India declares itself to be a secular state, but in reality it is far from that. Its Hindu majority wants it to to be a Hindu state. Worse still, they want the other religious minorities to renounce their respective faiths and adopt Hindu practices in the name of Indian culture. These Hindu extremists believe that Hindu culture symbolizes Indian nationalism. In the last few years there has been such a massive drift in the Indian society towards Hindu fundamentalism that not only in the center but in many of the states too, coalitions of the Hindu fundamentalist parties have come into power.

The worst sufferers from the rise of Hindu fundamentalists are the Indian Muslims. They are the biggest single minority in India and also the main target of the wrath of the Hindus. The Hindus hatred of the Muslims is rooted in the Indian history, to be more precise, in the Hindu version of the Muslim period of the Indian history, which has painted the Muslim rulers of India of 13th to 18th centuries as religious despots who ruled by the sword. These allegations are accompanied with other untruths like demolishing of Hindu temples by the Muslim conquerors and building mosques thereon etc. etc.

The new Hindu generation taught this distorted version of history is full of venom against the Muslim population. They are out to take revenge from the Muslims for the supposed injustices of the past. They now want to demolish Muslim mosques and erect their temples on these sites; and they want to convert the Muslims and Christians to Hinduism.

It has been this hatred which has been fuelling frequent programs of Muslims by Hindus in ‘secular’ India. Since the independence of India, millions of Muslims have been killed in the so-called Hindu-Muslim riots, which are actually carnage of unarmed Muslim citizens, with active connivance of the police.

The powerful Hindu-owned Indian media and the Government of India’s own propaganda machinery has suppressed the truth from the world, which is that the life and honor of the Muslim citizens is constantly at risk in India. During the 54 years of Independence, thousands of anti-Muslim riots have taken place in the country in which a huge number of Muslims have perished or made to flee their hearths and homes either to Pakistan or elsewhere in the world. The Gujrat massacre of February-March has been one of the worst in recent years. Over 2000 Muslims were killed in a matter of a few days, hundreds of homes and shops were burnt down by raving Hindu mobs while the police stood as spectators. According to many eye witnesses the police actually connived with the killers. Even the federal government acted too late which has cast serious doubts on its impartiality.

The international community, the Muslim countries in particular, cannot remain oblivious to the plight of the Muslim minority in India. India must be compelled to stop the Hindu fanatics and provide its Muslim minority security of life, property and honor. The United Nations as well as non-government human rights organisations should send observers to Gujrat and to the Indian-occupied Kashmir to monitor the situation in these two areas and report their findings for the international community to act to save the Indian Muslims.