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Persecution of Hindus

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Religious persecution and discrimination
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It has been suggested that Anti-Hindu be merged into this article. (Discuss)

The Persecution of Hindus has existed throughout history. In modern times Hindus have been persecuted in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) from the partition of India in 1947 until today. Hindus who initially constituted 30% of the population there have now dwindled to around 10%. Almost all of those driven out are now refugees in the North Eastern states in India. This ethnic cleansing has gone largely unnoticed by the rest of the world.

Historical Persecution by Christians

The Goa Inquisition, was established in 1560 by Portuguese missionaries. It was aimed primarily at Hindus and wayward new converts and by the time it was suppressed in 1774, the inquisition had had thousands of Hindus tortured and executed by burning.

The British East India Company engaged in a covert and well-financed campaign of evangelical conversions in the 19th century. While officially discouraged conversions, officers of the Company routinely converted Sepoys to Christianity, often by force. This was one of the factors that led to the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

Historical Persecution by Muslims

The initial invasion of the Indian Subcontinent by Muslim armies led to widespread carnage as Muslims regarded the Hindus as infidels.


Historian Will Durant quotes in his book "The Story of Civilization: Our Oriental Heritage" (page 459):

"...the Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." Almost all the Muslims of South Asia are descendants of weaker elements of the population who had succumbed to forcible Islamic conversion." )

"The Mohammedan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history". The Islamic historians and scholars have recorded with great glee and pride of the slaughters of Hindus, forced conversions, abduction of Hindu women and children to slave markets and the destruction of temples carried out by the warriors of Islam during 800 AD to 1700 AD. Millions of Hindus were converted to Islam by sword during this period. "

There is no official estimate of the total death toll of Hindus at the hands of Muslims. A first glance at important testimonies by Muslim chroniclers suggests that, over 13 centuries and over the entire subcontinent, Muslim Warriors easily killed millions of Hindus. There have been several occasions when the Bahmani sultans in central India (1347-1528) killed a hundred thousand Hindus, which they set as a minimum goal whenever they felt like "punishing" the Hindus.

The contemporary French writer François Gautier has said ,


"The massacres perpetuated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the Holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese."

Prof. K.S.Lal calculated in his book "The Growth of Muslim Population in India" that between the years 1000 AD and 1500 AD the population of Hindu's decreased by 80 Million.

The first Islamic Empire of India, the Sultanate of Delhi, was established in 1210 CE by Turkic tribes that invaded the subcontinent from Afghanistan.

Many temples were looted and destroyed. Infamous cases are the destruction of the Somnath Temple by Mahmud of Ghazni, and the Ramjanmabhoomi/Babri Mosque.


The genocide of Hindus by the hand of Ghazni at Thaneshwar and Mathura were particularly severe, according to the records of his own secretary Arikh-i-Yamini,

"The blood of the infidels flowed so copiously at Thanesar that the stream was discolored, not withstanding its purity, and people were unable to drink it. The Sultan returned with plunder which is impossible to count. Praise be to Allah for the honor he bestows on Islam and Muslims."


Muhammad Ghori conducted genocide of Hindus at Koi (modern Aligarh), Kalinjar and Varanasi, according to Hasan Nizami's Taj-ul-Maasir, 20,000 Hindu prisoners were slaughtered and their heads offerred to crows

The RamJanmabhoomi-Babri Mosque is another instance, which was the birth place of Lord Rama, according to Hindu scripture. The temple was destroyed by Central Asian muslim invader Zahir-ud-din Mohammad Babur and a mosque was built over it's ruins. The Hindu Right wing in India is presently fighting to get it back as a temple.

The Moghul Empire was marked by periods of tolerance of non-Muslims, such as Hindus, Christians and Sikhs, as well as violent oppression and persecution of those people. Large scale conversions were carried out at the tip of the sword in most places where Muslim emperors ruled.

The reign of Aurangzeb was particularly brutal. No aspect of Aurangzeb's reign is more cited - or more controversial - than the numerous desecrations and destruction of Hindu temples.

During his reign, tens of thousands of temples were desecrated: facades and interiors were defaced and their murtis (divine images) looted. In many cases, temples were destroyed entirely; in numerous instances mosques were built on their foundations, sometimes using the same stones.

Among the temples Aurangzeb destroyed were two most sacred to Hindus, in Varanasi and Mathura. In both cases, he had large mosques built on the sites.

The Kesava Deo temple in Mathura, marked the place Hindus believe was the birth place of Shri Krishna. In 1661 Aurangzeb ordered the demolition of the temple, and constructed the Katra Masjid mosque. Traces of the ancient Hindu temple can be seen from the back of the mosque.

Aurangzeb also destroyed what was the most famous temple in Varanasi, Vishwanath Temple. The temple had changed location over the years, but in 1585 Akbar had authorized its location at Gyan Vapi. Aurangzeb ordered its demolition in 1669 and constructed a mosque on the site, whose minarets stand 71 metres above the Ganges. Traces of the old temple can be seen behind the mosque.

Centuries later, emotional debate about these wanton acts of cultural desecration continue.

Sir Jadunath Sarkar (1870-1958) the pre-eminent historian of Mughal India, wrote the following in 1920 regarding the impact of centuries of jihad and dhimmitude on the indigenous Hindus of the Indian subcontinent:

”Islamic theology, therefore tells the true believer that his highest duty is to make 'exertion (jihad) in the path of God', by waging war against infidel lands (dar-ul-harb) till they become part of the realm of Islam (dar-ul-Islam) and their populations are converted into true believers. After conquest the entire infidel population becomes theoretically reduced to the status of slaves of the conquering army. The men taken with arms are to be slain or sold into slavery and their wives and children reduced to servitude. As for the non-combatants among the vanquished, if they are not massacred outright, - as the canon lawyer Shaf'i declares to be the Qur'anic injunction,- it is only to give them a respite till they are so wisely guided as to accept the true faith.”

(source: How the Muslims forcibly converted the Hindus of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to Islam by Jadunath Sarkar).


Contemporary Persecution of Hindus

Persecution by Christians

Hindus in Russia are being subjected to persecution and discrimination by a corpus made of the Russian Orthodox Church and the State. There are over 5,000 Hindus from India and 10,000 Hindu converts from the local Russian population in Moscow. In 2003 the authorities asked devotees to vacate their temple in exchange for a piece of land on which they could build a bigger temple.

This was followed immediately by mass protests orchestrated by the Russian Orthodox Church which did not want land given to a temple that was "converting Russian Christians to a Hindu way of life".

Hindus were victimised, threatened, bullied, beaten and subject to violence. A misinformation campaign was launched against Hindus by the Orthodox Church .

Finally, on November 2005, the Mayor of Russia cancelled the land order and took away the piece of land given for the construction of the Hindu temple. Russia also has a history of passing laws that discriminate against minority faith communities.

On January 14th 2006, The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone handed over letters expressing concern about the harassment of Russian Hindus by the Moscow Government and the Russian Orthodox Church to the visiting Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov in London, even as British Parliamentarians led by Ashok Kumar MP, Lord Dholakia and Baroness Flather got ready to host the launch of the Defend Russian Hindus campaign at the House of Commons on 18th January of the same year.

British Parliamentarians and members of the Hindu, Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities will adopt a resolution at the Defend Russian Hindus launch at the House of Commons, urging the Moscow Government to stop harassment of minority religions in Russia. Parliamentarians from all three parties will later hand a copy of this resolution to the Russian Ambassador in London .

Persecution by Muslims

There have been severe persecution of Hindus by muslims in Pakistan since it's formation in 1947. The increasing Islamization has caused many Hindus to leave Hinduism and seek emancipation by converting to other faiths such as Buddhism and Christianity. Such Islamization include the blasphemy laws, which make it dangerous for religious minorities to express themselves freely and engage freely in religious and cultural activities .

Minority members of the Pakistan National Assembly have alleged that Hindus were being hounded and humiliated to force them to leave Pakistan . Hindu women have been known to be victims of kidnapping and forced conversion to Islam .

Indian authorities have alleged that Pakistan has been covertly and financing Islamic Terrorism in Kashmir. Islamic terrorists have routinely engaged in attacks on Hindu pilgrims in both Kashmir and neighboring Jammu. Kashmiri militants have consistently persecuted Hindus in the region, as well as moderate muslims suspected of siding with the India . The well-known Kashmiri Pandit ethnic group of Hindus, who have been denizens of the region for centuries, have been ethnically cleansed from Kashmir by Islamic militants. .

Report on Human Rights of Hindus

A report released by the Hindu American Foundation on the status of human right of Hindus in Bangladesh, Pakistan and Kashmir covers great detail and with much documentation the condition of millions of Hindus who live as minorities amongst a Muslim population, which received insufficient attention before.

The 71-page report compiles media coverage and first-hand accounts of human rights violations perpetrated against Hindus because of their religious identity. The incidents are documented, often quoting from well-known international human rights organizations.

The Hindu American Foundation, a non-partisan American group, presented the report to the co-chairs of the US Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican, and Gary Ackerman, a Democrat. Both of these members of Congress endorsed it.

Findings of the report

The report documents the long history of anti-Hindu atrocities in Bangladesh, a topic that many Indians and Indian governments over the years have preferred not to acknowledge. Such atrocities, including targeted attacks against temples, open theft of Hindu property, and rape of young Hindu women and enticements to convert to Islam, have increased sharply in recent years after the Jamat-e-Islami joined the coalition government led by the Bangladesh National Party.


Bangladesh has had a troublesome history of persecution of Hindus as well. A US-based human rights organisation, Refugees Internationsl, has claimed that religious minorities, especially Hindus, still face discrimination in Bangladesh. The government of Bangladesh, a nationalist party openly calls for ‘Talibanisation’ of the state. It would seem that the first step to achieving this target is by ridding the nation of its indigenous Hindu minority. In 1971 at the time of the liberation of Bangladesh from East Pakistan, the Hindu population accounted for 15% of the total population. Thirty years on, it is now estimated at just 7% . The ‘Vested Property Act’ previously named the ‘Enemy Property Act’ has seen upto 40% of Hindu land snatched away forcibly. Since this government has come into power, of all the rape crimes registered in Bangladesh, 98% have been registered by Hindu women. Hindu temples in bangladesh have also been vandalised (article mirrorred from the US library of congress). The United States congressional caucus on India has condemned these atrocities . The estimated loss of 20 million Bangladeshi Hindus is because of an ongoing genocide and forced exodus. An aside to that statistic is that much of the purge has occurred well after the liberation of that country thanks to Indian blood and treasure.

Hindus in what is now Pakistan have declined from 23 % of the total population in 1947 to less than 2 % today. The report rightly condemns Pakistan for systematic state-sponsored religious discrimination against Hindus through bigoted "anti-blasphemy" laws. It documents numerous reports of millions of Hindus being held as "bonded laborers" in slavery-like conditions in rural Pakistan, something repeatedly ignored by the Pakistani government. Pakistan aggressively portrays its struggle against India as a Hindu-Muslim conflict, making it clear that its own Hindu minority is fair game for persecution.

Even within India, the pattern is the same. The combination of violence and local anti-Hindu sentiment has led to a similar "religious cleansing" of the Kashmir valley, where almost all the Hindus have fled.

Much like the Bangladeshi Hindu refugees in India, the Kashmiri Hindus are an unpalatable subject for many Indians, an ideological embarrassment for some people who feel uneasy about discussing the persecution of Hindus by Muslims. Some Indians still prefer to blame the Indian government for the flight of Kashmiri Hindus, ignoring the campaign launched by various Muslim groups to use public threats and violence, including murder, to terrify the local Hindus into leaving.

Conclusion of the report

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Some Indians may feel uncomfortable with this report because they do not want to be reminded about the problems of Hindus outside their milieu. And for some in the Indian intelligentsia, it is a badge of honour to distance themselves from these pogroms as a mark of their supposed enlightenment, oddly trashing their own ethos in the process. Many more Indians are reluctant to speak out against atrocities committed against Hindus for fear of being labeled "communal". Merely speaking about human rights for Hindus is for them a form of communalism. This can be attributed to a form of self-hatred that is similar to the so-called Self-hating Jew.

The people whose persecution is amply documented in this report are being persecuted because they are Hindu, not because they are poor or because of their political views. Human rights activists in Bangladesh and Pakistan, many of whom are not Hindus, have painstakingly documented the violations of basic human rights of Hindus in their country.

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