Posted on 07/12/2007 6:27:43 AM PDT by Gengis Khan
A band of former soldiers, ex-police personnel and victims of Maoist guerrillas have united in Nepal to form a Hindu army with suicide bombers to fight Islamic and Christian zealots as well as communists.
Called the Nepal Defence Army, the group is headed by a former policeman who says he joined the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist as a schoolboy but has now begun waging war on his former comrades.
The ex-cop, who today calls himself 'Parivartan' (change), claims his band has nearly 1,200 trained soldiers who possess arms and have the expertise to manufacture explosives.
Earlier this year, the Nepal Defence Army made its debut with a couple of blasts, including at the well-guarded office of the Maoists in Kathmandu.
On Wednesday, a Nepali tabloid carried an extensive interview with the shadowy leader, saying he had walked into the tabloid's city office to talk about his organisation.
"Nepal Defence Army has been founded to fight for Hinduism," Parivartan told Nepali weekly Ghanata R Bichar. "Hindus worldwide support us, including the families of top Maoist leaders. Our soldiers are being trained across the border in India and we get the ingredients for manufacturing explosives from India."
However, the new revolutionary said his group had no links with King Gyanendra.
"We are not funded by the palace," he said. "If the palace had tried to promote Hinduism and Nepal as a Hindu state, we wouldn't have to wage our war. We don't dabble in politics. Our sole aim is to form a Hindu state."
Parivartan told the weekly that his party didn't want bloodshed. "The bombs we threw at the Maoist office were intended as a warning and not to kill," he said. "I stopped plans to assassinate Maoist chief Prachanda and Maoist minister Dev Gurung.
"But if the warning is not taken seriously, the eight-party ruling alliance can suffer serious losses."
The shadowy leader held Maoists as their main enemy.
"During their 10-year war, the Maoists destroyed and desecrated temples and attacked priests," he said. "But they never destroyed any church or mosque."
However, he added that Maoists' families still remained devout Hindus. "During the civil war, Prachanda's mother would wake up early in the morning and offer water to the sun god to pray for her son's safety," he said. "It shows they are Hindus and would support Hinduism."
Parivartan ended with a dire warning.
"The Maoists had also begun in a small way," he said. "We learnt how to make bombs from Prachanda's teachings.
"Now, like the Al-Qaeda, we are training suicide squads.
"We have trained five suicide bombers who can go anywhere, including Singh Durbar (the heart of administration in Nepal, where the prime minister's office, key ministries and parliament are located.)"
I am sorry I didn't find any post where he actually said “terrorism is fine” or can be construed as such.
I’ll go on record and predict that most of the “fighting” will be against those scary Christian missionaries rather than the jihadists or the Maoists.
Why go to war against people who will cut your head off when you can beat up a priest and feel just as righteous? Simple human nature.
Get over it.
Maoist Christian is a contradiction in terms.
Cordially,
GK, is this consistent with Hindu beliefs? I support any country or religion’s right to defend itself, but I thought Hindus had a policy of non-violence? The whole suicide bomber idea feels very Muslim. Isn’t suicide forbidden in Hinduism?
Why is there any need to fight peaceful Christian missionaries?
Are they afraid of words?
I don't think so. Hinduism has no mention of concepts such as suicide bombing, martyrdom or religious crusade . Neither in favour nor against.
I am no expert on Hinduism and I maybe wrong. IMO Hinduism does not abrogates the use of violence but recommends it as the last option. In fact not to resist evil aggressors is considered a greater sin. Maybe LJ can explain better.
Most sane countries in the world realized long time ago that there are two ideologies that cannot allow progress - communism and radical islam.
People havent realized it yet in S.Asia. We got the worst kind of communist supporters in India. But the alternatives to communists arent great either, which is the reason why those elements exist in the first place.
See I still think the North-East issue is due to their RACIAL isolation. I had one room mate from Manipur, who was a Hindu, but didnt like Indians, especially northies. The language he used was like “N.Indians who belong to caucasian race hate us and look down on us because we are from mongoloid race” or something like that.
I think that makes more sense. Those guys are just using Christianity to distinguish themselves much further from mainstream Hindu India. Just look at Indian Christians in the rest of the country and compare with them. Those guys are a bit different from us, but the extremist elements among them are using christianity as a front to gain sympathy from the west. But their primary grievance is mostly racial rather than religious.
I dont think westerners can understand some of these south asian issues or culture properly. In US and europe, Christianity and Communism are irreconcilable ideologies which are poles apart. In India, most Communists are devoutly religious Hindus, muslims and christians. They apply communist principles only to Economic issues but not to religious or social issues.
I’m sure Titus or JackRyan were judging Indian/S.Asian communists from a Christian perspective.
“Most sane countries in the world realized long time ago that there are two ideologies that cannot allow progress - communism and radical islam.”
That is true in case of communism. The world realized the reality about Islam pretty late.
Even if we do have nicer alternatives I wont trust them to take tough decisions. Take for instance the current government of India. Nice ones are very often weak.
what is a Hindu state anyway?
You say that like it’s a bad thing. :-)
Thye situation in the North-East is NOT racial. It is a war between the converts, the tribals and the Hindus. Ethnically, all are KHASI.
You really think there are no Hindus of Mongoloid descent?
A lot of Christian converts in Nepal(like in other third world countries) are usually the poorest of the poor people(think not your regular poor, but poor in the world’s poorest country poor).
There are a lot of Missionary groups involved that provide free health and education to these people. Many do see Christianity as path to material prosperity... even those not struggling to survive feel that Christianity means material progress.
Excluding the Maoist leaders(most of them are high caste Hindus coming from well to do families), the foot soldiers are all poor people(often significant are Christians or recent Christian converts).
A lot of Christian missionaries from India are Dalit-Nationalists and have quite a radical ethno-religious-racial agenda for Nepal, India and the non-Muslim part of South Asia.
What goes around comes around.
Tks for the ping.
A pity it had to come to this.
The muzlims have taught the wrong lessons - that aggression pays, that bloodspill and threats buy respect etc.
But when survival itself is threatened, Gandhian principles are useless. Do whatever you have to to survive. You owe nobody any explanations.
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