Fwd: Hindu Supremacism Turns Deadly in Delhi - Sadanand Dhume- Wall St.Journal

my friend D responds to dhume's one-sided article.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: D

My response (within 1000 words limit) to Dhume:

 

D

SUBSCRIBER

3 hours ago

As a hired Hindu Indian sepoy, you have once again stoked 'Hindu phobia' & anti-Modi campaign with lies, distortions & innuendos. Hindu Muslim riots have a long history starting since Islamic invasions & rule from 800 AD onwards. Several such riots have taken place during the Congress dynasty rule & Gandhiji's time. As per Will Durant : "The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history."  Muslim historian Firishta (1560- 1620], author of the Tarikh-i Firishta and the Gulshan-i Ibrahim, wrote that the medieval bloodbath in India resulted in over 400 million Hindus got slaughtered during Muslim invasion and occupation of India. 
As per 'Tarikh-i-Yamini' -Mahmud al-Ghazni : "The blood of the infidels flowed so copiously [city of Thanesar] that the stream was discoloured, notwithstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it... Nearly fifty thousand men were killed."  You are a coward afraid of writing anything against Muslims & Islamic terrorism.

 

The Wall Street JournalOpinion

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March 7, 2020

Print EditinHindu Supremacism Turns Deadly in Delhi

A resurgence of the idea that India belongs to those of 'Indic faith' drove the riots, which killed 44.

By 

Sadanand Dhume

March 5, 2020 7:08 pm ET

Indian security forces patrol a street after the violence in New Delhi, Feb. 27.

PHOTO: ALTAF QADRI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Deadly riots in Delhi last month killed at least 44 people, most of them Muslim, and raised the prospect of heightened conflict between India's 966 million Hindu majority and its 172 million Muslims. But the violence also highlights another domestic fissure: between Hindus who back religious pluralism and their coreligionists who are bent on asserting their supremacy in what they see as their homeland.

This isn't a new divide, though its recent deepening could threaten India's stability. For close to 100 years Hindus have faced a choice between the inclusiveness of Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and the tribal appeal of Hindu nationalism's chief ideologue, Vinayak Savarkar (1883-1966). Savarkar espoused the idea that India belongs to followers of so-called Indic faiths, that is, those that originated in the subcontinent. This casts Muslims and Christians as inherently at odds with Indianness, no matter how long they or their ancestors have lived on Indian soil. 

In Savarkar's view, Muslim and Christian Indians form a kind of fifth column because their holy lands are not the same as their fatherland. By contrast, both Gandhi and India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, espoused civic nationalism, which views all Indians as equal regardless of their faith.

Long consigned to the margins of national life, Savarkar's ideas find many takers in India today, particularly in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. But though the idea of civilizational conflict with the Abrahamic faiths may appeal to die-hard Hindu nationalists, it's not clear that it offers a viable way to govern a country in which 1 in 5 Indians is not Hindu. 

The recent violence in Delhi—the worst outbreak in the city since anti-Sikh riots killed more than 3,000 people in 1984—is a manifestation of this ideological schism. Muslims are participants in the debate, and bore the brunt of the violence, but the real battleground is among Hindus for the simple reason that they make up four-fifths of India's population. If Savarkar's ideas prevail among the majority, India will cease to be a land that strives to treat its minorities fairly. It will become more like the rest of the subcontinent, where religious minorities often live on the majority's sufferance. 

Ironically, the controversial citizenship law that sparked the bloodletting in Delhi, which coincided with a visit by President Trump, recognizes the shoddy record of minority rights in India's near abroad. The law, enacted in December, for the first time introduces a religious test for citizenship by allowing followers of six faiths from Muslim majority Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh who arrived in India before 2015 to fast-track naturalization. The law pointedly excludes all Muslims—including Pakistan's persecuted Ahmadiyya Muslims and Shia Hazara minority. 

Since December, Muslims, secularists and students have protested the law. They fear that combined with a proposed (and currently deferred) national register of citizens, the new law will force Indian Muslims to produce documentation proving their citizenship, or risk disenfranchisement or being herded into detention camps. Such documentation isn't ubiquitous in India and it's likely that legal citizens will be caught up in the fray. Such a process, riddled with sloppiness, inconsistencies and casual cruelty, is already under way in the northeastern state of Assam.

In the run up to the violence, BJP leaders gave incendiary speeches and compared the protesters to traitors who deserved to be shot. Skirmishes between stone-throwing Hindu and Muslim mobs quickly devolved into deadly violence in which dozens of people were hacked, burned and shot dead. Mobs razed scores of small businesses. Thousands of people have fled their homes in fear.

BJP supporters point out that both Hindus and Muslims suffered in the violence. A rough count based on the official list of victims' names suggests that more than a quarter of the 44 killed were Hindu. In some neighborhoods, Hindus suffered disproportionately at the hands of Muslim mobs. Those killed included a police constable and a young intelligence officer.

All this may be true, but no reasonable person can view this as a contest of equals. The police in Delhi, overwhelmingly Hindu and under the command of the BJP's hard-line Home Minister, Amit Shah, did not even pretend to be evenhanded. In some places they reportedly stood down instead of confronting mobs. In others, there's evidence they actively abetted Hindu rioters.

A sensible government would work out a way to show compassion for persecuted religious minorities in India's neighborhood without stoking fears among Indian Muslims. A responsible ruling party would not confuse legitimate political protest with treason. But that would mean rejecting Savarkar's pernicious idea that Hindus are somehow more Indian than those who hold other faiths—something Prime Minister Modi appears unwilling to do.

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About this article

East is East

"East is East" explores the most important news from India and South Asia with a focus on the region's domestic politics, economics and geopolitics. It appears every other week on Thursday evenings.

Sadanand Dhume

Sadanand Dhume writes a biweekly column on India and South Asia for WSJ.com. He focuses on the region's politics, economics and foreign policy.

Mr. Dhume is also a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Previously he worked as the New Delhi bureau chief of the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), and as Indonesia correspondent for FEER and The Wall Street Journal Asia.

Mr. Dhume is the author of "My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist," (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009), which charts the rise of the radical Islamist movement in Indonesia. His next book will look at India's transformation since the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.

Mr. Dhume holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Delhi, a master's degree in international relations from Princeton University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, and travels frequently to India.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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