When a British Pakistani MP visits Pakistan, you can put money on it that they will return to the UK Parliament and ask a question about Kashmir. They have no regard at all for UK foreign policy – knowing full well what the Foreign Office Minister will say, “the UK believes this is not an issue for the UK Government”. So why does the MP ask it? For consumption in Pakistan. Not for UK votes. What is going on? The UK is a friend of India’s.
Separately, the Russian media have been pleased to see that after the chemical attacks in the UK, that India did not expel any diplomats. That it did not stand by the UK. As a British Indian, my first loyalty is to Britain. Were I a British Pakistani MP, that may not be so. But I am not. I am a British Indian.
Chemical weapons being used in Syria continue to sadden. I am reminded of a recent trip to Turkey…
“We’ll show them someday soon, the evidence of truth we are all over the world and to themselves, until light to them, that the Qur’aan is the truth. It not enough that thy Lord is witness over all things. “(Surah Fushshilat: 53).
Dear Prime Minister of Turkey,
I prayed to a Hindu God today in a Mosque – the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.
I prayed for the children of Syria, your neighbour, being murdered and slaughtered and exterminated and eradicated by your Muslim brother Assad. Prove me seditious for praying to another God on behalf of the children of your faith, because their God has deserted them.
I prayed, that your God, who my faith teaches me is my God too, listens to me in your Mosque, because He does not listen to His own children in their mosques – because surely as they are being murdered their parents pray for salvation – and none comes.
I prayed to Shiv, the destroyer, in your Mosque, that He may become death and the destroyer of worlds…the world of Assad.
(Forgive my impertinence, I confess, my God also fails to listen to the cries of His children in His mandirs.)
I prayed that your blood boils with anger and the wrath of the Lord flow through your veins and you strike down with a mighty vengeance those who harm your children.
What relevance that I am Indian? More Muslims reside in these two secular countries, India and Turkey, than any other secular State – so it is that India and Turkey have a responsibility to the world’s Muslims to show them secular liberal democracies will be their defender. It is a duty and opportunity both countries have yet to grasp. China has more Muslims than Syria, yet China failed to act. Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined – yet Russia too fails to protect Syrian Muslim children. So it is surely left to India and Turkey.
So show us non-believers, ‘the evidence of truth, that you are all over the world and that it is not enough thy Lord is witness over all thing’s – but that you will save the children of a greater God.
When Pope Benedict visited this same Mosque he said, ‘May all believers identify themselves with the one God and bear witness to true brotherhood.’ Tonight I bore witness as a believer in God, make me a believer in Islamic brotherhood.
Prime Minister – you are your brother’s keeper. A Catholic has told you – a Pope no less, a Hindu commoner has told you – both from inside your own Mosque – when will the brotherhood of Islam tell you?
