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| HOME | NEWS | COLUMNISTS | RAJEEV SRINIVASAN | ||
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May 30, 2002
NEWSLINKS |
Rajeev Srinivasan
Europe's hypocrisy
The touching concern that various European Union grand pooh-bahs have displayed about the goings-on in Gujarat would be much more believable if it weren't for several salient facts:
Let's face it: Jean-Marie Le Pen's rhetoric is winning the hearts and minds of Frenchmen primarily because all of Europe is now concerned about their Muslim immigrant populations in the wake of the World Trade Centre attack. As Muslim populations rise to levels near 10%, Islamist jihadi ideas, self-imposed separateness, unemployment, and general ghettoization are creating a permanent, dangerous, belligerent, anti-national underclass. The challenge to the nation-state from the idea of a transnational Muslim ummah or brotherhood is substantial. I pointed out a while ago in my column, 'You want a plebiscite? Okay, let's have a real one', that the immigrant populations from the Indian subcontinent to the UK have had vastly different experiences, which could only be explained by religious differences. With all due modesty, I was prescient in my analysis based on personal observation: the mainstream media has pointed out the same thing subsequently. An article in The New York Times ('How in a little British town jihad found young converts', April 24, 2002), among others, supports my contention. I argued that the trajectories of Hindu/Sikh and Muslim immigrants to the UK are very different. Many Hindus and Sikhs prospered through education and through integrating themselves into the mainstream, despite much racism. But Muslims, on average, whether from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, remained isolated in ghettos, did not educate themselves, did not integrate, and have thereby become the poorest and lowest-achieving ethnic group. Their children have now turned to terrorism or to lumpenization: remember the major race riots perpetrated in the British Midwest by Muslim youngsters a few months ago? Same people, same background, the only difference being religion. Three Muslim Britons, children of subcontinental immigrants and former Taliban warriors, are now in Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, captured by Americans. Another Briton, Omar Sheikh, is one of the prime accused in the Daniel Pearl murder case, and one of the murderers of several abducted Europeans and Americans in 1994, not to mention a 'hero' of the Kathmandu airliner hijacking. There are innumerable cases of extremist Muslim preachers openly recruiting for jihad in London: the New York Times article mentions one such telling his flock that it was appropriate for a Muslim to kill random Hindus on the street because the Koran says so. What is the British government doing to contain this sort of pure hatred? Nothing, so far. They are aiding and abetting the export of terrorism, that's all. The London School of Economics is the home of Fabian Socialism and Harold Laski, prime culprits in addling Krishna Menon and thereby Jawaharlal Nehru through idiotic economic ideas, and indirectly responsible for India's failure to uplift 500 million from poverty in the last fifty years. It now has another claim to fame: the epicentre for Islamist terrorism in Europe. Omar Sheikh is but one of its illustrious students. Since these terrorists, aided and abetted by the overly multi-cultural British, end up attacking and harming India, I think India would be fully justified to file a complaint with the newly constituted International Criminal Court (assuming India is a member) or with the International Court of Justice, naming Tony Blair, Jack Straw and the British queen for war crimes: they are allowing terrorists to be harboured on their territory. Apparently, three British Muslims are missing in Gujarat, and therefore somebody (there is a strong Pakistani-Labour Party nexus) wants to take Narendra Modi to the ICJ. Sure, do that, and India will retaliate with the above suit. Going by the examples of Omar Sheikh and those in Camp X-Ray, wouldn't it be fair to investigate if these British Muslims are of the jihadi persuasion, in other words, perpetrators, not victims? There is more. Christian rule in India was perhaps the most brutal and inhuman ever, possibly even more so than the most tyrannical Muslim kingdoms. I have plenty of data about it, but just one striking data-point will suffice to illustrate its crimes against humanity. Do you know that the rations approved by one Sir Richard Temple for those undergoing hard labour during an 1890s famine was less than the starvation diet given to Jewish prisoners at Buchenwald? (In passing, Temple was also infamous for his Christian evangelism activities.) Yes, the Buchenwald ration for the toiling masses. Here is a damning table from Late Victorian Holocausts (Mike Davis, Verso, pp 33). Look at the state-sanctioned ration for the famine-ridden Madras Presidency in 1877, under the leadership of the aforementioned Temple. Less than half the approved caloric intake for a modern Indian. Less than the caloric intake at the most notorious concentration camp run by the Nazis.
What earthly right do the perpetrators of such horrors have to pontificate to others? The British now want to send 'observers' to Jammu and Kashmir for the elections. Would they like Indian observers in British-occupied Northern Ireland? Yes, I know the British establishment, especially the Labour Party, just loves the Pakistanis and has a Muslim vote bank to count on (does this remind you of anybody in India? A certain newspaper and a certain political party, for instance?) Nevertheless, India should tell them in no uncertain terms to just shut up, and back it up with threats that the British can kiss the Advanced Jet Trainer deal goodbye otherwise. Europeans have for centuries also perpetrated the most horrific crimes against their Jewish minorities: in fact the word pogrom is of Russian origin, meaning havoc. Incidentally, opinion polls show that among the major white countries (see The Economist dated April 20, 2002) only the Americans support Israel to any extent. Europeans support Palestinians, yet they were among the loudest complainers when Palestinian terrorism impinged on their territories: example the attack on the Munich Olympics. NIMBY, I suppose: not in my back yard. Europeans, in particular the ever-dependably hypocritical British, were quite silent about ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. Where was Europe's tender concern for Bosnian Muslims? Where is Europe's tender concern for the 500,000 Iraqi children who have died of malnutrition and disease in the last ten years of the Anglo-American war? Where is Europe's tender concern for the continuing genocide in Tibet? I guess concern is case-specific. It is a good stick to beat India with because there are lots of self-flagellators, Resident Non-Indians. Go become a Briton, I suggest to these people. Your hypocrisy and their hypocrisy would mesh very well. Given all this, I think Indians would be well-advised to take the Europeans' expressions of horror with a very large pinch of salt. It is all fine and dandy to shed crocodile tears at no expense to oneself -- a lesson India's 'secular' 'progressives' have learned all too well. At a time when India's GDP at purchasing power parity has grown to be the fourth largest in the world, after the US, China, and Japan, these European minnows matter less and less. We should treat them with the contempt they amply deserve. Errata My apologies: it turns out that I mis-spoke in my previous column on Sri Lanka. I asserted that the maps of Tamil Eelam on the Internet included Tamil Nadu and Kerala. I was wrong, as was pointed out by several readers including Ramesh, Bala and Janardhan. The maps at www.eelam.org and www.tamileelam.org are strictly for areas in Sri Lanka. I was erroneously referring to a map I had seen, which it appears comes from a Christian-funded hate group that promotes the breakup of India. Also, readers including Palaniappan thought I insulted Tamils; I did not. I was merely saying I didn't have to write like a Tamil (whatever that means) because I am not a Tamil.
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