Militant
Attacks Against Muslims Do Not Represent Hinduism: Experts
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Indian
Hindu religious leader Shankaracharya said politicians in India
were trying to use religion to further their own ends, using
sectarian violence as a tool.
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By
Ayesha Ahmad, IOL Washington Correspondent
WASHINGTON,
July 20 (IslamOnline) - The growing Hindu militant movement in India
is not only responsible for the recent violence against religious
minorities, especially Muslims in Gujarat, but also reflects badly on
the Hindu religion, according to a panel of experts in Washington.
"The
irony [is] that the violence in Gujarat is at the hands of those who
claim to be protectors of Hindu… high culture," said panelist
Bruce Robertson, chairman of South Asia Area Studies at the State
Department's Foreign Service Institute.
For
the vast majority of Hindus, "This is not the Gujarat that they
know."
Robertson
was referring to the recent and ongoing bloodshed of Muslims in the
Indian state of Gujarat, perpetrated by organized mobs of Hindu
militants following a brutal ideology of Hindutva, or Hindu primacy.
Their
promotion of the conversion of what they consider "lapsed
Hindus" - Indians who converted to Islam or Christianity - back
to Hinduism, is not part of Hindu tradition at all, Robertson said,
calling it "completely out of sync with the tenor of Hindu
dharma."
Robertson
was part of a panel on religion and politics in India during a
day-long symposium on South Asia on Capitol Hill, sponsored by the
Policy Institute for Religion and State, held Thursday, July 18, 2002.
The
panel on religion and politics was moderated by Nina Shea of the
Commission on International Religious Freedom, who began the session
by expressing her disappointment that "the world's largest
democracy" has been placed on watch lists for religious violence.
Another
speaker, Dr. Lise McKean, deputy director of the Center for Impact
Research, insisted that the militant Hindu movement is a minority
group claiming to represent Hinduism.
Sangh
Parivar's Nazism-influenced ideology centers around "purging
their holy land of non-Hindus," she said.
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Audience
members take a break during the day-long South Asia
conference.
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She
warned U.S. officials of the pervasiveness of militant Hindu
nationalists, or Sangh Parivar, saying they have espoused
anti-democratic and anti-secular ideals before and after India's
independence from Britain in 1947.
McKean
pointed out that the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Atal
Behari Vajpayee, attended his first officer's training meeting with
the militant party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1940.
The
attacks in Gujarat, she said, were carried out only when the militants
were certain they could count on political and police support.
Panelist
John Dayal, general secretary of the All India Christian Council, said
that this state support was part of the legacy of India and Pakistan's
brutal birthing pains in 1947, when more than a million people were
killed on both sides.
"The
state has become an accomplice," he said of Gujarat, explaining
that the failure of the government to set up truth-seeking commissions
to investigate acts of bloodshed during partition paved the way for
further abuses of government.
"Until
this ghost [of partition] is exorcised, we will never be able to
exorcise Gujarat," he said.
Dayal
explained what he called the "meta-experience" of one act of
violence in Gujarat - the rape and brutal murder of a pregnant Muslim
woman and her unborn child - which has become the story of every
Muslim woman there, as though each actually experiences it herself.
The
level of horror reaches every part of the state, so that not only are
individuals affected by the violence, but all of "civil society
has been jolted by the meta-experience of Gujarat."
He
had a message for the U.S. as well - to see Hindutva for what it
really is, and to focus the war on terrorism on cutting off terrorism
at its roots.
"The
U.S. is waging war on terrorism - more power to it," he said.
"But I think this war will succeed if we stop the birth of
terrorists."
Other
panel discussions during the day-long symposium focused on nuclear
issues and economic development.
The
panel on religion and politics was initiated by a speech from an
Indian Hindu religious leader, Shri Jagadguru Shankaracharya, who
spoke in Hindi while a translator rendered his speech in English for
the audience.
Shankaracharya
insisted that politicians in India were trying to use religion to
further their own ends because they know that they can incite
religious sentiments among the people. He condemned the Hindu violence
against other religious minorities in India, saying that such acts
went against the teachings of all religions.
He
said such people were not human, and if they were not human, they
could not be Hindu, Muslim or Christian.
Echoing
some of the other panelists, he also warned the U.S. to be aware of
elements within India's ruling system that aided terrorist activities,
but he did not specify which elements or levels of government.
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