PARANOID FEELINGS OF THE MINORITIES (Pages 26-38) by in THE ENGLISH INDIA / ISSN: 2321-1172 (Online); 2347-2634 (Print)

The atrocities and indignities committed in the subcontinent in the wake of partition and the demolition of Babri Majjid make one hark back to the Holocaust. The Holocaust was completely State-sponsored terrorism intended to eliminate the Jewish race. On the other hand, the communal holocaust in the sub-continent people without any compunction fell upon each other with the ferocity of cannibals. It was abetted either by the complicity or the passivity of the State. The irony is that many of the communal leaders were great admirers of Hitler. The demonizaton of minorities was the crux of the process of annihilation in the subcontinent. Like their counterparts elsewhere in the subcontinent, the majority, emboldened by their numerical strength, possessed with communal dementia and abetted by the State, ran riot. The Hindus in India and the Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh perpetrated atrocities on the minorities on the ground that the other belonged to some “alien” religion.