THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MOON.

Everyone one of us knows and believes that the vast majority of Muslims is moderate, tolerant and wishes to forge ahead in life. Yet, it is like the other side of the moon; everyone knows it is there but no one has seen it. From poets to the denizens of the forests, all have been mesmerized by its glowing face as the moon has no means to show its other face. Of course, the majority of Muslims wish to get ahead with life but their silence is taken as their acquiescence because they are an otherwise assertive community that dares to be openly different in appearance and in many daily overt practices from the vast majority all around them. But since the British times and possibly even earlier during Muslim rule, the elite Muslims in India have been enjoying a large amount of patronage from the rulers. Whilst, the British did it deliberately as a policy of divide and rule by keeping its support with the Muslims, during the earlier Muslim rule the community took it for granted that they belonged to the ruling class. That is how the community came to be accepted as a special class that required deft handling in comparison to the vast majority of Hindus in whom it was dinned into their psyche that they must make all the sacrifices like the elder brother of the Hindu family does for his belligerent younger siblings and put up with their tantrums. This pernicious practice continued to be passed down from generation to generation of Hindus who were more concerned about their own caste equations than the non-caste aliens who ruled them. Today, it is in their DNA.

It is an accepted fact that a spoilt brat constantly needs mollycoddling as it is used to being spoilt silly by its parents. Being a malcontent and maladjusted the pampered child refuses to integrate with others wherever it is treated at par with others without any special favours to which it is accustomed. It either sulks alone or tries to bully others to get what it wants. That is why the Delhi and U.P. Muslims were more concerned with “innocents” being harassed in Jamianagar than the death of an exceptionally brave police officer who was trying to bring a clutch of hardened Islamic terrorists to book for randomly murdering innocents through bomb blasts in Delhi and elsewhere.

Contrary to popular belief, most terrorists today are well educated and some even come from affluent backgrounds, so the root cause theory of poverty being the driving force behind terrorism does not hold. Despite strong denials of demonizing the entire Indian Muslim community for being sympathetic to the terrorists’ cause, Centrist and Left politicians inevitably take a soft stand when it comes to appropriately dealing with Islamic militants both before and after every act of violence indulged in by them as if it will rub the entire community the wrong way. As a result, the terrorist elements get away easily being let off for vote bank considerations of politicians to whom the nation comes later.

Hindu society is under siege from several sides today due to the narrow minded survival instincts of Indian politicians. Another grave man made problem that India faces is the carte blanc given to those who with missionary zeal wish to reduce the Hindu population through conversion to alien faiths that are incompatible to the Indian way of life that only Indic faiths can offer. Swami Vivekananda had said that a Hindu converted is not only a Hindu less but an enemy more. Mahatma Gandhi also expressed similar views against conversion. Those so-called liberals and leftists who put great stress on multiculturalism and pluralism contradict themselves when it comes to taking the logical step against conversions that is anathema to these very concepts they loudly espouse from every known forum.

The current aggressive Hindu is like an antigen that an infected body produces in order to save itself from a disease. Simply put, if there is no viral attack on the body no antigen or antibody will be produced. And yet, it has taken a long time in coming after hundreds of riots, the Partition of the country and the naked non-resisted ethnic cleansing of Pandits from the Kashmir Valley as well. Many believe that fear is the key that a certain group wields blatantly which results in affected apologists springing up in its defense for self-preservation. The aggressive Hindu is merely replicating this time tested formula of success from its adversary. But it runs foul of general biased opinion of Left-liberals as because for centuries since the Hindu community has endured every assault and privation stoically it dare not change the pattern now, assert itself and make its disagreement known. After all, the pluralists aver, even in nature the roles of predator and the hunted are inexorably inviolable. Those Hindu bodies that openly defy this inverted logic for self-survival are equated with Islamic terrorists who are the perpetrators of destruction of the Hindu ethos itself.

The Christian Church is at the forefront of the conversion business in India as their adherents are diminishing in the West with good reasons. The head of the Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury had blasted Tony Blair for attending Sunday mass in a Roman Catholic Church with his wife who is a Catholic. The Church today is fragmented into at least 600 denominations and still counting. Let it keep busy converting each of its denominations within each other but just let them leave us Indians alone. The Christians who were present at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 after hearing Swami Vivekananda had collectively stated that the depth of Hinduism was so vast that the Hindu required no other religion and Christian missionaries labouring away at evangelical activities in India were wasting their time.

Finally, if only a predisposed media and vote-bank seeking politicians stay out of it, we Indians will never want to fight with each other as we will have to live side by side and grow together and not at the cost of each other. But will they leave us alone?