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Beware of unholy bias
The recent tragedy at Mina in Saudi Arabia where at least 94
Indian hajis met a fiery end highlights all that is wrong with
Indo-Saudi relations and India's pathetic gestures to appease the
Saudis as well as the domestic Muslim constituency. It is obvious
that India's attempts to please the Saudis have been in vain and
they continue to be as crude and obnoxious in their behaviour
towards India as they have always been. We are all very familiar
with how the Saudis use the platform provided by the Organisation
of Islamic States (OIC) to regularly belabour India for acts=
ranging
from genocide to oppression of the Kashmiri Muslims. The irony is
that with the exception of Malaysia and Egypt most of the OIC
nations are primitive despotisms, Saudi Arabia being the most
notable among them.
Saudi Arabia has a long record of hostility towards India. It is=
well
known that the Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank and the
International Islamic Relief Organisation fund various Islamic
institutions in India from where much of the money flows into the
hands of Kashmiri militants and other fundamentalist groups. Not
satisfied by just this, the Saudis fund the Taliban's training camp=
at
Khost in Afghanistan where about 2,000 Kashmiri youth are being
trained in terrorism and subversion.
The entry of Indians into Saudi Arabia is generally restricted to
Muslims. Among non-Muslims the Sikhs are particular targets and
are not given visas as a rule. India, on the other hand, welcomes=
all
and sundry Saudis, including old men who want to marry minor
girls. Typical of this Saudi mentality is the manner in which Saudi
Arabia spirited away the octogenarian who was involved in the
celebrated Amina case.
This hostility towards Indians is not restricted to the living. An
Indian may make his haj pilgrimage. But if he dies while there he
cannot be buried in Saudi Arabia's shifting desert sands. The
corpse must be removed to India. When the Saudi Government or
a Saudi company advertises in India for professionals, it makes it
very clear that only Muslims and Christians need apply. Most
Indian newspapers carry these advertisements even though they
violate Indian laws which prohibit any sort of discrimination. Just
to cite an example, the National Industrial Gases Company, which
claims to be a part of the ``prestigious'' Sabic group, recently
advertised in all major Indian newspapers inviting applications for
engineering professionals. Right at the top of the advertisement,=
in
bold type, was this warning: Muslims/Christians only.=
Interestingly,
the advertisement was released by a Bombay-based recruitment
firm. That an Indian firm could so brazenly release such an
advertisement shows that these things are now accepted as
normal. What is surprising is that the Shiv Sena-BJP Government
in Maharashtra has not sprung into action with the same alacrity
with which it registered a case against M.F. Husain for some old
sketches.
Saudi behaviour was true to form in the manner in which the Saudi
authorities conducted themselves in the aftermath of the mid-air
collision between Saudia Boeing 747 and the Kazakh IL-76. This
too despite the fact that there was ample initial evidence to=
suggest
that the Saudia pilot was flouting the Air Traffic Controller's
(ATC) instructions and climbing faster than permitted. At that time
not only did the Saudis insinuate that the ATC was at fault but=
they
were tardy in helping relatives identify and claim the bodies. No
Saudi official was present on hand when hundreds of mangled
bodies were retrieved, identified and cremated or buried. That job
was mainly left to RSS and local volunteers. Even in the matter of
paying compensation to the victims and to the farmers whose
standing crops were destroyed, the Saudis proved to be tightwads
and paid the meagre compensations most reluctantly. After all, to
the Saudis, an Indian life costs far less than that of a Saudi or a
white man.
It is quite evident that the heavy toll of lives in the Mina fire=
was
due to the fact that the Indian hajis were padlocked in their
enclosure by Saudi guards who apparently were more keen to
prevent their ``escape'' into the paradise the Saudis obviously=
think
their country is. Indian Consul General in Jeddah Afzal Amanullah
has done a great service to the nation by speaking out the way he
saw things. It did not take too long for the perpetual appeasers in
South Block to contradict him and then instruct Ambassador
Hamid Ansari in Riyadh to contradict the diplomat on site.
An Indian pilgrim Salim Ahmed, who lost his father, is quoted in a
newspaper as saying, ``I carried my dying father for two days on
my shoulder. I kept asking for a doctor but no one at the
dispensaries seemed concerned. Instead, people with minor
injuries from other countries were looked after while we waited for
treatment.'' The treatment Salim Ahmed's father got was standard
Saudi treatment for South Asians in general and Indians in
particular.
India bends backwards or more suggestively bends forwards to
please the Saudis. Nothing illustrates this better than the fact=
that
India's two top diplomats to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are
Muslims. This is not an accident or coincidence. This has always
been the Indian policy. One can understand if the VIPs in the haj
delegation were all Muslims. After all the haj is only for Muslims.
But when the newly installed government of I.K. Gujral decided to
send a team of MPs to study and comment on the situation, only
Muslims were chosen again. Are only Muslim MPs fit to study the
cause of the large loss of life and the quality of assistance=
rendered
to the affected? Or, was the visit by the MPs merely another
gesture to appease Indian Muslims? By these standards India must
send only Anglican Christians to the United Kingdom; And
comrade Harkishan Singh Surjeet, should be sent, if not to Beijing,
then most definitely to Pyongyang!
Obviously, the Indian policy of appeasement is not working. Not
with the Saudis at least. It is time India sent somebody like Swami
Nishchalanand, the Jagadguru Shankaracharya of the Puri Peeth, a
man who can hold his head high in the company of the most
obscurantist of religious fundamentalists, to Saudi Arabia as its
Ambassador.
Copyright =A9 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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