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Three bitter old Brahmins

When Nathuram Godse of the RSS gunned down the Sub-continent’s apostle of peace, Mahatma Gandhi, little did he realize that about 50 years later, his 25-year-old associates would one day be ruling India, under the camouflage of a successor organization called the BJP. The fifty years of frustration took a heavy toll on the psyche of these men and made them bitter and more virulent than they normally were. Today, three frustrated 70 plus year old Brahmins with one foot in their graves hold a nuclear Sword of Damocles not only over the region but the world. What the Indians launched on May 11 and 13 was not limited to a nuclear blast but was more of a public announcement that they wanted to remove the Muslim tide that had engulfed them for over 10 centuries till the British freed them from the yoke in 1857, setting them completely free in 1947. While Hindus in general have learned to live together with Muslims — and Christians — in uneasy secular India, with discrimination an accepted fact of life by the minorities as a prime pillar of the caste-ridden Hindu religion, a small minority among the Brahmin sect is violently and virulently dedicated to persecuting Muslims, not limiting this to discrimination only. This is the same crowd that mindlessly carried out the razing of the Babri Masjid and are engaged in making a Ram Temple in its place.

 The core issue between Pakistan and India remains Kashmir, where the UN Security Council mandated a plebiscite 50 years ago to ascertain the wishes of the majority of the populace. Almost for a decade now, a home-grown indigenous revolt has been sweeping the Vale of Kashmir. While unofficial outside help from Azad Kashmir and Pakistan is only logical and cannot be denied, the fact remains that no uprising can remain alive for so long in the face of half a million troops using brutal suppression methods without having strong indigenous support. Soon after the explosions the newly elected BJP supremo Thakre called for “freeing” of Azad Kashmir, others followed suit. Pakistan was not only threatened with war, but Indian PM Vajpayee expressly stated that in case of war they would use the nuclear option and that Pakistan should learn to live with the changed environment i.e. India’s regional hegemony. The final straw was the appointment of L K Advani, the previous BJP supremo and the present Home Minister, as the Union Minister responsible for Kashmir. Advani was the main instigator of Hindu violence over Babri Masjid. In public meeting after public meeting, BJP leaders taunted Pakistan to adjust to the new realities, offers for talks by the Pakistan PM were scornfully dismissed except “if Pakistan came with bowed head”. Playing to the gallery, the unholy trio whipped up religious nationalist frenzy and for the first time the world saw the ugly face of “Hindutva”, of Hindu fundamentalism, a form of neo-Nazism far more virulent than Nazism. The Nazis had Jews as their target for extermination, the BJP hard-core has Muslims as their target. Coincidentally, both the Nazis and BJP have the Swastika as their symbol. It is not so well-known internationally that Christians suffer as much persecution as Muslims, in eastern India the various ethnic tribes that are carrying out an armed insurgency for over 50 years include Nagas, Mizos and Manipuris. Very recently they have been joined by the Bodos. As regards Sikhs, the Khalistan Movement is still alive as is the Buddhist revolt for Gorkhaland and a more secular movement called the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). If Jews had been in any numbers in India, they would have faced far worse than in Second World War in Germany. However, it is the Muslims who have to bear the brunt of this small clique of closed minds within the Brahmin sect and since Pakistan symbolises defiance to their domination in the region, as well as a refusal to accept Occupied Kashmir as Indian territory, the brunt of their anger is reserved for Pakistan.

South Asia was desperately looking for economic emancipation prior to the Indian blasts. While the rest of the world is seeing an economic boom on the verge of entering the 21st century, only a small percentage of that prosperity had effected South Asia’s teeming millions, particularly those below that poverty line. At least 400 million (more than the population of the rest of the countries of South Asia) in India live in primitive conditions, with scant food, clothing, shelter, medicine, drinking water, sewerage, etc facilities. As far back as 1979, the region recognized that it was cooperation between the States that would usher in economic prosperity, thus was South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Treated initially with suspicion by India as a ganging-up of regional countries against itself, by 1998 SAARC had been turned into an instrument of Indian political and economic design, the only country showing independence being Pakistan, even Bangladesh and Sri Lanka very much taking their cue from South Block, HQ of India’s Foreign Ministry in New Delhi. The Gujral Doctrine was the soft face of Hindu fundamentalism, the only good thing about the BJP doctrine is that it calls a spade a spade and takes off the mask. Only the style has changed, the content and context, Indian hegemony, remains the same.

When the Nazis first came to power in Germany in 1933 they were a minority. By appealing to the basic instinct of Germans against the Jews, they roused the majority of the populace on their side. By fulminating against the excesses of the Versailles Treaty, they roused German nationalism. The combination of religious intolerance and pan-Germanism eventually gave to Hitler in a couple of years the mandate he wanted for the Nazis. The world could have stopped him at any time, they had the means and the reason but in a shameful display of international indifference they allowed Nazi Germany to annex smaller neighbouring countries without interference and only mild protest. This culminated in the appeasement at Munich by Chamberlain in 1938 which saw Czechoslovakia being handed over by the British and the French to the Germans in the hope of “peace in our time”, to quote Chamberlain. What Britain and France refused to do on the occasion of Indian nuclear blasts in May was also symbolic, the Indians only got mild condemnation without imposing sanctions. The BJP came in as a minority government, by fanning religious nationalism (and the hate inherent) they may even become a majority, Hitler-like, in the next elections. The weak world reaction gave a strong signal to the Brahmin trio to go ahead and browbeat Pakistan. As much as I was one of those who advised dynamic restraint, in the end the provocations were too much to stomach for anybody. People who lived in the US pre-World War II really had no idea as to the intimidation Hitler was using on his neighbours and his own countrymen, similarly people in the West have no knowledge of how much the Indians rubbed our noses in the dust in the days after their May 11 nuclear blast and the days preceding the Chaghi blasts. It was not only humiliating, it was downright suffocating.

We will continue to have differences with India but not necessarily of the violent kind espoused by the BJP. We can have peace in our lifetime if we can equitably resolve the core Kashmir issue, with peace will come prosperity as our complementary economies mesh together to provide an engine of growth. Taken together South Asia has the same population as China and the same hunger for economic emancipation that has propelled China into an economic power. What we need is peace, a lasting peace based on mutual respect, not one of domination and sufferance. That peace is possible but not while three bitter old Brahmins with one foot in the grave want to drag the future of the sub-continent down with them into oblivion.

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