The Forgotten Kohat Genocide of Hindus: An Introductory History

The Forgotten Kohat Genocide of Hindus: An Introductory History

At the outset, let’s look at two quotes.

Quote 1

“On the whole, violence is sanctified in Islam if it is carried out against infidels or heretics ‘in the path of Allah.’ On the philosophic religious level, there is no room for nonbelievers in the Islamic system, even if minorities are temporarily tolerated. The faithful live, at least in theory, in a permanent state of war with the non-Islamic world, and this will change only if and when the nonbelievers have accepted the one true faith…In brief, the Islamic fundamentalist attitude towards violence is that the final aim justifies the means.”

That was the late Walter Laqueur in his brilliant work, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction.

Quote 2

” [if the British left India], then the rule of India would pass into the hands of that community which is nearly four times as large as ourselves … Then, our life, our property, our honor, and our faith will all be in great danger. … woe betide the time when we become the subjects of our neighbors, and answer to them for the sins, real or imaginary of Aurangzeb, … and other Mussalman conquerors and rulers who went before him.”

That was Nawab Waqar-ul-Mulk Kamboh alias Mushtaq Hussain Zuberi, one of the founders of the All India Muslim League along with that other fanatic, Nawab Salimullah of Dhaka.

Mushtaq Hussain’s words are direct and unambiguous. They also formed the foundational raison d’être for the All India Muslim League. The attentive reader will notice the intricate and inextricable link between Quote 1, which is the inspiration for and guiding force behind Quote 2.

What did Mushtaq Hussain’s words translate themselves into in the impenetrable intellectual abyss called Jawaharlal Nehru’s mind? Let’s read his own[i] words.

Quote 3

“Communalism of the majority is far more dangerous than communalism of the minority… When the minority communities are communal, you can see that and understand it. But the communalism of a majority community is apt to be taken for nationalism.”

Let me spell it out: The Nawab of All-Encompassing Cluelessness emphatically endorsed the rabid Mushtaq Hussain (and several others of his ilk) decades later, by concocting an unofficial political religion called secularism, which neither had a concrete definition nor the sanction of popular will.

But Nehruvian secularism was precisely what the vestiges of the bigoted, separatist forces that remained in India after partition wanted. Secularism was that exact gift that helped the fanatical Ulema in India to lie low for a while and use time and patience to regroup, re-strengthen, and rearm another Jinnah. Almost the entire Muslim community underwent a massive sense of collective guilt thanks to Partition. There is a fundamental reason why Muslim actors and artists in Hindi cinema adopted Hindu names: remember Muhammad Yusuf Khan? Hamid Ali Khan? Mumtaz Jehan Begum Dehlavi? Mahjabeen Bano? From that era to the steady but sure transformation and near-total takeover of Bollywood by Dawood Ibrahim, there is a direct parallel to the dominance of secularism in Indian politics and public discourse.  

The contemporary equivalent of Mohammad Ali Jinnah in many ways is Asaduddin Owaisi. As the history of the last seventy-plus years shows, these forces used the selfsame secularism with much more skill and finesse than Mohammed Ali Jinnah. In “independent” India, these forces were also effectively aided and abetted by Communists, now masquerading as Liberals. One of the signal services that these Liberal traitors have rendered to the Jihadi forces is the whitewashing of bigoted mass murderers like Aurangzeb and Tipu Sultan.

But what else did secularism get us over these seven decades? The two-word answer: communal riots. Here is a topic for a Phd thesis: there is a direct correlation between secularism (as practiced in India under successive Congress regimes) and communal riots. It is an open secret that the maximum number of communal riots—euphemism for unprovoked Muslim aggression against Hindus who generally mind their own business peacefully—happened under the protracted Congress rule. A painstaking study undertaken by RNP Singh shows[ii]  that a staggering 8175 communal riots occurred between 1950 to June 1992.

The invariable outcome in the aftermath of these riots: blaming Hindus for a variety of reasons: mostly imaginary but always ideologically motivated. Over a period of six decades, Blame-Hindus became a flourishing cottage industry which peaked during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Here is how the indomitable Koenraad Elst describes[iii] this industry:

These days, much-acclaimed characters like John Dayal, Harsh Mander and Arundhati Roy lie in waiting for communal riots and elatedly jump at them when and where they erupt. They exploit the anti-Hindu propaganda value of riots to the hilt, making up fictional stories as they go along to compensate for any defects in the true account. John Dayal is welcomed to Congressional committees in Washington DC as a crown witness to canards such as how Hindus are raping Catholic nuns in India, an allegation long refuted in a report by the Congress state government of Madhya Pradesh. Arundhati Roy goes lyrical about the torture of a Muslim politician’s two daughters by Hindus during the Gujarat riots of 2002, even when the man had only one daughter.   

A History of the Depopulation and Displacement of Hindus

You know what’s even worse? In a majority of these cases where the rioting Muslim mobs have prevailed, hundreds and thousands of Hindu survivors of the riots have been displaced wholesale, never to return to their ancestral lands and homes and families that have lived in the same place for tens of generations.

One of the cardinal features that kept the Sanatana civilization unbroken for centuries was a sense of permanence of dwelling. The original Sanatana village was not only smallest unit of administration since time immemorial, it was also self-contained in almost all matter. It was rare for a villager to step out of his village except for say, attending functions, festivals, and going on a Yatra. But this was rudely, cruelly disrupted forever thanks to waves upon waves of Muslim invasions and raids spread over several centuries. It is estimated that throughout Northern and Eastern India, there is only one village near Hissar in Haryana, which can trace its antiquity to a paltry 600 years. There. Here is one more topic for a Phd thesis: the forced migrations of millions of Hindus from their original homes to various parts of India. This is a historical study of more than a thousand years. The interested student will find such a study highly rewarding.  

But what has changed since that era of Jihad-fuelled rampaging Muslim armies who could loot, pillage, plunder, raze, burn, conquer, and subjugate at will, and “Independent,” democratic India? Just the outer garb. But fundamentally nothing has changed. The said historical conquests have today become localized. And acquired an additional strength thanks to seventy years of secularism.

Today, forget hearing the heart-rending stories of the displaced Hindus, the vile nature of our Jihad-loving, Left-Liberal, Congress-sponsored public discourse has ensured that these Hindus didn’t even exist to begin with. Ask this question, for example: have you read even one news report of even one Hindu victim of the Gujarat riots and the spark that ignited it: the macabre burning alive of 57 hapless kar sevaks in the ill-fated Sabarmati Express?

This was the secularism that was in danger for example, when the Babri Masjid demolished, when the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and other Hindu organisations began reasserting themselves, and most recently, when Narendra Modi conclusively trashed it in the dustbin of history.

More recently, thanks to the abrogation of Article 370, all the beef-coated layers of lard have melted to reveal the true definition of secularism: incurable lust for Pakistan.

One such forgotten and long-buried incident of the genocide and mass displacement of Hindus is the infamous Kohat Massacre of Hindus circa September 1924. Carried out over three full days of appalling, brutal intensity against—as always—unprepared Hindus and Sikhs. Lambs for wanton slaughter. Such was the raw savagery of the Muslim mobs that it shook even the British who so skillfully hid and whitewashed their own colonial savagery.

Oh! The Kohat Genocide of Hindus also prompted Mohandas Gandhi to undertake a 21-day fast protesting this horror. No wonder that craven Gandhi-worshippers and alleged biographers like Ramachandra “Perfumed Kavita Krishnan” Guha carefully omit such key milestones in Mohandas Gandhi’s career. For Guha and his ilk, the life of a Hindu only has value when he or she is killed and used as fuel to keep the blaze of the Blame-Hindu Cottage Industry aflame.

But the story of the Kohat Genocide of Hindus begins about a year earlier, that is, 1923 CE. In a Jamait-ul-Ulema Conference held in Kakinada on 29 December 1923. The conference heralded a short-lived but heinous era of communal riots from 1923-26. The Kohat Genocide of Hindus was perhaps the most savage of them all.

And you guessed it correctly. Today, Kohat is part of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly, the North-West Frontier Province) in Pakistan. It is just over 300 Kms from Srinagar and about 750 Kms from Delhi. Barely a century ago, it was densely populated by Hindus and Sikhs.

The full story of how the Sanatana population of Kohat was savagely depopulated will be told in the next part.

To be continued     

Notes

[i] Jawaharlal Nehru: Speech at the All India Congress Committee, 1958. Emphasis added.

[ii] RNP Singh: Riots & Wrongs: Islam and Religious Riots: A Case Study, India First Foundation, 2004

[iii] Koenraad Elst: Ayodhya, the Finale: Science Versus Secularism in the Excavations Debate, Voice of India, 2003

The Dharma Dispatch is now available on Telegram! For original and insightful narratives on Indian Culture and History, subscribe to us on Telegram.

logo
The Dharma Dispatch
www.dharmadispatch.in