At the Heart of the conflict

Reams of digital pages on this forum have been devoted to India–Pakistan relations and the broader Hindu–Muslim, or Muslim–non-Muslim, conflict. I think most of these discussions miss the crucial issue at the heart of these conflicts.

I will try to navigate to that core. This particular reflection was triggered by a news item that broke recently:

TCS Nashik conversion case widens: Undercover women cops, Malaysia-linked preacher angles surface – India Today

If, twelve years into the Modi government’s Hindutva agenda, a dozen educated Muslim employees can allegedly engineer a conversion racket in TCS—with all its POSH and diversity guidelines—one wonders what Muslim radicals might get away with in majority-Muslim countries.

One doesn’t need to wonder. A Dawn report from 2014 alleged that around 1,000 non-Muslim girls are forcibly converted and married off every year. Even if the number is 100, that is a huge number for 2-3% of population. The demographic change in East Bengal over the last eight decades is a testament to these currents.

The grooming gang scandal in the UK was hushed up for decades, though one might almost expect such things in a “soft,” “liberal” country like the UK. But even in so-called “saffron India,” where Muslims are supposedly under danger (as Indian left-wing media would have you believe), one finds dozens of such scandals across states. I will link just one such report:

Family of Man Killed by Girlfriend’s Family Says Killers Told Him to Accept Islam or Call Off Relationship | Swati Goel Sharma

Today, I am not in the mood to conduct a statistical analysis to separate noise from signal. However, when I did this exercise about four years ago, I came across four times as many such stories as those related to beef lynchings. Maybe some other day. These instances may well be noise—but if this is noise, then the anti-Muslim violence one hears so much about is an even lighter noise.

Has the history of past victories against idolators imbibed so much confidence in the supposedly downtrodden? I would not be surprised if this is spun as revenge against “systemic Brahmanical corporate discrimination.”

Sadly, the behavior of a significant fringe (and what exactly constitutes a fringe?) isn’t the only problem. Sexual crime is widespread in India across communities, but what is alarming is that one hardly sees any prominent Muslim voices being guilt-tripped into public shame. Just imagine the outcry—in global media as well as among Hindus themselves—if ten Hindu leaders were caught force-feeding Muslim juniors pork.

For liberal Hindus, distancing themselves from their co-religionists isn’t enough; they often go further, masochistically making mountains out of molehills. For liberal Muslims, the initial instinct is to worry about how such incidents will be used to demonize Muslims. This self-preservation instinct was also prevalent in the Valley during the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus.

Take another example: our resident BP author Kabir. Many of his posts focus on rising Hindutva and abuse in India, but I don’t recall him posting about the systemic abuse of Hindu and Christian girls in Pakistan. I am not alleging that he (or others) condone these actions, but the silence itself is systemic.

While I have often argued that this conflict is only nominally historical, I am now wondering whether I was wrong about that.

A famous politician from Hyderabad once said, “Hum in Hinduón pe raaj karte the” (“We used to rule over these Hindus”), to a large, cheering audience. The Pakistan project was largely driven by a “we were rulers” mindset—but it didn’t stop there.

Why did Pakistan start four wars (or perhaps three, if we ignore 1971) with India despite the size differential? The Pakistani establishment believed it could overcome India’s numerical advantage. Does the history of Islamic victories against idolators continue to imbibe confidence among believers in the 21st century? When Jinnah called for Direct Action Day in a Hindu-majority population, was he thinking along these lines? Did the conspirators in the TCS case draw courage from historical victories such as those of Alauddin Khilji?

This may appear far-fetched to my rational mind—but perhaps those without a rational mind see it differently.