The buzzword for 2022 is ‘Islamophobia’. Any criticism of Islam, the conduct of the Muslim community as a whole in an incident where unbridled violence was unleashed on non-Muslims or even stating facts from their religious scriptures, which appear inconvenient to the facade of tolerance that has been created by the Ummah, is considered an aggression against the supposedly oppressed Muslim community worldwide. There are examples aplenty of how the global media helps the Ummah turn themselves into perennial victims after every incident of unilateral aggression.
One of the foremost examples in India recently was the Delhi Riots. There is ample recorded evidence that the Delhi Riots of 2020 were a planned conspiracy to target the Hindu community. Some of the players who hatched the conspiracy are lodged in prisons with cases of UAPA slapped against them. If one reads the over 17,000 page conspiracy chargesheet that has been filed by the police, one sees the meticulously documented evidence that includes pictures, dates, WhatsApp chats, CDR details, a money trail, witness statements and far more.
The Ummah, however, with the help of a terribly spineless media, turned a planned killing spree against Hindus into an “anti-Muslim pogrom”. They picked up one speech by a BJP leader hours before the violence broke out and general “Islamophobia” that they conjured out of thin air to assert, globally, that the Delhi Riots were a planned “pogrom” against Muslims. While taking into consideration the speech of Kapil Mishra, they ignored the hundreds of Hindumisic speeches delivered by the Muslims in the run-up to the violence, the trail of violence that started in December 2019 against Hindus, the fact that Muslim leaders like Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam had gone on the record to state that violence needs to erupt when Donald Trump would be visiting Delhi and the fact that genesis of the violence does not depend on body count.
One of the foremost tropes used by the Left to paint the Delhi anti-Hindu riots as an anti-Muslim pogrom is that there were more Muslims who died in the final February 2020 violence than Hindus. It is true that more Muslims died in the February violence, however, it is also true that the violence was unleashed by the Muslim side. As elucidated before, the first murder was that of a Hindu, constable Ratan Lal, and the first incident of violence was initiated by the Muslim community. After days of provocative speeches and a killing spree against Kafirs (Tahir Hussain admitted that the violence was unleashed to teach Kaffirs a lesson), Hindus had decided to defend themselves. In a riot, it is an established fact that unfortunately, lives would be lost on both sides – that is the very nature of communal strife. However, the nature of a riot is not determined by how much damage the numerically superior side defending themselves inflicts, but on the basis of the conspiracy leading up to the violence and honest analysis of who started the violence.
It is, however, the nature of the Ummah to cry victim when the Kaffirs decide to so much as defend themselves or, in the rare scenario, decide to retaliate in equal measure. During the Delhi Riots, the conspiracy was hatched by the Islamists, the violence was initiated by them to teach “Kaffirs a lesson” and the nature of the riot was purely anti-Hindu, however, the moment Hindus decided to defend themselves, the Ummah started claiming victim and the global media, with the help of their brown sepoys in India, painted the riots as an “anti-Muslim pogrom”.
This is not the first time this has happened and it certainly won’t be the last. The Hindu community has often been subjected to unimaginable violence and branded as the aggressor community if they have dared to defend themselves and/or retaliate against the original aggression by the Muslim community.
We mostly hear that Mahashay Rajpal was assassinated for publishing satirical work on Prophet Muhammad called Rangeela Rasool, but we seldom hear why he chose to publish the book. In 1923, Muslims published two particularly offensive books to Hindus. “Krishna teri geeta jalani padegi” used derogatory and vulgar language against Shri Krishna and other Hindu deities and “Uniseevi sadi ka maharshi” which contained derogatory remarks on Arya Samaj founder Swami Dayanand Saraswati (incidentally written by an Ahmadi). In response to this provocation by Islamists, Pandit Chamupati Lal, a close friend of Mahashay Rajpal, wrote a short biography of the Islamic Prophet, Mohammed. “Rangeela Rasool” was a short pamphlet which satirised the life of the Prophet of Islam. Pandit Chamupati made Mahashay Rajpal promise that he would never reveal the name of the author – he knew the consequences of it. Anonymously published under the name “doodh ka doodh aur panee ka panee”, the book enraged Muslims.
Staying true to the values of one-way brotherhood, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi wrote in his pamphlet “Young India”, condemning Rangeela Rasool. While Gandhi ignored the provocation by Muslims, by the end of June 1924, the colonial government banned the book. The Muslim community, partly emboldened by MK Gandhi’s endorsement of their hurt sentiments and whitewashing of the provocation against Hindus, filed multiple cases against the book under 153A. In May 1927, Mahashay Rajpal, who published the book, was acquitted of all charges with the court observing that commentary based on facts on historical figures, including the prophet of Islam, cannot be said to promote enmity between groups. As soon as the verdict was delivered, Muslim mobs went into a frenzy. They rioted and demanded the head of Mahashay Rajpal. They were chants about how the murder of Rajpal was acceptable because, under Sharia, the punishment for blasphemy is death.
On April 6th, 1929 a 19-year-old carpenter named Ilm ud din stabbed Mahashay Rajpal in his chest eight times while he was seated in the outer verandah of his shop. Though he was offered to give up the name of the author, Pandit Chamupati Lal, during the court proceedings, he refused and did not yield. He paid the price for it.
The initial provocation in this case came from the Muslim community. Mahashay Rajpal and Pandit Chamupati merely responded in the same coin. The response by the Hindus led to the Muslims demanding the head of Mahashay Rajpal, going on a rampage and unleashing riots, getting a special law enacted that we today know as 295A and the brutal murder of Mahashay Rajpal. Not only this, but it also led to the vilification of the Hindu community spearheaded by none other than MK Gandhi himself.
He had written in Young India, “A friend has sent me a pamphlet called R. Rasul written in Urdu, The author’s name is not given. […] The very title is highly offensive. The contents [are] in keeping with the title. I cannot without giving offence to the reader’s sense of fine give the translation of some of the extracts. I have asked myself what the motive possible could be in writing or printing such a book except to inflame passion. Abuse and caricature of the Prophet cannot wean a Musalman from his faith and it can do no good to a Hindu who may have doubts about his own belief. As a contribution, therefore, to the religious propaganda work, it has no value whatsoever.”
In fact, MK Gandhi had gone as far as to say that provocation and abuse by Muslims do not justify this response by Hindus, thereby, painting the Hindu community as the aggressors and whitewashing the original provocation by the Muslim community.
While Mahashay Rajpal was murdered in 1929 for a book that was published in 1923, in 1924 the Muslim community followed the same pattern during the Kohat violence, where Hindus were massacred for a response to the provocation by the Muslim community.
On the fateful days of September 9th and 10th of 1924, radical Islamist mobs unleashed mayhem in Hindu mohallas (neighbourhoods) in Kohat town of North-West Frontier Province (now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) in present-day Pakistan. The carnage was pre-meditated and resulted in the exodus of the entire Hindu population from the area. Since the British depended on the majority Muslim community to maintain their stronghold in the area, it implied that the government of the day turned a blind eye to the treatment meted out to the Hindus.
In May 1924, a notorious Muslim publication published a poem that was highly offensive towards Hindus. The poem in “Lahaul” read, “We shall have to burn the Gita of Kirars. We shall break the flute of Krishna. O Muslims! You will have to take up the sword and destroy the existence of Kirars and burn their goddesses“.
The genocidal poem by a Muslim newspaper hurt the sentiments of the Hindu community and especially the Sanatan Dharma Sabha. The local secretary of the organisation, Jiwan Das, then published a pamphlet by the name of ‘Krishan Sandesh’. The pamphlet contained poems meant to reinstate the religious identity among the Hindus. Miffed by the anti-Hindu poem published in Lahaul, Das printed a poem by one author from Jammu wherein he mocked the followers of Allah. It read, “We have kept quiet so long, we shall have to speak out, O mulla! You must gather up your prayer carpet and taken it to Arabia. We shall build a temple to Vishnu in place of the Ka’ba, And destroy the existence of the Nimaziz.“
After the retaliation by Hindus, which was publishing a poem that offended the Muslims as Muslims offended the Hindus, the Maulvis started their hate speeches baying for Hindu blood. On September 3, 1924, Maulvi Ahmed Gul and Qazi Miraj Din led a Muslim crowd to the Assistant Commissioner of Police, S. Ahmad Khan, and demanded action against Jiwan Das. Khan assured them that Jiwan Das would be prosecuted under IPC 505, 153A. He had also directed the burning of pamphlets.
“Alas! Oh impotent Mussulmans! You have spoiled your cause by accepting bribes from the Hindus. You should die! You should have some sense of shame,” the extremist preachings began at the mosque. Maulvi Ahmed Gul then set the stage for the impending riots. He warned the police to take action against Das or that the community would take action as per Shariat. He gave an ultimatum until 8 am on September 9. He received support from other clerics such as Shahin Shah and Mian Fazul Shah.
In one such meeting at Haji Bahadur mosque, fanatic Muslims took the ‘oath of talaq’ i.e. they will divorce their wives if they fail to defend their religion. By night, Muslims were seen parading with arms. On September 9, 1924, a crowd of 1000-1500 Muslims first went to meet Deputy Commissioner Reilly, forcing him to give in to their demands. At around mid-day, half of the mob disappeared and surfaced outside the Hindu mohalla. The Hindus were anticipating trouble after learning about the ‘oath of talaq’, and hate speeches delivered at mosques. They sent telegrams to the Deputy Commissioner, SP but in vain.
Muslim mobs, particularly young boys, stormed into Hindu colonies and began wielding sticks and pelting stones. Fearing an impending pogrom, the Hindus fired shots at them. Amidst the chaos, one of the stone pelters died while several others were injured. This gave the fanatic Muslim mob a free pass to kill the Hindus. Shops, temples and houses were set on fire and destroyed. Properties belonging to the Hindus were vandalised and looted.
The riots continued until 7 pm at night when the law enforcement authorities dispersed the mob and brought the situation under control. At about 11 am on September 10, 4000 Muslims from Kohat and nearby tribal areas gathered outside the Hindu mohalla. The large-scale arson forced about 3000 Hindus to flee Kohat town and take shelter in a nearby temple. It was at this point that the Muslims began torching Hindu homes after looting them and slaughtering those who chose to stay behind.
Several Hindus were killed, others went missing and tens were wounded according to official figures. In the case of Kohat violence, the Hindus paid a price for first responding to Muslims with a poem after they published one that offended Hindus and thereafter, for defending themselves after mobs stormed their colonies.
It is hard to miss the parallels that these cases, and so many more like them have.
In the Nupur Sharma case, for example, it is an established fact that she only responded to the provocation by a Muslim panellist, who had ties to PFI and other terror organisations. However, it was the Muslim panellists who escaped scot-free and Nupur Sharma who became the subject of threats from across the world, Muslims hankering to rape her, kill her and behead her.
The pattern seems to have been established rather firmly:
- Insult Hindus and their faith with vile words.
- Provoke a reaction from Hindus.
- Play victim about the reaction of Hindus.
- Demand special laws, special treatment and the prosecution of the Hindu for his response, while escaping themselves because they played the victim and partly because the state is incapable of dealing with radical Islam.
- Despite police action against the Hindus who merely retaliated, the Muslim community will often claim that the action was not sufficient.
- Soon after that, the Maulanas will start spewing venom against Hindus as a community.
- There would be intellectuals who would condemn the retaliation by the Hindus and help in painting the Muslims as the victims of hate from Hindus, completely ignoring how the Muslim community either initiated the provocation or the violence, as the case may be.
- Emboldened by this support, the Muslim community will step up their vitriol and start initiating violence.
- They will then unleash violence against the Hindus, in some cases, hatch a conspiracy to teach “Kaffirs a lesson”.
- When the Hindus defend themselves, they will turn the table and claim that the violence was perpetuated by the Hindus against the Muslim community.
Most cases of such violence have common elements from the 10 points cited – from the Rangeela Rasool fiasco, to Kohat riots and even Nupur Sharma were a result of the permutation of some of the 10 points cited above.
Essentially, the Muslim community has been sending a rather powerful message to the Hindu community – we will insult you but you have no right to retaliate in the same measure – if you do, we will hunt you down. We will also unleash violence against you, but if you defend yourself, we will tell the world that you organised a pogrom against us. This pattern has repeated over and over again, to a point where Hindus have, to a great extent, stopped responding to any sort of insult to their faith and assault against their families. A glimpse of that syndrome was seen during the Nupur Sharma case when Hindus wondered “what was the need” for Sharma to respond to the bile being spread by the Muslim panellist since she “knows the consequences”.
Here is what I had written back then:
Therefore, why it is “necessary” for Hindus to talk about, dissect and analyse Islam openly and honestly is because it is a faith that demands the sacrifice of Hindus. There is nothing remotely similar in Hindu texts that goad the Hindu community to annihilate those who follow another religion. Therefore, for Nupur to clap back at a Muslim panellist denigrating Hinduism by merely quoting the Hadits is necessary. It is necessary because the Islamic community needs to acknowledge, at the very least, that their insult to Hinduism comes from religious hate while the Hindus’ comment on Islam comes from a place of either self-defence or frustration at being subjugated for centuries.
For aeons, we have been told that the onus of maintaining peace, harmony and brotherhood rests on the shoulders of Hindus. And those Hindus, who think merely the fact that Hindus don’t indulge in violence fulfils this responsibility of maintaining brotherhood, are wrong. Hindus are expected to maintain brotherhood by ceding everything they hold sacred and by giving up large parts of their personal liberty. Hindus are not supposed to be offended when their faith is mocked, not supposed to utter a word against Islam, understand that Islam is peaceful and all the violence in the name of Islam does not represent Islam, die with a smile on our faces if we are murdered by Islamists, shut our eyes to facts, give up claims on our places of worship, accept that we are devil worshippers and believe, deep in our heart, that Islamists think of us as brothers and sisters while they hold a sword to our neck.
This cast of mind is so set in the Hindu psyche that any comment on Islam, even innocuous ones, seems “unnecessary” because it would lead to friction, violence and “disruption of harmony” – a harmony that only existed because the victims of Islamist violence and hate, the Hindus, had Stockholm Syndrome and were beaten to believe that accepting that subjugation with a smile on their face was their eternal responsibility. It is, therefore, not surprising that one of the main criticisms of Nupur Sharma is that her comments were completely “unnecessary”. She, in order to maintain this mythical harmony, must give up her rights, her hurt, her thoughts and essentially, the damn truth because one just never knows what might irk the intolerant minority off.
While Hindus do as Hindus were taught, this trope pushes us down a slope where the slide will ensure that it pulls the entirety of our civilisation down. Sita Ram Goel had said, “To start with, we want to take up what we consider to be its most important contribution, namely, the unravelling of two behaviour patterns – Muslim and National – which collaborated closely for years and precipitated Partition in the final round. The Muslim behaviour pattern was characterized by acrimony, accusations, complaints, demands, denunciations, and street riots. The National behaviour pattern, on the other hand, was characterized by acquiescence, assent, cajolery, concessions, cowardice, self-reproach, and surrender”.
Hindus, as I say, will perish if we refuse to recognise the patterns of oppression that we have been taught to accept like well-trained mules.
