New Indian Express 2013-01-11

Owaisi is the speaking Kasab

The Akbaruddin Owaisi’s hate speech in Hyderabad and decapitating of an Indian Army jawan at the Indo-Pak border in J&K are the result of a common mindset. Both the actions are borne out of centuries of abhorrence of timeless Catholic and pluralistic culture and traditions of this ancient land. Akbaruddin in his relentless tirade threatened Hindus, insulted their gods and beliefs. Worse is that his vitriolic statements were endorsed by a huge crowd, running into thousands. The helpful administration and ‘secular’ politicians turned a deaf ear to this case of rabid communalism and most of the players of the media entered into a conspiracy of silence. Owaisi spewed venom against India and Hindus at a public meeting at Nirmal in Adilabad district of Andhra Pradesh on December 24. For more than a week, none (‘secularists’ and the national media) saw any thing amiss and maintained a stoic silence, till a national English news channel decided to take up the issue. Meanwhile Owaisi, the fire spitting Majlis-e-Ittehadul Musilmeen MLA, had flown to London for ‘treatment’. On landing back, he was allowed a hero’s welcome by a helpful administration. The belated arrest followed orders from a court on a private complaint. Can Owaisi’s bombast be ignored as the rantings of an extremist since such extremists are there in every community and sometimes even in language or caste groups? For one thing, the perpetrator is a lawmaker and is the floor leader of MIM in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly. Secondly, the audience to which this was addressed was significantly large and was applauding with a number of women in it. Why is the script of this sordid drama so familiar and predictable. Owaisi comes from the infamous clan with deep connections with Razakars — an over a lakh strong militia raised by the then Nizam of Hyderabad against the local Hindus and India, at the time of departure of the British from the subcontinent. In August 2007, along with other members of his party, Owaisi had made threats against Tasleema Nasreen. He had declared “we in Hyderabad want to be behead this woman according to the fatwa”. The silence on the part of ‘secularists’ has to seen against the backdrop of their record so far. For them, endorsement of Islamic terror and fundamentalism are synonymous with support to ‘secularism’. While the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi upturned the Supreme Court judgment in the Shah Bano case in 1980s, Congress and Left front are competing with each other in Kerala these days in courting Abdul Nasar Madani, an accused in several terror attack cases. While infiltrators from Bangladesh are welcome, the Jammu & Kashmir Pandits who have contributed so much in profession, administration, literature and culture of Kashmir have been driven out and no tears have been shed for them in the so-called secular outfits including political parties like the Congress or the National Conference. The chief minister of J&K, among others, is opposing carrying out of the death sentence awarded by the judiciary to the conspirator of the Parliament attack on 2001, just because he is a Muslim. The Owaisi statement cannot be dismissed as a mere rant of a political figure because extremist Islam has raised its head in many parts of this country and in states like Kerala where Muslims are in high proportion (26 per cent) it has succeeded in imposing its will; even enabling what is described as mandates of Sharia are being imposed by stealth and force on co-religionists. Recently, a Muslim rally held at Mumbai had gone berserk and ransacked the Amar Jawan Jyoti. If not for local support from the community organisations like the Indian Mujahideen would not have succeeded in conducting serial bombings in several cities in India. The demand for a rigid adherence to Islamic law in personal matters that prevails now has been followed up by demands for Islamic financial institutions, for instance. Many political outfits compete among themselves to support such sections partly because of the clout the community already enjoys in 125 districts out of some 600 in the country. In Kerala this numbers game has enabled the community to gain a commanding position in the coalition government and openly flaunt it so much so this has alarmed the two major Hindu organisations to unite and resist the communal agenda of the Muslim League. In Assam and West Bengal the clout is strengthening conservative no change agenda. The Owaisi statement is thus an expression of a latent desire of a section of the community that is very much under the influence of extremism unlike other communities where extremism finds no encouragement. The underlining of Muslims being 25 crore in India has to be considered in the context of illegal infiltration of Pakistanis and Bangladeshi Muslims into the country — the latter on a large scale. District-after-district like Kishangunj in Bihar and several ones in West Bengal have graduated to Muslim majority. Our so-called secularists have sought to divert attention from the political clout the community is seeking to gain from the surge in numbers. The PM-appointed committee, headed by an ex-judge, has itself said that by the end of 21st Century the Muslim population will reach 28 per cent of the country’s projected population. Wikipedia reveals that ‘world Muslim population will grow twice as fast as non-Muslims in 20 years’. It also lists the reluctance of the community to adopt family planning as one of the causes of this growth; another is the widespread practice of multiple marriages. It projects that by 2030 Muslims will make up a quarter of world population. The Indian demographics has the following growth rates for the community: 1951- 9.91 per cent, 2001- 13.43 per cent; 2010- 18.9 per cent. The web encyclopedia also says quoting authoritative sources that ‘Muslim population growth rate is higher by more than 10 per cent of the total growth compared to that of Hindus’. The recent brutalisation of two Indian soldiers at the LoC, underlines the utter hate towards a kafir-dominated India that is present in the Pakistan psyche. Owaisi’s recent harum-scarum speech, in brief, is also a call to his community to wage a war against the state of India. He spoke what Ajmal Kasab and his co-patriots from Pakistan had done in Mumbai on 26/11. The three share the same despicable mindset.