India is home to nearly 18 per cent of the world’s population. That’s a huge chunk of humanity in one country. Of this, nearly 82 per cent are Hindus. So naturally, it is a nation with a Hindu identity, irrespective of whether people with more “secular” outlook accept it or not. If Turkey can be called a Muslim nation and Germany a Christian nation, India is for sure a Hindu nation that functions in the form of a democracy.
Unfortunately India is one of the biggest victims of terrorism in the 21st century world. Interestingly, it has become very fashionable over the past 4 to 6 years to flash Hindutva “terror” or Saffron “terror” at the drop of a hat. Hindutva, is essentially an ideology which is pro-Hindu, and Saffron is a colour most associated with Sanatana Dharma, or Hinduism as the world labels it. Many people bring “Hindu terror”, “Hindutva terror” or “Saffron terror” into political and media discussions to score brownie points with the generally Hindu-despising crowd out there — the so-called secular people, communists, and some ‘friendly neighbours’ of who have a big stake in projecting Hindus in bad light.
Since Islamic terror or Muslim terror has been so much in news this century, some people felt obligated to bring in an “equal-equal” balancing act to emphasise their own secular credentials. Of course it would be stupid to say that there are no bad people who are Hindus. They exist. There are criminals, rapists, murderers and much worse people who happen to be from practicing Hindu family or just have a Hindu name. But ‘Hindutva terror’ or ‘Hindu terror’ is mostly meaningless as hardly any Hindu would go out and commit terrorism for the glory of the Bhagavad Gita or for attaining heaven for the sake of Krishna or Durga, or cite a Vedic mantra before blowing up a group of people. Hindu criminals surely exist, but Hindu ‘terror’(of the Islamist variety) is mostly imaginary. I have never come across an act of Hindutva ‘terror’ that killed even 100 people (that’s 0.8 per cent of the number of global terror victims in 2011) anywhere in the world in one incident. You can leave a comment below to educate me if you find this claim false.
Now let’s go beyond our opinions and claims. Let’s get some hard statistics from credible reports. Beyond the studios of some select media houses, does Hindutva ‘terror’, so fondly peddled by our neo-intellectuals, even exist? If it exists among 15-18 per cent of the world’s population, shouldn’t it be a very visible form of terror in international reports and news items? That too when India itself features among the 6 most terror-affected countries in the global ranking?
I found one very credible and internationally accepted report on the previous year’s terrorism statistics. I was actually hoping to see a lot of ‘Hindutva terror’-related information from this comprehensive world report on terrorism in 2011. To my shock, there was not even a single mention of ‘Hindu’, ‘RSS’, ‘Sangh’, ‘Saffron’ and other labels that Indian media regularly feeds us. There were 16 mentions of India in this 33-page comprehensive report, but not ONE mention of the word ‘Hindu’!
Former Journalist,TIMES NOW
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