Lessons from the massacre of Muslims in Hyderabad State in 1948

Those who witnessed the massacres in Hyderabad in 1948 knew that they did take place, but they did not say it aloud, the skills to articulate it and the courage to challenge the silence of the government of India under the world-renowned secular prime minister Pundit Jawahar Lal Nehru.
Some 65 years after the massacres, the contents of the report of the committee that was formed by the then Prime Minister to assess the ground realities became known and affirmed what was always known by people.
Some 40,000 Muslims were massacred in what was known the then Hyderabad state.
The army sent to subdue Razakars, a local resistance movement, participated in the killing, looting, and raping of Muslims.
Local Hindus and their religious organizations incited Hindu mobs and terrorized the Muslim population and engineered the massacres.
Secular leaders also did not lag behind as they also joined and incited the mobs killing Muslims. They grabbed the land left by fleeing Muslims and sold it to whosoever offered them cash.
Razakars also engineered the killing of vulnerable, innocent Hindus wherever they could lay their hands on.
The report was suppressed by none other than the prime minister himself. This censorship is a violation of all national and international norms agreed by all nations. Yet, this censorship is always imposed and people discover the truth or partial truth only decades or centuries later.
Here is what we can learn from this latest episode of government secrecy.

1.      People need to develop their own independent channels to document their own history. Don’t rely on governments, however, representative they may be, to document information that goes against it. Without a vigilant population, democracy does not function well.

2.      Muslim in India and elsewhere must ensure that every act of injustice and violence against them is digitally documented and archived.  For instance, it should not be left upon government sources to document the atrocities in Muzaffarnagar carnage; rather, Muslim organizations should document these atrocities and preserve them while publicizing them.

3.      Muslims in India and elsewhere should join the police and army in large numbers to balance those sectarian forces that often use their official badges to intimidate minorities. The presence of Muslims in law enforcement agencies, the bureaucracy, and the army as well as in other sectors of society is paramount to their security. For long, the Muslims have been admonished by many of their organizations not join the government jobs. Such a policy was not only wrong, but it has proved disastrous for the community.

4.      Muslims should have a legal defense committee to pursue their cases. Muslim organizations in Europe and North America and elsewhere should help them pursue the matter at international courts of justice or with Amnesty or Human Rights Watch or the United Nations.

5.      Muslims should strengthen them at the grassroots level by creating open self-defense units to ensure that when they are attacked, they have people to defend them. These groups should be transparent and work within the limits of the law.

6.      Never trust the government or the media fully. Media has its own interests and spins. Muslims have to develop their own institutions to document their plight and sufferings.

7.      Muslims should never defend any incident that violates the law or the fundamental principles of their religion. If Muslims are wrong, they should be able to call a spade a spade. They must ensure that the presence in any village or town is not a source of discomfort. For instance, Hindus in Northern India believes that all Muslims slaughter cows secretly even if it is legally prohibited. Slaughtering cow is not an act that would increase or decrease the faith of a Muslim. For creating goodwill and giving comfort to Hindu neighbors, Muslims must adequately ensure them that they do not slaughter cow or desecrate Hindu symbols.

8.      Muslims should also participate in welfare projects for the good of the common people in their localities to ensure that their areas are clean, peaceful, and respectful of all residents.

9.      Muslims should also involve in local governance through contesting elections at local levels to ensure their presence at all levels. They should join all those political parties that believe in the supremacy of Indian constitution and that are not sectarian in their nature.

10.  Muslims should create an emergency fund to help victims of violence whenever it occurs. They should be ready to face a violent situation in the coming months as national elections are fast approaching and several political parties would use Hindu-Muslim tension to serve their electoral interests.

What if Modi becomes the next prime minister of India?

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has ruled over India in the past, and the hell did not break loose. Why would it be different if Narendra Modi becomes the next prime minister of India with his party having a majority in parliament?
Times are different. The BJP of today is ideologically and administratively controlled by the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS). During the previous BJP government at the national level and at present through its strong presence in several states, the RSS has systematically acquired position of influence in the army, judiciary, academia and administration at various levels.  The RSS has also created a myriad of organizations around its ideology at different levels. The organizations within the Sangh family include the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Vanbandhu Parishad, Rashtriya Sevika Samiti, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Vidya Bharati, Seva Bharati and many others spread in all parts of society. Numerous other Hindu organizations take inspiration from the RSS's philosophy.
 It is, therefore, not unsound to assume that the rise of Modi as the next prime minister of India might lead to a sea of change in India’s identity as a democratic and secular country.
The RSS is an organization run by secret cells with a mass following committed to the sanctity of Mother India. This para-military organization is no different than what any national army is expected to do. But the army defends the nation as a whole. The RSS is committed to an India that is controlled, dominated and run exclusively by Hindus belonging to a caste hierarchy deemed pure by the standards of Manu Samirti (codes of Manu).   
In its philosophy, organization and strategy, the RSS is not different than that of Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini’s National Fascist Party or that of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party.
One of the stalwarts of the RSS, M.S. Golwalkar laid out the foundational principles of his organization when he wrote the following:
“To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races—the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.
“The non-Hindu people of Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and languages must learn and respect and hold in reverence the Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but of those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture... in a word, they must cease to be foreigners; Or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment— not even citizens' rights.”
The secret cells of RSS have the expertise of the many former army, police, intelligence and administrative officials who had and still have access to national resources to gather information on anyone. These cells carefully laid plans to help the organization inch towards its goal of total domination of the country. The Gujarat massacres that took place in 2002 provide a glimpse of the tactics used by RSS to serve its interests. The massacres were originally planned to purge the state of Muslims and other minorities.
In Modi, the RSS has found a man who can follow its dictates fully and execute the plan perfectly. With every new day, India is learning the ways Modi manipulated the state resources to fulfill the RSS objectives in Gujarat without being caught by the law. Everyone in Gujarat knows that Modi carried out the RSS plans without leaving any legal traces.
The secrecy of RSS makes it one of the most dangerous organizations in the world. It has its own intelligence, hit squads and international PR groups. Through temples and social service organizations in India and abroad, it collects funds that support millions of its workers and their projects.
RSS views Muslims and Christians as the two influential groups that pose threats to India’s integrity and security. Christians are considered dangerous because of their ties with international Christian organizations in different parts of the world and Muslims because of their faith that gives priority to one God over everything else. In the view of RSS, Muslims and Christians cannot be loyal to India, a land specified by Gods to Hindus alone.
Of course, there exist a vast majority of Hindus that do not subscribe to the ideology of RSS. But the RSS is a very well organized group that exists at every level and has the capacity to mobilize millions any time. It has a dedicated cadre that can carry out its plan without hesitation anywhere and it has a network of secret cells that plans events and has prepared a blueprint for the future of a Hindu India.
RSS plan was to showcase an Indian state-run by the BJP as a model of prosperity and development of the world to prepare the ground for its national government. While, simultaneously, it had also envisaged a state free from all minorities. The 2002 massacres of Muslims in Gujarat were planned to drive minorities out of the state to turn it into purely Hindu state. But the plan did not work as perceived. The response of non-BJP Hindus shocked the RSS leadership. The way India’s federal government responded also surprised many. The RSS had expected the Indian government to ignore the massacres the way it had done so at the time of the demolition of the Babari masjid. But under the intensive persuasive power of India’s non-BJP Hindu intellectuals, the central government took a strong stand and challenged the Modi government. Had the central government kept quiet, RSS could have repeated the plans elsewhere.
RSS has the manpower and capacity to install Modi as the next prime minister of India. However, the only way RSS march can be checked is when the vast majority of India’s non-BJP Hindus come out on election day to cast their votes in favor of non-RSS candidates. India’s religious minorities will not support RSS with the exception of a few individuals and groups who value their personal interests more than the national interests. But rural India can be persuaded on religious issues. The RSS is fully aware of these realities; hence it will try to make religion a dominant factor in the forthcoming elections. It should not surprise anyone if they hear news about increased so-called terrorist activities and attacks on temples and other sacred places before elections. It should not surprise anyone if the country experience a new wave of Hindu-Muslim riots and the world should not be shocked if the plan to rebuild the Ram Temple at the site of the demolished Babari Masjid is unveiled.  The BJP under the influence of RSS has already appointed Amit Shah, a man accused of masterminding the 2002 Gujarat massacres as the election strategist for Uttar Pradesh, a state that is a must for any aspiring prime ministerial candidate.
In the glare of economic development, the world’s investors are ignoring the harsh ground realities in India and some of them under the influence and intense lobbying of pro-RSS groups in Europe and North America are trying to project Modi as a genuine progressive leader without realizing that the hands behind Modi are stained with blood including that of Mahatma Gandhi. The group that can engineer the murder of an emissary of peace, a Hindu from the state of Modi, would have no hesitation to cause genocides against even those Hindus who it considers detrimental to its interests. It is this danger that India is heading to and it is this danger that India must be saved from.

Mission Syria: Capture Asad and try him in the International Court of Justice

The responsibility to destabilize Syria lies solely on the shoulders of Bashar Asad. He is brutal and his regime is murderous. He has usurped the rights of people and denied them their basic dignity. He is staying in power because those opposed to him are not very well organized and those who claim to be supportive of justice have priorities other than justice. Moreover, the dictator has access to weapons of destruction, including chemical gas and no one can stop him from using these weapons as the events of the last week have demonstrated. He is supported by his neighbors such as Iran and Hizbullah because, in his ascendency, they see their interests preserved and protected. China and Russia see him as a pawn to check the United States in this long game of political chess. The people are paying the price. Millions have been killed and made refugees. The agony and pain of those uprooted from their homes are unspeakable.
Syrian Americans, by and large, are seeking US intervention in Syria. A majority of Muslim Americans are also supportive of this action. Depending on the nature and scope of the US mission in Syria, the situation might either bring about the desired change or further destabilize the region.
Let us be very honest about our mission in Syria. We are not going to save human lives. If human life were our concern, we would have supported the Palestinians, the Bahrainis, and the Saudis, to name a few, who have been struggling for their human dignity. Moreover, we are the ones who have often been accused of promoting the culture of violence in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places through our policies that we describe are rooted in our national security interests..
Our argument is that the use of chemical gas is a red line for humanity. Britain and Russia were the two main sources from where Assad obtained chemical gas. If we were really concerned about it, we should have stalled its supply to the murderous regime. We should have acted when the gas was being supplied to the murderer. During the last two years, hundreds and thousands of people have been killed, yet, we remained silent on the situation. What moral right, we have to talk about the chemical gas attack, when we encouraged Saddam Hussain to use it against his own people and against Iran. Moreover, we are the only nation in the world that has used the atomic bomb against its enemies.
So we are not going there to save human lives. We are going there to ensure the following.

1.      We create a regime that we could use for our political purposes in our fight against Iran and Hizbullah.

2.      We could control the supply route of arms to Hizbullah from Iran.

3.      We could use Syria as a base to foment trouble in Iran.

4.      We could also monitor Turkey and check its political strides.

5.      We could provide intelligence information to Israel to serve its political interests.

6.      We could also provide protection to the monarchs of the Gulf against an ever-increasing danger from Iran and Hizbullah.

7.      We could also check the Russian and Chinese encroachment in the Middle East.

8.      We could use, the local regimes in the Gulf to ensure that militancy against the US and Israel is curbed in its infancy.

The Syrian opposition is not mature to take an independent stand on regional issues. Even if it comes to power after Asad, it would indulge in political bickering and fighting on non-issues neglecting the real issues of the people. It is a coalition of people who want revenge, not a coalition of people who want to build a society based on justice and fairness. Obviously, such a coalition has the potential to will become a pawn in the hands of those who would provide it the political support.
So what is to be done?  

1.      Rather than targeting Syrian infrastructure, any military strikes should target the culprits. The mission should be to arrest him and his cronies and try them in the international court of justice for crimes against humanity.

2.      The Syrian coalition should expand its base and move from the tactics of revenge to the strategy of nation-building where everyone should have a share regardless of their sect, religion, and ethnicity. Proportional representation would serve the interests of each religious and ethnic community.

3.      The refugees should be rehabilitated in their homes as soon as possible and for that reason, all the assets of these regimes should be confiscated and the wealth stored in foreign banks should be brought back to the country.

4.      The coalition of Syrians should ensure its own independence and cultivate good relations with Iran and Hizbullah as two important neighbors.

5.      The People of Syria should be taken into confidence by through a process of decentralization of power to allow their maximum participation.

But the number one priority is to remove Bashar Asad. Once he is captured alive, his cronies would be eager to testify against him. This is what we should ask the United Nations to ensure.