From the WSJ Opinion Archives
CITIZEN OF THE WORLD
Patches of Evil
The Taliban's latest atrocity.
Two months ago, a man called Sayed Rahmatullah Hashimi visited the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. A senior spokesman on foreign affairs for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, he was on a mission to explain why that regime had undertaken to destroy two giant, and ancient, statues of the Buddha near a town called Bamiyan, 90 miles west of the capital, Kabul.
Mr. Hashimi, a man only in his 20s, gave us this "true picture"--I remember his phrase--behind the destruction of the statues. I paraphrase from memory, as well as from some notes I made at the meeting:
We in Afghanistan have many people dying of hunger. Children are starving. But no one in the West is prepared to help. Instead, we had a group of Western diplomats who came to our country and offered us money, lots of money, for the repair and restoration of these statues. We thought, these people care more about the Buddhas than about our children. This made us enraged, so enraged that we decided to get rid of these statues. We had to show the West that their priorities were wrong. So we decided to knock down the statues.The reasoning here is plainly spurious. You do not need to be a logician to see that. Quite apart from being a bare-faced (or should I say bearded) lie--the offers of money for the protection of the statues were made after the Taliban announced they would destroy the un-Islamic idols--Mr. Hashimi's version highlights the intellectual and philosophical backwardness of the Taliban. Were we supposed to feel guilty for having made them knock down Afghanistan's most ancient artifacts? Mr. Hashimi's message, in a nutshell, was this: Look what you made us do!
Thank God for echoes from history, for without them we might not have read of--let alone given voice to our outrage over--the latest act of malevolence in Afghanistan. History, specifically that of the Nazis and their Final Solution, has ensured that we have all taken notice of an edict--a fatwa--issued by Mohammed Wali, who holds the title of "minister for the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice," by which all Hindus in Afghanistan have to wear a yellow patch on the clothing so that they may easily be identified.
This move to stigmatize Hindus, like the Nazis' tagging of Jews with yellow Stars of David, is an attempt to strip the people so marked of their personality. The wearer of a cloth patch, deemed to be "the Other," loses more than just his civic status. He is dehumanized, and his condition is now no more than that of an incarnation of his patch and of its message. He has no face, no voice, no protection, no privacy, no respect, no dignity.
Mullah Wali, predictably, has come up with a disingenuous way to deflect the criticism: Hindus must wear patches "for their own safety," and to protect them from the religious police enforcing Islamic law. The move, he said, is "not meant to harm or humiliate Hindus." Afghan radio has attacked the "propaganda drive," which is "transforming a small issue into a big issue." The echo of history, clearly, has yet to reach Kabul.
Whereas the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas could be regarded as an act of mindless barbarity, of wanton destruction--the actions, arguably, of a primitive, backward and ignorant rabble--the decree against the Hindus is an act of cold and evil calculation. Coldness and evil are not the preserve of "rational" societies, with their Cartesian ways and temperament. A semiliterate mullah can be just as pitiless, just as remorseless, just as evil, as a man who commands the destruction of a people in ways that are "scientific."
The reaction against the Taliban has been universal. Every civilized country has voiced its indignation at the manner in which the Hindus are now to be marked. But shouldn't we fear a reaction from the hellhounds in Kabul? Will we have a visit from Mr. Hashimi in two months, seeking to explain the execution--the wiping out--of all of Afghanistan's Hindus?
We in Afghanistan have many people dying of hunger. Children are starving. But no one in the West is prepared to help. Instead, we had a group of Western leaders who told us not to make the Hindus wear yellow patches of cloth. They made a lot of noise, called us evil, savage, all sorts of things. We thought, these people care more about the Hindus in Afghanistan than about our children. This made us enraged, so enraged that we decided to get rid of these Hindus. We had to show the West that their priorities were wrong. So we decided to kill all the Hindus.Before I conclude, I owe it to my readers to make a full disclosure: If I were in Afghanistan, I'd have to wear a yellow patch.
Mr. Varadarajan is deputy editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal. His column will appear Tuesdays beginning June 5.
