Reports from India that more than 200 Muslims have been killed and 1000 injured in Bombay and Ahemedabad in a week at the hands of Hindu mobs come as a grim reminder of the fact that India is fast emerging as a fascist power out to decimate its minorities such as Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, Buddhists and Dalits. The violence in Bombay has certain alarming dimensions. It is surprising that Hindu violence against Muslims should crupt again after a month of the destruction of Babn masjid at Ayodhya. Immediately after the December 6 events at Ayodhya, Muslims came out in streets in India to protest against the masjid destruction. But these protests were drowned in blood by India’s Hindu dominated security forces. The result was that Muslims not only lost their shrine but also 1119 dead and about 4000 injured in police firings. The latest wave of Hindu violence appears to be unprovoked. Reports from India suggest that BJP-Shiv Sena combine had organized “‘maha art is” (the great homage paying to Hindu gods) prior to the massacre of Muslims. In the course of one week Hindu mobs comprising 30 to 40 men in each group spread out in India’s financial capital, picked up Muslim houses, factories and shops and looted them or buy them down. The mobs attacked Muslims and killed as many as they lay their hands on or injured them. In line with the typical Hindu practice, the security forces sided with the antiMuslim rioters to confirm the charge once again that the Indian stale as a whole is violent, partisan and fascist. What is noteworthy is the Indian prime minister’s role. Most Congress(I) Muslims are frustrated with Rao’s pro fundamentalist behavior. The Indian union Muslim League chief noted that Rao had been giving the “same reply” to everybody to questions on Bombay. Sections of the Indian media is unhappy at the failure of the government to cope with the situation. I The events at Bombay and Ahemdabsd underline the political calculations of both the Congress (I) and the BJP. A few by-elections were scheduled for it is week to vacancies in the states’ Assembly and the Indian Parliament The BJP has been pressing hard the Indian prime minister to hold midterm election immediately so that the BJP could exploit the fundamentalist fervor at the cost of the ruling Congress(I). The latter has been dragged into following the BJP agenda. The two parties are in a race to gather as much support from Hindus as possible. One sure way of mobilizing the Hindus is to let them loose on minorities on the eve of such directions. This technique was successfully employed by Mrs. Gandhi in the by elections to the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly in 1982 and later to the Delhi municipal committee in 1983. Rajiv Gandhi further perfected it when he ordered a massive slaughter of Sikhs soon after Mrs. Gandhi’s murder and on the eve of the elections to the Indian parliament in 1985. Incidentally, the present Indian prime minister was then Rajiv ‘Gandhi’s home minister. In the context of Rao’s role in the antiSikh riots of 1984 and the latest revelations that the prime minister had a terrorist past are sufficient to hint that the antiMuslim riots in ‘Bombay are an engineered affair, engineered by BJPShiv Sena axis and stoked by the ruling Congress(I) most probably at the highest level. It is, however, a different matter that the ruling party finds the ground slippery and has chosen to postpone the elections indefinitely. The fact, nevertheless, remains that Hindu fundamentalism is as much on the BJP’s political agenda as on the ruling party’s, headed as it is by a hard boiled Brahman with violent and conspiratonal past Any expectation in the west that Rao is leading India to modernity and economic reform to sheer self-delusion. A fundamentalist regime in political and religious sense cannot suddenly transport itself into the world of economic and industrial liberalization. An Indian economist, A.M. Khusro, recently rightly noted that vast area of government policy in India remains out of reach for the ideas of liberalization. The unending Hindu security forces violence against Muslims in Kashmir (refer to the Sopare massacre), Sikhs in Punjab (refer to the killing of Bhai Gurdey Singh Kaonke and torture of the people of a whole village in Patiala district) and the latest carnage of Muslims in Bombay and Ahemdabad have a powerful message to give to the world: India is neither peaceful nor stable. It is suicidal to invest in or extend loans to that country. No wonder shrewed business men are is no great hurry to land in India with investment proposals.
Article extracted from this publication >> January 15, 1993
