Hindu Militants Seek Muslim-free India: Report
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Controlled by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, Gujarat has been described as a “laboratory for Hindu fascism.”
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AHMEDABAD,
July 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – A report in the U.K.
daily newspaper, the Observer, outlined Sunday, July 21, the
explosion of Hindu violence, nationalism and “Nazi-style
politics” which has so far resulted
in the killing of at least 2,000 Muslims and the displacement of
250,000 within the past five months.
India’s
worst religious violence since the 1947 partition was sparked at the
end of February when 57 Hindu pilgrims were killed in the alleged
torching of a train carriage in Godhra, which was quickly blamed on
Muslims, the Observer reported.
Since
then, massacres by Hindu gangs have become commonplace.
In
five months, more than 2,000 Muslims have been killed and more than
100,000 – some human rights groups place the number at 250,000 -
displaced, congregating in squalid refugee camps around Gujarat.
On
Friday, July 19, only hours after the state’s top elected official,
Chief Minister Narendra Modi, resigned and dissolved the legislative
assembly to seek a fresh mandate, at least two people were killed and
eight others injured when police opened fire to disperse rioting mobs,
the Observer said.
In
recent months Modi had come under attack for his delayed response to
the killings.
The
violence has been linked to the rise of extremist Hindu groups such as
the Association of National Volunteers, or the RSS - a khaki-clad
nationalist paramilitary sect formed in the Twenties - and its
offspring, the World Hindu Council, or the VHP.
Gujarat
is one of the few states in India controlled by the ruling Bharatiya
Janata Party. The state has been described as a “laboratory for
Hindu fascism.”
It
also backed the construction of a temple in Ayodhya, where Hindu
nationalists destroyed a mosque in 1992. Several members of the
present Cabinet, including the Indian Deputy Prime Minister, L.K.
Advani, were present at the demolition, the Observer said.
The
RSS and the World Hindu Council, described locally as “Saffron
Warriors”, have one clear aim: Hindu expansion by mass conversion.
They
have introduced textbooks that convey former Hindu glories. The RSS
also lobbies to reintroduce the traditional names of cities like
Mumbai, until recently Bombay.
“The
situation is getting out of control,” Arvind Sisodia, vice-president
of the VHP in Gujarat told the Observer. A passionate advocate of the
Hindutva or “global Hindu conscious ness”, Sisodia is a
middle-class worker at the Life Insurance Corporation of India.
“In
Gujarat, the Muslims own all the shops; they are involved in illegal
trade,” says Sisodia. “And Muslim boys steal our Hindu girls and
marry them. So the situation is unbearable.”
In
the days after the first killings in Gujarat, the VHP distributed
leaflets asking Hindus to pledge a boycott of Muslims - including
refusing to be taught by Muslim teachers and ensuring sisters and
daughters did not fall into “the love-trap of Muslim boys.”
“It
is up to all Hindus to make sure that we restore India to
dominance,” says Sisodia. “Hinduism was once the dominant faith.
Muslims have to learn to adapt. Otherwise, it will be dangerous for
them. We don’t want them here.”
A
few days after the deaths at Godhra, on a humid morning in an
inner-city enclave of Ahmedabad, around 20 men marched up to the
Indian flag and offered the Nazi salute, the Observer reported. This
was a training camp, or shakha, run by the RSS. There are about 40,000
camps scattered throughout India and informal ones abroad for
expatriates.
The
men, many of them in their thirties, are middle-class professionals -
employees of Ahmedabad’s bustling industrial community.
In
a fashionable Ahmedabad gated community lives Vijay Chauthaiwale, a
microbiologist. Over lunch, with the World Cup playing on a satellite
channel behind him, he explained his attraction to the RSS: “We are
a very modern family,” he said, “but I feel that the more we move
towards the West, the more likely we are to lose our Hindu values.
“[Mahatma]
Gandhi would not have understood,” he said. “He was an
old-fashioned man with old-fashioned ideas. No one believes those
things any more. The world has changed. And for Hindus to survive, we
have to protect our culture and our way of life.”
Most
of the thousands of Muslims living in camps around Gujarat are fearful
of returning to their villages. “They can’t go back because they
face death threats,” said Father Cedric Prakash, director of
Prashant, a human rights group in Ahmedabad. “The fanatics have all
the power.”
More
violence seems inevitable. At the end of February, Anjum Bana escaped
her village in Panderwala with her six-week-old daughter. As Hindu
militants torched the village, she hid in the forest. “There was
nothing to eat or drink for three days,” she told the Observer.
“I could hear people shouting RSS slogans all around me. And my
child was dying. I know I can’t go back.”
The
hawkish Modi, however, is unconvinced. In the early days of the
rioting, as the body count escalated, Modi famously said Gujarat’s
Hindus had shown “remarkable restraint.” Shortly before resigning
on Friday, he said: “There is no problem with people returning back
home. If they don’t want to go, they should be forced back. They
have to go back.”
In a shabby camp in a graveyard in Ahmedabad,
residents have taken to organizing a night-time watch, the Observer
said. “They know that once we are on the streets we are vulnerable.
I can’t understand it. I have lived with Hindu neighbors for 40
years, and there have never been any problems. Now those same
neighbors have turned on me. And no one will look after us.”
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