ARE HINDUS COWARDS?
By
Francois Gautier
Face Book deleted my article "Are Hindus Cowards"; because of 'inappropriate content'! Do you think that is fair? the ISIS and Al Qaeda use freely Internet, Twitter and FB for their murderous purposes, but when you dare say that there is a problem with Islam, as I have personally witnessed a journalist, in Kashmir, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, you are censored. I am reposting the article below. You judge. FG
ARE HINDUS COWARDS?
“A dark fear is growing in our minds that we Hindus cannot rule. The art of ruling requires special upbringing, grooming and attitude besides guts and courage.
And this raises the question: are Hindus good people, but nevertheless cowards?
“Muslims are bullies and Hindus cowards”, the Mahatma Gandhi once said. He was right – at least about Hindus: there has been in the past 1400 years, since the first invasions started, very few Shivaji Maharaj’s and Rana Pratap’s to fight the bloody rule of the Moghuls, or hardly any Rani of Jhansi’s to stand against the humiliating colonial yoke of the British.
If a nation’s soul is measured by the courage of its children, then India is definitely doomed: without the Sikhs, whose bravery is unparalleled in the more recent history of India, Hindus would have even lost additional land to the Muslim invaders and there would have been infinitely more massacres of Hindus by Muslims during the first weeks of Partition. Are Hindus more courageous since they have an independent nation (thanks - not to the non-violence of Gandhi – but to the true nationalists, such as Sri Aurobindo and Tilak, who prepared the ground for the Mahatma at the beginning of the century)? Not at all!
Because of Nehru’s absurd and naïve “hindi-chini-bhai-bhai” policy, the Indian army was shamefully routed in 1962 by the Chinese, a humiliation which rankles even today.
Beijing is still able to hoodwink Indian politicians, by pretending it has good intentions, through the interviews the Chinese leaders very generously give to the Hindu newspaper (which should rightly be called the “anti-Hindu”) and Frontline (“the mouthpiece in India for the Chinese communist party”), while quietly keeping on giving nuclear know-how to Pakistan, as well as the missiles to carry their atomic warheads to Indian cities, arm separatists groups in the north-east and continuing to claim Arunachal Pradesh or Sikkim.
Everywhere in the world, Hindus are hounded, humiliated, routed, be it in Fiji where, an elected democratic government was deposed in an armed coup, or in Pakistan and Bangladesh, where Muslims indulge in pogroms against Hindus every time they want to vent their hunger against India (read Taslima Nasreen’s book “Lalja”). In Kashmir, the land of yogis, where Hindu sadhus and sages have meditated for 5000 years, Hindus have been chased out of their ancestral home by death, terror and intimidation: there were 25% of Hindus at the beginning of the century in the Kashmir valley… and hardly a handful today.
And this is exactly what happened in Bombay, after the Ayodya mosque was brought down by Hindu militants : Muslims, angry of the “terrible” affront done to Islam, started pelting the police with stones and burning shops; but unfortunately for the Muslims, who have made of riots an art (please read the passages of the Koran which deal with riots as part of jihad), they found that for once, the Hindus under the leadership of the Shiv Sena, retaliated blow for blow – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – as the Israelis, who have been so long at the receiving end of Muslim bullying, say so well.
It is not for us to condone violence: but how long can the Hindus be the butt of killings and persecution, be sacrificial lambs that meekly go to slaughter ?
For in a way, Gandhi was right: Muslims are bullies, they have bullied India and they continue to bully Hindu India, as Pakistan demonstrates time and again by shelling in Kashmir, which make the US apply time and again pressure on India to ‘negotiate’ with Pakistan. Remember how Musharraf deceived New Delhi by receiving a well-meaning, but naïve Vajpayee at Lahore, while its soldiers were quietly invading the heights above Kargil.
The truth is that there are two standards in India: one for the Hindus; and one for the Muslims.
Did the “fanatic” Hindus who brought down Ayodhya (and brought shame onto secular India, according to the Indian media) kill or even injure anyone in the process? No.
But Muslims do not have such qualms. When Gandhi said they were bullies, he was being very nice or very polite. For forget about the millions of Hindus killed during the ten centuries of Muslim invasions, probably the worst Holocaust in world history; forget about the hundreds of thousands of Hindu temples razed to the ground, whose destruction - whatever our “secular” Hindus of today say - was carefully recorded by the Muslims themselves, because they were proud of it
(see Aurangzeb’s own chronicles); forget about the millions of Hindus forcibly converted to Islam, and who sadly are now rallying under a banner, a language, a scripture which have nothing to do with their own ethos and culture.
Yesterday and also today, when the Muslim world feels it has been slighted, in even a small measure by Hindus, these Infidels, who submitted meekly to Muslim rule for ten centuries, it retaliates a hundred fold – this is the only way one intimidates cowards. After Ayodhya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (at least in a passive way by giving shelter for a while to Tiger Memon) with the help of Indian Muslims, planted bombs in the heart of Bombay and killed a thousand innocent human beings, most of them, once more, Hindus.
Tomorrow, Pakistan might wage, with the blessing of the Muslim word, the ultimate jihad against India, which if necessary, will utilise the ultimate weapon, nuclear bombs. For has not the Koran said
“'Choose not thy friends among the Infidels till they forsake their homes and the way of idolatry. If they return to paganism then take them whenever you find them and kill them” (Koran 98:51-9:5-4:89) ?
Unfortunately for India, the British, when they were here, had created an intellectual elite, to act as a go-between themselves and the “natives”, which today, thanks to the Nehruvian culture of successive Congress governments, looks at its own country, not by means of its own Indian eyes, but through a western prism, as fashioned by the white colonizers and the missionaries. These « Brown Shahibs », these true children of Macaulay, the « secular » politicians, the journalists, the top bureaucrats, in fact the whole westernised cream of India are very critical of anything Hindu. And what is even more paradoxical, is that 98% of them are Hindus ! It is they, who upon getting independence, have denied India its true identity and borrowed blindly from the British education system, without trying to adapt it to the unique Indian mentality and psychology; and it is they who are refusing to accept a change of India’s education system, which is totally western-oriented and is churning out machines, learning by heart boring statistics which are of little usefulness in life.
And what India is getting from this education is a youth which apes the West : they go to Mac Donald’s, thrive on MTV culture, wear the latest Klein jeans and Lacoste T Shirts, and in general are useless, rich parasites, in a country which has so many talented youngsters who live in poverty. They will grow-up like millions of other western clones in the developing world, who wear a tie, read the New York Times and swear by liberalism and secularism to save their countries from doom. In time, they will reach elevated positions and write books and articles which make fun of their own country, ridicule the Narendra Modi’s of India and preside human-right committees, be “secular” high bureaucrats who take the wrong decisions and generally do tremendous harm to India, because it has been programmed in their genes to always run down their own country.
It is said that a nation has to be proud of itself to move forward - and unless there is a big change in this intellectual elite, unless it is more conscious of its heritage and of India’s greatness, which has begun to happen in a small way, it is going to be very difficult for India to emerge as a real 21st century superpower.
One would be tempted to say in conclusion : “Arise ô Hindus, stop being cowards, remember that a nation requires Kshatriyas, warriors, to defend Knowledge, to protect one’s women and children, to guard one’s borders from the Enemy”….
And do Indians need a Narendra Modi to remind them of that simple truth ? FRANCOIS GAUTIER (*)
This is no to say that all Muslims are fanatics; on the contrary, many of India’s Muslims are extremely gentle and their sense of hospitality unsurpassed. The same thing can be said about Pakistan: Pakistani politicians, for instance, are much more accessible than in India and Pakistan has its own identity, which cannot be wished away.
No, the problem is not with Muslims, whether they are Indians or Pakistanis, the problem is with Islam, which teaches Indian Muslims from an early age, to look beyond their national identity to a country - the Mecca, in Saudi Arabia - which is not their country, to read a Scripture which is not written in their own language, to espouse a way of thinking, which is inimical to their own roots and indigenous culture. Indian Muslims, have to think of themselves first as Muslims and secondly only as Muslims.
Muslim soldiers fighting against Pakistan in Kargil, have shown the way.
And that is exactly what ISIL wants you to think.
The reality is more mundane. ISIL is a cool-headed organization with an impressive understanding of “image management” that feeds on state failure and sectarian tensions. ISIL is not trying to expand for expansion’s sake.
Rather, it is trying to “dig in” and create a mini-empire in Sunni-majority areas in Iraq and Syria. These limited goals, however, make ISIL more dangerous, not less. Managing the ISIL crisis requires recognizing three dynamics.
First, there is a method to ISIL’s madness, and a coalition of pragmatists — jihadists and secular Baathists — behind its strategy.
Second, a realistic assessment of the strategic environment where ISIL operates suggests that the organization is much less “irrational” or “suicidal” than often thought.
Third, ISIL’s approach to territorial control is pragmatic and flexible. Thus, strategic retreats or military setbacks, such as ISIL’s defeat in Kobane, do not hurt the organization as much as it is perceived in the West.
Behind ISIL’s success lies an alliance between jihadists and Baathists who play a crucial role in strategic planning, running military and information operations, and building institutions.
Baathists from Saddam’s defeated regime see ISIL as their only means for survival and the best vehicle for reestablishing dominance in Iraq.
The existence of this alliance suggests that we are facing not fanatics whose eyes are fixated on other-worldly prizes, but pragmatic agents who are more than willing to combine an inflammable ideology with military and administrative know-how.
Scrutinizing the evolution of jihadist ideology is necessary but not sufficient to understand ISIL’s strategy.
Once we move past the myth of ISIL as a homogeneous jihadist establishment, the “method” behind the madness that ISIL projects through its strategy of savagery becomes more visible.
The military logic of barbarism is all too straightforward: ISIL uses “fear factor” as a force multiplier to compel and deter both its enemies and dissatisfied factions living in territory under its control. Two additional factors inform ISIL’s approach.
ISIL’s acts of violence and territorial ambitions (and, so far, ability to get away with them) are best seen as daring commercials in a long and well-devised advertisement campaign to grab more of the market share.
Second, ISIL’s acts are not merely attempts to cow the Westerners into passivity (or to provoke them into over-reaction) by aggressively promoting a death cult. Rather, ISIL is aiming to present itself to a specific target audience in the Muslim world, as the righteous underdog that fights against overwhelming odds not only in the name of God, but also for the sake of justice.
Take the example of the recent video that shows the burning of a Jordanian pilot. For many in the West, this is an act of meaningless savagery or even desperation, but ISIL positions this as righteous justice. The group establishes a narrative around the “crime,” in this case the civilians killed alongside ISIL fighters by airstrikes.
Then ISIL instantly and directly associates the pilot with these charges. Suggesting that people who died in the airstrikes were burnt alive or crushed by debris, ISIL burns the unfortunate pilot and then crushes the cage in which he was trapped. Thus, this seemingly savage and senseless act is intended for a local audience to whom it will have meaning.
ISIL leaders believe they can afford to present an uncompromising and fanatical front because they don’t believe the United States and its Western allies will put boots on the ground in Syria and Iraq.
Nor does ISIL appear overly concerned about regional actors.
The Iraqi government has yet to recover the reputation it buried in Mosul. Furthermore, Baghdad’s heavy reliance on Shia militia and Iranian support that reached new heights during the battle over Tikrit in March 2015 inadvertently empowers ISIL by fueling the Sunni-Shia rift on which the organization feeds. Turkey may be more capable, but several factors inhibit Ankara from leading a ground assault against ISIL.
First there are the obvious economic and human costs that would be associated with such an undertaking.
Second, Turkey makes for a highly vulnerable target for ISIL-inspired or sponsored terrorist attacks.
Third, having bet heavily on Assad’s rapid downfall, the Turkish government categorically refuses to be involved in any cross-border operation against ISIL unless the West promises Assad’s removal from power in return.
While the Syrian military has extensive experience battling the jihadist groups, motivating Assad to tackle ISIL would be difficult for two reasons.
First, Assad’s weakened forces are tied up fighting the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and non-ISIL jihadist groups like Jabhat Al Nusra, al Qaeda’s Syrian branch.
Second, Assad would be unwilling to concentrate his forces and attention on ISIL unless the West commits to a settlement where the regime remains intact and the FSA is liquated.
Considering that Assad has been demonized in the West for years and countries such as Turkey adamantly oppose any reconciliation with the Syrian regime, this would be a very hard pill to swallow for the United States and its allies.
The Kurds appear to be a motivated and capable fighting force, especially in the wake of the successful defense of Kobane. However, not only are the existing Kurdish military experiences and capabilities best suited for territorial defense, the Kurds’ strategic priorities are to preserve what is deemed as Kurdish homeland, and to gain recognition as a capable and legitimate political entity.
Even if the West can incentivize the Kurdish forces to go on the offensive against ISIL through promises of further recognition and support for an independent Kurdish state, Kurdish incursions into regions that are deemed outside of the Kurdish homeland will provoke ethnic tensions and elicit harsh responses from Turkey and Iran (who both have their own Kurdish minorities) as well as the Iraqi government.
This leaves Iran as a wild card. Even if Iran opts for a more direct involvement in the conflict and helps bring down ISIL, the resulting “victory” may set the stage for a post-ISIL sectarian firestorm that can drag the region into a multi-theater transnational conflict.
Iran’s involvement in the Syrian civil war is a case in point. When the Iranian government sent — informally — its elite Quds forces to fight alongside Assad a couple of years ago, Tehran inadvertently empowered a narrative that portrayed the civil war as a Sunni-Shia conflict (despite the fact that the Assad regime has considerable Sunni support). In no uncertain terms, further Iranian involvement in Iraq and Syria can set the stage for the Middle East’s own Thirty Years’ War.
As things stand, none of the actors that ISIL defies has the will or capability to tackle ISIL head on. This allows the organization the opportunity and time it needs to build the kind of state it seeks.
Mapping Out the “State” in the Islamic State
There are two common assumptions about ISIL’s statehood.
The first is that ISIL cannot sustain itself as a state-like institution in the long run because people under its rule will be too displeased with the quality of services, and eventually rise up.
The second assumption is that since ISIL’s appeal comes from both the myth of invincibility it has created and its claims over territorial control, failure to capture new territory and territorial losses will break the halo surrounding the organization and will — almost automatically — pave the way for its demise.
Both assumptions are misleading.
Just like most proto-states throughout history, ISIL is acting as a “stationary bandit,” raising revenue through extortion, kidnapping, and smuggling while at the same time controlling natural resources. In return, ISIL provides a modicum of security and “protection,” as well as public goods that range from subsidized bread to free education and health. ISIL also polices the streets and even manages traffic. It is true that the revenue ISIL raises from such activities (1 to 3 million dollars a day) is not all that much for a “state” ruling over six million people. The assumption that ISIL will eventually implode, however, misses one crucial dynamic:
a stationary bandit needs to sustain a “standard” in its services only when it faces competition from other bandits. Simple market mechanisms are at work: unless other political actors in the region offer competitive services, ISIL can rule those lands on the cheap.
Although it resembles most proto-states in history, ISIL’s approach to territory fundamentally separates it from the nation-states that lie at the heart of the present-day international system. It is now common knowledge that ISIL declared its intention to eradicate the borders established by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 (that the more accurate reference point about present-day borders is San Remo Conference of 1920 :( http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Remo_conference) escapes not only ISIL but also many area specialists). What is often missed about this claim is that ISIL sees the very modern nation-state (with its hard borders and claims to territorial sovereignty) as a Western artifact that does not fit with the human terrain of much of the globe.
By implication, ISIL is not seeking a seat at the UN and cannot care less about the dictums of international law. In short, ISIL’s challenge to the present-day territorial order is more fundamental than merely seeking to establish an Islamic state.
But what about ISIL’s claims to have re-established the Caliphate?
If so, then it will be unlike most caliphates in history, which, while built around religious principles, were never only about religion. From a territorial perspective, most caliphates were transnational empires built on indirect rule that transcended boundaries. ISIL is in fact trying to build a mini-empire, in the same way land empires were conceived in the classical times from the Byzantium Empire to the Ottomans. Like those empires, it legitimizes its authority by invoking a borderless ideology, and aims to extend political control through break-neck pragmatism and institutional as well as territorial flexibility.
Upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that ISIL is following the key principles of imperial governance: pragmatism over standardization, multi-layered administration, and considerable delegation to locals. Similarly, ISIL does not strive to create “hard borders” or impose “uniformity in administration” to create “homogenous spaces.” These principles not only have allowed ISIL to expand its “sphere of influence” rapidly, but can also explain why ISIL can afford to run a terrain of six million people on the cheap.
The “territorial logic of ISIL” is also reflected in the organization’s power projection methods, which can be traced to the Islamic empires of the past, for example, the Ottoman Empire. In these Islamic empires, the disregard for hard borders and the embracing of “open frontiers” revealed itself best in the so-called Ghazi tradition.
Ghazi, in its traditional interpretation, stood for the Islamic knight who served both for religious reasons as well as for the sake of bounty. Ghazis were used to expand frontiers by raiding enemy areas repeatedly, in order to soften the populations and break resistance. A cult of martyrdom was combined with a remarkably flexible and pragmatic approach not only to territorial expansion, but also strategic retreats and territorial contraction.
[ come now to NW INDIA(Punjab Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan etc One will find "NAU GAZA PEER BABA" & locals on every Thursday will be seen praying around the grave of that so called BABA who as a matter of fact was a ISLAMIC raider who had come to loot & died enroute & was designated as "NAUA GHAZI in FARSI meaning a new martyr. What a shame & tragedy of HISTORY, local INDIANS have elevated those looters to "SAINT HOOD" ]
ISIL operates under similar principles and its military performance to territorial expansion and retreat should be analyzed accordingly.
Understood through this lens, we can surmise that ISIL can absorb losses of specific pieces of land like Tikrit.
First, ISIL’s ideology is not built on the notion of indivisible homeland, but rather on territorial flexibility.
Second, ISIL’s reputation and appeal do not derive from a myth of invincibility as most Westerners would like to believe, but has more to do with the image of “relentless David” who fights against not only non-Muslims but also those it brands as “pretenders,” especially the Shia.
As long as ISIL is able to commit its forces to fight till the bitter end and exact a considerable toll on the overwhelming forces it faces (the parity of forces was somewhere between 1:25 to 1:50 in Tikrit) while at the same time provoking sectarian reprisals on the Sunni population, piecemeal territorial losses will not have decisive strategic impacts on the fight against ISIL. In fact, the siege of Tikrit suggests that religion has a very important place in the ISIL crisis, if defined in terms of sectarian tensions.
Reverse-Engineering ISIL?
So, what can be done to defeat ISIL’s strategy?
In the near-term, we have to move beyond sensational interpretations of the organization that present ISIL as a band of irrational fanatics. Doing so points towards an immediate and time-sensitive opportunity: to break the jihadist-Baathist alliance, by either trying to co-opt or at least empower the Baathist wing. This would be a challenging task, one which intelligence agencies would be best-suited for.
If successful, the benefits would be substantial.
In the long run, we must target the territorial logic of ISIL directly. From a military standpoint, this requires separating the Syrian and Iraqi theaters by making it extremely costly for ISIL to transfer resources and manpower across now defunct borders. Enforcing artificial lines of demarcation is not the cheapest option and most certainly does not create as much fanfare as the “liberation” of a town does. The West must recognize, however, that such operational successes do not automatically translate into strategic victory.
We are facing a strategic actor that has achievable goals and operates in an environment that it understands very well.
Ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu held that
what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.
Make no mistake. ISIL is playing the long game. Slowly but surely, the organization is setting up a “sectarian trap” to establish a mini-Empire in Sunni-majority lands in Iraq and Syria. Defeating ISIL requires a long-term strategy that can undermine the organization’s strategic planning, not quick operational victories that may further destabilize the region in the long run. The worst that the West can do would be to give in to the sensational interpretations of the organization and the myth of a quick, decisive, and “cheap” victory.
Burak Kadercan is an Assistant Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and specializes in territorial and religious conflicts, the relationship between state-formation and production of military power, and empires. His scholarly work has appeared in numerous outlets including International Security. At the Naval War College, Kadercan lectures on the Islamic State as well as the legacies of the Ottoman Empire on present-day politics of the Middle East. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect those of the Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.