The recent street violence has put the focus back on the malignant influence of the Islamic ummah on large sections of Indian Muslim population
In 1353, England had enacted the Statute of Praemunire to prohibit all appeals to authorities outside England involving cognisable cases before the local courts. History knows how Henry VIII (1509-1547) had made use of this legal measure to bring an end to papal control, establish the sovereignty of the English State, dissolve the monasteries and taking forward the process of reformation. These have important lessons for many cutting across national boundaries.
The ongoing display of street violence in many cities of India, the attack on railway carriages, blockades put up on the highways, coupled with incendiary statements and threats of physical violence against the spokespersons of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have once again brought to the surface the malignant influence of the Islamic ummah on large sections of the Indian population. The support extended by the “secularists”, basically anti-Hindus, has further bolstered them. “Secularism”, as it has been practised in India since the Khilafat days, and more rigorously after Independence/Partition, is known for its promotion and pampering of many absurdities, irredentism, extra-territorial loyalty and theologically sanctioned intolerance/destruction of the “other”.
Those who foul-mouth “others” and threaten people with dire consequences in the name of alleged “blasphemy” must realise that what was easily achievable in the middle ages, long before the advent of enlightenment, liberalism, democratic system of governance, is not possible in 21st century India. Whether to stay cocooned in the primitive past or move forward with time as the rest of the civilised world is doing is for the respective societies to decide. It is true that certain political parties and State Governments have been partial to jihadi outfits and appear sympathetic to their atrocious religio-political objectives. True, these zealots were virtually let off for their lawless behaviour over the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019. Those guilty of large-scale violence in West Bengal before and after the polls in 2021, which resulted in the killing and rape of many Hindus, still remain unpunished. Hence, they feel emboldened.
However, it is time to ponder the unacceptable conduct of people pushing forward with the objectives of the Islamic ummah. Khilafat was discarded by Kamal Pasha in Turkey but got a fresh lease of life because of Gandhi, leading to the genocide of Kerala Hindus (Moplahs, 1921). Subsequent emasculation of the Indian National Congress, leading to the Partition, marked the ultimate defeat of Hindus and a glorious victory for the Islamic ummah. While Pakistan carried out a systematic religio-ethnic cleansing of its Hindu, Buddhist, Sikhs population, India’s “secular” leadership did not permit any exchange of population. Thus the basic issue remained unresolved.
The Hindus of Kashmir Valley turned into refugees in their own land. Certain constitutional provisions, gradual extension of Sachar Commission largesse, Minority Commission and the practice of helping the obscurantist elements have consolidated and rabid anti-Hindu elements.
The academic curriculum fashioned by Nehru-Azad-Nurul Hasan-Arjun Singh has strengthened this mindset that tends to push India back and destroys its very foundations. Heavily santitised social-science/ historical studies are the biggest casualties.
The liberal and creative space created by our saints and seers over the millennium, and later nurtured by the likes of Bankim, Swami Dayanand, Swami Vivekananda, Tilak, Sri Aurobindo, Pauhari Baba, Tagore and Savarkar, who had warned us against the destructive elements, is being systematically destroyed. Our media and entertainment industry are in the hands of anti-Hindus. Hence, urgent remedial legal reforms are needed to define “blasphemy”, impose condign punishment for espousing non-Indian ideas that violate our political-legal system and create a perpetually poisonous atmosphere.
It is high time that the ummah may have to explain, and then compensate all those in India (and also outside) who feel deeply humiliated at the sight of thousands of their sacred places turned into mosques and millions of their fellow citizens imposed with artificial Arab identity. Then there is the issue of Wakf property. Their crime multiplies when one adds to their inhuman record the genocide of Hindus and other minorities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and in our own Kashmir Valley. What ideology explains these?
All those trying to corner India must understand that our people are very much conscious of its rich indigenous civilisational legacies and its immense potential. India is a sovereign democratic Republic, and confident of chartering its own course without unwarranted external advisories and interference! Those operating the global interests of the ummah, like the Organisation of Islamic Countries, and certain other countries and their Indian agents demanding action/apology from India could be appropriately advised that they must look back at their own record of unpardonable sacrilege on the Indian soil over the centuries. India’s wounded civilisation cannot be targeted endlessly by terrorists in the name of a global mission!
(The author wrote the foreign policy content of the BJP, when its first website was launched in 1998. Currently, he is a Member, ICHR. The views expressed are personal).
