India: A Victim of Its Own Fixations

Indian Muslims. A relief camp in Ahmedabad

The ruling ultra right-wing junta who rode to power on the destruction and rubble of the 15th-century Babri mosque was not only accepted, but also warmly embraced by the West on account of shared Islamophobia. Today, this fundamentalist junta has torched the status quo in India, and no one seems to take notice. The burning of scores of Muslims, including some who held British passports, has garnered nary a protest, verifying that the present war against "terrorism" has a different agenda than that espoused, and that Muslim life is unworthy of mention - whatever national identity it may wear.

The present anti-Muslim pogrom in India followed a march to the site of the demolished mosque by the ultra-right wing Hindu Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, a component of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance. On their return journey from the Babri mosque site, these energized mobs were refueled with hate and spite for Muslims.

Ashok Sharma of the Associated Press (Feb. 28) - a Hindu himself - quoted Indian police sources that said the Feb. 27 train attack came after Hindus on the train refused to pay for food taken from Muslim vendors at the station and shouted anti-Muslim slogans, which Sharma added is "a common occurrence in recent days that has fueled Muslims' resentment."

Interestingly, most U.S. newspapers have labeled these types of anti-Muslim pogroms as Hindu "retaliation" for the alleged train attack, overlooking Sharma's account.

Luke Harding of The Observer, reporting from Ahmedabad (March 3, 2002) said, "The [Indian] authorities have done little to prevent the inferno that has swept the western state of Gujarat - not because of incompetence but because they share the prejudices of the Hindu gangs who have been busy pulping their Muslim neighbors."

Indian riot police in the streets of Ahmedabad

Sharma corroborated Harding's observations, "The [Indian police] officers stood in bunches, watching as groups of Hindus, wielding iron rods and cans of gasoline or kerosene, roamed Ahmadabad attacking Muslims in their homes, shops and vehicles."

The reality is that the police made no effort to hold back the mob, and in certain places even joined in. Harding, noting the late deployment of troops to control the Hindu mobs, wrote, "But the army's belated deployment seemed little more than a political calculation that the Muslims had now got the beating they deserved."

In fact, this lapse on the part of the authorities has been so serious and conspicuous that India's human rights watchdog - the National Human Rights Commission - has asked the state government to submit a report on the steps it had taken to control the violence and what it was doing to prevent further escalation.

In an attempt to garner Western support for the anti-Muslim pogrom, Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat state and a member of the ruling BJP, conveniently forgetting the militant nature of his own party, called the assault on the train earlier this week an "organized terrorist attack." Indian officials suggested that Pakistan's ISI, or Islamic groups with which it is linked, may have incited Muslims to attack the train. However, they provided no evidence, and no official has drawn any link between the violence in India and the al-Qaeda terror network of Osama bin Laden, yet.

The reality is that despite appeals for "peace" being made by India's elderly prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Vajpayee's own Hindu fundamentalist BJP is part of the problem.

Gujarat, one of the few Indian states still controlled by the BJP, has a reputation as a laboratory for Hindu revivalist thinking. Since sweeping to power in the mid-1990s, the BJP has pursued a communal pro-Hindu agenda. It has also supported the construction of a temple on the disputed site in Ayodhya, where Hindu zealots demolished a mosque (Babri) in 1992 - an act that several members of the present cabinet, including India's hawkish Home Minister L.K. Advani, watched. The BJP gained great prestige and political capital from the demolition, which helped bring it to power seven years later. But now the government is discovering that it is easier to ignite and fan such flames than douse them.

The Ayodhya issue now threatens to tear India apart. The extremist VHP, which started its campaign in 1984, has called for construction of a Hindu temple on the Ayodhya site where the mosque was demolished to begin by March 15. It has so far not been swayed by pleas from Vajpayee to abandon its plan.

Vajpayee, for his part, claims that he was "confident all secular-minded people" would "observe peace and help the government in maintaining communal harmony". However, that seems easier said than done. For one, the appeal comes from the head of a government controlled by a party whose ideology is grounded in Hindutva, the Hindu way of life.

And who exactly are these "secular-minded" people the prime minister is addressing? Some even in Vajpayee's inner cabinet cannot be called secular. The most obvious example is that of Advani, whose involvement in the Ayodhya issue has been so communal and provocative that he would be the last person one would expect to act impartially in the present frenzy of violence. Advani is on record as having said in 1992 that regardless of the Supreme Court's verdict, a Hindu temple would be built in Ayodhya. A few months later, thousands of Hindu activists, among them many from the BJP, descended on the town and destroyed the mosque.

The blame for the widespread violence also lies on the rabidly anti-Muslim VHP, whose senior vice president, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, described the massacres in Gujarat as a "little violent reaction" and who held the "Muslim psyche" responsible for whatever happened after Godhra. Another VHP hardliner, Sharma Prem, said Muslims were "being paid back in the same coin." Now, since the BJP is closely aligned with the VHP, it is quite likely that Vajpayee's well-intentioned appeal will fall on deaf ears.

Steve Forbes, publisher of Forbes Magazine (March 4, 2002), compares India to the Austro-Hungarian Empire that was similarly not a homogeneous state. Taking the cue from Forbes, on February 26, 2002, inserted into the Rep. Congressman Edolphus Towns (D-NY) Congressional Record of the U.S. Congress (Page: E198), his observation, "India continues its futile efforts to maintain its multinational state by force, in pursuit of Hindu hegemony. It continues to attack and kill Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Dalits and other minority groups. It continues to hold tens of thousands of political prisoners, something I find very odd for a democracy."

The world needs to tell Indian parties like the BJP, which has risen to power by exploiting Islamophobia, to do some soul searching and acted swiftly to stop bloodletting instead of paying lip service to secularism. The world community that cried aloud over the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan needs to step forward so that there could be a settlement of the Ayodhya dispute in a manner that addresses the concerns of the Muslim minority.

Editor – ISNA's Horizons magazine