ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

By Asif Haroon Raja | Doom Sayers predict Pakistan’s fate similar to Yugoslavia that was split into six states. Such gloomy assessments which started to appear in western press from 2005 onwards sounded mythical and figment of imagination of Pakistan’s adversaries. The way events have unfolded in the last three years, it now seems that such predictions may not be altogether haywire. Instead of sleeping over the reports of leading US and western think tanks, our policy makers should have got alerted and carried out series of critical analyses and gone to the bottom of such reports and determined whether the idea of balkanisation of Pakistan was cooked up to create feelings of despondency or the authors had floated it under a well-planned agenda.

The speculations howsoever mischievous in intent give insight to the deep-seated antagonist feelings nurtured against Pakistan.. After all, why such scenarios are not fabricated for India which is an ethnic museum and where 19 insurgencies and separatist movements are raging for the last five decades. India has a tainted history of meddling into the affairs of all its neighbours. It was the first country in the region to plan the dismemberment of its neighbour Pakistan and carried out massive cross border terrorism to fulfil its sinister objective in 1971. It has all along striven to force South Asian states to accept Indian hegemony and never hesitated from resorting to naked force or economic strangulation or indulging in Chanakyan tactics to achieve its nefarious designs.

The ugly face of Hindu fanaticism was seen during the Partition of India when the notorious RSS Hindu squads instigated the Sikhs and in collaboration with them brutally butchered lacs of Muslims in East Punjab and other parts of India while they were on their way to the newly born country Pakistan. The communal frenzy took the lives of two million people. The partition plan arrived at by the outgoing British had been agreed to by the Congress and the Muslim League but the Indians had not accepted vivisection of India and wanted to seek revenge.

Hindu-Muslim riots in India became a norm and in each riot the Muslims were vandalised. Besides taking several steps to cripple Pakistan in its infancy, India went to the extent of stopping the flow of rivers Ravi and Sutlej in 1948 to turn Pakistan into a barren wasteland. The World Bank came to Pakistan?s rescue and water was restored. Despite the Indus Basin Treaty signed between the two countries in 1960, India in violation of the Treaty started to build dams on rivers flowing into Pakistan to be able to choke or flood the rivers. In August-September this year, India applied the water strategy by stopping flow of water in River Chenab and reports are that Indian planners have finalised plans to turn western Punjab into wasteland by 2014.

Hindu bigotry was witnessed in June 1984 when the Indian soldiers ransacked the holiest shrine of the Sikhs Golden Temple and massacred one thousand Sikhs holed up in the temple and made no attempt to heal their wounds. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated in October 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards, the Hindus targeted the turban donning Sikhs and killed them in thousands. The state administration closed its eyes and did nothing to prevent the frenzied crowds from committing genocide and raping Sikh women.

Legitimisation of communal violence first by Indira Gandhi and then by her son Rajiv led to phenomenal growth of communal forces. In 1988, there were 611 cases of communal violence and in 1989, 701 incidents and 802 deaths; in 1990, 1404 incidents took place resulting in 1248 deaths; in 1991, 462 lives were lost in riots and in 1992, 1640 deaths occurred.

On 9 July 1992, the UP regime allowed around 300,000 Hindu militants to storm Babri Mosque in Ayodhya and on 6 December L.K. Advani, leader of BJP led the assault to demolish the centuries-old mosque along with 30 other mosques. The Hindu zealots strove hard to build a Hindu temple in its place and anti-Muslim arson spread to all the major cities of India. Unspeakable atrocities were committed on the hapless Muslims with the active connivance of the police. In Surat, some of the gang rapes were committed under floodlights with video cameras documenting the holy crusade.

Hardly had the wounds of Indian Muslims dried up when the fanatical Hindus once again targeted the Muslims of Indian State of Gujarat with vengeance in 2002. The hair-raising carnage was another blot in Indian so-called secular history. 2000 Muslims were knifed, torched and hacked to death. Thousands of women were raped, their breasts cut off; their bellies split open, their foetuses speared. The State governor Modi himself gave a green light to the pogrom.

In occupied Kashmir, over one lac Kashmiris have been killed and thousands of women raped imprudently. The tales of savagery are too harrowing and lengthy to recount. Hindu extremists are now on the rampage against the Christians in Orissa where hundreds have been killed, nuns raped and churches desecrated on the self-created suspicions that the Christian missionaries are involved in converting untouchable Hindus to Christianity. The Hindu extremists derive a sadistic pleasure in burning alive their victims and torching their houses and carry these gruesome acts as one of their favourite sports.

Every year thousands of people get killed in India on account of home-grown terrorists. Bomb blasts are a regular feature. This year in Ahmedabad, as many as 21 synchronised blasts took place within a short span of 70 minutes. Latest in the series is the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. This port city has been rocked by bomb blasts six times in the past, the worst being in 1993 when 13 bombs exploded in quick succession. From 1994 to 2005, 47371 people got killed in acts of terror. In 2006, 2765 were killed, in 2007, 2598, and in 2008 till November 2235 have been killed by left wing extremists, Hindu right wing militants and insurgents. The Nagas, Mizos, Assamese, Maghalayans, Tripurans, Manipuris, Bodos, Arunchal Pradeshis, Tamils, Naxalites, Maoists, Sikhs, and the Muslim Kashmiris are still suffering worst atrocities at the hands of Indian security forces. Hundreds of terrorist groups, separatist groups, and insurgents are battling the Indian security forces for the lat six decades. Scores of armed Hindu extremist groups which are anti-minorities and want to establish Hindu state keep honing their weapons and receive regular training in martial arts to terrorise and vandalise people of other religions directing them to follow the Hindu customs and traditions to qualify themselves as Indians.

Indian army is notorious for its savageness.. It kills people in custody or in fake encounters and uses rape as a weapon. It has now been caught in the racket of terrorism. Investigations into bomb blasts in Maharashtra’s Muslim dominated towns of Malegaon and Modasa in Gujarat on 29 September led to arrest of some suspects including a serving Indian army officer, a Hindu monk and a nun. Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit was found involved in providing logistic support to Hindu militants to make bombs. He was also found linked with Samjhota Express Train bombing on 18 February 2007 in which 68 passengers including 50 Pakistanis were burnt to death when the train was on its way from Delhi to Lahore. Nine other persons including a retired army Major Ramesh Upadhye have also been detained. The arrested persons are associated with the BJP and al acts of terror were committed at the behest of BJP.

Till the arrest of Lt Col Prasad, India had held Pakistan’s ISI responsible for Samjhota Train episode. Prasad is said to be a founding member of Abhinav Bharat, a radical Hindu right wing group. There are strong indications that radical Hindu elements have infiltrated the rank and file of Indian army and arrest of two officers is just the tip of the ice burg. The Maharashtra Police chief and two other senior police officers who had traced Lt Col Purohit network were gunned down in Mumbai on the night of 26 November. The police chief was shot in the back and it was obvious that he and other police officials were bumped off to close the incriminating case. Police chief’s wife has described it a cold blooded murder by Hindu extremists.

Uranium ore theft from mines in India and nuclear smuggling has become a routine affair. Several cases of smuggling of uranium ore have taken place in 2008. If there is any country with nuclear capability in the world which is vulnerable to theft of its nuclear bombs by terror groups, it is none other than India. No country is afflicted by such large number of terrorist groups, extremist groups and separatist movements with dangerous agendas as is India. It also ranks equal to Israel in human rights violations.

The iron-clad caste system continues to reign supreme even in the enlightened 21st century while the so-called secularism has been reduced to a farce. The low caste Hindu Dalits are doomed to perpetual inferiority and continue to endure the tortures and humiliations of Brahmans. Some of the infamous extremist parties in India who have all along worked for Hindutva and are most bigoted and ruthless against other minorities are BJP, VHP, Shev Sena, Bajrang Dal, Jana Sangh, Abhinav Bharat and Kar Sevaks. No state institution has the courage to touch any member of these groups/parties. These organisations are intolerant towards Islam as well as Christianity and carry deep-seated animosity against USA and the west. Their venom against Pakistan is a well-known fact.

It is indeed most surprising that all the sins of India are ignored by the watchdogs of the west espousing democracy, human rights and religious tolerance. Despite India’s immoral deeds, it is still acclaimed as the champion of democracy. Taking into account the rising Hindu extremism and terrorism and the undying urge of Hindu zealots to convert India into a Hindu state based on Hindutva, which has produced hundreds of terrorist groups and given rise to dozens of separatist movements, it seems that India is ripe for implosion. Apart from the Hindu belt within central India, rest of the areas are likely to get detached to get rid of perverse Hindu influence that has reduced them to serfs.

Asif Haroon Raja is former Dean of Corps of Military Attaches Cairo who contributes regularly for national and foreign newspapers.