Why Was There No Tranfer Of Population?

[Guest]

Master Tara Singh

[G.Subramaniam]

Savarkar

Visit esamskriti.com

Master Tara Singh was also one of the founders of the VHP

[G.Subramaniam]

Jinnah tried to cajole Master Tara Singh to accept an autonomous sikh zone within
Pakistan, and in the bargain drag East Punjab, Haryana and Himachal into Pakistan

This plan was supported by the british

Master Tara Singh remembered history and wisely refused to trust any muslim
and threw in his lot with India and demanded partition of Punjab

During the khalistan movement, the Bhindranwala faction of the Akali Dal was anti-India
The Prakash Singh Badal faction was neutral and the Master Tara Singh Faction was strongly pro-India

And Nehru in 1948 threw Tara Singh who had salvaged 40% of Punjab into jail

[G.Subramaniam]

Neelam.com

sells a Savarkar DVD for $15

When Tara Singh and the sikhs started having problems with Nehru
Tara Singh offered to abide by arbitration by Savarkar
since Savarkar was the only hindu he trusted, much more than the congress

In general hindutvawadis have tried to be fair with the sikhs unlike the secular scumbags of the congress


Savarkar was the only hindu honored by the Golden Temple committee

[Guest]

G.Subramaniam,
Thanks, I was looking for Savarkar DVD. <!--emo&:cool--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/specool.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='specool.gif' /><!--endemo-->

[Bharatvarsh]

I am a new member here and thought that this was an interesting topic, if anyone is interested in the riots by Muslims in Punjab (to which Hindus and Sikhs gave a fitting reply), read the following book online:

Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947

http://voi.org/books/mla/

I think not having a population exchange was the biggest blunder in modern day Hindu history, it cost us dearly and we are still paying the price. Also there was good retaliation in Bengal as well but the difference was that Hindu Bengalis stopped the retaliation when Gandhi visited Calcutta while Hindu Punjabis made no such mistake and ensured that Punjab became clean of Muslims. the following is an old interview with a Hindu rioter named Gopal Da who spelled terror in Muslim hearts and is still well known in Bengal and Bangladesh, he came out to protect Hindus after Direct action day and Greater Calcutta Killings, so here's the interview:

Duty does not permit repentance --The butchers of Calcutta
Andrew Whitehead
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gopal `Patha' Mukherjee, Gopal the Goat, looks an unlikely retired gang leader. He is positively beatific, with his thick, black-rimmed spectacles, long white beard, and tidy wisp of grey hair tied up on top of his head, sardar-style.

Yet, half a century ago, he was among the most feared of Calcutta's musclemen, with 800 boys at his command. He was an emperor and they were his army. Gopal Patha he got the name because his family ran a meat shop on College Street was, at the time of partition, a protector of his community. His idea of keeping the peace was killing the other side.

``He was very ferocious,'' recalls S. K. Bhattacharjee, a sub-inspector in the Lalbazar police headquarters at the time of the Great Calcutta Killing in August 1946. ``Gopal Patha looked like a gentleman. He was a criminal, but he was very helpful to the poor. During the riots, he came out to rescue Hindus.''

Then as now, gang leaders needed political patrons, and politicians were keen to have friends in low places. Gopal Patha, sitting in his office near Calcutta's Wellington Square, says he was close to the Congress Chief, B. C. Roy though he insists this was a personal friendship more than a political allegiance.

Whatever the inspiration, when Direct Action Day unleashed communal rioting in Calcutta, Gopal Patha assembled his force. ``It was a very critical time for the country,'' he asserts. "We thought if the whole area became Pakistan, there would be more torture and repression. So I called all my boys together and said it was time to retaliate. If you come to know that one murder has taken place, you commit 10 murders. That was the order to my boys.''

The words are uttered so softly, it takes a while for their import to sink in. Calcutta was in flames and Gopal Patha, in effect, took the opportunity to douse the city in kerosene. ``It was basically duty,'' he insists. ``I had to help those in distress.''

Today, his modest office is grandly titled the National Relief Centre for Destitutes. Apparently, a charity clinic occasionally operates from there. On the walls are black-and-white portraits of a pantheon of Bengali heroes, the garlands greying with dust and decay. And behind the door, sufficiently lifelike to unnerve the unwary, is a life-size model of Netaji, dressed in INA uniform, right down to the spit-and-polish military boots.

``People used all sorts of weapons,'' says Gopal Patha, relishing the opportunity to reminisce. ``They had small knives, big choppers, sticks, rods, guns, and pistols. I had two American pistols. We got some weapons during the 1942 movement. Then during the Second World War, the American army, the Negroes, were in Calcutta. If you gave them Rs 250 or a bottle of whiskey, they would give you a pistol and a hundred cartridges. That way we secured all these weapons, and we used them during the troubles.''

He made plenty of enemies. ``We came to know a Hindu called Gopal Patha,'' recalls former Muslim Leaguer G. G. Ajmiri. ``He used to catch hold of Muslims and slaughter them.'' Ajmiri was a Muslim strongman, a leader of the League's student wing in Calcutta along with Mujibur Rahman (``He was not that important then.'') and a member of the Muslim National Guard.

Ajmiri, who appears to have been loyal in turn to Britain, to Pakistan (he served in its army) and now to Bangladesh, lives in Dhaka, where he delights in telling tales of his prowess. ``They used to call me `brave'; `strongarm'. I never used a shotgun or sword. But I was a good boxer. And sometimes I took the bamboo sticks out of their hands and beat them with those.''

``One day,'' says Ajmiri, warming to his theme, ``somebody said: Gopal Patha has grabbed four Muslims and slaughtered them. Immediately, we rushed there. Gopal Patha looked at me and said: `Oh, this man has come again.' So I said, `Yes. Why are you killing people just because they are Muslims?' He said to me: `You go, we won't kill anybody now.'''

Patha ripostes that his boys were always selective. ``We fought and killed our attackers. But why should we kill an ordinary rickshaw-wallah or hawker?"For every first division gang leader like Gopal the Goat, there was a cluster of lesser figures, people like Jugal Chandra Ghosh, also now in his eighties. Still a big bear of a man, he was in 1946 a worker with the Congress Party's trade union wing. But that wasn't the source of his street power.

``I had a club, an akhara,'' he says. ``I was a wrestler, and I trained my boys, and they carried out my instructions. There was this Congress party leader. He took me round Calcutta in his jeep. I saw many dead bodies, Hindu dead bodies. I told him: `Yes, there will be retaliation.'''

``I went round the saw mills and factories. I set an amount sometimes Rs 1,000, sometimes Rs 5,000. They paid up. Then I declared: for one murder, you get Rs 10, for a half-murder, Rs 5. That's how we got started.''

A year after the Killing, Gandhi came to a still-smouldering city and appealed for a surrender of arms. The journalist Sailen Chatterjee witnessed the scene. ``People came with their weapons and placed them at the feet of Gandhiji. Shabbily-dressed people came with swords, daggers and country-made guns. Even Mountbatten said this was the miracle of Calcutta. Gandhi's miracle.''

Ghosh was among those who surrendered their arms. It was a remarkable conversion, and Ghosh remains a committed Gandhian. In the aftermath of Ayodhya, he worked hard to prevent communal unrest in his mixed area of Calcutta.

But there were limits to the miracle. Some strongmen, those who had fanned the flames so diligently over the previous year, took an intransigent line. ``Gandhi called me twice,'' Gopal Patha says. ``I didn't go. The third time, some local Congress leaders told me that I should at least deposit some of my arms.''

``I went there. I saw people coming and depositing weapons which were of no use to anyone out-of-order pistols, that sort of thing. Then Gandhi's secretary said to me: `Gopal, why don't you surrender your arms to Gandhiji?' I replied, `With these arms I saved the women of my area, I saved the people. I will not surrender them''.

With a steely glint in his eye, the sort which distinguishes the goonda from the loudmouth muscleman, Gopal Patha continued: ``Where was Gandhiji, I said, during the Great Calcutta Killing? Where was he then? Even if I've used a nail to kill someone, I won't surrender even that nail.''His sober determination underlines one of the tragedies of Partition fifty years on, so many of those who killed still have no sense of regret.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.

[G.Subramaniam]

From Shakti list posting

Gopal Chandra 'Patha' Mukhopadhyay (Mukherjee?)? better known as Gopal-Da

Gopal-da was born into a Hindu family of butchers which ran a flourishing slaughter-house in Calcutta and it was no surprise when Gopal-da decided to follow his traditional vocation. (Hence his nickname -'Patha' which is Bengali for 'goat'. Believe me, this was a name that struck terror in the minds and hearts of all Muslims in Calcutta and its vicinity fifty years ago). It was when partition occurred that Gopal-da decided to switch using his knife from one kind of animal(the goat) to another (the mohammeddan).
Seeing the greater Calcutta killings with his own eyes threw Gopal-da into a rage. He organised a dedicated and salaried band of Hindu hitmen who avenged Hindu deaths by slaughtering muslims wherever they could find them. Money was no problem for Gopal-da. His business flourished.
So, he paid his dedicated men 5 rupees for a maimed victim and 10 rupees for a dead one. He handed out guns, swords, grenades. He thundered-" For every dead Hindu, I want ten Muslim corpses. Go forth, my lads and show no mercy." He was not content to merely use knifes and swords..they were effective but the harvest was slow. So Gopal-da managed a deal with the American soldiers who were stationed in Calcutta( it was World War-II time and India was still British territory).

He bought grenades, pistols, revolvers and ammunition by the crateful form these soldiers, in the blackmarket,for his men. And his men used it with devastating effect. So much so, that an ageing Ghulam Rasool, one of the top leaders of the Muslim National Guard (a terrorist Muslim organisation, affiliated to jinnah's Muslim League and reponsible for most of the Hindu genocide in Bengal) in Calcutta and currently living in Lahore, recalls with terror -" I pleaded with 'Patha' to stop this madness. Bahuth khoon bahchuka...hamari tharaf se bhi aur aapki taraf se bhi. Ab is qatl-e-aam ko rokna hoga. Hum aur khoon kharabe ke liye taiyaar nahee hain. Hum ceasefire ke liye taiyaar hain."(Note the classic muslim behaviour of asking for mercy and peace, tucking one's tail between one's legs and running for one's life when the Hindu valinatly repels his attack and beats him to pulp.)

But Gopal-da was not the one to fall for this trap. His men went on merrily about their task of protecting Hindu honour and lives. Finally, a time came when even M.K.Gandhi tried to persuade him and other Hindu warriors to lay down their arms. Gopal-da characteristally replied -
"I will not lay down even a nail if it has been used for defending Hindu honour."

Fifty years have passed. Gopal-da still resides in Calcutta. A life size statue of Netaji Subash Chandra Bose, whom he idolises, adorns his living room. Tying up his long silvery mane in a top-knot, much the way the Sikhs do, Gopal-da, the octogenerian, expresses not an iota of regret for the bloodshed...he is, on the other hand, very proud of his past and of the fact that he did his duty.

[Guest]

<img src='http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/indiaforum/ShowLetter10.jpg' border='0' alt='user posted image' />

Partiton - Transfer of Hindu population from Pakistan.

[acharya]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->surinder wrote:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9&section=0&...&d=9&m=9&y=2006

<b>
Now Dr. Israr finds a disturbing portent for the future of Pakistan. “I am worried. The reasons why Pakistan was created (‘wajh-e-jawaaz’), its raison d’etre, are being questioned now. This worries me. ‘Why Pakistan?’ the younger generation keeps asking. It is becoming a chorus now. ‘Why did you go for partition?’ they ask. ‘What was the reason?’ Is that not a worrying factor?”

Dr. Israr elaborated. “There were two reasons (for the creation of Pakistan) — one positive and one negative. The negative factor was the fear of the Hindu: the Hindu will finish us off; the Hindu will suppress us (‘Hindu hum ko dabayega,’ ‘Hindu hum ko kha jayega’... etc., etc.) The Hindu will take revenge. It will finish our culture. It will strangle our language. This was the negative issue that became a rallying cry for the Muslim League. Remember, at this stage the Muslim League was not a party. It was just a club of nawabs and jagirdars. In his address of 1930 in Allahabad (‘Khutba-e-Allahabad’), the legendary poet Iqbal gave an ideological injection to this movement. During the address, Iqbal said: ‘It is my conviction that in the north of India an independent Muslim state will be established.’ It was a prophesy — not a proposal. Iqbal went on to say: ‘If this happens, we will be able to project the true picture of Islam to the world.’ This was the positive reason.
When Dr. Israr thinks back to the creation of Pakistan, he marvels over the consensus that formed it. “It was a miracle. Can there be any bigger stupidity from the political standpoint as to why a UP Muslim should support the Muslim League? It was an emotional atmosphere. Bombay Muslim, Madrasi Muslim, CP (Central Provinces) Muslim — what did they have to do with Pakistan? But they were the real creators of Pakistan. In Punjab, there was never a Muslim League ministry even for one day. It was either in East Pakistan or Sindh. Until the end, it was the Congress ministry in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The real creators of Pakistan then were the Muslims of the minority provinces. They generated a wave in 1946. It was because of this wave that when the elections took place, they established beyond a shadow of doubt that the Muslim League was the sole representative party of the Muslim community.”

Dr. Israr said that what started right, soon went wrong. “The creation of Pakistan was a good thing. It was created with good intentions; there was a long historical background to the movement, but we failed badly. There is one quote from Quaid-e-Azam worth remembering: ‘God has given us a golden opportunity to prove our worth as architects of a new state, and let it not be said that we didn’t prove equal to the task.’ Unfortunately, we proved that we were not equal to the task. Where is Pakistan? We divided it into two countries (in 1971). What do we have now? There is no such thing as ‘qaum’ in Pakistan.

“Only a miracle can save Pakistan,” Dr. Israr said. “To me, the creation of Pakistan was in itself a miracle, and I see optimism only in the form of a miracle. In 1946, Quaid-e-Azam had given up on the demand for Pakistan. When you had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan, what did it mean? It meant that the country would remain united for 10 years. There were to be three zones. Yes, after 10 years any zone would have had the option of secession. All this meant that for 10 long years, there was no question of an independent country. It was only after Nehru issued a statement saying ‘Who lets anybody separate after 10 years?’ that is when Quaid-e-Azam got adamant. He took a step back. ‘Agar yahi niyat hai to ye Cabinet mission plan hamen manzoor nahi hai’ (If these are what your intentions are, then we don’t accept this Cabinet Mission Plan). It was Nehru who created Pakistan.

</b>



It was Nehru who created Pakistan. (A common Paki refrain. I think this type of statement needs Piskological focus. It seems strange that a Pakis would credit their hated adversary for creating their beloved country. There is a deep down feeling among Pakis that Pakistan was merely a mistake, and Nehru, and all the other Hindus, should be blamed for it. It seems like that girl in the movie Excorcist when she is shouts "Help me.")


There is a funda behind this.
Jinnah and ML were working on a escalation ladder with Nehru and congress with the demand for Pakistan. What was the final goal. The goal was to get a large electrorate dominance in the united India Parliament for Muslims in India. The idea was that Nehru and congress would back down in that confrontation and accept a larger influence of Muslims in the legislature of a united India.

But Nehru and Patel made a larger decision based on British influence with the ML and future potential for breakup and chaos in a united India. They also beleived that Jinnah would back down later and then ask for merger with India since Indus water and kashmir was still to be resolved. They beleved that Pakistan would cease to be proxy for the master after a period of realization. But master used UN and other tricks to keep the game going for 60 years.

This uncertainity of Pakistan is showing up in Israr Ahmed statement in this way.

<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Muslim League Demand For Exchange Of Population
Aug 2006 

In response to the 23 March 1940 resolution of Muslim League for the creation of Pakistan, a number of questions were raised. One of the most important was; no matter where the line of demarcation was drawn, there would be Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs on either side in a minority. They would overnight become aliens and foreigners in their own homes. Mohammed Ali Jinnah initially evaded this question, but later began to promise protection to the minorities. However, there was no question of Hindus and Sikhs obtaining citizenship or equal status with the nationals of Pakistan. If they could, why divide India was his question? Not satisfied himself with his own logic, he suggested an exchange of population of population as the realistic solution.

But wise and educated he was, it is fair to believe that he was familiar with the European experience where, at the beginning of the 20th century, some two and a half million people had undertaken transfer of residence across national frontiers. Muslim Bulgarians were resettled in Turkey and many Turks were transferred to Bulgaria in pursuance of the Turko-Bulgarian Convention of 1913. This was also done officially under the Treaty of Lausanne signed on 30 January 1923 between Turkey and Greece.

Professor M. Mujeeb, Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi had an interesting experience. In his words, quoted from his book Islamic Influence on Indian Society, Meenakshi Prakashan, Meerut, 1972:

At a party given during the U.N. General Assembly Session in 1949 I had the pleasure of being placed next to the Turkish representative. He looked at my name card, saw that I was a Muslim and at once asked, are there still any Muslims in India? The impression then created does not yet seem to have been removed and it is believed that the sub-continent had been divided between Muslims and Hindus, with all Muslims on the one side and all Hindus on the other.

Jinnah must surely have been aware of the philosophical mainspring of Pakistan. even since British captured power and the consequent displacement of Muslim rule, there was widespread feeling that a Darul-Islam in India had been replaced by a Dar-ul-Harb or a land of struggle. There is a principle as old as Islam that a jehad has to be fought for acquiring a Dar-ul-Islam. On the other hand, when there is no hope of achieving it, a Dar-ul-Harb cannot be tolerated indefinitely. The solution for the Muslims then was hijrat or migration to a land of Islam. Incidentally, devout faithfuls believe that they were fighting a jehad against the British right through the 19th century. A hijrat was also undertaken by several hundred thousand Muslims who migrated to Afghanistan in 1920 on their realization that the British would not allow the Sultan to continue on the throne of Turkey and thus remaining the Khalifa for all Sunnis. Nearly 20,000 Indian Muslims succeeded in enterning and settling in Afghanistan.

For the Muslim leaders therefore the idea of a population transfer was neither novel nor surprising. Even prophet Muhammad had undertaken hijrat from Mecca to Madina while founding Islam. No wonder then that Khan Iftikhar Hussain of Mamdot had said that the exchange of population offered a very practical solution for the problem of the Muslims reported by Dawn, 3 December 1946. Pir Illahi Bux, the Sindhi leader, had said that he welcomed an exchange of population for the safety of the minorities, as it would put an end to all communal disturbances as reported by Dawn, on 4 December 1946. So also felt Raja Ghazanfar Ali who later became Pakistan's envoy to New Delhi. Dawn of 19 December 1946, reported his having asked for the alteration of the population map of India. Sir Ivan Jenkins, the Governor of Punjab, had then obseved that by asking for an exchange of population, the Muslim League was planning to forcibly drive away Hindus from Punjab.

It was important in these statements that the League objective was to undertake ethnic cleansing soon after partition. That this was not mere conjecture was proved by the fact that almost all Hindus were driven out from west Pakistan in a matter of two to three years. Evidently, the League leadership had fears that ethnic cleansing on their side would invite a similar action in Hindustan, causing untold miseries to their Muslim brethren. In any case, the Dar-ul-Islam that they were pursuing was for all Muslims of the subcontinent. Why should those, who happened to be in Hindustan, be condemned to live indefinitely in a hopeless Dar-ul-Harb?

These were no stray threats either by Mamdot or the Pir. Jinnah, while addressing a press conference at Karachi on 25 November 1946, said that the authorities both central and provincial, should immediately take up the question of exchange of population, as reported by Dawn, on 26 November, 1946. Sir Feroze Khan Noon, who later rose to be Prime Minister had earlier on 8 April 1946, threatened to re-enact the murderous orgies of Chengez Khan and Halaqu Khan if non-Muslims took up an obstrustive attitude against population exchange. Ismail Chundrigar, who also eventually rose to be Prime Minister of Pakistan, had said that the British had no right to hand over Muslims to a subject people over whom they had ruled for 500 years. Mohammad Ismail, a leader from Madras had declared that the Muslims of India were in the midst of a jihad. Shaukat Hayat Khan, son of the Prime Minister of Punjab, Sir Sikander Hayat Khan, had threatened, while the British were still in India, of a rehearsal of what the Muslims would do to the Hindus eventually. The point that came through clearly was that transfer of population was an integral part of the demand for Pakistan.

Besides the exchange of population, Qaid-e-Azam Jinnah had also suggested the "Theory of Reciprocal Hostages." that is, if some Hindus are still left behind in Pakistan and Muslims in Hindustan, after 1947, they will be treated as reciprocol hostages by the respective governments. This, according to Qaid, would ensure fair treatment of minorities in Pakistan and Hindustan. He had outlined this scheme to the Cabinet Mission which visited India in 1946. Beverly Nichols, a British Journalist, who had visited India at this time and flater wrote a book entitled Verdict on India based on his interviews with Indian leaders including Jinnah, also makes a mention of this proposal. Since, Pakistan ethnically had cleansed the Hindu/sikh population during 1947-48, Hindustan had every right to push out Muslims to Pakistan. Therefore, Muslims have no locus standi to stay on in India any longer after the creation of Pakistan and also the fact that Hindus and Sikhs have been driven out of that country. Every book written by Muslim scholars in Pakistan on the division of India has strongly emphasized the role of Muslims of United Provinces in the creation of Pakistan. Simultaneously, it is also brought out that none of the Muslim majority provinces wished for the division of India. The two-nation theory was the creation of Aligarh Muslim University which eventually led to the vivisectionof India. The Muslims of Uttar Pradesh were most active in the demand for Pakistan. Ironically, it is theseMuslims who did not leave for their Darul Islam. The government of India should, therefore, see to it that Aligarh Muslim University, the cradle of Muslim separatism, is abolished without any further delay.

http://www.janasangh.com/jsart.aspx?stid=140<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->

[Guest]

My People, Uprooted<b>"A Saga of the Hindus of Eastern Bengal"</b>
<b>THE COUNTDOWN : POLITICS OF BENGAL BETWEEN THE TWO PARTITIONS, 1905-1947 </b>
Tathagata Roy

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This view is supported by as ardent a Nehru-admirer as Ashok Mitra who could not help feeling regret at the fact that even after the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946 (see Chapter 3) neither Nehru nor Gandhi saw it fit to visit Calcutta[10]. Mitra could attribute this only to the fear that any such visit immediately following the killings (in which, according to Mitra, the guilt of the Muslims was many times that of the Hindus) might result in their being dubbed anti-Muslim. Thus, (conclusion author’s, not Mitra’s) the right or wrong of the situation was of no consequence. What mattered to the leaders, including the Mahatma, was that they should under no account risk being called anti-Muslim.

<b>An anti-Muslim riot was another matter. Then the Congress and the Muslim League would vie with each other to get tough with the rioters. Thus, during the Noakhali carnage (see Chapter 3 for details) where Hindus were butchered, their women raped and brutalised by the hundreds, and families forcibly converted to Islam by the villageful, all that Jawaharlal Nehru did was to meekly follow Gandhi from village to village. What Gandhi did in his turn was to visit villages once inhabited by Hindus with the message that they should come back to their homes. Or rather what had once been their homes, and were now charred remains thereof. But during the Bihar riots that followed in retaliation, where Hindu killed Muslim, the selfsame Jawaharlal Nehru seriously suggested that the Royal Indian Air Force should be brought in to strafe Hindu villages[11], and Gandhi of course threatened a fast unto death.</b>

These signals had a profound influence on the turn of events in the province of Bengal. Here, first, the Muslims were in the majority. Secondly, they could be inflamed much more easily in the name of waging a Jihad, holy war. Thirdly the logistics of inflaming passions among Muslims existed in the form of their prayer meetings five times a day. And now they were being told that an occasional deviation would result, at worst, in yet another fast by Gandhi. The inevitable result followed. The increasing number of Muslims flocking to the Muslim League felt emboldened beyond belief. With one party among the two principal ones in the country being their very own, and the other trying to placate and appease them in every conceivable way, the future was surely theirs.
........
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[Guest]

BOOK REVIEW:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
<b>The Bell Tolls: Tomorrow's Truncated India"

Demography and national security </b>
Organiser Weekly- June 10, 2007
R.K. Ohri

Manas Publications, 284 p, Rs 495.00

Written by a law enforcement officer by profession, this book is a topical study of the political scene in contemporary India.

Demography has always played a vital role in the history of mankind. Auguste Comte, the French philosopher of 19th century, had remarked, "Demography is destiny". Demographic changes have been a source of progress as well as destabilisation and decimation of many a country and civilisation.

India's security has been its Achilles' heel, leading to extended periods of subjugation and exploitation by invaders from outside. This has been because India has never paid adequate attention to domestic cohesion and consolidation since Independence. Broadly speaking, India's principal interests are to safeguard its territorial integrity, aim to be a dominant influence in the Indian Ocean, and craft an international role commensurate with its size and capabilities.

Of greater interest is the need to ensure stability in its patterns of demographic growth for internal security. Any country's internal security would be seriously undermined if there were rapid changes in terms of ethnicity, religion, race or culture. It would spur national and provincial problems, and embolden hostile States to consciously seek to exploit the changes in order to weaken Indian security.

At the root of the various insurgencies prevailing in the north-east is ethnic discontent and antagonism over rapid demographic changes due to the influx of immigrants from Bangladesh and other Indian states. The Assamese students' movement began in response to such an influence.

The author discusses threadbare the Census 2001 whose
data confirm two worst fears of the "nation's concerned population-watchers" . First, the percentage growth of Muslims has been galloping ahead ever since Independence and their growth rate is now higher by almost 45 per cent than that of the Hindus. Second,
this trend of increasing growth rate of Muslims is likely to pick up more speed and "culminate in a dramatically higher growth" decade after decade, which is likely to continue for the next 40 to 50 years!

The author has a valid point when he says that countries with a higher proportion of a young and economically active population are able to achieve a higher rate of economic growth compared to nations which have a higher proportion of an ageing population.

But the economically active population must be educated and sufficiently skilled. An illiterate and unskilled population incapable of earning livelihood for itself through economically productive effort is a liability.

Ohri says that the Hindus, who are now approaching the one billion mark, will become a helpless minority within the next five or six decades. He points out that in several parts of India, especially in states like Assam, Tripura, West Bengal and Bihar, the Hindu
population will get drastically reduced and the "community will come under increasing squeeze year after year," if the government of the day does not wake up. This would lead to flaring up of tensions and cause a sharper communal divide. This is already in
evidence in Assam, some adjoining states of the north-east, West Bengal and Bihar.

Talking of doctoring of population data, Ohri says that the sharp increase in the Muslim growth rate as revealed by the Census 2001 is an established fact and the truth "is a red rag to politicians of our country trying to usurp power by recourse to vote-bank
strategy."

When the Census data was revealed by the Registrar, J.K. Banthia, it created quite an uproar and the Central Government forced him to make certain "unwarranted changes". He has every right to ask, "Why was not the same dubiously ingenious method of arriving at the 'adjusted' data applied at the time of analysing the1991 Census figures? What is the legal and moral justification for omitting the headcount of Jammu & Kashmir and Assam forming more than 3.6 per cent to the county's population from the analysis of the 2001 Census? Are the two states of Jammu & Kashmir and Assam not part of India? Are more than 3.6 crore
people living in the two states not Indian?

The author rightly feels that it is time the government as well as the people, especially the top politicians and educated classes, started viewing the phenomenon of skewed population growth of India's
religious groups in the global context.

The other major highlight of the book is the damage caused to good governance by the lengthening shadow of parochial politics "supported by radical Islam and myopic Leftist leadership". The emergence of several casteist parties and regional satraps functioning in tandem with self-seeking Leftist groups has
systematically undermined most democratic institutions.

The book, in short, is sounding the alarm bell by warning that unless effective remedial measures are initiated, India—the only bulwark of secularism pitted against jehadist Islam in South Asia—stands marked as the next civilisational battleground.

(Manas Publications, 4858 Prahlad Street, 24 Ansari Road,
Darya Ganj, New Delhi-110002. )
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url:http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage& pid=187&page= 21