Monday, December 08, 2008
REJOINDER TO SEEMA CHISTI'S INDIAN EXPRESS ARTICLE: IT'S ABOUT TERROR, NOT SACHAR - By Ghulam Muhammed
Monday, December 08, 2008
REJOINDER TO SEEMA CHISTI'S INDIAN EXPRESS ARTICLE: IT'S ABOUT TERROR, NOT SACHAR
Ms. Chisti had been very perceptive in making out the subterranean intent of the West's double-game of sympathizing with India over Mumbai terror attacks while at the same time picking up the most sensitive sore spot in our nation's 60-year history: the plight of Indian Muslims, to work over India.
However, Indian observers should not be surprised over West's strategies in undermining India. They have done it in the past. And both Hindus and Muslims did not realise the enormity of the western colonists' 'divide and rule' tactics. Both, Hindus and Muslims went their separate ways and suffered immensely for their mistake.
It will be pertinent, if I take this point and put it in more descriptive perspective. The fault-line between Hindus and Muslims has been the gift of the British, from early nineteenth century. Later, it was Lala Lajpat Rai, a prominent Hindu activist, who wrote a 11-part article in Tribune, back in 1923. It was the first enunciation of the two-nation theory. Muslim thinkers and social activists too started a movement on the lines of separation of the two communities, each fully stressing its own aspirations and grievances. However, even with the formation of a Muslim League, the Muslim agitation for their rightful share in the governance of their country did not take the menacing shape until Jinnah took over, and that too on the behind the scene support from the British.
In the end, it was the British and their new overlords, the US, that decided that they could not leave India completely and they have to have a part of India under their open or proxy control to take care of their geopolitical interests in this part of globe, where 'oil wells' were to help re-usher the reconstruction boom in Europe and Soviet Russia is to be stopped in its southern advances. It was Churchill that expressly advised the visiting Viceroy, Lord Wavell, to keep a part for us. That part to later become 'Pakistan'. They teamed up with Jinnah, who sold 'that part' to Muslim masses as their new Islamic country. The argument put forward that Muslims can never get justice from the Brahmins and Banias. They must have their own land to enjoy their freedom of religion and freedom of economic choices. (Refer to Narendra Singh Sarila's important book: The untold story of Partition).
A similar situation is clearly visible now at this present juncture. The West is desperate to take over the continent once again for its own global geopolitical ambitions, as a staging ground to usher in the New World Order. It will not rest, till it has achieved its goal. Our empty-headed pragmatists of the kind of Advani, Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, have yet to realise that there is no free lunch. India will have to pay for all the benevolence showered by the West. The working over Muslim plight in India and Kashmir will be the chosen weapon in the hands of the Axis, to `on one hand gain the sympathy of the Muslims of the subcontinent for their support, and at the other hand mount pressure on India, to hand over its sovereignty bit by bit, at every turn of the screw.
It is, therefore, time for both the communities to recall the incidents of the past and unite. Hindus must realise that there is a limit to the 'benign neglect' of Muslim minority in their midst. They must move unabashedly, admit their short-coming and 'appease' Muslims. Only then, Indians will have the confidence to face the West, with any degree of resolve. We must not let the West exploit our differences. While Muslims have become accustomed to a discriminated existence in their own land, the change for redressal should come from Hindus, so that we face the enemy unitedly.
There will be many a Hindu, who will say that our real enemy is Muslim and not the West. That will be a very short sighted thinking. They will have to go back to history to grasp the enormity of the changes that the Western axis is demanding ofIndia. Only a united India can face their pressures and their machinations. So I will applaud Seema Chisti to have read between the lines, but ask her to come out with our own considered response to the Western designs on India. With only one caveat: It need not have to be a Left oriented solution, as they are woefully at the fringes of our polity.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
www.ghulammuhammed.wordpress.
http://www.indianexpress.com/
