murky politics of beef eating is going on for long. When people know that it hurts the Hindu sentiments if someone eats beef or cows are slaughtered, why then the other communities are hell bent to hurt the sentiments of the majority Hindu community. For long, this has been going on where the sentiments of Hindus are hurt knowingly in the name of freedom to express and freedom to eat.
Politics of Muslim appeasement by petty politicians for gaining votes has been going on for decades, which gave an impetus for these groups to intentionally do things which are disrespectful to the Hindu community. All this is changing now, because the current government doesn’t believe in appeasing Muslims for vote-bank. This government believes in calling spade a spade. Sooner or later, the pseudo-secular groups’ hypocrisy would be exposed to the masses.
(The writer is a Junior Research Fellow at School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
