In the United States, we’re aware of the dangers of homegrown Christian extremism, and 9/11 and other events brought the dangers of Muslim extremism to the fore, but Hindu religious extremism — a major problem in India — rarely makes headlines.
While doing research for a story about animal rights I came across news stories about an October 15, 2002 atrocity in India.
Five men who were Dalits — the lowest and so-called “untouchable” caste — were seized by a mob and lynched. Their crime? The five were accused of killing a cow.
These men were trying to eke out a living by skinning dead cows and selling the skins for leather products. When accusations that they had killed a living cow circulated, police said a mob of 4,000 to 5,000 showed up, seized the men, and lynched them.
The next day, Hindu extremists were quoting Hindu religious writings to the effect that the life of cows and pigs are worth more than the life of a Dalit, and that one of the scriptural penalties for killing a cow is death.
This is especially troubling because it is part of a pattern of Hindu religious extremism and right wing politics. In the United States, for example, there is a lot of consternation when Christian fundamentalists want equal time for creationism in biology textbooks. In India, Hindu religious groups have managed to reintroduce astrology into universities and the military is wasting resources trying to develop weapons based on literal readings of ancient Hindu texts.
And, of course, there is the often deadly interplay between Hindu extremism in India with equally dangerous Muslim extremism in Pakistan.
Which is why this atheist counts his blessings that he lives in a secular democracy where the political system by and large keeps such religious extremism on the fringes (and where our neighbors to North and South seem to have also largely escaped the scourge of religious extremism).
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2 Comments
India is supposedly ’secular’.
Its a different thing that we love Hindu/Hinduism-bashing here :P…
A lot of material around is propoganda (not specific stuff…like the Dalit-cow incident you mentioned) and the general messages are ‘Hindu Majority kill Muslims Minorities’, ‘Muslims have no rights in India’, ‘Hindus started the violence’.
If you do read up on the history of Islam, and the spread of Islam in India from neutral sources (and not ’self proclaimed secular’ sources) you may get a better picture. Its hard if not almost impossible to come across such material though as facts have been twisted to suit ’sides’.
If you can read any of the old Islamic chronicles of the invasions of India (hopefully translated accurately again!), you’ll get a good taste of what they were proud to do here.
A simple current example is the Kashmiri Pundits of Kashmir. I’m sure you must not even have heard of them (wiki…).
Kashmir was the source of Hinduism (according to certain research studies), but it definitely was predominantly Hindu and Buddhist for centuries.
That changed and now its Muslim dominated, with a systematic ethnic-religious cleansing effort still ongoing, which is rarely reported even here, in favour of news reports such as mentioned above.
The media here is very biased (as around the world), but its rare for any country media to go against the majority religion, and mostly by the people of the religion itself (elite Hindus love Hindu bashing :P), but I guess we are a ’secular’ exception.
I would consider myself fortunate to be living further south as I still retain religious tolerance and don’t go converting people in the name of religion, and killing infidels/non-believers because ‘their God is different’ and ‘our Allah tells us to kill them for that’.
Unfortunately, this is a repeating concept since Christianity (which is better NOW…recall Middle Ages… when Christians went down the Islam path…again fortunately my family survived the Goa Inquisition…a case of Portuguese Christian extremism :P)
well dear dont be so biased every one knows that muslim emperors ruled india for 1000 years almost and if they want ed to eleminate non-Muslim population than that was not difficult for them but they adopted tolerance and respect for other religions and it was the result of their just policies that a huge number of hindues converted to islam and they themselves accept it. neutral and just people among hindu community still acknowledge the justice and equality practiced by Mughal king Jahangir and King Akbar. as far as the recent HINDU EXTREMISM is concerned no one can hide the reality in the age of fast and sharp media. world is watching the terror of indian army in Indian Occupied Kashmir and Gujrat massacres. anti-Muslim and anti-Christian riots are a routine in WORLD’S BIGGEST DEMOCRACY and so-calld Secular nation.
its the right time to find the cure of hindu extrmism in india because it more dangerous to world peace and security than Hitler’s Nazism