Hindu Self-Defence: Some Steps To Survive

Dr Koenraad Elst

Some Hindus ask me, as a sympathizing outsider, if I have any advice for them when they want to revive their fortunes. In principle, I have no advice; it would be arrogant to pretend to know something that the people concerned are not so sure about. But then again, Hindus are no different from others, they are subject to the same laws, so an approximative knowledge of their condition is enough to predict where they are moving and to say what they have to do to make the best of it. So, here goes.

Self-knowledge

The first thing Hindus have to do, is to know themselves. The great problem of Hindus today is that they have become sleep-walkers, forgetful of their civilization. It gets worse with every passing year, as the ever-larger Hindu middle-class is becoming Americanized both in consumer patterns and in values. Their knowledge of Western films and music is becoming bigger as their knowledge of Hindu tradition is lessening. And the worst is that increasing numbers take pride in their ignorance. In the past, it didn’t matter if you skipped religion classes. You would just breathe Hinduism.

You would know the tales from the Mahabharata and the Puranas through songs and theatre plays performed in your village square. Girls would learn Hindu traditions from their mothers and pass them on to their own children. But that can no longer be taken for granted.

In a way, the world has become more conducive to Christian-style religion. NRI-PIOs congregate in their temples the way Christians gather in their churches. They organize Sunday school for their children the way they learnt from their Protestant neighbours. India itself is becoming similar, if only because the same family pattern with two wage-earners is being transplanted. You can study religion on your own, he way the first Christians practised their religion (even in secret), against or at least without support from your surroundings.At any rate, unlike in the past, if you don’t make a deliberate choice to do something about your religion, chances are that you won’t. To Hindus, this is a new situation. In days  gone by, religion was just there, you fell in line with your surroundings, you did as everyone did. Now, to an increasing extent, you have to make a choice for it.

The law of inertia is no longer working for Hinduism; it starts to work against it. The missionaries know this; the Hindus, I am not so sure. But they can save their Hinduism by practising it. The very first result is that they themselves will realize again what Hinduism is all about.  Not otherworldly Hinduism but the kind that Krishna preached, on the Kurukshetra, with the real enemies and opportunities and the real world.

For Hindus abroad, depending on circumstances, knowledge of Indian languages is probably lost. In a few places, native languages are perhaps viable, like Hindi in Suriname or Tamil in Singapore. If Hindu families can speak their Indian language inside the home and transmit it to the children, so much the better. But in mixed families and in oceans of powerful languages like the Anglosphere, children or grandchildren are bound to take to the language of their surroundings, so it is a waste to still your guilt feelings as an immigrant by forcing your children to learn a smattering of Bengali or Kannada. It is better to teach your children Hindu values, and if this has to take the form of a language, let it be Sankrit, the key to the main Hindu scriptures. For the rest, let  them acquire a thorough grounding in Hindu stories and ritual, in English or whatever vernacular they take to, rather than investing your and their precious time in a language that is bound to die.

In India itself, English should be shown its place as first foreign language. Mind you, mine is a position against self-interest, for I will never have more fluency in an Indian language than in English; by contrast, all Indians and Westerners pleading for English happen to be self-serving. At any rate, an anti-English stand is not voguish, now that Indian politicians are not just sending their own children to English-medium schools while promoting vernacular-medium education for the common man, but openly replace vernacular with English schooling. This is a political choice: either Panjabis and Malayalis will speak English with each other, like Danes with Koreans or Congolese with Pakistanis; or they will speak an Indian language. If you want Indian unity, you’d better aim for an Indian language that will set India apart from the Anglosphere.

That Indian language can only be Sanskrit. At this distance, we can say that it was a fateful day when the first President of India, Rajendra Prasad, cast the deciding vote in the Constituent Assembly in favour of Hindi as link language, to the detriment of the other candidate, Sanskrit. Hindi was not accepted by the chauvinist speakers of the other vernaculars. One of the good reasons was that it was but a recent language, a common denominator between old literary languages like Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, Rajasthani and others. Hindi as it is, was deemed vulgar by speakers of highly civilized non-Hindi languages like Bengali or Telugu. It didn’t have the kind of prestige that could overrule such objections.

By contrast, Sanskrit if chosen as the link language would have sent a cry of admiration through countries like China and Japan, Russia and Germany, France and America. The state of Israel, that chose to make Biblical Hebrew its first language, would have understood very well that India made its main Scriptural medium into its second language. The Flemish, who waged a struggle against French-language masses all while accepting Latin masses as a matter of course, would have understood it if the Indians had preferred their common sacred language over a vernacular. Even the Muslim world would have understood it.

Most importantly, it would have been accepted by the Indian people. Speakers of the constituent members of the Hindi commonwealth would have had no objection, and speakers of non-Hindi languages (even Tamil chauvinists) would have had fewer objections than against Hindi. As for the English-speaking elite, it would militate no harder against one Indian language than against another.

The vote in the Constituent Assembly, fifty-fifty between Sanskrit and shuddh Hindi,  shows how far India has slipped, and what an outrageous and what an outrageous failure the so-called Hindu Nationalist movement has been. If the vote were held today, it would rather be fifty-fifty between English and Bollywood Hindi, i.e. Urdu. The secularists were then a small coterie around Nehru, now the same stream of opinion controls all the cultural and other institutions. Back then, a vote for English would be unthinkable, now the same taboo counts almost for a vote against English. The Muslims were only 10% and smarting under their guilt for the Partition, not in a position to make demands; now they are 15% and growing fast, and in active opposition to every language policy that smells of either Hinduism or nationalism. Sanskrit has been borrowed heavily by the South-Indian languages and would be welcomed by their speakers (so would shuddh Hindi, for that matter, and for the same reason), whereas “Hindustani” or Urdu brings Hindi a lot closer to the official language of Pakistan but at a greater distance from the Southern languages of India itself.

So, you have a choice. Supporting Bollywood Hindi will make Indian unity weaker and the Muslim factor stronger. But more importantly, supporting English will make Indian unity and democracy weaker, and the hold of the secularist elite stronger. By contrast, supporting Sanskrit will make Indian unity stronger, along with popular access to the Hindu tradition. Whether India as a unified state survives, depends on many things, but English will certainly not be a factor of unity. A Kannadiga may speak English with a native of Karachi or Chittagong, as he would with a native of Hong Kong or Cairo or anywhere, without sharing a national state with them; and the same counts for a native of Mumbai or Delhi.

Admittedly, Sanskrit is a difficult language, but then it is equally difficult for everyone. And if one positive development can be mentioned since 1947, it is the decreased importance of caste pride, which led many upper-caste people to have a sneaking sympathy for the Nehruvian anti-Sanskrit policy, which at least kept Sanskrit out of the hands of the lower castes. One of the formative episodes in Dr. Ambedkar’s life was when he was denied the right to study Sanskrit in school because of his low caste. It helped make him a partisan of Sanskrit as national link language, a choice not followed by his so-called followers in the Dalit movement. They favour English, a choice unthinkable to the freedom struggle generation.

So, the anti-Sanskrit forces are a lot stronger than in the late forties, when they very narrowly won the day. Still Sanskrit is the only chance the lovers of India have. Hindi failed, and English will only weaken Indian unity, apart  from being an utterly undignified choice of link language. Brace yourselves for a difficult struggle – or for national disintegration.

Build your own Hindu organization

It is counterproductive to hope for tangible results from the Sangh Parivar. In most respects, they achieved nothing for the Hindus. A few merits go to their credit, viz. relief work and, in some areas,  security for Hindus threatened by aggressive “minorities” (i.e. the local branches of international religions with a lot of support from abroad). Important as these merits undoubtedly are, they do not justify the Sangh Parivar’s national claims for the “awakening of the Hindus”.On the contrary, the Sangh Parivar has done its bit for keeping the Hindus asleep.

They have misdirected their flock and neglected a number of concerns of those Hindus who were awake.

One good thing the Sangh did, was to organize. I call upon you to do the same. Unfortunately, the Sangh saw this as a goal in itself. It forgot to make self-organization subservient to a Hindu vision, because it had none.

However, that criticism of the Sangh has been expressed enough times and on enough forums. Repeating it is only one form of what Rajiv Malhotra calls: “mouse-clicking Hindu activism”, a useless activity that may be ego-flattering but otherwise makes no difference. It may be necessary to keep Hindus from a mistaken line of involvement, but it has mostly outlived its use now. The thing to do is simply to set up your own Hindu centre of activity and ignore the ideological line of the Sangh.

The focus may be very different depending on local needs. Physical security is an important concern in areas where the so-called minorities are strong and growing, like West Bengal and Kerala. That is why the Hindu Samhati in West Bengal is so important: it promises to be more effective than the RSS, and has so far also lived up to its promise. It channels the natural Hindu capacity for self-defence. In opulent areas where Hindu self-forgetfulness due to the invasionof American consumerism is a greater menace, by contrast, the focus may be more on Hindu identity and the revival of Hindu knowledge.

The national and international dimension can be taken care of far more easily that in the past, thanks to the internet. The pure communication dimension of this transregional cooperation will take care of itself. But is there a need of some more formal way of grouping along national and international lines? In particular, shouldn’t there be a party like the BJP?

If there were an effective lobby group, like the Jewish lobby in the US, there would be no need of a Hindu political party. There is no Jewish political party, but both the Democrats and the Republicans do their best to curry the favour of the Jewish lobby. For the impartisan form, the VHP (World Hindu Council) has in the past approached all political parties with its “Hindu agenda”, but in practice it only counted on the BJP. And even this party did not do the Hindu lobby’s bidding, e.g. whereas the VHP’s Hindu agenda of 1996 contained an anti-abortion item, in keeping with the Brahmanic-Shastric interdiction of abortion, the BJP programme (in keeping with most other parties’ and governments’) was all for birth-control by any means necessary, including legal abortion. So Hindus don’t consist of the right human material to form an effective lobby-group pressurizing political party.

A party like the BJP is better than nothing, according to many Hindus. While it fails to do anything for Hindu causes, at least when it is in power nothing will be done against the Hindus, unlike the other parties; or so they say. The opening of Indian media ownership under the NDA regime can be given as a counterexample, a BJP-engineered disaster for Hindu society; but we don’t want to be difficult. Well, let the BJP exist, it will do so anyway, but let that not stop you from doing anything on your own.

Once you’ve built up something, it will automatically become the lobby that some were dreaming of. The BJP, and perhaps other parties, will seek your approval when making its programme, your support during the campaign. It always does so when it sees people who know what they want; it did so with the secularists, and it will do so again with Hindus. This will put you in a position to make demands. The BJP will make some of your programme its own if it has the impression that you are consistent and credible. All  this and more will accrue to those who really do something and get started.

Let the facts speak for themselves

According to Rajiv Malhotra, Hindus are :   “under-informed and over-opinionated”. I already had that impression, but being a foreigner, I had no business saying it. However, if an Indian says it, it deserves to be quoted. They haven’t done their “Purva-Paksha”, their study of the opponent’s viewpoint, and – now I quote Sita Ram Goel — yet: they think they know everything about everything”.

I have, for instance, made many an argument with Hindus who claimed to know more of my home religion, Christianity, than I myself did. Perhaps it is an atavistic behaviour pattern dating back to the time when India was on top of the world, and when Indians had a superiority rather than their present inferiority complex.

On the internet, I have come across many Hindus who were ill-mannered and unwilling to abide by the general rules of good conduct. That will not influence my opinions too seriously, because my mind has by now been made up, but it will affect those of many others.  What they prove is that a good cause can be spoilt by bad servants. They give a good message a bad name by their lack of self-control.

They feel good about themselves because they had their say. They think it is impressive if they shove it into the other side’s face. But what they never do, is listen to feedback. Am I achieving what I set out to achieve? Well, the problem with most of these folks is that they don’t really want to achieve anything. The thought of getting somewhere just doesn’t cross their minds. They merely want an emotional kick, a feeling of having said it in a way that the other side, or more likely the sympathizing reader (they are not aware of another side), is unlikely to forget. They want to live out what is inside of them, and the result be damned.

The fact that they are participating in discussions on Hinduism and its plight at least proves they feel that something is not right. Let that be a start. For the rest, you have your own teachers to go to. You don’t need me to tell you that self-control (in Sanskrit: yoga) is better for you and for everyone than self-indulgence. You have Hindu civilization for that.

Hindu tradition teaches you all about Purva-Paksha, the “earlier wing” against which your own viewpoint is the counter-wing. It teaches you that you first have to acquaint yourself with what the others are saying before you can answer them. Short, it doesn’t want you to be lazy. It doesn’t want you to take the laughable posture of pretending you know it all without studying. By extension, it teaches you to take into account what the others say in answering you. It wants you to learn from their feedback. Thus, there has never been a Hindu who has convinced an outsider by means of a false (P.N. Oak-ian) etymology, it has solely earned them ridicule; only Hindus fall for this kind of “argument”, and that should tell you something.

How does this work out in practice? Instead of letting your emotions take centre-stage, you should let the facts speak for themselves. That works best. Isn’t it funny, Hindus who have the facts as their best friends yet want to hide these behind their own anger? In making your point, you should first of all let reality do the talking. Nothing convinces as much as reality does.

And yet, reality is not enough. Some Hindus know how to let reality speak and how to make their own emotions shut up, yet their performance is insufficient. For instance, so many times already I have received copies of Nathuram Godse’s speech about Mahatma Gandhi. Hindus think they are meritorious by spreading the word and propagating Godse’s speech, because it stays close to the facts,and because it is itself a historical fact. But except for a secularist of sorts (Ashis Nandy), I am the only author of an analysis of Godse’s speech. Many Hindus admire Godse, but they don’t bother to stop and think about his speech. They merely repeat it, mantra-like, without adding anything to it.

So, once in a while it is necessary to think things over. Was Nathuram Gods right? Was he more right in his words than in his act? What was the result of his act? Discussion forums are an excellent place to make a start. The “wisdom of crowds” is represented there, and I have already learnt a lot from it, even from the most ordinary people who have their moments of brilliance too, and their area of expertise. Hindus could learn a lot too, and train themselves in making up their own minds and influencing other people’s.

Don’t create false problems

According to textbooks, Hindus and especially low-castes (who were only induced into Hinduism by the evil Aryan invaders) are fed up with “empty ritual”. That is, according to the secularists, why they want to leave Hinduism. If you see Christians eat the flesh of Christ, just remember that they would never want to be Hindus and condemned to doing “empty rituals”.

In reality, there may be some things in Hinduism that trouble them, but “empty ritual” is not it. Take it from an eyewitness to the slow death of a religious culture, Christianity in Europe, who has seen numerous contemporaries sigh: “Yes, Christianity is a pack of fairy-tales, but where will I find such a good ritual setting for my funeral as a mass in church, conducted by a real priest?” Religion may be nonsense, but ritual is very important.

So, when I see Hindus on internet lists complain about “empty ritual”, I know they are just rattling off what they learned in their Jesuit school. Of course, the Jesuits know the value of ritual and also practice it, but to Hindu pupils they teach about its emptiness.

Ritual will take care of itself, it gets reborn easily, but some matters are more serious when they are made into problems. One perfectly false issue that has been keeping Hindus busy for a century and a half (if not for a thousand years) is polytheism vs. monotheism.  Pharaoh Akhenaten, Moses and Mohammed thought  they stumbled upon some important realization when they declared monotheism true and polytheism false. Against tem, some Hindus defend their ancestral polytheism, which nowadays is a brave thing to do.

Others, whom the Buddha called lickspittles, try to curry favour with their enemies by espousing monotheism. To have an edge over other Hindus, they declare that the others have not understood how a single God is hiding behind the seeming multiplicity of Vedic gods.

But the truth of the matter is that the Vedic seers didn’t cared two hoots for this quarrel between monotheists and polytheists. The divine manifests itself as one or as many, and both could be lived with. You should not import into Hinduism a problem that only your enemies created, and in the name of which they have destroyed your idols and temples.

A related “problem” is that of idolatry. For thousands of years, Hindus have depicted the divine through paintings and sculptures. To be sure, they also worshipped in the open air, with the wind as the natural idol of Vayu, the thunder as the natural idol of Indra, and so on. But surely the culture of artificial idols has so long and so intimately been interwoven with living Hinduism that we can call idolatry Hindu par excellence. So, it is safe to ignore those Hindus who, wanting to cozy up to their self-described enemies, suddenly “discover” that the Hindus have always been oppressed by false and evil idolatry.

The so-called problems of polytheism and idolatry are false problems floated by those Hindus who want to feel superior to other Hindus, viz. by bathing in the reflected glory of Christianity and Islam. Hindus had better concentrate on real issues, like how to maintain their Hinduism in a sea of hostile forces, or how to save girl babies.

Creativity

One very good thing by which Hinduism stood out, both in its Vedic and its Puranic phase, was its unbridled creativity. Today, this is what is sorely lacking. Sita Ram Goel diagnosed the Hindu activists among his fellow students ca. 1940 as the most mediocre of the lot. Those who had nothing to offer individually gravitated towards causes which tilted them above themselves but to which they themselves had indeed little to offer.  They gave their time and energy, nobody can deny them this dedication, but a winning movement cannot be built exclusively of such grey people.

The creative people are on the other side. Most Bollywood actors and directors are either on the anti-Hindu or, at best, on the mindlessly Hindu side. They have named their industry after its American counterpart and some say their product is lousy, but at least they know how to attract money and they certainly have a good time. Hindus ought to feel jealous, if at all they have the ambition to do as well as Bollywood.

Creativity was to be found in the late M.F. Husain, hated by the Hindus and disliked by a great many Muslims too. He was driven by hate, old and uninspired hate, but undeniably he created things in painting. Hindus could do nothing but demand a ban, the most humourless and uncreative solution. No Hindu came forward to be the anti-Husain, let alone some original way to silence him.

It was different once. Every art form was steered to new heights by Hindu artists. Every province of India had its own variation of the performing arts. In the visual arts, no tradition was a match for the richness in characters that the fable collections, epics and Puranas had to offer. Whereas Chinese and Japanese classical music are museum pieces next to omnipresent Western classical music (at performing which the East-Asians excel), Indian classical music remains as the only rival. More individualistic yet more complex, it differs from European classical music the way adult music differs from children’s songs. Hindus are fairly good at maintaining what was great among the inventions of their ancestors, but not so good at giving a creative answer to today’s challenges.

So, gird up your loins to start anew. Create Hindu art. Let it not be an imitation of Western “modern art”, the West is fed up with it and you have no need of Indians pretending to like it. Forget about trying to be original, just be Hindu and your originality will take care of itself. Except for calendar artists, no artist wants to be known as a Hindu, so by doing Hindu art you automatically stand out.

Celebrate

The greatest thing about Hinduism for all its adherents is its festivals. As long as people celebrate these, the religion will exist.  Just apply the Americans proverb: “If it’s fun, it gets done.” The same counts for the more serious Hindu business, like meditation. It is not airy-fairy, as Westerners imagine, but very down-to-earth, the most realistic thing in the world. But it is also the happiest thing, the source of joy.

And judging by this criterion, Hinduism is alive and kicking. So, I am not all that pessimistic about the future. You simply have to do what it takes.

Source: http://www.hinduhumanrights.info/hindu-self-defence-some-steps-to-survive/

Apostasy troubling global Islamic order increasingly

Dear Janaab Ali Sina,

My real name is Qadir Sheikh, I am an Indian and I was a Muslim till 7/7. I tried to find out what prompted these 3rd generation Muslims in Britain to kill themselves and others, in that quest I went to my local Maulvi in the mosque and in a bizarre twist of arguments and counter arguments led to angered arguments and freely flying abuses and insults from the Maulvi. My kuffr was that the Maulvi did not like the questions he also did not have the answers and called it a highly unislamic behaviour to ask forbidden questions which challenge the validity of the Quran. One of my questions was that whom should a person owe more allegiance to, his maadr-e-watan (motherland) or the Ummah (Nation of Islam)? Which led us to argue how much a true Muslim each of us was and since how many generations? In the end I was called a "kaafir" (some who commits a kuffr [balsphemy]) and physically thrown out of the same mosque, where I had offered my namaaz (obligatory prayer) for the last 37 years, by the Maulvi's assistants.

That led me to investigate the land records of my family and led me to the identity of my Hindu ancestors (just five generations back) and I have since decided to come back to the Hindu culture if not the religion. I feel that my Hindu ancestors were subjected to torture and humiliation and also had to pay jaziya taxes which they could not afford due to drought in the region which finally led them to accept Islam. Though I continue to keep my Muslim name (due to records in many places like my school certificates, driving licence, bank a/c etc.) I have stopped practising Islam and I have become a murtad (apostate), kaafir or both, as Islam classifies me. I have added 786 to my email name because I believe there is something magical and special about it as I believe that Allah (God) has as many names as there are languages in this world. Allah means Bhagwaan/Ishwar in Hindi and God in English. But the local mullahs anywhere in the world are still required to call for azaan in Arabic language only. "Allah-u-Akbar" means "God is great" or "Ishwar mahaan hai". This is nothing but cultural dominance and imperialism of the Arabs via the vehicle of religion.

But many Hindus think in India that "Allah-u-Akbar" is a war cry and a call to kill the non-Muslims. Oh my God!.... what a blasphemy has been committed and is being committed in Allah's name by the Muslims themselves. I realise that I have more Hindu blood in my veins than Mughal blood and it's time that I woke up the rest of my community in India to this fact and not get into clashes with their Hindu brethren with whom they share genes, food, culture, motherland, economy, language and everything else except this foreign religion brought in forcefully by the Arab looters and invaders and forced upon them under the blade of sword. Killing of Hindus in the past is nothing to be proud of by the Muslims but should be a matter of sorrow for all Muslims in India because all our ancestors were Hindus and were forced to convert to Islam under threat. Converting to Islam does not mean that we Muslims in India become Arab. So I am trying to awaken Muslims of all ethnicities in India to this fact that how they are being misled by these mullahs everyday. Islam was suited to the kind of social situation, which was prevalent in Arabia of Mohammed's times.

I was recently very upset about the formulation of Muslim marriage laws by AIMPLB (All India Muslim Personal Law Board) there were hardly any women in the board meeting. I do not understand what kind of marriage laws can be discussed and formulated without the participation of women in equal numbers. What kind of marriage laws can be discussed by a group consisting only (or mostly) of men? What is the guarantee of honour of my educated and good sisters when they get married tomorrow under these Muslim marriage laws formulated by someone in Arabia and interpreted by someone in India? How can I prevent my future brother-in-laws from dumping my good sisters and marrying other women? I realised that in the whole we Muslims are doing nothing but marrying each others sisters only to use, abuse and dump them in the end like Mohd. Azaharuuddin (former Indian cricket captain) has done by divorcing his first wife who is much more beautiful and cultured then the (witch) Sangeeta Bijlani that he has married. Whereas Janaab Sunil Dutt (a Hindu) remained faithful to his wife Nargis (a devout Muslima) throughout his life and did a lot of khidmat (service, care) to her while she was ill with cancer. She lived and died like a true Muslima. She was never forced to convert to Islam by Sunil Dutt.

Whereas Islam appeals to corrupt men like Dharmendra (a famous actor in India) who converted to it and use Islam to have two wives. I am still worried about my sisters who are about to get married in a couple of years time according to Muslim marriage laws that will be prevalent in India as the mullahs here are hell bent upon making these laws more and more anti woman rather than man-woman harmoniums relationship oriented. The mullahs are also demanding Qazi courts (sharia courts) to be given recognition which in the end will totally bar Muslim women from seeking justice through Indian laws in case of extreme abuse and injustice under Muslim laws. My fiancée’s first question was whether I would dump her or marry another girl if I started liking another girl after marriage to her. It is of course easier to be tempted to give in to your baser nature when your religious laws also encourage disloyalty to your wife.

Recently a Muslim woman called Imrana was raped by her father-in-law and when she went to the mullahs for justice they first rebuked her for making this matter public and then accused her of low morals and then ordered her to marry her father-in-law. What an embarrassing and shameful day it was for me in my office when my Hindu colleagues were discussing this incident and enquiring from me rather innocently if it was the norm in Muslim society?

Also disturbing is the arrival of rich old Arabs in the Hyderabad city of India who marry young Indian Muslim girls in connivance with the local mullahs for a period of 15-30 days, after satisfying their lust using the Indians Muslim girls and enjoying the Indian hospitality, these Arabs divorce the girls after robbing them of their virginity and respect and return to their lands as respectable grand fathers and fathers. Their shameful acts remain unknown to their own daughters and grand daughters of equal age back home. What is disturbing is that these Arabs are even rented out rooms made conveniently in the homes of these maulvies who perform these sham marriages. In some cases these marriages last only 24 hours. In reality Islam promotes prostitution and the mullahs are nothing but pimps. Very soon India might become the centre of legalized, sharia-approved prostitution, a Mecca of fornication sought by Muslim men mostly from the Arab world.

In the end I got my answers at your websitehttp://www.faithfreedom.org/Authors.htm and saw many Muslim names there. I like the many articles written by the ex-Muslims rather than by the Christians who can sometimes criticize something without knowing about it from inside. I want more and more ex-Muslims to write on your site, which I believe will lend more credibility to the fact that Islam is stifling the Muslims and hampering their progress in the 21st century. First of all a faith should allow the freedom of questioning and debate, which Islam does not allow. That's why I was humiliated and thrown out of the mosque despite having been a devout Muslim and doing my namaaz prayers in the same mosque for the last 37 years.

My real hero is Janaab A.P.J. Abdul Kalaam who is a great Indian scientist and has been rightly honoured by the majority Hindu India by making him the president of India, rather than put to shame in front of the entire nation by the President of Pakistan himself and later put into house arrest like Janaab A.Q. Khan of Pakistan.

My other heroes are Janaab Ali Sina (you), Janaab Shah Rukh Khan, Janaab Salman Khan, Janaab Zayed Khan, Janaab Javed Akhtar, Mohtarma Shabana Azmi, Janaab Sohail Ilyaasi, Janaab Salmaan Khursheed and many other moderate Indian Muslim personalities. Though I am not a Muslim anymore.

I need your teams' help in reaching out to all the Muslims of Indian origin through this site.

Allah (God) Haafiz.

Qadir Sheikh alias Kaafir786

Source: http://www.faithfreedom.org/Testimonials/QadirSheikh50905.htm

Hindus in Pakistan

by Lt Gen NS Malik

"If Muslims in India constantly crib to have no say and no power, they should come to Pakistan to see the plight of minority Hindus with their own eyes. They'll never complain and learn to live peacefully with their Hindu brethren in India." Asma Jahangir, Human rights activist, Pakistan 

-           

Asma's right. When pitted against the oppressed Hindus in Pakistan, the Muslims of India are indeed far better. A few days back there was news that Hindus in Baluchistan region are abducted and converted to Islam. The family members of those who've been abducted often avoid lodging complaints for fear of dire consequences. Many Hindus in Pakistan's Baluchistan, Sindh and NWFP regions, embraced Islam for survival.  

Has any Muslim in India ever been forced to accept Hinduism in order to live in this country?  

The Marathas, who fought against Ahmadshah Abdali in 1761 and couldn't return, are now languishing in Pakistan doing menial jobs. Most of them are sweepers and Pakistan Military Academy, Kakul has the descendants of those Marathas working as toilet-cleaners.  

June, 2000, Time carried an article (later banned and deleted from the net) written by Craig Gaverns. He 
interviewed a few Hindu-Marathas (most of those Marathas are now forced Muslims) working as cleaners and attendants at PMA.  

One of them told him that once a Pakistani captain continuously slapped him and made him eat human excreta for not polishing his shoes properly.  

He fearlessly told Gaverns to disclose his name (Nanji Ubale) despite Gaverns had grave doubts about that man's safety. His name was carried and within a couple of days, he was hacked to pieces. Even those Hindus who got converted to Islam are treated very badly. They're always reminded of their humble and infidel roots.  

One such Hindu doctor Ratan Chitkara, who later embraced Islam and became Saeed Khan, was always denied promotion to become the C M H O (Chief Medical & Health Officer) at a hospital in Pakistan's Chitral province.  

The reason was that he willy-nilly accepted Islam. 'Dil se nahin liya' (not accepted from the core of his heart) observed his born Muslim friend.  

My point is: Did the ancestors of the sub-continental Muslims ever accept Islam DIL SE ? Were they not converted to Islam by coercion?  

BBC, London's Roger Amlett's big essay ' Conversions on the sub-continent ' (1998) puts it bluntly " Why do all the 'converted Muslims' of the sub-continent behave in a manner as if their Allah directly dropped them as Muslims from an imaginary heaven? Why do they (or their forefathers) forget that they were cajoled, coaxed and coerced into embracing Islam? "  

The Hindus in Pakistan constitute 2.67 % of its population, which is now close to 18 crores. According to 
Pakistan-born Ibn Warraq, an ex-Muslim, " By 2015 this ratio will drop down to almost one percent as very many existing Hindus will have accepted Islam to save their skins, precisely necks."  

Here in India, Muslims cry foul that they're discriminated against. This happens indeed. But don't 

they also get their rights and rightful positions in India?  

In India, Muslims have become the heads of the state. There'd been so many top brasses in the Armed Forces of India, who're Muslims. Can one show a single really big and influential Hindu in Pakistan?  

Why wasn't Pakistan's second Chief Justice Bhagwan Das, a Sindhi-Hindu from Shikarpur, Sindh, made the CJP (Chief Justice of Pakistan)?  

Why was Neeraj Chawla (actress Juhi Chawla's uncle, who chose to stay back in Pakistan following partition) abducted in spite of being a high official on Pakistan's Film Censor Board?  

Despite his seniority, he was not made the chief of the Censor Board of Pakistan. 

Has any Muslim been deprived of his rank in the sensitive army because of his religion?  

Didn't India have Idris Hasan Latif as the Air Chief Marshal?  

It's very easy to condemn sitting on the fence and when you're getting everything without much efforts. Look from a broader and deeper perspective and you'll realize that you're much better and well-ensconced here than the poor Hindus in Pakistan, who get no representation at any level.  

They cannot even register their marriage in Pakistan. Karachi and Islamabad universities abolished their Hindi departments and even certificate courses in Hindi because it's the language of the Kafirs (infidels).  

Except for Danish Kaneria, no Hindu ever played Test cricket in Pakistan, though Anil Dalpat came closest to playing and getting included in the final eleven.  

Why was Nirmal Mukherjee, a Bengali Hindu of PIA, never selected for the Pakistan national hockey team? He was PIA's vice captain in the early seventies.  

Veerbhadra Seksaria, the only Hindu industrialist from Pakistan, never got an opportunity to set up a cement factory in Pakistan's lone industrial city, Faisalabad (erstwhile Lyallpur).  

Indian media and some so-called secularists like Teesta Seetalvad (her husband's a Muslim), Arundhati Roy (a Syrian Christian) and Mallika Sarabhai (a Gujrati Hindu) scream from their rooftops when something 'wrong' happens to the Muslims in India.  

Why can't these influential secularists raise their voice in unison against the treatment meted out to the Hindus in Pakistan who live there as gentiles and lepers? 

Courtesy: Various Sources

Hindus – stepchild of Secularism in India

Is the chronicle of secularism doctored in the realm of India?  This single issue has been confounding Indians, in particular Hindus, through decades and truly, the dispute refuses to end as with each day it passes, the same is getting more baffling. And the role of political parties in India, regardless of their (alleged) ideological inclinations, has been no less in fuddling the issue. Secularism, to cut a log story short, as per western tradition, happens to be a doctrine that does decline religion along with religious considerations or does portray an institution where biasness  to any particular religion finds no place in administration. Moreover, the Secular State, on the whole, doesn’t have the right to mistreat or placate any individual or community on the basis of personal religion.

Are all these perceived in India? I am eagerly waiting for a favorable answer even if this prospect is as bleak as the sun rays in a cloudy day!

Secularism in India, these days, is being exemplified through mounting  minorityism – in short, the interest of minority communities, in particular Muslims, has got to prevail others come what may and in this respect, other minority communities (be it ethnic or linguistic or religious) can also be sacrificed.

Where are Hindus then? They are nowhere; the religion in spite of its ancient heritage and high-flown humanist values has failed to retain a clout in the dominion of post-1947 India. And this disrepute is also the consequence of its own humongous faults – inordinate generosity and failure to abide by its own martial ethics (and to change it to cope with the changing reality).  

And the situation is right before us. While following Hinduism is being looked upon as sheer animism, Islamists are being regarded as the followers of a triumphant ideology who must be provided the first position to evade vicious onslaughts. State power of India is infected with this notion posing a grave threat to Hindus altogether.

The following calendar depicting national holidays depicts it more.

Holiday	Date	Day
REPUBLIC DAY	26-01-2012	Thursday
PROPHET MOHAMMAD'S BIRTHDAY (ID-E-MILAD)	05-02-2012	Sunday
MAHAVIR JAYANTI	05-04-2012	Thursday
GOOD FRIDAY	06-04-2012	Friday
DR. B.R. AMBEDKAR'S BIRTHDAY	14-04-2012	Saturday
BUDDHA PURNIMA	06-05-2012	Sunday
INDEPENDENCE DAY	15-08-2012	Wednesday
IDU-UL-FITR	20-08-2012	Monday
MAHATMA GANDHI'S BIRTHDAY	02-10-2012	Tuesday
DUSSEHRA (VIJAYA DASHAMI)	24-10-2012	Wednesday
IDU-UL-ZUHA (BAKRID)	27-10-2012	Saturday
DIWALI (DEEPAVALI)	13-11-2012	Tuesday
MUHARRAM	25-11-2012	Sunday
GURUNANAK'S BIRTHDAY	28-11-2012	Wednesday
CHRISTMAS	25-12-2012	Tuesday

In the said calendar, Islamic festivals revel in four holidays; Christian festivals have been rendered two national holidays while the majority Hindu community ought to remain happy with two national holidays only.

Secularism believes in fair treatment to all and appeasement to none. Isn’t it?

Do Hindus get fair treatment?  

If one says so, two words – partisanship and nonpartisanship – must be banished from English dictionary straight away. 

Islamic hardliners fight back “Secularism” in Bangladesh

That the Islamic radicals in Bangladesh are bold enough to hold the nation to ransom on any single pretext became evident once again when thousands of them, brandishing lethal weapons, chanting anti-government slogans marched to protest Awami League’s alleged bid to “restoration of secularism” in the constitution. The most vitriolic of them was witnessed in Narayanganj, especially in areas like Kanchpur, Panchabati and Fatullah, where Muslim cadres virtually clashed with police and damaged properties while venting their protests. It was just the first day of 30-hour nationwide strike.

What made cadres, having adolescents even, audacious enough was the comprehensive support of an alliance of 12 Islamist parties, determined to protest “restoration of secularism” in the constitution and carry on the strike as a result. Police handled the crisis strongly and responded with tear gas shells and rubber bullets since a few rampaging activists attacked the law enforcers and snatched from them a pistol, a shotgun and a wireless set, and dashed those. As per latest reports, there were heavy injuries of 120 people, including 17 policemen owing to indiscriminate attacks from Islamic hard-line cadres.

It is worthwhile to mention that both BNP, main opposition party in Bangladesh, and its ally Jamaat-e-Islamim are uncompromising in their views to castigate Awami League, liable to restore secularism as a state principle removing the phrase “Absolute Faith and Trust on the Almighty Allah.”

But what amazes all is that the protest march took place even if the constitution has retained Islam as the state religion and Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim earning wrath of Hindus and other minority groups with secularists.

It has been learnt that the shocking violence displayed in Narayanganj took place under auspices of Islami Andolan Bangladesh or IAB. Militant activists of IAB, majority included local madrasa students, started gathering in the areas since early morning. Many of them were seen to crouch on the Dhaka-Chittagong highway stranding many vehicles on both sides of Kanchpur Bridge. Lots vehicles were simply smashed too.

Bangladeshi citizens are apprehending the worst.

How can Islamic terrorism be checked?

Even if the entire world (invigorated more by US triumph in overpowering and stamping out Laden in Pakistan) is geared up against the fast growing pernicious stratagem of worldwide Islamic terrorism and is exploring all ways to defeat this satanic force once and for all, it has a long way to go still. This is said since end of a single Osama Bin Laden doesn’t man the end of global Islamic terrorism. The death of one can be compensated by the generation of a 100 more. What ails countries then? Are they incompetent for a large-scale triumph against Islamic terrorism? Does this failure emanate from their faulty mindset then?

Let’s find out. As per studies, when on earth an incident of terrorist attack occurs in a civilized society, the law enforcing authorities become convinced that it has been done by a terrorist organization like al-Qaeda, or Laskar-e-Taiba, or Hizb-ul-mujahideen etc and the culprits are a few people associated with those organizations. Or more pointedly, a few misguided Muslim young men, who are associated with the said terrorist organizations, are guilty alone. So they start to find clues to ascertain which organization is associated with the attack and after that tries to arrest those people to start a legal procedure against them, but keeping the breeding ground of the terrorists untouched.

After 9/11, the security people of USA could ascertain that the terrorists of al-Qaeda were involved. So the US armed forces attacked base camps of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, bombed the al-Qaeda hide-outs. In a similar manner, Indian authorities, after a terrorist attack, go for tracing the terrorist organization involved and to capture a few people, who have committed the crime.

But from Islamic viewpoint, any such terrorist attack is an attack on the kafir-camp by the Muslim-camp and hence not only the handful of terrorists but the entire Muslim-camp, or each and every member of the Muslim-camp, is responsible. Or in other words, the entire Muslim community is responsible. Thus for a terrorist attack in India, firstly each and every Muslim of this country, who takes the oath of killing kafirs five times a day through namaz, is responsible. Each and every Muslim, whether he is a vegetable vendor, or a rikshaw puller, or a mason, or a school teacher, or a politician, or a reputed man, is responsible. And in the broader sense, each and every Muslim in the world is responsible.

There is no doubt that the Koran is the fountainhead of Islamic terrorism and anyone who believes in Koran is responsible. Hence it becomes evident that, Islamic terrorism cannot be wiped out by capturing a few terrorists and killing them or by putting them in jails. To put an end to Islamic terrorism, action should be taken against each and every Muslim of this country. And in a broader sense, action should be taken against each and every Muslim in the world.

It has been mentioned above that Koran is the fountainhead of Islamic terrorism or it is the source of inspiration for terrorism. And more pointedly, the hateful kafir killing verses of the Koran are the fountainhead of Islamic terrorism. So the first step to end Islamic terrorism is to ban that blood-thirsty book of hate. The second step is to take action against the Muslim community as a whole.

Some people maintain the wrong notion that among the Muslims all are not bad and there are good or moderate Muslims as well. In this regard the renowned author Craig Winn has said that, as there is only one Koran and nothing like a good Koran and a bad Koran, and hence there cannot be a good Muslims and bad Muslims and moderate Muslim or radical Muslim. Muslims are Muslims alone. So, to put an end to the menace called Islamic terrorism, the entire community of non-Muslims, or all the members of the kafir-camp has to be united and come forward to attack and punish the Muslim community as a whole. If Muslim terrorists kill 10 kafirs at one place, the kafirs should kill at least 100 Muslims at any where in the world, and if they kill 100 people, kafirs should kill 1000 Muslims as a retaliation. If the entire community of kafirs can adopt such a procedure, Islamic terrorism will evaporate within seconds.

How the kafirs would adopt such a policy? What would be their guideline? Its very simple. The kafirs should accept the Koran as their own book, but with a little change. Take a Koran and replace the words like kafir, polytheist, idolater, non-believer etc. by the word Muslim. For example, the verse (IX,5) of the Koran reads, “Then, when the sacred months are over, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them and take them captive ….”.

The kafirs should rewrite the verse as, “Then, when the sacred months are over, slay the Muslims wherever ye find them and take them captive ….” Similarly, the verse (VIII, 12) says, “I will cast a dread into the hearts of the unbelievers” and the kafirs should alter it to read, “We will cast dread into the hearts of the Muslims”. If the kafirs can sincerely prepare such an altered Koran and act honestly in the likewise manner, the menace of Islamic terrorism will vanish in no time.