Habib Siddiqui

[Note: This article on the status of minority Muslims in India was written more than ten years ago and appeared in several Internet sites. Because of its relevance today when the Hindutvadi forces are trying to foment hatred and division, I am reposting it in its entirety. - Habib Siddiqui] ====================================================== Minorities in the Indian Sub-continent by Habib Siddiqui (Thursday, September 11, 2003) "In India Muslims are portrayed as villains, outsiders and plunderers. In their xenophobia, Indian Hindus forget that Muslims made India their home and that they are the beneficiaries of monuments, civil systems, highways, and social structures that were put in place by enlightened Muslim rulers."   Many Indian Hindus often present a very rosy picture about Indian democracy and secularism, while stereotyping its neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan negatively. They blame Muslims for the partition of India...

I recently came across an article by Tapan Kumar Ghosh, the fanatic leader of Hindu Samhati, in the IBTL, entitled “ Bengal's doomed Hindu community,” which requires response to correct the confusion and falsity that he has deliberately tried to create in the mind of his readers. He falsely claims that Islamists from Bangladesh have been infiltrating India virtually turning those bordering districts of India-Bangladesh border into Islamist strongholds. To support his thesis, Ghosh quotes from Bimal Pramanik, the director of Centre for Research in Indo-Bangla Relations (CRIBR), a front that is long known for its anti-Bangladesh bias and anti-Muslim agenda gravitating extremist Hindus for the Hindutvadi cause. Ghosh writes, “Take the situation in 24 Parganas border district. According to Bimal Pramanik (Endangered Demography: Nature and Impact of Demographic Changes in West Bengal, 1951-2001), ‘The 1981-1991 decade witnessed a massive growth rate of Muslim population, viz. 41.47%....