While convicting 16 persons in a mass conversion case and 12 of them in prison, a local court in Uttar Pradesh referred to the atrocities suffered by Hindus during the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh and observed that this was an example of the consequences of “demographic imbalance” in the country due to fundamentalist Islam.
While pronouncing life sentences to prominent Islamic scholar Maulana Kaleem Siddiqui and preacher Umar Gautam, the Lucknow court said the convicted persons used unlawful conversion as their “main weapon” as part of “extensive unconventional warfare” against the Indian state.
In the 264-page verdict – a copy of which is with The Wire – special judge of the National Investigation Agency-Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) court Vivekanand Sharan Tripathi took into perspective two books – including a dubious one – a paper on “sub-conventional warfare” by a former Indian army officer, and a recent controversial observation made by a judge of the Allahabad high court on India’s ‘majority’ population possibly turning into a ‘minority’ due to conversions.
Judge Tripathi found the accused persons, especially Siddiqui and Gautam – described as the masterminds of the mass conversion case – guilty of trying to work with the “mindset” of transforming India into a “Dar-ul-Islam” or “House of Islam” through a wide network of illegal conversions.
He concluded that Gautam, Siddiqui and others were inspired by the “fundamentalist Jihadi ideology” of the controversial Islamic preacher of Jamaican origin Bilal Philips and extremist American Islamic preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, who was linked to the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda.
Through connections with these two controversial characters and their organisations, the accused persons were working to convert India into a “Dar-ul Islam”, said Judge Tripathi.
His court on Wednesday (September 11) sentenced 12 persons to life and awarded a ten-year jail term to four others after finding them guilty of running an inter-state syndicate for unlawfully converting Hindus to Islam.
This was the first major instance of a conviction in a mass conversion case in Uttar Pradesh after the Yogi Adityanath-led government introduced a controversial law against unlawful conversion in 2020-21.
The 16 persons were convicted under Sections 3, 5 and 8 of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021 as well as sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) linked to promoting hatred on religious grounds, outraging religious sentiments and cheating.
The 12 persons who received life sentences were convicted under section 121 A of the IPC, which deals with waging war against India.
Two accused persons, Maulana Umar Gautam and his son Abdullah Umar, were also convicted under Section 35 of the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) for allegedly securing large sums of funds from foreign persons and institutions illegally in their non-FCRA accounts.
The money was allegedly used for unlawful conversion and providing financial help to converts.
The court said the accused persons were trying to convert Hindus to Islam in large numbers through unlawful conversions with the help of foreign funds and a foreign conspiracy.
Judge Tripathi quoted heavily from the book Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery, written by one M.A. Khan.
According to the book’s description on Google, Khan is a former Muslim who left Islam “after realising that it is based on forced conversions.”
“According to Pakistan Minorities Rights Groups, some 600 Hindus, Sikhs and Christians are forcibly converted to Islam every year. This and a host of other social problems and psychological pressure on the Hindus force them wither to convert to Islam or relocate to India. This has effected the change in religious demographics in Pakistan over the past six decades,” said the court judgment quoting Khan.
A similar situation prevailed in Bangladesh, where a wave of persecution was launched against Hindus after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party came to power in 2001, causing around five lakh Hindus to flee and take refuge in India, said paragraphs of the book mentioned by Tripathi.
The court order also made a mention of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, and quoting from Khan’s book, noted, “The half-a-century of somewhat effective Islamisation over most parts of India under Aurangzeb has contributed substantially to the shaping of current demography of Muslim population, particularly in Northern India.”
Judge Tripathi underlined that the book said that had the British not ended Mughal rule, the Muslim population would have been the highest in the country, which would have become an “Islamic nation” by now.
He said that back in 2009, when the book was published, its author had predicted that with the coming to power of the Jamaat-e-Islami and the right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party as well as the expulsion of the secular Awami League government, cases of atrocities against Hindus, the rape of women and “genocide” would take place.
This was “proven right” with the “Jihadi fundamentalist elements” taking over power in Bangladesh in August, said Judge Tripathi.
To illustrate the “terrifying” consequences of illegal conversion, Tripathi referred to a recent observation made by Justice Rohit Ranjan Agarwal while rejecting the bail petition of a man accused of converting Hindus to Christianity.
“If this process is allowed to be carried out, the majority population of this country would be in minority one day, and such religious congregation should be immediately stopped where the conversion is taking place and changing the religion of citizen of India,” said Justice Agarwal recently.
While explaining his concerns with “illegal conversions”, Judge Tripathi said such conversions never take place to simply alter the ways that the followers of a particular religion perform worship.
He said such conversions impact and have consequences for the “demographic balance” of the country. Over a period of time, the social, economic and political policies of the country as well as of the entire world are determined by the requirements and aspirations of the group with the most numbers, he continued.
In the judgment, Judge Tripathi also took cognisance of another book presented before the court by the UP ATS to understand specific terminologies linked to ‘jihad’ – Pakistan or The Partition of India by B.R. Ambedkar.
In his concluding remarks in the judgment, Judge Tripathi also acknowledged an article titled “Sub-Conventional Warfare: Requirements, Impact and Way Ahead” authored by K.C. Dixit and published in the Journal of Defence Studies in 2009. This also helped him reach the conclusion in the case, said the judge.
In the first few paragraphs of the judgment, Judge Tripathi mentioned the ATS’s chargesheet, in which it said that “fundamentalist Islamists” were using illegal conversion as a weapon for the spread of “Islamic imperialism” with the goal of jihad and to change the “demographic ratio” in their favour to end the constitution-based rule in India and replace it with sharia-based rule.
While pressing the police’s case, assistant prosecutor officer of the ATS, Nagendra Goswami, referred to the division of India into Pakistan and Bangladesh, and even Afghanistan before that, due to “orthodox Islamism”, forced conversions and jihad.
By fundamentalist Islamists, the ATS said it did not mean ordinary Indian Muslims but those Muslims who still claim that their ancestors came from outside India and were of Arab, Turk, Mughal and Iranian origin.
“Muslims in India are descendants of our Hindu samaj [society],” said Goswami, adding that Indian Muslims had once been converted due to allurements, force and pressure.
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