May 31, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 28, 1424

PARIS May 30: Eighty-eight-year-old Khushwant Singh, author of A Train to Pakistan, and more recently of The End of India, says that if there’s one thing he is revolted against is the end of India as a secular state.

And largely because of that situation, he says, the country is not yet ready for any reconciliation with Pakistan.

Interviewed in the French daily Le Figaro, Khushwant Singh notes that as a result of this situation, the 140 million Muslims who inhabit India “are nothing less than the Jews of Germany of the 1930s. And as in Germany under Hitler, if the fundamentalist Hindus have chosen to attack the Muslims, it’s because the Muslims are India’s largest minority. Certainly it wouldn’t be to the Hindus’ benefit to scapegoat the country’s Christians, at three per cent of the population, or the Sikhs, two per cent. That leaves India’s Muslim population, which accounts for 12 per cent of the Indian people.”

The author compares the fundamentalist Hindu parties who have come to power in India — the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Shiv Sena, Vishva Hindu Parishad — to the Nazis who rose to power in similar ways in the Germany of the 1920s and 1930s: “they began their work well before independence, enrooting themselves profoundly in Indian society, and today they are the ones who dictate the laws, who have the power. In Delhi, all the members of the government, or almost, come from the RSS, even if among them there are a few token Muslims.”

Khushwant Singh adds: “The Jihad supported by some Muslim extremists serves as a perfect alibi to Hindu extremists looking for a scapegoat. Let’s not forget the profound sense of humiliation suffered by India’s Hindus who feel they’ve been deprived of their heritage. During eight centuries, it’s true, Muslim dynasties succeeded each other in India, and their leaders destroyed Hindu temples, forcefully converting Hindus to Islam. But the Hindu leaders, in turn, have persecuted the Buddhists, the Jains, and destroyed their places of worship too.”