Rahul Gandhi Must Be Careful About What He Says
By Colonel ANIL A ATHALE (Retd)In the volatile international situation where 'nativism' is on the rise and immigrant communities are being targeted, the Leader of the Opposition's statement is like pouring oil onto troubled waters.
If the Indian diaspora numbering 4 crores is threatened it will constitute a grave threat to national security, warns Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Overseas Indians or the Indian diaspora number around 4 crores worldwide and is mainly concentrated in the Gulf countries, the US, the UK and Australia in that order.
As per statistics for 2021-2022, the inward remittances from NRIs amounted to $89 billion, nearly 3% of India's GDP.
In times of crisis these Indians naturally look towards the mother country for help.
India has never failed them and carried out several successful evacuations beginning in Kuwait in 1991 and from war torn Ukraine two years ago.
Reflecting the national demographic, the bulk of these people belong to the Hindu faith.
Indians the world over have earned a reputation for being hardworking, law abiding and peaceful citizens.
In the second decade of the 21st century world population dynamics has seen a major change.
Europeans and European origin US citizens have seen a decline in their numbers and rise in immigrant numbers.
Waves of Muslim immigrants to Europe have resulted in major demographic changes in countries like Holland, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and France.
In the US the rise of Trumpism can be directly attributed to the fear of impending demographic change.
This has led to rise of Rightist parties who are basically anti-migrants.
In the recent French parliamentary elections, it took a combination of centrist and extreme leftists to halt the march of the far right.
Indians have remained largely untouched by this anti-immigrant wave so far but there have been stray incidents of attacks on Hindu temples in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia.
There has also been a concerted effort by the 'liberal' left in some of these countries to paint Hindus and Hinduism as regressive.
Many of these instances can be directly tranced to events and fall out of India's domestic political battles.
Demonisation of the majority community in India as 'extremist' began in 2008 when a new term 'Hindu terror' was coined.
Pakistan that has been exporting terror to India latched on to it and the 26/11 Mumbai attackers tied sacred thread to their wrists in order to pose as Hindus.
It was thanks to the sacrifice of Mumbai policeman Tukaram Omble who caught one of the terrorists alive to foil this plan.
Subsequent investigations traced the terrorist Ajmal Kasab to Pakistan.
Later the link of David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, US and Canadian citizens respectively, came to light. Currently both are in US prisons.
This still did not stop some in India from claiming that the attackers were not Pakistanis but Hindus. A former police officer from Maharashtra even wrote a book putting forward this canard.
According to Wikileaks, a prominent Indian politician told a US diplomat that the greatest threat to India is from Hindu terror.
The proponents of this view lost the elections and have been lying low for the last decade.
From the 1980s, Hindus have been the target of Islamic and Khalistani terror attacks.
Hindus have never been involved in bomb blasts, hijackings or any major terror attack anywhere in the world.
It is true that there were communal riots in Gujarat, UP and MP during this period resulting in loss of lives on both sides.
But riots, that last for a short period, cannot be compared to well organised and planned terror attacks.
The equating of riots with planned and organised terrorism is a misleading ploy.
The reason this debate has resurfaced is because the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha charged that Hindus are violent. He later clarified that he meant it only for the opponent party and its supporters (that is around 33% of India's population).
Whatever the motives of this statement, the repercussions of this may be felt internationally.
The next time round when Hindus are targeted in the UK, the US or Canada etc, the perpetrators will point at the statements in Parliament to justify their actions.
After all, it is a prominent Indian leader who has declared Hindus to be thinking of violence.
Attacks on Hindus in these countries will thus be justified.
In the volatile international situation where 'nativism' is on the rise and immigrant communities are being targeted, this statement is like pouring oil into troubled waters.
If the Indian diaspora numbering 4 crores is threatened it will constitute a grave threat to national security and well being.
Is it too much to expect that our politicians exercise caution while playing with the lives and wellbeing of Indian migrants?
Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) is a military historian whose earlier columns can be read here.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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