Persecution of Hindus

"The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within."

"The attack on Bangladeshi Hindus is a crime against humanity. In and of itself, it is severe enough to spur our moral outrage and cause us to take action to stop it. But to make matters worse, it has been spreading across that open border into West Bengal, India. One would think these Hindu victims of Islamist terror would find a safe haven in the largest Hindu nation on earth, but they have not."

"“The wicked mlechchas pollute the religion of the Hindus every day. They break the images of gods into pieces and throw away the articles of worship. They throw into fire Srimad Bhagwat and other holy scriptures, forcibly take away the conchshell and bell of the Brahmanas, and lick the sandal paints on their bodies. They urinate like dogs on the tulsi plant and deliberately pass faeces in the Hindu temples. They throw water from their mouths on the Hindus engaged in worship, and harass the Hindu saints as if they were so many lunatics let large.”"

"Hindus have been forbidden to pray at the time of the Muslim's namaz, Hindu society has been left without a bath, without a tilak. Even those who have never uttered "Ram", even they can get no respite by shouting "Khuda, Khuda"... The few who have survived Babar's jails wail... The desolation which has come over the land.... The entire races which have been exterminated, which have been humiliated..."

"The king seizes the Brahmanas, pollutes their caste and even takes their lives. If a conch-shell is heard to blow in any house, its owner is made to forfeit his wealth, caste and even life. The king plunders the houses of those who wear sacred threads on the shoulder and put scared marks on the forehead, and then binds them. He breaks the temples and uproots tulsi plants… The bathing in Ganga is prohibited and hundreds of scared asvattha and jack trees have been cut down."

"In India there are some who speak of "Hindu genocide" or "the Hindu Holocaust".... The term [Hindu holocaust] once again draws attention to other people's experience, while the uniqueness of the Hindu experience still remains underexposed. There are indigenous terms, and it is now necessary to choose one as the default term and promote it. These include Hindū-vaṁśa-vicchédana or Hindū-saṁhāraṇa, "genocide of the Hindus". Since I also find that term imprecise, I will stick to the more general Hindū-hatya, "slaughter of the Hindus.""

"We need not even look very far: of the one to three million victims of the Bangladesh war in 1971, most were Hindus, totally dwarfing those who were killed in religious riots in remainder-India since 1947. In 1947 too, the Hindu refugees from West Panjab killed by their Muslim neighbours far outnumbered the East Panjabi Muslims who didn’t make it to the Promised Land they themselves had created."

"The very first Hindu grievance is that Hindus are being killed: in Pakistan and Bangladesh, in Kashmir, during bomb attacks... Among lesser-known types of anti-Hindu aggression, note the use of riots, targeted assassinations and minor forms of pestering... The Hindu death toll in post-Independence riots in East Bengal already outnumbers the Muslim death toll in Hindu-Muslim clashes in the whole of South Asia by far. ... All these riot data are, moreover, dwarfed by the East Bengal genocide of 1971. The first Bangladesh Government estimated the number of people killed by the Pakistanis... at three million. (...) Moreover, Western as well as Indian observers notices that the prime target group were Hindus. (...) The Nehru-Liaqat Pact of 1950, concluded with Pak Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan amid mass killing of Hindus in East Bengal, prevents the Government o fIndia from any form of interference when Hindus are maltreated in Pakistan and its partial successor state Bangladesh."

"Hindus suffered such attempted extermination in East Bengal in 1971, when the Pakistani Army killed 1 to 3 million people, with Hindus as their most wanted target. This fact is strictly ignored in most writing about Hindu-Muslim relations, in spite (or rather because) of its serious implication that even the lowest estimate of the Hindu death toll in 1971 makes Hindus by far the most numerous victims of Hindu-Muslim violence in the post-colonial period. It is significant that no serious count or religion-wise breakdown of the death toll has been attempted: the Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ruling classes all agree that this would feed Hindu grievances against Muslims.... Even apart from the 1971 genocide, "ordinary" pogroms in East Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of riot victims in India since 1948. .... The best-kept secret of the post-Independence Hindu-Muslim conflict is that in the subcontinent as a whole, the overwhelming majority of the victims have been Hindus. Even apart from the 1971 genocide, "ordinary" pogroms in East Pakistan in 1950 alone killed more Hindus than the total number of riot victims in India since 1948."

"There is no state today, certainly not in India, to protect Hindu interest in the international arena, to raise voice for the Hindus .... In December 1992, no less than 600 Hindu temples were destroyed in Bangladesh, thousands of Hindu homes were burnt down, hundreds of Hindu women were paraded naked on the streets of Bhola town, a number of Hindus were killed, Hindu shops were looted, Hindu deities were desecrated, Hindu girls were dishonoured. But the Government of India remained silent. In Pakistan, 300 temples were destroyed. In Lahore a Minister of Pakistan personally supervised the pulling down of a temple with the help of bulldozers, and several Hindus were murdered. But the Government of India remained silent. No matter how much tyranny, how much injustice is heaped on Hindus anywhere in the world, the State of India is not bothered - this is the essence of Secularism in India."

"Over the last few years, there have been several incidents in Punjab and Jammu, in which some passengers were segregated and dragged out of buses to be lined up on the roadside and shot to death. You should remember that in each one of these incidents, the victims of the butchery, persons killed like dogs, were Hindus and Hindus alone, and they were so killed because they were Hindus."

"Contrary to a widespread impression, the typical victim of Hindu-Muslim violence is a Hindu. Not, of course, that this justifies any of the occasional Hindu violence, but the fact itself deserves to be noted."

"In India, by contrast, massive violence against Hindutva activists.. has gone unanswered. Hundreds of Hindutva activists have been murdered and no one has taken revenge."

"We will not change the subject and discuss the large though unknown number of Hindus killed by Christian separatists in Mizoram and Nagaland over the decades, nor the terror of Christian natives in Fiji against Hindus, the latter phenomenon... is not the target of any protest in the world media, and the first is never even mentioned, so I suppose we need not attach any undue importance to the death of Hindus at the hands of Christians."

"There was persecution, partly religious and partly political, and a stubborn resistance was offered by the Hindus… The state imposed great disabilities upon the non-Muslims… Instances are not rare in which the non-Muslims were treated with great severity… The practice of their religious rites even with the slightest publicity was not allowed, and cases are on record of men who lost their lives for doing so."

"[The Sultanate of Delhi] “was an Islamic State, pure and simple, and gave no religious toleration to the Hindus… and indulged in stifling persecution.”"

"…though the faith of Hindoos has been often tried by severe persecutions, excited by the bigotry of their Mahomedan conquerors, no people ever adhered with greater fidelity to the tenets and rites of their ancestors."