The Unknown Abuses
I don’t really know what to make of this Tariq Ali piece, but this here is a provocative point:
Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.
I don’t see any point in trying to get into a Kashmir-Tibet oppression olympics, but problems in Kashmir are real enough according to Human Rights Watch:
Violence erupted in Jammu and Kashmir after a state government decision in May 2008 to transfer uninhabited forest land to a Hindu trust to build temporary shelters during an annual Hindu pilgrimage called “Amarnath Yatra.” Once the decision became public knowledge in June, Muslim Kashmiris protested against the land transfer and the transfer order was revoked. This sparked off anger among Hindu Kashmiris. Demonstrations in the Jammu region have paralyzed the state in recent weeks.
The state of Jammu and Kashmir has been in conflict for the last two decades, and tens of thousands of civilians have died, caught between separatist militants and Indian security forces. While militants have been responsible for human rights abuses, Kashmiris have long complained about violations by Indian troops who go unpunished for serious crimes including extrajudicial executions, torture, arbitrary detentions and enforced disappearances. The violence had reduced since 2003, but the recent protests show that the Kashmir issue is yet to be resolved.
You hear basically nothing about this in the United States. And surely Ali is right that the “instrumentalization” of concern for human rights is part of the story.
68 Responses to “The Unknown Abuses”
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November 28th, 2008 at 12:29 am
I always thought the whole Tibet thing was overblown… I mean, seriously, what has Tibet ever given the world??? Kashmir at the very least has given us cashmere cloth. I sometimes sympathize with the Chinese nationalists who think the West just hates China. Yes, Tibet is oppressed, but so is ALL OF CHINA.
Otherwise, I’m not an expert on the Kashmiri role in this.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Is there much that the US could seriously have done about events in Kashmir? India does what it does not for kicks but because it perceives the region as its most serious domestic concern; a breakaway of Kashmir would literally destroy India’s claim to existence of being a pluralist democracy. The US–aside from having little to no credibility on this issue after Iraq, etc.–also has limited leverage against India. America finds it hard enough to lean on Israel as it is.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Whilst there clearly have been human rights abuses in Kashmir , one thing India has not done is treat Kashmir as a colony.
I am pretty certain that the state constitution for Kashmir includes provisions that mean that only people who are already resident in kashmir can buy property there.
i.e. by law it is impossible for people from other Indian states to buy property there and ‘colonise’ it, even if you accept the idea that people moving from one part of a country to another is colonisation.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Mr. Yglesias,
It’s important to protect the safety and well being of Muslim Kashmiris, but it is eqully imortant to maintain Kashmir in Indian hands. Pakistan has utterly no right to Kashmir, and the militants who would join it to Pakistan must be suppressed by the use of extreme force.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:43 am
a breakaway of Kashmir would literally destroy India’s claim to existence of being a pluralist democracy
Kashmiri India is repudiation of the theory of India being a pluralist democracy anyway. I have no idea what you are talking about.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I get global news from the BBC as a podcast every day and Kashmir is something you hear about weekly at least. I hadn’t even noticed that if I wasn’t consuming that I’d never hear about the place.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:49 am
Kashmir, like Aceh, Cabinda, and a dozen other spots, is a conflict that the American government has no interests in. The “instrumentalization” of American concern for human rights is an old story. I don’t think its a problem.
Rajesh — Colozation is not only the influx of people. Not very many Britons permamently move to British India, but British India was still a colony. That said, I don’t think Kashmir is a colony like Tibet, mostly because the Indian government is not as competent as the Chinese government.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:49 am
It’s important to protect the safety and well being of Muslim Kashmiris, but it is eqully imortant to maintain Kashmir in Indian hands. Pakistan has utterly no right to Kashmir, and the militants who would join it to Pakistan must be suppressed by the use of extreme force.
Indeed, it is important for the United States to insure that the decision of the Hindu Maharaja of a largely Muslim state to adhere to India be respected. Decisions of Maharajas are always sacrosanct, although those of Nizams and Nawabs have no comparable force.
The Junagadh situation, in particular, is exactly the mirror image of the Kashmir situation (Hyderabad’s a bit different, since the Nizam hoped to keep Hyderabad as an independent state). If Pakistan has no right to Kashmir, then India has no right to Junagadh.
Of course, the Pakistani positions on these issues are just as inconsistent as the Indian, but the idea that there’s some kind of reason that the United States should support the idea of an Indian right to Kashmir seems absurd to me.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:52 am
but the idea that there’s some kind of reason that the United States should support the idea of an Indian right to Kashmir seems absurd to me.
I don’t even think it does officially. Last I knew we had a decades long commitment to not being involved at all.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I had a friend of mine today try to convince me the earlier bombings in Mumbai were a gambit to make Thanksgiving Day travel more difficult for Americans. Weird.
Kashmir really seems to be a difficult thing to grasp. Why do Indians feel it so necessary to hold on to that people such as Rajesh (#3) feel it’s ok to excuse human rights abuses as a means of maintaining control over the province?
November 28th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Imagine that Mexico lays a serious claim to California
and instead of sending unskilled workers across the
border, floods the state with terrorists. Will we
much care for human rights of those Mexicans and even
Mexican Americans?
American tilt toward Pakistan on almost all issues
between India and Pakistan has embolden Pakistan’s
determination to train terrorists for export. A
case can be made that if our foreign policy in the
region had been more neutral, the probability of
9/11 would have been reduced.
Tariq Ali’s case falls quickly if one realizes that
both Hindus and Muslims uffer for incredibly income
and wealth inequality, and so even if the Muslim
terrorists are home grown - and evidence in
the case of Mumbai
suggests that they are not- it will be hard to explain
why Hindus in similar dire straits do not
blow up the Taj.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
John and Jeremy,
Who said anything about the United States? I’m concerned with India here, being that I’m of Indian blood.
Look at a map. Junagadh, in theory, should have joined Pakistan, but it was an isolated and tiny principality surrounded by India, and it wasn’t practicable. Kashmir was a large state and a border state which could reasonably join either country. Whether the majority of Kashmiris wre Muslim or Hindu is utterly irrelevant. Under the laws of the time, Kashmir and other princely states were joined to the British Crown under treaties between the Crown and the native princes. Once Britain ceded control, sovereignty over Kashmir temporarily returned to the king, not to the people, and it was the king who was to make the decision of who to join.
While I don’t think they should have a plebiscite, it’s uquestionable that the Pakistani cause would lose such a plebiscite. In the last poll, about 35% of Kashmiris wanted to stay in India, 60% wanted independence, and onl 3% wanted to join Pakistan.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
of course, J&K State has plenty of non-secessionist groups–indigenous to the State (Kashmiri Pandits, Kashmiri Sikhs, many member of the Gujjar Muslim community, Muslims in Kargil, Buddhists in Ladakh, many members of the Muslim community in Jammu district, Dogras, etc. etc.)–that pretty much vitiates even the weaker notion of J&K state as a ‘colony’ peddled above. And it goes some way to explaining why the India ‘irrationally’ holds on to J&K State.
Kumar
November 28th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Jeremy, you obviously can’t read. I agree entirely that there have been human rights abuses and I am not defending them at all. I haven’t even commented on what the solution to the problem is. All I said was that you cannot say that India has treated Kashmir as a colony and I stand by that assertion.
Vikram, the difference is that the few people who did move to India could buy property and thus control things.
Kashmir is clearly by fact a part of India and the goverment and military have a considerable presence there.
What I was saying was that there is no policy of allowing non Kashmiri indians to settle or ‘colonise’ there. A punjabi, for example, ciould not move to Kashmir and buy out locals to set up a hotel , for example.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Hector - of course your position applies equally well in the opposite direction to Junagadh. The big difference is not some kind of abstract “impracticality” to Junagadh joining Pakistan. It’s that the Indians wouldn’t allow Junagadh to join Pakistan, just as they enforced their claim to Kashmir.
Also, this isn’t about the Pakistani claim to Kashmir, it’s about the Indian claim, which, apparently even you admit is supported by barely more than a third of the population.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
“it will be hard to explain
why Hindus in similar dire straits do not
blow up the Taj.”
No, but haven’t extremist Hindus done any killing recently? I seem to recall Gujarat as being a flashpoint for some Hindu -on-Muslim violence.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Salman Rushdie gave a compelling, fictionalized account of Kashmir’s tragedy and its impact on the growth of Muslim militancy and general looniness on both sides of the religious divide in “Shalimar the Clown”. It is not a scholarly account, but is very balanced in fact, and shows the depth of the problem, in a valley that used to be multi-confessional. Looks like this should become strongly recommended reading.
Unfortunately, as some other readers point out, Hindu extremists have done more than their share of killings in recent years, often backed by state authorities (but not federal ones). On the other side, the Indian federal state has been arguably much more restrained than the Pakistani one…
As to the comparison with Tibet, one might argue that if things are more quiet there than in Kashmir, it is because Chinese used “weight of numbers” rather than repression. And also don’t even bother trying to have representation…
November 28th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
John, don’t be ridiculous. Independence is not a realistic option, as the Islamic Jihadists in Pakistan will immediately begin conspiring to stage a coup in an independent Kashmir and bring it into the Pakistani fold. An independent Kashmir will inevitably fall to the Pakistanis. So leave out that 60% for purposes of the discussion. The only meaningful choice is between India and Pakistan, and over 10% as many Kashmiris support the former alternative.
Not that this even matters….as I mentioned above, under the terms of the British treaties, sovereinty over Kashmir resided with the king, not with the people.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
under the terms of the British treaties, sovereinty over Kashmir resided with the king, not with the people
Did this kind of reasoning stop the United States of America from becoming independent???
November 28th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Also one more comment on this topic: Kashmir’s Maharajah chose India at partition time, there is some evidence that the population probably wanted independence rather than Pakistan, but probably not India either. It is a clear example of the people’s will being denied, and it has hurt India’s democracy and stability ever since. Typical behaviour, when a state thinks granting the right to secede to a region would be the beginning of the end, and this very denial becomes a festering wound…think Chechnia for Russia, or on a much smaller scale Corsica for France (my home country). Chechnia has really been the basis for the KGB to re-take control of Russia, and thus this can be seen as one of the sources of the end of Russia’s quasi-democratization in the nineties…
On the other hand, of course Lincoln also refused the right to secede, but this was really a different context, and the South was not quite an example of self-determination of the people at large, given slavery!
November 28th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Hector — Add to the list the princley-state of Bantva — a Muslim majority state in Gujurat that opted for Pakistan. The Indian government reacted by invading Bantva and committed ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. 90% of the Gujurati Memon Muslim population was driven out of the country, to Pakistan.
Independence is most definitely a realistis option for Kashmir, just as it was for Bangladesh.
Rajesh — It would be nice if the imperial government in delhi did not actually control things in Srinigar — but that isn’t the case. The prohibition on foreigners owning land in Kashmir is about as meaningful as Tibet’s “autonomous” status.
And its Ikram, not Vikram.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Secession is simply not a ‘realistic’ option, for a number of reasons–most importantly, a number of indigenous Kashmiri groups are stuanchly anti-secession (Kashmiri Pandits, among others). The prohibition on owning land is very much in force, and is a key reason why J&K State has not seen people from other parts of India settling there.
Kumar
November 28th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Discussions of rajahs’ agreements with the British are entirely beside the point. The only important question underlying the political status of Kashmir is “what is best for the people of Kashmir?”
As part of India, Kashmir’s Muslims (about 2/3 of the population) are free to be Muslims. India does not restrict the practice of Islam, and there are over 100 million practicing Muslims in India. But if Kashmir became part of Pakistan, or became an independent Islamic state, its 1/3 non-Muslims would be subject to the same blasphemy laws and non-protection by the police that make life so difficult for religious minorities in Pakistan today. Kashmiri separatism is and always has been about identity, not real grievances.
None of this should be taken as a defense of Indian atrocities in Kashmir.
November 28th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
As someone who has no link to either side: I would disagree that one can say that “a number of indigenous Kashmiri groups” being against it is sufficient reason to declare that secession is “not realistic”.
Many countries have seen independence, which was not backed by the entire indigenous population. Say, Ukraine, where I have been working a couple of years. Some have been successful (Ukraine generally so, by the way, in spite of its absurd politicians), some less so, but as always, majority rule is the worst system to the exclusion of all others…
November 28th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Western Sahara takes the bronze!
November 28th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Keep in mind that the other reason secession is problematic is geography:
J&K State is composed of three regions: Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh. Secession is largely confined to the Kashmir region (the Valley or “the Vale”).
Aside from the problem of the Kashmiri Pandits and Kashmiri Muslims who would opt for India, there’s the fact that secession of Kashmir would cut India off from Kargil and Ladakh — regions that desire to be part of India.
Moreover, Kashmir itself is dependent on trade through routes that go through Jammu, which would also like to stay with India.
As pointed out upthread, polls show very few Kashmiris want to join Pakistan — most would opt for independence.
My sense is the best solution might be some kind of confederal arrangement — an entirely autonomous Kashmir that has a confederal relationship with the rest of India, with the Indian government providing for defense and foreign policy and with Kashmir having a common market with the rest of India. (It should be said, however, that J&K state is already autonomous — the legislature of the state is permitted to negate any federal law exc. those related to foreign policy or defense.)
November 28th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Hi Ikram
sorry about the misspelling. I was in a hurry to leave work and obviously misread.
I was making a narrow point about how often (tibet is an example) where the government will encourage outsiders to come into a land so that they can later clain that now the area is not significantly different from the rest of the country.
Whatever else India may or may not have done it has not done that and that I feel is a key point against Ali’s quote above.
I don’t have a very strong opinion about Kashmir, apart from a vague thought that a Northern ireland type solution could be possible ,but that quote stood out as incorrect so I pointed it out.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
‘Majority-rule’ is indeed best if the majority would actually respect the rights of the minority. I take it as axiomatic that such respect for the rights of minority groups is what distinguishes (a liberal) democracy from mob rule.
However, that is plainly not the case in J&K, and so the ‘veto-power’ of the indigenous groups is a sufficient reason to render secession unrealistic: For example, not least among the not-so-liberal-democractic actions of the secessionist faction in J&K State is that Kashmiri Pandits–a Hindu group indigenous to the Valley–were forced to leave the Valley en masse after armed attacks, and many still languish in refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi.
Kumar
November 28th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Also, FWIW, most of the evidence from 1947 indicates that the majority of Kashmiris preferred India to Pakistan. When the Indian Army moved in, contemporary accounts had them being greeted by large crowds. Though the accession was undertaken by the unpopular Maharajah, the decision was endorsed by Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of the state’s largest democratic political party, the National Conference. The NC swept the subsequent elections and there were no protests against Indian rule for ten years after the accession.
Kashmiris’ disillusionment with India came later, after the central govt. chipped away at the state’s autonomy. In response, Sheikh Abdullah began to flirt with separatism. India responded by jailing him and thereafter began blatantly rigging elections to ensure India-friendly parties won. That culminated in mass protests in 1988, and the Indian Govt.’s heavy-handed response further alienated the local population.
Since then, Islamic militancy has infected the movement (which was originally secular). Most of the Kashmiri Pandits have left. Relations between the state’s three regions have deteriorated too.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
CK,
Indeed. If the Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Ladakh were subjected to the tender mercies of Pakistani Islamism, they would be hanged for questioning the divine inspiration of the so-called “Prophet” Muhammed, as many Pakistanis already have been.
Ikram,
Comparing Bangladesh, a country with 130 million people, fertile land, a commercial jute industry, and a deep and rich cultural and intellectual tradition, with a remote and sparsely populated mountain principality is beyond ridiculous. Just because Bangladesh could survive as an independent nation doesn’t mean Kashmir could do the same. Mind you, it’s not yet clear whether Bangladesh will be able to survive rising sea levels and other effects of global warming without massive international help.
‘Secession’ and ‘independence’ in the Kashmiri context are nothing but code-words for “Annexation to Pakistan”. And as I mentioned, many more Kashmiris would like to remain part of India than to join Pakistan.
Candide,
Hari Singh’s preference isn’t irrelevant, it is THE relevant issue. Under the agreement with the British, sovereignty belonged to the prince, not the people.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Ikram,
By the way, how about if Pakistanis pay us reparations for nearly 1,000 years of murder, tyranny, and exploitation of Hindus and others by Muslim rulers? Fat chance of that, I suppose.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Hector - any reason why people today should be bound by what the agreement between the British and the rulers of Kashmir was long ago? I come from a republic, and India is one as well - thankfully!
November 28th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
This may have been important in 1947, but I can’t see why it would matter today.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
The fear is that Kashmir will become an Islamic Republic (like Pakistan and Bangladesh) and that non-Muslims would be subject to Sharia. This is terrifying to many, many people and with good reason. I think that we should acknowledge that when we are talking about the situation.
Plus, the center of Kashmir’s economy is Jammu, which is something like 85% Hindu. What would be the economic center of a separatist state that does not include Jammu? Would this new state be viable? And if it is not viable, what is to prevent Pakistan from annexing it? And what would that mean in terms of stability in the region? Would we have a mass migration into India from Kashmir like what happened after the 1947 partition? Are the Indian states bordering Kashmir prepared to take in potential refugees?
It irks me when people make this out to be a simple problem.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Anyone who thinks that conditions in Kashmir are much worse than
in Tibet should not be taken seriously.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Lily, fully agree - this is an extremely complicated problem! I just don’t think we should take options from the table as “impossible” because of imaginary reasons. Now, status quo does not look like an excellent option either…
November 28th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Nothing in the Human Rights Watch piece affirms Ali’s most bold contentions– that India’s role in Kashmir is a cut-and-dried matter of colonialist aggression, and that state-sponsored Indian torture and rape of Kashmiris is a regular and institutionalized event.
The suggestion that Western concern for human rights is “heavily instrumentalized” is not a new one, even if the phrasing is novel.
But Ali is going a step further. He’s binding general awareness of the fact of conflict in Kashmir up with specific allegations of one-sided brutality, and he’s saying, furthermore, that if Westerners are unconvinced of these specific allegations it’s only because we’re Westerners, and that our lack of awareness is an indication of our inherent lack of concern. Why provide documentation, when it’s so much simpler to guilt one’s readers into acquiescence?
November 28th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
You don’t hear Tariq Ali talking about the ethnic cleansing of the Kashmir valley do you? 20 years ago, 30% of Kashmiris in the valley were hindu, the number is much less today because many of these people now live in refugee camps in the rest of India. Also, “Kashmir” includes Ladakh and Jammu, which are not majority muslim, and the people here know that “independence” means that they will either be killed, converted or become refugees. Also, interestingly enough, for all their talk, none of the “indigenous Kashmiri” independence groups have the courage to participate in elections. The last time they did, they were soundly defeated. Also, why do you think the Indian Army is in Kashmir? Because they get pleasure from carrying out operations against innocent and defenseless civilians?
There is a very severe Islamic terrorist problem there,
which is mostly a creation of Mr. Ali’s home country.
Also, Mr. Ali has some chutzpah talking about Kashmir as an Indian colony. They have elections there, and special laws to protect them in the constitution. In Pakistani Kashmir, on the other hand, there has been forcible resettlement of the region by people from other regions to change the ethnic composition, no elections, and brutal military rule.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
In fairness to Ali, he’s been pretty critical of Paksitan’s role in Kashmir as well as India’s.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Yes, if one reads Ali’s entire post, it is rather balanced, though I don’t agree entirely with him (in particular not the comparison w Tibet) - the quote in Matt’s post is only part of Ali’s view
November 28th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
The issue with Ladakh may be different, but the idea that anyone is contemplating a situation where Hindu Jammu becomes part of Pakistan is arguing with a straw man.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
by “anyone” in post 41, I mean “anyone you are arguing with in this comment thread,” not “anyone anywhere.”
November 28th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Re: how about if Pakistanis pay us reparations for nearly 1,000 years of murder, tyranny, and exploitation of Hindus and others by Muslim rulers?
Historically that would quite absurd. The Pakistanis are an indigenous Indo-Aryan folk, speaking mainly Indo-Aryan languages (with a couple of Dravidian languages and one language isolate). They didn’t invade or conquer anyone. The various invaders of India came from farther away, many from central Asia. The Aryans themselves. Alexander the Great. The Kushans. The Ghazi Turks. Tamerlane and his heirs the Mughals. The British.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
JonF,
Yes, you’re right. That was a silly and unjustifiable bit of resentment that I regret. However, I do feel that not enough emphasis is placed, either in India or the West, on how badly Hindus, Sikhs, Christians and Zoroastrians suffered under Muslim rule, and how Muslims were right up until Independence a privileged group.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:51 pm
John @41,
I think if you look at the claims of “Kashmiri independence” groups, and of Pakistan, this is what they ask for. Also, the other idea they like is religious partitioning, which is again similarly ridiculous and unacceptable.
Peter @39,
Mr. Ali pays lip service in regards to the Pakistanis and then implies that they are not very different from India, and that the Indian army is the real evil doer here. There is no equality between what they did (sponsor terrorist activity in India, first in Punjab and next in J&K), and the response of the Indian state, which was to defend against such terrorism. He also never explicitly discusses the fact that the terrorists committed and continue to commit significantly greater atrocities in Kashmir and elsewhere (see e.g the ethnic cleansing of the population in the Kashmir valley). He also ignores the fact that the current problems with Islamic terrorism everywhere are largely due to Pakistan, and tries to provide moral justification for the actions of terrorists in Mumbai, by attempting to shift the debate to supposed oppression of people in Kashmir. I find it all very dishonest and disgusting.
I also find it deeply intellectually dishonest of Mr. Yglesias to be writing the sort of ill informed and ignorant posts about India and more specifically, Kashmir at this juncture, to “explain” the events in Mumbai. I still remember that he supported bombing the daylights out of Iraq, supposedly in retaliation to the attacks of 9/11. I wonder how the reception would have been if someone from outside the US had written about the human rights abuses perpetrated by the United States in Iraq (through the blockade) and more generally through its support of oppressive regions in the Middle East, as part of the “story” behind the attacks of 9/11/2001.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Regarding Matt cavaliarly supporting the Iraq invasion while turning all sensitive about Mumbai etc, I’ve always been baffled by the imperialist sense of entitlement that even liberal Americans have. Matt regrets his Iraq war support but probably about as much as the time he drank too much or was really mean to some ex-girlfriend. I doubt he sees himself as supporting the original war crime but when it comes to other countries he really really wants to be as even-handed as possible.
Not trying to pick on Matt here, just conveying how surreal the whole thing appears to an outsider. A good analogy would be how astounded liberal blogs feel at Washington democrat chumminess with Lieberman, Rove etc.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Hector, why should the vast majority of South Asian Muslims — most of whom are the descendants of low-caste converts to Islam — be in any way responsible for what some Muslim invaders and raiders did seven centuries ago?
Moreover, it’s silly to reduce Islamic rule in India to a cartoon. Yes, there were plenty of violent Muslim rulers in India — Timurlane, Mahmud of Ghazni, and various others.
But there were also people like Akbar, Shah Jahan, and Tipu Sultan.
The destruction of major Hindu temples by the likes of Mahmud of Ghazni and the like get a lot of attention — what gets less attention is that temple-destruction and looting was common, even from Hindu rulers — temples were depositories of wealth and rulers from rival castes or devotional cults would often raid other temples.
That doesn’t excuse it — it’s just that history is complicated and actions that were undertaken hundreds of years ago say nothing about ordinary people living today. Yes, plenty of Hindus suffered under Muslim rule. But guess what? Everyone suffered under all types of rule in the past. (For that matter, low-caste Hindus didn’t do too well under Hindu rulers.)
History is filled with wars and brutal actions from all types of actors. Yes, there were violent Muslim invaders of India. There were also violent British invaders. And violent Hindu invaders who invaded other Hindu-lead states. And elsewhere in the world there were violent Christian invaders (i.e. the crusades), and violent pagan invaders, including the Mongols, who were perhaps the bloodiest invaders of all time. Yet nobody accuses the Mongolians as being somewhat responsible for people’s current problems.
And even if there is a sense of grievance over Muslim invasions, why should those grievances by turned to ordinary Muslims with no connection to those invaders?
November 29th, 2008 at 8:59 am
ASI,
The Crusaders were ‘invaders’? Don’t be utterly absurd. The Middle East was Christian before it was Muslim. The Crusaders were restoring what was rightfully theirs, and rolling back the dominance of the so-called “Prophet” Muhammed that had been established throuh centuries of butchery and tyranny. I do criticize the way the Crusades were conducted, there were great and terrible atrocities committed by the Christians, and a total lack of ‘jus in bellum’. But as for the cause of the war itself, the ‘jus ad bello’, the Crusades were eminently justified. We Christians have many sins to our credit, including for example the colonization of the Americas. But the Crusades are not one of them. It was a sad day when the Kingdom of Jerusalem fell.
As for Tipu Sultan, don’t make me laugh. Unlike his father he was a big believer in jihad and forceful conversion, and was notorious for the forcible circumcision of Christian converts. As Daniel Larison has pointed out, Akbar was a tolerant and humanitarian leader, but he was also hardly a very good Muslim.
The British colonists had many sins of their own, but any sensible Hindu would much rather be ruled by the British than by the Muslims. The British actually did much good for India, remember, unlike most of the Mughal and other rulers.
November 29th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
“The Crusaders were ‘invaders’? Don’t be utterly absurd. The Middle East was Christian before it was Muslim. The Crusaders were restoring what was rightfully theirs…”
Hector, a persistent problem in this thread and elsewhere is that you believe that members of a religion have a right to land that belongs or belonged to their co-religionists. But an important principle of international relations is that property rights are determined by national borders, not religious demographics. (This mistaken idea of yours explains your earlier slip when you said that the Pakistanis, as Muslims, were “invaders” and owe reparations to the Hindus.)
The Middle East was indeed “Christian before it was Muslim,” and it was pagan before that so I guess you would have supported a Pagan Crusade even more. But the point is that, though it was previously Christian, it was never French, English, Italian, etc., so the Crusaders had no legitimate claim on that land.
Not to mention that the Crusaders routinely slaughtered the Jews in the Holy Land and elsewhere, and since the Jews’ claims predated the Christians’ this would seem to indicate that the Crusaders were indeed invaders, even by your logic.
November 29th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Not to mention that the Crusaders at the beginning of the wars killed many Jews, as well as Christians of Arab appearance. If you really regret the Christian conquest of America, shouldn’t you be supporting a military uprising by Native Americans, according to your own logic?
November 29th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Sajia Kabir,
Well, I do support the current efforts in places like Peru, Bolivia and elsewhere to secure political and economic power for the pure-blooded Indigenous population. There aren’t enough Native Americans left in the USA or Canada for them to become the new dominant group, but if the Native American population of, say, South Dakota or the Northwest Territories wanted to form their own country, we could have a serious discussion about that.
I regret the fact that the New World was colonized by the European powers, and I deplore the fact that Christianity was spread there by the sword (which was explicitly forbidden in the Summa Theologica), and that so much of indigenous culture was erased. I don’t regret the fact that the Americas are mostly Christianized today, and I do regard it as an interesting demonstration of the fact that it is th nature of God to bring good out of evil. I don’t have any problems with religious syncretism, and it makes my happy today that some Bolivians can pray to Pachamama, and Brazilians can pray to Ogoun or whoever, and other traditional deities while still acknowledging that Jesus Christ is the coeternal, coequal and consubstantial begotten son of the one true God. While some of the Native American religions included much pure evil (e.g. Aztec human sacrifice), others were, I believe, genuine revelation that paved the way for Christ.
November 29th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
So basically your problem with us is that we don’t accept Christ as our savior.
Oh, and a lot of the Christians who did convert to Islam did so because they were fed up with theological infighting within the churches, especially regarding the nature of Jesus. See Paul Johnson’s A History of Christianity, among other.
November 29th, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Sajia Kabir,
Well, you certainly have the legal right not to believe in the divinity of Christ, and that’s as it should be. However, I do think you guys are seriously wrong on that issue, and that the flat denial of the Incarnation means that Islam is unalterably and irredeemably diametrically opposed to Christianity on the most important issue.
December 6th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Citi CEO Vikram Pandit will address employees today about the bank’s reduction in workforce, reports CNBC’s Charlie Gasp… G20 Plan Enough? As world leaders at the G20 meeting agree on further coordinated action in an attempt
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