It is no great surprise to me that the
so-called 'ceasefire' by the shadowy Hizbul Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir came
to an ignominious end. As I said in my previous
column ('Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!') it was a propaganda exercise for the
separatists and the Pakistanis to claim that see, they were willing to talk, it
was India that was intransigent.
For once, India did the right
counter-propaganda by immediately responding to the 'ceasefire' offer. With such
alacrity that the Pakistanis (and their puppet, the Hizbul Mujahideen man
Salahuddin in Islamabad) were caught on the wrong foot. They might actually have
had to sit down and negotiate with the Indians, which they really don't want to
do. Therefore, Plan B was put into action.
That was the brutal massacre of a hundred
Indians, including Hindu pilgrims on the Amarnath Yatra and Hindu laborers from
Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. This was trigger-happiness, intended to a. show the
Indians who was boss, b. cause mass outrage and calls to abort the talks. But
the Indian government still did not withdraw from the negotiations; the Indian
public did not rise up in anger.
Therefore Plan C had to be hastily
constructed: add some unreasonable demands. Yes, ask for Pakistan to be included
in the talks post-facto -- this is guaranteed to be rejected by India.
Thereafter, feigning injured innocence, the Hizbul Mujahideen wrings their hands
about Indian 'unreasonableness' and goes back to business as usual, murdering
people.
The theatrics have backfired: anybody who
cares could see that India acted in good faith, and it was Salahuddin and the
Pakistanis that sabotaged the talks. So no little gold stars for the dictator
Pervez Musharraf; his propaganda ploy got him no plaudits whatsoever. So it is
back to square one -- Situation Normal All Fouled Up.
Except for one small detail -- one hundred
innocent people, mostly Hindus, who were murdered. In particular, many were
pilgrims, going on an arduous pilgrimage to the ice cave at Amarnath. Pilgrims
are always treated with deference everywhere in the world, for their closeness
to the Infinite. Yet, the Indian media did not see fit to dwell on them; I don't
remember seeing anywhere a full list of the people killed, their family
backgrounds, any details about them. I know nothing about who these unfortunate
people were. They have already been forgotten.
And I don't remember seeing the professional
Human Rights mafia raising a ruckus. Let me pick on the most visible of these
'progressives' -- Shabana Azmi, Teesta Setalvad, Communalism Combat, SAHMAT. Not
to speak of John Dayal and the National Christian Council or whatever. Not one
of them, unless I am gravely mistaken, even turned an elegantly coiffed hair.
You see, the dead were Hindus, so they were not human. So they had no human
rights. QED. Only Muslims and Christians have rights.
Can you imagine the fuss if 50 Muslim or
Christian pilgrims were slaughtered in India? Do you remember the breast-beating
about attacks on Christians? The god-awful fuss made over exactly one missionary
('Death of a Missionary') burned to death? The mea culpas are still resonating.
The manhunt for the perpetrators was most energetic. We get periodic interviews
with the missionary's saintly wife who forgives all and sundry for all their
sins, whether they committed any or not. I wouldn't be surprised if the Vatican
saints Graham Staines any day now, even if he was not a Catholic.
Where are the interviews with the wives of the
Hindu laborers and the pilgrims? Why doesn't anybody care if they forgive the
killers of their kith and kin? Are they even getting any compensation money? I
suppose not. They have already been forgotten. They are only Hindus.
This is what it means to be a Hindu in the
great Socialist Progressive Secular Republic of India. You are a second-class
citizen. Jawaharlal Nehru must be laughing in his grave -- he has succeeded in
what he set out to do: destroy Hinduism. He put in place a perfect system of
apartheid, one in which the silent majority is explicitly handicapped and
exploited by law; and they believe they deserve it. While the 'minorities' are
coddled. How this is different from the erstwhile white-supremacist regime in
South Africa I really am not sure.
The Nehruvian Indian Constitution is a
discriminatory document, as it expressly curtails the freedoms of Hindus, but
not of 'minorities'. For instance, Hindu religious institutions come under
government control and grand theft, but not Muslim or Christian ones. Hindus are
not allowed to run schools, but 'minorities' are. The list goes on and on. It is
apartheid, codified.
Each of these dead Hindus is a victim of
Jawaharlal Nehru's megalomania. For it occurred to me recently that Nehru was
anti-Lincoln. Whereas Abraham Lincoln gave his life to preserve the American
Union, Jawaharlal Nehru gave the lives of several million Indians to destroy the
Indian Union; primarily to massage his ego. As I said in my previous column
'Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,' Nehru was the reason for Partition, for the
Kashmir problem, for Pakistan. He and his dynasty have been India's sorrow.
As India looks fearfully to August 15 and the
mayhem on that day, it is worth remembering Saadat Hassan Manto's words:
"There, behind barbed wire, on one side, lay India; and behind more barbed
wire, on the other side, lay Pakistan. In between, on a bit of earth which had
no name, lay Toba Tek Singh." We in the subcontinent all seem to inhabit an
illusory homeland, just like that disappeared village, Toba Tek Singh.
All thanks to the wholly unnecessary
Partition. All the other nations that were partitioned in the binge of partition
in the mid-1900s have reunited or will reunite: for instance, Germany, Korea,
etc. But Nehru's vanity and desire to be king have forever blighted this beloved
country. Pakistan will never give up its struggle to destroy India: we will
never reunite the old India.
Macaulay must be laughing too. He too has
succeeded beyond his wildest imagination. This country has an entire two
generations of Nehruvian Stalinists in positions of influence and power who have
been brainwashed into despising themselves and being bilious shadows of others,
in this case Chinese, Russians and Americans. Not the British, though, alas for
Macaulay.
I read a lot of reports in the worldwide media
about this whole ceasefire charade. Most of them scarcely mentioned the
massacre. Practically none of them mentioned that these were pilgrims. I suppose
the world media also hardly thinks of Hindus as human beings. How can you blame
them if the Indian media doesn't? Self-respect is needed before others will
respect you.
At best, Hinduism falls in the 'Other'
category of religions according to the New York Times. This is the way they
reported on the Peace Summit (which His Holiness the Dalai Lama was excluded
from): Rev. XYZ, Monsignor ABC, Rabbi XYZ, Mullah ABC, and then 'representatives
from the Buddhist, Hindu, Native American, Shinto and other faiths.' Once again,
note that these are nameless, un-individualised people. Only the Semites deserve
names and individuality. Only the Semites are people. So, naturally, they have
human rights. Hindus are mere statistics.
Ramesh Rao in a column on rediff.com suggested
that the New York Times has been unremittingly hostile to India in the recent
past. I agree, at least from the time Barbara Crossette used to file unvarnished
tripe from Delhi. I think this has hurt the Indian propaganda cause quite a bit,
as the paper is practically the mouthpiece of the foreign policy mafia in the
US. I suggest that India's ambassador to Israel should ask the leaders there to
put in a good word with the NY Times, who are after all Jewish and very
pro-Israel. This could be a tangible benefit from the growing Indo-Israeli
warmth.
What bothers me most is the casual way in
which devout Hindus were butchered by Muslim terrorists. Don't they realise the
worm can finally turn one day? After all, Muslims do go on pilgrimages too. Or
maybe these terrorists are so bloodthirsty that rational thought does not occur
to them. They have massacred some 50,000 of their co-religionists in cold blood
in Algeria. And god knows how many in Afghanistan.
Look at the list of killings of Hindus in
Jammu and Kashmir (from India Today, August 2, 2000). This is in addition to
350,000 Hindus ethnically cleansed from the Kashmir valley. Most of the
following are in the Jammu region. These were cold-blooded executions of unarmed
civilians by heavily armed mercenaries, often Afghan or Arab.
2000
August 2: 11 in Doda district
August 2: 7 in one family in Kupwara district
August 1-2: 27 labourers in Anantnag district
August 1: 31 Amarnath pilgrims at Pahalgam
February 28: 5 drivers in Anantnag
1999
July 19: 15 in Doda
June 20: 15 in Anantnag
February 20: 11 in Rajouri, 9 in Udhampur
1998
August 8: 35 in Himachal Pradesh (Islamic
terrorists responsible)
July 28: 16 villagers in Doda
June 19: 25 in Doda
April 18: 27 in Udhampur
1997
March 20: 7 in Budgam in Kashmir
January 25: 25 in Ganderbal
Who cries for the Hindus? Are we children of
some lesser god? Will the world notice us only if we take up the gun in
self-defense?
And why is it that explosions do not disrupt
Pakistan's Independence Day? What exactly is RAW doing? Pakistan can relate to
counter-terrorism: being fanatic bullies they will be able to appreciate pain
when it is applied to them. Pakistan is a fairly porous country, as demonstrated
by the roving bands of mercenaries: why aren't some of them in India's employ,
wreaking large-scale havoc and terrorising people?
India needs to ally with the Israelis to
understand both the psychology and the tactics of protracted action against
religious terrorism. After all, the Hindus and the Jews have both been
victimised for millennia; it is time that both stood their ground. Especially
for the Hindu, there is no outside help, at least not until India gets to be a
major economic power. We are the Other, those of the frighteningly timeless
religion, that which Islam and Christianity must worry about -- for Hinduism was
there before they came about; and Hinduism will still be there after they
disappear.
Postscript
Thank you to the readers who wrote to the
United Nations regarding the shameful blackballing of His Holiness the Dalai
Lama. In particular, I liked reader Kaustubh's gentlemanly yet firm note.
However, it appears the insult will stand: the Lama is not going to the
conference.
I read somewhere that the Pakistani
information minister took umbrage to L K Advani referring to 'South Asia' as the
'Indian subcontinent'. "India is only one of the countries in 'South Asia'
" quoth the Pakistani. (Quotes mine.) Now you know where all this 'South
Asia' garbage is coming from. As I said in my
previous column, 'Why I am not a South Asian' it is a desperate Pakistani
information warfare attempt to reduce India's brand equity. After all, the only
things people associate with Pakistan are "Paki-bashing" and
"wild-eyed, bushy-bearded, fundamentalist terrorists including Osama bin
Laden."
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