Originally published at: Hindu extremist leader advocates for his followers to kill Muslims | Boing Boing
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My imaginary friend in the sky is better than your imaginary friend in the sky. Ok, Got It.
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Much like in the 1920s and 1930s, this is a globalized phenomenon. The shit happening in India is pretty scary. There have been a bunch of massacres of Muslims in India already, both historically and more recently.
Rooted in colonialism, this current wave of Islamophobic violence really starts with Jammu after the partition of in 1947, with violence on “both sides” as it were…
This article SERIOUSLY downplays the British role in all of this bloodshed (as they often used ethnic or religious divisions as part of their divide and conquer strategy in colonial rule), but discusses another massacre of Muslims in the early period of India’s national history:
More recently, there were anti-Muslim riots in cities like Dehli…
Arundhati Roy has called Modi openly fascist and it’s hard to argue, given how he’s used religion as a rallying point:
Here is her take on how his government did on Covid among other things:
No, this is just open fascism, as Roy says. It’s easy to just dismiss this as religious “fanatics” gone too far, but it’s going to lead to yet more violence and deaths. This is fascism and we need to call it what it is, just like here.
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Until it starts killing people, at which point it’s no longer “silly games.”
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That is the reason why there is a phrase called “The Black Hole of Calcutta”, and why I refer to the brits as “The Brutish Empire”.
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Right… honestly, I don’t care what people believe as long as they are not forcing me or others to believe it too, especially through ceasing political power.
What Modi has weaponized historical divisions that became especially keen after partition to stay in power. The logic of fascism can be quite powerful for people who feel aggrieved in some way by forces outside of their control. The violence against religious minorities in India is only going to increase as long as his party is in charge.
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I understand your reference to the Brutish Empire but the Black Hole of Calcutta has me confused. This refers to an event where British soldiers were captured and imprisoned in a tiny cell causing many of them to suffocate, no?
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Sadly, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi essentially turning a blind eye to the plight of Indian Muslims, it seems like the violence and anti-Muslim sentiments brewing in the nation will only increase.
Modi made his bones doing a lot more than just turning a blind eye to the suffering of India’s Muslims.
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I keep reading about the police siding with Hindu nationalists in enforcing their will to essentially create a Hindu theocracy - everything from seemingly minor things like shutting down food stalls that sell eggs (despite most of the customers actually being Hindu), supporting assaults on Muslims, to banning meetings at Christian churches before Christmas for reasons of “public safety” - because Hindu extremists had been attacking the churches. Plus local authorities creating rules that directly (and presumably unconstitutionally) targeted non-Hindus.
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They recently froze the assets of Mother Teresa’s ministry, for that reason.
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Right you are, I had it backwards. Mea Culpa. Doesn’t forgive the British from doing terrible things to other people in the name of empire building, though.
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Well, I didn’t want to get into the entire history. That would’ve taken a bit. I can do a piece that delves into the whole history of the conflict at a later date if you’d like.
I really wanted this particular video to speak for itself, Ya know?
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Oh, sure! It’s a deep history which has been twisted in the ongoing tensions between Pakistan and India, that has been distorted by the British to be just another “intractable” conflict that just “can’t be understood” by the west (even though the west had a huge hand in creating said conflict… I’m looking at you, former Yugoslavia countries)… And of course there is “history” (which are false and created to make one side seem “innocent” and the other “evil”) and then there is history (the facts of what actually happened as best we can determine via evidence that we have).
But the bellicose Islamophobic language has really exploded and been horribly normalized since 9/11. The US tried to claim that their rhetoric was not designed to inflame anti-Islamic sentiment, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see what was happening… just using language like Crusade is loaded language, as it brings about all sorts of mistaken notions of an intractable conflict between the “Islamic world” and the “Judeo-Christian world.” In this case, of course, it’s the “Islamic world” and the “Hindu world”… But those sorts of constructs ignore the very long history of both conflict and peace and intermingling/connections…
Anyways… what’s been happening to religious minorities in India under Modi’s government is just unforgivable. I want to say that there was another hardliner politician that was saying that the guy who shot Gandhi should be praised, because Gandhi wanted to keep India together rather than partition it along religious lines.
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The problem isn’t so much that a Hindu extremist leader advocates killing Muslims; but that under BJP administration(especially now that ‘Modinomics’ largely hasn’t delivered; remember back when good for prosperity and development was pretty much the primary leg of his platform? It’s been a little while now; but it used to be the part that got all the talk) it’s not clear that being in favor of killing Muslims necessarily qualifies you as an ‘extremist’ anymore.
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Um. Yes. That’s actually a problem.
One is an extremist if they advocate for that, even if Modi government lets it slide.
Just because some don’t see it clearly doesn’t mean it’s not.
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Strange thing for a religion that believes in Karma and reincarnation to espouse. Aren’t they concerned they’ll come back as a muslim?
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I guess maybe they’d believe that they might if they don’t do the work of “defending Hinduism” from what they see as a threat… But just like Christians can selectively take from their religious works to support all sorts of odious beliefs, it’s clear that Hindus can do the same…
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