Deadly ‘Peace’ Alliance – Ram, Buddha would have nipped it in bud

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Editorial

BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, as a top RSS functionary in March 2013 posted comments on his Facebook and Twitter accounts sympathetic to Buddhist extremist group Bodu Bala Sena. In September this year, the Sri Lankan group held a convention in Colombo and made Ashin Wirathu, a Burmese Buddhist radical whose picture Time magazine put on its July 1 cover as “The Face of Buddhist Terror”, the Guest of Honour. Wirathu heads 969, a Buddhist extremist group in Myanmar. Now with media reports last week that Bodu Bala Sena was engaging “at a high level” discussion with RSS, the right-wing Indian Hindu group, to form “Hindu-Buddhist peace zone”, it seems Islamophobia and deadly alliance against Muslims have banged South Asia, the region marred by communal and ethnic violence, in a big way. For last two years, there have been deadly attacks on Muslims by extremist Buddhists in Myanmar and Sri Lanka – leaving scores of them dead.

Though Madhav has denied being in any such talk with the radical Sri Lankan Buddhist group, even hints of such alliance must be an alarm bell for the governments of Myanmar, Sri Lanka and India. Islamophobia or fear or hatred of Islamic doctrine, a phenomenon plaguing the western societies post September 11 attacks in 2001, has invaded this part of the world and attacks on Muslims in Gujarat post-Godhra train carnage in 2002 and in Myanmar in 2012 were certainly Islamophobic in nature.

In his bid to counter anti-Muslim tendencies among a section of Buddhist population in Myanmar, The Dalai Lama had earlier appealed to Monks asking them to act according to the principles of the Buddha and shun targeted attacks against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar.

“When resentment or anger towards your Muslim brothers and sisters emerge please, remember [the principles] of the Buddhist faith,” said the Tibetan spiritual leader, during an annual peace conference held in Prague, Czech Republic.

The Dalai Lama even on his 79th birthday in July this year asked the Buddhist extremist groups in Myanmar and Sri Lanka to stop instigating killings against Muslim minorities in the two countries. The spiritual leader was probably aware of the rise in level of Islamophobic tendencies that have come to grip the societies in these two countries as Galagodaththe Gnanasara, leader of the radical Sri Lankan Buddhist group Bodu Bala Sena, announced at the Colombo convention that “the time has come to ally internationally”.

Allowing of such conventions out of political expediencies at times proves expensive as has been proved several times in the past. The Muslim and Christian groups in Sri Lanka had asked the government of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa to deny Wirathu the visa but in vain. Rajapaksa must have heeded to the larger message of Dalai Lama and put curbs on such meet in his country. Wirathu visa can only reinforce the fears of many Muslims that the government and perhaps more powerful regional allies back Bodu Bala Sena, which translates as Buddhist Power Force.

Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi who has won on a development-for-all plank and asked the minorities not to fear anyone and assured them that he was against discrimination, and also asked them to “come out of fear politics”, should not appear to ally with such forces of Islamophobia for the larger goal of peace and prosperity and rein in any such sentiments not only within the country but also in the region.

If Ram and Buddha, the most revered and holiest figures in Hinduism and Buddhism respectively, were around they must have nipped the unholy alliance in the bud.

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