Dear Editor,
It is unfortunate that Mr. Shashi Tharoor could stoop so low to demonize India’s PM Narendra Modi on so many fronts in his article `Narendra Modi’s second partition of India’ (SN December 24th).
One has to understand his real pain is that of his Congress Party (of Gandhi and Nehru) losing two national elections back to back to Mr Modi and his BJP, with Mr Modi increasing his share of seats from 282 (2014) to 303 (2019). There are so many false statements he has made that it would take a book to rebut them, so I will deal with just three issues.
First, he charges that India’s ‘Mr. Modi’s government passed a Citizenship Amendment Bill that fast-tracks citizenship for people fleeing persecution in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh – provided they are not Muslim. By excluding members of just one community, the bill… is fundamentally antithetical to India’s secular and pluralist traditions.’
These persecuted minority non-Muslim people who are to be fast-tracked – who were in India at Dec 31, 2014 – are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, Parsees/Zoroastrians and Jains; and the persecuting countries are all Muslim states – Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. So, how can Muslims, who are the majority people of their chosen countries, be discriminated against? While they may have inter-sect divisions – which they need to solve among themselves – they opted at Partition (1947) to be in or migrate to these “Muslim” states. Pakistan and Bangladesh (East Pakistan) were created expressly as “Muslim” states, for Muslims who couldn’t live with impure Hindus and people of other faiths. As evidence, please note that the expressly created Pakistan means “Land of the Pure” implying that Hindus and other minorities of India are adulterated people. Besides, as a practical reality, India, an overpopulated country wouldn’t have space to accommodate Muslims who can’t live with other Muslims; and furthermore, if they can’t live with other Muslims, how can they live with so-called idolatrous and blaspheming Hindus?
The six unfortunate minority peoples were left in these countries because Mr. Tharoor’s Congress party just neglected to ensure that at partition these people would not remain in those designated Muslim countries. Mr. Modi is now taking humanitarian action to repatriate them.
On the next two issues, he chastises Mr. Modi on the following: “he [Modi] has focused on criminalizing the triple-talaq form of Islamic divorce [and] pushing for a Hindu temple on a site where a 470-year-old mosque was demolished in 1992 by Hindu protesters.”
Imagine Tharoor argues that it is discriminatory to Muslims for Mr. Modi to pass a law which bans a Muslim man who was otherwise allowed to say “Talaq, Talaq, Talaq” and thus divorce his wife. As the BBC reports: “Triple talaq”, as it’s known, allows a husband to divorce his wife by repeating the word “talaq” (divorce) three times in any form, including email or text message.” If Mr. Modi hadn’t intervened he could/would have been pilloried for being anti-women; and shamed for allowing Muslim women to be so unconscionably oppressed in the free, democratic nation of India. So, it is just political expediency, and sour grapes, for Mr. Tharoor to berate Mr. Modi for taking this humane action.
Tharoor, once again stoops very low and hides facts about the (Babri) Mosque. The Supreme Court in November 2019 made a unanimous decision that the Babri Mosque was not built on vacant land (but as archaeologists found there were demolished Hindus structures that the mosque was erected over). According to Guardian.com “The Indian Supreme court has ruled that India’s most hotly contested piece of religious land rightfully belongs to Hindus, and has granted permission for a temple to be built on the site in Ayodha.
“The five Supreme court judges based their unanimous and historic judgment on Hindus’ claim that the site is the birthplace of the god Ram.
“They ruled that a mosque that had stood on the site since the 16th century, and was the basis of the Muslim claim to Ayodhya, was `not built on vacant land’ and that the Hindu belief could not be disputed.”
So, just on the basis of these three issues, it ought to be apparent that Mr. Tharoor’s arguments are specious, without merit and are motivated by two stinging losses at the polls to Mr. Modi.
Yours faithfully,
Veda Nath Mohabir
