[Assam] A matter of Religion - Sentinel Letter

[Ram Sarangapani]

This letter in the Sentinel today, reflects, I guess the sentiments of many
in Assam and elsewhere. Mr. Girindra Kumar Das has done a good job in
explaining the issues of the B'deshi illegal infiltration.

That fact that India claims itself as secular, means that the GOI and its
institutions will treat its Citizens as equal without regard to religions.
Its beyond logical reasoning when some people try to include this concept of
secularism to also cover illegal B'deshi infiltrators into India.

--Ram
**
*A Matter of Religion?*
This refers to Mr Ann Rohman Boruah's letter "It is a Matter of Religion"
(The Sentinel, May 2). Personally, I full sorry for his unfounded
apprehension which led him to write about "hurting the religious sensibility
of the indigenous Muslims of Asom". Most sincerely, I want to tell him that
so far as I know, Muslim infiltrators are referred to as "Bangladeshi
Muslims" not generalized as Muslims. Let me say further that there was a
pact called Nehru-Liaqat Pact, 1950, where it was settled that if any
Pakistani Hindu wanted to migrate to India due to religious persecution,
India was bound to accept them. In the same way, any Muslim who faced
religious persecution in India, could migrate to Pakistan. I think this
provision is still in force, and so the reference "Bangladeshi Muslims" is
used in case of illegal infiltrators. During the Asom agitation, perhaps the
AASU was not aware of this Pact. Hence the echo was: "A foreigner is a
foreigner, be he a Hindu or a Muslim.'' In the latter part, the VHP, RSS
ABVP had tried to amend and reassert the objectivity of the agitation, which
is gaining currency. The whole world knows about the religious persecution
(read ethinic cleansing) meted out to the Hindus in Kashmir and Bangladesh.
Can Mr Boruah cite any example of such religious persecution on any Asomiya
Mussalman? But I can show him a Mussalman widow with her only child — a
17-year old daughter — living very peacefully in a cent per cent Hindu
society, who refuses to shift to any Muslim-dominated area for security.
What has been observed in reality is that a Hindu village, surrounded by
villages infested with Bangladeshi infiltrators, never feels secured, unlike
the security assured to Asomiya Mussalman villages surrounded by Hindu
villages. Mr Boruah, please note it down! Also, it is a matter of doctrinal
truth (not a matter of religion!) that the Indian society has been founded
on cultural nationalism, not on religious fanaticism or arrogance. The
present day 'minority' politics in Assam is not a hidden secret under the
shadow of the so-called Indian secularism.
So far as my knowledge goes, no hurt has been inflicted on "religion
sensibility of the indigenous Muslims". In that case, Mr Boruah would do
well to read some books like The Tragic Story of Partition by HV Seshadri
and Muslim Separatism: Causes and Consequences by Sita Ram Goel. There are a
whole lot of books written by eminent writers, mentioning desecration and
demolition of more than 2,000 temples (on record). One must remember that
cow slaughter, though not mandatory for any religious festival, has been
made so, just to hurt the Hindu sentiment, since the Hindus worship cow as
their mother (go mata). This is the least to tell about hurting the Hindu
religious sentiment in Hindustan!
In the present context, Mr Borua's allegation as an Asomiya Mussalman is
very unfortunate, and perhaps it holds little water. Such writtings can
easily polarize our Asomiya society. Such words cannot help one to cultivate
the sense of cultural nationalism, which has sustained the essence of
Bharatiyata in India. In the absence of cultural nationalism, present Greece
and Iran are not the old Greece and Persia with their own national identity.
Hinduism has taught me to respect very religion on this earth. So I fully
agree with Mr Boruah that there are many noble things that Islam can teach.
But the trouble is that much to the confusion of the readers, many Leftist
Hindus have started blasphemous writtings against Hinduism. Similarly, many
Muslim writers have raised their heads against intractable Islam. This tribe
includes Salman Rusdie, Taslima Nasrin, Anowar Sheikh, Forida Mojid, JS
Bandukwala (famous for Fellow Muslims, Look Inward), to name a few. Of
course, there are Hindu writers like Sita Ram Goel as mentioned earlier. In
his book Muslim Separatism, Mr Goel has described the fate of one Kanjilal,
an employee of a British-owned indigo factory in Bengal, as: "Kanjilal was
given the full treatment prescribed for Kafirs in the Quran ..."
Mr Ann Rohman Borua would do well to go through the aforementioned books and
choose to react wherever and whenever he likes. Since open discussions, as
provided by bold and radical newspapers like The Sentinel are always
helpful, I must thank Mr Rohman Borua for giving the readers a fair chance
to read the mind of an elite Asomiya Mussalman.
Girindra Kumar Das,
Guwahati-21
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