Title: The shameless secularist in our midst
Author: M.V. Kamath
Publication: Free Press Journal
Date: May 16, 2002
URL: http://www.samachar.com/features/160502-fpj.html

There is nobody in all the world more despicable than the Indian secularist. If the truth has to be held, this is an individual who has no self-respect, who will sell his soul to the European Union to damn his own country, in order to get the White Man's patronising pat on the back. There will be more to say about the White Man and his hypocrisy a little later, but let one first complete the description of this animal called secularist. He was identified a long time ago by that great Bengali writer Bankimchandra Chattopadhyaya (1838-94) in words that ring true to this day. Bankimchandra was, of course, then writing about the Bengali babu. But what he wrote about the babu rings true of today's secularist.

A babu, wrote Bankinchandra, is one "whose deity is the Englishman, preceptor the Brahmo teacher, scriptures the newspapers and pilgrimage the National Theatre". And he went on: "He who declares himself a Christian to missionaries, a Brahmo to Keshabchandra, a Hindu to his father and an atheist to the brahman beggar is a 'babu'. One who drinks water at home, alcohol at his friend's, receives abuse from the prostitute and kicks from his boss is a babu..." That is an apt description of our secularist.

The babu was a secularist. In today's sad world he has turned out to be the nation's perceptor. He has no respect for his country, let alone his religion; he decries his religion and, as one the kind recently wrote, believes that there is no such thing as Hinduism which he dismisses as a collection of castes and ethnic groups. And he is the darling of the English media. He would, of course either first say that his Hinduism, whatever that is, is of a different kind or merely go further to insist that it is a myth that must be exploded. It is this kind of secularist who infests the English media and spreads poison and hatred in the country. He sees nothing wrong in being a conduit for insults hurled by the European at India and Indians. He sees nothing wrong in being trampled upon by European boots. What more insulting can it be than for the petty countries, Spain and Belgium to present on behalf of the European Union a 'demarche' to the Government of India on the matter of the riots in Gujarat? Of all the continents in the world, Europe is the most blood-thirsty, and unprincipled. And Spain and Belgium are most representative of the blood-thirstiness.

What Spain has done in Mexico and Peru and what Spanish priests have done in Goa beggars description. The record of the Belgians in Congo has been no better. And what about their crusades that the Europeans fought against Muslims? The crusades began, officially, on 25 November 1095 when Pope Urban I, addressing a tumultuous gathering of knights, priests and laymen, granted remission of all sins to anyone who joined the holy war against Muslims. The Muslims, said the Pope, had become "an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God" and it was a Christian duty "to exterminate this vile race from our lands". In his book 'The Shade of Swords' M. J. Akbar writes: "On 15 July 1099, during the Holy Month of Ramadan, a trooper in the army of Godfrey of Bouillon broke through from the north towers and the rest of a thirsty and inflamed army followed. It was inflamed by faith and thirsty for blood. For three days Muslims and Jews, male or female were massacred. A group of the thousand Muslims who thought they were in the sanctuary of the al Aqsa mosque were slaughtered. Jews met a similar fate in their synagogue."

The reference to Jews is significant. Jews in Europe throughout the centuries were treated as less than dirt in every European country. They were forced to live in ghettoes. They were forbidden to own land or indulge in agricultural pursuits. Necessarily they were forced either to become money-lenders (remember Shylock in Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice)or intellectuals. Such was the hatred of Jews among Europeans that it culminated in the 1930-40s holocaust is Nazi Germany when some ten million Jews were sent to concentration camps or to gas chambers to be killed with unmentionable ruthlessness. One would have thought that was the end of anti-semitism. But no. And who says that ? The much-respected 'The Economist' of London (May 4), that's who. Writes the journal: "In the months since September 11th, Europe has seen an increase in attacks on synagogues and other Jewish centres, a rise in threats and intimidation directed at individual Jews, and an increase in anti-Jewish propaganda of one sort or another. In Germany armed police guard Jewish schools and Jews are advised not to wear visible signs of their faith. In Britain, often praised for its tolerance, a synagogue was attacked and desecrated (in May).Describing this as a "great new surge of European anti-Semitism" The Economist goes on to wonder why Europe is taking the side of "Palestine's suicide bombers, passing lightly over their crimes, while vilifying Israel's government" and the journal answers: "Anti-semitism explains it all".

It then goes on to quote one of the Washington Post's most distinguished political commentators, Charles Krauthammer who wrote: "What we are seeing in Europe is pent-up anti-Semitism, the release - with Israel as the trigger - of a millennium-old urge that powerfully infected and shaped European history. What is odd is not the anti- Semitism of today but its relative absence during the past half-century. That was the historical anomaly. Holocaust shame kept the demon corked for that half-century. But now the atonement is passed. The genie is out again. This time it is more sophisticated. It is not a blanket hatred of Jews. Jews can be tolerated, even accepted, but they must know their place. Jews are fine so long as they are powerless, passive and picturesque. What is intolerable is Jewish assertiveness, the Jewish refusal to accept victimhood". To that The Economist adds: "The guilt that people who lived through the 1030s and 1940s felt about their failure to prevent the Holocaust is not felt to the same degree by the post-war generation... Criticism of Israel is now being freely expressed".

In a more focused report, The Economist writes: "It has become an article of faith in much of the American press that anti-Semitism in Europe is surging and that age-old hatred of Jews, after a post-holocaust period of silence and shame is one again coming to the surface. First, there has been a sharp increase in anti-Jewish vandalism (against synagogues, for instance), mainly, but not only, in France... Synagogues and other Jewish buildings have been attacked in Belgium, Britain and especially in France. A German rabbi, after two recent street assaults on Jews (by youngsters of Arab appearance) has advised his brethren in Germany not to display signs of their faith for fear of being beaten up. This week a synagogue in London was ransacked at night.... A well-known British journalist says that anti-Semitism is rising in Britain's media and political establishment', especially on the Left". Then the journal quotes an Israeli editor as saying: "This wave of anti-Semitism across Europe is unprecedented since the second world war". In Germany anti-Semitism is a spiralling threat. Elsewhere in western Europe there has been a rise in attacks on Jewish property but this is cleverly attributed to 'young Muslims'. Why 'young Muslims' cannot then be immediately extradited is not explained. Europeans evidently don't want to accept responsibility for anti-Semitic acts in their own countries and find it convenient to lay the blame on others. Says The Economist: "It is this mix of physical assault by thugs, mainly on property, with verbal assaults on Israel by more respectable citizens that has made many Jews feel vulnerable in general".

These are the European nations that dare to insult India and go to the extent of issuing a demarche to Delhi and their hypocrisy needs to be exposed. Nobody in India has pushed Muslims into ghettoes. Muslims, unlike Jews in Europe, have been the rulers and the despoilers of India. Al Beruni has described the havoc that Ghazni Mohammed wreaked in India, saying that he "utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed wonderful exploits by which the Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in all direction... This is the reason, too, why Hindu sciences have retired far away from those parts of the country conquered by us and have fled to places which our hands cannot yet reach....". Jews have done nothing of that damage to Europe but in many places they have been treated like dogs. And it is the European Union that now has the gumption to issue a demarche to Delhi and most shameful of all, it is an Indian national paper that has supinely published information about it as a matter of pride, in the name of secularism.

In the name of secularism, the European Union is allowed to insult India. Indian Journalism cannot be degraded any further. India should issue a stern demarche to the European Union in the matter of gathering anti-Semitism in that blood-thirsty continent.