“An extremist is not just the enemy of the other religions he tries to decimate but it is in fact a bigger enemy of the religion he believes he represents”.
“India can also witness forced mass conversions, genocide and another 1947, if ideologies of ISIS, Boko Haram or Al Shabaab touch the Indian Soil”.
Kapil Naik
What thought drives a religious extremist has been the question I have always been trying to find answers for. Although on the face of it the reasons appear to be religious, I have never been able to find conclusive answers as I am always distracted because of a suspicion in my mind that somewhere behind presence of religious extremism in Middle East & Africa, there possibly exist a western crony capitalist system which thrives on turbulence in these areas. For the proposed frame of this article I keep this point to be written over on some other day.
Coming to the thought that might drive an extremist, it is widely believed that an extremist is driven by the following ideology –———– Only my God is God & hence if you do not follow my God you are not actually following any God. And those who don’t follow god (Non Believers) are either have to be killed or converted. And while bringing this thought into reality among the non believers if any believer gets death, he gets Heaven.
If this thought is to be believed to be true and accepted as the only reason behind birth of the organizations like ISIS, Boko Haram & Al Shabaab, we the citizens of this world have a serious problem on our hand which if unaddressed can wipe civilizations off this earth and bring great disrepute to the religion the extremists represent.
India’s first and foremost concern should be to find out if such ideologies are finding roots in India.
Having said that the ghost of religious extremism is not new to India. The extremism has been there since known and documented history of India. Be it multiple attempts of destruction of somnath temple, be it systematic humiliation of Kashmiri Pundits, be it war of panipat – religious extremism has been very much a threat.
My worst fear is that there exists a certain class of pseudo secularists – political people and media who will look the other way when such demon might be coming up in India. Vote is important than justice after all.
India’s concern is not the presence of an extremist within its territories. Because the extremist can easily be located & handled as he prefers to be visible in order to inspire many others. He does not befriend the non believers to make them believe in his god. The real trouble is to deal with those people who refuse to comprehend threat of extremism as real. It is not as much difficult to deal with extremist as much it is to deal with people who overlook the presence of extremist or undermines the threat an extremist poses to the civilizations.
History of Extremism in India is rarely studied, scrutinized and addressed in modern India. The bitter truth of extremism is typically avoided with an idea – Extremism has no colour. To me this would be the biggest lie ever told on earth.
History is more important than any school teacher that has ever told you. It is much more than remembering dates and saluting Heros. Purpose of history is to be able to take steps in right direction so as to avoid the darker side of history repeating itself. There is no shame in learning from mistakes that may have happened in handling extremism in the past.
To stop the Ideology of extremism from proliferating in India it is important and urgent that we act ruthlessly against the extremist with strict laws and their ruthless implementation. The vigilance teams, investigation teams and the Judiciary is kept completely untouched from political bias and interference.
We also must remember that we are acting against the ideology of the extremist and not the religion he represents. If we are mistaken about the fight against the ideologies of an extremist as fight against the religion he represents then unknowingly we are creating another extremist in ourselves.
And most importantly we need to act now before extremism becomes too big to be handled
through a political solution.
Jai Hind