The former Minister and prominent Congress leader should know better and behave more responsibly to bring all our citizens together
Salman Khurshid’s pedigree comes through in the book, Sunrise Over Ayodhya, only if one chooses to completely ignore his comparison of the RSS with the ISIS and African jihadi outfit Boko Haram. Both the latter organisations make no bones about their aim of exterminating all non-Muslims in order to establish a worldwide Islamic Caliphate. While Hindutva will not be weakened by such comments, such provocation does pose some danger to the Indian Muslim in the urban street and the remote village. One is of course welcome to hold a different view, but I have Muslim friends who are clear that they agree with me. The well-to-do, rich and well-connected individuals like Khurshid may feel safe, but the poor, who are much larger numbers, are not so resourceful or fortunate.
Then there are loudmouth speakers in Pakistan who don’t bat an eyelid in conflating a win in a cricket match with a ‘victory for Allah, the Merciful’ and ‘Islam, the great religion’. They did not stop here; they expressed the hope that their sentiments have a resonance across the border. By that, they meant that Indian Muslims would join the Pakistani celebration of Indian defeat — all this outpouring in the actual and virtual presence of millions of Hindus. Imagine what anger the Hindus might harbour towards their Muslim brethren, which may turn into fury one day. The victims would be those residing in jhuggi-jhopdis and not those patronising Il Pallazos and Mehr Manzils in the luxurious locales of, say, Mumbai or Delhi. Have some consideration for the ordinary members of your religion. Do not try to instigate them against Hindus; it won’t be in anyone’s interest.
Similarly, what do some Indian Muslims, even the well-off ones, gain by comparing Hindutva to Boko Haram and ISIS? How many girls have the adherents of Hindutva abducted? How many people have they killed, as ISIS has done and is still doing? I cannot see the remotest connection. The Oxford-educated ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan not too long ago blithely declared that Pakistan has treated its minorities ideally and India should, therefore, learn from Islamabad. I had long ago aspired to study at that esteemed university. Maybe I too would have imbibed such precious pearls of wisdom.
The dastardly jihadi terror attack on Mumbai — better known as 26/11 — would surely help remind Indian Muslims how their co-religionists can treat Indians. Did Imran Khan mean 26/11 when he said that India must learn from Pakistan how to treat its minorities? What else can it be? Or did he mean terror attacks which, in the Hindu mind, are associated with Pakistani inspiration? Many in the world believe that what Aligarh’s students in 1946 hoped would become a New Medina, has developed into a new factory of terrorism. All this is building up a great deal of pressure on Indian Muslims. One of its concrete symptoms was the present that Salman Khurshid has given India, ie the above-mentioned book.
Let Pakistanis not forget Bangladesh is also their product. Had there been no Partition, there would have been no Bangladesh. How much blood Lt General Tikka Khan made flow in the erstwhile East Pakistan, we in India need to know. A local journalist, writing in Bengali, had said that Tikka Khan and Lt General Niazi spilled more Bengali blood than the Ganga and Brahmaputra carry into the Bay of Bengal. This may have been forgotten over the last 50 years, but not temples, 92 of which have been demolished by terror miscreants in the towns of Bangladesh, and the blood of Hindu Bengalis has been made to flow into the streets. This is the manner in which Bangladesh has repaid the blood of Indian soldiers who laid down their lives on the fields of ‘Sonar’ Bangla in 1971.
As a result of the verbal gyrations of people like Salman Khurshid and Imran Khan, Indian Muslims have been rendered into walnuts, stuck between the two blades of a nutcracker. When one arm remains static, the other comes down, trying to split open the edifice and spill innocent Indian blood. What do our helpless compatriots do? My appeal is for a breather, if not a long rest. Do not wait for Delhi’s handle to go off and re-enact 1971 in the west what it did in December of that year.
That apart, there is another very sinister angle to Salman Khurshid’s diatribe against the RSS and Hindutva. He has been a Minister, former diplomat and an important figure in Congress regimes. His statements have let his mask slip, revealing a double-faced person. While he is very eager to paint the RSS and Hindus in sordid colours, one cannot recall him uttering a word of condemnation against either the Boko Haram when it abducted and killed girls for the mere crime of becoming educated, or the ISIS for its spree of jihadi terror across the globe. Shorn of jargon, one is forced to conclude that the Oxford-educated Khurshid’s utterances are nothing more than an attempt to ‘normalise’ and justify jihadi terrorism.
(The writer is a well-known columnist, an author and a former member of the Rajya Sabha. The views expressed are personal.)
