During their visit to Sri Lanka last week, the Indian Parliamentary delegation led by Lok Sabha Opposition Leader Sushma Swaraj spoke about the rights of Tamils and told what the government should do with regard ethnic reconciliation and the implementation of LLRC. She also advised the Tamil political parties on what they should do.
It is very kind and nice of her. However, Swaraj and her team never spoke a word about Muslims, the third most important community abandoned by all alike. They visited Jaffna, Mullaithivu, Menik Farm and other places to gather first hand information. But they failed to visit even for five minutes the Jaffna Muslim refugees mercilessly kicked out within two hour's notice by the LTTE - a group trained, armed and financed by India.
For more than two decades these unfortunate Muslims have been languishing in refugee camps in Puttalam. Instead of helping to rehabilitate, they are now being dismissed as old IDPs while every effort was made to resettle the Tamil IDPS in the wake of the LTTE defeat in May 2009. Swaraj understood the Muslim dimension of the ethnic problem only after she met a Sri Lanka Muslim Congress team on the eve of her departure.
However, Sri Lankan Muslims cannot expect much from Swaraj who is a prominent member of the Baharatiya Janatha Party (BJP), one of the front organizations for Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) whose declared ideology is to set up a Hindu Raj in India by wiping out the Muslims.
Before she preaches on minority rights to Sri Lanka, it would have been better for her to speak about the plight of around 150 million or so Indian Muslims whose political, economic and social conditions today remain worse than those of Dalits, as disclosed in the Justice Sachar committee appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Congress led government to probe into minority rights. The committee report has been gathering dust since it was released years ago.
Her own BJP colleague, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is alleged to have burnt Sabarmati train, killed 59 Hindu pilgrims, put the blame on innocent Muslims and committed genocide on innocent Gujarati Muslims virtually destroying their economic base.
Prof. Ram Punyani who works for communal harmony stated "VHP leaders led the attack in the heart of Ahmadabad. The mob used knives, axes, swords, iron and wooden rods, acids, gas cylinders and all sorts of inflammable materials and almost every possible other weapon to slaughter Muslims in the cities and villages. In some cases, they got the entire Muslim populations in certain areas electrocuted. In many urban centers, explosives were used to blow up houses, shops, dargahs and mosques. Structures that could not be razed by the mobs were mowed down by trucks. The pattern of violence against women was particularly horrific, targeting at their reproductive organs and shaming them to no end".
Ten years later today Gujarati Muslims were not rehabilitated yet. However, Modi remains in power. This is Indian democracy?
Meanwhile her BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani started his political career as an RSS activist and his road to power has been through the blood and flesh of Muslims. He went on Rath Yatra, whipped up countrywide anti-Muslim feelings, triggered anti-Muslim riots which killed thousands of Muslims apart from causing destruction to property.
It is common knowledge that Advani supervised the destruction of five century old Babri Msajid in Ayodhya.
On top of all the RSS and its affiliate political parties such as the BJP, the VHP, the Bajran Dal and other racist outfits sponsored anti-Muslim attacks, from time to time, and killed indiscriminately men, women, children and the elderly, raped Muslim women and destroyed property aimed at depriving them of their livelihood. These well planned attacks have been common and, according to some reports, there were around 40,000 such communal carnages since 1947.
According to mainstream Indian media, in one such attack about two decades ago, Muslim women were stripped naked, paraded in the streets and video filmed. While this is the plight of minority Muslims in India, this very same BJP party leader, Sushma Swaraj, comes here to preach on minority rights and tell the government and the Tamil parties what to do.
Adding insult to injury, Tamil Nadu's defeated Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi calls for a United Nations referendum on Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. It appears in his dotage he lives in his own world. Before he speaks about referendum in Sri Lanka it is more appropriate for him to call for a war crimes inquiry into India's atrocities on Kashmiri Muslims. In fact, Kashmiri Muslims are some of the most peaceful people on earth but being brutalized by Indian forces. According to the March 2010 issue of All Parties Hurriyet Conference Azad and Jammu Kashmir, 93,142 people were killed, 105,832 houses and shops destroyed, 107,326 orphaned, 9901 women molested and 22,719 widowed in the conflict there.
This is the tragic plight of Indian Muslim -- the country's largest minority. And they come to preach minority rights to Sri Lanka.
This is something Sri Lankan brought it upon itself. Sri Lankan is passing through one of its most difficult periods in its history. Under such circumstance isn't it time that the short-sighted forces which brought the country to where we are today realize the reality that this is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-racial and multi-lingual country where the minorities -- Tamils, Muslims and all others - should enjoy equal rights. This is the only way to silence anti-national elements and helps move the country ahead rather than indulging in the destructive policy of demolishing shrines, mosques and temples, erecting statues and grabbing lands.
Muslims remain the community abandoned by all. For example, British Minister David Miliband and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner followed by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in 2009 rushed to the island to see the plight of Tamils. They came all the way from London, Paris and New York to express what they claim as their humanitarian concern, but failed to find five minutes to visit the Muslim refugees in Puttalam. Isn't this outrageous?
(The writer is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist) |
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