Author: Rafiq Zakaria
Publisher: Popular Prakashan
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 248
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8179910709
Description
Dr. Rafiq Zakria, a scholar of international repute, who has spent more than 50 years of his life trying to bring Hindus and Muslims together, delves deep into the past and present of the relationship between the two communities to discover what went wrong that brought about such conflagration of hatred and bloodshed. He also looks at the future with diffidence but hope.
Why did the torching of 58 kar sevaks in the Sabarmati Express at Godhra take place? It was undoubtedly the work of some demented persons, insensitive to its possible aftermath. Worse, how did genocide on such a brutal scale in most parts of Gujarat occur? And that too in a state which gave birth to Gandhi and nurtured him! People all over the world continue to wonder-Have human relations in a country known for its broad humanism fallen so low?
Why is it that Hindus and Muslims who lived together for more than a thousand years in peace, have now begun to hate one another? Never before were women and children burnt and butchered in such a bestial manner. The miscreants, incited by communal Hindus belonging to different castes and sub-castes and cutting across the rich and the poor, unleashed such a terrible reign of murder, rape and loot that history itself stood aghast at what it was forced to record.
Prof.Amartya Sen of Cambridge University, one of the greatest thinkers of our times, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998, has written the Foreword to the book. He warns that unless the communal virus which seems to have overtaken India in such a horrendous manifestation is not destroyed, it will destroy India itself.
Contents
Dedication
Foreword by Prof. Amartya Sen
Preface
1. Godhra Massacre
2. Gujarat Genocide
3. Relief Camps
4. Fascist Trends
5. Hindu Grievances
6. Historical Distortions
7. Religious Misconceptions
8. Muslims in the Dock
9. Shivaji and Vivekananda
10. Sardar Patel
11. What Should Muslims Do?
Notes
Bibliography
Index