From: a9@public.btr.com (Ashar Nisar)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: Wall Street Journal article by ImranAnwar
Date: 2 Jan 1993 17:58:24 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu



The following article by Imran Anwar appeared on December 31 issue of 
Wall Street Journal, next to the editorial.  The following is reproduced
for newsgroup readers and may contain several typos and missing punctuation.

sender: Krishnan Srinivasan
---------------------------------------------------------------------------


	INDIA: The Ugly Religious Reality Behind the Secular Myth

			by Imran Anwar

		[ Mr. Anwar is an information technology entrepreneur
		  and financial services consultant with offics in
		  Pakistan and Newyork  ]


Economic issues can be the basis for a destructive chain of events like the
one we are witnessing in India between the Hindus and Muslims, but in this
case they are not the source, merely a catlyst.  Religious hatred and 
persecution of minorities are the root of what heppended recently, an what
will happen in the future, in India.

This newspaper's Dec.8 editorial "Crusading in India" mentions that conv-
entional wisdom relates this issue to a quarrel over a single patch of land.
The editorial tried to say that simple economic depravity in Indian society
is the sole cause.  Both these assertion are far from accurate.

At the time of this writting more than 1200 people have already died in the
riots triggered by Hindu militants' destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya; 
the vast majority of the victims were muslims. Western journalists have 
confirmed that law-enforcement organizations also took the opportunity to
side with the Hindu majority, proving once again that India's claims of a
secular country are farcical.

Let us look first at India's creation. Even as the British were leaving the 
subcontinent, it was apparent to the Muslims that they would immediately 
face severe retaliation from a Hindu majority that would try to make up for 
several centuries of Muslim rule.  It was this fear, even certain knowledge,
of persecution that provided the impetus for migration of millions of 
people in 1947.

The Muslims were willing to take a separate homeland even though it meant a
new country created in two separate entites, East and West Pakistan, 
separated by the entire mass of the remaining India.  They were willing to pay
an economic cost by migrating because they knew that in a United India
there would be a lose-lose situation.  Economic and educational opportunities
would be limited, and religious persecution would be widespread.

This is borne out by the fact that even though Muslim are 12% of the Indian
population, their share in everything from top government job to post-
graduate degree opportunity is much smaller.

Even to India's forefather, the obvious threats to unity of an Indian nation
were relegious differences.   They knew that even with the mass exodus of
Muslims to Pakistan, there would still be the likelihood of religious 
trouble later.  It was with this in mind that the Indian leaders raised
the flag of secularism.  They must have hoped that secular dream would keep 
the Indian unit intact, but both their fears and the hypocrisy of indian
secularist statements are exposed today.

There are three major religious groups in India. Hindus are the predominant
majority, followed by Muslims and Sikhs.  It should come as no surprise
that the two biggest internal threats to India are the continuing struggle
by Muslim Kashmir to end Indian occupation and obtain its right of self-
determination and efforts by Sikh Punjab to secede from the union that has
brought it nothing but persecution based on differences in reiligion.

Your writers credit Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao "with his free-
market reform program" as some kind of visionary who brought his vision to
Indian leadership.  The sad truth is that from the time of independence
until recently, India aggressively follwed the Soviet agenda, including
adherence to the socialist economic model.  As a result of running of
options, the self-destruction of the socialist model, and neighbouring
Pakistan's aggressive privatization and economic liberalization program, 
India woke up too.  Mr. Rao may have ideas of his own, but in this case he
has simply been reactive, not proactive.  He did what any other person
in this situation would have to do, to prevent India from going bankrupt.

A reuters news report said Prime Minister Rao called the demolition of the
Mosque preplanned and his Congress Party blamed the BJP, the main 
opposition in Parliament, for trying to capture power by arousing
religious frenzy among India's majority Hindus.  Yet, Mr. Rao did not do
what any other leader in his position would have, and should have done.  He
did not take any measures to safeguard the mosque in Ayodhya, and the lives
of Muslims.  He allowed the genocide to take place.

The Muslim minority does not represent an economic threat to the hindu 
majority, nor does the destruction of mosques and the killing of Muslims
open up new avenues of economic prosperity for Hindus. Instead, it just
sends out a signal that ethnic cleansing has commenced, and now no mosques
or Muslims are safe.

Reuters' report mentioned a statement from the former government minister
and Janata Dal party leader Sharad Yadav, a lower caste Hindu:  "The 
essence of India's problem is not a Hindu-Muslim problem, but the inability
of the so-called liberal Hindus to accept the brutality of their faith, 
the brutality of the caste system".

Mr. Yadav tried to transfer attention to the economic persecution, again
based on releigious hatred, that Hindus belonging to the lower rungs of a
rigid caste system faced from upper-caste Hindus. He said they were as
exploited as the country's 100 million muslims.

This also points out the ugly truth about religious domination in India.
Upper caste Hindus, the Brahmins, have dominated throught history and 
continue to dominate the top position of power. They persecute and exploit
of people of the lower castes of their own religion, so the Muslim's -
who have a completely separate, monothesitic religion and who had been
India's rulers for hundreds of years - get even worse treatment.

As the Indian prime minister said, the mosque's desctruction was preplanned.
It was not the act of a mob of economically deprived Hindus going out of
control against a well-off Muslim minority.  Instead, the whole effort
was orchestrated by rich Hindus to achieve their goal of a Hindu empire
to make up "Mother India".  When you see that one of the main characters
in this case is V.H.Dalmia, whose family owns one of the well-known
industrial groups in India, you can understand how "economic" problems
are just an excuse.

Fanatic hate-mongers will always use any excuse to cover their message of
hate and bigotry. Neo-Naziz in Germany and Serbs in Bosnia today are on a
rampage with the same old hate, again using economic conditions as an excuse
to kill, destroy and loot.  Hindus are using a similar pattern of economic 
excuses to cloak centuries-old desires to destroy Muslims.





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