What happened to the India of our dreams?

Cry, my Beloved Country!

Aijaz Zaka Syed (VIEW FROM DUBAI)

4 September 2008

Until recently, many of my Pakistani friends would envy the pluralism and the culture of genuine tolerance in the world’s largest democracy, attributing it to its democratic ethos.  This general worldview of India did not change even after the demolition of Babri mosque (1992) and Gujarat (2002).

The extremist Hindu organisations like RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal have been concerned by the massive proselytizing by Christian missionaries in the tribal areas of Orissa.  The missionaries have been doing some excellent social work, running schools, clinics and orphanages in interior Orissa where even government officials avoid going.  As a result, low caste Hindus and tribal groups, exploited for thousands of years, have been joining Christ’s flock in thousands every year.

The current wave of violence was sparked by the killing of a leader from the VHP, the militant Hindu organisation that was in the forefront of the Ayodhya mosque demolition and subsequent anti-Muslim riots.

Religious violence is hardly new to Orissa.  In 1999, an Australian missionary Graham Steins who had been working in the state for three decades treating lepers in remote tribal areas, was burnt alive with his two sons as they slept in their jeep.  The children had been visiting their father from Australia.     And the self same demons have come back to haunt Orissa today unleashing a reign of terror across the region where Emperor Ashoka gave up violence to promote Buddha’s message of peace.

And all that the state government and the federal government in Delhi have done so far is pass the buck to each other. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has rightly called the attacks a “national shame,” just as PM Vajpayee had done in the case of Gujarat in 2002 where his own party was in power and his protégé presided over the carnage.

But is that enough? Is it not the responsibility of governments to protect their people, especially the vulnerable among them?  The Orissa government finds itself helpless in dealing with the murderers and arsonists because they are led by the men who are part of the coalition in the state.  The government in Delhi is busy settling political scores with the Orissa government.  Instead of taking action to stop the carnage, the federal government has suggested a probe by the CBI -– India’s answer to FBI -– into attacks.  

Remarkably, the authorities that look the other way while the mobs ransack Orissa, hunting and killing helpless men and women like some cornered animals, have been extraordinarily efficient in dealing with the ‘Muslim terrorists.’

From the plains of the North India to the Malabar coast down south, hundreds of young Muslims have been swallowed up by India’s jails as the terrorists and ISI agents.   Although there has always been the ominous cloud of ISI and Pakistan hanging over Indian Muslims -- especially if they looked like Muslims – the extent of persecution of Muslims under the secular and liberal UPA government is truly shocking.

Even though one has been reading and hearing about the harassment of Muslims in Indian press from time to time, the big picture revealed by the Tehelka magazine (www.tehelka.com) and the recent open, people’s courts held by human rights groups in Hyderabad is incredibly horrifying. I can’t believe this is happening in my own country.  From fake encounters to torture to old fashioned terror tactics, the world’s biggest religious minority today faces the kind of terror that it did not experience even under the long British rule. Today, the Muslims have become enemies of the state in their own land.

The then BJP-NDA government started the witch-hunt of the Muslims by banning the SIMI (Students Islamic Movement of India) in September 2001 -- days after the 9/11 events in the US.    Not only the offices of the obscure outfit hopelessly dreaming of Muslim glory were shut and sealed but hundreds of innocents from across the country were also thrown behind bars in the name of fighting terror.

  Is this Gandhi’s India? Whatever happened to the India of our dreams, the champion of non-violence and tolerance? And where’s this country headed? I do not know. But I fear and cry for my country.

Read it all