UN Report and Muslims

The social media is abuzz with the UN report that 93% of all riots in India is started by Muslims. More often than not we forget that Hindus have retaliated after horrific incidences of crime perpetuated by the Muslim community. And more often than not, the Hindu community has not retaliated to Muslim atrocities even though the community has lost its members to the infernal cycle of hate.

 

Gujarat riots hover us like a dark cloud even today. Most omit the fact that the rots were an out pouring of shock at the tales of Muslims watching peaceful Kar Sevaks being burnt alive in train compartments which  they had set fire to! Though violence is ever the answer to any problem, but meaningless violence begets more violence.

 

If the Muslim community finds itself isolated and backward in West Bengal and all over the world because it has chosen a way of life suited in 632 CE and not the 21st century. It is striving towards the restoration of a more insular outlook rather than an educated and well connected one.  

 

True, there are pockets of enlightenment and tolerance within  the community. but they are too few and too far in-between. Every time moderation raises its head, it is crushed from within the community itself. It own sacrifices to its own alter of violence.

 

If armed Jihad is the solution to the a struggle then armed protection is the natural choice of other communities. And since, there is always a possibility of violence in the background, the cycle of suspicion of other communities is but natural. The Muslim community has never been able to break stereotypes within its own community and/or in its interaction with the wider world.

 

Of course, since we are Hindus, profoundly rooted in the memory and tradition of our people, our first response is to Hindu fears, Hindu needs, Hindu cries. For we belong to a traumatised generation which has seen the Mumabi blasts, Kar sevaks burning alive in trains, more Mumbai blasts, unrelenting support of Pakistan and so on. We have experienced abandonment and isolation of the community as Hindu concerns have gone unnoticed by the ruling parties within the country. Successive governments of CPI-M and TMC have done nothing but doled out appeasement sops to Muslim while Hindus have languished.  

 

However, we are not ignorant of the plight of Muslims. They are frustrated, that is understandable. The disenfranchised in their ghettos. The uprooted and their hopelessness. The refugees and their misery. Something must be done for them. But violence is never the answer. Both communities have lost too much blood, lost too many sons and daughters.

 

We have faith in  the large humanity. Let peace is given a chance, if the threat of violence removed form the horizon, peace will prevail in and around Bengal instead of an uneasy compromise.