Justice for Minorities in India

Once again another Muslim was found guilty of 1993 Bombay bombings. Seven people have been convicted so far in connection with the blasts, including four members of one family. If we look at the overall statistics of this incident, the numbers are staggering:

13 explosions
257 dead, 713 injured
100 convicted, 23 acquitted
12 death sentences, 20 life terms
About 25 suspects still sought
10,000 pages of charges
686 witnesses testify
35,000 pages of evidence
At least 13 years to reach a verdict
-Source BBC News

A decent human being should not complain if a person is found guilty in connection to the above bombing incident or any other bombings that caused harms to innocent human beings anywhere in the world. We want justice to prevail, whether the convicted is a Muslim or a Hindu does not matter. But the disturbing question is why does India have double standard for justice? When the atrocities involve Muslim criminals, Indian justice seems swift and perfect. But when it involves Hindu criminals committing crimes against non-Hundus, the same system does not seem to exist. In the latter cases, the Hindu criminals in inter-religious riots always enjoy a sort of impunity in Indian society.

I admire India on many grounds, especially in technology, medicine, and education. Even though a lot of people in India live in poverty, India’s progress is worth envying. India has become a beacon in Asia and in the World. Political atmosphere is much more healthier and less corrupt than Pakistan, and Bangladesh. But no country can become a great nation if they mistreat their minorities. And no country can become developed under the rule of right wing extremism or fascism, and only military might does not make a durable superpower. Justice for every citizen has to be established at very basic level.

Far more Muslims (in one particular incident Sikhs also) have died, and untold numbers of girls and women have been brutally raped in numerous Indian riots. Just check the following statistics of few riots:

1984 Riots Against Sikhs: The riots, in which more than 3,000 Sikhs died, were sparked by the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by Sikh bodyguards on 31 October, 1984. In many cases whole group of Sikhs were surrounded and hacked to death. How many Hindus were arrested and tried? Anybody wants to make a guess? Does zero sound good?

1992 Bombay Riot: First the right-wing Hindu terrorists led by BJP, Shiv Sena, RSS and other fascist groups demolished the Babri mosque in Ayodhya. Approximately 1,000 people died, and countless number of girls and women were raped in the violence triggered by the demolition. The vast majority of the dead and almost all the rape victims were Muslims. Muslim women were made to run naked in Surat. In another case, Muslim women were packed in a floodlit stadium in Gujarat where the masked right-wing Hindus raped them, and the whole ugly incident was videotaped by Sang Parivar for private distribution. Newlywed wives were gang raped while their husbands were hacked to death by the mob on the spot. Pedestrians were stopped in the streets and checked for circumcision. And the circumcised men were burnt to death on the spot. How many Hindus were arrested and tried for these gruesome acts? Anybody likes to make another guess? Now compare this zero with the numbers at the beginning of this article. Can anybody feel good after that?

2002 Gujarat Riot: First is the controversial train fire allegedly by a Muslim mob that killed 58 Hindus. Judiciary inquiries by the Federal Indian government found that the fire was actually started inside the train, not set by the mobs from outside. But the murders and rapes of the Muslims that followed this incident prove only one thing that the reactions of the right-wing Hindus were not spontaneous, it was carefully pre-planned waiting for an excuse. Most of 2,000 dead were Muslims. Nobody knows how many thousands of women were raped. Most were burned to death after the rapes to destroy the all evidence. There are pictures of makeshift Hindu temples in the burnt-out and destroyed Mosques. Parents were bludgeoned to death in front of their children. 180 mosques were destroyed. Many other gruesome acts by the fanatic Hindus were documented by the secular and moderate Indian writers. The whole incident was very shameful for the whole humanity. Once again the so-called civilized world totally ignored the plight of some poor Muslims in India.

We cannot say the Indian government did nothing. They form Judicial Commissions after every riot. Subsequent reports find “Police officers are partisan and anti-Muslim, politicians are complicit.” “We have orders not to save you” was the reply of many police officials to the Muslim victims of Gujarat riot. Even a police officer recently testified that the Gujarat’s Hindu government under Narendra Modi had authorized the killing of Muslims during the riots. Independent research has shown that riots in India usually happen with the complicity of police who either covertly participate or turn a blind eye to the violence. The fallout from the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the 1992 Mumbai riots and many other riots prove this point. The governments failed to take any action against them afterward.

The following stories describe just two incidents that are not even 1% of what happened to the Muslims in Gujarat, but this will give us enough idea. This will enlighten us about the right-wing Hinduism (or any other right-wing groups for that matter).

One instance in Naroda Patiya, the victims ran to the SRP (Special Reserve Police) post nearby for shelter. The police said they had no orders from above to save them, and told them to 'go die elsewhere'. But one kind officer told them to stay. Sometime later, Bhavani Singh came and told them he would give them some food. The group trusted Bhavani because some of them had known him for at least 30 years. They were also hungry. "All of us went with him. He told his son to get something for us. He returned with a mob. There was no escape. I could not save my wife, my oldest son and my beautiful, young daughter. They raped her and then burnt her. She was only 16 years old. I witnessed the rape of two other girls too," the affidavit states. Other affidavits cry in the hope for justice even though the processes of justice have been jeopardized already.

Fifteen-year-old Suphiya Bano was raped; she was later taken to the Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad. Her name was changed, given in the hospital records as Supriya Marajad, which made it difficult for her relatives to find her. Her father located her after a long search and she described to him how she was caught and assaulted by Bhavani Singh's son and others. She gave her statement to the police on March 1. On March 4, doctors told her father that she was recovering. But when her father went to visit her on March 7, he was told she had died. "I feel she was killed because she gave a clear statement to police indicting the people who ruined her life," says the affidavit filed by her father. (Source: Tribune India Dec 1, 2002)

The IAS officer Harsh Mander wrote a horrifying report visiting riot survivors' camps in Ahmedabad. The horrors described by the survivors are so gruesome that he writes in one place, “My pen falters in the writing.” Few snippets from his report:

An eight-month pregnant woman's stomach was slit open and her fetus slaughtered in front of her. A family was killed by 'flooding their house with water and then electrocuting them. Everywhere, women were raped and then burned or beaten to death, in one case with a screwdriver.

Arundhati Roy in “Democracy: Who’s She When She’s at Home?” in Outlook India magazine, May 6, 2002:

Last night a friend from Baroda (in Gujarat, India) called. Weeping. It took her 15 minutes to tell me what the matter was. It wasn’t complicated. Only that Sayeeda (a Muslim), a friend of hers, had been caught by a mob. Only that her stomach had been ripped open and stuffed with burning rags. Only that after she died, someone carved ‘OM’ (Hindu invocation of the divine) on her forehead.
Take the case of Mr. Ahsan Jafri. A loyal member of Congress Party, he had worked hard as a member of parliament to reinforce India’s secular position. But he was a Muslim. That was enough for the Hindu mob, ten thousand strong, to break into Jafri’s house in the middle of the afternoon, beat him senseless, pour kerosene everywhere, set the house on fire, and then carry him into the streets. No one is sure whether Jafri was still alive when the mob decapitated him, poured paraffin on him, and set him ablaze. The mob then returned to the house, pulled out the rest of Jafri’s family, including two small boys, and burned them to death.

Across Gujarat, thousands of people made up mobs. They were armed with patrol bombs, guns, knives, swords, and tridents. The leaders of the mob had computer-generated cadastral lists marking out Muslim homes, shops, businesses and even partnerships. They had mobile phones to coordinate the action. They had trucks loaded with thousands of gas cylinders, hoarded weeks in advance, which they used to blow up Muslim commercial establishments. Not even cemeteries were spared. They had not just police protection and police connivance, but also covering fire.

I did not want to bring back memories of those gruesome gut-wrenching accounts, but we have to remember that justice has not been even served 0% in any of the incidents. Instead of getting justice, hundreds of Muslims are languishing in prisons under controversial and politically motivated, draconian and biased terrorism laws. They are still suffering tremendously in every aspect of life in Ahmedabad and in many other parts of Gujarat. They cannot find jobs, their businesses are doomed, prospects for proper education for their children are very bleak, they have to live in ghettos, they are constantly being told to leave Gujarat and go to Pakistan etc. They are not even treated as third-class citizens. But on the other hand, India is being projected to the rest of the world as soon-to-be economic superpower.

If this is not terrorism then what is? If this is not racism then what is? This barbarity is not befitting of any society. India does not do much better when these brutal crimes are compared with that of the Hutus or the Serbs. It seems there is no justice for the minorities in India. It will not be a overstatement if we say that the state of Gujarat (where many Indian origin business owners in USA and Europe hail from) is under the grips of murderers and rapists. With these abysmal records of inhumanity and gross injustice, can India become a developed nation or superpower in near future? That's too bad for India and the Indians.

What have the so-called impotent Muslim dictators, regimes, pseudo-democratic or religion based extremist political rulers done in this regard? Have they put any pressure on Indian government that this sort of double standard cannot be acceptable? Aren’t there millions of Indians working in the oil rich Middle Eastern countries? How many of them are from Gujarat? Instead of enjoying the obscene sub-culture Hindi movies, dances, and songs, can’t they tell India to fix this issue or else the relationship with her will be revised? India needs to prove that the life of a Muslim (any other non-Hindus and low caste Hindus as well) is equally valuable to that of a regular Hindu in all over India.
(Indian Muslims 'have lowest rank':Muslims in India are even more disadvantaged than low-caste Hindus, a report commissioned by the government in Delhi suggests. The report says India's 138m Muslims are poorer and less educated and suffer from higher unemployment and greater mortality than other religious groups. Details of the report - yet to be published - have been leaked to the local media. Some ministers are already calling for affirmative action for Muslims. The Hindu-nationalist BJP party has said it will oppose any system of quotas for Muslims.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/6159178.stm)

Where are the Moderates in Pakistan?

In an interview with a Southern California Monthly, Salman Ahmed of Pakistani pop band Junoon mentioned that the voices of moderations are gaining steady grounds in Pakistan. He further stressed that almost 95% of Pakistanis are moderates. If what he said is even 25% true and the moderates finally prevail over the fanatics in near future, it will tremendously benefit not only Pakistan, but also her neighbors. We often forget that hatred begets hatred. It is an endless vicious cycle, and the moderates in Indian subcontinent should take the necessary initiatives to break this.

A moderate has to be honest, sincere and brave enough to face the truth. A moderate who committed injustices to others needs to acknowledge it, and at a minimum, should work for reconciliation by seeking apology to the victims. In this regard, I like to find out how moderates the Pakistanis are by revisiting a serious issue still remained unsettled for 36 years. The issue involves the brutal war crimes committed by the Pakistani Army and military rulers during the 1971 war in Bangladesh. 1.5 to 3 millions civilians were murdered, and close to 200,000 women were raped. Around 80% of the raped women were Muslims, which shows that the Pakistani Military junta was engaged in an ugly ethnic cleansing of the local Bengali population regardless of their religion. Many women had to choose abortions, suicides, and prostitutions. Many of the 25,000 war babies were adopted by the western Christian families, mostly the Canadians.

In her groundbreaking book, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller wrote: "Girls of eight and grandmothers of seventy-five had been sexually assaulted ... Pakistani soldiers had not only violated Bengali women on the spot; they abducted tens of hundreds and held them by force in their military barracks for nightly use…The women were kept naked to prevent their escape. In some camps, pornographic movies were shown to the soldiers." How many died from this atrocious treatment can only be guessed at. To make these crimes look legitimate, many of the soldiers even had been told by their superiors during the war that either all Bengalis were infidels or had become such, so killing or raping them would not be immoral.

Adding insult to injury, not a single Pakistani army officer or soldier was put to trial after the war. Only thing the Pakistan government did was to set up a commission to investigate the reasons and causes of its worst ever defeat. The commission headed by the then chief Justice of Pakistan Hamoodur Rahman held widespread atrocities such as murders and rapes of innocent civilians, serious acts of human rights violations, other abuses of power by Pakistani generals and complete failure in civilian and martial law leadership responsible for the loss of East Pakistan. There is even an instance in the "Hamoodur Rahman Commission Report" of a Brigadier entertaining women while his troops were being shelled. The commission had recommended stringent punishment for top army officials including court-martial for a number of them. But no Pakistani government, be it martial law regime or a legally elected government ever gave a thought to punish guilty members of its armed forces. The Pakistani government never apologized to Bangladeshi people and the role of its armed forces in 1971 war has never been part of its history curriculum. Not only that, the Pakistani public are generally unaware of these crimes, and are still being told that their armed forces only killed some Indian agents in that war. (Note: USA under Nixon-Kissinger administration fully supported Pakistan during the 1971 war politically, financially and militarily. China, most of the Arab and Muslim countries also supported Pakistan. During that turbulent period only India, Soviet Union and other socialist countries, and US Senator Edward Kennedy sided with the plight of Bangladeshi people.)

A good number of Bangladeshis and Muhajirs mostly from Bihar, India (known as Biharis) also collaborated with the Pakistani armed forces in those crimes. Golam Azam (literally means great servant – aptly named considering his lifelong service to his masters, the Pakistanis), the top leader of Jama’ate Islami of Bangladesh, a political party based on Pakistani scholar Moududi’s twisted religious teachings, even declared all the war rapes as "Muta marriages" (temporary marriages which are banned in traditional Islam) through self-style religious edict (fatwa). After the war, the new Bangladeshi government jailed approximately 10,000 worst Bangladeshi offenders. The Bihari war criminals had already left Bangladesh for Pakistan soon after the war. But that was then. Not only were they released from jail by the military dictator Zia after the 1975 bloody coup, but also given special status and power; and utilizing it fully, these Moududi followers have now become all powerful in Bangladeshi politics with royal money from the Middle East and sometime tacit support from the West. It often becomes very difficult to form viable government without making alliance with them. Two of the most notorious and well-publicized criminals, Matiur Rahman Nijami and Ali Ahsan Mujahid, served as ministers in previous BNP-Jama'at led government. These two were the topmost leaders of Al Badr, a notorious organization who orchestrated the killing of the intellectuals. When the Pak Army and their local collaborators found out that the defeat was inevitable and imminent, Al Badr came up with a savage idea of ridding Bangladesh of her intellectual base. They thought the new country would not survive long as a result. During the dying hours of the war, they meticulously executed their evil plan, and killed thousands in most gruesome ways. Some grateful people of Bangladesh rewarded these killers, who murdered and raped their very own people to please foreign masters, with ministership! And the same people in their abundant spare time criticize Israel, India, USA, UK, Russia….

A strong movement has been going on among these pro-war-criminal Bangladeshis and their supporters to hide and distort the facts of crimes committed by the Pakistani armed forces and even eliminate them from history. Whenever these issues are brought up, they feel so much embarrassed as if their parents had committed those crimes. They condone the heinous acts by their beloved Pakistanis by saying, "You know, these types of incidents happen in every war. We should forget the past and forgive our Pakistani brothers…" The irony is that these same people react completely other way whenever they hear any news of atrocities committed by the US, Israeli or Indian army. They also conveniently forget that the Rwandans, Serbians, and numerous other war criminals are still being prosecuted in many places. Argentina and Chile have been prosecuting their own army officers for the 70’s and 80’s brutalities they unleashed on their own civilian population. In one of the latest incidents in USA, some soldiers are being prosecuted for the murder and rape of an Iraqi 14-year-old girl and the murders of her parents and little sister. The prosecutors have recommended capital punishment if they are found guilty.

Israelis are relentless in their pursuit of finding and punishing Nazi war criminals even 60 years after World War II. Japan and Germany teach their children about the atrocities committed by their armed forces during that war. What about Pakistan, and its collaborators and supporters in Bangladesh? We always criticize others, but never check our faces in mirror. Is it not hypocrisy? Aren’t hypocrites the worst of all in Islam?

Asking for justice in Pakistan is oxymoronic in nature. This is a country that even does not do justice to its own womenfolks. Under the pretext of Sharia, the Pakistani parliament passed barbaric Hudood ordinance to prosecute rape victims for adultery. The rapists are safe as long as there are no four male witnesses in a rape case. How many rape cases in the world can produce at least four male witnesses per incident? Since when do the rapists rape in front of four or more male witnesses?

Finally, as long as MMA (the coalition of the religion based parties in Pakistan) stays in power or does not change its extremist views, laws like Hudood remain, roles of the Pakistani armed forces in 1971 war are not taught in schools as part of history lessons, and criminal members of the Pakistani armed forces are not punished (even posthumously since some of the war criminals are already dead), statement like “95% of the Pakistanis are moderates” would be considered as nothing but gross exaggeration.