TO BE OR NOT TO BE

Is moderate extremism possible? That is decidedly a contradiction in terms and can never be. So also is moderate fascism, moderate Nazism, moderate communism or moderate jihad an oxymoron. The September 11 attacks in New York have shaken up the American people like never before but a far worse fate had befallen India on account of this nefarious religious bigotry that tore India up on the eve of independence and gave us a truncated landmass by way of gift of freedom. Gone with the wind was Nankana Sahib, seat of Sikhism, gone were Harappa and Mohenjodaro, seats of the Indus Valley Civilisation and gone was the Gangetic delta to Pakistan which was founded on the basis of Islamic fundamentalism. The worst sufferers of Islamic persecution in history have been the Hindus. 80 million Hindus have perished at the hand s of Islamic invaders over the protracted period of their occupation in India. The Hindus numbered 600 million at the time they were first conquered by the Muslims and by the time Muslim rule ended in India they were reduced to a mere 200 million. The decrease in numbers was because of widespread forced conversion to Islam and also because many of the lower castes among the Hindus to escape Brahmanical tyranny converted to Islam. But primarily it was a case of religious coercion that did the Hindus the worst damage. Tens of thousands of their temples were razed to the ground and mosques raised in their place. The temple wealth was looted, images desecrated and the Hindu gods merely kept watching for what else could they have done. The Buddhist university of Nalanda was destroyed by the Muslim invaders and all that was glorious of Indian culture went into hibernation. The Hindus withdrew increasingly into rigid caste mode as their survival mechanism and a long night fell over the once sunlit nation of Bharat. But the Muslims did not end there with their brand of fanatical religion wreaking havoc in the holy land of Bharat. When it was time for the British to depart, they carved out two huge chunks of landmass on either side of India to separate as a Muslim State. Thus, was Muhammad Bin Qasim's conquest of India, Ghazwa-e-Hind, finally fulfilled in a big way as the infidel Hindu had to suffer heavy losses to the rising State of Islam. Since then Pakistan has been carrying on the age-old agenda of the Muslim invaders, that of waging constant war on India, jihad as it is called in Islamic terminology. Will their stance towards India ever change? Not till India flexes her muscles for strength is the only language barbarians understand. A civilised approach to a barbarous proposition is bound to boomerang and it is meet that we do not make the same error as Mahatma Gandhi did with the British. The Islamic ideology is world-domination through conversion and imposition of sharia and towards that end tens of thousands of fidayeens (suicide bombers) are ever willing to give up their lives to honour their scriptural injunction and attain instant transference to Paradise where beautiful virgins are waiting on them to serve their vital needs. This is irrationality at its worst and no amount of logical persuasion will work against this supposed divine commandment that has taken root in their psyche through systematic indoctrination from childhood in theological schools. The only solution is to wage war against these war-mongers and destroy this evil called Islamic terrorism that has plagued the world for the last 1400 years. The enemy has to be identified, named and eliminated. Else, worse days are ahead as mass immigration of Muslims into Europe form Asia and Africa, high fertility rates of the immigrant Muslim populations resulting in marked demographic changes across Europe and a declared agenda of global jihad by a huge network of Islamic terrorist organisations threaten to take the world back to the dark medieval age whence this political ideology sprang in the first place. The battle lines are drawn, now the ensuing struggle will see either the victory of freedom and enlightenment or the emergence of a barbarous cult of medieval monstrosity masquerading as religion. Upon our ideological and political resistance lies the well-being of the future of the human race. Many a time in the past we have fallen prey to fanatical forces which have, to quote Vivekananda, 'sent civilisations to despair'. Must we repeat the same mistake of the past or will we be wise this time and take effective action to combat fanaticism and uproot it from its very base? The choice is ours and the consequence we shall have to manfully bear either for good or for ill. The enemy is tough and uncompromising for they have 'divine commandment' to carry out while on our side are the human forces of reason and civilisation. The war is to be fought not merely on the ground but in the ideological realm too. And this enemy of civilisation must be defeated and destroyed for good so that the march of human progress remains unimpeded for a very long time to come for who knows when again counter-civilisation culture will be thrown up to disturb the equilibrium of things?