The situation in present day India is not very different. Hindus, the vast majority of India’s population, don’t mind having Muslims and Christians among their midst. But the reverse is not at all true. It has never been true. The ill will is obvious to me.

Extreme Islam advocates a ‘kill or convert’ policy. A more benign kind would accept the state where Muslims are in power regardless of how small a minority they are and tolerate non-Muslims as powerless second-class citizens or worse. We have seen both of these in the Muslim invasions of India and in the kingdoms and empires of Muslim rulers in South Asia. Rapid procreation, which the Muslims engage in, to overwhelm and eventually dominate the other communities is not a sign of acceptance of others. I think that Muslims, especially their religious and intellectual leaderships, even today believe that it is the right of the Muslims to rule and subjugate the ‘idol worshipping infidel’ Hindus like they did for the better part of the past millennium. That they are not doing so today appears to them as an intolerable injustice and an affront to Allah and as a failure on their part as true Muslims. To a Muslim, accepting Hinduism and the Hindus is perhaps like taking the bitterest medicine for the rest of his life for a disease he thinks he doesn’t have.

Present day Christians on the other hand believe in a ‘bribe them or scare them or deceive them’ policy to cause conversions. Like an accomplished predator with an instinct to spot weaker prey animals they prey on the weakest of the Hindu community. In this, the economically and politically powerful Christian West ably supports the Indian Christians. Funds are pouring in to buy Hindu souls. Simultaneously, coercive political pressure is maintained by Western governmental and non-governmental agencies (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch etc.), both under the influence of Christian fundamentalists to various degrees, to intimidate the weak Indian governments from creating a fair anti-fraudulent, anti-immoral conversion legislation. The cover is religious freedom and human rights. The West which never understood its own religion or anyone else’s, which didn’t hesitate to use violence in the past to convert the unwilling, which even today has a ‘all is fair to achieve conversion’ attitude, which even today asserts ‘my path is the only path’ preaches to the Hindu about the virtue of religious freedom -- to the Hindu whose sages have been proclaiming for thousands of years that there are many paths to God, to the Hindu who never lifted the sword to force his faith on others, to the Hindu who never shut the door to new and different faiths from lands beyond his borders.

And human rights is as much about politics as about human rights if not more. The objective of the human rights groups is to give themselves a weapon so they can intimidate countries of what they ‘affectionately and respectfully’ call ‘the 3rd world’. Don’t get me wrong. I am not against human rights. I support human rights. But I object to it being used as a political weapon. I object to it because the word ‘human’ in human rights doesn’t seem to include Hindus.

Obviously, all ingredients for conflict exist. In the prevailing conditions, can peace exist? A definite No. But the Indian English Print Media (IEPM) insists it can. What is its solution? It is advising that Hindus should accept all the blows from Muslims and Christians, that Hindus should not at all react and that the Hindu’s instinct of self-preservation is wrong. The IEPM wants to give the Hindu a value that is contrary to common sense and his tradition of doing everything to preserve dharma and fighting aggression, a value that has no basis in Hinduism per modern day Hindu sages. Isn’t it strange that the IEPM with all its leftists and hard-core materialists who have no use for religion, tells Hindus what Hinduism is really about? Unfortunately, some of the Hindus, naïve and gullible, lend their ears to this propaganda and believe that perhaps there is truth in what the IEPM says, perhaps what IEPM recommends is the high moral road. To me, the Hindu inaction is not the road to peace. It is a highway to death -- death of Hindu dharma and India. And that obviously is unacceptable.

What then is possible and acceptable? The answer is ‘No War’ -- a condition where communities in conflict do not engage in war out of respect for the power of the other community to inflict deterrent pain.

In my view, Godhra was the crime of aggressors and Post-Godhra Riots were the deterrent retaliation by a wounded community. This argument may appear cruel and heartless to some because of all the gore and violence that marked the riots. After all, shouldn’t only the guilty be punished. After all, isn’t it the domain of the judiciary and the executive to nab and punish the criminals and not that of the common man? Ideally, yes. Most of the time the common man remains passive, doesn’t take matters in his own hands. But exceptional provocation produces exceptional reactions. People who spent decades minding their own business are stirred to stand up and fight. Such reactions are fortified, not in small measure, by the apathy and slothfulness of the judiciary and callousness of politicians who think that their life’s mission is to please the Muslim and Christian minorities. Such reactions are strengthened by a thousand cuts the Hindu suffers in his lifetime at the hands of the Muslim and Christian minorities. Such reactions are reinforced by the fact that there is none to speak for the Hindu, to air his grievances, to listen to what he has to say. Powerlessness is the overpowering feeling. Isn’t it? Is it a surprise then that the common man reacted the way he did to Godhra?

Unless the political establishments in India are seen as even handed in treating various communities, unless the justice system in India is seen as doing its job, unless the media stops its unrelenting, knee-jerk Hindu bashing, unless Muslim and Christian minorities stop their aggression, incidents like Post-Godhra Riots are bound to happen, perhaps with increasing frequency. This must be recognized.

With all its apparent death and destruction, I do believe that there is a positive side to the Post-Godhra Riots. Muslims, hopefully, have realized at least in some hazy way that there could be a heavy price to pay for their misbehaviors (euphemistic understatement of course) like Godhra and hence are less likely to repeat something like what they did there. Hindus, hopefully, are seen by at least a sizable section of the aggressive Muslim and Christian minorities as a community not to be trifled with or trampled upon. Isn’t this a movement towards ‘No War’? (I do believe that ‘No War’ is a temporary, short-term truce. Mutual acceptance and respect is the long-term goal.) I understand why Post-Godhra Riots happened. Therefore, I refuse to condemn Post-Godhra Riots. I refuse to join the bandwagon of compulsive Hindu bashers.