From: DXA4@psuvm.psu.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.indian
Subject: FACING UP TO THE TRUTH
Date: 29 Sep 92 16:18:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: psuvm.92273.121813DXA4
Organization: Penn State University

Following article on the Hindu-Muslim relationship by Mr. M.V. Kamath (Former
Editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, and Resident Reporter of Times of
India at Washington), a veteran journalist brings out certain home-truths and
raises compelling points regarding the logic and reasoning of some of the well-
known muslim leaders & secular writers. I am sure this will make an interesting
reading. The article appeared in his regular syndicated column in various news
papers and magazines. (THE EMPHASIS IS MINE).

Dinesh Agrawal....
***************************************

FACING UP TO THE TRUTH:  By: Mr. M.V. Kamath

It is embarrassing and painful to open old wounds. They are best left to heal
themselves. But when important muslim leaders and writers insist that they are
the people who are hurt and that Muslims live in perpetual fear, some things
must be said.

Muslims did not live in fear when they were a power in the country. They did
not consider themselves a minority when they ruled large tracts of the land. As
late as 1946, a pamphlet written by no less than the then Muslim League Mayor
of Calcutta, S.M. Usman, was saying: "According to wishes of God, the All India
Muslim League has chosen this sacred month(of Ramzan) for launching a jehad
for Pakistan. We Muslims had the crown and ruled. OH KAFIR, YOUR DOOM IS NOT
FAR AND THE GENERAL MASSACRE WILL COME!" THE GENERAL MASSACRE CAME IN CALCUTTA.
THE GREAT KILLINGS FOLLOWED. WHO WAS AFRAID OF WHOM?

One Muslim writer, Sk. Sadar Nayeem writing in the Calcutta-based The Telegraph
(27 July) wants us to believe that while Muslim zealots got their theocratic
Pakistan "the liberal Hindus and Muslims got their rule of law in a secular
and democratic India". LIBERAL MUSLIMS? According to Anita Inder Singh (The
Origin of Partition of India, Oxford University Press), on an all India level
75% of the Muslims voted for Muslim League. In Bengal over 85% of them did,
knowing only too well that a vote for the League was a vote for Pakistan. The
liberal Muslim voice was stilled. At the Simla conference, Mr. Jinnah started
proceedings by refusing to shake hands with Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan and Maulana
Azad. WHY CAN'T TODAY'S MUSLIMS FACE UP TO THE FACT THAT THEIR ELDERS (NOT
ANCESTORS) BETRAYED THE CAUSE OF INDIA'S UNITY? THIS THEY REFUSE TO DO?

They will also not face up to the fact that from time of the first invasion of
Islam in India, Hinduism was under siege. Did Muslims, in all those years when
they ruled the roost, think of themselves as a minority? There may have been
periods of quiet when the rulers, for a variety of reasons, stayed their hands
but on the whole the rule of Muslims was tyrannical in the extreme. For publish
ing a book by a distinguished American historian in which references to this
tyranny were made, Muslim zealots have strongly criticised the Bhartiya Vidhya
Bhavan. Those portions to which Muslims objected had to be cut out. But what
will they say now of Wilhelm von Pochhammer's book: India's Road to Nationhood
(Allied Publishers, Bombay) that was first published in 1973 and subsequently
in India in 1981 in an  English translation?

Von Pochhammer, now dead, was a distinguished diplomate-historian who can hard-
ly be called a Hindu communalist. He devoted one whole chapter (Chap XXVII) to
Hindus under Islamic rule. Among other things he wrote:

"The first reaction of the Hindus to the occupation of North India by conquer-
ors professing Islam was one of great horror in the face of cruelties they had
never before experienced. THE IMMENSE AND UNCONTROLLABLE BLOODBATHS, THE BRUTA-
LITY WITH WHICH CIVILIAN POPULATIONS WERE MASSACRED AND WOMEN AND GIRLS DRAGGED
INTO 'HARAMAS' WHICH TO THE HINDUS APPEARED AS NO BETTER THAN BROTHELS, THE
INTRODUCTION OF A SLAVE TRADE IN WHICH THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE, INCLUDING CHILDREN
WERE SOLD, ALL THESE GENERATED A HATRED FOR FOREIGNERS THE LIKE OF WHICH HAD
NEVER BEEN FELT BY INDIANS BEFORE. THE HATRED WAS INCREASED BY THE SHAMELESS
WAY IN WHICH THE FOREIGNERS DESTROYED HOLY PLACES HAVING FIRST DEFILED THEM...
What the Brahmins as protectors of their culture achieved in those days has
never been properly recorded, probably because a considerable number of people
belonging precisely to this class had been slaughtered. If success was obtained
in preserving Hindu culture in the hell of the first Islamic centuries, the
credit goes undoubtedly to the brahmins..."

Muslim leadership would not want Hindus to remember these things. Their first
reaction is: Well, it all happened centuries ago (massacres were repeated
between 1946-48 too, a point that tends to be forgotten). If this is questioned
the second reaction is: "But why hold this generation responsible for what
happened four hundred years ago?" (Forgetting that such hurts are not easily
forgotten). If that does not go down well, the third reaction is: "What, didn't
Hindus fight with Buddhism and Jainism and destroy their temples?" (Again for-
getting that Hindus now consider Buddha as another avatar, and Jina and Thirth-
ankars are held in highest esteem.) BUT NEVER HAS THERE EVER BEEN A SINGLE
INSTANCE OF A MUSLIM LEADER ACCEPTING HISTORY AND SEEKING TO MAKE AMENDS TODAY.
THE ARROGANCE SHOWED BY THE MUSLIM LEAGUE LEADER IBRAHIM SULAIMAN SAIT IN
RECENT INTERVIEWS TO THE PRESS (see Sunday Chronicle, 2 August 1992) IS A CASE
IN POINT.

If any minority should be afraid, it must be the tiniest of them, like the
Parsis. Do the Parsis live in fear of the Hindus? Do Christians? Do Jains, an
even tinier minority? There is proven evidence of over 2000 temples being
destroyed by Islamic rulers. And what is it that is asked? That Hindus be allow
ed to rebuild just three temples to salvage their own sense of deep hurt which
has been nursed not in the last one or two years or one or two decades but for
over four centuries? A gracious people, sympathetic to the feelings of their
fellow countrymen, would have voluntarily agreed to that request. Instead,
there has been confrontation, challenge, and the Babri Masjid Protection
Committee or whatever it is called has done everything short of asking for the
birth certificate of Shri Ram or Shri Krishna to agree to vacate the Babri
Masjid plot. HAS GRACE AND DECENCY GONE OUT OF OUR LIVES?

WOULD CALLING THE BJP OR THE RSS OR THE VHP AS SEMIFASCISTS WIPE OUT THE SENSE
OF HURT OF CENTURIES? HOW INSENSITIVE CAN MUSLIM LEADERSHIP BE? UNLIKE AS IN
THE VALE OF KASHMIR WHERE MUSLIM FANATICS HAVE TORN DOWN SEVERAL TEMPLES IN
ANANTNAG AND ELSEWHERE, HAS A SINGLE MOSQUE BEEN TORN DOWN IN THE REST OF
INDIA? There certainly has been agitation, but the contemptible manner in which
Hindu 'intellectuals' of the breed of Ashok Mitra, Kuldip Nayar and the rest
have dismissed the feelings of Hindus has to be read to be believed. But what
is interesting is that not a single Muslim 'intellectual' has dared to say that
the RSS or the BJP may - just possibly may - have a case. The Muslim intellect-
ual refuses to think that Hindus can ever have reason to complain or to be
angry. And he is surprised that any Hindus should feel hurt. IF A HINDU EXPRESS
ES HIS FEELINGS OR EVEN CLAIMS THAT HE IS A HINDU, HE RUNS THE RISK OF BEING
DUBBED AS 'COMMUNALIST' AND - AT ONE POINT REMOVED - A CONFIRMED FASCIST. In
Hindu India one can't say one is a Hindu, lest his 'secular' credentials are
questioned. It suits the Muslim fundamentalists, the zealots who can go round
saying: "Didn't we tell you? See how the BJP and RSS are being criticised by
Hindus themselves?"

Now the BJP has come out with fresh evidence that a Hindu temple did indeed
exist where now the Babri Masjid stands, but this evidence will be pooh-poohed
because it won't suit our secularists. How can a secularist accept the fact of
somebody in the name of Babar having demolished a temple? What would it do to
their secularism?
Xref: sparky soc.culture.indian:33046 soc.culture.usa:7626