| Finally,
it is a pity that there does not exist the slightest awareness,
wither among Hindus or Muslims, that Muslims need the rise if Indian
civilization as much as Hindus, if not more. Indeed, such is the
grip of the misrepresentation of Hindutva in anti-Muslim terms that
its proponents, including some leaders of the Bharatiya Janata
Party, themselves, speak of it defensively.
History knows of any number of
instances when a community has needed to be protected, or
liberated,from,its own leaders: Germans under Hitler;
Russians under Stalin; Chinese under Mao Zedong; and, more recently
Iraqis under Saddam Hussain, for example. Hitler and Saddam Hussain
first let loose a reign of terror at home and broke the spirit of
their own peoples before they went to war with other countries.
Indeed, the war at home is central to all dictators. Stain got an
opportunity to extend his tyrannical rule to eastern Europe only
towards the end of the Second World War. Earlier he, like Mao later,
had to be content with mass massacres at home, and he was
about to return to the sport at the time of his death in
1953. To extend the argument further, while the West has doubtless
celebrated the collapse of communist tyrannies in eastern Europe,
the principal beneficiaries have been the peoples of those unhappy
lands.
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