Cautioning against what he saw as dangers involved in the presence of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar in India, Indian Council of Social Science Research Chairman Braj Bihari Kumar said on Wednesday that “this nation should not tolerate them as part of India”.
He said that Buddhists in Myanmar could not “forget” their past problems with Rohingya Muslims, recalling what he saw as the history of the bitterness against Rohingya Muslims in that country.
“We should like to know about the Rohingyas also. What is their record? In 1943, when war was going on between the British and the Japanese, the British government of Burma supplied arms and ammunitions to the Rohingyas to fight against the Japanese, and the Rohingyas turned the gun towards the Buddhists,” Dr. Kumar said.
He was speaking at a seminar on refugees and “infiltrators” organised by the Indian Council of Historical Research.
Forgetting enemies
“How can Burmese forget such enemies? They are not fools like Indians. The Burmese remember their enemies,” he asked,
He said the Rohingya Muslims attacked the Myanmarese and their Army, and this led to the second phase of the conflict.
He also alleged that “many Hindu villages of that province in Myanmar were just smashed and their mass graves were found”.
“My point is: we can’t placate illegal migrants. We should not do it. This nation should not tolerate them as a part of India,” he said.
Dr. Kumar said that while the Mahabharata nowhere called for excusing the enemy, Indians had forgotten their tradition.
He claimed that the Rajput king Prithviraj Chauhan did not kill the enemy (Mohammad Ghori) despite defeating him 17 times — professional historical research says there were just two battles —adding that such a nation was bound to suffer.
Dr. Kumar also said that Hindus had suffered in Pakistan and Bangladesh after Partition.
Post-Partition
He asserted that while there were 16.5% Hindus in Pakistan just after Partition, the number was just 1% today.
He added that while today's Bangladesh had 28% Hindus at that time, the number had fallen to just 8% now.
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