A thought-provoking essay written by Narain Kataria, president of the Indian American Intellectuals Forum, sounds a familiar alarm. “Hinduism Faces Eclipse” reveals that “the anti-Hindu forces within and without India are working in tandem on an insidious mission to destroy our civilization and culture, and obliterate Hinduism from the Indian soil.” Kataria further contends that Indians are not facing terrorism, but worldwide jihad, which he calls a “fully globalized franchise…working overtime to destroy all non-Muslim nations.”


Muslims currently comprise 20 percent of India’s 1.2 billion population, the rest of which is overwhelmingly Hindu. But as Narain points out, Indian Muslims have engaged in a series of attacks on Hindu citizens, temples, religious festivals and unarmed pilgrims. He reminds us that a month after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, a proclamation was issued on Al Jazeera television promising that “Hindu India” would also be targeted for jihad. Two months after that, a suicide squad assaulted India’s Parliament House in New Delhi on December 13, 2001, killing 9 and wounding 18.
Since then thousands of terror attacks have besieged India. The city of Mumbai alone has been terrorized on four separate occasions. On March 12, 1993, 13 separate explosions in various parts of the city killed 257 and wounded more than 700. Most of the terrorists involved received arms and training in Pakistan, and Indian authorities contend the Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was actively involved as well. On July 11, 2006, a series of pressure-cooker bombs exploded on commuter trains, killing 209 and wounding over 700. Once again, the ISI was involved, along with the Pakistani Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba, and the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, according to Mumbai police. On November 26, 2008, another wave of terror attacks perpetrated by Muslims targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish center, a tourist restaurant and a crowded train station. Another 166 people were killed and more than 300 were wounded. And on July 13, 2011 three separate bomb blasts killed 26 and injured 130.

As recently as July 2012, riots in the state of Assam initiated by Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh resulted in at least 74 deaths. Several Hindu women were raped and then chopped into pieces during the attacks.
Kataria blames these and other atrocities on “India’s decadent culture of political correctness and pock-marked ‘taqaiyah’ of ‘paid news,’ when no national leader dare muster the courage to speak truth.” The New York Times echoed that assertion when they covered India’s 2008 election campaign, noting that the nation’s fight against terror is “complicated by a political landscape in which parties vie for Hindu and Muslim voters’ loyalty.” Kataria told FrontPage that the Indian government “doesn’t understand Sharia,” and that the “politicians are afraid of Muslims” because they have organized highly effective political blocs, capable of removing anyone who would even suggest India is under Islamic siege.
As recently as July 2012, riots in the state of Assam initiated by Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh resulted in at least 74 deaths. Several Hindu women were raped and then chopped into pieces during the attacks.
The blocs’ ultimate purpose? “Muslims want to finish India as soon as possible,” contends Kataria.
Incrementalism is one of the key strategies employed by the Islamists. Thus it is no surprise Sharia courts have been successfully established in various parts of the country, including Hyderabad, Patna and Malegaon. As recently as two weeks ago, a Sharia court was set up in terror-scarred Mumbai by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB). Sounding familiar rhetoric, AIMPLB secretary Maulana Wali Rahmani contended that Sharia courts do not complete with India’s civil courts. ”On the contrary, Shariah courts will lower the burden of the civil courts where thousands of cases are pending and the judges are overworked,” he said.

Incrementalism is further explained by Times of India senior journalist Ramesh Khazanchi, who cites a series of events, including the banning of “Vishwaroopam,” a film critical of Islam, in Tamil Nadu theaters; the blacklisting of author Salman Rushdie at various literary festivals; and the war-mongering of the Owaisi brothers, leaders of the Muslim group Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM), who have threatened Hindus with annihilation, as more evidence that the “aggressive Indian Muslim has thus been emboldened by the state.”
Kataria notes that Hindus have ignored previous warning signs of such aggression, citing a 1986 court case involving the arrest and prosecution of two Hindus, who published and circulated a poster containing 24 Quranic “ayats” under the heading, “Why Riots Take Place in the Country.” The 24 ayats commanded Muslims to fight against the followers of other religions. The prosecutors submitted that they were distorted versions of what was said in the Quran. Yet the judge ruled in favor of the two men, noting that the ayats were accurate. Kataria explained that neither the Muslim community nor the Delhi government ever filed an appeal against the ruling. “It is high time that the partisan members of the NAC (National Advisory Council) read the aforesaid historical judgment and the relevant ayats of the Quran to understand the growing cult of communal violence, even after partition of the country,” Kataria contends.

The partition to which Kataria refers is the division of India in 1947 into Pakistan and India, after the nation gained independence from Britain. The division was along sectarian lines and, as the official break-up grew closer, a religious civil war ensued. The “Great Calcutta Killing,” during which 5,000-10,000 people were killed and some 15,000 wounded, was precipitated by the Muslim League, which sponsored a “Direct Action” program containing 23 points promoting jihad against Hindus.

In 2011, Kataria addressed that part of his nation’s history. “India was partitioned in 1947 on the basis of two-nation theory as propounded by the Muslim League Party,” he explained. “Pakistan was immediately declared as an Islamic state. The corollary of that action was that India should have been declared a Hindu state. But that did not happen. It was a monumental blunder committed by India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his Congress Party.” He then explained why such a solution was necessary. “Secularism, as practiced in India, has become synonymous with the Hindu-bashing, while Hinduism has become a dirty word in the lexicon of country’s ‘secular’ fundamentalists.”
Speaking with FrontPage, Kataria reveals that his feelings about Islam remain unchanged. He spoke of being born in Pakistan, “where I was threatened with death if I did not leave.” He claims he has seen “Muslims rape and kill with my own eyes,” even as he “watches Islam capturing countries one by one.” Although he has made America his home for the last 45 years, he remains highly concerned about his country, which he fears is heading towards a religious-based civil war. In his essay, he explains that such a war is “likely to be powered by the twin factors of fast growing jihadi attacks and galloping increase in the proportion of the Muslim population.” Regarding the latter reality, he believes that the combined Muslim population of the Indian sub-continent will be greater than that of Hindus within the next thirty to forty years.

Kataria is highly critical of those in positions of power. “Unfortunately despite centuries-old violent encounters with jihadi Islam neither the Indian government, nor the comatose Hindu leadership, have learnt any strategic lesson,” he writes. “Time has come for Hindu leaders and masses to remember Arnold Toynbee’s famous quote: ‘Civilizations die from suicide, not murder.’ Time has come to face the jihad courageously and stop sleep walking towards [the] suicide cliff.”
Kataria worries that the United States is walking towards the same cliff, for the same politically correct reasons. “I do not want the US to be destroyed by Islam,” he told FrontPage. When asked if so-called moderate Muslims were equally worrisome, he scoffed at the notion. “There is no such thing as a moderate Muslim,” he contended. “That means you don’t follow the Koran.” He believes all true Muslims are “soldiers,” and that the Koran “teaches violence.”

There is no question that Kataria’s views conflict with the prevailing ethos promoted by the Obama administration. One is left to wonder how long Americans will countenance Obama and company’s polar opposite approach, one that consists of such realities as labeling the slaughter of American GIs by Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood as “workplace violence,” the grim determination to keep the word “Islamic” from being attached to the terror perpetrated at the Boston Marathon, or the scrubbing of law-enforcement training manuals of language that accurately depicts the threat we face from global jihadism.

Those who might find some of Kataria’s views offensive might consider how they would feel if terrorist attacks were being perpetrated in America at the same rate they are being perpetrated in India. Kataria worries that someday America will also be subjected to semi-regular terrorist attacks perpetrated by an increasing population of home-grown Islamic terrorists. We ignore his warnings at our own peril.