Sinister face of Islamism

Horrific bloodshed in Sufi shrine, mosques

Muslims kill Muslims in name of Islam!

On July 2, suicide bombers attacked Daata Darbar, an ancient Sufi shrine in Lahore, killing at least 44 people who had come to seek blessings. For the first time in 927 years, langar was stopped at the shrine. Some news reports say there were three suicide bombers, others say there were two.

Earlier, on May 28, two Ahmedi mosques in Lahore were attacked by suicide terror squads, owing allegiance to Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, resulting in the death of at least 95 worshippers who had gathered for Friday prayers.

There have been similar terror attacks on mosques and shrines in Pakistan, including a mosque in Rawalpindi frequented by Army personnel and their families -- a 10 year old boy was killed, along with scores, in that attack.

Instead of looking within and coming to grips with the grim fact of Islamist terrorists turning on Muslims in Pakistan, most Pakistanis and the Government of that country continue to live in denial. The Jamaat-e-Islami blames Americans and Blackwater for killings by Islamist terrorists. Others blame India!

Arifa Moen, 32, a teacher in the central city of Multan, told the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times: "Washington is encouraging Indians and Jews to carry out attacks in Pakistan." If a teacher has such perverse views, what will Pakistani children learn? And who will save Pakistan's children from the monsters who kill so remorselessly?

And while denial rules the collective Pakistan conscience, the terrible slaying of Muslims by Muslims continues, ironically in the name of Islam.

Worse, if you dare criticise the outrages, you are labelled an Islamophobe.

Here's my commentary on the issue:

"We Muslims are one community... (my goal was to) injure people or kill people... One has to understand where I’m coming from, because… I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier.” It’s unlikely the American judge presiding over Faisal Shahzad’s arraignment was quite prepared for such a candid admission of Islamism über alles by the would-be Times Square bomber. But this is not the first time that the jihadi impulse has been so baldly stated by those who believe that bloodshed serves the cause of Islam — the more horrific the bloodletting, the greater the piety of the perpetrator of what others consider to be both a crime and a sin.

The Fort Hood killer had no qualms about killing fellow soldiers; the underpants bomber was prepared to die to bring down a trans-Atlantic passenger plane, and Faisal Shahzad was comfortable with the idea of blowing up innocent people in New York’s fashionable Times Square. Before them, Mohammed Atta al-Sayeed had led a dozen hijackers on a suicide mission to terrorise America; in London, young Muslims of Pakistani origin had stuffed their backpacks with explosives and pulled the trigger in crowded compartments of underground trains.

We in India have known for long what the West has discovered to its horror after the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center were felled on 9/11. Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s sophistry was useful distraction from the Muslim League’s coarse politics of separatism premised on the fundamentals of Islamic exclusivism, intolerance bordering on hatred of the ‘other’, the ummah’s presumed right to rule the world and hoist the banner of Islam atop every capital.

Tragic as the violence that accompanied partition may have been, far worse has since been witnessed. Islamists from Pakistan have struck again and again, in more ways than one, from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. When excessive attention is focussed on 26/11 because it was jihad brought live on television screens, their other crimes tend to be glossed over. For instance the ethnic cleansing of Kashmir Valley. Or the subversion of the Indian Muslim’s mind.

Jinnah was given to lofty speech if not noble thought, but the lesser among the ranks must have sniggered when he declared on August 11, 1947, in a speech that is often quoted by those untutored in Islamism: “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the state... You will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the state.”

That state is today rapidly sinking into the quagmire of Islamist fanaticism. Pakistan’s citizens have neither ceased to be Hindus and Muslims “in the political sense” nor has the Pakistani state steered clear of religion. The degeneration began within months of the Quaid-e-Azam’s death; a decrepit, derelict Islamic Republic of Pakistan, variously described as the “most dangerous place in the world” and an “international headache”, is now engulfed in the very jihad which it thought would destroy India.

Jinnah was able to wrench out of India what he despairingly (some would say, disparagingly) described as “a moth-eaten Pakistan”; what remains of Pakistan is being gnawed at from within by those who are so consumed by hate that they find the idea of Muslims cohabiting with Muslims an intolerable idea. Nothing else explains why suicide bombers should target worshippers at Daata Darbar, an acient Sufi shrine in Lahore, drenching a saint’s dargah with the blood of the innocent last Thursday, or kill believers gathered at a Rawalpindi mosque. Since by law Ahmediyas are not considered to be Muslims in Pakistan and treated as heretics by mullahs, their slaughter while at prayer, as it happened on May 28, is considered to be nothing extraordinary in the ‘land of the pure’.

So, when Faisal Shahzad says, “One has to understand where I’m coming from,” he means one has to look at Pakistan to understand what drives Pakistanis to kill with such ferocity and cite Islam as the reason. But Pakistan alone does not breed such monsters; look around and you will find that rare is the Muslim-majority country untainted by the violence propagated by Islamism and perpetrated by Islamists. Secular Egypt thought it would render the seeds of Islamism planted by Syed Qutb sterile by executing the man who called for “offensive jihad” as the true assertion of the Islamic identity. But the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen has flourished, carrying forth Qutb’s message that “true Islam will transform every aspect of society, eliminating everything non-Muslim”, and that Islam is the “ultimate solution”.

It would be a folly to believe that every Muslim subscribes to Qutb’s interpretation of Islam or that behind every Muslim name lurks a terrorist waiting for an opportunity to strike. For evidence of the deep schism that sets Faisal Shahzad and his ilk apart from those who just want to get on with their lives and live in peace we just need to look at Pakistan. For every suicide bomber there are thousands who are repelled by his act of terror, who weep at the sight of so much blood being shed for nothing. Muslims in Mumbai, let us not forget, refused to allow the bodies of Ajmal Kasab’s slain colleagues to be buried in their graveyards. Such examples abound.

Yet, it would do us no good if we were to gloss over the reality. Islamofascism exists and those who subscribe to it are unfortunately also those who are fashioning policy and influencing society in Islamic countries — individually and collectively. The Organisation of Islamic Conference bears evidence to this: Every time it demands the criminalisation of criticism of Islamist excesses and crimes against humanity because it allegedly “defames Islam”, it strengthens those very elements whom it should be condemning before anybody else does so but won’t because it conflates Islamism and Islam and views the former as a triumphalist, faith-driven assertion of the latter.

It’s easy to demonise critics of Islamism as ‘Islamophobes’ and call for global legislation to curb free speech. But if conceded, this will embolden the Faisal Shahzads and the suicide bombers and the fanatics for whom hate is a virtue and tolerance a sin. Rather than lash out at those who find Islamism abhorrent, its champions should ask themselves a simple question: After “eliminating everything non-Muslim”, what shall happen to ‘everything Muslim’? The terrible sight of Muslims killing Muslims in Pakistan, which was supposed to be the homeland of the Indian sub-continent’s Muslims, should provide a clue to the answer to that question.

[The comment originally appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on June 4, 2010. (c)]

Veil of darkness

Exploits of the burqa brigade

An apocryphal story is told of how an infamous smuggler who operated from coastal Gujarat in the 1970s would ensure raids on his house by the police would not result in the seizure of ‘incriminating’ material and documents. Every time the police knocked on his door, whether at high noon or sunset, he would send word that he was praying and could they please wait till his communion with god was over? Mindful of not hurting ‘minority sentiments’, the police would cool their heels on the street or sit in their jeeps while his men swiftly strapped gold biscuits, cash and hawala documents to their muscular bodies. Next, each one of them would don a voluminous, ankle-length burqa and stand around their boss. The door of the don’s den would then be thrown open to the patiently waiting policemen who would troop in, move from room to room, look under beds, sofas and cabinets, and, after failing to lay their hands on any ‘incriminating evidence’, profusely apologise before trooping out. Some 25 years later, a senior police officer who was a frequent visitor to the don’s den courtesy the raids which never led to either arrest or prosecution told me, “It was so frustrating. We knew all about his trick but there was nothing we could do about it.”

Kalimuddin Shams, who would contest West Bengal Assembly elections as a Left Front candidate and was the acknowledged mastaan of Kolkata’s Kidderpore Docks, used the same trick on the day of polling in his constituency. There would be endless queues of burqa-clad voters who would refuse to show their face or have their finger inked as that would amount to ‘intimacy with strangers’. Each one of them would step into the polling booth, vote for Kalimuddin Shams, and join the queue again. Needless to say, Hasina Bano would get to vote more than once, as would ‘her’ friends. On counting day, Kalimuddin Shams would be declared the winner with a huge margin. It’s not surprising that the CPI(M) held him in high esteem: He had mastered the art of rigging elections without leaving any tell-tale evidence behind. “They were brazen about it. You could see their lungi sticking out from beneath the burqa, their hairy arms would be visible. While standing in the queue they would casually lift the veil on their face and smoke beedis. But there’s nothing we could do,” the Chief Election Officer of West Bengal told me after demitting office. Kalimuddin Shams, who never tired of reminding officials “I am a Muslim first and then an Indian” and had once famously declared (while serving as a Minister in the Left Front Government) that “Muslims form a separate nation in this country”, was not someone to be trifled with.


The burqa has proved to be useful to others, too. Maulana Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric of Lal Masjid in Islamabad, tried to escape the July 4, 2007 Army crackdown ordered by Gen Pervez Musharraf on his jihad nursery clad in a burqa. The Pakistani commandoes proved to be tougher than the 1970s police of Gujarat and West Bengal’s polling staff, and the maulana in drag was spotted, arrested and carted off to prison. Islamabad’s Deputy Commissioner of Police, Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, told the BBC, “The maulana came out of the mosque with a group of girls wearing a burqa and carrying a handbag. The girls protested when he was stopped. But the officers were suspicious and after a search, Maulana Abdul Aziz was identified and arrested.” According to another version of the maulana’s failed flight to freedom, put out by AFP, he was “picked out” by security officials “because of his unusual demeanour”. The agency quoted an official as saying, “The rest of the girls looked like girls, but he was taller and had a pot belly.” A third version, which was gleefully related to me by a Pakistani journalist, was far more delightful. Apparently, the maulana decided to wear women’s shoes to make his disguise as authentic as possible. After much rummaging in the dark as bullets whizzed through shattered windows and shells landed on the roof of the women’s madarsa, he found a pair of high heels, slipped them on, and tottered out with a group of women, clutching a handbag. There was a problem though. The shoes were a size too small for the him and he couldn’t quite keep his balance on the high heels. It was this comical sight that drew the attention of security officials. Gen Musharraf’s regime charged Maulana Abdul Aziz with murder, incitement and kidnapping (of Islamabad’s prostitutes). The Pakistani Supreme Court, in its wisdom, decided to let him walk free on April 16, 2009. Public memory being notoriously short, the maulana was accorded a ‘rousing reception’ when he returned to Lal Masjid.

In more recent days, one of the Taliban suicide-bombers who attacked guest houses in Kabul on February 26, killing six Indians and other foreigners, is believed to have worn a burqa to avoid detection by security guards. It was a common trick used by Palestinian terrorists when suicidebombings were a feature of daily life in Israel. Meanwhile, our Supreme Court is hearing a petition seeking exemption for burqa-clad Muslim women from getting themselves photographed while registering as voters or revealing their faces to officials at polling booths, keeping in mind their “religious sensitivities”. On March 1, Muslims ran riot in Shimoga and Hassan in Karnataka, allegedly enraged by an article published by a local daily, Kannada Prabha, penned by dissident Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen, questioning the religious basis of forcing Muslim women to wear the burqa. Taslima Nasreen has since clarified that she did not send the article to Kannada Prabha for publication. It transpires that the daily took the article from her website, but these details are not germane to the organised mob fury which resulted in the death of two persons.


Since we began with an anecdote, it would be in order to end with another. The former ‘Grand Mufti of Australia’, Sheikh Taj al-din al-Hilali, wanted for inciting terrorism in the country of his origin, Egypt, is given to describing women who do not wear the burqa as “uncovered meat” and blaming them for “enticing rapists”. On one occasion, while addressing the faithful after Friday prayers at Lakemba Mosque in Sydney, Sheikh Taj al-din al-Hilali rose to the defence of a serial rapist, Bilal Skaf, asserting, “If I come across a crime of rape, kidnap and violation of honour, I would discipline the man and teach him a lesson in morals and I would order the woman to be arrested and jailed for life. Why? Because, if she hadn’t left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it... If one puts uncovered meat out on the street or the footpath or the garden or the backyard without a cover, then the cats come and eat it. Is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat?”

Must we let ulema who insist “women should not be seen in public as they cause social turmoil” answer that question? What do you think?

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on March 7, 2010.]

Islam's stockpile of human bombs

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had promised his people and the Muslim ummah the ‘Islamic Bomb’. He didn’t live to see his promise fulfilled by a thieving AQ Khan. But given the reality of mutually assured destruction just in case someone is tempted to push the button, Pakistan has to perforce keep the ‘Islamic Bomb’ in safe custody, a useless totem of power. But there’s a far more easily accessible variant of the ‘Islamic Bomb’ which is used with sickening regularity by those who are thrilled at the sight of human gore and flesh, preferably that of women and children. It is called the ‘Human Bomb’.

Before Islamist suicide-bombers became dime-a-dozen, theorists would agonise over what made a man or a woman voluntarily pull the trigger of an explosives laden belt or jacket, thus blowing himself or herself up along with unsuspecting victims, for instance children in a school bus in Israel. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam had perfected the art of using the ‘human bomb’, despatching young men and women to commit dark deeds of mass murder or targeted killings, as in the case of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. But the LTTE’s suicide-bombers were driven by ideology, no matter how twisted and perverse it may have been. The cadre followed the leader’s command, or were executed for defiance.

It could be argued that the Islamist ‘human bomb’ is equally driven by ideology — the ideology of hate which fuels jihad in our times. But that would be a simplistic explanation. Perhaps a more abiding reason could be found in the faith they seek to espouse through their ghastly expression of fealty to Islam. The Quran variously praises the “man who gives his life to earn the pleasure of Allah...”, men who “fight in His cause, and slay and are slain…”; it promises rewards for the martyr, “be he slain or be he victorious”. The Hadith (Bukhari) extols the virtues of the ‘martyr’: “I would love to be martyred in Al1ah’s cause and then get resurrected and then get martyred, and then get resurrected again and then get martyred and then get resurrected again and then get martyred.” That and the promised pleasures of zannat with doe-eyed virgins.

The Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, a kindly man of wisdom with whom I had several enlightening conversations during my stay in Egypt, would often point out the fallacy of quoting scripture to justify terror, especially suicide-bombing. “Those were different times, we live in a different world. We must understand the text in its context.” Grand Sheikh Tantawy, despite heading Sunni Islam’s most famous theological centre and the world’s oldest surviving centre of learning, had nothing but contempt for those who sought martyrdom through terror. While preachers of hate like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who runs the most popular portal on Islam, have glorified suicide-bombers and exhorted followers to tread the path of violence as it leads directly to heaven, Grand Sheikh Tantawy has unhesitatingly described them as “enemies of Islam”.

Much as we would like the voice of Grand Sheikh Tantawy to drown the murderous discourse of lesser imams and self-appointed standard-bearers of Islam, unfortunately he and his tribe are in an awful minority. What prevails over the faithful who are easily persuaded by chapter and verse is the constant chant of the virtues of ‘martyrdom’, of becoming a shahid for the cause of faith: They are brainwashed into believing that the road to heaven is made shorter for those who “slay and are slain”, who are “martyred in Allah's cause”. Many of the suicide-bombers are illiterate or semi-literate, but there are also those who have not allowed their education to come in the way of their belief. Mohammed Atta, who flew a hijacked plane into the World Trade Center, was not educated in a madarsa, nor did Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian ‘underpants bomber’ who almost brought down a trans-Atlantic flight last Christmas, suffer denial and deprivation.

Yet, there is no single pattern or explanation to what drives men and women into committing a horrific act of self-destruction aimed at killing innocent people. Reem Riyashi, a 22-year-old mother of two toddlers, blew herself up at a check-post on Israel’s border with Gaza in January, 2004. It was publicised by Hamas as the ultimate expression of loyalty to Islam and sacrifice for the ummah. In a video tape recorded hours before she became a ‘martyr’ and which was shown on a television channel controlled by Hamas, she was heard saying, “I have always wished to knock at the door of heaven carrying skulls belonging to the sons of Zion.” Later it transpired Reem Riyashi’s husband had discovered that she was having an affair with a senior Hamas office-bearer. The hapless woman was given the choice of death due to infidelity at the hands of her enraged husband or death as a ‘martyr’ by becoming a suicide-bomber. She believed the latter would fetch her redemption in the eyes of god, her family and society; her children would respect her.

How, then, would we explain why an Iraqi mother strapped her unsuspecting little child with remote-controlled explosives and blew her up as she raced to collect chocolates from an American soldier who would visit the neighbourhood every day to play with the children? Or the sheer cruelty of a Taliban commander who trains young boys and girls to become suicide-bombers? The BBC recently ran the story of a 13-year-old girl who escaped from home, terrorised by the prospect of being turned into a ‘human bomb’. She told the BBC how her brother, who is a Taliban commander, trains ‘human bombs’, among them his own sisters. Nor is it easy to explain why Humam Khalid Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, an educated Jordanian who is believed to have been on the CIA’s payroll and was given the task of tracking Ayman al-Zawahiri, apart from being trusted by the Jordanian authorities, blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan, killing seven CIA agents. His family had no clue about what he was planning to do; they thought he had gone abroad to study medicine.

Explanations are not easy to find for a phenomenon that defies logic. We are now told that MI5 has come across evidence to believe Muslim doctors who trained in British hospitals have returned home and joined jihadi ranks with the task of preparing ‘bosom bombers’ — women who volunteer to have explosives implanted in their breasts that cannot be detected by scanners and X-ray machines at airports. Technology and theory spun around a terrorist’s psychoprofile — there cannot be a psychoprofile to profile all terrorists — can help us only up to a point. Beyond that, it’s a grey area, a no-man’s land where logic is replaced by the illogical urge to die and destroy.

-- Kanchan Gupta.


[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on 07/02/10. (C) CMYK Printech Ltd.]

To forget would be to forgive

Nandimarg massacre of Pandits: Even toddlers were not spared by Islamists.

Twenty years ago this past week, Hindus were forced to flee Kashmir Valley, their ancestral land, by Islamic fanatics baying for their blood. Not a finger was raised by the state in admonition nor did ‘civil society’ feel outraged. In these 20 years, India has forgotten that outrage, a grotesque assault on our idea of nationhood. So much so, nobody even talks of the Kashmiri Pandits, driven out of their home and hearth, virtually stripped of their identity and reduced to living as refugees in their own country, any more.

Our ‘secular’ media, obsessed as it is with pandering to the baser instincts of Muslim separatists, waxing eloquent about the many sorrows of India’s least of all minorities, arguing the case for rabid mullahs and demanding ‘greater autonomy’ for Jammu & Kashmir so that the Tricolour doesn’t fly there any more, has not thought it fit to take note of the 20th anniversary of the new age Exodus. Our politicians, who salivate for Muslim votes and are willing to go to any extent to appease ‘minority sentiments’ — including approving the automatic though absurd inclusion of Muslims in the list of BPL beneficiaries of the Indian state’s munificence in keeping with the Prime Minister’s ‘Muslims first’ policy — would rather pretend this particular event never happened. Our judiciary, which endlessly agonises over terrorists and their molls being killed in Gujarat, has not thought it fit to set up a Special Investigation Team to identify the guilty men of 1990 and bring them to justice. It would seem Hindu pride, Hindu dignity and Hindu lives are irrelevant in this wondrous land of ours.

Tragically, Hindus have no sense of history: Those who have come of age in these 20 years, we can be sure, are ignorant of how the Kashmir Valley was cleansed of its Hindu population through a modern day genocide. To forget, it is often said, is to forgive. But should we forgive those who committed this monstrous act of criminal misdeed? Should we forget that the Government of India has disowned the Hindus of Kashmir Valley? Should we rationalise the remorseless attitude of the Government of Jammu & Kashmir towards the plight of Kashmiri Pandits?

***

Srinagar, January 4, 1990. Aftab, a local Urdu newspaper, publishes a Press release issued by Hizb-ul Mujahideen, set up by the Jamaat-e-Islami in 1989 to wage jihad for Jammu & Kashmir’s secession from India and accession to Pakistan, asking all Hindus to pack up and leave. Another local paper, Al Safa, repeats this expulsion order.

In the following days, there is near chaos in the Kashmir Valley with Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and his National Conference Government abdicating all responsibilities. Masked men run amok, waving Kalashnikovs, shooting to kill and shouting anti-India slogans.

Reports of killing of Kashmiri Pandits begin to trickle in; there are explosions; inflammatory speeches are made from the pulpits of mosques, using public address systems meant for calling the faithful to prayers. A terrifying fear psychosis begins to take grip of Kashmiri Pandits.

Walls are plastered with posters and handbills, summarily ordering all Kashmiris to strictly follow the Islamic dress code, prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcoholic drinks and imposing a ban on video parlours and cinemas. The masked men with Kalashnikovs force people to re-set their watches and clocks to Pakistan Standard Time.

Shops, business establishments and homes of Kashmiri Pandits, the original inhabitants of the Kashmir Valley with a recorded cultural and civilisational history dating back 5,000 years, are marked out. Notices are pasted on doors of Pandit houses, peremptorily asking the occupants to leave Kashmir within 24 hours or face death and worse. Some are more lucid: “Be one with us, run, or die!”

* * *

Srinagar, January 19, 1990. Mr Jagmohan arrives to take charge as Governor. Mr Farooq Abdullah, whose Government has all but ceased to exist, resigns and goes into a sulk. Curfew is imposed as a first measure to restore some semblance of law and order. But it fails to have a deterrent effect.

Throughout the day, Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front and Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists use public address systems at mosques to exhort people to defy curfew and take to the streets. Masked men, firing from their Kalashnikovs, march up and down, terrorising cowering Pandits who, by then, have locked themselves in their homes.

As evening falls, the exhortations become louder and shriller. Three taped slogans are repeatedly played the whole night from mosques: ‘Kashmir mei agar rehna hai, Allah-o-Akbar kehna hai’ (If you want to stay in Kashmir, you have to say Allah-o-Akbar); ‘Yahan kya chalega, Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (What do we want here? Rule of Sharia’h); ‘Asi gachchi Pakistan, Batao roas te Batanev san’ (We want Pakistan along with Hindu women but without their men).

The Pandits have reason to be fearful. In the preceding months, 300 Hindu men and women, nearly all of them Kashmiri Pandits, had been slaughtered ever since the brutal murder of noted lawyer Pandit Tika Lal Taploo by the JKLF in Srinagar on September 14, 1989. Soon after that, Justice NK Ganju of the Srinagar High Court was shot dead. Pandit Sarwanand Premi, 80-year-old poet, and his son were kidnapped, tortured, their eyes gouged out, and hanged to death. A Kashmiri Pandit nurse working at the Soura Medical College Hospital in Srinagar was gang-raped and then beaten to death. Another woman was abducted, raped and sliced into pieces at a saw mill.

In villages and towns across the valley, terrorist hit lists have been floating about. All the names are of Pandits. With no Government worth its name, the administration having collapsed, the police nowhere to be seen, despondency sets in. As the night of January 19, 1990, wears itself out, despondency gives way to desperation.

And tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits across the valley take a painful decision: To flee their homeland to save their lives. Thus takes place a 20th century Exodus.

* * *

After the Holocaust, Jews reflected on their persecution and resolved, ‘Never again.’ Yad Vashem is not only a moving memorial to the atrocities committed against Jews, it is also an archive that documents specific details, including names, addresses and photographs, so that future generations neither forget nor forgive their tormentors. Twenty years after the persecution of Hindus began in Kashmir Valley, we don’t even know how many men, women and children were stripped of their rights; how many were raped, slaughtered and maimed; their names; and, what happened to those who survived. Barring those living in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi, in the hope that some day they will be able to return to Kashmir Valley with their dignity and safety assured. Deep within they know, and the rest of us know, that is never going to happen.

And thereby hangs a tragic tale of callous Hindu indifference.

[This appeared as my Sunday column Coffee Break in The Pioneer on 24/01/10]

Artistic freedom yes, but not with Aurangzeb

Artistic freedom yes, but not with Aurangzeb
Artistic freedom in increasingly 'secular' India has come to mean the right to denigrate Jesus Christ and Goddess Shakti, as was done by a callow student of the fine arts faculty of Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda last year. But permission to exhibit exquisite miniatures and firmans related to Aurangzeb has been denied, because 15 Muslims and a bogus nawab have demanded so.
French journalist Francois Gautier's Foundation Against Continuing Terrorism (FACT) has painstakingly -- and at great expense -- put together a collection of 40 miniatures and firmans that tell the story of Aurangzeb's rule. The exhibition is called Aurangzeb as he was according to Mughal records. "We have taken care to present all facets of Aurangzeb, including his piety," says Gautier.
The collection was first exhibited to critical acclaim at the Habitat Centre in New Delhi. It next travelled to Pune where one lakh people visited the show. It was equally well received in Bangalore where the popular Gallery G hosted the exhibition. FACT then decided to take the collection to Chennai where it was supposed to be exhibited at the Lalit Kala Akademi from March 3 to 9.
The exhibition was inaugurated by N Vittal, former Chief Vigilance Commissioner, and B Raman, security expert and former R&AW official, March 3 at 5 pm. Some 100 people attended the inauguration. Since March 4, a continuous stream of people came to see the exhibits.
On March 5, a group of 15 Muslims (Gautier says "they were no more than six") affiliated to the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam, Manitha Neethi Paasarai and other Muslim organisations, entered the exhibition hall and confronted FACT volunteers who were present there. Raising their voice, they rubbished the show and alleged that it did not portray the right image of 'their' Aurangzeb.
"They threatened they wouldn't allow the show to go on, that they would send hundreds of protesters after Friday prayers from a nearby mosque," says Gautier. The organisers lodged a complaint with the local police station and the next day policemen were posted at Lalit Kala Akademi.
Meanwhile, RM Palaniappan, manager of Lalit Kala Akademi, rattled by the protest by 15 men, asked FACT to pack up and leave. He panicked after Assistant Commissioner of Police KN Murali visited the exhibition hall, had a cursory look at the miniatures and firmans (written in Persian and hence unintelligible to him), worked himself into a rage and shouted at the organisers, lacing his diatribe with expletives, before stomping off, threatening to return.
On March 6, Prince of Arcot Nawab Mohammed Abdul Ali made a surprise visit to the exhibition at 3 pm. After spending some time looking at the miniatures and the firmans, he lashed out at FACT volunteers and accused them of "misrepresenting facts". He was particularly enraged by two miniatures -- the first depicted Aurangzeb's army destroying the Somnath temple and the second showed the destruction of the Kesava Rai temple in Mathura.
He insisted that the paintings amounted to "fabrication and distortion of history" and that Aurangzeb had never done anything to harm the Hindus. He demanded that the exhibition be immediately shut down and said he would take up the issue with "higher authorities" in the State Government. Later, the 'Prince of Arcot' issued a Press statement, claiming, "the exhibition seemed to dwell only on Aurangazeb's alleged misdeeds and not a word about his munificent contribution. The exhibition would only promote enmity between various groups."
By Thursday, March 7, "higher authorities" in Tamil Nadu Government had issued instructions to the police to shut down the exhibition. Murali, along with his men, stormed into the exhibition hall on Thursday evening and began taking down the paintings. "He was looking for the paintings showing the destruction of Somnath and Kesava Rai temples. He threw them to the floor," said a FACT volunteer.
The police say they acted after receiving "three complaints that the show would disturb communal harmony". They wanted the exhibition to be shut down immediately as the next day was Friday. The police also forcibly took into custody three FACT volunteers -- Saraswathi (65), D Vijayalakshmi (62) and Malathi (47) -- although women cannot be detained after sunset in police stations. They were not allowed to contact their families.
The hall has been sealed and FACT has no idea about the fate of the paintings and other exhibits, including the priceless firmans. "I am told some of the paintings have been damaged beyond repair. This is shocking, especially because what we have witnessed is vandalism by the police," says Gautier.

To save tigers in Sunderbans, halt Arabisation

To save tigers, halt Arabisation
Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli

It's been a bad week for tigers. A pregnant tigress, which had strayed into a village in the Sunderbans, was chased and beaten; she barely escaped with her life. Another tiger, an ageing male, which had strayed into an adjacent village, was lucky not to meet a similar fate. But at Panna National Park in Madhya Pradesh, a tiger died after being shot by poachers. The proud animals that once stalked vast tracts of our land, feared and venerated by the masses and hunted for perverse pleasure by India's dissolute 'royalty', are now reduced to struggling for survival in ever-shrinking forests that are supposed to be protected by the Government. The latest census presents an alarming picture: Our tiger population is down to 1,411 and dwindling fast.
When it comes to paying lip service to the plight of tigers, everybody does so -- politicians, bureaucrats, animal rights activists, forest rangers and national park guards are equally vocal on the need to save the big cats from going the way of the dodo. But precious little is being done to prevent poaching and halt the shrinking of forest cover. A slothful criminal justice system has made the task of saving this endangered species more difficult: Sansar Chand, a poacher and smuggler of contraband wildlife products who emptied Sariska of its tigers as the Rajasthan Government snored in blissful sleep, was arrested by Delhi Police on June 30, 2005. Two-and-a-half years later, he has been sentenced to five years rigorous imprisonment in one case while other cases are dragging on in lower courts. By the time the appeal process is over, he will have done his time, tigers will have become an extinct species and media will have moved on to other 'exciting' news. Such is justice in this wondrous country of ours.
None of us would have heard about a non-descript village called Deulbari in the Sunderbans, the mangrove delta where the muddy, silt-laden water of Hooghly merges with the sea in Bay of Bengal through innumerable estuaries. The water rises and falls as the tide moves in and ebbs in a cycle that has remained unchanged even as the profile of the Sunderbans has changed, first slowly in the last two centuries, and then rapidly, propelled by factors other than human greed. Deulbari featured on the front pages of national newspapers and on prime time television news after a pregnant tigress strayed near the village. Given the fact that tigers in the Sunderbans are born man-eaters (various theories exist to explain this fact, including the salinity of the water they drink) it is natural that the villagers should have reacted with fear. Nobody, not even animal rights activists, would want to be mauled to death and devoured by a tiger - or a tigress, for that matter.
Therefore, it would have been understandable if the villagers had chased the tigress back to the forest where she came from, or informed forest department officials who are trained to deal with such situations. Instead, they surrounded the cowering animal and hurled stones at it. Dazed and desperate, the tigress tried to claw her way up a young palm tree. Amused by her 'antics', the villagers lit a fire under the tree, which singed the tigress's skin. Thankfully, some forest department officials had arrived by then and they used a tranquilliser gun to bring the tigress, roaring in pain and agony, under control. Later, she was released in the forest from where she had strayed into human habitation.
The conflict between man and beast in the Sunderbans is age-old, each trying to survive against odds. Ever since the first settlers came to reclaim land for paddy cultivation, this conflict has existed. Richard M Eaton, in his fascinating study, Human Settlement and Colonisation in the Sunderbans, says, "For several centuries after 1200, the Bengal delta saw two frontiers, both of them moving -- a cultural frontier dividing Turk and Bengali and an agrarian frontier dividing forest and field." Muslim rulers gave 'land grants' to those willing to "settle new areas and pay revenue/tribute to the state". Since grants were also given to religious institutions and families associated with them, the process of converting forest into field "went hand in hand in certain areas with the Islamisation of local populations".
Yet, while converting forest into field or foraging for honey and firewood, the settlers were mindful not to disturb the predators or rob them entirely of their habitation. Both Hindus and Muslims forged a common faith of sorts in the power of the forest and its beasts (symbolised by the 'demon king' Dokkhin Rai) and in a protector who could keep the beasts of the forest at bay (Bon Bibi). Conventional wisdom would suggest that both Bon Bibi and Dokkhin Rai are part of India's elaborate 'Hindu' folklore to which Muslim peasants and gatherers also blindly subscribed, but they aren't. In his essay, 'Wild Fictions: Narratives of Nature and the Politics of Forests', celebrated author Amitav Ghosh (whose novel, The Hungry Tide, deals with life in the Sunderbans) provides an interesting version of the origin of three deities, Bon Bibi, Shah Jongoli and Dokkhin Rai, intimately associated with life in the Bengal delta.
According to this version, the legend of Bon Bibi begins in the Islamic holy city of Medina in distant Arabia. After much prayer and penance, a childless Sufi faqir is blessed with twins -- a girl, Bon Bibi, and a boy, Shah Jongoli. When the twins come of age, Archangel Gabriel tells them that they have been chosen for a divine mission in distant 'aathhero bhaatir desh', the land of 18 tides, to make it fit for human habitation. And so Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli arrive in the Sunderbans, over which Dokkhin Rai held sway. In the battle that follows, Dokkhin Rai's forces are defeated, but he is not killed. Instead, Bon Bibi and Shah Jongoli demarcate those tracts of the forests that will be his to control, the rest will be for men to till -- an unwritten pact between tigers and settlers to be honoured by both. Several stories exist about Bon Bibi's prowess; the most popular is about how she saved a young boy, Dukhey, from Dakkhin Rai. These stories are the foundation of the faith reposed in Bon Bibi and the reluctance to disturb nature's balance by offending Dokkhin Rai.
Or, if Deulbari is any indication, they were the foundation of a composite faith that transcended religion. Obviously, the legend of Bon Bibi, Shah Jongoli and Dokkhin Rai has begun to wear thin. This could be because of three reasons: Modernisation that demands rejection of tradition; Marxist repudiation of all that is rooted in this land; and, Arabisation of Islam in India. The first and second can be reversed; the third needs to be halted. For that, let's begin by imposing a ban on Tablighis entering the Sunderbans.