Word: moslem
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...discussing a creeping malady that is undermining our nation," lamented Socialist Leader Nath Pai in India's parliament last week. Dramatic as it seemed, his statement was no exaggeration. Once again battles had broken out between India's Hindu majority (460 million) and its Moslem minority (60 million). It was essentially the same conflict that rent the subcontinent when it achieved independence in 1947, forced its partition into the hostile states of India and Pakistan and has caused periodic upheavals ever since. This time the site was the west-coast state of Maharashtra, where eight days of rioting...
...troubles began in Bhiwandi, a cotton and silk weaving center 35 miles north of Bombay, Maharashtra's capital. Bhiwandi's most prominent Moslems agreed to join Hindus in an anniversary procession honoring the 17th century warrior Shivaji, who is remembered for his rout of the Moslem Moguls who dominated India for over 200 years. So delicate are relationships between the sects that marching slogans had to be approved before the procession started out. All of them were about as inoffensive as LONG LIVE MOTHER INDIA. Midway through the parade, however, a few marchers began to shout scurrilous slogans...
Haunting Face. Word of the religious riot ran through Maharashtra with predictable results. In Jalgaon, 200 miles away, Hindus forced an entire Moslem wedding party into a building and set it afire; 19 Moslems, including small children, died. In the town of Broach, 300 people rioted after a pedicab knocked down an eight-year-old boy. In Bhiwandi, Hindus chased six Moslem moneylenders into a thicket, set it afire and hacked the men to death as they fled the flames...
...Hindu-Moslem enmity has been a factor in Indian life since the beginning of the tenth century. Two decades ago, it reached a peak when more than 100,000 people died in the wake of partition. Religious fanatics still stir up trouble, and police intelligence is usually not good enough to head it off. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi blamed the Hindu nationalist party, Jana Sangh, and its paramilitary arm, the Rashtrya Sewak Sangh (R.S.S.), for the latest bloodbath. "Is it a coincidence," she asked, "that when people who belong to the R.S.S. or the Jana Sangh go somewhere, soon afterward...
...freely given, it forbids either spouse from inflicting corporal punishment on the other. It also ends child marriage by raising the wedding age to 18 for men and to 15 for women and sets up village conciliation boards for mending broken marriages. Such red tape will deprive the Moslem male of his traditional right to shed a wife simply by declaring "I divorce thee" three times. The plan would not abolish the ancient custom of bride price, which often amounts to ten or 20 prime cows. But it would ease the young man's burden by permitting...