To Dr. Ronaldo Ferrario, In Response To The Last Few Unanswered Queries

Submitted by Rakshas 10 Anan (India), Aug 23, 2006 at 13:57

This is in continuation of my previous lengthy post, because I understand that the last few issues deferred in it also beg the answer. Your casual sounding queries have inspired me to clarify the issues, for which I must thank you. I hope that Dr. Daniel Pipes will permit me to complete the reply. This is important because India is one shining example where time after time the collective will of a people has served to defeat jihad, no matter what the cost of the war in terms of resources, including human! Pakistan is yet to win a single war against India in its six decades of existence, while India is an organic non-Islamic entity that has a continuous history of over 5000 years of known history.

And to digress a little, yes Reuben, Indians tend to be an emotional people, because no matter how much the Anglo-Saxons and others would love to usurp their Vedic heritage through a trumped up and overtly racist Aryan invasion theory, Indians are simply not amenable to the Teutonic coldness of temper, owing to the acknowledged well-rounded and balanced Vedic influence on their temperament. For all Indians from the North to the southernmost tip, the Vedas are a matter of strong oral tradition and a lived experience. They are well in touch with the feminine side of their personality because of the goddess influence upon their culture. This is the main source of their indigenius intelligence, and contributes to both passion and compassion as remarkable traits of their personality. The hypothetical Aryan - Dravidian divide generated in colonial Asiatic Studies was a convenient device to fracture the innate unity of the cultural experience of India, and its influence on the body politic of India is well on the retreat by now! It was Churchill who spoke dismissively of the chances of Indian survival as a sovereign entity after the departure of the British from its soil, but it seems as though that is the likely fate of the British themselves, not even to mention Pakistan!

Returning to the subject under discussion, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian widow of Rajiv Gandhi, is now an Indian citizen and the constitutional leader of the ruling Congress Party. She has also won democratic elections with a massive majority each time, and there is nothing in the Indian tradition that denies such a woman leader her rightful due in politics, so long as she adheres to the national democratic framework. It is felicitous that she has chosen to play the role of the wise elder and king maker, with the support of her party, given her own limitations. If she brings the breath of fresh air to an age old party, it is most welcome, since it serves to strengthen the cosmopolitan glue that binds Indians from diverse backgrounds together. She has learnt a lot over the last 4-odd decades of her association with India, and Indian voters have taken her to their heart as the dutiful daughter-in-law of the long-serving ruling family of the Nehru-Gandhis.

Speaking of Gujarat, it happens to be the home state of both Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the respective founding fathers of independent India and Pakistan. As also of the father of Rajiv Gandhi, although all three leaders' families eventually settled elsewhere. It is a western border state largely unpoliced by the security forces, and thus open to much jihadi mischief from across the border with Pakistan! When sleeping women and child pilgrims on a train were shut in and burnt alive by the jihadis in Godhra, there was brutal retaliation of a kind never before witnessed in the history of independent India. That Talibani lesson will not be easily forgotten in a long time. It was a rotten, gangrenous reply to the festering jihadi canker in its midst. Yes, it was wrong, and it was a slur on the Hindu tradition of tolerance, as were the Sikh killings in Delhi after Indira Gandhi's assassination. And that is why, you will find Indian leaders straining every muscle not to permit such retaliation despite severe provocation as the frontline nation facing jihadi aggression. There was no major street conflagration after the attack on the Indian parliament, on the Diwali revellers in Delhi, at the temples of Akshardham in Gujarat, in Varanasi or Ayodhya! Or after the train bombings in Mumbai!!!

It would be foolish to believe that all jihadi activity against India is on account of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, going by the anti-India proclamations and terrorist acts of Pakistan since the end of the Cold War. Despite all Pakistani efforts to dismember India, an interesting facet of Indian Muslims is that they are much more concerned about the lot of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military, than they are about the alleged mistreatment of Kashmiris by the Indian army! And even the Kashmiris cannot be pursuaded to join Pakistan, after all the shedding of crocodile tears on their behalf by the latter!

To my mind, the time is soon approaching when the Indian Muslims will themselves begin to lynch the jihadi infiltrators in their midst. A sign of the times is that the Indian mullahs and other Muslim representatives have begun to petition the secular Sonia Gandhi for protection in times of distress, like they did after the Mumbai bombings by Pakistan-trained mercenaries, rather than congregate under the protective umbrella of discredited fatwa-issuing 'Grand Mufti' of India.

As for Hyderabad, Ronaldo, it is the chief city of the State of Andhra Pradesh on the east coast, and unlike the Hyderabad of the Sindh state in Pakistan, it is a thriving IT hub and a secular miracle visited by Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, now on the verge of stealing the shine off Bangalore. It is also the home town of the teen tennis sensation Sania Mirza, who continues to pursue her passion in professional gear despite the fatwas of illiterate mullahs. There again, it is Indian Muslims who have stood up firmly in her support, overlooking her occasional outbursts on radical teen causes such as pre-marital sex. Need more be said?

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".