Recent events in India around the Ayodhya Mosque have once again exposed the facade behind which the Indian ruling class hides.
The soldiers sent to protect the old Babari Mosque at Ayodhya watched silently while the Hindu zealots reduced the Mosque to rubble. In what was apparently a planned attack the police colonel in charge sat in a folding chair smoothing his mustache while his men stood watching the mob swarming over the mosque? According to the newspaper reports next day when the fanatics who had begun constructing a Hindu temple atop the mosques ruins were driven away many of the Hindu soldiers removed their boots and offered prayers and donations to the blue-faced multi-armed idol of Rama installed in a makeshift shrine atop the rubble No attempt was made to remove the shrine despite a government pledge to rebuild the mosque.
Now make shift-temple sits atop the ruins of the mosque guarded by soldiers
Hundreds of people have been killed by the bullets of the Indian police in the riots that have followed the demolition of the mosque. Not a single shot was fired all day on Sunday at Ayodhya while the mosque was razed to the ground.
In Kashmir carnage on the unarmed civilian population continues unabated. In Kashmir during the last three years on an average one Kashmiri was killed every hour by the bullets or torture instruments of the Indian army for seeking a basic human right the right of self-determination. Indian soldiers routinely violate Muslim places of worship in Kashmir; even funeral processions are shot at. In Kashmir they shoot to kill and do not ask questions.
Such is the shame of “world largest democratic secular republic” which maintains the world’s third largest military force, 500,000 of which are deployed for colonial subjugation of 4,000,000 Kashmiris in the Valley of Kashmir, 10,000 Kashmiris have been killed in the last three years. Rafique A.Khan
Kashmir Human
Rights Foundation
Los Angeles, CA
Article extracted from this publication >> December 30, 1992
