Articles
Speaking up for Rohingyas
Dt.29/12/16
Speaking up for Rohingyas
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
Sri Syed Munir Khasru (Chairman, The Institute for Policy, Advocacy and Governance, Dhaka) writing in the Hindu of 26th Dec lamented that India is indifferent to the plight of Muslim Rohingyas being expelled from Myanmar. He referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of the United Nations which is adopted by almost all members of the UN including India but that all nations are unconcerned about the Rohingya refugees. He has not mentioned that in contrast to the UDHR, more than 50 Muslim countries in the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) had come out with an Islamic Declaration of Human Rights (IDHR) , obviously, suggesting that Muslims are different from other humans. Islam is a transnational religion and Muslims belong to a borderless Umma. If the more than 50 Islamic countries with a separate Declaration of Human Rights of their own and holding that Muslims belong to a borderless worldwide Umma, cannot take a few thousand Muslim Rohingyas , how does he expect that India, which is home to 30 mln Bangladeshi Muslim illegals and another tens of millions of Hindus & Sikhs expelled from Pakistan, in 1947 itself ; with thousands of Hindus and Sikhs of West Pakistan taking refuge in the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir inspite of seven decades of living there are not even given the citizenship of that state because it is a Muslim majority state, why should India have to take care of the Rohingya Muslims of Bangladeshi origin who had illegally infiltrated into Myanmar and proliferated to such an extent that the local native Buddhists are overwhelmed by them and they are therefore expelled? Like the Rakhine district in Arakan province of Myanmar is flooded by Bangla’s Muslim Rohingyas, some districts in Assam and West Bengal are illegally entered into by Bangla’s Muslims and have become Muslim majority.
2. Sri Khasru is perhaps not aware that Muslim organisations in Delhi and Hyderabad are playing host to thousands of these Rohingya Muslims of Bangladeshi origin and helping them to fraudulently get identification and ration cards and also Indian citizenship by marrying them into local Muslim families .
3. Sri Khasru is saying that the much touted pluralistic and secular ideology of India is rather disappointing to the extent that it is not taking care of the foreign origin Rohingya Muslims (who are facilitated by their co-religionists to enter into India), India is actually a fake secular state. India’s Governments at the Center and States are indifferent to Hindus but are specially taking care of Muslims & Christians. For eg. though required to be secular, the Government of India is spending Rs. 1400 cr of rupees ( increasing year after year) to subsidise Muslims’ pilgrimage to Mecca, while Hindus themselves have to not only pay the cost of their pilgrimages to places like Amarnath and Mansarovar and Tirumala but also have to buy ticket to see their gods and offer pujas. Muslims and Christians are given some rights and privileges not available to Hindus (Article 30 of the Constitution allows these minorities to found any number of colleges of any variety like engineering, computers, aeronautics and medical and dental colleges whose management is exempt from several regulations applicable to such institutions founded by Hindus). Besides, many state governments fund the construction of Churches, mosques, Urdu Ghars and Shadi Khanas meant for Christians & Muslims utilising state funds while not a rupee is spent from the government budgets for similar facilities for of Hindus .
Some state governments pay salaries to Muezzins ad Mullahs and fund Madrassas of Muslims Hindu priests in temples and teachers in Samskrit and Vedapathasalas are not funded by governments but by private persons, and Hindu devotees. So, India’s governments at the center and in States spend budget monies (95% from Hindus) to promote Moslem and Christian faiths. That is not secularism.
4. Is it not curious that Bangladesh, a Muslim country from where the Hindu, Buddhist population has been reduced from 35% in 1947 to 7% by now by decades -long discrimination and oppression, is itself least concerned for the settlement of Bangladesh- origin Rohingya Muslims expelled from Myanmar ? Also, consider the fact that Muslims from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and other Muslim countries, affected by the civil war between Salafi Sunni ISIS and a predominantly Shia Syrian government are not going to any Muslim countries, to their Umma but are deliberately (sometimes, very hazardously) flooding Christians’ Europe. Not one country of the OIC is inviting them, despite such refugees belonging to the Islamic world -wide Umma.
5. It appears that Muslims think that they have a overriding right to enter and settle in any country and all non-Muslim countries have the obligation to host them and look after them. This is entirely inadmissible. It is indicative of the arrogant presumption that Muslims are a special species of humanity as announced through the Islamic Declaration of Human rights. Some Muslim organisations are hosting Rohingya Muslims in India while totally ignoring the plight of 400,000 Hindus expelled from the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley of J&K state and so living in refugee camps for the last nearly three decades.
Tail Piece: India (or for that matter any non-Muslim country) can’t afford to be a haven for those who have been historically denigrating Hindus as idolaters and kaffirs and whose community ruled and ruined the people for six hundreds and severed one-third of its territory from them. (906 words)
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