The Security Threat from Rohingya Refugees: Examining the Debate in a Larger Perspective

To my mind, there have been two elections not too long ago, one in Germany and the other in Gujarat in our own country in which the supposed liberals were compelled to show some deference to the sentiments of the majority. The presumption that the sheer numbers that the majority constitutes, secures it automatically in a democracy, and that its legitimate sentiments are undoubtedly bound to get respected by a government based on electoral majority franchise, has been proved to be a myth, which is why we see majority assertions in different parts of the world, though sometimes in ways that are morally and legally untenable. But since our left-leaning friends keep telling us that without endorsing any violence, we ought to sympathetically understand the Maoists bombing election booths killing innocent voters or jihadists killing innocents in large numbers, it may not be a bad idea to pause for a moment and without riding the intellectual high horse, think as to why majority right-wing movements globally are gaining traction, without seeking to stigmatise everyone associated with them as being fascists or even bigots, which is obviously not to condone bigoted or fascist attitudes, and indeed, just as someone supporting ‘secular’ parties like the Trinamool Congress going soft on Muslim rightist goons in places like Malda, the Congress which went soft on Raza Academy goons in Azad Maidan in Mumbai or the Samajwadi Party having a hate-monger and alleged riot-provoker like Azam Khan as a senior leader can’t be presumed to be a supporter of Muslim extremism, not everyone in the Hindu rightist camp should be branded without basis as having a nefarious agenda, and some of the genuine concerns and issues that the majority community can have, have been discussed here. Electorally, the ‘secular’ parties have consolidated vote-banks based on some Hindu castes plus Muslims, whereby Muslim extremism, if not specifically directed against those Hindu castes that are typically a part of the vote-bank, can be overlooked. True, when these parties have felt that Hindu sentiment at large is turning against them, they have, at times, gone soft on Hindu extremism too, which explains the Congress apparently not doing enough to check rioting by Hindu extremists in Gujarat in 1969 or Bhagalpur, Bihar, in 1989 or Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993 (these riots were not one-sided, though the Muslim death toll was higher) or the massacres of Muslims in Nelie, Assam, in 1983 and Hashimpura, Uttar Pradesh, in 1987 [which validates Salman Khurshid’s khoon ke cheente (stains of blood) confession vis-a-vis Muslims for the Congress], but to only see this side of the picture and overlook the Congress and other ‘secular’ parties otherwise going soft on Muslim extremists and seeking the patronage of clerics like Imam Bukhari (who supported the demolition of Buddha statues by the Taliban), or starting several minority-specific welfare schemes (implemented as badly or well as schemes for all), won’t be a correct assessment, and clichéd as it may sound, given the tragic episodes of terrorism and sectarian and ethno-linguistic violence among Muslims themselves in Pakistan and many other Muslim-majority countries and the lack of democracy in many of them, it is true that Indian Muslims are better off in many ways than Muslims in many other countries, which is not to say that we as Indians mustn’t do better for all our fellow citizens, irrespective of religion.

Barring some absolute bigots, it is nobody’s case that every Muslim is a terrorist. Apostates of Islam ("ex-Muslims") and even other critics of the Islamic scriptures have also contended that their critique of the Islamic scriptures (there are similar critiques of scriptures of other faiths, including by their apostates), holding controversial interpretations as accurate, does not validate stereotyping in a negative fashion the people we know as Muslims or even practicing Muslims, nor is terrorism or even theologically inspired terrorism a Muslim monopoly, as discussed here, and I’ve discussed the ideological roadmap to fight Muslim extremism here, and it’s known that jihadist terrorists are a microscopic minority of Muslims constituting a threat not only to those of other faiths but even fellow Muslims rejecting their worldview (and even generally, bombs and bullets in public places don’t differentiate on a religious basis). Indeed, resorting to hatred against Muslims as a whole would only help the jihadists, other than being inhuman, and indeed, it nothing short of disgusts me to see so many politicians, including ministers, from the Modi-led BJP, from time to time, making outrageous statements and even hailing the perpetrators of rioting and lynching, an affront to the rule of law.

That said, it would not be unfair to suggest that without speaking of every last Muslim (and I adore the likes of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, a practising Muslim with his own heterodox understanding of Islam, other than having several Muslim friends myself), Muslims as an aggregate whole have failed to embrace wholeheartedly modern constitutional secular democracy (how many such Muslim-majority countries do we have? - yes, there are a few like Albania and Burkina Faso, and many Muslims in countries where they are in minority like India yearn for sharia courts; indeed, most Muslim-majority countries are theocracies with human rights issues based on religion-based laws being less or more, but never non-existent, and it does matter that some problematic ideas in the Muslim-majority countries, be it Malaysia, as you can see here and here, or even the UAE, as you can see here, are often institutionalised in law, unlike in countries that aren’t Muslim-majority – the need for India to have good strategic and economic ties with many Muslim-majority countries is another matter, and not all Muslims in these countries favour the regressive legal interpretations of Islamic theology) and the sentiment of a global pan-religious fraternity is often widespread, which may not make one an outright extremist hating those of other faiths or not having any sense of affinity to one’s non-Muslim countrymen, but the slope to radicalisation becomes more slippery if one ardently believes in a yearning for theocracy of some form and upholding the exclusivist cause of one’s religious grouping globally. We are seeing this problem of Muslim radicalism taking root in regions in our own country even where the Hindu right has, for long, politically been a virtual non-entity and where there is a syncretic culture, like Kerala and West Bengal, and even in some basically very tolerant and foreign policy-wise very peaceful European countries like Sweden. True, other other religions have undergone their renaissance, and Islam has yet to, with liberals, moderates and extremist Muslims still debating for the soul of Islam, but that only means that Muslim extremism specifically is a threat that must be acknowledged as such.

In Germany, Angela Merkel from a Christian right-of-centre party went out of her way to accommodate Syrian refugees, many of whom indeed, as Shias, practitioners of Sufi Islam (Shias and practitioners of Sufi Islam have been targets of the ISIS and are largely not involved in jihadist terrorism, as much as many of them too are yet to fully embrace modern human rights values like gender equality) or even more puritan versions of Sunni Islam, did not share, at least to the same extent, the ISIS worldview of intolerance of other faiths, women’s rights, music and cinema, and were largely escaping their war-torn country for their own safety. That said, the fear was expressed that terrorists could find their way to sneak in among the refugees, and that some of the refugees may not, in an open-minded fashion, integrate into the German society, such warnings being raised even by liberal Muslims already settled in Germany, but the left-liberal chorus sought to outshout them, telling them their fears were misplaced. The result, however, was that other than the mass sexual assaults in Cologne (in which the police operating under Merkel tried to conceal that the perpetrators were refugees), there were repeated terrorist attacks by those who had sneaked in among the refugees, or worse still, by refugees who got radicalised finding it difficult to integrate in a different environment. (Even a constitutionally secular Muslim-majority country like Burkina Faso, on accommodating Muslim refugees from neighbouring Mali, has been facing a serious crisis of jihadist terrorism, unknown to that country earlier, and while Turkey’s secular and democratic credentials are becoming worse by the day under Erdogan, the purchase of oil from the ISIS to strengthen them against the Kurds has backfired with ISIS bombings in Istanbul, a city that has been housing many Syrian refugees.) Sure, most refugees may not be jihadists and even vice versa, but taking the risk has proved to be problematic.

In this context, Merkel became unpopular with her own people for having given asylum to so many Muslims, some of whom posed a threat to Germany. But she beat the anti-incumbency sentiment to return to power by coming up with stern steps to convey to her people that she was willing to take Islamism (right-wing political Islam) head on. She acknowledged jihadist terrorism to be the greatest security threat to Germany, called for banning full-face veils in Germany (which can indeed very well be a security hazard, other than being regressive) and demanded of Turks living in Germany to be loyal to Germany.

Likewise, in India, the Congress party, which has a long history of appeasing communal and regressive Muslims (since Rajiv Gandhi’s times) by coming up with a lopsided Communal Violence Bill that viewed a majority person killing a minority person as a graver offence than the vice versa (which has fortunately never become a law), subtly opposing the progressive Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case and having had a prime minister (Manmohan Singh) claiming that Muslims had the first claim over India’s resources, has now been struggling to portray itself as a party that openly respects Hindu religious sentiments, with Rahul Gandhi making a temple run in Gujarat and even flaunting his sacred thread.

In this context, the issue of refugees in India also becomes pertinent. Many have been very critical of the way the BJP has sought to open its arms to Hindu refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and on the other hand, labelled Rohingya Muslim refugees from Myanmar as a potential threat. Kapil Sibal from the Congress party has been pleading the Rohingyas’ case in the Supreme Court, and Shashi Tharoor tweeted in solidarity with them too, and this issue came up in the Gujarat elections with Amit Shah asking the Congress as a party to clarify its stand on the Rohingya refugee issue, while himself offering to help Rohingyas in Myanmar. Likewise, while the  Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, introduced by the BJP, makes Hindu, Sikh, Christian and Buddhist migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh eligible for Indian citizenship (not only Hindu migrants), the Congress opposed it as having a communal bias.

But are the concerns about some of the Rohingya refugees potentially being terrorists completely misplaced? Should India’s hospitality to refugees come at the cost of the possibility of a threat to the physical safety of its own citizens? These are legitimate questions that deserve to be explored, especially in the light of the experience Germany, France and even secular Muslim-majority Burkina Faso have had with the influx of Muslim refugees. Also, while examining the issue of non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan and Bangladesh and granting them Indian citizenship, does it amount to communal bias?

While there is something seriously wrong with the moral compass of anyone who gloats over the plight of the Rohingya refugees, as some anti-Muslim bigots in our own country have (who fail to realise that the same Myanmarese establishment expelled many Indian-origin Hindus too from that country, and there are Rohingya Hindus too facing persecution at military hands in and even fleeing from Myanmar, like other ethnic minorities like Chin Christians) and  no side is completely blameless in this conflict (as discussed here and here), the fundamental question vis-a-vis Rohingya Muslims for us as Indians remains whether they pose a potential threat to our national security. On this front, let me simply mention a few facts for the readers-



- Many Rohingyas have participated in jihadist action in Kashmir, as recently as in 2015.

-Using Bangladesh as a base, some of them have a history of having tied up with Indian jihadists, and Rohingya terrorists have been acknowledged as a threat by the secular political forces in Bangladesh (if anyone wants to know more about Muslim extremism in India with a Bangladeshi connect, that has been discussed subsequently in this very article).

-In Myanmar itself, Rohingya Hindus have faced persecution at the hands of Rohingya Muslim extremists (other than the Myanmarese military), something accepted even by Amnesty International (which is indeed not in the least biased against Muslims), and Rohingya Hindu refugees have been attempted to be forcibly converted by some Rohingya Muslim refugees in the camps in Bangladesh.

-Jihadist terrorists from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan have found a place in the Rohingya militant ranks, with the jihadists having leaders in Saudi Arabia, again showing that this movement is about Islamism rather than a pure ethnic liberation struggle, which is also signified by the name of their militant movement being Harakah al-Yaqin, which has a clear religious connotation, and is not even inclusive of Rohingya Hindus. Indeed, whether it is Kashmir,  Chechnya, Palestine or Rakhine, once a political movement has gained an overt Muslim religious flavour, it does become theofascist.

-An Al Qaeda operative has been arrested, who was seeking to recruit Rohingya Muslims on Indian soil.

Given these facts (without even bringing recent intelligence reports about Rohingya refugees in India into the equation), should we allow our sense of humanitarian compassion to overtake our own sense of national security? Sure, till such time as Rohingya refugees are there in India, they should not be unnecessarily subjected to any slurring or violence (which may end up radicalising even the moderates among them), but it does make sense to restrict their movements (something the BJP has rightly advocated, while distributing aid to the Rohingya regugees in Bangladesh and Rohingyas in Myanmar), and if you find that overly harsh, look at how much worse is how Muslim-majority Indonesia has treated Afghan Muslim refugees. Perhaps, a vast majority of the Rohingya refugees in India aren’t radicalised, but can we risk the minority of radicals, especially when they are not even Indian citizens, the way some Marxist, Sikh, Muslim and northeast Indian radicals, or even the upper caste Hindu extremists maltreating Dalits, are? I do believe that we should place our national interest first. This becomes all the more pertinent, given where a large number of Rohingya refugee settlements are situated - in the regions of Jammu and Ladakh in J&K, but not the Kashmir valley. Given that Jammu and Ladakh are very far away from the Indo-Myanmarese border, how some Rohingya Muslims landed up there in the first place (something over which the Modi government has failed to furnish an explanation for to eminent Hindu right-leaning journalist and Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta in parliament) and how some of them settled there managed to obtain Aadhaar cards (even in Hyderabad, a Rohingya Muslim has been caught with Aadhar cards, PAN cards and even Voter ID cards), with the refugees in Jammu also holding Permanent Residency Certificates enabling them to buy property, which non-J&Kite Indians are also not entitled to, is a mystery worth exploring, when Jammu has seen very inhuman, brutal attempts at ISI-backed ethnic cleansing of Hindus in the Kishtwar and Doda districts (as you can see here), eloquently discussed by Maj. Gen. GD Bakshi (Retd.) in his brilliant book The Kishtwar Cauldron: The Struggle Against the ISI's Ethnic Cleansing (the problems some people may have over some of his political views and manner of presenting them on TV debates is another matter altogether).

Lt Gen Ata Hasnain (Retd) of the Indian Army, a Muslim gentleman, has also warned of security a risk from the Rohingya influx, citing the experience of Europe, and even illegal Bangladeshi migration in India. Indeed, while most of the Bangladeshi Muslims illegally settling down in India may well be economic migrants, that some of them have indeed posed a terror threat is beyond debate, as you can see here, and many of them too have illegally procured documents meant for Indian citizens. Besides, there is also the increase in burden on the economy of a developing country like India failing to meet the needs of its own population, and illegal migrants (including Rohingya refugees) even adding to the crime rate (which is obviously not to label all of them as criminals).

So, if Bangladeshi and Pakistani Muslim migrants pose a security threat to India, should India, in the name of religious neutrality, not give asylum and citizenship to non-Muslims from these countries, many of whom are genuine refugees fleeing persecution? Despite the efforts of genuine secular Muslim intellectuals in Pakistan and Bangladesh fighting for minority rights, some like Salman Taseer paying for it with their lives, and despite some pockets of religious syncretic practices and some from the non-Muslim minorities emerging as prominent public figures (to read about some positive developments in Pakistan, see this article, and this one specifically on how everything vis-a-vis non-Muslims isn’t about gloom and doom), the systematic, one-sided attacks on non-Sunni minorities with considerable impunity (in Bangladesh when the BNP is in power) in these countries have indeed continued unabated. The non-Muslims of these countries pose no security threat to India, and there is no significant history of Hindus, Buddhists or Christians from these regions having engaged in terrorism, and what is more, India actually has a locus standi for the non-Muslim minorities of Pakistan (then including Bangladesh) under the Nehru-Liaqat Agreement, and the charge of lack of religious neutrality could have been applied had India opened its doors only for Hindus and not other non-Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh, but that is not the case, something the Congress must keep in mind before opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, introduced by the BJP, and on a case-to-case basis, Pakistani Muslim individuals not posing any threat like lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi (who was far from being a Muslim right-winger, was a critic of orthodoxy and criticised the two-nation theory) and singer Adnan Sami have been given Indian citizenship, the latter under the BJP, who has publicly furthered India’s narrative, as you can see here and here. Instead, the Congress should focus on the Kashmiri Pandit issue as it has some legitimate subject-matter to blame the BJP for only offering lip-service to the Kashmiri Pandits, the BJP having failed them on several occasions (as you can see here) with the Congress actually having taken some steps for them (as you can see here and here), howsoever insufficient. In fact, by opposing the bill conferring citizenship to Pakistani and Bangladeshi non-Muslim migrants, the Congress worsens its own case, with its baggage of having neglected the Pakistani non-Muslim refugees in India for decades, and while its leaders are apparently going out of their way to demonstrate compassion for Rohingya Muslims, it seems they shamefully want Pakistani non-Muslim refugees, many of whom are economically backward and had nowhere to go to, except neighbouring India, to continue to languish stateless! In fact, it is to the credit of the BJP that it has actually taken some steps for Pakistani Hindu refugees (as you can see here) as well as Hindu and Sikh refugees from POK (as you can see here), though more surely needs to be done, and the delay in giving them citizenship on the part of the current BJP government, and in some cases, seeking to deport them, is indeed inexcusable.

Also, when the Congress and the Left seek to engage in virtue-signalling with respect to the Rohingya refugees, and talk of how there should be no bias against refugees based on religious identity, they would do well to dig into their own past of how they have neglected, and at times, even harmed the interests of Hindu refugees. As Maj. Gen. GD Bakshi has pointed out in the book of his referred to earlier, some Hindus go so overboard in proving to themselves and others that they are tolerant that they even neglect genuine concerns of their own community, and I would add, often go overboard in even generalising in a negative fashion their own community, without putting other communities to the same benchmark (of the mildest biases among several people being branded as hatred on the part of Hindus, overlooking the other side), thus turning off many Hindus from the idea of Hindu-Muslim harmony (if such are its spokespersons) on one hand and validating anti-Hindu confirmation biases of many Muslims on the other, thus only deepening rather than bridging any divide.

Coming to the Congress, I, for one, am not endorsing the many bizarre and baseless conspiracy theories circulating about and even many other allegations against Nehru or his political successors from his family (like Indira Gandhi, who split Pakistan in two, being called Durga by Vajpayee). And it’s not like the Congress, even in the past, hasn’t shown any respect to Hindu religious sensibilities on any occasion (indeed, the party does celebrate Hindu festivals) or that it is hands-in-glove with jihadists or other secessionists – in fact, in Kashmir, Punjab and the northeast, it was the Congress at the centre and sometimes in the states that fought violent separatists, and  it was the Congress party that broke Pakistan into two in 1971, integrated J&K in India in 1947-48 and repulsed Pakistani designs in 1965. Also, P. Chidambaram, as home minister, ended the turf wars between intelligence agencies leading to several terrorist attacks being averted (including a planned Khalistani attack in Delhi on Diwali in 2011) and oversaw the extradition of terrorists Abu Jundal and Yasin Bhatkal from the Middle East. That said, on the whole, in its engagement in domestic politics, the Congress acquired a pro-Muslim image for seeking to communalise human issues like poverty and illiteracy, while pandering to and seeking endorsements from regressive clerics. I have already referred to it having a long history of appeasing communal and regressive Muslims (since Rajiv Gandhi’s times) by coming up with a lopsided Communal Violence Bill that viewed a majority person killing a minority person as a graver offence than the vice versa (which fortunately hasn't become a law), subtly opposing the progressive Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case and having had a prime minister (Manmohan Singh) claiming that Muslims have the first claim over India’s resources. Speaking of its attitude towards refugees, while it allowed many Afghans, including Muslims, to settle in India as refugees, and even gave Indian citizens’ rights to Tibetan Muslims for their Kashmiri lineage, and it didn’t do much to check illegal infiltration by Muslims from Bangladesh, the very same Congress party turned its back on Nepalese-origin Hindu refugees from Bhutan (to know about the expulsion of Hindus from Bhutan, see this), and didn’t do much to support Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan and POK, and allowed the Chakma Buddhist refugees from the erstwhile East Pakistan to remain stateless, something the Supreme Court changed only recently (Vir Sanghvi got it completely wrong when he wrote in 2012 that Indian governments have supported only Hindu refugees, and much of our ‘liberal’ class needs to be better with fact-checks before making statements that can create unnecessary anti-Hindu resentment). Given its past, its refusing to stand with Pakistani and Bangladeshi Hindu refugees for Indian citizenship but supporting Rohingya Muslim refugees is going to do little to win the confidence of many Hindus viewing it as a pro-Muslim party, something it can ill-afford if it wants to make more electoral headway.

Speaking of the CPI and CPI-M, on the whole, again, I am not one of those who would demonise the entire parties. They are, on the whole, mainstream left-of-centre parties [with a post-independence history of patriots like Capt. Lakshmi Sahgal of the women’s regiment of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s INA (no, Netaji was not a Muslim-appeaser), and Aruna Asaf Ali, who were willing to sacrifice their lives in the struggle against British colonialism, in their ranks] that are opposed to Muslim extremism - the CPI-M has been asking the centre to have the Popular Front of India (PFI), a Muslim extremist outfit, banned, it has unambiguously denounced triple talaq before the Supreme Court verdict when most ‘secular’ parties were shying away from doing so and in Kerala, arrested a Muslim extremist hate-monger, they have, time and again, condemned Maududi and the Jamat-e-Islami, as you can see here  and here. They have also (unlike the rabid leftist fringe constituted by the Umar Khalids and Anirban Bhattacharyas, who I have exposed here and here), been, for the last many decades, firmly committed to electoral democracy and strongly opposed to Maoism, having suppressed Maoists in West Bengal, and have been opposed to any threat to the unity and integrity of India, their men even having lost their lives for not toeing the line of ISI-backed Sikh extremists in Punjab and Muslim extremists in Kashmir, and even recently, they unequivocally acknowledged and condemned the role of the ISI in backing theofascist terrorists in Kashmir when the terrorists shot at harmless Amarnath yatris, and Communists, including actor Kabir Bedi’s mother Freda Bedi, even took to arms for India against the Pakistani onslaught in 1947-48. In Tripura, the CPI-M government of Manik Sarkar (a man of impeccable financial integrity), minimized violent Christian right-wing terrorism (specifically terrorising Hindus) to the extent that perhaps not a single innocent civilan lost his life to it since 2012, and he managed to do so with minimal human rights violations by the security forces and managing to lift the AFSPA in Tripura, for which he even won Modi’s admiration. While the CPI-M is indeed opposed to the right-wing political assertion of Hindu identity, the party per se is not against Hinduism as a faith (there are practising Hindus in the CPI-M, and the current Kerala CM is an admirer of yoga). Unlike some independent left-liberals reading a Hindu fascist conspiracy in the RSS-backed anti-corruption crusade with Anna Hazare as its face, the CPI-M actually joined hands with the BJP in supporting Anna Hazare's struggle, which, I dare say, the BJP betrayed. The current CM of Kerala from the CPI-M has been exhibiting ideological flexibility, working towards ease of doing business, the Kerala startup mission supporting private startups being a step in that direction. They have also introduced good welfare measures and other positive initiatives in Kerala, like these. Yes, sections of the Communists do have a complicated history when it came to the freedom struggle and the two-nation theory (also true for the Hindu Mahasabha), and even with China, but there never was or has been complete unanimity or uniformity on these scores among them.

With serious allegations of riots, land-grabs (remember the episode in Bhatta Parsaul in UP under the BSP or the jal satyagraha in BJP-ruled MP?) and political murders (remember Safdar Hashmi’s murder by Congress workers or even the murders of CPI-M workers by RSS-BJP workers like the vice versa?) facing almost every consequential political party in India, the CPI-M, while guilty of episodes like the reprehensible bloodbath of farmers in Nandigram, is not singularly guilty of these. That said, when it comes to refugees, the CPI-M has a blemish that can’t be washed away and will haunt it, when it takes an overly sanctimonious, unsuited-to-national security stand on the Rohingya issue, and that pertains to Hindu refugees from Bangladesh being mass-murdered in Marchjhapi in 1979 by their cadres for political reasons (though to be fair, they have, in recent years, supported giving Hindu refugees from Bangladesh Indian citizenship, and even raised their voice for Tamil refugees, mostly Hindus, from Sri Lanka).

Finally, I would like to end this article by addressing my Muslim countrymen. While fully acknowledging that not all of them think alike, and I have already acknowledged that Lt Gen Ata Hasnain (Retd) of the Indian Army, for one, is not very welcoming of the Rohingya influx, there are those of them rallying for the Rohingyas on religious grounds, and even the violent Raza Academy protest in Mumbai in 2011 was for Muslim lives lost in Bodo-Muslim clashes that had taken place then (but Bodo Hindu lives did not seem to matter to the Raza Academy) and for Rohingyas, even though the then Congress government had already announced aid for Rohingyas (as pointed out by a rational Indian Muslim friend of mine back then, as you can see here). Empathy for non-Indian Muslims as co-religionists, as exhibited by some Indian Muslims (I believe that we can and should empathise with people across the globe, but without any identity-oriented affinities as far as possible, except our country-oriented national identity being paramount) should not be allowed to come in the way of India’s national interest (indeed, more economically backward people in India would mean less resource allocation to every individual economically backward Indian, many of whom are Muslims, as this article discusses), and I advocate the same for Hindus, whose anger over the expulsion of Hindus from Bhutan or even Myanmar [most Indian Hindus, sentimentally (even if not in practice) care for India, as every Indian must, but bother very little with Hindu affairs in other countries, usually oblivious to the existence of Balinese Hindus in Indonesia or the ancient Angkor Vat temple in Cambodia, unlike some otherwise not-interested-geopolitics Indian Muslims seeking to take a keen interest in instances of Muslims being persecuted across the globe, overlooking persecution of non-Muslims by Muslims or even Muslims by other Muslims, often even conveniently choosing to believe only what suits them] or for that matter, the violence against innocent Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka (as you can see here and here) should not translate into seeking to sever ties with these countries (as some misguided Tamil Hindus in India desire as regards Sri Lanka), ceding them to Chinese influence. Even the secular government in Bangladesh has been weary of the security threat from sections of Rohingya refugees. I would like to offer my Muslim fellow countrymen a tit-bit in terms of my own interpretation of Islamic theology shared by many Muslims (I know that some Muslims would argue that I, as a non-Muslim, am not eligible to interpret Islam, but if non-Muslims are not going to try and understand Islam, how are they expected to not harbour biased views against it?) that suggests that the idea of a global pan-Muslim fraternity is anachronistic, and while enjoying freedom of religion, the nation-state should constitute the basis of one’s socio-political identity, so long as it doesn’t entail going and violating human rights of others (surely, that is never a legitimate option), but to err on the side of caution is, sometimes, a necessity. And Muslims mustn’t blindly hold any sympathetic-to-Muslims view from any non-Muslim, sounding like music to their ears, as being “unbiased”, and should factually and logically assess them; else, they should expect Hindus to take on face value any defence of the BJP from any Muslim individual, and if they want Hindus to care for their concerns as fellow Indian citizens invoking the constitutional philosophy, they too ought to give priority to Indian national concerns, including on the security front (as many indeed even do). Also, to my Muslim countrymen, I must say that those of you (I may emphatically assert that I am not in the least generalizing all of you, as is clear from what I have been saying all along in this piece) who wish to demonstrate your “secularism” and “human rights activism” by idolizing anti-AFSPA Manipuri activist Irom Sharmila and wrongly generalizing the Indian security personnel as all being murderous, pervert rogues by pointing to their human rights violations in the northeast (and not only Muslim-majority Kashmir to showcase secularism), just like harping on the problems of Dalits and Adivasis, or Christians targeted by Hindu extremists, ought to speak up more openly against your own politicians like Azam Khan (who hasn’t even been charge-sheeted for his alleged role in the riots in Muzaffarnagar and Sahranpur, unlike Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi, who were duly convicted and spent some years in jail, after which they were rightly or wrongly conferred bail, and my point is not with respect to how much evidence is available in which case for what sentence, but whether the narrative of “Hindu riot-instigating politicians always go scot-free and Muslims are only victims, not perpetrators of riots” is true, and I believe that the issue should be ‘powerful vs. non-powerful’, ‘vote-bank politics vs. the spirit of democracy’ etc., rather than ‘Hindu oppressors vs. Muslim oppressed’, which would actually be half-true or even false in many contexts), other instances of violence against innocent Hindus (take, for instance, the recent news of a Hindu boy in Bihar being murdered by Muslim extremists for marrying a Muslim girl, or the killings of innocent Hindus in a communal riot in Rampur over a petty issue of some Hindu farmers’ cattle having strayed into Muslim peasants’ farms or how before the Dadri incident, an innocent constable in Maharashtra was killed as a retaliation against the beef ban in that state, or how very many innocent Hindus were killed by Muslim rioters in Muzaffarnagar in 2013 and Gujarat in 2002 and not only the reverse), anti-Jewish hatred within your community, the forced displacement of the Kashmiri Hindus, also known as Kashmiri Pandits (as for rebutting the conspiracy theories and rationalizations offered about the exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus from their homeland, have a look at this piece), Shia-Sunni violence (which has occurred in India in places like Lucknow), the intolerance towards Ahmedias who are socially boycotted and occasionally violently targeted in India by Muslim extremists in India and whose right to free speech and freedom of religion is to a great extent legally denied in Pakistan, refusal to accept progressive verdicts of the Supreme Court as in the Shah Bano case, curtailment of females’ rights in Muslim communities in India in different ways, like disallowing them from playing football or acting on stage or forcing them to wear burqas in many cases, non-Muslims not being given equal rights in many Muslim-majority countries and being violently targeted in our neighbouring countries (if such Muslims can shout against injustices by the US and Israel in Iraq and Gaza respectively, they can certainly look at our immediate neighbourhood), blasphemy and apostasy laws in Muslim-majority countries and so on (and for those of you, Muslims, not genuinely caring about the rights of others, why do you expect others to care for the rights of Muslims?). I understand that many of you felt let down by Narendra Modi becoming India’s prime minister, but that was with a low vote-share (the votes of the majority of the electorate not in favour of Modi getting divided, enabling Modi to win) at a time when the anti-incumbency sentiment was at its peak, and with Modi, during the election campaign and for some time even before that, making it a point to demonstrate commitment to religious pluralism. Besides, those particular Muslims and left-leaning non-Muslims of the subcontinent who shy away from condemning Jinnah for the Direct Action Day riots (before which Jinnah said he wanted India divided or destroyed and after which he said he didn’t want to discuss ethics) or are willing to give him the benefit of doubt, those who shy away from condemning Kashmiri separatists like Yasin Malik for killing and driving away the Kashmiri Hindus (also known as Kashmiri Pandits) or are willing to give them the benefit of doubt (as for the conspiracy theories and rationalizations offered about the exodus of the Kashmiri Hindus from their homeland, have a look at this piece, and it is noteworthy that none of the Kashmiri Muslim perpetrators have been convicted, unlike hundreds rightly convicted in connection with the Gujarat riots for the massacres in the Best Bakery, Ode, Sardarpura and Naroda Patiya, and the Kashmiri Hindus haven’t even been rehabilitated the way the Muslims driven out from the village of Atali have, and while the media has rightly consistently supported the Muslims of Atali, it has actually been biased against the Kashmiri Hindus on some occasions – so much for our national media, on the whole, being supposedly biased against Muslims) and those who shy away from condemning Azam Khan for the riots in Muzaffarnagar and Sahranpur (it is noteworthy that he has not even been “chargesheeted” in spite of sting operations suggesting his involvement, while Maya Kodnani was rightly convicted, and my point is not with respect to how much evidence is available in which case for what sentence, but whether the narrative of “Hindu riot-instigating politicians always go scot-free and Muslims are only victims, not perpetrators of riots” is true, and I believe that the issue should be ‘powerful vs. non-powerful’, ‘vote-bank politics vs. the spirit of democracy’ etc., rather than ‘Hindu oppressors vs. Muslim oppressed’, which would actually be half-true or even false in many contexts) or are willing to give him the benefit of doubt have no business to be spitefully critical of those shying away from condemning Modi or those who give him the benefit of doubt for what happened in 2002.


Also, for those contending the irrelevance of the entity of a nation-state, well, I heartily agree that jingoism and chauvinism should be rejected, but so long as the nation-state is the basis of governance and citizens’ rights, it remains relevant, and caring for your home doesn’t amount to hatred for others in the locality; so, loyalty to one’s country and a commitment to humanity as a whole are not exactly in contradiction, but yes, to be concerned for the safety of one’s household and to limit the movements of outsiders in your home who can be a threat to your family, is only normal. Also, countries in the Organization of Islamic Countries like Malaysia and Indonesia, as also Pakistan, should certainly offer to take the Rohingya refugees if they have issues with the restrictions the Indian government plans to impose on their movements.

The author would like to thank his friends Karan Bidani and Ameya Kelkar for their help and support for this article.


By:

Karmanye Thadani
Knowledge Council