Hindu Militants Seek Muslim-free India: Report

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.

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.”

The enemy of my enemy is not neccessarily my friend.

ANTI-CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE ON THE RISE IN INDIA
New Report details politics behind extremist Hindu attacks
(London, September 30, 1999) – The Indian government has failed to prevent increasing violence against Christians and is exploiting communal tensions for political ends, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today. The 37-page report, Politics by Other Means: Attacks Against Christians in India, details violence against Christians in the months ahead of the country's national parliamentary elections in September and October 1999, and in the months following electoral victory by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party, known as the BJP) in the state of Gujarat.
Attacks against Christians throughout the country have increased significantly since the BJP began its rule at the center in March 1998. They include the killings of priests, the raping of nuns, and the physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced to convert to Hinduism. The report concludes that as with attacks against Muslims in 1992 and 1993, attacks against Christians are part of a concerted campaign of right-wing Hindu organizations, collectively called the sangh parivar, to promote and exploit communal clashes to increase their political power-base. The movement is supported at the local level by militant groups who operate with impunity.
"Christians are the new scapegoat in India's political battles," said Smita Narula, author of the report and researcher for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "Without immediate and decisive action by the government, communal tensions will continue to be exploited for political and economic ends."
The Hindu organizations most responsible for violence against Christians are the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP), the Bajrang Dal, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS). According to a former RSS member, these groups cannot be divorced from the ruling BJP party: "There is no difference between the BJP and RSS. BJP is the body. RSS is the soul, and the Bajrang Dal is the hands for beating."
A majority of the reported incidents of violence against Christians in 1998 occurred in Gujarat, the same year that the BJP came to power in the state. In April 1999, Human Rights Watch visited the Dangs district in Gujarat, site of a ten-day spate of violent and premeditated attacks on Christian communities and institutions between December 25, 1998, and January 3, 1999. The report documents patterns there that are representative of attacks across India. These include the role of sangh parivar organizations and the local media in promoting anti-Christian propaganda, the exploitation of communal differences to mask political and economic motives underlying the attacks, local and state government complicity in the attacks, and the failure of the central government to meet its constitutional and international obligations to protect minorities.
Jamuna Bhen, a thirty-year-old agricultural laborer in Dangs district, told Human Rights Watch, "The Hindus removed the ornamentation from our church on December 25 [1998]. They threatened us by saying that they will set the church house on fire. Then they started taking down the roof tiles…. There were one hundred to 200 people who came from other villages. They said, ‘We will burn everything.' We begged them not to. We said, ‘Don't do this,' and said we will become Hindu."
In January 1999, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were trapped in their car and burned alive in the state of Orissa, reportedly by Dara Singh, a local leader of the extremist group Bajrang Dal. On the eve of India's national parliamentary elections in September and October 1999, the situation for minorities in the state deteriorated significantly. In August 1999, Singh struck again, chopping off the arms of a Muslim trader before setting him on fire. One week later, Rev. Arul Doss was shot in the chest with an arrow and beaten to death by a group of unidentified assailants. The BJP charged the Congress-led state government with criminal negligence, while Congress sought to blame the incidents on the policies and activities of sangh parivar organizations. While communal tensions in the state were exploited by political parties on all sides, the main perpetrators of the attacks were still at large.
In a pattern similar to the response to organized violence against lower castes, the tendency is for local officials under pressure to arrest a few members, but not the leaders, of the groups involved. The communities affected represent some of the poorest in the country and include Dalits ("untouchables") and members of local tribal communities, many of whom convert to Christianity to escape abuses under India's caste system. In many cases, Christian institutions and individuals targeted were singled out for their role in promoting health, literacy, and economic independence among Dalit and tribal community members. A vested interest in keeping these communities in a state of economic dependency is a motivating factor in anti-Christian violence and propaganda.
Though eyewitnesses have identified politicians and local officials as participants in the attacks, the state administration and Hindu nationalist leaders continue to portray the incidents as actions instigated by minority communities. The chief minister of Gujarat and BJP spokesmen have even blamed the violence on an "international conspiracy" to defame the political party. The prime minister has called for a national debate on conversions, signaling tacit justification for the motives underlying the attacks. The central and state governments continue to ignore the recommendations of the National Commission for Minorities.
Human Rights Watch called on the Indian government to meet its constitutional and international obligations to ensure that religious minorities may equally enjoy freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice, propagate and adopt religion. In particular, Indian officials should commit to taking steps to prevent further violence and end impunity for campaigns of violence and prosecute both state and private actors responsible for the attacks.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.