KANPUR, India - At her summer camp, 10-year-old Stuti Gupta is learning to use guns, leap through rings of fire and fight with knives and wooden truncheons - skills India's most powerful Hindu nationalist group tells her she needs to protect her faith. The women's wing of the World Hindu Council is holding training camps in several parts of India, where girls learn martial arts and are "ordained" with metal tridents, the symbol of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. But in a modern nation built on principles of tolerance and equality, such camps don't just deepen Hindus' faith. They create cauldrons of hostility and inject hatred against Muslims and Christian minorities, critics say.
| No! Really? Who'da thunkit? |
"Such trends are inconsistent with prosperity, development and modernization. They are completely antithetical to the modern project of nation building," said Mushirul Hasan, a Muslim who is a professor of modern Indian history.
| There are enough Islamists doing that stuff instead of holding down jobs... |
"If the government wants to create a modern state, it must call the bluff of the Hindu fundamentalists and show the danger they pose to the country."
| But the WHC doesn't want a modern state any more than the mujaheddin across the border do... |
Stuti, a fourth-grader, traveled 170 miles from her native Banda to attend the camp in the northern industrial city of Kanpur. Both cities are in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. "This training will prepare me to fight the odds in the society confidently. They are killing Hindus everywhere to reduce us to a minority and this would help me to face that challenge," the girl said.
| Same argument the Islamists use. With the Islamists waving guns and rolling their eyes, it's understandable, I suppose. But if the Islamists can be prevented from cutting her head off, she'd do a lot better to study math... |
The World Hindu Council's main target is Muslims, who make up more than 12 percent of the country's 1.02 billion people. Some 84 percent of India's citizens are Hindus, and the Hindu nationalists often warn of what they say are the growing militant ambitions of Muslims. |