As Indira Gandhi was getting red carpet welcome in Arab countries assuring them that our Muslims are treated so well and urging them to invest their petrodollars in India, we hear heart-rending reports of massacre of Muslim in Bihar Sharif and communal riots in Lucknow and Agra.
According to newspaper reports about 300 people are killed in Bihar Sharif, although the official figure of the dead is put at 50 at the time of writing this. While in the entire three month long caste war of Gujarat, the total dead is officially put at about 50, in mere three days of rioting in Bihar Sharif, the official figure of the dead reached 50 or so. In Moradabad, in a day about 1,000 Muslims are reported to have been killed. Does it mean the Muslim life is the cheapest in India? How can such ghastly thing happen in this “Land of Ahimsa” ? That too when Indira Gandhi is busy wooing the Muslim countries and selling out “secularism”.
Bihar Sharif has a population of 1-60 lakhs of which Muslims constitute about 50% .
According to the Patna based Special Correspondent of the “Hindu”, a newspaper whose name itself indicates its attitude towards Muslims, minorities were the worst sufferers. The Bihar Govt. was utterly callous and it got alerted only when Indira Gandhi rushed to Bihar Sharif. From newspaper reports, we can make out that the Bihar police and the administration were not moved by such large scale killing of Muslims.
If the ‘Hindu’ itself had to admit that the Muslims were butchered like anything, what could be the magnitude of the massacre?
PRESS REPORTS
To understand the gravity of the situation, we would like to quote few samples of the press reports from the so-called “national press”, which is hardly sympathetic to the plight of minorities. And all the reports that we quote here below are from the Hindu journalists.
HINDU: (May 12) “The real story of communal flare-up in Nalanda can be told only after sanity returns to the strife-torn countryside and passions cool down.
Meanwhile, suffice it to say that what happened in villages around Bihar Sharif, the district headquarters of violence-prone Nalanda during the first four days of the flare-up, is shocking beyond words.
It would be a misnomer to describe the communal violence in Nalanda as a riot or clashes. It was a one-sided affair with minority community at the receiving end. Except in Gulani village under Deepnagar police station, marauders, a motley mob of communalists and rapists met with little resistance
THE STATESMAN: Staff correspondent reporting from Bihar Sharif itself (May 7) says how mercilessly Muslims were massacred He also gives the names of those butchered.
WHO PROVOKED?
In Smt. Handisha’s family, a six-year-old baby was also hacked to death. One Lt. Col. Sahaya’s son was dragged out of the bus and murdered. Just because he was sporting a beard, he was mistaken to be a Muslim. The correspondent describes the area as the “desert of hatred and barbarity.
TIMES OF INDIA: (May 3) Staff correspondent Janak Singh refers to the attack on a funeral procession. He says “several local residents put the blame on R.S.S. elements active in the town”. He also refers to the attack on Muslims engaged in Friday prayers. At least eight people were killed in this.
INDIAN EXPRESS: (May 5) Its staff correspondent points out one Mohammed Murtaza, a bidi worker, saying “I have lost 7 members of my family”. Mihir Mukerjee of the Statesman reporting (May 9) from Chorsua says “riots on such a largescale had never been witnessed in the area since 1946”.
P. K. Krupakaran, the Indian Express staff correspondent at Patna, (May 14) in a review of the Bihar Sharif incidents, says how Hindu communal elements were responsible for provoking the violence. He says that full three months before the riots there was a clash between the two communities. The cause, some Hindus had planted idols on the Muslim dargahs and graveyards. No doubt the land belonged to the Govt. but the Muslims had been using these lands for years. Why did the Hindus indulge in this provocation?
What type of “secularism” we are practicing? The April 30 clash, which is the beginning of bloody riots, Krupakaran says war between the Yadavas and the Muslims. It was not a clash between the high caste Hindus and the Muslims. Backward class (OBCs) are as poor, if not poorer than the Muslims. Their poverty is mainly due to oppression sanctioned by the Hindu religion. And yet the OBC leaders and our Left movement have not tried to educate them on this vital aspect.
R.S.S. HAND
How long the poor people of India go on killing each other? Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra has brought to light yet another important point. He said Hindu-Muslim clashes in villages was something unknown in Bihar after 1947. But this time the Hindu communalists took violence to villages as well.
The Hindu-Dalit (caste) riots used to be a rural phenomenon. But the Hindu-Muslim (communal) riots an urban phenomenon. Just as the communal riots are spreading to villages, caste riots are spreading to cities. The Gujarat caste war was inaugurated at Ahmedabad.
In caste war and communal riots, we are breaking no grounds. What a tremendous progress we have made-thanks to secularism, ahimsa and socialism!!! Indira Gandhi, Jagjivan Ram, Devaraj Urs and others have already visited Bihar Sharif and their findings as to how Muslims were butchered have appeared in the press. But till the time of writing this neither the CPM nor the CPI has sent any team to this place. Nor did they bother about the killings of untouchables in Gujarat.
That is why the persecuted minorities of India – untouchables, tribals, Muslims and Christians – are hardly evincing any interest in the Left movement. But it must be noted that these four sections together constitute over 50% of the Indian population.
Jagannath Mishra never bothered about the Bihar Sharif carnage until he was forced to go there with Indira Gandhi. But he was quick enough to hold a press conference at Patna on May 3 to put the entire blame on the RSS for the Bihar Sharif incident. The CPI general secretary Rajeshwari Rao also held the RSS responsible.
As days pass, we can hear more and more people accusing the RSS for the Bihar Sharif riots. Each political party will try to fish in the troubled waters, but will do nothing to go into the basic issues that spark off Hindu-Muslim clashes.
It is easy to put the blame on the RSS and be done with it. Such accusations making RSS as the whipping boy, no doubt immensely please the persecuted minorities. Those political parties criticizing the RSS will get Muslim votes.
SECULARISM
But Hindu communalism is not the monopoly of the RSS alone. One need not be only in the RSS to be a communalist.
We have any number of communalists in different parties, press, judiciary, business and professions.
Persecuted minorities like the Muslims, Christians and untouchables all over India have been the victims of the Hindu communalism. We talk about “secularism” and go on persecuting Muslims and Christians. Indian brand of “secularism” .
We found ample evidence of this during our two visits to Gujarat where the Dalits were the victims of the Hindu communalism. In Moradabad, Biharsharif and Aligarh, it was the turn of the Muslims. Tribals and Christians are also victims of Hindu communalism.
In Ahmedabad, the very same Hindu communal elements did their best to turn the Hindu-Dalit caste war into a Hindu-Muslim blood bath. But owing to the effective steps taken by the alert Muslims of Ahmedabad and the Gujarat Dalit Panthers, such a holocaust was averted. We were immensely pleased to see the new-found friendship between these persecuted minorities at Ahmedabad. The Panthers’ official journals are printed in a press owned by a Muslim as Hindus refused to do this job.
ROOT OF THE PROBLEM
Muslims told us at Ahmedabad that these very Hindu communal elements let lose a section of the Dalits against Muslims in the 1969 communal carnage, in which unofficial but authoritative estimates put death toll at over 1,000 .
Therefore, it is easy to put the blame on RSS and close the chapter. But the roots of communalism in India are much deeper. Muslims, Christians, untouchables and tribals were being persecuted in India even before the RSS was born. Therefore, it is high-time the persecuted minorities go deeper into the roots of communalism and try to destroy it.
They cannot depend upon political parties to do this job. Because political parties, including the CPM and CPI, are not interested in social change. But what the persecuted minorities in India want is social change and through that economic change. Will the awakened sections among the persecuted minorities realise this danger, and work for social change?
