Fitzgerald: Muslims and Hindus

Gandhi was unacceptably wrong about a number of things -- his advice to Jews to mimic Indians in their campaign with the British, and to offer "passive resistance" to Hitler, and if necessary to sacrifice themselves, takes the cake. But he was also remarkably ill-informed about the Muslim threat, the deep and permanent threat, to the "wounded civilization" of India (in Naipaul's phrase -- a civilization "wounded" by the centuries of Muslim rule, its cruelty, its mass murdering). And he certainly gave Muslims the benefit of every doubt.

After Partition, Muslims attacked Hindus, and Hindus fought back. There was an exchange of populations, but many tens of millions of Muslims remained in India, while a few million Hindus remained in West Pakistan (now Pakistan) and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). But because of the constant discrimination against, and persecution of, Hindus (as well as of all other non-Muslims), the percentage of the population of West Pakistan that is now Hindu has dropped from 15% to 1.4%, and from 35% to less than 8%.

The much smaller population of Buddhists in Bangladesh has also been persecuted, and of course Christians in both Pakistan and Bangladesh have a terrible time. Meanwhile, in India, the Muslim percentage of the population climbs steadily up, and no Muslims appear to be fleeing India to go to Pakistan or Bangladesh. So there continues to be population movement, but not population exchange. Hindus (and other non-Muslims) continue to be subject to Muslim terrorism and to Muslim demands, each demand more outrageous than the next, with no sign that Muslims are willing to own up to what is in the Qur'an, the Hadith, and the Sira. Nor is there any sign that they are going to own up to the incompatibility of Islam, and what Islam inculcates, with the beliefs, or the legal and political institutions, of Hindus, or Christians, or Jews, or Buddhists, or anyone at all who is non-Muslim and refuses to yield to the Sharia and to dominance by Muslims.

Eventually, and inevitably, Hindus and others upon whom war has been made, will react. And they will not stop until they have done to Muslims what Muslims have been doing to them, and have pushed many of them into Pakistan and Bangladesh, in a mirror image of the Hindus formerly pushed out of those places during the past half-century since Partition. It is doubtful that in the rest of the world there would be much, or any, sympathy for the Muslims dealt with in this matter. Infidels need not inure themselves, need not endure forever what has become or is becoming an intolerable situation because of the ideology of Islam.

Yet on the other hand, if they are put in this position, Muslims may win worldwide sympathy, for Muslim propagandists and their non-Muslim supporters, have successfully prevented the outside world, and even many of those who may be Hindis or of Hindu origin, from fully understanding what Muslim rule did to India, beginning with the 60-70 million murdered Hindus.

It is unfortunate that thoroughly modern young Indians or Indian-Americans or Indian-English are uninterested in this matter, or have allowed themselves not to become interested. They wish to signal to the outside world how thoroughly devoid of what they see as silly, nearly troglodytic attitudes of Hindutva, that they (those thoroughly modern Hindus) cannot be accused of such. And to prove it, they will always denounce Hindu nationalists, no matter how reasonable those nationalists might be (they are not all Hitler-praising like a certain politician named Thackeray -- no relation to Becky Sharpe's creator). Some of those young Indians apparently find it unseemly to be too interested in the pre-Islamic history of India (they might start with A. L. Basham's "The Wonder that was India"). And in the United States, those of Hindu descent may, far from India, and even farther from understanding the past and present and future menace of Islam as an ideology, have Muslim friends -- and, as so many do, they may end up confusing personal charm or even kindness or even romantic entanglements with a Muslim for the sweet reasonableness of Islam itself. And this in turn can lead to a tacit whitewashing of Muslim history.

Were I an Indian-American, I would like to find out about what Muslim rule meant for India. Why did Ibn Battuta report, with such bland indifference, on the mass-murders and enslavement of whole villages of Hindus in his "Rihla"? Why was it left to Sir William Jones, and a group of Englishmen, to rediscover or help to rediscover India's Hindu past? What is the real origin of India's Muslims and of Pakistanis -- was it that Islam was simply so wonderful and attractive, or where there other reasons for conversion to Islam? How many Hindu victims were there of Islam in India? What happened to all the temples? (Hint: see the list compiled by Sita Ram Goel). What did the India's own historians write about the Muslim invaders and rulers, as for example in the 2-volume anthology edited, in the 19th century (and recently re-published) by Dowson and Elliott? Why have such historians as K. S. Lal and Sarkar not received their due in the outside world -- or even on Indian campuses? How were Sikhs treated by Muslims, including the most important early figures? What happens to Hindus (and Sikhs) in Pakistan today? In Bangladesh? In Kashmir? How much Muslim violence and terrorism takes place in India, and is never reported outside of India? What happens to Hindus in Amsterdam? In London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Bradford, at the hands of their Muslim neighbors -- anything? Nothing?

Why do Indian-Americans tend to uncritically accept Muslim propaganda, and denounce -- without having read K. S. Lal, or Sita Ram Goel, or Koenraad Elst, or Sir Jahundath Sarkar, or a hundred others who have written -- any expression of interest in, or sympathy for, Hinduism and the Hindu past as something fit for only the most reactionary supporter of Hindutva?

Why is it only the most extraordinary and self-assured observers of Indian descent, such as V. S. Naipaul, who are capable of taking Islam's measure, without any fear of being labelled "Hindutva" fanatics?

These are questions to be asked, if not in Hindu temples and Sikh gundwaras, then privately, to oneself, just before ordering on-line a few books, to start with, by K. S. Lal.

And don't stop there.

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/022949.php
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