POLITICIANS who make spreading hate their bread and butter should be censured and ostracised. Creating a vote bank based on hatred does not require much imagination. The trouble with politicians is that they do not want to or cannot work hard.

They can be likened to high school students who throw away course syllabi and take up shortened guidebooks to get through their examinations.

The trouble starts when these politicians become leaders by deceiving their electorate. One of their pet tricks is rewriting history.

In the context of India, this is done by declarations like: “all Muslims are foreigners”, “Taj Mahal doesn’t represent the Indian ethos, demolish it”, etc.

The invokers of hate forget that Kanishka was a Turko-Tatar. Many other Indian kings were also from foreign lands. In America, bigots chant “hate Muslims, destroy Islam”. They falsify all evidence that establishes beyond any shadow of doubt that Mansa Abubakar, a Malian Muslim king, landed on the soil of America 200 years before Columbus.

Vasco da Gama, the first European to step on South Asian soil, was guided by an Arab navigator, Ahmat Ibne Majid. Without the Arab guide, da Gama would have reached Australia.

The Turks have already removed the name of Columbus as the founder of America from their textbooks. The victims of the politicians who come to power by propagating hatred are their voters. Hate-mongers should never be in the driver’s seat.

Azmat Ansari
Karachi

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2018